Unresolved

Happy New Year, everyone! Yeah, I'm a day late. I didn't post of New Year's Day because...um, I was attacked by rabid monkeys that chewed off my fingers so I couldn't type. No? Would you believe...Paul Simon actually came by to deliver that Christmas gift I asked for? No?

Would you believe I got to doing stuff with my family and just plain forgot until it was too late?

Truth is stranger than fiction. Especially when it comes from me. Yeah, Precocious Daughter and I did some shopping - there was no food in the house that didn't originate in a stocking - and then we grabbed Beloved Spouse and hit the movies (Hugo - have you seen this movie? Fabulous.) Then we watched the Dallas Cowboys play the sorriest game of professional football since the last sorry game they played, and then boom, it was bedtime.

PDaughter and I also went on a failed quest for a rug to put in the living room. More on that later - it's a great story that involves hats, nerds, and a ceramic hedgehog.


Here's a picture of an adorable real hedgehog, because I'm too lazy
to go take a picture of the ceramic one in question.

D'awwwwww. Anyway, since it's a new year, let's talk about resolutions. I'm not making any this year. I'm very bad at keeping them. In fact, if you want me to not get something done, just make me resolve to do it. It's one of my psychological quirks, along with an intense fear of abandonment and my conflicted feelings toward potatoes.


Check your DSM-IV. It's got to be in there somewhere.



Really, I'm not good at setting goals and making them happen. I do much better working on the spur of the moment, up against ridiculous deadlines, and with no real plan of action. You may remember the saga of my amazing concrete floor, which started with BelSpouse ripping up all the carpet 10 days before Thanksgiving and ended with a fabulous paint effect, with several near-coronaries in between. That's how I roll, and bless BelSpouse for recognizing it.


Because now my front room looks like this.
That's right, balloons and streamers and everything.

Also, I did something very, very important in 2010 that wasn't the result of a resolution and probably would never have happened if I'd made one. I made this blog a daily commitment and published a new post almost every single day. Not because I grimly promised that I was going to do it, come hell or high water. That would have made it a chore and a grind and I would have resented the hell out of it and all of you before too long. Don't worry, I always resent the ones I love, so it wouldn't have been all bad. The point is, after 43 years on this Earth I've come to realize that my brain is wired to zero in on that cosmic loophole between promising to do something and actually doing it. The last thing you want me to ever do is tell you I'm going to do something. It's the kiss of death, folks.

You get some really interesting results when you Google "kiss of death."
This one is pretty awesome.

So I have a bunch of things I'd like to do in 2011, and I'm not going to "resolve" to do any of them. The important things in life tend to happen without planning. The most important things happen despite our best efforts. PDaughter is going to become a teenager this year, no matter what I do or say. I'm going to make a bunch of stupid mistakes, and no resolution to be even slightly perfect is going to change that. And I'm just not going to feed my loophole mentality by setting certain goals and therefore putting them safely out of reach for yet another year. Screw you, brain. And the lumpy potato you resemble.

This year I'm going to keep my commitments - get up in the morning and go to work, pay my bills, renew the car registration at roughly the correct time, vote for whichever candidate makes me the least physically ill in November. Those aren't resolutions, they're just life. Outside of that I'm going to do as many of the things that I think are truly important as my limited time, energy, and resources allow. I will fail, repeatedly and maybe spectacularly (and for the sake of this blog, I hope entertainingly). But God will keep lobbing opportunities at me, if He is so willing, and I'll field as many of them as I can. Based on past experience, I have a feeling that I'll manage to connect with the ones that really matter and hit them out of the park.

But no promises. What are you trying to do, freak me out? You're in league with the potatoes, aren't you?

Happy 2012, Drunkards. Stay tuned for another year of this crap. And thanks for tuning in at all. I'm baffled but grateful. If any of you sees Paul Simon, tell him I'm still waiting for him.