On the New Year and Fresh Starts.
The new year is upon us, a fresh clean slate to fill with whatever we please. Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Every year prior, I make up something that I am going to improve on and usually it never sees the light of the second week of January. This year I decided that I wouldn’t. I will simply try to improve being a better person throughout the whole year. (Maybe that is a resolution ;) I will say though, there is a little list in the back of my head of things I want to accomplish but I am not calling them resolutions in hopes that they will come to fruition.
Our new year’s youth deal was quite chill this year. After playing some volleyball at school, we went to someone’s house and spent the evening lazing around in the basement. Some slightly chaotic “Whose Crazier Than We Are” happened. I learned somethings that I hadn’t know previously. We tromped outside when it was close to midnight and watched some of the boys hurriedly trying to prepare the flash powder or whatever they were using. The countdown was on but as the clock struck all zeros, there were no booms. Around three minutes past, there were four bright explosions that left us slightly deafened and a little warmer. It was just a “tad” cold so in we went to sit around the fireplace and drink sparkling cider out of red solo cups. A game of truth or dare kept us up till a little past two. It was an exhausted group of people that stumbled out of that house and groggily drove home to fall asleep within minutes.
This Christmas break has been amazing. We got home from our vacation on Sunday the 29th and our school doesn’t start until Monday the fifth. It has been such a blessing to be home and not have any schedule at all. I got the bright idea to completely go through my entire room, reorganizing and Marie Kondoing my life. After multiple trash bags and a laundry basket full of donations, my room looks pretty much the same. Ope! (By the way, “Ope” is apparently a midwestern term. It is not pronounced like “oops” but rather with a long O.) At least I feel like I got something accomplished even though you can’t see it.
Have you ever looked through old journals or writings? I came across some things and reading them made me laugh. I wonder what little me would think about my life right now. There was a point in my life that I said I would never teach school. That was a basic Mennonite girl thing and I just couldn’t do that. Well, that version of me would be quite surprised if she saw what I do now and how I actually enjoy it!
Going out for supper with fellow youth always proves to be entertaining. We sat around a small table and tried to eat fettuccine alfredo without splattering sauce everywhere. One of the boys informed us that they didn’t care if we ate messily. The conversation hopped around like a sporadic heart monitor. From one topic to the next, we were kept highly captivated. We sat in the restaurant for so long, I think the waitress was getting concerned. Eventually we moved outside and shivered around a fire pit. The snow covered all the chairs so we stood until our legs were quite numb and we couldn’t feel our noses. Also, three out of the five of the group knew that there were engaged people that were getting announced the following day. If you ever are with guys who are holding that kind of secret, it is quite hilarious. It got brought up as a question and they squirmed around and pleaded the fifth. That was a pretty obvious answer although the two of us who didn’t know had a pretty good feeling about it. On that note, it will be exciting to have another wedding here at home and it is a childhood classmate so that will be so neat to see! Life moves on so quickly and I am so happy for the both of them. It really does make me feel old at the young age of eighteen. :))
A quote for my bookies: A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one. -George R. R. Martin