I’ve been thinking about my New Year’s Resolution and I’ve decided, no computer time after 6:00 pm!

Now I could tell a big ‘ole fib and say I’m writing this during the day but you and I both know it’s midnight and I’m sitting here with my computer in my lap.  I’m not technically breaking my resolution though because using my computer to write an actual article doesn’t count – you know, just like eating a Snickers bar doesn’t count if you have a Diet Coke with it.

So before you make your resolutions I wanted to let you know that there are things that count and things that don’t count and, as it turns out, there’s a whole lot of things that don’t count for much.  Here’s my top ten.  Feel free to keep adding to the list.

1. If you’re a knitter you can resolve to not buy any more yarn and still buy cashmere because well, cashmere doesn’t count.
2. If you resolve to lose weight by cutting out snacks you should know that sandwiches don’t count if you eat them over the sink.  Neither does food that you eat out of the pan when you’re cleaning up the dishes.
3. Spreading office gossip absolutely doesn’t count if the person you’re talking about has dated your sister.
4. Two stepping with someone other than your spouse doesn’t count if you don’t tell them your real name.
5. Margaritas don’t count if you drink them alone.
6. This is probably only good in Texas but speeding doesn’t count if there’s a yellow jacket in your car.  When the cop pulls you over just jump out of the car screaming and batting your hair yelling, yellow jacket and any cop worthy of a badge will let you off.  Of course if you’ve been drinking margaritas you should just shut up and pay the fine.
7. Sleeping in when you resolved to get up early and run five miles doesn’t count if you ate a green vegetable the day before or a protein bar wrapped in a picture of a polar bear.
8. Not paying your rent doesn’t count as long as you spent the money on red shoes, even if they hurt your feet, because spending money on red shoes never counts.
9. Stealing valium from your mama doesn’t count if she’s the reason you need it.  Same goes for your child’s Ritalin, your spouse’s muscle relaxant, your dad’s Jack Daniels.
10. Having sex with your ex one more time doesn’t count because everyone does it and it’s never any good anyway.
11. If you resolve to give up television and then spend an entire Saturday watching the Twilight Zone marathon it doesn’t count because some things are just beyond counting.

Okay so that was eleven things instead of ten but it’s totally okay because one of them doesn’t count.

You’ve worked your ass off to get where you are because well, everyone knows women work twice as hard as men and are at least 10 times as smart. As Ann Richards used to say, “The rooster crows but the hens deliver.”

So now that you’ve got a title and maybe even a window you don’t want to trip up and slide back down the ladder even if you do have a mild concussion from bumping your head against that damn glass ceiling.

Now I don’t want to scare you or anything — but, the truth is that it can all fall apart in the splash of a cocktail, the flash of too much cleavage, or asking your boss, “Who’s that doofus in the corner with the comb over?”

That’s right, I’m talking about navigating the minefield called the Company Holiday Party. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go – I mean you have to go – I just want you to know that there are absolutely no do-overs when it comes to making an ass of yourself.

The fact is that the Company notes are written in permanent marker and will remain in the water cooler history book forever. People will pass down the stories of how you drank out of the punchbowl with the ladle, did an imitation of Sarah Palin (well, okay that might be funny,) stood on a chair and sang “I Will Survive,” and how your dress was too damn short and the five-inch heels made you look like a hooker.

I’m telling you careers are ruined over less and girlfriend I really don’t want you to go down in flames or even smoke. I want you to be the amazingly smart, competent, talented, successful, leading-the-way woman that you are. Just remember that when you’re tempted to drink too much and let it all hang out – I mean it’s a good bet that what’s hanging out just shouldn’t be seen in public.

From the title of my column you know that I lean toward telling the truth.  Oh I fudge here and there and am apt to make a story funnier than it was the first time around, usually at my mother’s expense, but I assure you she doesn’t mind – in fact she kind of feels like a celebrity, which of course she is.

So I’m thinking about truth telling and I thought, hmmm – the truth about what? There’s not a lot I censor in this column – I mean I confided a while back that I’d posted my profile on Green Singles and I told you the absolute, complete, total truth about the resulting date.  I told you all about driving naked down interstate 35 in North Texas.  I’ve revealed my obsession with Neil Diamond and vampires.  I don’t think I ever mentioned getting naked in the Little Chapel in the Woods on the Texas Woman’s University campus but now you know even that.

There is one secret, however, that has stayed firmly behind my zipped lips.  Well, it’s not much of a secret because anyone who knows me already knows the awful truth.  It’s only a secret because no one ever says it out loud.   Drum roll please ….. the truth is that over the last year I’ve gotten fat.  Not just plump, fat.

Now no one is more shocked about that than me.  In fact I only realized it this week when I got a look at a picture of myself that clearly revealed rolls of fat and cheeks the size of a greedy squirrel storing nuts for the winter.  I was shocked I tell you, just shocked.

You see I’ve always thought of myself as thin.  Hell, I was thin.  You know those terrible bobby socks in the 50s that came up to your knees and then you folded them down until you had this two-inch wide roll of sock encasing your skinny little legs?  Made my legs look like two toothpicks stuck into brown penny-loafers the size of oil tankers.

I mean I was one of those “send this child to camp” kids that you used to see on billboards along Texas highways asking parents of plump children to help fatten up the poor kids by donating money to buy us good food like fried chicken, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, homemade biscuits, and creamy coconut meringue pie.

It wasn’t that my mom wasn’t a good cook or that we didn’t have money for food, I was just naturally skinny.  Let me tell you that skinny wasn’t a good look in the early 60s when the ideal woman was Marilyn Monroe with all her curves, and sweater girls like Lana Turner and Jayne Mansfield were splashed across every drugstore magazine.  A flat-chested skinny kid like me didn’t have a chance.

But that was then and this is now and I’ve plumped up right nicely and the sex goddesses are now Jennifer Anniston and Jennifer Lopez who together weigh 95 pounds soaking wet.

So I’ve decided to bare all and share my plan for becoming “not fat” with you.  Now with my propensity for nakedness you might be wondering just what I mean by bare all.  Never fear, I’m just going write about it and try to keep myself honest.

I want you to know that I’m doing this for the right reasons and I absolutely have not bought into any woman-hating couture designer’s catwalking version of a woman.  I want to be svelte again so that I’ll be able to paint my own toenails, zip up my down coat, have enough energy to mow my yard (I don’t want to actually mow the yard – just have enough energy to do it if I wanted to,) and look as good as is humanly possible for someone who’s old as dirt and doesn’t own an elliptical trainer.

So here’s my “duh” plan – eat when I’m hungry.  Now it might seem like an obvious solution to you but food and hunger do not necessarily go together for me.  Feeling crappy, stressed out, pissed off, sad, lonely – these are the makings of eating a half-gallon of maple-nut ice cream, not hunger.

I know this isn’t much of a plan.  I mean there’s no counting calories, weighing food, going to meetings, or joining gyms, but it’s something and every journey begins with a single step, stumble, jump, leap, or moment of truth.

The nurses at Fletcher Allen Hospital are the best.  For the last few days they have provided my mom with excellent care, called her honey and dear, and served as the first line of defense; as did the nursing assistants  who patiently changed her bedding at least four times today and lifted and held her so gently.  God bless the nurse who let me sob on her shoulder when I couldn’t bear to hold it in any longer.

Thank you to the emergency room staff who looked me in the eye when I was the guiltiest and said, “You’ve taken such good care of her.”

Thank you to my friend Courtney who has walked Gracie every afternoon and to Liz, Carl, and Jeffrey who have offered and given so much.  Thank you to my colleagues who are so much more and who offered to make meals and put them in my freezer.  Thank you to my neighbors who surround my mother and me with care.

Thank you to every single person who has sent up a prayer, a wish for health, a meditation, a thought of love.

My mom, who you all know if only from my stories, fell last week and bumped her head.  Just a little bump.  Two days later she became disoriented and couldn’t quite balance herself.  The CT scan revealed a small amount of blood in her brain.  Doctors say that it will dissipate but it will leave behind damaged brain cells.  At the age of 92 my mother will have to learn to walk again.

She will do it.  There is no doubt in my mind.  She has done things that took far more courage than this.  She stayed firm by my brother’s side while he battled liver failure and cancer and never wavered, not even for a moment.  She buried him, her husband, her sister and so many more.  She saved pennies and quarters and dollars for two years to buy a house where it would be safe for me to play.

When she was 86 she sold her house in Fort Worth and moved half-way across the country to make a new home with me in Vermont.   That summer with absolutely no regard for her safety she got in a kayak with me and paddled in circles on Lake Champlain. Her first winter she rolled down the side of a snow covered hill and couldn’t stop laughing. When the lake froze over she held my hand and walked out on the ice even though the cracking was scary and creepy.

My mom is my compass and my beacon.  She’s stubborn, gritty, salty, and spicy hot like Texas chili.  There are foods that only she can make – chicken & dumplings, cornbread dressing, and peach cobbler.  No one else should even try because she’s the best.

So what I want to say is that I love her absolutely and that she is absolutely the best.

Vermont says, “Thank You, Thank You, Thank You .”
Texas is hopefully waiting.

Sharon

I have to tell you I was starting to lose faith this morning when I got up to rain but low & behold it’s the middle of the afternoon and the sun is shining, however — there’s a tiny little problem.  There’s a cold front moving in this afternoon and it’s bringing thunderstorms.  Now see this is exactly what I was saying we don’t want.

So I’ve decided to use this as a teachable moment.  In Vermont rain is bad;  sun is good.  In Texas it’s just the opposite; rain is good, sun is bad.  Learning can be fun when we do it together.

Now I  know you can do this if you just put your mind to it – I mean you made it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, and then there was the parting of the Red Sea and all, so it’s not like you don’t know how to get things done.

So, I’m asking again, nicely of course, for you to take care of the weather thing and if you could do it quickly, well, that would be really, really good for me and I’m sure it would go down in the history books as one more miracle you pulled off.  Good publicity is great, isn’t it?

Thank you very much,

Sharon

I want to thank you for this absolutely perfect, sunny day in paradise — as opposed to all the crappy days we’ve had lately.  You know the kind I’m talking about – the rainy we’d-turn-the-heat-on-if-it-were-this-cold-in-November days. Yeah, well we don’t want anymore of those.

Now I don’t want to seem ungrateful for any day – I mean they are all truly a blessing but honestly – I know you appreciate honesty – this summer has pretty much sucked.

You know I think you might could fix this problem by just kind of evening things out a little – I mean we’ve been cold and wet in Vermont while my daughter and her family are trapped in a slow-bake oven in Texas.  Doesn’t seem quite fair does it?

I don’t wanna tell you how to run the world but I’m thinking you could take these two extremes and kinda smush them together to make a pretty good summer for everyone.  It would certainly make everyone in Vermont and Texas a lot happier and I know in my heart that you want us all to be happy.

No need to feel bad about how things have turned out so far  –  I know you would have fixed  it sooner if you’d just thought of it.  No shame in that, everyone needs a little help now and then and I was happy to do it.

Sincerely,
Sharon

Achoo!  Yep it’s spring – the trees are a blooming and I’m a sneezing.  What kind of twisted trick is this?  I mean Mother Nature finally blesses us with perfection – warm weather, sunshine and beautiful flowering trees all over town – except that the damn trees are toxic to hundreds of us who suffer from allergies.

Could it be that Mother Nature has an evil twin who goes around sprinkling poison pollen on everything that her prettier, nicer sister creates?  Or maybe Mother Nature is just delusional and doesn’t realize she’s created the Attack of the Killer Trees.

So at a time of year when I should have the windows flung open, be out walking my dog, and have an insanely large smile on my face I’m blowing my nose, wiping my eyes, and walking around in a stupor from all the Benedryl I’ve taken.

Would somebody  just cut my nose off and put me out of my misery?