2012: I resolve to resolve

Just because I’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution doesn’t mean I can’t continue to make them. In 2012, I resolve to:

• Develop a healthy late-night addiction, like novel-writing
• Now that I know how to receive a text, learn how to send one
• Become reacquainted with vegetables
• Attend Mexican wrestling matches more often
• Fire myself from my detective agency, so I can collect unemployment
• Buy a paella dish and learn how to make it
• Accept every writing assignment that comes my way
• Be first in line when Skrine Chops reopens
• Donate something besides matzo ball soup to the food pantry
• Write a history of Forest Park
• Play chess more often
• Pre-eat before going to restaurants to free up my mouth for drinking and talking
• Finally get the low-down on Forest Park’s haunted Victorian
• Find out if my late aunt’s hideous lamp might be a priceless antique
• Complete the first draft of a Haymarket play by May Day
• Read to my grandson – he just loves the Tribune business section
• Get some help for my out-of-control grocery-shopping habit
• Find my reading glasses
• Watch every Bulls game in its entirety, no matter how big their lead is
• Finally gain that elusive 10 pounds
• Quit at the top of my game by abandoning my career as a concert pianist
• Find a teaching job that only requires a GED
• Revive the internationally acclaimed Forest Park History Tour
• Always be there to help out my family and my editor
• Learn how to shower in the dark, or get bathroom light switch replaced
• Check with adult daughter, before discarding her “blankie.” It still has some soothing silky border left
• Break-in new arctic boots
• Hire someone else to teach the teenager to drive
• Take a real vacation, as opposed to a long weekend
• Add some swing to the Sabbath, by attending big band jazz on Sunday nights at FitzGerald’s
• Re-read my favorite book The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
• Help residents with their history inquiries
• Shop and dine in Forest Park whenever possible, depending on the specials
• Learn to type with all 10 fingers, or take early retirement with carpal tunnel syndrome.