VItamin Extreme

Today, I tossed out last year's paper calendar.

It was a beautiful calendar: Full-color, great pictures of rock climbing feats nationwide, and filled with highlighted dates, records of births (and a few deaths), and appointments kept and forgotten. I loved that calendar - and as I paged through it before letting it go, I couldn't help but enjoy the stroll down the memory lane marked "2007."

And yet ... it's freeing to start a new year. The calendar is mostly blank - marked only with the appropriate birthdays and appointments for the coming year. It has no highlighting on it - no markings to show when my husband's scheduled days off will fall - no pre-set vacations or visits from friends. Anything could happen in this year: Anything!

It's appropriate, then, that my calendar of choice for the year is proof positive that anything really can take place. It' s a record of random people ironing in random spots - the title of the calendar is Extreme Ironing. I hope, like the people in this calendar, 2008 finds me doing the most ordinary things - watching my kids, feeding my family, taking my daily walk or having quiet time in the morning - in a way that speaks volumes about my love for it. After all, only a certain kind of passion for ironing would drive one to iron, say, on the back of a taxi. That's the same kind of devotion and drive I'd like to bring to the everyday rituals I take part it. I'd like to love them enough to commit to doing them even in the most unexpected of circumstances.

Will I be on a cruise ship this year? Will I be moving to the Northwest? Will I host more company this year than last year, and find it difficult to do those everday things - bathing my children, eating three square meals, taking date night with my husband? I hope so! And I hope that my ability to stay consistent in even the most mundane of things will make even this humdrum housewife's life look 'extreme.'

I take my inspiration from this calendar: I hope my life somehow mirrors it!