Out With the Old

It's that time of year -- when we make promises to ourselves to improve our looks and our outlooks.

I stopped making resolutions years ago. Now I have goals. I did fairly well in 2006 -- the biggie I missed was not losing 20 pounds -- I think I gained 40. And I accomplished a lot of things that weren't on my list of goals, so I feel pretty good about that. Today, I put together my list of goals for 2007, which is THE YEAR OF MOLLY.

Family traditions are changing this year, too. I thought we had one more year before Y-Chromo decided he'd rather be with friends than family on New Year's Eve, but I was wrong. He'll be at a movie marathon over-nighter on New Year's Eve. So it will be just me, TV Stevie, and X-Chromo watching the ball drop. I don't even know if we can play games with only three of us -- our favorite Balderdash is definitely out. I loaded up on junk food -- frozen cheese sticks, dips, dogs-in-a-blanket, chips, cheeses, crackers. My last hurrah before I face that lose-40-pounds goal.

Other goals for 2007 include finish writing a particular book, debt management, finding a dream job, and a 40-day on-line program about positive thinking called Destination Transformation that my friend Maggie Shayne told me about.

So I have three things to eliminate this year: weight; debt; negative thinking.

What are you trying to shed?

O Night Divine

A couple of weeks ago, my critique group went to a restaurant for a holiday dinner instead of having a regularly scheduled critique session. We had a difficult time finding a mutually accessible date, due to the Black Hole of December, but we did. We had a lovely time.

We also scheduled the Friday-before-Christmas for our second critique session of the month. Christmas Cactus
wanted us to come to her house and see her tree. She bribed us with promises of homemade pierogi. And, after weeks of intense family time, particularly 7 nights of Chanukka, I was ready. But poor Christmas Cactus hurt her back, and pierogi are a physical-labor-intensive treat. The menu changed to take-out pizza and wings.

The rest of us chipped in with treats: a tray of fresh veggies with dip; homemade Italian Christmas cookies; sausage dip (a/k/a heart attack in a bowl); hummus and multi-grain crackers; and of course, Cactus's favorite ice cream, a limited-edition flavor that comes out only every couple of years, and even then is almost impossible to find. The Queen-A-Athena has the best luck and showed up with four half gallons of Perry's Zero Visability. Our evening had turned into a second holiday gathering.

We sat in Cactus's living room, in front of her gorgeous tree, sipping wine and enjoying the calm. Scented candles, a crackling fire, soft holiday music in the background, and much laughter: all of the ingredients for a perfect evening were there.

Sir Cactus arrived with the main course. We adjourned to the dining room, where Cactus had gone all out with her holly-festooned china, gold flatware, and a center piece of a small artificial tree bedecked with her grandmother's costume jewelry. Stunning. We laughed, we ate, we drank lots of hot tea, and three of us actually read something.

After cleaning the dining room, we returned to the living room. More talk, more laughter. Laughter until it pained my bronchitis-wracked ribcage.

The scene was like something out of a movie. A good movie. Since my life most often resembles one of National Lampoon's "vacation" movies, I basked in the ambience. I didn't want to leave.

It was indeed a holy night.

In Thy Dark Streets Shineth . . .

A dual topic blog!

Topic #1: Flashing Lights

The other night, when I was driving X-Chromo to religious ed, I had a run in with a fire truck. It was scary at the time, as well as infuriating. I was on a one-way street, driving in the correct direction. I was stopped at a traffic light. There were vehicles behind me and vehicles beside me. I heard sirens. I heard horns blowing. I saw a fire truck racing up the street. He had the green light. All those of us stopped at the light had to do was wait.

Wait!

The fire truck turned. The wrong way. Straight at me. He blared his horn, and I had no where to go. The truck was blocking the intersection. The vehicle next to me finally pulled all the way over to the right; the vehicles behind me backed up, so I could back up and swing right & out of the truck's way.

I had no way of knowing the truck was going to turn the wrong way down a one-way street. I'm not even sure it's legal for an emergency vehicle to do that. But it's not like the fire truck was using a turn signal or anything. There were flashing lights all over that thing!

My dad is going to check with a police officer friend of his: who was wrong? Me, for not "yielding right of way" to an emergency vehicle or the driver of the fire truck for going the wrong way down a one-way street?

Topic #2: O Little Town of Bethlehem

My friend, Queen-a-Athena, likes to joke that I know an awful lot of Christmas songs . . . for a nice Jewish girl. For several years, I played guitar and led the caroling at the CNYRW Holiday party.

The tradition of leading the carolling is being passed down through my family. Y-Chromo's Spanish teacher gave him a CD/cassette of Christmas carols and asked him to lead the class in singing them. That's right. The only Jewish kid in the city's largest school will be leading the carolling.

Last night, he came into my office and asked me how the song, O Little Town of Bethlehem goes. He doesn't know it.

At CNYRW we have a tradition of singing this carol to two other tunes. My friend Amy was the lastest recipient of this little joke. She was pretty funny. I tried it on Y-Chromo last night, and it didn't work.

First, I sang the lyrics using the Theme from Gilligan's Island. Y-Chromo thanked me. I said, "No, no. I'm pulling your chain. That's the Gilligan's Island theme song. It really goes like this." Then I proceeded to sing the carol to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. Again, he thanked me, and I had to confess to stringing him along.

There's no fun trying to tease someone who just doesn't get it. Maybe next year he'll remember.

Pinching Pennies

Several years ago, TV Stevie bought me a nice tin bank. It's shaped like a British telephone kiosk. I keep it on my desk and toss my loose change into it. This morning, however, I couldn't. It was full! Time to dig out the wrappers for rolling coins. My "secret" writing account is now $37.50 richer. Not bad.

As much as I enjoy the "found money," there are things about rolling coins that irk me.

• The icky metallic smell that won't come off your fingers
• $4.90 in dimes
• $9.75 in quarters
• $1.95 in nickles
• Pennies

Pennies. Not just 49 of them, either. Thanks to my dad, whom I love very much, I am chronically unable to roll pennies without checking the backs of them, looking for this:

The "Wheat Penny." This is what the backs of pennies looked like when I was a child. At some point, the "wheat" was replaced by the Lincoln Memorial, so numismatists everywhere started pulling "wheat pennies" out of their pockets.

I have a slew of them. Don't know what I'll ever do with them, but I have them.

This morning's tally:

• $2.50 rolled pennies
• 1 wheat penny
• 49 unrolled pennies

It's enough to make a woman weep.

So what annoying chronic behaviors did your parents instill in you?

Disappointment, Debt, & Dreamwalkin'

The other day, I received an e-mail from the Toby Keith International Fan Club announcing that Toby would be at the nearby casino in late January. I immediately forwarded the announcement to Queen-a-Athena and Chris, both of whom also would like to see His Toby-Ness.

Because the show is at a casino, there was no advance sale on the tix for fan club members. But I made sure my membership is current so I could enter the fan club raffles for both the back-stage Meet & Greet and the On-Stage pass.

My fellow Toby fans and I decided that we simply couldn't afford the most expensive tickets, but would take either of the two lower levels. And we wanted seats on the aisle, so we couldn't order the tickets on-line.

Tickets went on sale at 10AM on Saturday 12/2. I started calling the casino box office at 9:58am. I tried the on-line method, too, but couldn't specify an aisle seat, and the three seats I got weren't on the aisle, so I foolishly released them. A moment later, the on-line connection said no seats were available. The whole time I did this, I was also speed-dialing the casino. I got a busy signal until about 10:50am, at which point I was put on hold. At 11:05am, a nice young man named James offered to help me. Except he had nothing left to sell me but the $125 seats.

I'm unemployed. I need to be realistic. As much as I want to see his Toby-ness and perhaps meet him back stage again, I can't justify $125. I know my friends can't either.

I'm really glad I decided not to enter the raffles until I had purchased the tickets. How awful would it have been if I'd won the passes -- and not had tickets to the show? If he comes back to area soon--and he plays around here a lot--I can enter then.

Oh well. I had my moment with Toby several years ago. I guess I shouldn't be greedy. But without his music, I never would have written the book that landed me my agent. And he wrote a song about my muse, too. I owe that man. Just not $125 worth.