Moving on to 2016

I thought this was a sweet picture to begin 2016. These are the seeing eye dogs belonging to my friend Phil. The one of the left is Santiago, now retired, and the other is Porter, now the active service dog since February. It's wonderful that they are so close instead of rivals for affection, but don't let innocence fool you--they are both terrible table surfers. They are also sweet and so affectionate. Porter particularly is a cuddle dog. My poor Sophie caught the short end tonight because she too is a surfer--she got crackers and came close to getting cheese grits. It seemed that everywhere she turned someone was scolding her, and she did get locked in the office once--stood looking pitifully at the rest of us.

We’ve eaten ham black-eyed peas, and collard greens, so we should have a prosperous and happy year in 2016. Plus rolls, cheese, grits, chocolate chip cookies, banana bread. We will all be fat as little pigs in 2016. We had a quiet gathering of our regular neighborhood group tonight—quiet either because we’ve all seen too much of each other over the holidays or because we are just plain worn out. But the food was delicious—pot-luck—and the company pleasant. I for one was glad not to have a crowd of people all talking at the top of their voices so that I couldn’t hear any one individual. A thoroughly pleasant evening.

We agreed that nobody knows what day of the week it is. Holidays on Friday are hard. I have a lunch date Monday and started to lay out clothes for it tonight—then realized it is two days away. I take several medications in the morning and several vitamins in the evening, so I put them in day-of-the-week pill cases. Totally confused today on which pills to take when.

But the first day of the new year was the kind of day I like. I did housework by jumps and starts, sat at my desk in-between. Finished proofing the novel I’ve been working on forever, keyed corrections into the manuscript, and loaded it to Amazon’s print division. Promptly rejected because they found seven major problems. Before I corrected it, they had accepted it, so I’m not sure where I went amuck. I will worry about that tomorrow.

A long, lazy weekend looms ahead of me, and I couldn’t welcome it more. I’m going to follow my pattern of getting back to work, but I’m also going to read and sleep late and maybe cook a bit.

A cheering thing for me: I find myself landing in one room or another of the house and wondering where I left my cane. It means, yes, I’m liable to fall if I don’t lift my feet off the floor, but it also means I’m feeling confident enough to move about without the cane. I feel like a different person than I did a month ago, and I’m grateful and happy.

Yes, 2016 will be a good year.