Resolutions, Christmas and Other December-y Things

This is that time of the year when people relax, think about their year and all the resolutions they didn’t keep and probably won’t the coming year either. Work slows down, everyone is on holiday mode, making travel plans and planning holiday meals. Not so for me. Yes, I did think about my 2019 resolutions and yes, I did plan holiday meals. But I thought about all the stuff that I meant to do this year that I didn’t and then I decided to cram all of that in the 31 days of December. 

Reflecting on 2019, it was a pretty good year. I made a lot of ambitious plans this year and I made most of them happen. But if I were to sum up how my year sort of panned out, in one word, it would be this. Procrastination. 

I made a lot of interesting plans this year. If not alway..conventional, they were, at least well researched. Then I gathered everything I needed for that plan, spent 2 days on it, and then dropped it in pursuit of another mad plan. And come December, my apartment was littered with at least 4 or 5 abandoned projects I never started. But I didn’t want to end the year saying, “Ah well, never got around to that” so I decided to buckle down and finish everything I had left hanging for so long. Here’s all the exciting December-y stuff that happened.

Lake Chelan : The Winter Getaway

Lake Chelan is a 52 mile long lake in the Central Cascades region in Washington. It’s bordered by tiny towns, including its namesake, Chelan. Pepe and I wanted to go away for a weekend, to some isolated place far away from tourists, with the sole intention of sleeping. Some might wonder – ‘Who pays good money to drive 3 hours and sleep through an entire weekend in a hotel?’ I do, because I’m a Pretentious Snob of the First Order apparently. And Pepe, because she came with me.

So we loaded up her car with way too much food and supplies (in case we were stranded in the snow), and set off. Chelan is hugely popular in the summer, teeming with tourists wanting to do water activities in the lake, but is dead in the winter. Perfect for what we wanted. It’s an extremely adorable tiny town, dotted with vineyards everywhere you look. We arrive, check in, and because we were probably the only guests there, get instantly upgraded to a super fancy room with a fireplace and a kitchen. We get settled in, and walk to a little brunch place where I proceed to down a giant mug of irish coffee with whipped cream. It was an auspicious start to a boozy weekend. We then drove to a winery to do some wine tasting. Pepe only likes white and I only like red wine. We both get complimentary tastings, and we got to talking with the store people and somehow within a span of 15 minutes, Pepe and I went from tasting wine to me buying two bottles and being inducted into the Chelan Wine Club. Apparently, I shall get 10 bottles of wine in a span of 12 months at 20% off and while this still seems like a great idea, I will never forget Pepe’s expression, a cocktail of extreme disbelief and amusement on her face. I shall justify this by becoming a wine connoisseur and throwing booze references everywhere I go. That evening, we went to an ugly sweater christmas party and took pictures with Santa before getting back to the hotel and pulling out our jammies and fuzzy socks.  And then we downed a bottle of wine and ate cheese and watched Parent Trap on Netflix. The next morning, on our drive back to Seattle, we made a pit stop at Leavenworth for lunch, and spent some time making sad looking sidewalk snowmen and pelting each other with snowballs before heading back to the car. Here is evidence of my great snow sculpting skills.

Apartment Hunting and Downsizing

For the 3rd time in three years, I am moving. I am extremely nit-picky about where I live and slowly, over the years, I’ve been figuring out what I like in a home (at least that’s what I like to tell myself). My first apartment was nice, but overlooked a senior home. Which isn’t bad per se, but if all you ever see out of your home is a wall, two windows and a very old man playing candy crush on an ipad, it tends to get boring. Plus they raised my rent and my soul protested at paying so much for an apartment worth so much less. So then I moved from my 620 sq feet apartment to a 700 sq ft apartment in a smaller building. It was a basement/first floor apartment, with two huge closets and a lot of storage space. It was cheap and closer to work and included parking. Sounded like a dream come true. Until summer arrived and the huge trees in front of my balcony blocked almost any sunlight coming through. And the trees and heat brought with it, spiders. I was constantly watching for them, finding gross ugly large ones in the corners and shrieking for Pepe to come help kill them. No spiders. Absolute dealbreaker. So now I am determined to move out again. And this time I want to go live in Capitol Hill, the unanimously cool part of town. The neighborhood full of bars and restaurants and indie bookstores and live music venues and skyrocketing prices. After a few weeks of searching and memorizing every listing on Zillow, Apartment.com and Hotpads, I finally took a couple of hours off work and decided to walk around the area and tour all the apartments I liked. At first, everything seemed out of budget and for all the wrong reasons. I do not want an 800 sq ft apartment with a wine cooler and a giant hall and a tiny bedroom with no door (they call ‘em urban bedrooms). I grew up in India where an entire 3 bed/3 bathroom apartment can fit in 800 sq ft! I want an apartment for a single person and I want to pay for the square footage I use, not for the 400 sq feet of empty space in the middle of my hall that will compel me to buy useless furniture to make it look less empty! I went to see one last apartment and I was pretty dejected and sure I wouldn’t like this one either but I finally hit gold. It was tiny, only 450 sq ft, but well designed, compact and spacious enough to look much larger. It would fit in most of my stuff, and would force me to de-hoard. (Yes I am a hoarder and I have random useless things from years ago). Yeah, it’ll definitely be a challenge to downsize and have a tiny kitchen and limited storage, but hey, its cheaper than what I pay now, in the right location and 2 blocks from my office bus stop. I am excited!

Christmas Cooking Extravaganza

The entire year I had struggled with consistently cooking healthy for myself. It’s not a secret that I do not like cooking, which is a shame, because my grandmother and mom are the best cooks I know. However, adulting means not eating takeout every other evening so I was determined to prove to myself that I could cook and cook well if I gave it a legit shot. I was going to cook up a christmas feast for Pepe and myself. I had the 24th off, so I was going to spend the whole day cooking. I had a full 3 course meal planned. I was going to make goat cheese and crushed-almond rolled grapes for appetizers, a Cornish roast hen and eggplant parmesan for entrees and mashed potatoes and butter garlic beans on the side, with custard for pudding. I also asked Uncle Matthew for mulled wine recipe and made a giant batch around noon. I ended up cooking through the afternoon and sipping mulled wine throughout the day (the wine was fantastic!) and by 6 pm, Pepe and I were ready to eat. The eggplant parmesan was great, the roast chicken was good but slightly low on salt. I also forgot to salt the beans and put too much salt in the potatoes, but if you ate them together, it balanced out. (yes, I have a traumatic relationship with salt). I didn’t make the custard but we had chocolate ice cream instead. We put Bridget Jones’ Diary on the TV and as I drank more mulled wine, I distinctly remember watching Hugh Grant and Colin Firth fighting and thinking, “Hmm, Hugh Grant is rather edible” and Pepe dissolving into giggles. The food wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty and fun and the company was perfect and you couldn’t ask for more. I spent Christmas day eating leftovers and knitting a scarf while I watched Home Alone for the 37th time.

If I think about it, I learnt a lot of new skills this year. Here’s some random hobbies I decided to give a try in the last few months.

Random Hobby #1 – Sewing

I got a sewing machine and sewed myself a skirt. The skirt makes me look like a milkmaid and I have worn it in public a few times and then decided, it needs to live out the rest of its days in the back of my closet, but hey I can sew clothes! And cushion covers and curtains and useful things like that. I don’t think I have much of a future in fashion design though.

Random Hobby #2 – Knitting

So I actually learnt to knit in October 2018 and decided I hated it and left it unfinished but I forced myself to knit through the end and I have a half decent scarf! While I think its too boring, it does make for great gifts, and mom has already commissioned two scarves from me. Guess I’ll still be knitting this year then.

Random Hobby #3 – Salsa

I did classes for 3 months and I’ve been going to socials a couple of times a month since September and it’s the absolute best. I did one salsa lesson in grad school and it involved an hour of people with bad breath stomping on my feet. Needless to say, I was pretty turned off, until my friend Samy, who’s been into latin-dancing for years convinced me to give it another shot. Century ballroom is my dance floor of choice and while I’m certainly not super skilled yet, I am learning more with every social I go to. And you know how whenever someone asks, ‘So, can you dance?’ and people always respond, ‘oh no I’m soooo awkward, omg it’s honestly embarrassing! I only dance when I’m drunk!’ when they actually dance just fine? Well, now if anyone asks me if I can dance, I’m gonna say, ‘HECK yeah, I can dance my butt off, can you dance?’ Because I own it. (Silently does a butt wiggle while writing this)

Random Hobby #4 – Furniture Making

I made a footstool out of an old wine crate, some plyboard and scrap fabric and it looks adorable. I felt like Hercules, using the power drill and the electric screwdriver, and the seat turned out to be a bit lumpy but hey, the seat is imbued with love from my own hands. Ohoho.

Things I want to learn/do better next year!

1. Learn Krav Maga – It’s a form of self defense/fighting that was developed from the Israeli Defence Forces and I’ve always wanted to try it! It teaches you to rely on your natural instincts and keep yourself safe while also being an insane way to stay fit!
2. I want to learn how to illustrate – I love art and I rarely have time to sit and paint anymore. Plus having all the right supplies is always a bit of a hassle. So I want to try and see if I can translate the vivid imagination into some illustrated cartoons. For some reason, I really want to draw a stocky and muscular cowboy from the 1870’s who can make his pecs dance. He shall be called Roderick Brawson and all the women go all fluttery and breathy whenever he rides into the town to get his fix of bourbon and pretty madams. 
3. I want to read more books this year. At least 12 new books this year. I was a voracious reader as a child and with so much other stuff going on, it’s easy to let that habit take a backseat. I probably have more than 12 books that I’ve bought and haven’t read yet, so I’m going to make my way through my bookshelf and no buying more books before I finish the ones I already have!
4. I’m going to hike more in 2020 than I did in 2019! I clocked in 14 hikes last summer, so this summer, I’m going to make it to at least 15! Of course, I am going to repeat some of my favorite ones, but I already have a list of new hikes I’m going to tackle next. 
5. I am going to at least two new cities this year. Tiny towns around Seattle don’t count, no, they’ll be completely new places that I’m going to make vacations out of. I don’t yet know if they’ll be in the States or another country, but I can’t wait to plan my next vacation! 

And finally, I am sure my parents when reading this are thinking, “Ok, but where’s the important stuff?!” , here’s the important stuff. My life is a work in progress, and while I have not come up with a brand new personal development goal, 2020 will be another year of work towards a better version of myself, where I am happier, healthier and better at my job. Oh, and that version of me also cooks regularly and keeps her bedroom clean. Scout’s honor. 

By the way, that reminds me, as the decade comes to a close, my friend asked me about one product that I have consistently used for the last decade. Not like facebook or google , but an actual physical product from a particular brand. And my answer was…BOROLIN! I have used it for 25 years and will use it for the next however many years I will live. *Borolin all the way woot woot* 

If you guys are confused about what Borolin is, it is an antiseptic skin cream that all people from eastern India swear by and use as a miracle solution to dry skin, chapped lips, cracked elbows and cuts and scrapes. I have even tried putting Borolin on my backyard cat as a 6 year old. That did not go down well. 

That’s all I have for now! Tell me what your year looked like and what fun resolutions you have for the next year and the next decade!

Kat