I’d been trying to think what resolute slant to take on this New Year’s Day column. Finally I decided to look back for inspiration to those I’d written previously. Big mistake. I found to my dismay that my record for keeping New Year’s resolutions is not so good. In fact it’s average. And that’s what’s not so good.
According to psychologist Michael R. Mantell, a frequent guest on Good Morning America, these January 1st pledges have an average 80 percent failure rate. And, they are nearly all broken within about six weeks. Maybe what I needed was not a long list of radical changes to make to myself. Maybe I could take something already good about me and try to make it a bit better. As I have an unsavory history of underachieving a long list of resolutions, it needed to be something short, simple and definitely doable.
I finally decided to do just one thing: make lemonade. I’m a pretty positive person and I’m versatile. The first is in the DNA I guess and the second was honed over 25 years of marriage and motherhood in an Air Force family, followed by another quarter century of writing on deadline. All three pursuits feature the prominent presence of Murphy’s Law. So I do have some experience in seeing the glass half full and working to achieve that. All I needed to do now was work on seeing it three-quarters full and do it sweetly. No grousing.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. Thus I wrote a column (not this one) overflowing with a profoundly positive attitude for 2010. Then “somebody” doubled the dishwasher detergent and that appliance overflowed with a bulging load of bunch dishes the day after Christmas – after all 16 guests had gone, and Jim was out running errands. I test drove my lemonade premise, cleaned up the floor and ran the dishwasher through a few dozen more rinses to flush the excess suds. I stayed sweet. I also stayed silent and didn’t share this little domestic mishap with my spouse. Believe me: I needed to keep him sweet too!
Then I discovered that “somehow” the door to the garage freezer had been left ajar and food was thawing. There was little room in the inn of my refrigerators. Nevertheless, I thought positive once again and rescued most of the provisions – without sharing this with my spouse either. And I kept smiling (mostly). Trouble was, our antiquarian freezer is not frost free. In fact, with the door open in the cold garage it made frost fast. Frost and ice. Some food had to be chipped out and the ice melted with pans of boiling water steaming on the shelves and a turkey baster full of same squirted on the frozen stalagmites. Pans of water on the bottom shelf then had to be dumped repeatedly. This chore started after breakfast and continued until the next morning. My deadline morning: Murphy again.
You can get some excellent suggestions on keeping your resolutions from Dr. Mantell on Facebook and Twitter. This lemonade theory has a lot of promise for me. But one thing I do know. Given the past couple of days, it’s going to take a whole lot more sugar!