The New Year, Carpool Style

So. It is, of course, another new year. My children, finally, are back in school, and it is time for me to celebrate surviving last year. Instead of doing the obligatory recap (which I don't think I can do without whining, frankly), I'm doing what I always do at the first of the year. Make The List.

The List, you see, is not the Gratitude List, which while helpful, is not goal-oriented, it's the List of things that (hopefully) have been finished. Either finished or haven't killed me, anyway. No. This list, you see, is the list of things I want to do this year. You would think that I would wise up and actually make the list attainable, but alas, the making of the list is so much fun that I just wind up with 428 things on there because one rambling thought leads to another and all that. (Sort of like this entry, but bear with me.)

This year, though, in an effort to actually cross more things off the list than I've added on, I'm trying a monthly format. Oprah would be all kinds of proud, since this puts me in a state of continual resolution. Surely there is a self-help book like this?

So. January. There are the must dos, like finish my niece's baby sweater before she arrives, and at least start her quilt by then, and the would really like to dos, like write more and clean out my office. (There is indeed some dissension in Casa Carpool as to which list that particular item falls on, but since this is my blog, I win. ) Then, the worst category of all, is the "dreading them but need to anyway" list - clean out clothes, make the new budget, find an anger management strategy that is better than continual chanting of "be good" and total avoidance of PE, figure out how to insulate under the house, etc.

Those things do seem awfully low-brow for a New Year's list, though, so I broke down and thought that if people keep making a singular resolution list, perhaps there's something to it. (Like Eastern Medicine. You don't really know why it works, but if it's been around since the beginning of time, there must be something to it, right?)

So here (drumroll, please, and hold the snickering) is The 2008 List.

- Give up on being a Size 8 again. There have been 3 babies in this body, and I just need to deal with it.

- Exercise anyway.

- Figure out how to garden without killing everything or using 427 pesticides in the process. (Which, frankly, still allowed me to kill the actual plants.)

- Clean more than once a month so that it's not so overwhelming.

- Play more games with my kids.

- Take more pictures. Develop the film, even. (It is not good form when you get your baseball pictures back in January, especially when baseball was in March. Of 2007.)

- Act on the things I want to try or do, instead of just filing them away for "someday."

Now to figure out how to make those things happen - and to make the January "to do" list coincide with it.

Happy New Year, y'all.