Resolutions

Does anyone else go through the farce of making resolutions at the New Year?  If you make them, do you keep them, and for how long.  I've never been very good at it but this year I have to do something and I might as well start the year out right.

I have to clean and organize my house!  I began doing that when I read Marie Kondo's book (The Magical Art of Tidying Up), but I got thrown off course with trying to sort and organized photographs - probably got 1/4 to 1/3 of them done.  But other things have sprung up to take their place, specifically artists canvases of all sizes, paints, and all the necessities  to calling oneself a bona fide beginner artist!

I am on a registry for adoptable pets, and yesterday was notified of my dream dog:  a black labrador retriever, between 6 mos and 1 yr old, a beautiful boy who looks just like my Smoky.   I contacted the organization who is responsible for him and they asked me to submit the required info so they could have me come and meet him soon.

In the meantime I wrote to my son Steve, who was the one that got Smoky at the pound in Richmond, VA.  That dog owned my heart from the minute I laid eyes on him, and fortunately Steve needed to give temporary custody to someone when he decided to move to NY for a job.  When the job moved him to Columbus, Ohio a couple of years later, Steve said he'd take his dog back, and I told him his dog was now my dog.    So Steve is a dog lover and understands why I want a black lab.  When I sent him a link to this particular dog, with all the info, he took a long time to respond and then in only a sentence or two.  I wrote him again with more reasons why this was the dog for me, and he gave me another noncommittal answer.  There is a reason he doesn't think I should take this dog and he isn't telling me.  Maybe I'm too old for an energetic young dog?

In the meantime I've been in contact with the woman in charge of adoptions and told her that I reconsidered overnight, realizing that I have many tubes of acrylic paint, some with cadmium and titanium among their contents.  This is no problem for me, but as anyone who has ever had a labrador retriever knows, their appetites are insatiable, and they will eat anything.  There is no way I can secure all the painting stuff to keep a lab puppy away from it if he wants it.

I had a friend at work with a black lab and we used to have lunch together and laugh about our labs and the things they ate.  She came home from work one day to find that Jake had eaten an entire bag of dried beans, and she found him standing over the empty bag barely able to move.  She rushed him to the vet, who sort of chuckled and said he didn't know, but definitely not to give him any water for a while.  I fell out of my chair laughing at that!  So those lovable labs get into trouble very easily and i don't know if I can handle it.  

The lady wrote me back and sent a photo of what she thought would be the perfect dog for me - a 10# chihuahua!  Anyone who knows me would get a laugh from that.  I like big dogs that don't bark at everyone and everything they see.   I've always had big dogs, and even as a kid we had big dogs.

So in my own wordy way, I'm getting back around to my original thought about needing to thoroughly clean my house.  Even if I don't get a dog it needs to be done.  At least last night I had wonderful dreams of taking my dog on camping trips and maybe even a longer road trip.   Morning always brings an end to the best of dreams, and now I just have to get on with my regular life.

Now get busy and make those New Year's resolutions that probably won't last through the month of January!