So begins a new year

It’s already seven days into the New Year, and I have yet to write a “new year” blog entry. Any summary of 2007 would be too long because so many wonderful things occurred in our lives last year. 2007 was a wonderful year, capped by an absolutely spectacular time at Mom and Tim’s house. 2008 began with a flurry of cleaning in the Walters household.

Ever since we’ve moved to 4th Street, our front bedroom has not really had a purpose, except for holding a lot of junk (and M&T’s piano), boxes of books, scrapbooking supplies, and various wedding-planning items. We would like to make this room into another room of retreat and relaxation, especially since our living room/dining room/kitchen serves that main purpose now. So, what better way to start than by cleaning the front room so we can move our current sleeper sofa into it this weekend! Please cross your fingers that we will actually be able to move the sofa into the front room. Cross your fingers so Nate will have another room where he can convince me to put up a plasma TV and I will not have to put my old sofa on the front porch NM-style. Also, if it fits, you out-of-town guests will have another room to hang out in (or sleep) and a new, cushy sofa to enjoy in the living room!

We spent all of Sunday purging old documents, organizing files, looking at pictures from our past (middle/high school, undergrad, grad), reading our wedding cards, and boxing up books. Yes, we still need more bookshelves, but that is another blog post and another discussion entirely. We also took down our Christmas decorations. While I’m celebrating the Christmas season, I never want it to end; but this weekend, it felt like our tree was starting to take over our living room and that our little house was collapsing in on us. Well, maybe not quite that dramatically, but it was time to take everything up to the attic again. I guess that’s what happens when you put up Christmas decorations before you’ve finished the Thanksgiving leftovers.

I also would like to thank my wonderful husband for taking me on a dinner and a movie date when he was feeling like total crap. We saw Atonement – I loved it. Nate thought it was a little slow and did not have enough dialogue. It is one of the most faithful and beautiful adaptations of a book to film that I have ever seen. I reveled in the gorgeous and sensual scenery, the way heat and wartime and love and guilt translated on screen and off, plus all the great actors. Usually, when I see a movie adaptation of a book, I am pointing out all the discrepancies. This time, in my head, I was pointing out everything they got right or I was marveling at the way the director handled the narrative or how he interpreted Ian McEwan’s delicious prose. I cannot remember seeing a movie that tells different points of view so flawlessly and so creatively. This book is why I love reading and why I’m always going to be an English literature nut. This movie is why I love the cinema.