January 10th & It's New Year's Day

I made it. I made it through Christmas. That was all I asked of the end of 2008.

It's my first day back in Brooklyn & I'm thinking, finally, of MY 2009.

"My" is capitalized because the last six years have been given to self-indulgence in the forms of over-eating & weight gain, financial fear, depressions of which one fraction is my rage at being fired sixfuckingyearsago, developing agoraphobia, dogs, isolation, silence, fear of writing, fear of being a public enough person that you, Dear Reader, are turning to this blog.

& I'm tired of it, & tired in general. So many harsh emotions boomeranging back on myself in physical & psychological ways is exhausting.

I've been thinking what my New Year's Resolution(s) could look like. Here's a random list:

* Lose weight.
* Get back to The Rooms.
* Get back to step work.
* Get back to my sponsor.
* Finish my novel.
* Listen to music & the radio.
* Shower every day.
* Blog more.
* Get out of the house more often, without dogs, without going to the store, bank or CVS.
* Get back to church.
* Answer my huge backlog of email & letters that I'm too scared to answer.
* Look for adjunct teaching.
* Weed through my junk.
* Say goodbye (& hello) to New York.
* Go some place where my parents aren't.
* Study up on how to use my camera & Adobe.
* Get ABT tickets.
* Go to Montana.
* Wear earrings often enough that it's not a struggle to put earrings in.
* Be a better friend.
* Look around for a boyfriend.
* Train my dog.
* Start writing a journal again.
* Listen to meditation CD's & start doing Yoga for the Rest of Us.
* Get a new TV, DVD, VCR that work.
* Learn to say "no".
* Learn to decoupage.
* Get out of debt.

The thought of all of this is, to say the least, both overwhelming & impossible.

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So I want to look back at 2008 first, & not at my failures but at my successes & at my lessons.

The election brought me back to the news. I'm not only deeply interested in several politicians but am exceedingly pissed off at the invasion of the Gaza Strip. I haven't been interested in the news in years.

I finished the first draft of Angry Fat Girls. Oprah regained 40 pounds & Kirsty Ally also obliged me by validating the need for this book. It might be more important than PFT.

I found some old friends &, in doing so, resolved some jagged endings & made some new starts. D., U., C., N., L., M., K., D....that's a considerable number of friendships reclaimed from time, distance &, in some cases, bitterness.

I've begun to make some friends via Facebook. At least I have good feelings toward them.

I wrote one really terrific Lab Lady blog that I will stand by forever.

I've pretty much decided to move to Seattle about six months after AFG pubs.

I cut my hair off in an act of self-mutilation & only got rave reviews of it.

I began a novel that feels Right.

I have become closer to members of my family -- my parents during their health crises & during my depressions; my brother; nieces & nephews I can watch on Facebook; a cousin; my sister-in-law.

I have learned that I don't handle stress well & I learned where several of those stress lines are. I THINK I can learn to handle stress better again & I think I can stretch the boundaries of where too much begins.

I understand some of my weird fears better, or I can at least articulate them.

I continue to see Providence at work in my life.

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Not a bad haul -- & probably not a complete one. I do so much lamenting on this blog that I don't want to go into specifics of boundaries & stress, ruptures of old friendships, my weight gain or how much, the shades of depression, the losses & scares of the year.

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When I look back at 2008, the moments I want to remember include:

* Sobbing through Sunday in the Park with George
* Singing musical comedy tunes with BJ to our dogs on a bleak Promenade
* A long conversation with my oldest friend that was so funny & so dead-on that it's enough to last for months
* Hearing the Ohio poles come in while walking Daisy on the street & the feeling of unity & good will that pervaded my neighborhood the next day
* A series of suppositions BJ & I wove into a story that had us rolling on the sidewalk
* Getting a slightly larger advance for reselling AFG than the original sale
* Conversations with A Boy in which that frisson of wide-eyed wonder at synchronicity buzzed around my head
* Sitting on a stoop one afternoon with the dogs when suddenly I felt Henry rest his head on mine

These are the photographs of 2008 that I want to remember.

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I'm eschewing as much sadness as I can here. It's my New Year's Day. It's time to look forward & continue building on what is good & scrapping what isn't so good.

In the forefront of mind, of course, is keeping every one of those resolutions. In the middle of my mind I have decided to limit it to one sort of group resolution for the time being: shower every day, wear jewelry more often, brush my teeth at night.

Simple? Ha! I've failed at all of them at least once. But in selecting this cluster of things, I'm opting for some self-respect, some focus on my body. I'm voiding some of my excuses for why I can't go to Starbucks or a meeting or church or to see a friend. I'm making it less likely I'll binge at night.

Come to think of it, I guess every day is the start of a new year. I'll pick up some other resolutions as I go along with 2009. I happen to be abstinent today. It feels energizing in the dead world of January.

I don't know what tomorrow's resolution will be but I think I should print out these lists & remember that resolutions to & resolutions of sometimes simply happen. I'm sniggering a little as I write this, thinking of Awful Rat-Faced Alix quoting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which she regarded as her Bible. "Ultra-ultra secret," she would say with her rat-smile of some huge book deal she was handling that would entertain a lot of folks but not improve the world beyond that.

The proper quote, I know after finally reading the novel, is "Ultra, ultra sensitive."

Waiting for Hannah

You can cut the air with a butter knife right now. Until the storm really blows in it's going to be sheer unmitigated misery outside.

Then it will be a different kind of sheer unmitigated misery outside.

Yesterday was borderline horrid but evocative. I've never really been any place tropical but the very tip of the Caribbean was covering Brooklyn, sometimes in sticky stillness, sometimes in a breeze that "almost" made me want to dance. Almost = it was still damn humid, hanging out at between 60 - 80%.

So we wait. I'm in several cycles that I don't enjoy but have to go through. I have two extra dogs today, who hated each other -- "Allen," who needed to be out of the movers, & Henry, whose humans are suffering through the US Open. Tomorrow Daisy and I go to Mally's house for 3 1/2 days, juggling Mally with the other dogs, although thankfully Boomer is away for two weeks -- they hate each other & Roger went after Henry today that left a number of bloody scratches on my left arm & thigh, which is enough for a while.

The best thing about Roger moving, aside from fewer scraps, is that I gave him a red triceratops that is sewn as tightly as any object I've ever seen & is only slightly smaller than Roger. It's become his demon twin & he is hilariously attached & scared by it in turns. The other best thing about this dog is that when he goes in for a scrap, I can pull him out, not only because he weights about 25 pounds, but because he lets me. I hauled him away & we sat & had a talk about being jealous of Henry & I told him about the people I'm jealous of & I cried & he rolled over for a belly rub.

The worst thing about Roger is my sore heart at losing this demon seed. He's a scary, scared dog but so smart & understands me better than anyone but Daisy. Unfortunately, because Daisy owns me, she doesn't give a shit very often about how my novel is going or how much I wish most parts of Henry's humans' lives were mine. The second worst thing is that he didn't kiss me goodbye, but that, like losing weight & waiting for hurricanes, is an act of nature & nothing you can ask for.

The best thing about the Mally gig is his owner asking if I was prepared to hydrate their elderly cat. The cat's nickname is "Little Boo" but Tim put the question both more and less formally: "You OK with Left Pocket and the bag?" You tell me, but I had a long pause in which I had to put various scenes from The Godfather out of my mind.

The latest act of nature perpetrated upon me is that I got on the scale this morning & it told me I've gained four pounds. Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me??? What did I do? It's one of those "All I Want" days: "All I want is to break 240".

All "All I Want" modes are suspicious, even when I think they're realistic. I'd like to say, for instance, that all I want is a shower. But I want a cheeseburger more & I want to NOT want a cheeseburger even more than that. Whatever accounts for those four pounds is in the wait-and-see ether.

Still. I really want to break 240.

This is a grab-bag post. I'm listening to Annie Lennox. I cleaned the tops of my stove today & bought a flame-thrower with which to relight the pilot light in my oven. I walked past a Ford Explorer this morning & thought it said "Extortioner," which made me giggle, & when Henry wanted to kiss a baby's feet & I steered him away, I heard myself saying, "You don't eat babies' feet, Silly. You wait until they're toddlers."

I've spent too much time alone lately. Can you tell?

With more to come as Hannah sweeps up from New Jersey.