If New Year's resolutions were a pastry item, I think wafting from the kitchen would be a big, silky, chocolate souffle that as soon as you took it from the oven of good intentions, would deflate completely into a pancake of February disappointment.

Since I like my dessert moist and fluffy, I usually don’t make grand resolutions. However, that does not mean that I don’t appreciate the constant need for fresh starts and self-improvement. I guess I just choose a smaller scale in which to start.

For instance, perhaps 2008 will be the year I abandon such trivialities that bog my mind down on a daily basis. Perhaps I will finally solve the small mysteries of life. Like why bicyclists insist on riding in the road like a car when there is a perfectly safer sidewalk right next to them? Do they believe that their Live Strong yellow rubber wrist bands deflect SUV car fenders? Or are spandex shorts suddenly responsible for taking a Schwinn from 0-60 in less than 4 hours? A quandary to be certain.

And maybe this is the year I’ll figure out what ceviche is. Or learn to put on a crib sheet. Or get through car line in less than an hour. Or understand spontaneous combustion. And Sudoku.

Maybe I will finally address why I still feel like a 14 year old girl in the locker room after all of these years. Or not. I will probably just rejoice that I have perfected dressing discreetly behind a 4 x 6 inch metal door. I think that after years of hiding Victoria’s Secrets under a T-shirt and gym towel, I could probably escape a strait jacket underwater faster than Houdini.

I may soon well give up my proclivity to become Amish as well. In 2007 I bundled our phone, cable TV and Internet into one service. Now every time an ibis passes gas, we churn butter by candlelight and draw out YouTube videos on a chalkboard. This New Year’s Eve we’re going to party like it’s 1799…

And every year I seem to fall for the latest “miracle” fruit or vegetable. Remember when the cranberry cured leprosy and the loquat promoted world peace? Well 2007 seemed to be the year of the pomegranate. This hideous flavor is in everything from seedless jam to dryer sheets. To do my part for the food pyramid I’ve incorporated it into my martinis, but frankly even there it still tastes awful. I think I will therefore resume my letter-writing campaign to champion the prickly pear as the next “in” fruit. I hear it can do your taxes. (Hopefully we can leave the pomegranate with the forgotten kiwi in rehab and a tell-all book. I hear the apple has a biting expose on corruption the Agriculture Department. It alleges they are rotten to the core.)

So it looks like that chocolate soufflé is much loftier than I certainly have the ambition for this coming year. A box of Oreos and a can of Readi-Whip are much more my speed.

After all, I am not out to change the world, just control my husband’s.

©2007 Tracey Henry

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