Like many people right now, I’m thinking about things that I’d like to accomplish in the new year. I thought about writing about the things I accomplished this year, but my blog anniversary is coming up in February and I think I’ll save it for then.

To tell you the truth, I don’t put a lot of energy into New Year’s. We’re going to a friend’s house tonight, but most of the time I go to bed the same time I normally do. I’m really a lightweight these days. Fifteen, twenty years ago, I would have been chain smoking cigarettes and trying to drink everybody under the table. Many times I did. I just don’t enjoy that kind of thing any more. I don’t care for loud music or crowds, so home is usually the place that I’m happiest on New Year’s Eve.

Although I do miss charades. That was a tradition for a while - charades all night long at D’s house. Then everybody started getting divorced and, well, if you’re my age you understand what I’m talking about.

I’ve found that New Year’s resolutions aren’t worth much. If you really need to make a change, you’ll do it when you’re ready. I can’t tell you how many times I resolved to quit smoking on January 1, for example. I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to set a date, but there’s so much baggage with New Year’s Day. When I stopped smoking finally, I set a date of my 34th birthday. Fate helped out by giving me a nasty case of bronchitis a week before my deadline. So I didn’t make it to my set date.

The only resolution I ever made that I’ve kept was that I don’t let dirty dishes sit in the sink for more than 24 hours. And I can’t say that I’ve always kept that one religiously, but I don’t count a coffee cup or two. Or three. Well, I keep it some of the time.

One thing I’d like to do this year is to loosen up a little. I’m pretty tightly wound, although a lot of people wouldn’t guess it. Buspar helps. I need to remind myself now and then that one of the major reasons I’ve made so many changes over the past year and a half has been to lighten my own load. I need more down time and alone time than most people and I don’t let myself have enough of it. So I’m going to try to allow myself to have more days when I don’t have a list of things to do. And I’m going to remind myself that it’s okay not to be like everybody else.

I will try to live in the present. Since I’ve been blogging I notice that I think about what I’m going to write about during an experience instead of fully experiencing the experience! I guess that’s a writer’s curse. Mindfulness is important, though.

By the end of next year, I hope to have my backyard completely converted over to a permaculture garden. This is about halfway accomplished. I took some before photos today, because I hate it when I develop a section into something beautiful and can’t show others the way it was!

I will cut down on sugar.

I will ride my bike more often. I’m going to buy a double basket for the rear and ride it to the farmer’s market when the weather is nice.

I will preserve and can more of my own homegrown food.

I will convert the back building into a studio and paint, weave, or both.

I will remember that the purpose of this blog is my own enjoyment, not to write what I might think others will like. But at the same time, I’m not taking off the Sitemeter! -grin-

I guess that’s a pretty good list of goals for 2006! Happy New Year!

They call it Sunset Beach for a reason.

<< tubb’s inlet

Tubb’s Inlet is between Sunset Beach and Ocean Isle. It has filled in to the point that you can walk across during low tide. On the other side of Sunset Beach, Mad Inlet silted in several years ago. Now you can ride a bike to Bird Island, which is protected by the North Carolina Coastal Trust after years of haggling and wrangling with private owners.

These photos don’t do justice to the beauty of Tubb’s Inlet at low tide. I took the first two standing somewhere in the middle of the inlet. The temperature was in the sixties and people were biking, wading, and playing football.

<< sunset beach pontoon bridge || 2005 sunset christmas >>

The pontoon bridge connecting Sunset Beach to the mainland opens for a pleasure boat. The bridge will soon be a memory - a large modern bridge has been planned for about twenty years now.

<< big nell’s pit stop || tubb’s inlet >>

After the first night’s traditional poker game, we nursed our hangovers at another family beach tradition - Big Nell’s Pit Stop.

Big Nell’s is on the highway between Sunset Beach and Ocean Isle Beach. It is a shrine to Dale Earnhardt, and they also have a special love for Richard Petty. I don’t eat pork barbeque, but T* loves it. We usually make it there for breakfast at least a couple of times during our beach visits.

I heard a rumor that if you ask for a non-smoking table at Big Nell’s, they put you in a little room with the video games and forget about you. We are afraid to test this. We don’t want to tick off the waitresses at Big Nell’s.

The blonde waitress behind us remembers us from past visits. She remembers Sandy as the guy who drinks his tea really fast (Sandy drinks iced tea at all meals out), even though he hasn’t been there in over a year. Once T* asked for more lemons, and a few minutes later she marched out with a glass of water ringed with lemon slices. “Here’s yer palm tree,” she said as she moved on. When we went back two days later, she brought all our drinks from the previous visit as we sat down.

I recommend the cheese grits. But I always do. Grits without cheese - well, there just shouldn’t be such a thing.

I highly suspect that the eggs aren’t from free-range chickens. The grits are probably from GM corn. The cheese is probably from dairy cows who never see a pasture, and the potatoes and onions have probably been sprayed eighteen times with chemicals.

But mmm, mmm, mmm, this was good eatin’.

<< christmas in marietta 2005 || sunset beach pontoon bridge >>

Christmas in downtown Marietta

We drove down to southeastern North Carolina on Christmas Day, where we had Mama’s vegetable soup and corn muffins for both meals, first with my brother and his girlfriend, then with my sister and her husband. Believe me, I do not mind eating this soup twice. The muffins were especially good - just a little sweet, with onion. It’s a shame that I can’t replicate my mother’s cooking.

That night we exchanged a few gifts between us and my mother. Mama gave me a pottery quiche pan that I had looked at when we did the Chevy to the Levee festival in Lumberton a couple of months ago. The men all got slipper socks, which pleased Sandy mightily. My sister struck gold with a painting, and Mama got a gift card to Belk’s and a sweater set.

My sister received the exact same camera for Christmas from T* so we all sat at the table after supper and fiddled with the settings.

We left the house in Marietta behind after a traditional Christmas dinner the next day (remember, dinner there is lunch here) and a round of Dirty Santa with everybody plus my cousin and spouse, minus the younger generations, and arrived at Sunset Beach just as the sun dipped below the waves. It was a good Christmas.

>> big nell’s pit stop

Is this thing on? One, two, three.

Well, we’re back, and the house is still here. I always have a few moments of terror when I come back from a trip convinced that the house burned down and nobody could contact us. It’s a little neurosis that I’d like to get over. My brother-in-law did a great job with the cats, so he’s a possibility for cat-sitting during our trip to Tuscany next October.

I left him a pot of beef stew, a lasagna, and a pot of soup that was so good I decided to make it again for us to have this weekend. I’ll post it Sunday.

Now I’m uploading photos from the new camera and working on a couple of posts. I took some beauties at the beach, but one day was just too gorgeous to capture on camera. Hopefully the computer will hold out until I can get them posted. We definitely have to get a new chip. I kept having to erase photos to take new ones!

I think I’ve about had it for the day - I’ve been going hard on little sleep. I think what I had might have been a virus because my neighbor said he just got over the same symptoms and we didn’t eat the same foods. I didn’t get everything done and I had to make some changes in plans, but it’s a holiday, so I’m cutting myself some slack and going to bed. I just hope I didn’t pass on this particular little Christmas gift to others.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to make the Chex mix! And I’ll have to make do with the 16 mb chip because I just couldn’t face Christmas Eve store shopping past what was necessary. The farmer’s market, however, was great and I bought us both fair-trade knitted alpaca wool caps from Deep Roots to wear at the beach. It will be nice to be unplugged for a few days.

Tomorrow Pratie Place is hosting the Tarheel Tavern, so please go check it out! Melinama has been offering free holiday music downloads all week long, so look around her blog.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah, and I’ll be back on Thursday night!

Even though we don’t do as much shopping as others do for Christmas, and I opted out of having a Christmas tree this year, I still have a lot to do today. So this post is mostly just getting my thoughts and plans together for the day.

I was up half the night sick on my stomach. I did drink a lot of punch and large amounts of great food at a party early last night, but I don’t think it was the alcohol. Trust me when I say that I know what a hangover feels like. I think I had food poisoning from something I ate earlier in the day, or a virus. Hopefully I’m over it enough now to go to the farmers market, but I’m skipping the coffee and waiting until 9:30 just to be sure.

It would not be nice to go to Mama’s Christmas dinner with a rocky stomach. All that rich food usually gives me some trouble anyway. It sounds like we’ll have “Christmas dinner” midday the day after Christmas now, which gives me a little time. Then we’ll head to the beach for three nights, about an hour from Mama’s house.

My brother-in-law will be staying here in the house tonight and then will housesit until we get back, so feeding the cats and fish is covered. Miss Lucy will probably hide under the bed the whole time, but I think that the others will be fine.

So I’m going to make a few dishes for him to eat while we’re gone, like a pot of chili and a pot of potato corn chowder. Tonight my husband has requested spaghetti, so that will be easy. I have to put together my asparagus casserole that has become “my dish” to bring to holiday meals. I may post the recipe later. And, even though I seem to be the only person in my family who loves this, I am making Chex mix from scratch with pecans that I gathered at my mother’s house at Thanksgiving and I have been picking out for a month! It’s one of those comfort foods for me. But I saw one disturbing thing on the first recipe. Bean Chex?

Now I need to buy milk, almonds, and crackers, which unfortunately means a trip to the store as well. I’ll go to Deep Roots after hitting the market for milk.

I mainly gave out jars of quince chutney for gifts, but I did buy a present for our niece, nephew, and grand-nephew. I have to wrap them, but I recycle my boxes and gift bags and bows. Because of this and an after-Christmas spree three years ago, I have enough wrapping paraphenalia to last me for the rest of my life. The grand-nephew is also getting my old digital camera because (ta-da!) Sandy gave me a Canon A520 camera last night for Festivus. We did not, however, perform the feats of strength or air our grievances. We’re wimps. We’ll save the grievances for the drive down, because more than likely we’ll be taking the car without the radio.

I was a bit irked at this at first when I realized what he’d done, because if I can’t get my husband on the no-present bandwagon, that’s a problem. But the fact is that I was about to buy one anyway, and he knew it. I’ve been researching them on the Internet for a couple of months. I asked him if he wanted to go with me to buy it, and he told me not to buy one. So I knew what he’d done. We’ll share it, and I’ll let it go. It was a little bit of a surprise because he got me a better model and a tripod.

Won’t it be nice to have some quality photos for my blog? The dinosaur camera I had didn’t do close-ups well. I’ll have time to get good and acquainted with it before the trip to Tuscany next fall, and I’ll have it for my garden shots this spring and summer. I’ll need to buy a much larger chip, and that’s another thing on my agenda today. Unfortunately, the last independent camera store in Greensboro closed recently, so I’ll have to go to a chain store.

At some point, I have a lot of cardboard and newspaper that I’ve collected to put down in the backyard. I’m going to try to do this today before the expected rain tomorrow.

Okay, I think I’ll be fine. I’m heading out to embrace the day!

David Batstone writes about his family’s Christmas tradition in Materialism and greed might ruin your Christmas. His family basically does for Christmas what my sister and I are doing after Christmas. He’s right about connecting with family by going to a different place where there are no obligations or unfinished chores beckoning. It’s an excellent choice for Christmas. We’re fortunate that many of us in our family group are now in a position to do this after Christmas when we can get off-season rates, making it more affordable.

Sojourners is an inspiring magazine. For progressive Christians and spiritual seekers and other Christians who don’t agree with the politics of greed and distraction with which mainstream Christianity has unfortunately become associated, it is a breath of fresh air. I am so thankful that these Christians have been working so hard to balance the strident shrieking of loud judgmental egotists with firm insistent voices that remind us of the true nature of Christ’s teachings.

It is good to know that there are so many of us. I think that by nature we tend to pray quietly and witness by the examples of our own lives, and so the squeaky wheels naturally get the greasy press. That press has discouraged those who Bishop Spong calls the “church alumni,” a group I left after discovering the Church of the Covenant 9:20 service that we call a “gathering of sojourners.” I hope that voices such as those of Sojourners will bring hope to more sojourners like myself.

As I’ve said before though, on some days I’m a Christian, on others I don’t like to be labeled. I just keep moving on through life, trying to do better, trying to learn and understand. The path of voluntary simplicity has helped me more than anything by freeing me from the distractions of materialism.