Despite detailed to-do lists, lists of books to read, movies to see, restaurants to visit, businesses to plan, and Google Docs galore, in all of my 28 years I’ve yet to execute a succinct, thoughtful list of annual goals.  I’ve had plans, sure, hopes and aspirations, mostly achieved, and through small collections of good decisions, sprinkled with a few not-so-greats, everything keeps moving along.  There are big victories, like planning a wedding that felt like a celebration of everything that Mike and I hold dear- our family, friends, food, farming, hip-hop, and Microsoft Excel- and there are the small things, like hanging up a file folder next to the front door to help us remember when things need to be mailed and filed, in our constant quest to become Real Live Grown Ups. 

The past year, more than any year, has felt so completely like a step into who I am and who I’ve always longed to be, and it makes planning for the next a measured balance of the desire to keep everything just as it is- at the moment, warm lamplight and full bellies, the last dishes of the evening getting a final rinse and intermittent attention paid to the James Taylor and Carole King duets on PBS- and a headlong rush into the next! big! thing! that we can surely complete, the two of us, unstoppable as we are.  We’ll see.

Looking over our photos of the last year, it seems like five.  We got engaged, married, Mike changed jobs, I became an aunt for the second time, my brother left for Afghanistan, we traveled to Vermont (twice), Oklahoma (three? four? times), Illinois (twice), made a brief stop in Texas (and more stops in the Houston-Bush airport than I would ever care to repeat), and split for upstate at every possible chance.  In between we snuck in picnics, football games, visits to socialist paper mache puppet museums, and skipped the line at the cherry blossom festival.  We made our own cheese, pickles, bread, ice cream, and jalapeno poppers, picked our own fruit, cut down our own Christmas tree.  It was the first full year of Us, and we didn’t waste a minute.

If nothing else, I ended the year in better health than I started- I wrapped up Christmas 2010 with a wicked case of the flu, a trip to the ER with an out of control fever, and spent the first week of the new year in bed, surrounded by a forest’s worth of Puffs Plus, watching seasons one through three of The Wire.  Oh, and there was a blizzard.

We spent the rest of the month watching the snow slowly, slowly, ever so slowly start to melt.  We had big plans a’brewing, but in the meantime we bided our time, coordinating NFC championship game outfits and making elaborate bar grub in our 4x6 kitchen.

Despite my best efforts to recreate a Bears color scheme using only the Gap sale rack as a design source, they lost.  

‘

We drowned our sorrows in hot wings and deep fried jalapeños.  It was rough.

Clearly, 2011 was off to a great, if artery clogging start.

More saturated fat to come.