Great Resolve

And here we are again, another new year, another chance to make all the resolutions, with wonderful intention, but not always wild success. Not so for everyone, some actually focus, make great effort and set about the new year in a new way.

Lola and I were neighbors, and eventually friends. We met when her cat killed a mouse in her apartment and she ran screaming into the hallway. Mice make me scream, I have no capacity for intelligent thought with regard to mice. They are small, they are scared of me, blah blah blah, they terrify me. I screamed with her, and then she began a tirade, language I had not heard since my grandmother ran over my father's surgically removed, and brand new,toenail free toes with her wheelchair. Lola's cat was embarrassed, the mouse was glad to be dead, I was silenced. Lola's resolution that year was to swear more, and I bet, even though we no longer see each other, that she worked hard, practiced every day and accomplished what might have seemed to some to be lofty goal.

Mary and Kate rang in 2009 by resolving to never, ever, nap again. And here we are, the end of day nine and they've not napped once, what fortitude, what determination. How proud we are that our young children have the mental stamina to put forth and accomplish such goals. With complete exhaustion they bob heads in unison around three in the afternoon, they are cranky, cantankerous little creatures who need to just accept that this was not their year, a nap or two is not terrible, we will not think less of them if they have to back down and accept that next January might be the time to aim for a nap free year.