Caitlyn Duffy was here.

So, the inevitable has happened and I’ve managed to come down with the flu. This is really inconvenient and depressing, because I’ve been working really hard on tidying up the sequel to The Rock Star’s Daughter, and this is just a pesky setback.

Also, the flu is gross.

As part of enduring the flu, I’ve spent a great deal of quality time the last few days in my pajamas, which is not an entirely bad thing. Quite honestly, I love wearing my pajamas, and if I were not a resident of one of the filthiest cities on the planet, I might be one of those girls who visit Starbucks, the dry cleaners, etc. in PJ pants.  I am a fan of the button-down style of pajamas with elastic-waistband pants. Here are a few faves:

Mandarin Lantern Pajamas

Bedhead PJ’s are made in the USA and they are super cute. I don’t actually own these Mandarin lantern PJ’s, but I do own a pair of this company’s Nantucket Gingham Cotton pajamas, and they are really comfortable.

LL Bean Tartan Flannel Pajamas

The warmest. The coziest. There is simply no better investment for future sick days home from work than these pajamas.

A vintage floral pattern from a famous textile house

I am a huge fan of Liberty Art Fabrics from London (I’ve even got the Liberty Nike wedge high tops) and these PJ’s made with one of their vintage floral prints are adorable.

In 2011, I set some pretty intense goals for myself. Some of them, I actually achieved (I took Italian lessons, published my first novel, saved up money to go to my friend Tranner’s wedding in Spain) and I made an honest effort at others (running a half-marathon didn’t happen, but I did go to the gym diligently and hit the treadmill). Even though I didn’t cross off every single item on my list (I swear, whirlwind trip to India has been on my annual list for almost a decade now), setting realistic goals really did help me stay focused on what was important to me during the year. I even squeezed in a few extra achievements, like finally moving into my first apartment in New York that could be described as “pretty nice.”

For whatever reason, I was too distracted last December to write down goals for 2012. I was busy writing The Believer’s Daughter at all hours of the day and night, and settling into a new job, so perhaps I thought my two main goals for the year were self-evident. 2012 has been a year of chaos for me, juggling emergencies as they’ve popped up and doing my best to squeeze in exercise when there’s been available time. All around me, friends have had similar experiences in 2012… lots of bad luck, dissatisfaction at work, unexpected inconveniences, heartbreak, illness and general crappiness. Factor in a horrible hurricane, school shootings, and impending lousy fiscal cliff anxiety, and 2012 kind of sucked.

This year, however, I want to get re-focused. Some of my goals may seem trivial and not even that important, but the fact that they’ve made the list means that they need to get done. Here, presented without any frivolity, is my list of…

2013 Goals:

1.) Hang living room curtains. Really. The box from Target has been on the floor way, way too long.

2.) Finally watch Homeland so I know what the heck people are talking about. It is ridiculous that this is on the list. I feel un-American because I have never seen this show.

3.) Finish screenplay, submit to Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab for a few months of nail-biting and heart-fluttering.

4.) Run a 10K race. I am giving myself a small break by reducing this goal from half-marathon to 10K. This is achievable. I cannot make up excuses to prevent this from happening unless I am involved in some kind of horrible vehicular accident.

5.) Resume Italian lessons, go to Italy even just for a few days. It makes me sad that I worked so hard at learning my verb tenses in 2011 and then let this fall off my schedule in 2012. My wonderful, beautiful friend and teacher, Valeria in Milano, is counting on me. Ci vediamo presto, amica.

6.) Go on a real summer vacation for at least 5 days. I skipped my summer break in 2012 and I felt like the season passed me by. This doesn’t necessarily have to be an expensive investment. This could just be taking 5 days off from work and getting my buns on the train to the beach every morning. I think everyone should make an annual goal of setting some time aside for at least one break during the year. For me, summer is the most restorative time to recharge. There’s nothing like watching waves break to bring balance back into my life.

7.) Finish reading Infinite Jest.  This might be the most lofty goal on the list. The book is powerfully written but after every five pages, my brain begs for rest. This might even be a more unrealistic goal than #8.

8.) Become best friends with the entire cast, past and future, of The Walking Dead. I’m not sure yet how I am going to achieve this goal, but I would very much like for it to actualize.

9.) Make more of an earnest attempt at getting into yoga. Everyone else is doing it, why aren’t I?

10.) See more movies. I love going to the movies, I love popcorn, I love velvety seats. Somehow in 2012 I convinced myself on a regular basis that taking 2 hours off to go see a movie was a waste of time.  Not in 2013! I have gotten a head start on this goal by seeing This is 40 yesterday, and seeing Zero Dark Thirty today!

So there you have them. Sure, there are loftier things on my overall list, like being a better person and of course my writing goals, but these are the things that I want to be mindful about accomplishing this year. What are your goals? Drop me a line, share! I’d love to hear what you plan to tackle in Lucky 13.

One Christmas Eve, when I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, my parents dropped my brother and me off at our friends’ house a block away. I can’t remember why exactly, or if a reason was even given; they were probably just at our own house, taking all of the presents they’d been hiding for weeks out of the trunks of their cars (hey, our house was small and my brother and I were incorrigible) and wrapping presents as fast as they could before we came home. My memories of that Christmas Eve spent at the Browns’ house are some of my fondest, even though it was hardly a special occasion to spend time over there. I was best friends with their son my age, Paul, and daily we all climbed trees, chased each other until we were out of breath at the park around the corner, and helped ourselves to the impressive assortment of Good Humor ice cream novelties from the freezer in the Browns’ garage. Revolver by the Beatles was on repeat on the record player, and I lay on my stomach in the living room drawing pictures to leave for Santa, wondering about Eleanor Rigby and how her life ever got to be so miserable. It may very well have been the year that John Lennon was shot just a few weeks before Christmas, and I’ve come to always associate the Beatles’ music with nostalgia and December. The Browns had big, bulbous Christmas lights on their tree, the kind that blinked, which were different from the steadfast, pastel-colored lights that we had on our tree at home. They also had old-fashioned strands of tinsel, which their horrible cat Snowball carried out to the backyard like prey, whereas on our tree at home, we had garland that my mother kept wound around cardboard shape-keepers when it went back in the box for attic storage in January.

Mrs. Brown made cocoa for all of us, and we watched Santa’s progress as it was televised on the local Chicago news. I imagined Santa soaring across the northern suburbs of Chicago on his sleigh, stopping on every snowy rooftop, and could hardly stand my own excitement when the newscaster announced he was only two hours away. There was nothing particularly eventful about that Christmas Eve. No majestic feast, no unexpected windfall of expensive presents. We probably went to midnight mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church later that night, held candles until the dripping wax reaching our fingertips inspired our mothers to take them away from us, sang Christmas carols, and fell asleep in the back seats of our fathers’ cars on the drive home while listening to the local radio broadcast of “A Christmas Carol.” What I remember best about that year is a certain, unquestionable sense of security and contentment. It was a time when I, as a kid, knew that my best friend’s home was pretty much the same as my own, that his mom would care for me and my brother the same way our own mom would, that Santa was undoubtedly coming, and in the morning there would be presents to open.  To this day, I can’t hear “Yellow Submarine” or “Good Day, Sunshine” without thinking of the warm glow of blinking Christmas lights, the smell of crayons on my fingers, and delicious excitement for Santa’s arrival. I’ve written before about how much I admire the late Linda McCartney for her activism in the area of animal rights and for generally being an all-around awesome lady, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted before about how much I deeply, truly love the Beatles. For me, the Beatles = holiday cheer. There ya have it.

Merry Christmas, everyone!  I hope a lot of holiday wishes came true today.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I am a Christmas maniac. I listen to Christmas carols even during summer months when I need a pick-me-up. I have two winter coats: one green, one red. I have been known to wear pins in the shape of reindeer and snowmen.

But this year, my sense of Christmas spirit has really been delayed. I’ve been under lots of stress at my day job, my dog has had a few health scares that have served as painful reminders that he’s getting very old and he won’t be my little guy forever, and for a bunch of various reasons I haven’t been able to plan a trip home to go see Santa with my nephew.

Yesterday’s news of the tragedy in Connecticut really shook me to the core. I don’t even have any thoughts to share on the topic other than expressions of the same sentiments we are all feeling: rage, confusion, unbearable sadness.

Today when I woke up my first thought was to hightail it over to the JAF post office on Eighth Avenue to pick up a letter written by a child to Santa. Operation Santa is an initiative run by the post office in New York in which all of the letters addressed to the North Pole are collected and distributed to anyone wishing to send a kid in need their Christmas wishes. Getting over there and participating this year has been on my mind since Thanksgiving, but there’s always been an errand to run or a meeting to attend, and I’ve been putting off that trip to the post office. This morning, doing something kind for a child I’ll never meet was my top priority.

I ended up selecting two letters, one written by a 17-year-old boy whose father is out of work and whose Christmas wish is for gift cards to buy winter clothes, and the other written by a 13-year-old boy whose parents are having a tough year because of Hurricane Sandy. Answering letters written by teenagers is especially meaningful for me, because teens have such a raw deal in our society. Our reality TV shows send them misleading messages about how their lives are supposed to be, the financial hardships upon our country keep their parents busy at jobs instead of at home keeping an eye on them, and in general, they’re shoved into adulthood before they’re ready. I think it’s an important message for people at any age to believe that when you need help in life, and you have the courage to ask for it, someone will hear you. 17-year-olds aren’t grownups. Kids at that age, on the brink of making decisions that will shape the rest of their lives, need to know that there are people in the world who care about them. I can’t stand the thought of kids at that age throwing away opportunities because they think no one cares about their future, so why should they?

And so I spent my afternoon in line at the sporting goods store buying gift cards for cool kicks, wondering about the lives of these boys who wrote letters to Santa in the hope that someone would find their letter special enough to respond. It’s such a small act of charity in light of what the people of Newtown, Connecticut lost yesterday, but it made me feel like I am doing something to assure two kids out there in the world that they are special.

Please do something this holiday season to put a little more love back in the world. Even if it’s just sending a card to someone you normally wouldn’t, or leaving a candy cane on the desk of a coworker you don’t know so well. We’ve all only got a short amount of time on this planet. If there’s anyone in your life who doesn’t know how much you care about them, please make sure you tell them this year.