Resolutions to keep - if I remember

Happy New Year!

My friend Guy Clifton wrote a great column about all those friends we've lost in the past year, but though I knew some of them well, I can't bring myself to do the same.

Instead I think I'll bring up a dirty word - resolution.

Yep, I said it. Nope, I've never kept any that I can remember. But that's the beauty of being me. My mom once told me geese have no memory and each day they wake up to a new life. I'm not quite as bad. I'm pretty sure the guy I went to bed with last night and woke up with this morning is my husband. But then again I may be wrong.

I tend to remember things the way I want to. Or leastways the way I remember them. My brothers remember nearly everything about growing up, yet I remember nearly nothing. So it makes keeping a resolution kind of difficult.

My memory is so bad my father gave me one of those organizer sets for Christmas. It's monogrammed so I can tell it's mine. There is a 2004 photo album so that if I remember to take pictures, remember to develop them and then remember to put them away I can go back one day and remember my life.

There are three-day organizers so that if I remember to write stuff down, remember to look at the organizer and remember to watch the clock I may make it to an appointment. But forget it if you think I'll be on time. It's genetic.

And there is a journal. So when I get a thought for a column, or some other brilliant piece of intellectual nougat that I'm prone to from time to time, if I remember to write it down I can remember it.

I think I was born to be a journalist, because I'm forced to write things down so that when I forget them I can at least go back and find them - sometimes - and remember them.

So, now that I'm armed with every memory tool known to mankind, including a cell phone datebook, and a computer program that comes complete with pop-up reminders, I'm going to change my life.

I resolve to:

- Stop eating chips for breakfast - every day.

- Stop drinking my full body-weight in diet soda every other day.

- Stop carrying my full water bottle into and out of work each day.

- Stop driving around with my gym bag in my car.

- Start taking the gym bag out of the car and into the gym.

- Quit living under the belief that I can get ready for work in 20 minutes.

- Stop viewing the snooze button as an excuse to stay in bed. It'll go off again. And again, after all.

- Give up the illusion that I need glasses only to drive.

- Give up the notion that more chocolate is the answer to ANYTHING.

- Do some research to prove my theory they are making pant sizes smaller.

All humor aside, though there are some things I'd like to finish in 2004.

I'd like to:

- Go skiing again. I haven't tried since knee surgery.

- Finish the front half of my garden.

- Ride my bike.

- Paint the inside of my house.

- Get new window coverings and get them up.

- Put down new flooring throughout the no-one's-touched-it-in-two-decades house I live in.

- Put up new cabinet doors and redo my kitchen countertops.

- Decide once and for all if I really want an island in the middle of my lawn.

I'll even have to tackle a few things I MUST do in 2004 that I'm really not looking forward to.

- I'll have to survive after my daughter leaves for college a year early.

- I'll have to pay back my student loans to take out more for her.

- I need to stay in better touch with my friends who are now all finally having their babies.

- Spend more time with my family - those at home and those close to home and those not so close to home.

- Most of all though I really want to do a better job of remembering. And I suppose if that means I have to write everything down I guess I'll just have to remember to go buy some more pens.

Kelli Du Fresne is features editor for the Nevada Appeal . Contact her at kdufresne@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1261.