"New Year, New You" Can Kiss My Grits

I have to confess that I'm writing this on an overcast, snowy day, on a Friday when my son has attended precisely zero days of school this week. Maybe, just maybe, I might be slightly manic, but here, on this day in the end of January, I've hit my ceiling with the bullshit "new year, new you" promotions plastered on the edges my web browser. 

It's January. It's snowing. It's beautiful and cold and everything has stopped.

I want to eat all the things. I want to eat oatmeal cookies for breakfast. I want to eat veggie chili and mashed potatoes, and my husband and I are sparring over left-over Indian food. Popcorn will happen later, with tea and dark chocolate.

And it's fine. It's all fine. In fact, it's pretty damn fantastic. New year, new me. Snow days are snow days, and most days are not. All I can do on any of those days is take care of my body and the bodies of the people I love in best way I know how. And right now, with ten inches of snow out our windows, the best thing we can do for those bodies is go roll in mounds of snow, come home, curl up, warm up, and eat something real, with substance, something that will leave us wholly satisfied.

I somehow missed the glut of diets and fitness schemes around New Year's this year. I was sharing a small hotel room with my husband and 4-year-old in the days surrounding New Year's Eve, so I didn't get any time to sit around watching a bunch of grown-ups on TV pick apart their year-gone-by and wring their hands about the magnificent or terrifying 365 days on the horizon.

I was busy with Team Umizoomi, Denver's Natural History Museum, and total amazement at the recreational weed phenomenon dotting the street corners of Colorado. I was living, walking, moving, and breathing, not thinking, dieting, plotting and scheming. 

This year I am living, in my body, not outside of it... the start of a promising year.

Jellybean, the tiny snowman