Resolution

My birthday was yesterday.

I have a tradition with myself that each year, I resolve to do one fun thing for a year, to improve myself.

When I turned 30, I resolved to not drink a gin and tonic for an entire year, but instead to order girly drinks at bars. I celebrated my 31st birthday, as I had my 21st, with a g&t, and the main take-away from that experiment was a delightful thing called an amaretto sour.

For several recent years, my resolution has been to not die.

Last year, I resolved to not wear exclusively jeans and sweatshirts, but to try and look decent at least some of the time.

This year, I had a struggle. Do I resolve to try and breathe some life into my moribund writing career? That’s not the kind of thing you can do by sheer force of will — too much depends on luck. I seriously considered making a commitment to not buy anything for a year, but I am just not there at this point, right now.

“Focus on the positive,” I told myself. “What’s good?” There’s a lot to do in my house and garden, but I am going to do that anyway, so resolving to focus on those things is like telling my kids to make as much of a ruckus as they can.

What’s good.

My husband, Chris. He is good. He is so good, in fact, that he is perfect, which is a hell of a lot to live up to.  But he is a fantastic husband and he deserves more credit than he ever gets for his role in this whole surviver thing, plus the part where I’m crazy about him.

I’m going to spend the next year of my life being the best wife I can be. Or at least trying to be.