Welcome to 2018, a new year of promise and a clean slate.

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet?

Whatever your wishes, hopes and aspirations,  this day of new beginnings gives you the opportunity to start anew, and then see how long you can follow through with today’s declarations.

For last year, my 2017 New Year’s resolutions were admirable.  I wanted to get this house in order, from top to bottom, so there was a place for everything and everything in its place.  I wanted to say to myself “I need such and such” and then go retrieve it, without missing a beat.  Well, for the most part, I did follow through with those good intentions.  I did declutter the house somewhat during the first half of the year and removed at least 35 fully-loaded plastic garbage bags filled with stuff that hadn’t been used in decades.

As my long-time followers to this blog know, the second half of the year was not so great, nor as productive as the first half.

First, a whole-house insulation job left my basement and garage in a shambles and I spent every weekend for a month, cleaning cellulose particles and sticky foam that had landed here, there and everywhere.

Then, I had two back-to-back plumbing disasters, both upstairs and downstairs.

When the PVC pipes for my kitchen double sink were replaced due to a small leak, the seal did not hold and the whole contraption fell apart while I was running a sink full of water.

Next, the pipe underneath the fiberglass sink in the laundry room corroded and fell apart and water went everywhere.

If these events were not bad enough, my laundry room looked like a war zone after the plumbers used a jackhammer to rip apart the tile floor to clean out the main floor drain.

After restoring order to that room and painting the exposed cement floor, a few months later, I had my dryer vent cleaned out, and the repairman moved the washer and dryer to clean the vents.  Unfortunately, he left the AC condensate hose out of the laundry tub on a steamy hot day in September.  Thankfully, 24 hours later, my internet went out and I went downstairs to reboot the modem and I wandered into the laundry room while waiting for it to fully boot up.  Water had flooded a sizeable portion of the laundry room, resulting in a big mess and more clean-up.

After cleaning up that mess, and scrubbing and waxing the floor again, I put in a load of laundry and the washer started dancing across the floor.  I had to lay over the washing machine to steady it until the load was done, and, while bending over the washer, I saw water seeping out of the floor drain beneath the laundry tub.  The appliance repairman came back, adjusted the washing machine feet, and we tested the washer, which was deemed good to go on his part, but water began to seep out of the floor again while he was there – “not my fault” he said.

So, the plumber made a return visit and had to take a sledge hammer to the area under the laundry tub to put in a new drain, necessitating more mess in that room and I had to repaint both drain areas since the first paint job was trashed up.

I spent way too much time organizing, mopping up and painting in 2017 … I could hardly wait for the year to end.

This year, I’ll concentrate on personal growth instead, because it is much cheaper and way easier … in my opinion anyway.

To that end, I thought I’d step up my technology game a notch .

No, not another smartphone, because the last one was a debacle … it was not all user error either.  The AT&T salesman told me the phone was a dud and suggested a different model, but I went back to a flip phone.

My friend Evelyn and I often text back-and-forth for hours, her from her smartphone, me from the computer.  She lives in Richmond, Virginia and we both decided that we should learn to Skype this year instead of working our fingers down to bloody stubs.

Evelyn is also taking a photography class to learn more about her digital camera.  As for me, maybe I’ll learn to use the settings on the digital camera instead of shooting on automatic all the time, but, back in the 70s, I took some photography classes for my 35mm Canon camera, and shot all my travel photos on automatic, because it was easier and faster and less to fiddle with.  At Council Point Park, you have to be fast with the critters as they might hold a pose for a couple of seconds, then off they go, and, when you upload your photos, you’ve got nothing more than a flash of a furry tail, or just the wide webbed feet of a Canada goose, even though you thought you captured an image of a goose with its pink tongue hissing or a lot of wing-flapping going on.  Maybe I’ll work on honing my photography skills before those fuzzy goslings arrive on the scene, though I did okay with some of the shots I took of them last year.

Of course, there is the usual “I’ll take better care of myself in the new year” … well, I do eat smart, but I was going to get up and ride a few miles on the bike this morning to kick off the new year.  Unfortunately, the firecrackers going off in the neighborhood until 1:30 a.m. made me shut off the alarm and roll over a little longer than I should have.

I generally follow the credo of Ben Franklin, i.e. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”  Well, that principle works for women too, and … two out of three isn’t all bad, right?

I guess I’ll adapt Scarlett O’Hara’s attitude and begin anew tomorrow.

Here’s some inspiration to get you through this first day of 2018:

“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” ~Meister Eckhart

P.S. – Remember that snazzy-looking Snow woman a few posts ago, on December 22^nd?  Well, I think this picture is of her main squeeze celebrating the new year.

[Image of snowman by Jill Wellington from Pixabay]