Dispatches from a happy Hullian

Well, I think I managed on average to floss about half of the days in year #33, and I've had a lighter touch with the filters online and in person. I think this was a four- or five- massage bar year and I got somewhat better at bringing back beer bottles. The mortgage breathed its last in May, and now our "make the house warmer and the kitchen fit us better" fund is growing fast and I'll be closing in on my RRSP deduction limit. We have a six-foot wooden fence with a gate that Oscar keeps figuring out as we secure it better (now he just wriggles under it), but at least he's down to one choke-point, and we did try! On the stuff I didn't do so well in from last year's list, I didn't get that check-up (no family doctor and not quite enough drive to get it done at a walk-in clinic), and I don't know that I made any big strides in relationship communication — appreciation, I think, and adventures, for sure, and some fine-tuning in timing and medium, but it's something I can still try to work on.

In the no-deadline parts of the list, we increased doctor coverage from zero of us to Vivien, and maybe Oscar in the fall. I started a new position, for which I'm learning a bunch of stuff and alternating between feeling competent and feeling like I just opened an overstuffed closet and the top shelf fell on me. My aches and pains had a good go at me in the spring, but I think I'm done with sciatica for a while and feeling generally as good as I was at last list time. In improving the house, we got a dishwasher, which might count, and I fixed the back stairs last week — their surprise collapse would've been hard on the comfort of whoever was on them at the time. The kids are gaining competence at a frightening pace and Oscar declared he wanted hugs and fire for his birthday party, so we're doing something right even as I feel I could use more patience and humour sometimes.

Here's what I would like to achieve in the next year:

• Keep up the flossing.
• Communicate better in relationships.
• Continue to wear through massage bars.
• Make the house cheaper to heat, either with insulation or a heating system upgrade, or both.
• Getting a GP and a checkup/vaccination update might be a tall order, but I will attempt to start allergy shots so I'm popping fewer antihistamines next summer. If I can do allergies and deferred maintenance, all the better.
• Somehow fix the Wike's stroller mode. As it is, the walking wheel doesn't hold up under our frequent use — three bolts to one frame member is no match for the leverage exerted by bumps and curbs.
• Give the promotion process this fall my best shot, and accept whatever comes of it gracefully.
• Reach out to a few more people at work in the hope of developing a new friendship or two.

Here are some longer-term things:

• Round out home heating improvements and make the kitchen suit us better.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.

I hope I'll do at least as well between now and next birthday as I did in the last year or so.

Not too long ago, we decided to get our worn-out chain-link fence replaced with a proper wood one, for privacy and reduced climb-ability. Elizabeth has been wanting to do this for a while, but this fall I did the research, we decided not to DIY it, I found someone to do it (serendipitously through a co-worker), worked out the cost and where the money was coming from, and let Chris and his assistant Aaron go at it. We weren't sure whether the weather would co-operate with a fence done before winter, but it did, and now we have a nice, solid, tall fence with a person-sized gate and a yard that feels a bit more enclosed.

I've been carrying around a list in my head of things to do while I'm 32 years old; now I'm committing it to the Internet. I've seen bucket lists and life lists, but the time horizon doesn't speak to my procrastination-prone and tactical nature, and I of course see New Year's resolutions, but I think going by my years rather than calendar years is more personal, and protects me a little from the list elements being fresh when the invariable collapse of many resolutions happens in late January. Also, some elements of the list were really dear and salient to me in the summer, so it made sense to hang them on my birthday (even if it's taken months to post them here). So, here are the things I would like to do or improve significantly this year:

• Floss more days than not.
• Make a conscious and courageous-when-necessary effort to improve my relationships in ways that make me happy.
• Make deeper use of this journal, as part of trying to be less guarded with people that I trust.
• Wear through multiple massage bars.
• Get the deposit back on beer bottles at smaller intervals and more reliably.
• Wipe out the mortgage and direct the resulting savings to a mix of responsible and fun things.
• Replace the chain-link fence with a durable, attractive, Oscar-resistant one.
• Get a check-up this year and renew my vaccinations; it's been too long on both counts.

In general, I think I have more guiding values than long-term specific goals, but here are some things (somewhere between values and goals) on a longer time scale.

• Have fewer secrets.
• Be entrusted with more secrets.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Make our house more comfortable, energy-efficient and adjusted to us.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.