Words... what do they all mean?

I've made a few different resolutions for this year, and may still make more, but so far today at least I'm on track. Woo hoo! 1 day down.

I want to be more serious about my writing, which means make a point to sit down every day and get something out. Ideally of course this would be stories, but even nonfiction stream of consciousness and/or blogging counts as eventually I will run out of real-life stuff to talk about and start making stuff up. ;) To that end, I've dusted off my Writer's Book of Days for daily prompts, and am using http://750words.com as recommended by eonone to keep me on task.

I had this fantastic idea that instead of making a big scary (and vague) resolution like "keep the house clean" I would instead word it as "do one bit of house-tidying every day." See? Much less scary. I figure it will be easier for me to stick with it if all I have to do today is scrub the toilet. All I have to do tomorrow is vaccuum. The day after that is sort the mail that's accumulating on the buffet. Etc. Now, the apartment is in such a state that unless I go crazy and do a binge one day, it might take me into February before the place as a whole is tidy. But hey that's February and that means I have the whole rest of the year to carry on just doing one thing every day and I will never have to stress about my house being a mess. That sounds pretty awesome.

We're planning to go to church tomorrow morning (another resolution), and my perennial one is to stop biting my fingernails and I'm happy to say that I didn't today. There was much cuticle-nipping and filing whenever I got the urge instead. Morgan is into having her nails done so I think if I can institute a weekly manicure day for both of us, that will please her and help me quit biting. Plus it's a big-girl bonding thing and that's time that I will spend particularly with her, so hopefully she won't feel forgotten or overshadowed when the baby comes. I know a certain amount of that is unavoidable, but both Alan and I are aware of that potential so we're putting things in place ahead of time to stave it off. Alan's time specifically with Morgan, for instance, is teaching her to swordfight (I think I mentioned us buying wooden swords at the pirate fair last summer or fall for this purpose? Well, it's finally started happening). And of course the good thing about instituting these things now is that she won't associate them with the arrival of the baby, won't feel like everything changes all at once. Instead she'll have these nice familiar routines she can depend on when so much else is different.

Got my midterm and my first project back in my Second Language Learning & Teaching class. I got a B on the test (missing three points out of twenty five will really goof you up), and aced the project. Yay! I was so nervous about that thing. It was bizarre and unlike any writing thing I've ever had to do, so at no point in the process of doing it was I sure that I was on the right track. _So_ nerve-wracking! But apparently I got it right, because the prof wrote notes all over my margins saying things like "good analysis" and "I agree."

Now we're on to the even _more_ terrifying second project which is ESL classroom observation and analysis. I know, no big surprise, it's only the name of the course. But this is the first of the "serious business, this is what it takes to become a teacher" kind of stuff that's really quite intimidating. Teaching was always just sort of in my nebulous future somewhere, but I'm quickly approaching the point that it's going to become a reality, or not happen at all. And if it doesn't happen I have no _earthly_ idea what I'm going to do with my life. So yeah. No pressure.