Best of Intentions

I am really good at making personal goals, if I do say so myself, and not just for the New Year. On a fairly regular basis, I mentally mash together a ball of things I’d like to start or stop, and it just rolls around my head until the superfluous ones fall off and I’m left with the things that are pretty necessary to life (go for oil changes regularly) and/or just plain common sense (get the heck out of bed when the alarm goes off). You’ll notice that I didn’t say that I am good at reaching personal goals, so I get very excited when I manage to accomplish something in which I am not naturally skilled.

The items that have repeatedly fallen off the ball o’ goals are many and varied. I’m on my third time trying to learn how to play the guitar. I’ve never really stopped biting my fingernails. My mail-filing system has broken down to a pile of envelopes with a mishmash of post-its sticking out to remind me of something. My exercise routine hasn’t been as consistent as I’d like it to be, thanks to a few hellish weeks at work, but hey – there’s no time to re-start like the present. And by “the present”, of course, I mean “tomorrow”, because my current attempt at a regimen doesn’t include weekends.

There is one goal that I am bound and determined to get out of the way, and I am dedicating today and the rest of this week to that end. I am going to knit scarves for the seniors on the girls’ volleyball team that JG is coaching at the high school where he teaches. I made this claim before the team was determined, without knowing how many seniors there would be or even how long the season would last. Well. There are three seniors, Senior Night is a week from tomorrow, and I have all of 1.1 scarves completed. This is not good.

The plan for today is to hunker down on the couch and knit for the rest of the night. Oh, I’ll take a break to make dinner and eat, but while JG watches his normal Sunday TV lineup, the twitching, clicking bump next to him will be me, knitting. Any time this week that I would normally spend reading or browsing up ways to spend my online gift cards will, instead, be spent in the sweatshop of my own making, driven by the intent to start a tradition and attain the level of supercool coach’s wife. Even if my intentions aren’t entirely pure, at least they’ll be fulfilled.