In honor of our friends in the Far East, let me wish you all a very lovely Year of the Dragon, which apparently started on January 23. (How do you keep track of New Year’s when it always falls on a different day? Chinese New Year is not always even in January. Usually it’s February, right? Just wondering….)
So far 2012 is looking more like the Year of the Teeth. This year my dc need a total of ten teeth surgically extracted. How can that be? I have no idea. Sometimes things all happen at once like that. Last week was a bugger of a week for my poor dd who had to have oral surgery just before returning to college.
2012 is also the year of passport renewals for the dc. Both American and Mexican passports are expiring this year for our three youngest dc. Between that and orthodontist and oral surgeon visits, it looks like I may spend a crazy amount of time running back and forth to the city, waiting in lines, and filling out paperwork. I’m not going to even think about the finances for all these extras.
Who knows what else this year might represent. Both our vehicles are getting up there on mileage, so 2012 might end up being the Year of the Car for all I know. 2011 was the Year of the Plumbing, among other more fun memories.
How about you? Any glimpses of what the New Year is looking like?
One annual task I failed to do in January is to type up a list of the year’s highlights. Usually I don’t know what to call a year until after it is past. Recent years are easy to recall because of weddings, and of course 2011 will be the year I became GJ. As I get older, though, I am thankful to have my handy file of yearly bullet points to help jog my memory. I can’t recommend this enough to you younger women with your minds still intact.
If I ever get around to writing my memoirs, it would be a nightmare to find stories in all my journals. Now when was that…? You think you will never forget, but trust me; it all gets jumbled together after a while. My “cheat sheet” is a folder of yearly highlights. I can flip through that pretty quickly and then find what I seek in my stack of journals. When random photos show up in a drawer or a packing box, my little file folder helps me pinpoint dates. (Why, or why did I not put dates on photos in the first place is another issue.)
Each year I make a list not only of what I did, where I went, and significant news items, but I also list new friends who have come into my life. Sometimes friends come and go so quickly, I only vaguely remember them when I look back on a particular year, but other times it is fun to look back and mentally celebrate how many years I have known a particular person.
2009 was the year I “met” WOTH. 2010 was the year I “met” many of you! Now I am enjoying my third year of blogging with WOTH.
IRL* I’m vowing to carve out more Real Life time for the people God puts before me this year (besides the orthodontist, oral surgeon and immigration agents).
