The system, it is me

Life is proceeding in a very January fashion. Save excursions to the market, the video store, the swimming pool, and the pharmacy (to purchase various ointments and pills for the various afflictions the Mister and I seem to have acquired: he bronchitis, me swimmer's ear), oh and church and French class, we have been more or less housebound.

Fortunately for us, today we gussied up the house part of housebound, cleaning and organizing and picking up and throwing away. It felt really fantastic to throw away papers that have been crowding my desk for a while. I did find some disconcerting items, however. Among them: a paper I was supposed to have read and edited for a friend (but then completely forgot about), and a receipt for a bedspread that I bought using wedding gift cards IN 2006 OVER A YEAR AGO and NEVER received. Yet, I didn't realize that I never received it until now. Which, on one hand, means that it didn't affect our quality of life overmuch not to have had that particular item. But, on the other hand, it was a wedding gift! AND we asked for bedding for Christmas, so maybe we DID need that bedspread after all.

And tonight, over a yummy lentil-spinach-tomato soup that I threw together, we had our first 2008 official pow-wow, during which we went over all of the pressing issues that should be dealt with in the near future and/or over the year to come. There were some bits of drudgery in there (what to do with that humongous pile of receipts?) but also some things to look forward to (Italy this winter, Paris and maybe Amsterdam in the spring, South Dakota in the summer [one can't very well spend ALL of one's vacation time in chic European cities, can one?]). We have vowed to make this a weekly pow-wow, which I think is a fantastic idea, and one that I hope we can stick with. It's a new year's resolution, if you will.

I haven't made any official resolutions this year, but I'm sort of keeping ideas for them in the back of my head. Meanwhile the days of January drift by, and I am so far doing well fulfilling some of the not-officially-resolutions resolutions, and feel incredibly victorious for doing so, i.e., for keeping resolutions THAT I HAVE NOT MADE. I feel like I'm beating the system. Even if the "system" is made by me. It's like adding something to my to-do list that I have already done, just so I can feel the satisfaction of crossing that item off of the list.

I'm crazy, I tell you.

(But I'm beating the system.)