HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I know that today isn't exactly New Year's Day anymore, but I figured at least most of you would be too busy recovering from New Year's Eve to bother checking in on New Year's Day. I would have suggested that perhaps you were all too busy watching football Bowl Games, but I know that very few of you who read this blog have any real appreciation for football, so I have restrained myself from making any further enlightened comments about my favorite sport.

I thought that perhaps we might start 2010 off by sharing some New Year's resolutions. I'll go first, then you chime in when you read this.

1. Resist the urge to take new Amazon Kindle e-reader into the bathtub, no matter how good the book I am reading is. Similarly, strongly resist urge to carry Kindle near or in hot tubs and swimming pools. Paperbacks are still superior near water, as they are much cheaper to replace.

2. When Toddler says any sentence with the word, "potty" in it, act with all due haste.

3. Be diligent in ordering Toddler's training pants on line. This will save therapy bills later in life because the local stores do not carry Toddler's size in boy colors. Admit and acknowledge that there is something not quite right in hearing Toddler say he wants to wear his pink big boy diapers and just order them online. If Toddler wishes to embrace traditional feminine colors and other social customs, it will be because he wishes to, not because I was too lazy and dressed him in Disney Pink Princess Pull Ups.

4. Try not to get annoyed at diaper companies for not making training pants gender neutral.

5. Try to be kind to random strangers and distant acquaintences that feel compelled to critique my parenting choices and skills. Chances are they have a social disease and I should make accomodations for them. Regardless, acting on the urge to beat them into submission will be quite inconvenient when the police arrive.

6. Be patient with those who fail to realize that asking the question is almost certainly funnier than Googling the answer.

7. Try not to make too much fun of Blogger Readers who killed Football Wednesdays because of their failure to understand the appeal of such a captivating sport.

8. Focus more effort on removing Camel Crickets safely from the house and not leaving them for the cats to dispatch. Camel Crickets exact digestive revenge, and I have to clean it up anyway, so I'm not saving anything. Better to save time and insect lives.

9. Remember that Toddler is listening to everything I say, and he is getting easier to understand every day when he repeats what I say.

10. Restrain urge to yelp when spiders come near so that Toddler will not imitate me.

11. Clip handles of bags with bows and all brown bags sitting around the house at Christmas time.

12. Start a petition to get Pluto its job back.

13. Learn to throw out magazines and books without reading them if I think they aren't interesting.

14. Invest in a mop or similar floor cleaning device.

15. Make better effort to come up with original blog entries and not generate lists that refer back to earlier posts when I run out of ideas.

This one isn't a resolution, but it is my fervent New Year's wish: Return the rain to a more reasonable level, please. (Rain 1, Rain 2, Rain 3, Rain 4)

Okay, now it's your turn. Write your resolutions in the comments. I'll get you started:

A. Read, "It's All Good If You Can Laugh" every weekday without fail.

B. Repost "It's All Good If You Can Laugh" on my Facebook Wall everyday so all my friends can read it.

C. ReTweet "It's All Good If You Can Laugh" daily.

D. Talk about "It's All Good If You Can Laugh" with my friends.

(The rest you have to do yourself)