Happy New Year!

The beginning of a new year is always a strange time for me. After all the frenetic activity of the holidays, then it all suddenly grinds to a halt and everything starts all over.

I’m not a resolutionist. Oh, I’ve tried it before. It just doesn’t work for me. I know me too well to waste time on resolutions any more. But beginning a new year does make me a little retrospective.

2005 was a year of extreme highs and lows, separated by long periods of mediocrity. I suppose it’s the same for most people.

One of the highs was our January trip to Disney World. What fun to take the boys out of school for a week and escape the cold Kansas wind and weather and go to a place where we didn’t even need a light jacket. Not to mention it was the first visit for all of us and we had a blast.

Another was surprising the boys with a trip to Kansas City and seeing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in December. They had totally fallen in love with their music after my nephew gave me a couple of their CDs for my birthday. They thought we were just going to shop. (Wheeee! Four hours of driving only to go shopping!! You can imagine who thrilled they were.) After checking into our hotel, we gave them their tickets wrapped up in pretty little boxes with bows. They were ecstatic. The concert was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Lows … lost my Dad on Valentine’s Day. The pain was worsened by some history I won’t go into. Also lost a dear friend in December. Someone I somehow thought would always be around.

So now we begin a new year. In some ways, nothing has really changed. Our lives are no different than they were last week. Still, as I said, it does make one think things over. If I WERE the resolution type, I think some of my goals for 2006 would be:

Eat better. Although I desperately need to go on a diet, I also know me too well in this department as well to think that would be successful. My current plan is to just cut back a little on portions and choose more wisely.

Try to be patient with my Mom.

Not feel like I need to be everything to everyone, and not feel bad when I can’t.

Match effort with effort and not feel bad about that either. For example, next year I probably won’t go to the time and effort to make BIL and SIL lovely, hand-made gifts when SIL goes out the day after Christmas and buys two HUGE gift baskets of bath stuff for me when she knows that I only use certain lotions (and these weren’t it.) My time involvement – about 7 hours. Her time involvement – about 5 minutes.

So, let’s move on with this year and see where it takes us.