A Year's Worth of Judy's Stew

Today I am seventy-seven years old or, as my father would have said, entering my seventy-eighth year. I am blessed with good health, a wonderful and close family, a comfortable life and home, complete with a faithful dog. I still have a career—writing—and an avocation—cooking. Still, I feel about thirty-five, and it amazes me to think of my age. And, yes, scares me a bit too.

I’ve been blogging almost daily for nine years, and I have a fairly good following. From time to time, someone suggests a book of my blogs—a publisher gave me free rein on organization (writing, my life, cooking, etc.) and my brother wants me to pull out family-related blogs. Both would be great projects, but I didn’t keep Word files—just wrote on the blog—and it’s a mess to retrieve.

So I decided to keep Word files of my posts for a year, and my birthday seems a good place to start. I don’t want to creep into my new year; I want to stride confidently. Maybe with that thought in mind, I’ll come up with enough meaningful posts.

Yes, there’ll be some blatant self-promotion, some cooking, some posts about family. Jacob starts fourth grade this year, and I’m hoping it will go more smoothly than third, which has had its rough spots. There may be some book reviews, if I read books that not everyone else has read. I may even recycle some posts I’ve written about my own work for other blogs. I won’t avoid politics. If you read my blog at all regularly, you know that I’m a liberal or progressive. This should be an interesting year, with a crowd of candidates on the Republican side and some interesting debates shaping up on the Democratic. If I feel moved to comment, I won’t mince words. Sometimes I’ll simply post my observations on life around me. If it’s a truly dull day, and all I could post was “I did this, and then I did that,” I’ll simply skip—but I hope there won’t be many of those.

I’ll try to include pictures as often as I can. Need to get in the habit of taking a photo of most meals.

Anyway there it is. At the end of a year, I’ll publish, probably though Create Space. If nobody wants a book, so be it. Maybe my children will each buy one.