I’ll be the first to admit, while I love my fur babies, I know they can do wrong and are not exempt from ill behavior. Which is why I set them out on the task this weekend to come up with a good New Year’s resolution to help them get ahead.
Ma. You’ve gotta be kitten me, Cairo bemused as he stared blankly through my face and towards the wall behind me, like a cat does.
No kitten, kids. I make resolutions every year, just for fun, and also pick a word of the year, also just for fun. I treat my resolutions more like yearly contracts, that I extend each year as needed instead of blatantly admitting failure. I sometimes remember to write the words down and sometimes I remember them, change them mid-year or forget them entirely. In 2020, my word of the year was apparently “unnecessary” because I completely forgot it. I think I even wrote a blog about it that I remembered just this second. Ah, youth, when my memory was good (since I’m turning 30 this year I can say that now.)
So my biggest goal this year is to part with things I don’t need: old clothing items, dusty furniture, knick-knacks, and actual, literal garbage like crinkled receipts and credit card applications I did not ask for. I feel like this goal is deja-vu, but the clutter is becoming stressful. And if I recall, last year, I put everything away to be sold, donated or removed and instead… left it exactly in those boxes for a year.
In my defense, a pandemic isn’t exactly prime time for thrift or consignment shopping.
My loftiest goal this year is to learn how to cook. I have exactly three recipes: milk spaghetti, spaghetti tacos, and now, gnocchi. I can also bake a pie per Betty Crocker’s instruction. I’ve written about the gnocchi attempts recently. Spaghetti tacos are just crunchy taco shells filled with spaghetti that was cooked in taco seasoning, with cheese and tomatoes and whatnot, a recipe I stole from teen television program iCarly. One of my guiltiest pleasures is Nickelodeon shows aimed at teenagers. Milk spaghetti isn’t what it sounds like at all. It’s just plain spaghetti with no seasoning or sauce served with a glass of skim milk to drink, something my dad used to prepare for me often as a picky little kid. It is now my go to comfort food after a hard day, and ok, it's sort of what it sounds like.
So I tasked the fuzz-butts with a resolution task. They returned with a joint resolution: "to be more cuddlier."
Ok, we can start small. They’re animals, after all, and have no concept of time. And really, I’m not a loser here, since I’ll be getting a host of sweet snuggles, cute cuddles and all around love/wuv/ruv rays.
And in the past few days, as I return the house to normal, there has been less snipping at each other for who gets to sit in the chair with mom, who gets to sleep on the couch while mom watches TV, and who gets dangerously close to mom while she eats. Smidge even let my boyfriend, Chris, pet her for at least 90 seconds the other day, while Cairo that evening confidently joined me in my reading chair.
If their aim is true, I am interested to see the flight plan for this “cuddlier” resolution. But until then, I’ll just enjoy it.
