It’s a new year – 2025. I remember bringing in 1998 in Times Square and can’t believe that was more than half of my lifetime ago now. This year, I spent part of New Year’s Eve at the Arcade (that’s what Russ and I call the casino here in Bristol), with one of my girlfriends, and we got lucky, doubled the $100 we started with or better, and went home to watch the Ball drop.
What does a new year hold? Lots of hope. Lots of optimism. Often some well-founded fears and concerns. This year, among the numerous obstacles and other unknowns out there waiting to be overcome, I have some pretty cool things waiting. Some are things I try to do annually (Hindman, Table Rock, Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference, etc.), so they’re not big surprises, just things I stretch to do and try to figure out how in the world to pay for each year – conferences, workshops, classes, etc. Some are writing goals – I’m back to my goal of #50Rejections after hitting a record-breaking #100Rejections in 2024. I’m taking it back down to 50 because I have a short story collection and a couple of other big projects that need more attention this year to see publication light of day. That means I have lots of things to write, edit, and revise. And new writing is tough right now because I’m not able to spend much time at my desk due to a hysterectomy and related “surgical servicing” that took place on December 9. It’s hard to believe it has been almost a month. My recovery time is 12 weeks, so I’m technically almost 1/3 of the way there. Yet I still have low energy and much trouble sitting up for long periods unless I’m on my memory foam bed (also a relatively new thing in my life, acquired in late October in hopes of making the recovery process of surgery more palatable, which it has indeed accomplished, and a much better night’s sleep, too).
We also have a new television hook-up – Superbox. Superbox… How to describe it? It’s not cable. It’s a streaming service, but not one that you pay for. It’s a device that hooks into your Internet that allows access to thousands of channels that you would find on various cable packages and it’s highly addictive. (Of course, when you’re me, most things are highly addictive because that’s one of my personality traits – it goes with the territory of being bipolar for me.) I love that it has a microphone feature I can speak a football team’s name into on Sunday afternoon and it brings up where the game is out of the multitude of channels, and I just click in when it’s time to watch the game. I’ve gone from watching Cozi almost exclusively to branching out to four or five channels during the week. Sundays is football. Saturday is no longer reserved for Columbo on Cozi, though, and that thrills me. Superbox has been a Godsend while being away from my writing desk.
And we have a Litter Robot that we got around Thanksgiving because scooping litterboxes is on my list of no-no’s after surgery. No scooping the poopings for twelve weeks was not going to make anyone in our house a happy camper, so we bit the bullet and the huge price tag to try out the much-lauded litter contraption. It was a rough start the first week or so, as the cats adjusted to a new system. But now, I suggest it whole-heartedly. It has made our lives much easier during my recovery, and the cats are using it just fine. They also seem to enjoy watching it cycle through after they do their business.
There’s an 80s Cruise on the horizon on March 1. And then the Christmas gift Russ surprised me with in mid-April to Vegas to see the Eagles at the Sphere on their Long Goodbye Tour. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m looking forward to finishing surgical recovery and getting back to some semblance of normalcy. I’m looking forward to getting back to work. All the new contraptions are fun. But I miss sitting at the desk doing what I love best. May 2025 be a satisfying, successful, and prosperous year for all of us, however we define those words.
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