Happy New Year!

I didn't post anything for Christmas, so I'm going to work backward here.

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS?

Normally, I don't pay much attention to New Years Day, but this morning while David was working on our friends' fence, I heard part of the second hour of Dennis Prager's New Years program. He talked about the power of New Years Resolutions. I usually don't put much stock in typical New Years resolutions, and it was interesting to hear his ideas and those of listeners. He got a surprise call from his Mom, who slyly reinforced the typical stereotype of a Jewish Mother by suggesting that maybe he could resolve to call her more.

Dennis favors setting three resolutions - one each for:

Happiness
Health
Character

Speaking of character development, I sent Our Sacred Honor by William Bennett to Mom for Christmas. She was impressed by how often individuals in the founding generation of our country thought about improving their personal character. Our Country's Founders is an adaptation for young adults.

Back to the subject of New Years Resolutions: Dennis maintains that resolutions are useful even if you may not be able fully keep them. He suggested that all-or-nothing thinking is usually an excuse for doing "NOTHING". Maybe I need to re-assess the usefulness of New Years Resolutions. He and callers also discussed the advantages of keeping a diary or journal, even if all you record is events. I hope I can work the blogging thing in to the "journal-keeping" ideal somehow. Otherwise, I'm still stuck at the stage of notes jotted on calendars.

The audio of today's program isn't up at his website yet, but here's an interesting hour on gratitude in trying circumstances and on how to deal with problems or sadness during the holidays. I heard part of the hour while David was with his Dad at the hospital for an angiogram and found it touching.

Update: Hour One, Hour Two and Hour Three of the New Years broadcast have been posted. Sometimes the holiday broadcasts get repetitious (as they are for radio). I would probably choose Hour Two if I were just going to listen to one of them.

So far, David and I have not done well at establishing any New Years Day traditions, let alone making resolutions. I can't get into the California Okie tradition of blackeyed peas with ham on New Years day. So I'm making blackeyed pea salad with a pound of frozen blackeyed peas, cooked until tender but firm. If you'd like to try it, use a classic 3-bean salad recipe, replacing the sugar in the dressing recipe with honey (measuring a little less than sugar in the recipe, preferably in the cup you used to measure the oil). Replace the green bell peppers in the recipe with deep green, slightly spicy Pasilla (Ancho, Poblano, etc) chiles, and maybe some red bell pepper. It all works together and looks festive. I can't eat much of it, as blackeyed peas tend to give me migraines. I bet the Pasilla chiles, red bell peppers, onions, honey and cider vinegar would also work well with garbanzo beans or even with little canned white or pink beans.

Recipe here.

NEW YEARS EVE - Preoccupied with dogs

New Years Eve, for me, now involves a goal of smug satisfaction that I am not out with unpredictable revelers. But we also must think about the dogs on noisy holidays. We stayed in again for New Years Eve last night, taking care of dogs frightened by the (illegal) fireworks and smatterings of gunfire nearby. Surprisingly, Sparky stayed in the doghouse, even though he usually wants to get in the house and even in the bathtub during fireworks. Maybe that insulation David put in the doghouse makes him feel safe. Dottie was in the garage. Reverse of the last night of fireworks in town (the big championship football game). Sparky started in the garage and ended up in the house. Dottie seemed content when she was in the dog house.

Sparky's hearing isn't what it used to be now, which may make it easier for him to tolerate fireworks than in years past. He once bent the gate in a chain-link fence in order to get into the house during a thunderstorm. He's really showing his age in a lot of ways now. He went to visit Troy and Maggie yesterday, and it was sweet to watch clumsy Troy's delicacy around Sparky, who is not so steady on his feet. In close quarters, excited dogs sometimes knock him over accidentally.

I think that Sparky and Troy are probably about the same weight, but Troy looks bigger because he is a little taller and hold his head high. Sparky, who is part Husky, has a heavy, big-chested sled-pulling build with a furry hump on his back like a grizzly bear. Our neighbor Emma still calls him "bear". Troy's more elegant coat with flowing tail feathers and other fancy touches make him look bigger than Sparky, too. Troy is almost as scared of fireworks as Sparky used to be. Odd to have two big dogs with the same excessive fear. Both Sparky and Troy have very soft undercoats, but Sparky's guard hairs are more wolf-like. There's such a variation in breeds of dogs. Maggie's soft, wavy coat resembles a Cocker Spaniel's even though she looks like a small, black German Shepherd.

CHRISTMAS TO NEW YEARS

Our Christmas day wasn't typical. We took the neighbor's formerly neglected little Chihuahua over to David's parents as a playmate for their Boston Terrier. He immediately knew he was home. We took the little heated house we made for him, where he normally ate, so he would get the idea that he was not being abandoned again. He had his first meal there inside the familiar little house. Soon, David's Mom was talking baby talk to him and he was seeking love from David's Dad. Previously, it had taken him quite a while to warm up to men, probably due to abuse earlier in his life. He was promptly named "Radar" for his huge ears (relative to the tiny rest of him). We also saw Debbie, Judy, Dan and Aunt Helen and passed out pillows.

Radar makes their rambunctious little Boston Terrier, Prissy, look huge. Prissy showed him how to navigate the ramp into the garden. He and Prissy got along well until a couple of days ago when he scolded her for something, causing her to temporarily avoid him. It's probably a good thing that he has the spunk to hold his own with her. Reports are that they now get along pretty well, though Prissy wants to eat Radar's dinner and hers, too. He's gaining weight and doesn't look so much like a death-camp survivor. Our inexperienced neighbors were well-intentioned when they took him in but were only feeding him once a day and expressed their frustration at trying to take care of him. They were thinking about taking him to the ASPCA. He's reportedly up to three hefty meals a day now and looking much better.

The Elders spent much of the day with us on Christmas, getting calls from home at our house. We had Ken, Suzy and Berta over for lunch and Marcela and Pauline for dinner. Thank goodness for frozen roll dough. I even got in a short nap while the Elders were watching their yearly G-rated video with the others before dinner.

Paula got baptized Sunday. I hemmed up her dress, hanging a coople of David's fishing weights inside the hem at the side seams in little cloth packets (didn't have any drapery weights) so that the skirt wouldn't float up. David thoroughly cleaned the font Saturday, discovering years of dirt on top of the mirror hanging above the water. It was a nice baptism.