Surely after a week of doing next to nothing, soon we will all feel like getting up and moving again. Not so much today, though. The man reluctantly went out to troubleshoot our daughter's heating system (let's hope it's just a failing thermostat and nothing more interesting). I had to have a fire lit under my butt to do a cursory cleanup of the main floor public rooms. I did it, but my heart wasn't in it. I just can't view the winter holidays as anything but moments completely unmoored from time. Twice in a week, it came up in conversation that historically this time of year was unassigned to any formally named month. Eventually some legal or political need carved up that free-floating uncounted time into the months of January and February. It's a shame. To me, these weeks are still amorphous. I hate doing anything other than sitting around, drinking warm, sweet beverages and playing games or watching TV.
I shook things up with my New Year traditions. I still made black-eyed peas--I mean, I'm not a savage. I'm a good Southern woman still. But all those other foods I normally make on January 1st were supplanted by what we had on hand. In place of pork and greens, we had ground beef over rice and my daughter brought over some frozen steam-in-bag Brussels sprouts. I've been doing things the other way for decades, and if ever there was a time to try something new, it was this year. The whole world has felt like we are in the upside down since at least the beginning of 2016 (for me even longer than that). 2018 calls for changes big and small. The "lucky" first meal of the year is an incredibly small change. Don't care. I want it all to be different, practically from the sub-atomic level to changes that span the galaxy.
We were late to the concept of first footing. We didn't grow up with that particular Scottish new year tradition. Somewhere in the last 20 years, we started paying attention to who our first guest of the year was. The first non-family member to cross our threshold today was a dark-haired man, as the tradition calls for, but for the first time in dozens of visits, he didn't come with an adult beverage to share. We tried to feed him, and succeeded in offering him beer and support for all the sudden changes this new year has brought to his life. I expect this will be a common pattern for all of us. Changes ahead, for one and all. Better go through them all with true friends and family.
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