Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

New Year’s Resolutions

by Sara Peterson-Davis

I am sitting here at my computer on what is, for me, the most depressing day of the year.

The holidays are over, there’s still two and a half months of winter left and the television, newspapers and magazines are filled with commercials touting weight loss products and news stories about how I’m never going to be able to keep any of the resolutions I may make for the New Year.

This could really get me down. But I’m an optimist and I figure if the first day of the year is the most depressing, there’s nowhere else to go but up from here.

In the same spirit, I’ve decided to prove all those experts wrong by making a few New Year’s resolutions. The trick is these are resolutions I’m almost certain I can keep.

So here I go, in 2007 I promise to:

1) Swear off Kentucky Fried Chicken’s most popular menu items – the Mashed Potato Bowl. I will resist all the mashed potatoes; chicken strips and corn drizzled with KFC’s signature home-style gravy and sprinkled with cheese.

2) Ignore the on-going feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell. Although, I will continue to wonder which will be voted America’s most annoying human being.

3) Sing and dance “The Beer Barrel Polka” whenever my kids start bickering in public.

4) Eat too many fun-sized Snickers, Three Musketeers and Hershey Kisses on every major and minor candy holiday, including Texas Independence Day and Casimir Pulaski Day.

5) Find room for another four-legged furry thing in our home.

6) Forget every three months to exchange the furnace filter, change the oil in my car and check the freshness dates on all the half-filled containers shoved to the back of the fridge.

7) Hit the snooze button at least three times each morning.

8) Freak out whenever my pre-teen son turns the conversation to bodily functions at the dinner table.

9) Refuse to ignore the eye-rolling and heavy sighed “Motherrr!” that are already coming from my soon-to-be 8-year-old daughter.

10) Like most Americans fight global warming whenever it doesn’t conflict with driving my car wherever I please.

11) Consume too many preservatives, trans fats and hydrogenated oils simply because I don’t have time to read anywhere, let alone the grocery store.

12) Always have the lowest score on any video game found in my home.

Well, there they are a dozen guilt-free, easy-to-keep resolutions for 2007. This New Year is looking brighter already.

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