Yes a new year is dawning, and most people spend the first few days weeks of a new year reflecting on the past year, and making plans for the year to come. These are your “resolutions”. We all make them , we all break them. It really is a strange little tradition don’t you think? They even have labeled this custom as “Making your New Year’s Resolution”. And people ask you about it, “what are your new year’s resolutions?”… just like they would ask you what you got for Christmas, it is an acceptable and expected question at this point. I have never heard anyone say, “you know it’s St. Patrick’s Day, need to start making some resolutions”, no it takes a “new year” or open heart surgery for people to make resolutions, other than that we are foot loose and resolution free. At the new year your find yourself at the commencement of a new calendar period, and set out with the best of intentions to right the wrongs of your past, or too become a better, more healthy, more productive you! You don’t do monthly resolutions or weekly, why? The answer is simple, you are going to fail at these so why have failure occur so frequently? We need to spread this out, if it was up to me I would have decade resolutions and lift a lot of burden off of the masses. I often wonder if the Pope has any such resolutions? If he sits in the Vatican and makes a resolution to try to help moooooore lepers, or pray for moooooore peace, or to say mooooore rosaries… or if he just resolves to himself… “You know, I am pretty damn perfect… other than cussing.” I don’t what the Pope does, but I do know that me and billions of others will make these resolutions (about 5.9 billion others)
I have a feeling about this year… a good feeling. It is 2007. That is the seventh year in this century. I am lucky number 7 out of eight siblings, the seventh child of two incredibly brave parents. I think I have the calendar on my side this year. According to Chinese Astrology it is the “Year of the Pig”, well according to me, it is the “Year of the Martha”. But I have to borrow something from the pig, I like pork, and I love bacon… there is nothing quite like the smell of bacon frying in the kitchen. That being the case, this will be the year I step up to the proverbial plate and chow down. I am expecting a good year, neigh a banner year. So, here are my hardly contemplated, but hopeful, new year’s resolutions.
a) To work out consistently regardless of work pressures. – so far this is going well, and has been since late November.
b) To keep my little home in order – again, this is going well and has been since late November
c) To audition for at least one more play before I die – I hope I don’t die tomorrow.
d) To work on the novel that I have begun and hopefully finish it – again… hoping I don’t die tomorrow.
e) To keep my new year’s resolutions – this is a double whammy, b/c it falls into a recursive pattern this is one of the most dangerous resolutions to make.
Those are mine, please feel free to send me yours… I may pass them along to the rest of the world in my next update, you never know.
I would like to touch on one other subject before I close this New Years Update, and that subject is
Two of my nephews however, are in middle school, and they have begun to “date”. Which means that text message girls on their cell phone, email them over “myspace” and occasionally pass them in the hall at school. One of my nephews just recently had a girlfriend, she was an older woman, yep… she was a freshman in high school! Hubba hubba. So, he and his girlfriend date for a couple of months. I think they actually saw each other a total of four times, because they obviously didn’t go to school together. But about a month ago, the incredibly foreseeable happened, she ended up breaking up with him, and this was the devastating blow. He cried, it is tough to see a man cry, but tougher to see a near man cry… he is trying so hard to be a man and not cry but failing miserably and blubbering all over the place. He moaned and groaned. He said that he had “waited his whole life for her” and that “before I met her there was a whole in my heart and it was filled with her” and even moreso… “I am going to wait for her!” Wait for her? She didn’t get deployed to Iraq, she broke up with him. Wait? I really think this kid is watching way too much Oprah or something. He was actually going to go to her house and watch “Sense and Sensibility”… I almost took his man-card away from him for that. He is setting some bad precedence there. Next thing you know he will be watching “Steel Magnolias” and renting all four seasons of “Allie McBeal” on DVD!!!
Fortunately he calmed down and has come to grips with the fact that this “relationship” is over. But we were all out to dinner after Christmas, and he received a text message to his phone. I asked him who text messaged him and he said “Crystal”. My mother, trying her best to quickly catch up, asked “Who is that?” and he replied “My ex.” The words hung in the air like the stench from a rotting carcass. I couldn’t laugh. I couldn’t throw up. I had to sit there steal-faced and let the comment go unnoticed. But it was there… he had said it. And nothing was going to make it go away.
My mother and I get in the car later by ourselves and really had a good laugh or two over that. The kid felt like he had been divorced, and he had barely been involved in any kind of “relationship” with this girl. It was a riot. I really hope his next relationship goes as quickly so that he can see that at his age a “girlfriend” is something that is “easy come easy go”, “here today gone tomorrow”, they are like Kleenex… there is always more in the box.
Well, that is all from me for this fine Friday afternoon. I hope you have a wonderful New Year. I hope you keep all of your resolutions, or die trying!
Peace, love, and the year of the pig… oink oink!!
Martha
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