Nine in Oh-Nine

The awesome Kerri Anne posted an absolutely kickass list of goals for 2009, and it inspired me to come up with my own. I'm historically very bad at keeping resolutions and following through on stuff, so this might be a struggle for me, but I'm going to see what I can do.

1. Develop better eating habits. I'm going to start simple, by making it a goal to eat a small, relatively healthy breakfast each weekday. I also will try to add fruits and veggies to my daily diet, since I am absolutely terrible about that.

2. Get into a sustainable exercise routine. Realistically, I will not exercise every day. Probably not even every other day. But thanks to evilducky, I have a weekly yoga class now, and I'll be taking a six-week Pilates class starting at the end of the month. I'm going to try to keep the momentum going as long as I can.

3. Enter a photograph in an art show Now, I can't control whether or not I get into a show, but for two years I've looked at photographs at art shows and thought, I could do that. So at least once this year, I'm going to get a photo printed, frame it, and pay my fifteen bucks to see about getting that sucker in a show.

4. Launch a ruthless assault on clutter. I got rid of at least three full SUV-loads of crap when we moved into our house last February, and I've managed to excise a few more boxes of junk from our lives since then. I'm going to keep on rolling, because life is too short to spend it dusting / washing / working around stuff you don't even like, want, or use.

5. Try at least one new recipe each month. We don't cook very much, and when we do it tends to be the same stuff over and over. We have a dozen or more cookbooks in the kitchen, which we've barely touched. I lack confidence in the kitchen, so I never want to try anything new lest I fail and waste all the time and food. I may come to regret it, but I'm going to bust out some new recipes this year. Even if I only add one new favorite dish to our rotation, it'll be worth it.

6. Redecorate at least one room in our house. Our house is fab, but it came with some really unfortunate wallpaper. I'd like to have at least one room (or the staircase) stripped, repainted, and re-curtained by the end of the year. Maybe we'll go really crazy and even hang some art!

7. Get the piano tuned and practice regularly. I took years and years of lessons, but after a long break from regular playing, my sight reading is pitiful. I want to get the piano tuned and then go back through my old primers and polish up, and then get back to where I can play classical pieces again. (I should probably apologize in advance to MB and the pets for all the crap playing they're going to hear during my remedial phase.)

8. Read the magazines I pay for. I have had a subscription to National Geographic for years, and it's time to put an end to my habit of guiltily stacking them in the office so I can "read them later." At the end of this year, if I haven't actually cracked any of those yellow-bordered covers, it's time to admit that I am merely pretending to be a cultured NG reader.

9. Waste less food, and be more prudent about what we buy. Right now we have a freezer full of stale ice cream sandwiches and popsicles and Toaster Strudels, and a crate by the fridge full of ancient chips and pretzels. I think there are at least six partial boxes of cereal in the pantry. We never intend to be wasteful, of course, but I'm bad about buying a different variety of something I already have at home, just because I'm craving it (i.e. a box of Kix when I've already got Cheerios at home, Fritos when I'm still working on my Cheetos). It's time for this to stop, I think. I'm making it a goal to clean out all the hidey-holes in the kitchen, and then to be thoughtful and responsible about refilling them.


And, let the year begin.