Crossword resolution

Though I work as an editor, I am at times dolefully inarticulate. I'm of the general philosophy that there's a lot of stuff I don't need to know, I just need to know where to find out that stuff when I need to. On the whole, this approach works just fine. But there are times I wish I knew stuff just a little bit faster. That includes words. I wish I knew more words, the right words, when I need them.

Just after Christmas I picked up for myself a New York Times Sunday Crossword 2013 Weekly Planner Calendar, to sit on my desk at work, the idea being that exercising the puzzle-solving neural pathways will make them, and related word-retrieval mechanisms, stronger.

I love crossword puzzles. I used to be very good at them. I used to meet my sister regularly at the pub on the weekend — we'd enjoy beer and wings and the Sunday crossword, and we wouldn't leave till it was done. But it's been years since we lived in the same city, and I'm out of practice.

So I have this weekly planner, with a crossword puzzle per week. The calendar starts at December 31, and I was worried I wouldn't finish the first puzzle by the end of the work week. So I started a few days early. And, with a little input from a couple colleagues, it was completed on schedule.

My daughter made a new year's resolution this year, and when she asked me what mine was, I told her about this puzzle project, one a week, to exercise my vocabulary and general knowledge, to exercise my brain in ways I haven't lately. "But Mommy! You're brain is perfect! Don't get too geeky." [I've been replaying that soundbite in my head for days now, every time anything starts to go horribly wrong.]

But, hey. Puzzle #1 is done, and I'm feeling a mite bit more cruciverbabendy.