NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

I found these New Year’s Resolutions that I wrote down when my kids were ages nine and eleven:

These truths are held to be self-evident – evident to anyone who has attempted to raise a kid. No family has ever been or ever will be a democracy. THE PARENT HAS THE LAST WORD

With that off my chest, let me make a few New Year’s resolutions. I resolve that, under my roof:

• No one will sass his or her mother
• Everyone will eat his or her veggies
• Mom will get the computer upon demand
• People who make obnoxious noises at the dinner table will be cast into a dungeon, not to emerge until said dungeon is cleaned up. (That last part’s just a perk for Mom.)
• Changes in any routine must be cleared in advance with the monarch of this kingdom (i.e., Mom)
• Freedom of name-calling is hereby removed from the Freedom of Speech U.S. Constitutional amendment.
• Name-calling will be punishable by anything handy.

These are laws that must be accepted for survival, kind of like the law of gravity. My point is this: A FAMILY IS NOT A DEMOCRACY! Someone has to have the last word. If it’s the child, odds are that the child will grow up unstable, and the parent’s odds of going insane become dangerously greater. If it’s the parent, then the child has better odds of growing up. Period.

Cooking for Thanksgiving

My niece says the Thanksgiving meal is hard to cook when you only have three people because you have to cook everything yourself.

May I add this: Cooking for eighteen or so (I lost count) is a MESS! Don’t get me wrong. I love to cook, and I love to get the family together. But here’s the deal.

On Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I had to re-arrange the house. This forced me to clean it. Then I got all my stuff in the kitchen laid out and ready, and found I had to go to the store for more stuff.

The dinner went well. There were lots of leftovers. I sent food home with everyone. There were still leftovers. I stuck two pies in the freezer for Christmas, then put all sorts of food in pans and finished stuffing the freezer tighter than the turkey.

Next I cleaned gravy pots and potato bowls, stuffing pans and bread pans, four cranberry sauce dishes (one per table and one for the feeding line), relish dishes, butter dishes, etc etc etc.

On Friday I put the house back the way it was before the big event. It seemed like I had forgotten something, but everything looked spic and span.

Saturday I found the turkey roaster on top of the refrigerator, with all the grease and gunk still in it! It's a good thing I enjoy Thanksgiving.

TOASTMASTERS

I’m a pretty old mouse and have conquered lots of public speaking challenges in my life, like teaching, and leading discussions. But many years ago I was so shy I couldn’t lead a bunch of two-year-olds at a birthday party. So I joined Toastmasters, and, surprisingly, I loved it! (I’m very competitive. You can be shy and competitive. Or at least you can if you’re Hugh Mouse.)

Every time I went to a meeting I leapt over a new hurdle. The first was the night I finally remembered to address my audience. I stood proudly and said, “Mr. Table Topics Master, Fellow Toastmasters, and Guests.” Then I launched into my statement – which fell flat, of course.

The next hurdle was when I made it to the green light at Table Topics time. That means I gave a full one-minute answer. You can’t just stand up, answer a question and sit down. (That would be more interesting sometimes.) No. You have to talk for a full minute. Stretch it out. BS your way through it – which I have never learned to do. (Could have learned from my daughter if I had really worked on it. It just comes naturally to her.)

We had a vocabulary word at each meeting, and everyone who had an opportunity to speak tried to use it. It isn’t easy to cleverly figure out how to use THE WORD when you have a couple dozen eyes focusing on you and you are trying to control your pounding heart, sweating palms and racing voice. I remember the night I did it. I zoomed into the driveway threw open the door, kissed all my family (who were glued to the TV) and proclaimed, “I said THE WORD! ‘Foible!’ Isn’t that a great word? Foible?”

Oh well. It was big to me.

MEMORY DRUGS

Here’s a story I wrote in when I was 48. Now I'm 63 and, unfortunately, no better!

I read in the paper, in three different articles, that they have come up with a drug to enlarge brain cells, one to shrink prostate glands, and one to make cholesterol disappear. Gee, I hope they don’t mix them up.

The one about the brain cells was supposed to help the memory of us aging mice. How in the world do they know if a mouse’s memory improves? Do they ask him what day it is, and who the president is?

The mice who made a nest in our air conditioner compressor had good memories – good enough to scurry back to the nest hundreds of times to build a big mess! They chewed through wires and fuses, shorted out a capacitor and coil, and made the transformer burn out. I guess their memories were impaired after that!

Being a mouse myself, I shouldn’t be so hard on the little guys. Especially when their memory goes. Mine is already going. Last week I saw a note on my calendar (in my own handwriting) that said “Wednesday, 11:30, Eye doctor.” I knew I did not have an appointment yet because I distinctly remembered they had said they would wait and call me for an appointment when my contacts came in. I figured this must be an appointment I had made for my husband. However, I did call my eye doctor to ask when the contacts were coming in, only to learn that the contacts had come, they had called me, and I had made the appointment. The gal on the phone laughed, “Your memory’s good. It’s just short!”

So if there’s a memory drug for aged mice, maybe I can apply for it – if I remember to.