New Years Preservation

After the toasts, kisses and well- wishes comes the New Year resolutions.

My resolutions used to include weight loss, growing five inches taller, and going blonde. The first would be easy if I had an attention span that lasted 12 months rather than twelve minutes. The latter two have been on my list since I was five years old. I will never be taller than I am now, and I did try to go blonde once and ended up looking like Jane Fonda in Klute (Google both Fonda and Klute to satisfy your curiosity and forgive me for dating myself).

That brings me to today – January 1 of the new year. I have resolved to make no more resolutions. Instead, I am embracing NewYears Preservation. The good things of 2022 are coming with me in 2023.

1 )My husband and kids are at the top of the list. I really like them. We think we all are terribly funny. Yep, I'm keeping them.

2) My friends. See above.

3) My car. It’s like a little black dress – nothing fancy but quite elegant. It fits me well, and I can take it anywhere without embarrassing myself. It is ten years old (the same age as my real LBD). I think it has another ten years to go.

4) My writing jacket. It is an ugly, screaming yellow, fleece jacket that I bought for $10 years ago. That jacket is the signal that I am working. My husband forbids me to wear it outside. I love that jacket. I want to be buried in that jacket.

5) My father’s fountain pen. My mother gave me his pen, the one he used to writer prescriptions and scrawl his name at the bottom of patient histories, when he passed away. It looks like a skinny watermelon and doesn’t hold much ink. It’s a great pen.

6) Dinner parties. Cooking and conversation are our favorite form of entertainment. Your invitation is in the mail.

7) My sewing machine. The buttonholer doesn’t work anymore, but it sews backward and forward. We’ve been friends a long time and you don’t throw a friend away just because they can’t do the fancy stitches anymore.

8) My work schedule. work 7 days a week. Sometimes I don’t have much to show for all those hours, but sometimes I end up writing a pretty good book. Working toward something is what it’s all about.

9) Sue who has been cutting my hair for a year. It took me a long time to find her. I am going to keep her.

There should be a number ten but there isn’t. If the car still works, Sue doesn’t have a meltdown, and my family and friends are hanging in there with me by the time 2024 rolls around, I will be a happy clam. I will still have brown hair and stand 5’4”. I probably won’t be whippet thin, but what the heck.

Who needs a resolution that has a snowballs chance of succeeding. Gather up, gobble up, stash away all the good stuff you’ve already got and unpack it in 2023. I promise you'll have a happy new year.