Well. Didn’t THIS year feel like one that might never arrive.
We had a bit of a flop of a New Year’s Eve, for various reasons, but no big deal. The year-in-review thing the news channel was doing was so depressing we had to mute it, but that’s okay. The nearly-deserted Times Square thing was obviously a giant change, which was GOOD! but odd. (And how many non-present “hosts” are we going to stack in the title as the decades go by?) None of us remembered to put fortune cookies on the list until about ten minutes before midnight, which was FAR TOO LATE TO THINK OF IT, especially when MOTHER ASKED SEVERAL TIMES OVER THE PREVIOUS COUPLE OF WEEKS IF ANYONE COULD THINK OF ANYTHING IMPORTANT WE NEEDED FOR NEW YEAR’S. I WAY overpurchased snacks, and I ALWAYS overpurchase snacks, and this was MORE THAN THAT, so that I felt stressed at all the things I was not eating. Also, somehow it accidentally turned into “Mother runs back and forth bringing snacks while everyone else relaxes”? We will be sure to avoid that situation next year, mark my words. MARK. MY. WORDS.
In the meantime, I think January 20th is a GREAT day to aim for a do-over. We can have all the leftover pizza rolls and egg rolls and mozzarella sticks and chocolate-covered pretzels and fun ice creams, and the champagne I wasn’t in the mood for, and so forth! And I can buy the stupid fortune cookies! And we don’t have to stay up until midnight, we can just go to bed at the usual time, because actually the fresh start is at noon! GLORIOUS!
I wish to discuss resolutions, if any of us have managed to make any at this interesting-times point in history. It’s okay if not. MORE than okay if not. Please don’t feel you should, if you’d rather not. Just abdicate the whole idea, with everyone’s full blessing. THIS IS NOT THE YEAR, unless you want it to be the year.
As usual, there is low interest around here in “I WILL CHANGE MY BODY TO BE SMALLER / THINNER / MORE SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE” resolutions. As usual, feel free to HAVE those resolutions, we cannot stop you, nor would we ever even consider attempting it, as many of us DO HAVE those goals, so DO go RIGHT AHEAD, and may it bring you EVERY THEORETICALLY-POSSIBLE ASSOCIATED JOY! But I feel like we have had our ears FULLY FILLED with that sort of resolution from EVERY POSSIBLE SIDE (media! marketing! friends! family! ALL OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY!), and that it is such a lucky thing to have places to discuss the OTHER kinds of resolutions instead, and I would like this to be an Other Place.
My resolution this year is to buy more Fun Clothes. My parents gave me this Christmas llama t-shirt in navy (I am an XL Tall in Old Navy and I take a 2XL in this), and I wore it on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and felt super cute and glad to be wearing it:
(image from Amazon.com)
And while this was not the original seed of this year’s resolution, it fortified and strengthened that resolution. Long, LONG have I envied Elizabeth her children’s-department t-shirts with pictures of sloths and llamas and rainbows and so forth! But there are companies that sell similar shirts for adults (I have this rainbow one in women’s 2XL baby blue)! And I have access to those companies via computer and credit card! So I am resolving to buy SEVERAL new fun shirts this year. Contenders so far:
(image from Amazon.com)
A second llama Christmas shirt. (So cute how the links default to the men’s sizes, even if I select women’s before making the link! Super cute!)
(image from Amazon.com)
Hello Kitty Christmas shirt. I only need maybe two Christmas t-shirts total, but this is what’s in my cart right now. (Again, wow, the link goes the MEN’S shirt! Yay! Love it!)
(image from Amazon.com)
Library card shirt, for if the pandemic is ever over and I can go back to my library job.
(image from Amazon.com)
Robin Hood fox shirt. FIRST/EARLY CRUSH FOR SO MANY OF US.
(image from teepublic.com)
Raccoon Royalty shirt. I love MANY of these shirts, but the fact that they give a “Tee Tip!” that “many customers prefer” to “order a size or two up!”—but it turns out “customers” “prefer” this only if they are customers ordering the Women’s cut, which is ALREADY available only up to 3XL, verses men’s cut which is available up to 5XL—meaning that apparently ACTUALLY they are offering women’s shirts up to XL and men’s up to 5XL, makes my heart turn icy and then, shortly afterward, catch on fire. Do please mention if you know of t-shirt companies that don’t think it makes perfect sense to offer shirts in sizes only for grown-men and teen-girls. I don’t WANT to buy from Amazon, but their 2XL women’s shirts fit my tall-torsoed non-skinny frame without making me feel as if I hit my maximum culturally allowable size at age 12, and I do value that. [Edited to add: I think the ABSOLUTELY MOST HELPFUL is when people can compare to other brands: like, if you say “I’m a S petite in Old Navy / Gap / Target tops, and I buy a M in This T-Shirt Company I’m Recommending and it’s a little long but not TOO long,” that is SO HELPFUL, even though I am not a S or a M or a petite.]
Hyper local company, but many shirts have broad appeal. http://greenpeapress.com/shirts
Love your re do idea!
I have their Baby Yoda/ Eggbeater Jesus shirt and love it so much
You likely already know about this site, but in case you don’t, I’ve always thought the tshirts on outofprint.com would be so fun to wear — especially at a library job!
Ohh, I just ordered a shirt that says “my weekend is booked” along with a picture of a stack of books. I think my kids (I teach) will get a kick out of it because we spend a lot of time discussing multiple meaning words.
I want to read for pleasure every single day this year and date my husband at least once a month.
I’ve never kept a resolution in my entire life but I think of them as more like wishes or intentions and I think they set a tone for me and I get a lot of satisfaction out of thinking about my life and considering what I would like the different aspects to look like. It’s refreshing, but I don’t feel pressure or frustration around it. It’s just a happy thing, even knowing things might not stick when life gets in the way.
I deleted FB from my phone because it was only serving to make me loathe the people in my feed with all of their COVID-ignoring get-togethers and the occasional anti-vax comment so I’m hoping to be on social media less and make myself happier that way. But my real resolution (that I’m still working out) is to send either more email or more snail mail this year. We live abroad so I have had so much fun sending people packages of random stuff from here, so I would like to continue doing that and also write at least one letter/postcard per week to a different person. Or maybe make it an email to someone I haven’t talked to in years and don’t have a physical address for. I’m not sure I’ll keep up the weekly thing but the thought of it makes me happy so I’m going to try it and see how it goes.
I deleted FB from my phone last New Year’s Day and I do not regret it one bit. I do occasionally look at it on my computer but since I also unfriended or muted a good number of people there’s not much there to see. I know a lot of people can’t imagine life without FB but honestly I’m much happier without it and can’t imagine why I ever thought I *needed* it.
I would really, really like to do this and have tried in the past but where I get stuck is getting information from places I need information, like schools and PTAs and neighborhood groups and church. Have you found a way around that problem?
Sending packages is so magic. I am bad at writing in things, but would like to get better.
(and I have not had Facebook and this year I was SO GLAD to not have Facebook.)
2020 was the first year I made resolutions/goals for in about 2 decades. Needless to say, I will not be making New Years resolutions ever again.
I love fun shirts and since I have worked remotely for 12 years, I have many. I have found that my post-babies body size does not fit as well into many brands as it once did (*sob*) but I have had some luck at old navy and target. Current ON favorites are a shirt with a graphic of a mug with the words “Chai harder” and another one with a pocket-size design of two champagne flutes clinking that says “mimostly awake”.
I love a resolution – most fade away before Easter but I’m ok with that. I just love the fresh new year feeling.
I am very much a go out and do things person and my family are mostly stay in and relax type people. This has led to me dropping lots of activities because it is too hard and I don’t have fun being resentfully followed around by teen-agers. This year I have resolved to do the things I want to do. I will still invite my family but if they aren’t interested I will go on my own. No more forcing them to come to things they dont like and no more staying in and feeling resentful. I’m quite looking forward to it once we can get out and about again.
Happy New Year!
I have a moderate addiction to fun T-shirts 😁
I don’t know if these companies ship to the US (for all the awareness I apparently have, they may even *be* in the US), but I love Qwertee, RedBubble, Litographs (more literary fun, but fun all the same, and definitely in the US), Pampling and probably others I can’t think of right now.
i’m afraid I can’t help with sizes either, as I generally wear an M or an L, though Litographs are a little short, so I get an L even though the M fits otherwise.
I love Litographs! I have a couple of their scarves, and I got a blanket for Christmas with an image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg created by the text of her dissents (https://www.litographs.com/products/rbg-blanket), and it is AMAZING. That said, I don’t love their shirts. The women’s shirts fit really short and weird, almost a cropped shirt on me, even going up a size or 2. I ended up getting a unisex shirt … which fits like a unisex shirt. The material is soft and comfy, I just don’t like the fit, so I rarely wear it.
One of my resolutions is to buy new bath towels. You will have to trust me that it will take Resolve to make this happen.
What IS it about foxy Robin Hood that makes him so foxy? (Besides him being a fox.) Boggles the mind and yet he is the most attractive cartoon ever drawn.
I think the thing with Robin Hood is that he is having fun, and he is not a jerk. But I could be wrong. Would be interested in any discussion. :-)
ModCloth has great graphic tees! And second the recommendation for Out of Print.
I have no interest in being a smaller size, but for health reasons I have had literally no exercise for a little over a year. My resolution is to have more exercise than none at all, whatever that looks like and however I can make it happen.
Yes, check out Out of Print! I think you will love them. They have women’s plus size shirts, shown on plus size models! I have their 1984 George Orwell shirt, because I like the sentiment (warning: do not have a society like this) and, full disclosure, I was born in 1984. Also highly recommend searching for t shirts of bands you like/liked. Great hipness/nostalgia potential there.
“In the meantime, I think January 20th is a GREAT day to aim for a do-over.”
Omg. Yes.
We love Tee Turtle shirts! They are cute and punny.
I have never, ever, ever commented before, but after possibly two decades of reading I have to break the silence to recommend Woot! Shirts. Tell me you know of Woot!?! Amazon bought them, but they offer the cute/witty/nerdy shirts up to Women’s 3X, as well as many rando deals.
Pleased to meet’cha, now back to my feed reader…
I love Woot – so many great shirts – definitely recommend!
I know nothing about fitted t-shirts, *but* when our niece went through a teenaged “I would like to have witty t-shirts, please” phase (our niece is awesome; the phase before that was All The Duct Tape), Threadless had… a ton. Sizing chart for 2xl, in theory, maybe, but you may have to click through farther: https://www.threadless.com/shop/@threadless/design/cat-tree/womens/t-shirt/fitted?color=denim&size=2x-large#
Also, no resolutions. Instead I tend to do, on occasion:
1. analysis and culling (basically: out of any specific source of input, are there things that are absolutely Not Serving Me Well even though they draw me in like a moth to a candle? Blogs! Comics! Twitter-anything! Habits! Occupations that have moved from being fun hobbies to not-fun and yet I am still doing them?)
2. a generalized mental list of things I would like to do if the opportunity arises (grow sweetgrass! try glassblowing! etc.)
3. specific “no, I really need to get this DONE” things, like “okay, so apparently I avoid doing my PT exercises unless forced, so it is time to force it” – and then I make moves to get those more aggressively incorporated into my life, usually via habit chaining (Atomic Habits: I read it, and discovered I was already doing a bunch of it, but it was so nice to feel strategic rather than weird and to have things articulated and extended, and there were additional good/useful ideas in there) and also sometimes rewards/carrots and/or sticks. But those rarely line up with January 1?
And yet I feel like I’m “wasting” the potential propulsive power of January 1! Except I am always too brain-fried from December to really be able to dig – the water is so murky that I can’t see through it, I am so tired, etc. – which was less so this year in many ways – I was not doing shoals of Last Minute Crafting and Last Minute Wrapping and all that, and Christmas was delightfully quiet – but still a problem this year because there is most of a year of pandemic brain-not-quite-working. So I read someone who starts her new year on February 1, and that seems brilliant – it is still a new date; you have maybe recovered from December – but January 20 is sounding even better, provided January 6 & co. go comparatively okay-ish…
I often think of September – specifically the day after Labour Day – as a New Year marker as well. The weather where I live is more noticeably fall-ish, so wardrobes start to change, and it’s back to school for the kids, end of summer holidays, etc.
True! Fall is a really good re-start for some things. I’ve never thought about Resolutions then, but that’s where I have Organizational Nesting impulses, often.
(also, I am definitely crabby, so you were right!)
Those two Christmas llama shirts are so good.
THREADLESS.
https://www.threadless.com/shop/@threadless/design/a-book-lover/womens/t-shirt/triblend#m
I love Threadless for the guys in my family, but they have the same problem of offering men’s and teen-girls’ sizes: Elizabeth outgrew their small women’s size in early middle school, even though several years later she takes a small in Old Navy and other brands; I once took a chance on their 2XL women’s shirt and could barely even put it onto my body.
The women’s sizes at Threadless always ran small but have gotten even worse over the years. I still have some 10 year old shirts from them that I occasionally wear but I’ve given up on buying anything new.
I am not usually big on New Year Resolutions but this year I am going to try and be better at meal planning and eating at the dinner table together. I haaaate meal planning and 2020 was a lot of me trying to figure out what’s for dinner at 5pm and just making everyone frozen pizza/chicken nuggets and eating on the couch in front of the TV. I am going to try The Lazy Genius monthly meal plan method. I just did it for January and I think it may be a game changer – fingers crossed.
How did your family end up liking the Catan game you got for Christmas? I ended up buying it for my family after I saw you post about it. We were intimidated by the instructions at first, but after watching a YouTube video about how to play we finally gave it a shot. We are now obsessed with it. So fun.
They haven’t tried it yet: I bought them so many games, and then two of their aunts bought them two games each, so the games are piled! I will tell them about watching a YouTube video to learn to play it—that seems like a good idea.
I’ve got less in the way of specific resolutions this year and more one overarching goal: reclaim my identity as something other than a mum.
If you’d asked me in 2018 I think I would have felt mostly ok on that score. But then I had a second baby and a giant global pandemic happened while I was on maternity leave, and life shrunk down to one never ending parenting slog with little in the way of light relief.
So! I’d like to go on my first date night with my husband since early 2019. I’m going to Read More Books (I am an immersive reader. I find a book I love and I don’t want to talk to anyone else or do anything else until it’s finished. It doesn’t combine well with two small kids…). I’m going to leave my kids for a weekend and go away with girlfriends. I’m going to keep up a running schedule because the endorphins make me happy and happy people feel much less like throwing up their hands and walking away from their claustrophobic and overwhelming little lives! So. Let’s see how this goes… with UK school closures already looming I can’t say it’s a strong start.
Oooooh I love those t-shirts. I have ordered with lots of success from Redbubble and Cafe Press. The Calgary library has an online store that supports the library, and it has a shirt with old-school date stamps, and I’m coveting it. It used to have a face mask with a book on it and the words “nose in a book” and I’m too late! They don’t have them anymore. Sad face.
I set goals every January and they are usually hippie-ish “mindfulness and gratitude” type goals, but last year I resolved to buy a new bra and I never did and now I can’t imagine how I ever will. Maybe 2022.
My BEST resolution was for last year, which seems unfair— I resolved to try the seasonal (monthly) flavors at Molly Moon’s ice cream each month. I was doing very well until, ya know, March.
This year, my resolution is to Drastically Reduce the stuff I buy from Amazon. I would like to reduce it down to NOTHING, but that might not be realistic. So.
Oh gosh, my main resolution (which I did manage to stick with) last year was of the Type That Shall Not Be Named, and this year my resolution is along similar lines, but more of a fitness thing: does trying to get more flexible count in that group? I’m finding I have some intermittent lower back issues and I think it’s linked to my lack of hip flexibility, so I want to do something about that. I’ve lifted weights for years and my flexibility seems to have suffered for it.
I do think I need less passive screen time in my life though – perhaps limiting Facebook should be on my list. I’d like to get back to some more photography and design work. I honestly thought when I started to work from home exclusively last March that I’d be doing more of that sort of thing, but instead I ended up doomscrolling way too much.
I am ALWAYS wishing there was more of a market for grown-women-hilarious-shirts (my kids all have them! And there are lots of sites geared towards men for nerdy or just funny shirts! Why not anything for me in something that is an actual adult female size????). I hope you’ll keep us posted as you keep finding new items! (You could probably rack up a good deal of affiliate income just by saving the rest of us the legwork of hunting for the good stuff!) :)
My resolutions are often vague and ambitious and inevitably fail, to the point that last year I jokingly posted to FB that I was simply resolving to become a perfect person, and that was that. I tend not to LIKE resolutions, but I’m already someone who constantly tries to “reset” mentally, so it’s hard not to make them, even if it’s just in my head.
But then , about a month into the pandemic, I started doing yoga videos two times a day, every day, and I’ve kept it up since April. I wouldn’t call it a habit now – some days I really have to force myself to do it – but I’ve never stuck with anything every day for this long before (except maybe when I finally committed to flossing my teeth). “Continue what you’re already doing and plan to keep doing” didn’t seem like much of a resolution, but having succeeded at the yoga so far has helped me realize that the specificity of the goal can help. Also, since my whole family knows about my yoga commitment, there’s some accountability there. Which is all to say that this year, I suggested that we make a couple of resolutions each as a family and write them down so we can revisit them next year.
I picked “social-media-free Saturdays” (which includes blogs in addition to FB, Twitter, etc. because I spend way too much time on certain political blogs growing ever despairing about the state of the world). This already paid off January 2, one of my most productive Saturdays in weeks and weeks, so I think it will be a rewarding one to stick with.
I also resolved to read every unread book in my stack or on my Kindle before I can check out or purchase anything new. I think this will be hard – it means saving some books for much later than I want to read them because they are the first of a series, and I don’t want to have to wait to buy the next one if I love the book. Also, I have a lot of nonfiction, self-help/parenting-type books to wade through, and it will be tricky to balance those with the fiction so that I don’t get stuck slogging through a dozen of them at the end. I was planning to just alternate, but I’m already discovering that trying to read this type of book at bedtime or in the bath just makes me not want to take a bath or go to bed. But these are books I DO want to read – I never would have purchased them otherwise. So maybe I will allow myself to start a nonfiction and a fiction at the same time, but I have to finish both before I can start new ones. Hm. This is beginning to have too many rules and caveats, which I’m not good at sustaining, but we shall see.
Re: unread books:
Have you considered having two simultaneous streams? One fiction, one non-fiction (or you could divide by Fluffy vs. Duty), and then you can’t buy more of the thing you still have until you finish the pile of that one. Obviously, yes, you will get through more Fluff than Duty, at least until the world’s stress levels… reduce slightly… but I’m not actually sure that matters.
(also: if a book fails out, let it fail out. Sometimes you go “okay, this book looked like it would be good and enjoyable, and I’m four chapters in and… perpetually avoiding reading more, even when it would be really reasonable to be reading this book, and even if I try reading just one sentence in it, I don’t want to read farther. So! That one fails out of my class, next up?”)(obviously, different approaches re: quitting would need to be taken for books that are the Necessary Painful kind, but… we need to have a special type of approach to that sort of book anyway, so that’s maybe okay?)
Over the holidays I also had a “forgot” and then “got to have later” thing: Christmas crackers. I bought them ages ago but forgot to put them out for Christmas dinner. No matter! they were pretty festive for New Year’s Eve and we could hear fireworks in the background while we opening our. I’m not in the US but I do think that Christmas crackers would make a nice addition to an inauguration celebration.
For fun clothes, may I suggest https://svahausa.com/? You might be particularly interested in the literature/language arts collection (https://svahausa.com/collections/literature-language-arts) though their core business is STEM/STEAM. It is a company I feel good about supporting for lots of reasons.