2026

This is to be the resolutions post. Public, the only way to do it. But a glance at last year’s resolutions suggests I don’t always follow through.

-We have found a babysitter, and have hired her exactly twice. Better than nothing but not quite what I was envisioning.

-I have come no closer to driving, BUT have made enough peace with Toronto’s layout to accept that if I want to buy a month’s worth of items from the Fiesta Farms supermarket, beyond what’s doable by subway, it is worth the $20-or-under taxi back, this is still far less expensive than car ownership and certainly less terrifying than me picking iced-over December to try to drive one.

-Cleaners, well? I did hire some for a move-in clean, having assessed that this might not be the worst idea. I have gestured at planning to set this up on a more regular basis, but have not done so and it’s 50-50 whether I will.

-The greatest success has probably been on the fitness-resolution front (not in the move-into-holidays weeks but, in general): I now go to strength-training classes once or twice a week, go jogging when weather permits, and the simplest model of treadmill from the treadmill store is on its way.

So, to yes-and my resolutions for 2025, some 2026 items:

-Read books that have no work-use whatsoever. Between reviewing books for work and other writing-aimed reading (book research etc) and kids’ bedtimes I’m often reading a book, but am I often, these days, picking up a novel for my own enjoyment? Nope. Got to fix that.

-Actually deal with every home improvement that needs dealing with WHILE ALSO not becoming one of those middle-aged people for whom improvements to their own home is their entire personality. Which brings me to…

-A return to socializing. If I know you irl and have not been in touch recently,* whatever convoluted reason you imagine (if you’re neurotic in the same ways I am), it is not that. It is that the quasi-abrupt decision to move houses (we’d been looking, but looking for something so specific I did not actually think we’d move, and then there it was) took over my non-work-hours life. Looking at houses in person and online, second-guessing every associated decision, gazing ever-deeper into what is more boring than one’s own navel under normal circumstances: the real estate where one’s navel should reside. It was unquestionably the right decision, but yes, a whole production as it’s happening.

That, and my default suggestion social-plans-wise is to invite people over. Given packing, unpacking, and the bizarre intermediary bit of house staging (wherein you live in a borderline-squalid AirBnb for a month while your house gets dressed up), there has been no real ‘over’ to have people. We had held off getting various furniture because ‘maybe we’ll move’ and remain in this intermediary stage where less is put-away-able than it had been.

But we’re at a point where it is possible to walk through a room or whatever, where I know where a plate is without having to think about it. So yeah, anything beyond this would be me opting to make my entire remaining time on this planet about home refurbishments, and I do not opt in that direction.

*Of course, if you’ve been wondering, what’s been so great about the past six months or so?, and then you put together that it’s that you have not heard from me during that time, then carry on, as you were, etc etc.