They’re more what you might call… guidelines

I don’t do resolutions. Oh, sometimes, I jump on the New Years Meme bandwagon and come up with some, but mostly? I don’t need to set up some artificial expectations that mostly mean failure. One thing I’ve learned about my weird brain is that I just can’t force it to do something until it decides it’s damned well good and ready. Sometimes I can trick it… for example, my brain LOVES to cross things off a list. So I’ll put a mixture of easy and more difficult goals on a list and go to town, get on a roll, and before you know it I’ve brushed my teeth AND tackled world hunger.

A lovely online friend who comments here calls it, “eating your frog.” You look at that list and you identify the things you really really don’t want to do… and you do them. Eat that frog. Get it out of the way. For a single mother lifestyle, where we are all things to some pretty egocentric little creatures, eating our frogs is a pretty important concept to master. We can’t let things slide. Whether it’s taking out the garbage or finally getting into shape so we can bounce grandbabies on our knees or travel the world in a purple wide-brimmed hat, we’ve got stuff we just have to do.

So I think this year will be the year I kick my own patootie into shape. I know I think I say this every year, but I just dropped a small fortune at the health food store to do a body cleanse, and got a yoga mat and some really healthy foods besides. While it’s nice to be loved just the way I am, I’m not doing anyone any favors by clinging to the out of shape and overweight identity I’ve carried around since I quit smoking and started cooking professionally in the same week, oh, maybe 12 years ago? Pathetic.

I’ve got some big frogs on my list of things to do this year. One by one, I’m going to eat them. With butter and garlic and a nice glass of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Cause that, my lovely friends, is exactly how I roll, these days.

What portion of 2009 do you plan to kick?