New Year's Resolutions: Pledging the Slightly Impossible and Marginally Hopeless

[PlanetMom]

Now that the hustle and bustle of the holiday season has passed (and we all survived the horrendously addictive Elf movie marathon!), perhaps it's time for me to visit the matter of New Year's resolutions. Here are a few I've penciled in thus far:

•1)      LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE-more specifically, I'd like to speak "Dog" so that I might comprehend both the rhyme and reason behind my pooch's random and often errant placement of piddlings and poo. What's more, I'd love to know what compels him to literally screw himself into the ground when he does, in fact, experience success in the lawn. And why (oh why!) must he frantically circle the same silly patch of earth exactly 47 bazillion times beforehand? It's disturbing to me. Quite frankly, I think he needs some sort of therapy-or an excrement coach. His insanely bizarre desire to consume both rocks and chew toys is equally disconcerting, as is his tendency to become distracted by anything and anyone while attempting his business-a passing UPS truck, a leaf skittering across the pavement, the nagging cough of an ant.

•2)      DECLUTTER MY WORLD-purge all that is unnecessary so that tabletops and dressers might once again be shimmery and shiny and, of course, used for their intended purposes as well as garage bays, closets and KITCHEN COUNTERS. Plan B: Rent a mammoth storage facility and jam it with every last bit of junk-that-no one-will-let-me-throw-away (to include outdated and ill-fitted clothing, beloved collections of rocks, used Band-aids and ridiculously dilapidated lunch bags). Amen.

•3)      GROW MORE COURAGE-courage to confiscate and discard the repulsive scraps of carrion my dog brings home, to remove misshapen clumps of cat vomit (still warm, yet impossibly welded to the carpet), to unplug more toilets, to "see what that noise was" at 3 am, to view the vast array of insects my kids insist I examine up close, to pet the fuzzy caterpillars and slimy grubs they befriend, to find the source of the "unusual odor" in the recesses of my fridge, to accept the fact that my oldest can and will navigate city streets and wickedly fast freeways-with or without a freaking map of the DC suburbs.

•4)      (SOMETIME) ISSUE A MORATORIUM ON PROCRASTINATION-begin by tackling daunting tasks like Christmas shopping and greeting cards (this season's or next) TOMORROW or sooner, then move on to scheduling that dreaded gynecological appointment and super gluing the mass of wounded toys currently spilling from my countertop-turned-triage-center.

•5)      END THE OBSESSION WITH ALL-THINGS-COMPUTERISH-to include unwarranted and nomadic-like Internet wanderings, relentless monitoring of my varied and decidedly insignificant website statistics as well as my mildly incapacitating fixation with creating Planet Mom-ish products (read: foolish tripe no one will buy) for my online store. The latest bit of idiocy: a 2009 calendar, of course, on which I fully intend to track my progress on the aforementioned resolutions.

That way, I can both validate and glorify my efforts, regardless of the outcome.

Planet Mom: It's where I live. Visit me there at www.notesfromplanetmom.com

Copyright 2009 Melinda L. Wentzel

Tags: 2009 calendars, chaos, clutter, dogs, funny, kids, moms, new year's resolutions

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[Fistandantalus]

Jan. 8, 2009 at 11:53 AM

Awesome and pee-worthy as usual!