Making Plans for a New Year and New Me...

Yes, it's a bit early to make New Year's Resolutions but, with Facebook not in my life, I have begun to understand how much time it eats up.  Actually, it took most of my non-working, non-commuting time such that I neither exercised nor read nor did anything fun.  Worst of all, I didn't dote enough on my cats....

So, I've been thinking of what to do and how to do it.  There's so many things I do want to do, but I really have a very limited amount of time, even without Facebook.  Something like learn to play my flute just isn't going to happen -- practice 1/2 an hour every other weekend....  But there are a number of things I can or need to do:

• Do something about my weight.  Yep, I'm fat.  Not only are some of my favorite clothes not fitting, I'm beginning to feel a bit inconvenienced when I move around.... I need to lose weight and get in shape.  Now, I know me -- if I say diet, I will for about 2 hours and then binge on something.  With tom losing weight and needing extra calories, I can't even keep the stuff out of the house.  So, maybe eat better, more nutritious meals is more realistic than a diet.  Then rely on exercise to actually help lose the weight.  I have a great book on losing fat via working with weights, so I'll start on that.  The program is simple and designed to be done in 20-30 minutes, which really does fit my schedule.  While walking would be nice, I don't have the time to do a 30 minute walk every day, and I won't do it after dark here.  (Too many semi-feral dogs wandering around looking for a fat juice morsel...)
• Read something other than cats.  Yes, I love cats, but really, I don't need to read about them all the time.  I just finished a book on the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and started on an older book on English Dialects.  They both reminded me of all the other subjects I'm interested in.  So, I did the only logical thing -- I ordered 5 books on linguistics.  That will be my 'area of focus' next year.

Now those are the things I've decided on, but there's a number of other things floating around in my head.  Things like:

• something to do for fun -- stamps? quilting? cross-stitch?
• organizing the house -- cleaning, finishing painting the bathroom, building bookshelves, etc.  I suppose tackling THAT closet should be on the list too.
• bathing and grooming the cats
• really studying either feline nutrition or nephrology -- I have wonderful books on these topics, but I need the time to work through them.
• eating better -- as in actually cook something, not just heat it in a microwave.
• deal with the stuff from my father's house that is in storage in Iowa
• sort out my retirement/investments

I have about 2 weeks to sort through all this and come up with a game plan.