Chill the Fuck Out

The only New Year's resolution I've really kept - for years and years - is the one I've never told anyone about. When I thought of it, I was a semi-shallow 17 year old. Now, (slightly) more than 20 years later, I still keep my nails neatly painted (clear counts, okay? My resolution, my rules.)

Now that I've mentioned it, I will probably have a horrible nail accident that prevents me from painting them for the next six months.

Anyway, I don't talk about my resolutions anymore, for the most part. Partly because I tend to keep them so easy and manageable ("I will not let gray show in my hair for at least another 5 years," "I will reorganize the hall closet", "I will stop drinking wine because it gives me a headache") that they don't seem a proper response when someone tells me that her resolution is to run a marathon that year. And partly because I'm superstitious that if I tell everyone then my resolution will fail.

Not that I haven't had plenty resolutions fail anyway. Such as last year's "lose weight" and "stop yelling". So this year one of my resolutions is, "Stop being superstitious about New Year's resolutions".

Another resolution I'm going to share with the 4 of you that still read this blog:

Chill the Fuck Out.

Yep, my resolution is so rebellious that it contains the F word.

Every year, I resolve to be a better mother, a better wife, a better daughter, a better friend. I plan to lose weight (except for 2008, when I planned to at least not gain weight and got pregnant a month later), eat healthier, exercise more, clean the house more, be more organized, take my writing more seriously, manage our limited financial resources better, create interesting projects for my children each day, learn to cook, make more money, learn Spanish, develop a supplemental home curriculum to boost my children's learning, to volunteer at the preschool more and to never yell at my children.

Sure, I"ve made improvements in some of those areas. But mostly, I've just felt like a failure. And failures are not happy people, just in case you didn't know. I know that there are people out there who do all of the above and more. Goddess bless them, it's time to face the fact that I will not be joining their ranks.

Oh, I'm going to keep trying to be better. Much as I might be tempted to give up and turn into Peggy Bundy, I'd be bored in two days weeks. But when I don't succeed, I'm going to chill the fuck out. And when I'm driving myself crazy to match up with the image I have of good mothers/writers/housewives, I'm going to chill the fuck out.

I've started small this week, because I've also finally accepted the fact that I'm better with small steps and not grand gestures. So this week, I've chilled out about the morning. For some reason, no matter how early we get up, I've always felt the need to hurry my kids in the morning. I've been wanting them to dress faster, move faster and eat faster for months (consequently I think that they've started to do things more and more slowly, but that's another post) so that we could get to school on time.

So what if we were grumpy and harassed when I dropped them off? At least I'd fulfilled the good mother checklist of getting them there on time.

On the chill the fuck out approach, I've stoppped hurrying them. I've even stopped setting my alarm, because Lovebug will always wake early and thus so will I. And hearing him play is much nicer than the buzz of my alarm clock. I tell them what to do (and I've hedged my bets by laying out their clothes the night before) and then I just let them do it. I don't rush them. We have conversations and hugs. I don't offer dire warnings of starving until snack time while they talk instead of eating at breakfast.

Here's the strange part: We actually made it to school on time every day this week.

I think I might really like this resolution.