I am always excited by the prospect of the New Year’s resolutions — not adhering to them, exactly, but making the list. I love making a list! This year I am sticking close to the obsolete definition of “resolution” that means to satisfy one’s desire (thanks, OED), and not the traditional New Year’s Resolutiony resolutions. Sure, I should eat better, probably exercise too, but I have no desire to do so. I do have a desire to do the following:

learn to knit
be able to make basic sauces without having to drag out a giant cookbook
paint the bathroom
get an orchid

I would write “massively clean out closet” but I’ve already done that. I also insanely organized my stuff by type of garment. Then I went nuts and did Larry’s side, too. What? He has rediscovered a pair of pants he’d forgotten! I have discovered that I own 17 cardigans. (I’d done all the laundry and picked up the dry cleaning when I counted, so that number is accurate. Oy.)

As for knitting, look: I’m old, I have cats, I have 17 cardigans to choose from: I might as well knit. I do not exactly predict that I’m going to be super good at it, as I tried once before and made a lumpy, misshapen circular thing that was supposed to be a hat but I never finished it and thus it was just “hey look I made this lumpy, misshapen circular thing, which I will now wear on my head around the house sometimes, even though it has a skein of yarn dangling behind it because I don’t know how to finish this.” I just want to make a scarf. And, if we’re being honest, I want to knit lumps of coal for Christmas next year. That is my official goal.

I also have reading goals, as usual, and this year I am ramping it up to 100 books. (Will I make it? Probably not, but as Joy Behar says, so what? who kez?) I’ve already read two: the Kathy Griffin book (which I loved) and The English American by Alison Larkin (which was good in that I read it in two days, but perhaps not the most literary book in the world; still, a good story that sucked me in enough that I read it in two days).