New Year Countdown
Welcome to the eighth day of Cathy’s New Year Countdown. Look, I promise you that it is not too late to make your 2009 resolutions. (Go to http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090102/ARTICLES/901020301 to find out why.) You were nursing a headache busy yesterday, anyway, so make today the day. Need inspiration? Go to your favorite bookstore and find new guides and how-to’s for every problem you’ve got. Browsing in good bookstores is a joy and treat you deserve — what better way to start 2009? (A friend told her book-loving granddaughter she’d take her to Barnes & Noble for her birthday but they only had a couple hours and her granddaughter said, “Only two hours? That’s not much time!”) My motivating picks for 2009 are “A Year of Wine” — which explores the idea of drinking wine by the season and packs in lots of wine info — because I want to stop wandering around wine shops aimlessly and choosing bottles only by the cute labels; “Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design” — a workbook for identifying and celebrating your personal style — because I have none; ”Great Hair,” by What Not To Wear’s Nick Arrojo – who shows you how to choose styles and products based on your hair’s texture — because my hair is a disaster; and “Get Positively Beautiful,” by WNTW’s Carmindy — who believes in enhancing the positive instead of hiding the negative — because I couldn’t get Nick Arrojo’s book without getting Carmindy’s, too. Based on the way my post-holiday house looks right now, I probably should have concentrated on books about cleaning and organizing, but wine, fashion and makeup are much more fun. Check back for day no. 9 in Cathy’s New Year Countdown, when we finally face the dismantling of Christmas.
About
Cathy Wood is a freelance writer and columnist based in Muscle Shoals, Ala. For more than 10 years she was a features writer and columnist for the TimesDaily, in Florence, Ala.,
Me and my messy bulletin board.
after first starting work there in 1997 as an advertorial writer and then as a clerk. Her writing has appeared in many newspapers across the country through the New York Times Regional Newspapers Group. Her areas of specialty include fashion, books, food, decorating, shopping, entertaining, local personalities and arts. Her weekly column, which appears on Fridays in the TimesDaily at www.timesdaily.com, is a humorous look at her life –- and the lives of her two 20-something daughters, four cats, one dazzlingly cute grandchild and her husband of four years, a sports editor who is kind and well-meaning but often befuddled about such things as women’s shoes and which day to take out the garbage. She also writes for Shoals Woman and other TimesDaily and regional magazines and has recently dipped her (monthly pedicured) toes into the blogging world. She’s a 1979 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., where she was editor of the school newspaper, Sidelines. She also has worked at the Manchester Times, in Manchester, Tenn., and the Daily-Post Athenian, in Athens, Tenn. E-mail cathylwood@gmail.com
– John Lewis Pitts
