"I bought more broccoli because I knew you were coming," my mother informed me.

You can never get enough broccoli; that is my belief.

I am lucky in that I never had to acquire a taste for vegetables out of some sort of concern for my health. I have always loved vegetables. My mother has a picture of me at 3 years old, sound asleep with a serving spoon in my hand. I had apparently offered to finish up the remaining peas. I did, then fell fast asleep at the table. I think I could still do that today.

My sister also loves broccoli, so I am inclined to think it was our upbringing that instilled our love of vegetables. She remembers the time when she had dinner at a friend's house as a child and realized the modest-sized bowl of broccoli was intended to feed the entire table -- a bowl she could easily have eaten on her own. My broccoli-eating capacity exceeds my sister's, and this is why my mother (who prefers to buy things in small quantities) bought twice the normal amount of broccoli before my visit. We cooked it all. It was all eaten.

Eating vegetables is not something I have to worry about doing. I saw an advertisement for "vegetables in a pill" and was appalled. I have a hard time believing there is anything in those pills approximating a vegetable but, even if there were, why would anyone want it? Eating vegetables is one of my favorite things in life.

I'm reading a book about habits right now. I hesitated to buy the book because I thought I had pretty good habits already, and I thought it would be about breaking a bunch of bad habits or training myself to eat broccoli.

But it turns out that habits are even more important than I imagined. A lot of habits don't pay off for a long time, which makes staying motivated to keep them hard. But habits will have more influence on accomplishing goals than actual goal-setting. Most of us have similar goals. Not everyone has habits that make accomplishing the goals possible.

The author suggests that, instead of celebrating big accomplishments, we should celebrate sticking to a good trajectory, staying the course, making and keeping good habits. It doesn't sound quite as exciting as celebrating a big success, but maybe that's OK because the morning after the big success usually means going right back to the boring habits that made the success possible. And that's a good thing. Especially if you like broccoli.

The year is still new, and I'm trying out some new habits. I want to read more. I want to spend less time scrolling the internet. I want to do more pushups. I want to try to learn a little more Spanish, since I'll be traveling to Mexico and I feel I've forgotten every word I ever knew. None of these activities will have any effect whatsoever if I only do them for a day or two. So I'm trying to get some new habits in my life and push out the things I'd be doing instead.

Progress in Spanish is slow, and pushups make me tired. I usually start too late in the day to get much reading done. But I am going to keep trying.

I like the idea that getting a little stronger or a little smarter or a little more fluent might become easier with time. None of these habits will ever be as fun as eating broccoli, but that's a lot to ask.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

I was excited to wear my new dress.

It was slimming, I thought: all black and covered with flounces from the neckline to the hemline. I wore it with high heels -- which I rarely wear -- and red drop earrings. I was feeling much more sophisticated than I usually do when I went over to my sister's house for dinner.

"Nice dress!" my mother said.

I gave my new dress a little twirl and set the ruffles flying in all directions.

"You look like a car wash," my sister said.

This is why it's good to stay close to family.

My husband, Peter, and I moved across the country to the Midwest in large part so we could be closer to family. It's good to see my parents on a regular basis. Peter's oldest sister is battling cancer, and we can now be near her. We have dozens of cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, and now most of them live nearby.

My family members (and my sister in particular) absolutely do not care what I say about myself. They do not care about my New Year's resolutions or recent accomplishments or nice things other people might have said about me.

They remember when I was 13 and wore a green felt hat all the time out of some sort of weird superstition. They remember when Dad had to drive back two hours to fetch the green hat after I left it someplace. And they will never believe that the green felt hat-wearing person has entirely changed.

I look at pictures of myself as a young teen, very shy, trying to become invisible beneath my peculiar green hat and only drawing more attention to myself in the process.

There was a lot I didn't understand as an awkward teen. I didn't realize that lots of people were shy. I didn't know that, by starting a conversation with someone, I would be doing them a huge favor. I didn't know I'd see the relief in their eyes when they realized they could talk to me and forget about feeling awkward themselves. I didn't need a green hat to become invisible. To take the pressure off me, I just needed to direct the attention to someone else. If someone had told me that sooner, I wouldn't have had to wear that silly hat for so long.

I like to think I've changed quite a bit since then, but my family knows better.

I firmly believe in the power we all have to change ourselves and follow our dreams wherever they take us. I hope to continue trying new things for quite a while. But, while chasing my highfalutin dreams, it's good to have family around to keep me grounded. It's good to remember that, no matter what grand schemes I take on, there are people who have known me before and know me best.

They will always cheer me on, but they will also know that I am still the same person, in a fancy dress, trying new things, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing miserably. And they still love me.

"It doesn't really look like a car wash," my mother said.

My mother has been saying reassuring things to me all my life. But I suspect, now that the image is in her mind, my fancy-schmancy dress will never look quite the same. And that's OK.

My self-esteem has come a long way since my green hat-wearing days. Nowadays, I can put on my fancy car wash dress with a pair of heels and not care who sees me.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

The New Year is when we take stock.

In some cases, like my husband Peter's, this is literal. He keeps an inventory of our canned goods and chastises me if I mess up his inventory.

"Did you mark off the black beans?"

"Um, no."

"You have to mark it off on the list or I won't know how many I have."

"Oh. Sorry."

I am less concerned about our supply of canned goods in the New Year and more concerned about stockpiles closer to home -- on my hips, for example.

I had gotten out of the habit of weighing myself, and I decided this was probably unwise. So I started weighing myself in the mornings. Monitoring my weight is far more disconcerting than losing a can of beans. I cannot see how I can go out to dinner, eat a heavy plate of curry, and lose a pound and a half, only to eat almost nothing the next day and gain it back. My weight rises and falls like a roller coaster.

This morning I noticed that I had inexplicably gained two pounds overnight. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked fine. In fact, I thought I was looking particularly fit. The mirror and I decided the scale was crazy.

The New Year is also an appropriate time to recognize that not all that is lost will be found. It is tempting to believe that the picture frame mysteriously lost in the move will reappear, or that we will find that kitchen gadget that Peter and I are both convinced we used to own, but no longer seem to. The New Year is a good time to just give up and get a new frame and a new gadget.

The same is true of socks. Socks are like kidnapping victims. If they are not recovered within 48 hours, the odds of them ever returning to their mate are substantially reduced. After three months, as in all True Crime stories, the trail has gone cold.

But then there will be that one (as there was, just the other day) miraculously recovered from beneath the mattress of the bed who was joyfully reunited with its mate because I had not quite abandoned hope. It's things like this that keep me holding on to single socks far too long.

At any rate, I am trying to keep track of things a little better this year. I even bought a daily planner. I didn't have one last year because I remembered what happened to the one I bought in 2020. It had a flurry of events penned in the first two months, then it sat looking at me accusingly from the corner of my desk, unused for the rest of the year.

"What are we doing today?"

"Same as yesterday. Nothing."

Remembering to go out on the front stoop to talk to the neighbor and her dog did not require an entry in my planner.

So I held off on buying one last year and got along just fine. This year, I gave in, and I am busily filling my new planner with things I'd like to do and accomplish.

It may all be foolish. Perhaps this year will be as uneventful as the last two. Still, there is hope. And I guess that is the point of taking a New Year inventory.

It's the time of year when I imagine life being a little different and somehow a little better. It's the time of year when I make sure my inventory of hopes and dreams is stocked to capacity.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS