Rez-olutions

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Well, new year is among us friends. Time make our rez-olutions for 2023.

In the past, it would be around this time, I would commit to fixing the old van in the back yard, replacing the sheet over that back window and vowing to eat less KFC. I still have the van and the sheet, but I am eating a lot less KFC, simply because there isn’t one in my town, which is a blessing.

This year, I am committed to three things: learning to make bannock, fixing the 1997 Chrysler Town and Country (again) and redecorating my crib, again.

I’m okay at making survivalist bannock, kind of a hard-tack, long-lasting, easily transportable puck, but I lack skills to make it taste good.

This year, I think I will focus on fried bannock by putting on my headphones and tight shorts, cranking “Greasy Fry Bread” by Punkin’ Lusty, and doing my sweet thing in the kitchen until I get it just right.

Hopefully the results will be good.

The Chrysler is another story. I don’t predict much success with that battle.

The thing is blessed and cursed with one feature: it always starts. If it weren’t for that, I would find it much easier to just have the auto wrecker come get it, then I would at least have $300 to hire someone to make bannock after mine burns.

I mean, it’s a pretty good van, all it needs are tires, breaks, shocks, seats, doors, a cv joint, new radio, new battery and air conditioner and to have the tape deck rewired.

That’s right, the old girl still rocks a tape deck and sometimes the radio. This means occasionally it will turn on by itself at full volume and decide I need to hear a song. Lately, it seems to prefer outlaw country and classic rock. Thank you, radio.

I thought about selling her the other year, but I wanted to do it fairly, so I started making a list of all the things wrong with it for prospective buyers, sort of a mechanic’s special.

I stopped about two-and-a-half pages in. I just couldn’t do that to someone, plus nobody else knows how to play with her headlights to get them to turn on right. I guess she’s mine for life.

Redesigning the house is a little easier now that I am working full time and things are a little more stable. In the past, I would be deciding which sheets to hang on the doorways and if I should get a different colored couch for the front yard.

For now, I sit drinking eggnog, which of all the nogs, is my most favourite, looking out the window at my dog’s yellow snow trail up my walkway to my house.

Somehow, “Follow the yellow snow trail, Dorothy!” doesn’t sound quite as magical as the other famous Wizard of Oz quote.

As I sit, mug in hand at 11:59, I am reminded of many years ago, when a friend was visiting the city from up North for the first time to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

At midnight she went out on the porch excitedly waiting for everyone to come fire their rifles into the sky like they did back home.

“We could do that here sweety, but it means the SWAT team might show up… again, and nobody wants to ring in the holidays looking at a pencil drawing of a Christmas tree on a jail cell wall again, which is unpleasant… or so I hear.”

Much better to be here, with a snoring dog on my lap, consuming my nog, and looking out at a snow-globe-winter scene with a fake fire on the T.V.

Dear reader, I hope you were snuggled cozily at home, enjoying your nogs and dogs, or if you don’t have those things, you were at least with someone who cares about you.

2023 is our year!