2015 is nearly over with! I’m attempting a thirteen month year by starting my goal preparation for 2016 a little early. The premise is that instead of weeding out unreasonable goals and establishing habits in January, start a month early so you have 12 months of productivity instead of 11. When I first read about this, it seemed so obvious that I felt silly for not thinking of it before then. From trying to be more mindful, I already have a few things I’d like to accomplish in 2016. It’s exciting to start planning for a fresh start. I know any day can be a new beginning, but there’s something nice about it starting on 1/1. But here’s the progress on finishing out 2015!
Goals:
- Budget/Debt Repayment Plan
Purchase/Finish Christmas Gifts & Dad’s birthday giftGo to Natchitoches Festival of Lights- Finish one bear for the Mother Bear Project
- Work out 8 times at the gym
- Read Half of a Yellow Sun
My parents’ gifts came in the mail! I got my mom a beautiful necklace of a figure holding her three children and a stool with a bag of gardening tools that snaps under it so that she can do work without having to be on her knees (the cartilage is worn pretty much completely away). My dad wanted cologne so he got Gucci – Made to Measure. For his birthday I got him a leatherbound collection of the Game of Thrones books. I was able to use an $8 gift card I got for doing a survey for Cox and a $10 gift card I got using My Coke Rewards. I finished Z’s Christmas gift (a 7 foot long double-sided scarf of the constant tau in green and cream (the colors I had used for his hat)). You can see him wearing it in the photos below! We went to the Natchitoches Christmas Festival this past weekend.
Many things went wrong for that trip (very late start due to a wreck backing up traffic), then a blowout, then wrong orders, and a lot of delays that meant we were on the road for about 8 hours instead of 3 to return home. But…despite some of the things that went wrong, so many things went right. We got to go see all these antiques and try different samples in the kitchen store. I was also able to show him where I went to boarding school and the library I had worked at. We ate at one of my favorite places from when I was a teenager, and he finally got to eat his Reuben (versus the night before, when they’d gotten his order wrong). Silly as this sounds, it was also really nice to see how we reacted to things going wrong. He was kind and positive the whole time. It made what could have been a bad situation so much easier 🙂 When we were sitting next to the river, a little bug fell on him (see below). We named him Henry! And then promptly released him into the “wild.”
The last thing that happened was he gave me my Christmas. After I got home (and he was at his own home learning topology), I opened it. And it was the Thug Kitchen Cookbook! I had never heard of it before, but I absolutely love to cook and bake, and it is very funny to read and the recipes are different than what it would occur to me to search on something like Pinterest. They’re healthy and vegetarian, and use ingredients I’m not as familiar with (e.g. lentils, quinoa, chick peas), so I’m very excited to try some of these! I have a cabbage and black eyed pea recipe picked out for New Year’s already!
So far, December has been a good month. I am finished with work, no one failed my classes, I’ve gotten to visit my family and spend time with Z and talk with other friends. Later this month I get to visit the WWII Museum in NOLA and have s’mores made in a fireplace! I hope everyone else’s December has been wonderful as well!
How did it get so late so soon? – Dr. Seuss
little fish in a large pond 