I have only one New Year’s resolution for 2020:

AISLE 1

At a time of year when I’m anxiously watching for the Black Friday sales prices for a new TV, and I really want all new kitchen cabinets, and a new rug for the dining room, and pretty wallpaper for the guest bath, and new light fixtures as long as we’re at it, and I want I want I want I want…

We pulled out the good sterling flatware for dinner the other night. Not because we were celebrating or anything. Because all the other silverware was still hidden away in a packing box somewhere.

Last week was really busy and, well, I wound up missing out on Halloween.

“When you’re trying to do deep thinking work, it’s nearly impossible to maintain a cogent train of thought when you’re getting bombarded with interruptions.” — Forbes magazine

Sean Dietrich is in some ways a man out of time.

Doodles were in the news this week. Not the things you scribble on the side of a notepad during a boring lecture. Not the Google doodles, those special occasions when Google changes up its logo. No, we’re talking about doggie doodles.

Last week, I was talking with a friend about something that had been put together in a slapdash fashion, and I opened my mouth to say the word “jury-rigged,” but then I panicked and thought maybe that wasn’t right so I said “jerry-rigged” instead.

The son is leaving for his first year of college, and I spent his last week at home making his favorite foods. Parmesan-garlic chicken with penne pasta. Homemade meatballs. Pancakes. Bacon. A different kind of ice cream every day. (Oh wait, the ice cream was for me.)

Most every afternoon at work, I tuck a dollar and a quarter in my pocket and head downstairs to the break room to get a $1.25 pack of peanut M&Ms out of the vending machine.

When I look back over my long history as a homeowner, sometimes all I can see is a string of broken relationships.

Barbie turns 60 this year, which is causing a certain amount of hoopla.

The other day I had to look up how to spell “hip-hop.” Not the “hip” or the “hop” parts. I could handle those, thank you very much. But was there a space or a hyphen in the middle?