Get Thee to a Beanery

I have never had any New Year’s traditions that I have followed, unless you count nursing a hangover or breaking resolutions by nightfall, back when I made them. But last year I read somewhere that you are supposed to eat black-eye peas on January 1st to bring good luck and fortune. I figured it can’t hurt, so I bought a can, but promptly forgot about it once I put the can in my cabinet. Out of sight, out of mind. 2008 has come and gone and who knows if it would have been better had we had the beans. For all I know, I totally screwed us.

This year, I start seeing tons of articles/news segments/chatter about eating the beans and also lentils. Perhaps a recession concession. So I buy some lentils and pull that can of black-eyed peas out of the cabinet. I cook both in olive oil and add some salt and pepper and viola, New Year’s Day breakfast. (I added a fun corollary: The beans had to be the first food we ate in 2009. Mmmm….beans and coffee!) I made Nicole eat it and the girls had to have bites. Maddie liked the beans but not the lentils. Avery liked neither. Nicole indulged me and grimaced her way through her portion

Well, all I have to say is go eat beans. It is working already! On January second, I got another editing job and on January third, I got a sizable check as a down payment for my services. This is not something I tried for; it literally fell into my lap. It’s the beans, I say. Now I have a lot of work to do, but a little hard work never hurt. I did want this to be a productive year and it is starting out that way.

And the girls had good luck too: On January seconds, just 24 hours after having a bite o’ beans, the girls received balloons, which are their favorite things right now. Well, at least they are Maddie’s favorite thing.

The next couple of months are already jammed packed. What happened to hibernation? It starts next weekend and ends in early March. (But there are very big March plans, which I will write about later). At the end of February I have a date with a medium. Yes, someone who speaks with the dead. Not a date-date, but a planned reading, I guess. Has anyone else done this? I have no idea what to expect, but it should be an interesting experience. I asked my sister-in-law if she wanted to come and she said “Does the medium speak Japanese?” Which brought up a good question: Do mediums need translators? Does my Japanese sister-in-law need a Japanese-speaking medium? Or do the dead speak some sort of universal language?

Every year I mean to collect the ridiculous predictions of psychics so I can look back at the end of the year and see if they are accurate. And every year I don’t. But is anyone anywhere keeping track of these predictions? I did see one man on TV predict that something bad was going to happen to some member of a boy band (Jonas brothers?) that has to do with fish. I think it was on the Today Show. He made some other predictions but I was distracted.

The only plan for tomorrow, other than work and children, is a napoleon at Bergamot. And I think we should be eating a bite of beans every day. We need all the luck we can get in 2009.

Pictured above, new year’s Day breakfast, which was followed later by Nana’s Secret recipe Pancakes. Below that, fire. The girls practiced saying Hot Hot Hot. And on the bottom, now that is a conversation piece, at our friends' apartment.