My Seven New Year's Resolutions for 2009

2008 is drawing to a close and 2009 can be heard creeping up the hall on little cat feet, so it's time to reflect on the year past and look forward to the year to come in an annual celebration of lessons learned called:  My New Year's Resolutions.  As many of you know, I have adopted the Ellen Degeneres philosophy, which is to set goals I actually have some hope of achieving, and simultaneously celebrating the things that seem to be working well for me so far, by not changing a thing.  So here goes:


Resolution #1.  I resolve not to go sledding with the dog anymore.  True, there was this brief moment--with her leash tied to the front rail of my Mountain Boy Ultimate Flyer and that beautiful, unblemished, snow-packed street laying before us like a glittering white and virgin Olympic luge track...a moment just before the squirrel skittered across the street and the dog exploded with a deafening howl in a cloud of fur and a hail of ice clawings--when sledding with the dog had actually seemed like a funny idea.  At 45 mph careening down 37th behind a howling Devil Dog and the Bottomless Potholes in front of Epiphany Parish Episcopal Church looming straight ahead, not so much.

Resolution #2.  I resolve to drink more sage margaritas.  This is to replace the red wine I have to give up because even a sip now gives me a pounding headache.  Sage margaritas are not only tasty, but they put me in a good mood.  And I sing much better and more loudly after 3 or 4 of them.  True, sage margaritas don't have the cardiovascular sparing advantages of red wine (which contains lots of antioxidants and is therefore good for your coronaries), but then again, I will always have chocolate, whose flavenoids and antiplatelet activities will more than make up for it.  For those of you who remember last year's resolutions, see 2007 Resolution #1 "I resolve to keep eating chocolate."  I was particularly successful in 2008 at keeping Resolution #1.

Resolution #3.  I resolve to look at a travel book the next time before answering impulsively when Sandy asks something like "Hey, Pookie, wanna go for a little hike in Spain?"  Travel books often contain key information like just how many thousands of feet straight up the "gentle hillside undulations" are, whether there is anything to eat besides boiled rabbit and cabbage, and will there be decent shopping at the end.  It is precisely such key information that can help you formulate a more practical and meaningful response like "Sure, Snookums, but only if we spend a weekend in Tahiti afterwards where I can just lay on the beach and have nice young men bring me umbrella drinks while my blisters heal."

Resolution #4.  I resolve not to vote in the 2009 Presidential Election.  The current president has certainly not been boring.  In fact, he has been both occasionally entertaining and, most of the time, a little scary.  And not just because he's so conservative.   Sure, he's called on the world to join together in fighting terrorism, has injected faith into government, and lowered interest rates so that more people could afford homes.  But he has clung to an oil-based economy while the world continues to overheat and suffocate in greenhouse gases, has been slow to support minorities and women, and, well, frankly his national energy policy, which includes ramping up heavily in nuclear power, not only sucks, it poses a clear and present danger to the rest of the globe.  So President Ahmadinejad will just have to win re-election without me.

Resolution #5.  The next time I am on an international flight and they call overhead for a doctor, I'm sending Sandy.  This will accomplish two things;  it will keep me out of unusual quasi-medical situations at 37,000 feet, and it will satisfy Sandy's secret longing to be called "Doctor."  And let's face it.  If you, oh, let's say for example, decide to go into precipitous labor somewhere over the Atlantic, where the only medical supplies are a kid's lunch pail filled with gauze, a pair of scissors, some smelling salts and a bottle of nitroglycerin, you're probably better off having a real professional sit down and pray for you than have an anesthesiologist, or even worse, a radiation oncologist or an orthopedic surgeon show up and try to figure out which way the baby is supposed to come out.

Resolution #6.  I'm going to live my leap second to its fullest.  It isn't every year you get an extra 1/60th of a minute just tossed in for good measure.  And no one says I had to use it right after midnight last night.  I'm saving mine for when I really need it.  That extra leap second may come in handy before I respond the next time a male hospital administrator calls me "sweetie."

Resolution #7.  After discussing it with Sandy, I have decided against running for a seat in the US Senate this year.  Caroline Kennedy has Camelot, and Roland Burris seems very nice, but I have something critical that they both lack, and which is uniquely valuable in this particular year.  I'm a political nobody.  No one can accuse me of currying favors from my Governor, since I have no money and absolutely no political capital with which to influence anyone.  There is absolutely no danger that I will be seated in any real election, which means that the people who want to duke it out for the full term have about a year and a half in which to get their act together, while I hold down the fort.  I also want to point out that I have actual administrative and financial experience heading a multi-million dollar corporation (seriously), have ideal skills to deal with narcissistic personalities (I work with doctors), and I have bona fide hard-ball negotiation skills (I'm married).  I come complete with my own personal organizer (a border collie) and security system (don't forget the pink sequin-adorned taser I acquired during last year's after-Xmas sales).  With these attributes, and as a short-term appointee with no hope of re-election, I can actually get stuff done, since I won't care who-owes-what-to-whom at the end of my term.  Unlike a recent candidate for even higher office, I have actually visited several foreign countries (just see my Facebook page--"places I have visited" if you don't believe me), I know some real actual Russians (and not just looked at them with binoculars from my front yard), and I regularly read Newsweek to keep up with world affairs.  Despite all of these wonderful reasons to make myself available for public service, Sandy points out that unfortunately I lack what apparently are the only hard qualifications necessary for those senate seats:  I don't live in either New York or Illinois.