Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

Happy New Year!

2007 was quite an eventful year, which ended on a very sad note around here. I have so many mixed feelings about the passing of Martha...she was a lovely lady, but also very tradtionally minded. She was after all born in the 1920s, and had only been out of the country once in her life. I remember vividly one time when we were discussing our new neighbors. She was marveling at how 'international' the village was becoming - Frau T. was from northern Italy, and Frau S. was from the Ticino! The Ticino is part of Switzerland (the Italian part), but, my thought was if someone from there was still considered foreign, what am I? While I do not blame her for Max and I splitting up all those years ago, I also cannot discount her influence either.

But nevertheless, that is all over now...and I hope, if there is a heaven, she is there in peace now. It's also made me resolve to be in better touch with my own parents...

I have not yet mentioned another sad passing at the end of the year. Bill Grimes also died peacefully in his sleep. He'd had some strokes and was incapacitated in his last few years. I am pretty sure that he is in heaven (if there is one), happily exploring tracks and tracks of old and unusual trains and trams.

Now onto 2008! Some random things I hope to achieve this year, in (the favorite words of competition reality shows) no particular order:

• Expand my mini-blog franchise. I find that I need some variety in my writing, and it's just easier for me to have separate blogs for specific topics. I was quite overwhelmed by the response to Just Bento, and plan to continue to expand that site. I've also recently started, sort of unintentionally, a blog about language, on my old Typepad site. The Typepad site used to be where I had Just Hungry, and I kept the account because so many people had already linked there. I was thinking of cancelling it already, but I've seen that formerly popular and abandoned Typepad sites can get taken over by the equivalent of those awful domain name squatters with bogus 'search pages'. I may still decide to cancel it eventually, but for now it lives as Hungry For Words. I also have tentative plans to open two more sites...but we'll see where that goes.
• This month, and maybe the next, I'm going to concentrate on doing a deep level decluttering of the house. My aim is to get rid of a third of our possessions. A large part of this should be easy - there's so much crap that should just be tossed - but I know there will be snags. But it just has to be done.
• Get fitter! This is body-decluttering.
• Creativity goals. Last year I made a short lived resolution to draw a picture a day. That did not last long, unfortunately, due to frustrations with, of all things, my damned scanner. I think a replacement is in order (and they are so cheap after all). This year I am going to just try to do something creative every week, that is not digital. So, drawing, painting, crafts, etc. They may or may not get shown online but that's not the point after all!