When my oldest daughter was learning how to spell, she would sit in the grocery cart as we shopped, diligently making a list. Every time I put something in the cart, she’d write it down. And when we got to the check-out line, she’d look at what she’d written, look in the cart, and marvel, “Mama, we got everything on the list!”
Who wouldn’t like to feel a sense of accomplishment like that? On the other hand, who wants to go to all the fuss and trouble of actually accomplishing stuff? Smart people take a good, hard look at who they already are, and, rather than trying to improve on that, they concentrate on making the right kind of goals—the kind which, after years of repetition, you could achieve even after a stiff dose of ketamine.
Here’s my list of goals for a failproof 2012:
JANUARY: Just clean up after Christmas. Oh my gosh.
FEBRUARY: Try to blast my way out of late winter gloom by buying an elaborate seed starter kit. Float home on a sunny fantasy of tender, home-grown lettuce, intensely flavorful tomatoes and ultra-nutritious squash that my children will suddenly want to eat because no one could resist such scrumptious, bumptious, homegrown goodness. And anyway, all those other things I’m supposed to be taking care of will fade into insignificance amid the lushness of the garden, the garden! Who could be sad or mad or tired or ill-tempered when there’s a garden? Oh, what a garden we’re going to have!
MARCH: Have a sudden, irrational, and unshakable conviction that I’m pregnant. Freak out, then feel horribly guilty that I’m freaking out instead of rejoicing. Freak out even more. Pray. Through a tremendous effort and influx of grace, discover a place of peace. Rearrange plans for the future (no garden). Tell a few hundred close personal friends our news with sincere joy, mixed with only a few small grains of resentment and dread.
Find out I’m not, of course, pregnant. Cry.
APRIL: Come to grips with the idea that the year is not exactly new anymore. But it’s not that old, either! It’s still the perfect time to make a fresh start, buckle down, and get cracking with that super important—ooh look, a furry hoodie that makes you look like Chewbacca! Just gotta send this link to a couple of friends, and then I’ll organize my life and whatnot.
MAY: With the fresh breeze, flowing water, and caroling birds, have a sudden revelation that life is good! Virtue is easy, and self-control is a thing of joy. All one needs to do is ally oneself with all that is good, true, and beautiful, like birds, and one will effortlessly and joyfully lose weight, pray regularly, have a clean kitchen floor, and teach one’s children how to scan poems and sight read Gregorian chant on weekends just for fun, and it will be easy, because look how warm it is.
JUNE: At the start of vacation, vow to get all the boring, obligatory stuff out of the way early, so we can concentrate on having a nice time for once.
JULY: While doing the spring cleaning we put off earlier because we were lolling around complaining about the heat, discover that seed starter kit, still in the bag. Shove it under the bed. Buy a couple of tomato plants with encouraging names like “SUPREMEO BIG BOY JUICEMEISTER E-Z GROW” and “FARMER NED’S DOMESTIC GUILT ASSUAGER” and stuff them into a fertile-looking area of the driveway. Water seldom to never. When they don’t grow, teach the children to grumble, “Thanks a lot, Monsanto.”
AUGUST: In a panic, abandon the spring cleaning and commence the end-of-vacation frenzy of pleasant activities so that the kids will have something to write about when they have to write about “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.” Actually have a kind of nice time.
SEPTEMBER: Open Facebook and see the book lists, the watercolors, the inventive little study spaces, the video clips of hilarious and inspired little skits that everyone else’s kids are doing; immediately drown in regret that we’re not homeschooling anymore. Everybody else in the entire universe is homeschooling! It would be so easy, if only I loved my children just a little bit more! Oh, and argh, half of them are incorporating their beautiful, beautiful gardens into their curriculum! Thanks a lot, Charlotte Mason.
OCTOBER: Open Facebook; read about how everyone’s homeschool year is going now. Get down on my knees and thank the God of mercies that we’re not homeschooling anymore.
NOVEMBER: Have a sudden, irrational, and unshakable conviction that I’m pregnant. Just skip to the crying part without even trying to figure out how I ought to feel.
DECEMBER: Look back over the past year and marvel over the large amount of personal growth I’ve achieved, if, by “growth,” you mean, “After building a strong spiritual relationship with our family this year, our pastor needed a break and asked to be transferred to the diocese of Pyongyang. ” Also, I finally learned how to make a mojito.
Thanks a lot, 2012.
What’s on your list? What do you just know you can do?
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I don’t know what else you can do, but you made me laugh. Thanks for that. Or should I make that, “Thanks a lot…”
I want to blog if only I could get started.
My March always looks a lot like yours. I just told my 4 year old to stop playing her math skill-building game so that I could focus on your hilarious list, so that probably does not point to good things about my own goals.
Mine:
Jan - Hopefully have this baby before the doctors start messing with me. Also, get the child baptized.
Feb, March, April - Nurse non-stop. Accomplish very little other than school with the kids (I home school, but I’m not crafty and have no photos of our accomplishments)
May - Gadzooks! It’s First Communion for my oldest AND the Baptism party we delayed for the youngest so family would only have to fly out once! Panic.
June - Life gets easier. We have no garden because our yard is too small and when I have one the kids trample it and I get mad. And I try to avoid doing things that set my kids up for an insane screaming mother. But look, the baby is growing!
July - Attend fireworks. And visit the beach.
August - Whine about the inevitable heat wave. Also, it’s the start of Birthdaverserythanksmasween season, the 5 months of the year that include all family birthdays, a bunch of holidays, and our wedding anniversery. Time to get party fatigue.
September,Oct.Nov.Dec - Ugh—-do I really have to think this far ahead?
I will learn Spanish this year (finally).
I try not to make resolutions, as they always end up being subject to forces beyond my control, or being unrealistic: “This year, I want to become the All Being — Master of Time, Space and Dimension, and then I want to go to Europe.”
I tried to start small: a *DECADE* of the rosary per day.
Not yet.
Also having fantasies of adding a walk every day and a sugar detox….once hubby’s birthday is past and also we get another paycheck to pay for all the non-sugary food I would have to eat in order to keep myself from checking into the hospital from sugar withdrawal.
But I am—finally—learning not to hold myself to any standard whatsoever, so. We shall see how it goes.
To read the whole Bible following this plan: http://readthecatholicbibleinayear.wordpress.com/
and play the keyboard well enough to join a band
FYI - the fear/joy of being pregnant will last well into your peri-menopause years but you will find yourself crying a bit more than usual.
I wish you lived in my neighborhood. we could laugh and cry together.
Absolutely hilarious! I loved it.
I am carefully not making any firm resolution-type plans as I am recovering from an Achilles tendon tear in my right foot and my husband from shoulder surgery. So all our plans for the winter have already been . . . adjusted.
I have one word for you: pumpkins.
They’re on my to-do list for the 1st of June, but YMMV—I don’t know where you live. You might need to start earlier. But they are pretty freakin’ idiot proof, as long as you remember to give them water, and, if you have anything resembling a lawn that you care about, move the vines back off the lawn every week or two so they don’t take over the tri-state area.
Come September or October, you will feel like a gardening goddess.
This may well be the one thing that I “get done” this year, the way things are shaping up around here… :)
Sorry, Anthony S. Layne, I’m pretty sure that you have to be born a Time Lord; you can’t just join up. But if you could get your hands on a TARDIS you might be able to make it to Europe.
Simcha, your March just described my December, except for I am really pregnant and we’ll probably start telling everyone later today (my only friend who reads the NCR and would recognize me already knows). When people ask how I feel I will just refer them here. LOL
My resolution for 2012? **To survive more or less physically and mentally intact.
Oh to be young enough to worry that I was pregnant again. You are much calmer than I was though. I would consider a pregnancy AT LEAST once a month.
Our youngest child will start college in the fall, making my husband and me “empty-nesters”. With that milestone looming there is also a mixture of dread and giddyness. It’s not really a resolution but it’s earth shattering enough that I’ve been using it as my response to anyone who asks. It’s fun to watch their jaw drop and then silently judge me because I don’t break down in tears at the thought of all our babies outta the house.
not to drive any of my siblings any further from the Catholic Church than they are. —or anyone else
My goal is to get through today, and then do it again tomorrow, for 360 some more days. :) (Yes, I homeschool our 5 kids, and it is a love/hate relationship for sure.) Thanks for making this today easier with your hilarious writing!
I forgot to add—the daily goal, this year, as always, is “Don’t throw any of the kids out the window.” As long as I get to 11 PM each day, and haven’t thrown anybody out a window, I can consider it a successful, well-spent day.
THAT IS SOO HILARIOUS! February’s description sounds downright Seussical and sadly, reminds me of my dreams of a garden…A GARDEN!!!! ;)
All I want to do this year is 1)get my marriage blessed in the Church, so that 2)I can be received into the Church just after Easter, and then 3) give birth to our 5th this summer (preferably without losing my mind, but let’s set our sights low), and then 4)have him/her baptized. A real Catholic baptism! I get teary just thinking about it!
Oh, and somehow help my husband finish remodelling our new home, sell this house, and move.
OTHER THAN THAT, not much.
*hyperventillating*
May God reward you, Simcha! I soooooooooo needed to laugh, albeit quietly, as our 11 month old son is sleeping next to me ;-) I hope you are doing all right, with little Benedicta. Thank you, too, for your honesty. I feel less guilty ;-) Prayers for you!
Last year’s resolution was to learn how to make egg rolls. That didn’t happen because I learned that to do this you have to have a deep-fry thermometer, a thing I hate to spend money on as I will use it twice (once to learn, once to realize that I don’t love egg rolls enough to make them myself).
This year’s resolution is to avoid tuna sandwiches, because my life is half over and that’s if I’m really lucky, and I don’t have time to eat disgusting tuna anymore.
I have had the freak-out, guilt, cry, cycle once a month for the last 17 years, since my youngest was born. This year, as a change, I resolve to go straight to cry. I am pretty sure I can do that. My baby will be a senior in high school and all my grandbabies have moved far away. *tears*
Love it! Plant mint because it grows like a weed. Tell your friends that it is a wonderful antioxidant and start making those Friday night Mojitos…Oh, and lest I forget, when the baby gets colicky at night too. The Brits used to give colicky babies “gripe water”—Americans took out the booze. It took me four kids to realize that the MOTHER needs it! Baby gets a bit in the breast milk. Works like a charm. Just don’t succumb to a second, when the first goes down like heaven. And don’t let your husband tempt you to it, when he’s loving blissful you.
Oh, and one more thing, *WHY on Earth* would you deprive the public school system of your *wonderful* children?? What else could possibly balance out the universe of super special onesies and twosies? Plus, homeschooled kids don’t get the advantage of being sent to the principal’s office when they are bad. Mine learned how to take it like a man, and say “Peace Out” as they departed. Unfortunately, they don’t terrorize them there like they used to. They use lots of positive reinforcement. I finally had to go in and complain saying, “scare him a little! I’d want to go to the principal’s office, if I could miss math, and be told by the head of the school that I was that wonderful, and her favorite!!”
My goal for 2012 is a Godly dose of super human *empathy*...
@Corita, saying the rosary with someone else (12 and above) is SOOOOO much easier! I wish I had been a little bit pushier about it with my husband in years past. All it took was a little drama and a few tears to get him on board. Same goes for daily mass. We go in the early evening when I am the most burnt out, and it has an amazing effect. We both LOVE it. If someone had told me we would have this in our daily routine a few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, and would never have imagined how sweet it could be.
You lovely, lovely ladies! I have to read Simcha every couple of days for the hauntingly funny and deep thoughts; the comments make my heart sing also.
Happy, healthy, holy new year!
I really like your writing and the way your mind works!
Please remind your husband that he’s a lucky guy!
@anna lisa- Oh, how I would love to say the rosary with my husband, but he is not only a “no public prayer” guy but a “no praying at all” guy.
Mass is another thing you wouldn’t catch him dead at. LOL. No, really, if he died I would struggle with having a funeral Mass because there is no way he would consent to it if alive.
AnyHOO. I did say my decade tonight, actually with my 5 yo. I was teaching it to him. It was frustrating but nice at the same time.
Simcha,
Finding one of your columns on New Advent is always an upper - your description of New Year’s Resolutions that can be accomplished is delicious.
Thank you for the smiles and laughter from the many who enjoy but do not bother to post comments.
TeaPot562
@Corita
Pray that rosary FOR your husband and then read the life of St Monica.
My resolution for 2012; Put one foot in front of the other. Do it again.
January-March - Try not to vomit so much.
March - Get daughters Baptized, Confirmed, and Eucharized(?). Decide whether we should take everyone out to an expensive Easter brunch or try to make one at home. Go ahead with the loan. Try not to vomit during the Easter Vigil.
April-June - Reduce heartburn. Try not to vomit so much.
June - Have baby. Kiss husband for the first time in 8 months. (He smells like meat and makes me vomit).
July - Enjoy the baby and being skinny (the vomiting comes with a silver lining).
August - Try not to eat so much now that I can. Manipulate husband with false promises so he will watch the baby and I can get daughters ready for school. Pray that skinny jeans go out of style.
September - Step on scale. Panic. Join gym. Go for one hour. Suspend membership.
October - Fight with daughters over baby Halloween costumes.
November - Change sheets and vacuum. Make a turkey.
December - Go crazy on Christmas food because I couldn’t last year. Tell daughters they can cook, then find ways to prevent them. Hope the New Years dress I bought in July when it looked good doesn’t split while I’m dancing on the car hood. Hope the car hood doesn’t split either.
Corita, Before I saw Arsenal’s reply I thought of Monica too! If it makes you feel any better, without the gory details, I’ll just say my hubby of 26 years was a real tough nut! :) I’ll give you a little hint though: I met his family when I was seventeen. His mother is an angry atheist. She went on a mission to destroy my faith (and anyone else within earshot)Ranted like Margaret Sanger, and was generally impossible. I really wasn’t used to people like that. Being a seventeen-year-old fueled my lack of sensitivity in blurting out to him on the way home that night: “Oh my gosh! Your mother is going to Hell!!” She is still like that, and it has had a really harsh effect upon her children, and family. **This has a lot to do with my New Years resolution for empathy! (poor woman says she was abused) I prayed to St. Joseph for my husband A LOT! I remembered how Teresa of Avila said he *never* failed her. I actually got a bit testy with him! He came through!
My goals get more primitive each year… lately Im happy if people can tell my gender and I dont scare small children.
But seriously folks… I hope to get published in 2 professional journals (about time, Ive been at my job 26 years) which I can say with real optimism since I wrote the articles already and they were requested by the publishers, so if they dont suck (can you say “suck” on a Catholic mom blog?”) they should see ink meet paper.
Oh, man, I can completely relate to February, overandoverandover-turns out hope isn’t the only thing that springs eternal. Garden envy does, too.
My resolution is to accept the fact that even if I start today, I will not be able to make all the lovely handmade gifts that I dream of making and giving for Christmas, so start looking for sales. Immediately.
And take my homeschooled brood in for some “school” pictures for crying out loud, but not all at once because I want to use the coupons… Thanks for the laugh, Simcha, Happy New Year!
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