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.