Happy New Year (A Week Early)

Yesterday was Christmas, and it was all that Christmas should be. On Christmas Eve we had our traditional buffet dinner at 4:00, so that Christopher could head off early to church to finish rehearsing for his role as pianist for the high-profile Christmas Eve "carols and lessons" service. This was a "bucket list" item for him - to play on this most holy evening - and his proud mother can report that he performed beautifully.

Christmas morning two little elves appeared in matching elf pajamas.

Great was the joy as we opened the mountains of presents left by Santa and ate cinnamon rolls from the recipe of my mother (who so loved her Christmas birthday). We then played with the presents until Christopher, Ashley, and the girls left for THREE more Christmas gatherings with Ashley's extended family, and Gregory and I assembled the jigsaw puzzle he had gotten me as a gift: a covered bridge-in-autumn scene to reflect my abiding love for the covered bridges of my adopted state of Indiana.

(I still can't stop some of my pictures from appearing rotated despite saving them a thousand times in a re-rotated position!).

Now it is the Day After Christmas, and I'm totally ready for it to be New Year's Day. I'm ready to start my Whole New Life. I'm planning for January to be Buy Nothing Month, where I purchase absolutely nothing except for food and a minimal amount of gas for the car, to offset the money hemorrhage of the holidays. I'm planning for January to launch a year of dazzling writing productivity where I've set myself the goal of submitting one substantial manuscript (creative or scholarly) every single month. I have my little notebook for 2017 all ready to start listing my year's goals in every aspect of my life. I wish it were 2017 right now!

So I decided: why not start my new year today? If Auntie Mame could sing of needing a little Christmas, right this very minute, candles in the window, carols on the spinet, I can proclaim my own need for a little New Years's, right this very minute. Instead of hauling out the holly and slicing up the fruitcake, I'm going to take a good long healthful walk, read a mentee's manuscript, and - gasp - face revisions on a major manuscript of my own. And spend nothing, not one cent! And eat leftover broccoli instead of leftover Christmas cookies! (Well, maybe just a few leftover Christmas cookies).

Happy New Year! May 2017 be a year of love and joy - and if you're enraptured by work like me, promise and productivity - for all of us.