New Year’s Resolutions – don’t tell me about them

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend on January 7th, 2011

Don’t talk to me about New Year’s Resolutions. Everyone in America is supposed to have the same resolution. Apparently, it’s to lose weight. Again.

Why couldn’t we all join some sort of Global Swap program in which we each trade lives with some underprivileged, undernourished person from an equally underdeveloped country for about six months? That would thin us out a bit and fatten them up a bit, and then we would trade places back…just in time for the monsoons. Oh, wait. I think I see a problem with this plan.

You must be wondering what’s wrong with me. Wasn’t I supposed to complete that fascinating column on how decrepit my microwave had become? With children home all last week, I force-fed them my last column. There was plenty of eye-rolling. I confess: I have written several columns on my dying dishwasher, the death of my washing machine, clogged toilets, and now, the microwave oven. I was scraping the bottom of the broken barrel, so to speak.


Think peer pressure is bad? Try progeny pressure. It’s worse.


Naturally, I have some New Year’s resolutions. These would be apropos to share with you in our first week of 2011. I realize that I am a little late, since this will print with January 7th’s date. I also realize that I am leaving another task (the microwave saga) undone, but all these can be dealt with in the Resolutions Phase.


Speaking of resolutions, mine are to lose some weight (don’t want to seem unpatriotic here), stop being late (although you must recognize that I am fighting a huge cultural handicap here), and to try to get my house straight (never-ending task). Summarized version: lose some weight, stop being late, and keep it straight. Also, I should free myself from this compulsion to rhyme.


There are other resolutions, too, but I’ll just stick with these few. Ugh! Another rhyme. I need my list to be small, because if it gets any bigger, I’ll have to write it down to keep track of it all. That would mean locating a list, and of course, when you’re disorganized, that adds in a complicated twist. Must stop rhyming.


Obviously I’m already failing on the punctuality issue. And when you’re afraid of losing a list, you’re not too well organized. So, seven days into the New Year and that just leaves the weight issue.


The dieting industry. Need I say more? Need I even use a complete sentence? Remember, when sentences go “light,” they use fewer words. Or should I use that hateful word, “lite,” because it weighs one letter less than its legitimate counterpart? It seems like the vowels are analogous to vegetables, so “lite” is tall and slim, while “light” seems to be a little constipated with consonant carbs in the middle. Enough of the word analysis. I am no lexicographer.


I don’t know how many billions of dollars we spend on trying to slim down. I know it’s healthier to be slimmer, but I feel like we have an unhealthy obsession with it.


I know. Don’t remind me of the statistics of my own home, because you’ll deflate my whole theory and also call into question my qualifications to talk about weight. But skip the part that my husband had a massive heart attack at age 52 and that most of my household is overweight. Obviously, I have been a little negligent in the nutritional department at home, and have abdicated my responsibilities on emphasizing exercise in the past. But that’s the good thing about a New Year. We can look forward and we can try to make changes. So ignore my personal experience, and just pretend I’m an expert.


The other day, I was standing at the grocery store checkout with my eight-year-old daughter. Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing when you are accompanied by young, reading-age children when you enter the checkout lanes, as you must, if you have selected something and intend to pay for it before departing the premises.


One of the headlines blared something like, “Get the thighs, legs, and butt you’ve always wanted.” What, were they advertising chicken parts? Amazingly, and thankfully, they had omitted mentioning those two items, whether you speak of squawkers or that which is of intense interest to gawkers. When your child scrunches up his or her nose or snickers, it’s one thing. If questions ensue, that’s another. There are words and thoughts and images that do not need to be pushed at their young minds. All I have to say is, why, why, why? Obviously, there is an audience for this sort of thing, but must it accost us, and must the covers be required reading for non-shoplifters?


So, forgive my defeatist attitude about New Year’s Resolutions. We all know that there is bound to be some measure of failure. That gives us the impetus to continue in our status quo until 2012 emerges. That’s when the majority of us, whether or not we are good habitual recyclers, will pull out those same tired but true resolutions. Provided we can find them.