Resolutions and Other Such Beasts

First and foremost, being sick while you are on vacation sucks donkey balls. Seriously. Why is it that the one time when C and I are both home, and everything should be all relaxing and merry (read: time to make whoopie), I get the head cold from hell again? How is that fair? Ugh. Sleeping til 11 this morning helped a lot, though. (Yes, J slept that late too. He's also sick, and yeah, I know that we're incredibly lucky that our almost 2 year old sleeps that long!)

On to my "resolutions."

I think I should start by saying that I think that New Year's resolutions are sort of pointless. I remember in college, from January 1-15 you'd be hard pressed to find an available stairmaster, elliptical, or treadmill at the gym, even at 5am. Starting January 16, though, you'd notice that there were more available all the time. I've noticed that people tend to make resolutions like the following:

• I resolve not to argue with my husband/kids/coworkers/boss any more. (This resolution, while admirable, is doomed to failure, as clearly if someone has to resolve this there are deeper issues that would make this impossible to carry out for long.)
• I resolve quit eating so much/drinking so much/smoking. (Good luck, but just resolving that is not so likely to make it happen. You need to actually do something to carry this out, not just say that you want to, and a support system is a must. This resolution is way too easy to just blow of and say "I'll start tomorrow.")
• I resolve to exercise more. (Vague, very easy to weasel out of, but admirable to want.)
  

I think you get my point. People, in general, tend to resolve things that sound great but really involve far more effort than they really want to put forth. It is also very easy to make excuses about why you haven't followed up on your resolutions.

Anyway, in that super optimistic spirit, here are my "resolutions:"
1. I am going to lose 20 pounds by July 1. I will do this by keeping up with my SparkPeople tools, the support of my friends, and my exercising as much as I can once this stupid cold clears up and I can do stuff without coughing up my spleen or drowning in snot. I'm not kidding about the drowning, I've gone through a whole small box of kleenex since yesterday. (See? There I go, making excuses already.) This will likely involve the resurrection of the Fitness Diaries.
2. Continue being frugal (stick to the $40 a week for groceries, not going shopping when it's not necessary, etc). This will be helped by the fact that J is tolerating cow's milk very well, and we hope to have him totally off goat milk by his birthday(ish) so he will be a 100% cow milk drinking kid. The frugal thing also includes efforts to be "green" and conserve energy.
3. Improve my efforts to keep the house as clean and homey as possible. This has been made slightly easier by the fact that my mom gave J a bookcase/toy holder cube thingy with 9 slots for storing fabric boxes of his many, many toys. That has helped order the living room enormously. Yay!


Yeah, I think 3 is about good. What can I say, I feel like crap. Goodbye 2009.