We had it. I shall not dwell on the particulars. Always forward-thinking, is Smokey, despite an occasional yearning to travel back to 1977 in a time machine and see the first showing of Star Wars. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?)
Anyway. The fallout: my excellent mother gave the snortlepig a potty. This means we have to house-train her. So far she has had a fine time prancing around the house naked, smacking her squish and trying to remove the receptacle part of the potty in the hopes of using it for water play (which… never mind). Signs of Elimination Awareness are notably lacking, but I will keep you apprised.
The passing of Christmas has given me thoughts about the next milestone, New Years Resolutions. I have not always kept Resolutions, excepting an annual angsty determination during my troubled youth to become thinner than my thin sister (which never eventuated; still hasn’t; but I can make puff pastry from scratch and she can’t, so ha. Come to think of it, there might be a causal connection here.) Two years ago I had a very specific and concrete list of Resolutions, which worked to some degree - not the degree of actually fulfilling them, ’cause that’s crazy talk, but the degree of doing more of whatever it was than I otherwise would have done. F’rinstance, “read one theology book a month” didn’t quite pan out, but I did read several, which I otherwise might not have done.
(Interruption: snortlepig throomed on my trousies.)
Then the next year I abandoned concreteness in favour of vague general intentions, and pretty much did squat. Moral: concreteness is key.
So this year, I have some fairly specific goals and slightly less than a week in which to revise them.
(Interruption: snortlepig throomed in the potty while reading Animalia, another Christmas gift. Go snortlepig! Yay for throom! Rah rah rah, etc.)
Let me tell you them.
-Get my learner’s and restricted licence. This is a tad intimidating and I’d really rather not… but come on. I’m 23. It’s getting pathetic. And I have a copy of the Road Code… somewhere. My friends assure me that the learner’s test is dead easy, but I’m not sure they have fully engaged with the cluenessness of a Smokey on the road. Where others subconsciously pick up road rules just by driving around with their parents, making the whole process seem absurdly intuitive, Smokeys… don’t. A quick readthrough of the Road Code was something of a revelation, similar to the discovery of Tolkien’s hobbit runes, but slightly less obvious. Still, we shall do our best.
(Interruption: the snortlepig throomed on the floor again. Twice. I guess she peaked early.)
-Publish 9 print articles. I had a vague aim for 12 last year but totally didn’t make it - I published what, four? Not very many. But it’s good money and keeps the old synapses perky, so I should make more of an effort.
(Interruption: good golly, that’s one leaky pig.)
-Handmake all gifts. I’m of two minds about this, mostly due to laziness, but I feel faintly obliged as a blogger to have at least one goal that’s eco-friendly or anti-sweatshop or similarly noble. And I feel even less inclined to vow only to eat the produce of my veggie garden or live on $30 grocery money a week, or whatever the cool people do. I could manage a “no buying clothes new” thing, but that wouldn’t really be a challenge now I’m into sewing. I will think on it.
-Learn to make ferments, a la Traditional Foodism.
No more ideas as yet… but note that in a rare moment of realism, I have not put “learn Spanish”. I might have to add “Potty train the snortlepig”, though…
Miriam Says:
Mother Says: