I saw on Facebook this morning that Karen Mercer, my mother-in-law, has decided to give up drinking her Diet Mountain Dews.  Inspired by that, I impulsively decided to give up sodas again.  I don’t drink them much now, but I do at times and I figured it can’t hurt anything.

I actually went several years without drinking any soda, and Amanda went her whole college career without drinking them.  We both broke our streaks at my parents’ house one weekend a few years ago when there was literally nothing to drink but beer and soda and bad-tasting water.  Amanda doesn’t like beer and I didn’t want to get smashed and neither of us wanted to drink the water, so there you have it.

Milly slept until about 9:30 this morning.  Since she was ostensibly sick, we let her sleep in as much as she wanted.  I myself was up a little before 9:00.  That’s not bad, as I usually have a hard time sleeping much past 8:30 anymore.

While we were all at the table this morning I was reflecting on 2010 and pulled up the video of the last few minutes of Duke’s national championship game against Butler.  Milly was intrigued by the sound of it, so I turned the laptop around for her to see it.  She made me proud by saying, “Guh Goo (Go Duke)!” several time, then made it even better by signing and saying, “More,” when the video was over.

I made some phone calls to wish people a happy new year today.  I called my parents first and talked to them for a bit, then I called Baba.  My cousin, Shelby, answered the phone.  Her dad, Uncle Bernie, plus at least a couple of her brothers (from what I gathered) had been there visiting our grandmother.

After that I called my siblings in age order.  I left messages for Erin and Adam, but I did get ahold of Andra and talked to her for a few minutes.  Then I called Aunt Robbie and caught up with her.  She talked about Christmas memories from when I was little, then we talked about taking a cruise from Rome to Venice and about how much we (and Amanda) would love to visit Italy.  A little later I talked to Jason, who was watching a Twilight Zone marathon on SyFy with Liz, and had been since yesterday.  Amanda and I had actually been watching some of that ourselves while playing Dominion during Milly’s nap.

Speaking of Dominion, we played two games.  The first one was flat-out terrible for me.  I mean, it was seriously demoralizing.  I finally did win one with our second game though, and I won it more convincingly than I thought I was going to.

After Milly got up we went over to Anna and Barry’s for dinner.  Milly was somewhere between being in a good mood and being a bit fussy.  I was tired and I think I was in and out of consciousness lying on the living room floor after we ate.

After Amanda and I put Milly down to sleep for the night we played a game of San Juan.  It was a close one and I won.

Milly was doing much better today, by the way.  While she still has some leftover crustiness on her eyelashes because she won’t let us put a warm cloth on her face enough to loosen it up, she didn’t wake up with any more in her eyes.  She also still gets very upset when we put the drops  in her eyes, but she gets over it really quickly.

I was feeling very motivated today, just as I’m sure literally millions of other people were, it being January 1 and all.  I’ve been feeling pretty energized about a number of things lately though, and I want to start developing some good new habits.  Hopefully I’ll stick to it.

Zach Dotsey