New Year's Resolutions . . .

I don't really buy into making resolutions in January . . . however, for some reason I thought I'd give this a try. So here goes . . . I started with items like "eat more chocolate", spend more weekends traveling to local places, and avoid time-wasting sites like Facebook but then decided that a resolution must improve the resolver's daily and long term life. So . . .

For the obligatory "exercise" resolution . . . I'd like to maintain my yoga schedule throughout the year. I have this rather lazy habit of turning a weekly conflict into a multi-month vacation from yoga. Not sure why . . . I actually love yoga! If we all did yoga, world peace would be possible. I truly believe this.

For the mandatory "eat healthy" resolution, I decided to be specific . . . Vegetables . . . my husband seeks every opportunity to ban me from our kitchen . . . and I don't exactly fight this most of the time. However, he violates the "palm-sized" meat portion rule and believes that one should finish meat portions "because it costs more". Me . . . I'd probably become a vegetarian or someone who rarely eats meat if I were left to my own devices. I love the color and crunch of good vegetables. So . . . I hereby resolve to become the vegetable cook. This will, of course, involve an expenditure of some truly beautiful veggie cookbooks. Now . . . if I can just convince my husband that it's okay if I use his expensive Shun knife!

Movies . . . okay, this one is self-indulgent. I work hard, don't I deserve some recreation? I think so! I love movies . . . good ones, bad ones, mediocre ones . . . I love all movies except for pornography and slasher flicks. As a child of the '80's, I grew up with enough slasher films to last a life time. After the eighteenth Friday the 13th film, I swore off this genre . . . with the one exception of Silence of the Lambs (Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster's performances were too impressive to miss). Now . . . I avoid slasher flicks like the plague. My tastes run towards indie films, dramas, and films that produce truly great artistic performances. I like most Oscar nominated films although I haven't been able to get through last year's winner, The Hurt Locker. I don't get to see enough movies in the theater. My resolution is to fix this . . . it's okay to go to a film by myself and I vow to do that if my family members are sluggish about joining me.

Here's the difficult resolution fulfilling the "make me a better person" requirement . . . I resolve to keep my bedroom clean for one third of the year. Yes, this will kill me! I'm surprised that my husband hasn't banished me to the basement for my penchant for never putting clean clothing away. I will need to invest in some closet essentials and more dresser space but this is something that must be done.

Finally, I must include the commercial "let's lose 50 lbs. in two weeks" resolution. However, 10 lbs. is probably more reasonable. Perhaps I can bring myself to reacquaint myself with my treadmill or convince my better half to actually go for evening walks. We'll see . . . heck, I ought to be able to lose 10 lbs. simply by avoiding my school's cafeteria for a week!