Happy New Year!

I stopped making New Year's Resolutions several years ago after realizing that I had never succesfully accomplished a single one. Shocking, I'm sure. That said, it has felt really strange to not have any type of goals or aspirations of any sort with the ringing in of the past few New Year's.

I decided yesterday that perhaps I should rethink the whole resolution thing. I should be thinking in terms of a "To Do" list. If I keep the items on my list small, I may actually achieve them. Here goes:

1. Drop off dry cleaning every other Tuesday. I'm serious--this is really hard for me to remember. Now that I no longer work outside the home and wear things that require dry cleaning, I just don't do it. I don't realize that I should until Herr Hausfaru starts pulling out my father's old bowling shirts from the back of the closet that are NEVER OK to wear at work.

2. Take the car into the shop to have middle brake light repaired. Again--sounds simple, but it isn't. I took the car in for a tune-up in October and told them to change the bulb. It seems it is a wiring problem that will cost God knows what. Also, it will take weeks for me to prepare myself to drag both children to the Nissan dealership for a morning of car repair despair since the closest dealership isn't open on Saturdays (WTF?).

3. Work my way up to 100 stomach crunches a day. While it is all well and good that I go to the gym at the crack-ass of dawn, it doesn't seem to be helping me at all with my mid-section. I figure if I work my way up to 100 crunches over the next few months, the mushroom that magically pops out of my stomach when I try to wear anything more form fitting than a muu-muu will go away.

4. Take my vitamins. I absolutely suck at taking pills. I take two medications faithfully at night before going to bed so that I will not eventually die, but other than that, I can't be bothered. However, I will start taking one of these when I give my daughter one with her breakfast. Better than nothing, I suppose.

5. Get a babysitter on retainer. The teenagers in our neighborhood have been quite busy this school year. Sucks for me! We weren't even able to secure a baby sitter for New Year's Eve beacuse they were all BUSY. Excuse me? Just what the Hell do you need to be doing on New Year's Eve, young ladies?

Ahem, anyway, I am going to strike a deal with Lindsay across the street. While she is quite busy with her AP courses and her dance squad competitions, she is ACROSS THE STREET. And Baby Girl loves her. So I am going to talk to her about scheduling set evenings from now until she starts college (in the fall) to babysit the girls. Herr Hausfaru and I really need to start getting out more than the three times we've been out since we moved to Cincinnati in APRIL.

6. Stop spending time with people I don't like. In the November 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, Marjorie Williams wrote an essay entitled, "A Matter of Life and Death." She wrote the following,

"I think cancer brings to most people a new freedom to act on the understanding that their time is important. My editor at The Washington Post told me, when I first got sick, that after his mother recovered from cancer his parents literally never went anywhere they didn't want to. If you have ever told yourself, breezily, that life is too short to spend any of it with your childhood neighbor's annoying husband, those words now take on the gleeful raiment of simple fact. The knowledge that time's expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel."

This paragraph has really stuck with me since I read it. And while I don't have a terminal disease now, I could tomorrow, and I would hate to think that I wasted one more minute with people I don't care to know because I am trying to be nice or make someone happy.

Here is the article if you want to read it.