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Friday, January 1, 2016

Quirks (New Years and pets and ????)

New Years is such a goofy concept.  Can we all agree (probably not) that it really is an arbitrary man-made delineation of time that doesn't actually mean anything?

So I don't get all hoopty-hoop over NYE, although I do superstitiously eat cabbage on NYD because my parents, who are as frugal as they come, always serve cabbage in the hopes that it will bring more wealth.  We aren't going to my parents this year on NYD, so I bought egg rolls.  I'm not cooking a whole head of cabbage.

My own NYD on which to be better than I was before (bigger, stronger, faster) begins on the Monday that the kids and husband resume their school and work schedules.  I can resume normalcy.  I can go to the gym every day if I want (I don't and won't, but I could....).  I can toss out all the Christmas cookies and hide all the candy (if I don't see it, I don't eat it.)  I can get back into the routine that allows me to clean my house (with all of us here for 2 weeks, it is just pointless for me to clean up much).

This isn't to say it has been a bad winter break.  It has been pretty good, but I think the best thing for sticking to resolutions (if I were the type of person to make such things) is a routine in which to put them.

But I don't make resolutions, partly because there is no real meaning to the arbitrary NYD and partly because if everyone else is making resolutions then I definitely don't want to be part of that.

Another of my weird quirks is my philosophy of pet names (a book club friend's post about her new dog made me think about it).

I had a pretty strict name philosophy about the kids' names.  They had to be names that could not be shortened/nicknamed.  I love the name Catherine, but I dislike Kate, Katey, Kathy and/or Kat. I realize that some children do manage not to get stuck in the nickname rut, but it seems like it is a constant battle, and I'm not that diligent.  When D and I threw this requirement in with his requirement that they be names that people had heard but very infrequently, it got pretty dicey.

My requirements with pet names is that they have to not be human names, and they have to be a little oddball.  Shanks was named after the Jane Yolen's book King Long Shanks.  Gonzo was named after the Muppet and Hunter S. Thompson (gonzo journalism).  Our new kitties are Slippers and Skits (short for skittish).  Other names that I think make great pet names:

Flotsom
Narf
Nerdle / Nurdle (this is actually my cousin's dog's name, and I love it)
Yurtle
Floob
Plotz
Skeets
Poit
Stoob

My friend named her dog Larry, which is actually a name that I prefer as a pet name instead of a human name.  Maybe because Larry is a nickname for Lawrence, and I so dislike nicknames?

(Of course, I should say I feel about all these things the way I do about chino pants.  I don't like them in my own life, but I certainly don't really care what other people name their kids and/or their pets or wear on their bottom halves.  Do what you want....

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