This is a text I sent my sister over the weekend.

Now you are probably wondering, “okay, but why DO you have a finger puppet in the drawer of the nightstand?  Why do you have a finger puppet AT ALL?”

Good questions.

I went out for dinner with a friend the other night and as we waiting to get on the list for a table, I noticed the family in line in front of us. It was a chilly night and they were all still bundled up. There is something so cute about kids in winter hats.

While we waited, one of the younger kids (all were grade school aged) tugged on his dad’s coat and the man bent down so that his son could whisper in his ear.

“What was that?”

“Pst ssssp pss pss.”

“Are we playing ‘restaurant’ in a restaurant?”

“Pst pst.”

“Yes, buddy, we are. We are playing the restaurant game at a restaurant. It’s very meta.”

In my completely inexperienced-childless-spinster opinion, this man is dadding correctly. First of all, I love the idea of the restaurant game, which I assume involves training the kids how to act in a restaurant in preparation for moments such as these, where the family goes out for Indian on a Tuesday. Because that’s awesome.

Also, how adorable is it that he used the word “meta” in a conversation with six year old. We don’t talk down to kids in my family, and I think that this is the way it should be done (please review above statement about my being childless and having no right to any opinion whatsoever). Not to teach them about brainy words or academic concepts, per se. Just to expose them to those things. Challenge them and they’ll pick up on what it all means sooner or later.

I once told the twins to stop being willfully obtuse. They were five at the time. “What does that mean?” my nephew asked.

“It’s the thing you are doing where you are pretending not to know what I am talking about. And it is obnoxious.”

Then they carried on being willfully obtuse about being willfully obtuse. Come to think of it, that was pretty “meta,” too. Wish I would have thought of it at the time. I would have pointed it out to them.

There is a big problem with making New Year’s resolutions in January. January is the most difficult month of all to make any changes whatsoever. In fact, January is the most difficult month to just manage all the status quo stuff. January is the month that I want to find a nice dark cave, make a bed out of dirt, sticks and the bones of small mammals, and sleep until I no longer have any fat or muscle mass to sustain me.

Get to the gym, you say?

Fuck you.

Why don’t we make New Year’s resolutions in the spring? Spring, when the coats start to go back into the closets and the air starts to smell like thawing dirt and sex once more seems like a possibility? When the threat of bikini season looms on the not so distant horizon? Spring is when I can consider actively burning calories and eating naught but fruits and grains.

January, though…

I did so well last week. I lit a small fire under my butt and I rode it through Sunday. Then yesterday I had pizza for lunch. And then again for dinner. And then I went to bed at nine. By which I mean eight thirty.

I do realize that “New Year” is the practical time for resolutions, and we probably need the poke in the ass to counter-weigh the effects of January. But dearlordalmighty, it just feels so mean to be set up to fail like this on an annual basis.

To illustrate the way that I feel, imagine that I am the dog in this photo and the kitten represents my hopes and dreams.

Only instead of a couch, I have the comfiest bed in the world. So comfy and so warm, I can crush a mountain of hope and resolve in its folds and just keep on snoring away.

But I’m not ready to be defeated… not quite yet.

Okay, inner cave dwelling bulldog. Time to suck it up and go have a healthy lunch. And then, after work, you are going to take the shrink wrap off of that Jillian Michael’s DVD that you bought with your amazon.com points and your quixotic enthusiasm last week and see if you can, as advertised, have “Killer Buns and Thighs.” And if you kill those buns before they kill you, you can go to bed. Even if it is only six thirty.