January 2011: The Follow-Through Fairy

photo by HappyTownUsa

I love New Year's.  Not for the staying up late part or being allowed to eat whatever you want "one more last time", since after-all, you will be starting your diet the next day... but for the good ole sense of renewal!  For the feeling of "I can be better".  For setting aside your normal frustration with your shortcomings and determining to improve.  You see yourself in a new light, one of optimism and of possibilities!

I love this feeling!
Here's where I digress for a moment... I remember having this feeling last year and for some reason, my New Year's resolutions seem to be the same as last year.  Hmmm?!
So this year I've decided I'm having a New and Improved Resolution:  To FOLLOW-THROUGH. I'm rather good at coming up with ideas.  I've got piles of them and piles of started projects to prove it.  What I need is completed projects, results.  I need to see change in myself.  What does that require:  (all together now...) FOLLOW-THROUGH.

So here's what I'm thinking, I need 2 things this coming year that are going to help me.  Really one or the other will do.

First, a new super power.
My kids asked me recently who I would be if I could be a superhero.  I told them that I wanted the super power to stop time.  I would bring my hands together and time would stand still, everyone would be frozen like a statue, even the little dust particles in the air {which I named "Sun's Helpers" as a little girl, incidentally} would stand still.  I could clean up, finish projects, exercise, cook dinner, and do what I needed to do with my children frozen in time and then, voila...I could start time back up again.  Wow, that would be incredible!  Of course they didn't think it was really cool super power.
For some reason I'm thinking that there was a girl named Vickie who had this power on a show I watched as a child, maybe "Small Wonders".  I'm thinking that's not exactly right, someone correct me here.

Photo by MBarberPhotos

Next, the Follow-Through Fairy.
Since we are so good as a society at coming up with fictional creatures that grant us our every wish and bring us gifts and money, I think I might as well come up with my own.  The Follow-Through Fairy.  I think she will become very popular.  She can sprinkle you with her Follow-Through Fairy Dust and suddenly you will have the energy and efficiency to balance your time to complete all of your projects and remain on the path to self-improvement.  Brilliant ideas will suddenly come to your mind and your will-power will be unstoppable.

So the first unfinished project I decided I needed help from the Follow-Through Fairy on this year is my well-participated contest, "Girls Got No Skills" that some of you may have entered ... last July... 2009.  I asked for help with submissions of recipes that this cooking-challenged gal could make for my children now that Mike is no longer the family chef.  I asked for meals that would be easy to make, healthy, and kid-friendly.  Now I would need to add that they could not contain red meat, for Mike's diet restrictions.  So sad, but I need to resume the contest so badly.  Yes life has been crazy with having a baby, Mike and my Daddy being sick, Mike's new work schedule dot dot dot, but I've got to figure out how to put yummy, healthy meals on the table for my children.  The saddest part is that they don't realize that they are deprived of normal family meals.  Case in point:  Feeling that amazing New Year's Empowerment today I asked Owen to write down the boys' things they would want me to make for dinner- any meal at all- determined to learn how to make it for them.  Here are the boys' top meals: oatmeal, corn dogs, breakfast shakes, and Malt-O-Meal with Chex, Cheerios, and quesadillas also coming in among the favorites.  Mike and I were dying.  Laughing but oh so sad.  My boys don't even know what "a meal" is.  Really I've tried-lots of times even with 4 food groups in one meal:-), but I haven't been consistent, not enough FOLLOW-THROUGH:-)

So I ask for your support in encouraging me this year to complete some of my projects and make those changes that I want to see in myself.  I have such good intentions!  Really I do.