New Year Rituals and Resolutions

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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What are yours?

Mine are the usual for the resolutions: quit smoking, lose weight, save money, get organised. Exercise regularly. Have a professional demeanour at work. Less surfing, more writing.

But my New Year’s Eve ritual isn’t very exciting: I clean the house. I like the part where you usually get off work early (I work in an office, have done so for many years. It would be a different story in the hospitality industry!) Come home, brew up a big pot of tea, and start cleaning. I want the house swept, vacuumed, tidied, dusted. I want all the garbage and recycling out. All the dishes washed and away. Clean sheets on the bed. Clean bathrooms. Hopefully, it should all be done by eight or so. Then I can “relax”.

I may or may not start drinking during the Big Clean. :slight_smile: I make up my list of resolutions for the upcoming year. Clean, drink, resolution-writing. Put away the holiday treats—my husband can finish them up in January, but they’ll be off my menu come the morning.

Before midnight, I might make a list of the things I want to let go of from the past year—bad habits, and so on, and burn it at midnight.

I sure don’t feel like going out and trying to have a good time at a club or whatever. Too many people, trying too hard to have too much fun. Not interested in a bunch of drunken rowdies. Nothing wrong with a tipple or several—hey, it’s a bit easier to start the January 1st diet with a hangover. I won’t feel like eating. :slight_smile:

Anyway, rituals are nice, even if they aren’t exciting!

Happy New Year! What do you do?

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I clean too!

Also the kiss with my Mig every year and he had a tradition of hanging a new calendar right after midnight. He said it’s bad luck to wait until the next day.

When I was a kid we always had hog’s head and black eyed peas. A big ol’ hog head. Disgusting.
But somehow still so very tasty.

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Every year I swear this year I’ll start spending less than I make and clean up the goddamned house. And the last few, I’ve also resolved to get back down to my fighting weight. Success: mixed.

At, like, 12:01 Spark People e-mailed me to arm-twist me into doing their 28 day boot camp. I’ve already started up again with Couch to 5K, so I think I’ll really try to do this. Of course, we all know how that turns out.

ETA - happily, my dad is out of town, because I HATE that New Year’s dinner. The only thing I can stand to eat is the black eyed peas - keep your nasty dry pork and your why-would-you-eat-something-that-smells-like-that-cooking collards?

ETAA - the boyfriend and I both kissed the dog this year because while we’re both sick we have a shade of uncertainty as to whether it’s the same cold or not because our symptoms are a bit different.