I’m going to check back in three months and see if the enthusiasm I currently feel for for all my new 2020 rules of clean living are still true. It’s easy today, ten days into the new year to be proud of my new, adult approach to life. But as my daughter, the former Pesky Pescatarian has observed, sagely, that all this adulting is hard work.
Luke the wonder dog and I have been taking two walks every weekday. It’s been easy, so far. Sure, it’s been chilly in the mornings, but bright and sunny in the afternoons. No excuses have been sought. I’m trying to maintain that lofty goal of 10,000 steps a day, and so far, every day this week we have been successful. I don’t know what we will do on a rainy day, though. Luke hates to get his feet wet in the rain. Never mind that he loves pools and oceans and rivers. No; he does not like to go out in the rain. I’ll have to leave him here while I go off trekking.
Dry January is a little trickier. This is the second year that Mr. Friday and I have joined in Dry January – no alcohol for the month. We didn’t realize how much we like that glass of cheap white wine when he comes home at night, or choosing the right wine to pair with Friday Night Pizza. This abstinence is good for the liver, pocketbook and waistband. I’ve lost 2 pounds since Christmas, which included inhaling city blocks of créme pat in the Christmas cream puffs and acres of homemade peppermint bark. Plus a whole flock of Champagne; some really nice Veuve Clicquot Rosé, too. Weight-wise, it has been an excellent New Year, so far. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793895415/dry-january-the-health-benefits-from-taking-a-break-from-alcohol
My dentist is sang froid and easy-going. She is just pleased that I wander through every year. Her martinet of a dental hygienist is another story. Every 6 moths I get Miss Minchin’s soul-crushing assessment. She knows that I don’t floss every single bloody night. Not so in 2020! 9 for 9! So far! And I replaced the head of my electric toothbrush on January 1. Who says I am not serious about oral hygiene?
Santa brought me a nice pile of books that I haven’t been able to find at the library, so I will not be indulging in an impulse buys on Amazon for a few months. I even tidied up the stack of waiting books on my bedside table. Now, if only the New York Times would call to see what I am planning to read this year. Among them are: Virginia Woolf’s Garden, Nigella Lawson’s At My Table, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, Penelope Lively’s Life in the Garden, Nigal Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles, Donald Hall’s On Eagle Pond, and The Old Success by Martha Grimes. Murder, gardens, food, poetry, gossip and more food. (I’m thinking I might re-read Little Women, too. I know just where my well-thumbed copy is, too!)
Which brings us to the kitchen. For the most part our kitchen is fairly well organized. There are drawers dedicated to potholders and trivets, rolls of aluminum foil, parchment and waxed paper. A drawer for baking tools: cookie cutters, measuring spoons and cups, offset spatulas and icing bags. A drawer for tea towels, another for silverware, one for matches, straws, razor blades, twist ties, and other rarefied junk. There is just one for all the key cooking utensils. Mr. Friday and I have a lot of repeat items. I have two turners I like, thin and sleek and metal. He prefers a few of icky, clunky black OXO silicone pancake turners. I like an old fashioned, easy-peasy cork screw – he likes a fancy battery powered one. (Luckily that isn’t an issue this month!)
We have two sets of indoor cooking tongs, and an outsized pair for outdoors. We have cheese graters, micro-planers and a nutmeg grater. We are down to one garlic press, and one can opener. Several slotted spoons. Lots of sterling serving pieces. A basting brush. Two cooking forks we got from our mothers, that are exact matches, which makes us suspect they were both acquired through the assiduous application of child labor pasting S&H Green Stamps into books, as we both have vague recollections of being entertained as tots…
My next character improvement is going to be organizing this shambles of a kitchen drawer. Wish me luck. Luke says it is going to rain this weekend…
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”
-A.A. Milne
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