Having already missed the New Year’s Day  blog entry, I’m already behind.

So, here’s what’s up for the year. These are not resolutions per se. Resolutions are a joke. They are promises we make to ourselves that every knows can – even should – be broken. No, my goals for the year are set in stone. I must not get to 2011 without achieving them.

They are as follows:

1) Get Sonny into a decent high school. My daughters have already sullied the family name at the neighborhood high school. Examples include:

A) Winter 2006: Grace, having received the supporting lead in the school musical as a freshman, decides she should have been Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” and decides to start a MySpace page called “Freshman Against Channtelle,” the senior who did get the lead. It is my first encounter with the school Vice Principal, whose many subsequent calls on a variety of issues lead me to use caller ID to simply pick up the phone and say “Hi Jim. Who did what now and how many days suspension will it be?” Grace is forced to apologize to the cast, and specifically to Channtelle, and is allowed to play the role of the Wicked Witch. In hindsight, it is considered typecasting.

B) Fall 2007: Faith, now a freshman, and Grace, now a junior, get into a fist fight – with each other! Five days suspension are levied as punishment. It doesn’t help.

C) Later Fall 2007 through June 2009: Faith is bullied mercilessly – including being told on Facebook that she should “…just go and kill herself…” – lashes out physically. In one instance, when told her father (my husband – yup – an intact family – barely) is coming to pick her up after being suspended, she yells about an incident a year earlier where he uses her as a mop to clean up spilled milk. Child family services become involved, but Fred is exonerated. I, thankfully, was never accused! The torment ends with Faith clocking a student with a lacrosse stick in gym class. She is whisked off to a local mental institution and spends a week in-patient, five weeks out patient, getting her anger under control.

D) Jan. 2008: One of Faith’s tormenters dies of natural causes (an undetected heart issue), and Faith faces guilt along with additional tormenting from the dead girls friends, who believe Faith put a curse on them. The school is contacted, but is, as usual, useless.

Okay, you get the picture. No local high school for Sonny.

2) Finish my graduate degree. Seems like an easy one, since I have only two courses to go. Unfortunately, one of those courses is a capstone project that needs to be completed by May and it isn’t started. <sigh>

3) Find a new job. Don’t get me wrong – I love my job. But the term ends on December 31, 2010, and I need to find something sooner. Something in the six-figure range would be ideal!

4) Keep Faith on-track. Now a junior (we think), Faith is at a school for emotionally disabled (call it what it is folks – emotionally disturbed!) kids. She is even having trouble there!

5) Get a divorce. Admittedly, this is more of a resolution, as I say it every year, and yet I’m still married to my first husband. Going on 20 years, he doesn’t smoke or do drugs. He doesn’t drink to excess and brings home a decent paycheck on a regular basis. He also doesn’t believe people should have feelings other than anger, and that there is no need for sex at our advanced ages. At 47 (next Wednesday), I happen to disagree. Marriage counseling enters its fifth year shortly.

And away we go!

Good food, good company, lots of dancing, great fun. Brought two of the kids. 13-year-old NC was totally bored and pulled out his Nintendo DS, much to my embarrassment. 18-year-old SG looked beautiful, but refused to dance (“I’m not wearing a sari.”). So I danced – much to THEIR great embarrassment.

How did I manage to raise uptight white kids?

A house in the ‘burbs, an elderly mother and three brothers who live too far away to do much more than provide moral support.

In laws whom I love, brothers-in-law whose wives judge harshly.

Chiggers in my son’s room, a daughter off to college, another daughter clinically depressed , three courses away from a graduate degree, and an unsettled employer budget that may cost me my job.

Scared? Yes. Depressed? Perhaps. Determined to make 2010 the best year of my life?

You bet!

Enter here for the ride of our lives –  if you dare