Good bye 2013

New Years resolutions:

To lay in some bed randomly with good friends and laugh ourselves silly while doing totally stupid stuff like drinking weird wine on ice and listening to Peter Frampton records (yes records) and making fun of each others' hilarious shirts / belts / selves /mannerisms...oh wait I just did this - well to do it again x 47.

To drink Tecate with lime and salt and eat pan after pan of my best nachos while talking all at once with 5 friends.

To laugh till I pee and cry.

To break, fold, iron, knead and rename rules till they change color.

To stand up to mean bigots and call them on their antichrist shit.

To cut down on the times I say "come on" to my children.

To continue my special extracurricular program for our special children - which is composed of them not being special but just wonderful as is without special classes or training - to do a 70s parenting paradigm plus a huge pinch of awareness and let's see what happens - I'm not afraid.

To rebel.

To make nice strategically.

To surround our girls with warm wise wonderful adults who will teach them how to be interesting just by being interesting and who will feed them delicious food and ideas and water them with seeds of anarchy and love mixed with a good night's sleep and hundreds of interesting words and outlandish ideas and notes.

To keep my children and their tribe safe.

To help shut up parents and adults who bully kids. 

To continue with my living art installation entitled "Amy's Guide to Ineffective Living" - with guest appearances and no net.

To cook for my cooking cheffing bartendering husband.

To thank him for being so good to me now.

To tell children inappropriate and hilariously awful things out of respect for their intellect.

To lie outrageously on occasion. 

To feed children food.

To contemplate Violet and Fiona's profiles (actual - not online) more thoroughly so I can recall their constellations of freckles more perfectly.

To carefully avoid purposefully or accidentally telling anyone with cancer or a very frightening and horrifying problem or disease that it is their fault - this means paying attention to small nuances and not pushing or thinking of myself as being on a higher level. And to correct others when I see this so I can stop super super bad hurt feelings that need not be. 

To read your blog or novel.

To say hello to everyone who looks a little older, sadder, more scared, or meaner than I do. Especially the super crabby impenetrable nasty mean shut down types - bring me your fortress I shall break it. 

To eat eat eat the most delicious foods and revel revel in them with pure delight - BLT sandwiches, Parisian cheeses, crispy salads, calamari, book club dinners, olives, Clayton spreads, antipasto, Mike's steak, nachos, champagne, crunchy dark chocolatey things, tangerines, love in the form of food. All of it shovel it in delicately.

To be kind.

To get you to visit me again.

To host - I excel at this.

To read more - which is to say - to ingest more of my drug of choice (words) and therefore to learn.

To freaking beat some of my brilliant friends on Words with Friends! I thought I was a good reader and therefore word maker but it's a sham! A fake! A lie! I'm not good at scrabbley games....why? WHY? What? Must flex that muscle. My dad would be horrified.

To share a crossword puzzle with Kris.

To teach rhetoric and composition again - I'm bereft without it now. Who am I?

To thank all of my friends for their loving support during this drat illness, which suggests a preceding goal which is to get beyond this cycle of poison goddamn it - when I do I will go on a thank you tour. If I drove around for 400 days bearing gifts and leading a parade I could not touch the kindness shown me so I won't do that but I do resolve to let you know.

To decorate our upstairs TV room thing - it's bugging me to death. Style freaks come on I'll pay you.

To party with our neighbors - come on I'm supposed to be the fun one and here I came here then splat landed on my ass in the chemo loony bin - gotta uphold my reputation. Or create one.

To squeeze a baby - bring me your fat babies. 

To visit the West Coast and see our peeps. With food.

To take the kids to iFly.

To wash my hair.

To wake up ok.

To not taste heparin in my mouth.

To perfect gazpacho.

To see Lake Tahoe.

To go to Boulder and Gold Hill and tend to the graves of Max and Burnyce and Ray and Emma Lou and Jim and Shari and other mountain love people that I know.

To thank you.

To write something and revise it.

To help a child.

To teach an 8th grade class and a 9th and a 10th and an 11th and a 12th. Or and a 7th.

To party with English teachers.

To decorate my life.

To listen to pop music without prejudgment.

To be a contrarion.

To frame some photos.

To show my girls the power of friendship.

To make French bread.

To hike up whatever.

To wear dresses.

To take an art class - which?

To beat Dave at Scrabble.

To go on tour.

To dance at a great gay bar. 

To unhate the physical objects that have been ruined in my psyche due to the co-stimulation of sickness and the visual input simultaneously. Not sure how. 

To have a pill free day.

To throw a mismatched dinner party.

To read 30 books - ha just kidding! THAT'S RIDICULOUS! What a stupidly tiny number. 

To write a thank you note to you.

To get rid of 25% of my clutter and to not receive gifts. 

To eat jam.

To hear you.

To see you.

To walk with you.

To read you.

To draw you.

To be you.