Crazy Stable

"I'm going to give away all the cats and cancel my magazine subscriptions, and then I'm going to paint ten pickets a day!"

 Yes, it's time for CrazyStable New Year's Resolutions! This seminal work by George Booth, that master of CrazyStable iconography, just about sums them up.  [Go here for a great selection of Boothabilia, but so far I haven't found the cartoon above.] They are more or less the same every year:

* Spend one hour a day doing some small renovation task.

* (By February) Okay, spend one hour a week doing some small renovation task.

* (By April) Okay, once a month. Or, like, one day once a month where we just get the little stuff under control.

* (By May) House? What house? I'm in the garden, leave me alone.

* (By July) Spend just one hour a day in the garden--just long enough to keep the plants alive, okay?

There are others:

* Make a schedule of seasonal maintenance chores, and put them on the calendar. [Sound of hilarious demented laughter.]

* Get the "tool room" cleaned out and organized.

* Get the Child's baby, toddler, and early childhood wardrobe and furnishings out of the "Blue Room" and into the hands of some needy recipients.

* Strip the rest of the paint off the stained-glass front windows. (Spend 19th year wondering why anyone would paint stained-glass window lights with white housepaint...on both sides.)

* Get out the little pad sander you bought at Sears and see if it will take the paint off the banister.

* Get out your late father's Dremel tool set and see if it will get the rest of the paint out of the little curvy bits of the banister.

* Wonder for 19th year why previous owner painted everything ox-blood red. (Chinese culture ascribes luck to the color red, but surely not that particular shade.)

* Do 50 sit-ups a day so as to be strong enough to break up cement pad in back yard and plant stuff there.

* Fix doorknobs that fall off, undeterred by fact that we have already fixed them and they still fall off.

* Make curtains and Roman blinds for four different bedrooms, using huge bolt of fabric bought on street for a song. Where is that bolt of fabric, anyway?

* But do not do this until curtains and duvet cover are made for Goddaughter and skirt is altered for Best Friend.

* Ooh, put this first: Oil sewing machine. Check it for rust.

And then there are the post-9/11 resolutions I never fulfilled:

* Bake bread every week.

* Learn to tap-dance. (The connection to imminent annihilation by Al Qaeda may be obscure to some, but it works for me--in theory, anyway.)

And of course:

* Lose 15 pounds. Do this by strenous daily exercise in the course of renovations ... (see top of list).

Happy New Year...time for a final round of cookie-baking before the Great Leap Forward!