Archive for December, 2008

Every year I make resolutions, because I like the idea of a fresh start, a definitive place to start, a moment you can point to and say yes, there. That is the starting line, and here is where we’ll begin. Every year about this time, I look back at the resolutions I had made (because I have a memory like a drunken sieve) and I think oh, those were good ideas! Too bad I didn’t actually, you know, work on any of that stuff. Too bad this year was exactly like last year which was exactly like the year before, in terms of Self-Improvement.

In terms of everything else, this year, and last year, and the year before have been amazing rollery coaster kinds of adventures, during which, if we have to be honest and fair, I haven’t had much time to think about esoteric improvement schemes.

My boyfriend calls me gullible, and he is not wrong. He has me believing things so very, very easily–a list of things that is, in fact, too embarrassing to reveal, because it is true that I am so very gullible. I prefer to think of it as “trusting,” and “filled with the belief that the people around me who love me would not ever lie to me for the sake of comedy because that would just be cold-hearted and cruel,” but he weirdly just will not buy into that world view and I think it’s because of that chip in his head that he told me about.

There are some beliefs I hold that I have never considered myself gullible for believing, though. Stuff like “A poinsettia will kill your cat dead, so do not have one,” and “All the heat goes out the top of your head, so wear a hat!” and “Drinking a lot of water and eating McDonald’s breakfast will fix the night after a whole barrel full of eggnog.” As it turns out, these things are not true, and neither are the truths that so many people had previously held to be so self-evident, that sugar will make you crazy-nutball banging off the walls, and if you eat after, say, 7:00 p.m., you will get very fat and then die, possibly of suicide around the holidays, which is when everyone rushes to knock themselves off, you know.

Since I moved to Utah, I have been inviting people to come visit Utah. Come visit Utah! I say. It has got fry sauce and mountains! Mormons and me! You will love Utah! You will come because of a sense of obligation and because you feel a little bit sorry for me, the way that I live in Utah, but you will want to stay for the “scones” (deep-fried sugary bread) and how cute I look in my giant white down jacket that looks more like a comforter and less like an article of clothing.

Weirdly, I wasn’t really taken up on my offer, and I can’t imagine why. When Mo Pie and I talked about seeing Twilight–we share a sick fascination for its magnificent awfulness and balls-to-the-wall determination to be thoroughly offensive in every possible way–we said how cool it would be, if she came to visit and we saw the movie and we had a weekend where I could go look, here is my town and my house and my life and how things are for me. I spend a lot of time talking and writing and telling about how it is and where I live and what I do, but I have had the urge and the desire and the need–I don’t even know why, and I wish I did–to take someone around and show them and say look, this is what I am talking about, do you see?

I’m lucky if I’ve resolved to get out of bed every day, and stick to it. But there’s something about this time of year that makes me think that Things Are Possible and Hope Is In The Air and All Wishes Can Come True, so I am going to make some resolutions for the month of December that are more kind of like wishes and hopes and beautiful dreams that maybe will be realized if Santa pays me a visit, or if maybe I put down my figgy pudding and get on it.

Plus, it’s a busy season, full of busy-ness and many things to do, so probably making an actual list of the doing that needs to be done (instead of having a vague and amorphous Plan in my head that amounts, in the end, to me drinking a lot of eggnog and wondering if there’s some place I was supposed to have been right now) would be a smart and useful thing to do, am I right?