The Nicest Thing a Husband Can Say To a Wife

My husband made me wonderfully happy two days ago. We were buying toys for the kids (hockey sticks! pajamas! calendars!) while looking at of mounds basement clutter that was made up largely of the Toys of Christmas Past (a small trampoline! a plastic bowling set! Legos and more Legos!).

My husband is a good husband and a kind man, but not someone who happily throws out Things That Might Be Useful Some Day to Some One. This explains the rusted shut pipe wrench in the tool room that he found on a construction site decades ago.

So, when he said IT, I got shivers of love and joy.

Not to delay the momentous moment any more, my darling husband held up a small screwdriver with a busted tip, and he said, “I think I’ll throw this out.”

I showered him with kisses. He was a bit surprised. I hugged him with joy. He hugged back suspiciously. I told him I never loved him more and that he was the finest husband ever. He tossed the screwdriver in the trash with a sidelong look at me.

My mom, on the other hand, said: “You don’t have to throw it out. You could just file down the tip to fix it.”

This, of course, explains her basement.

So these are my resolutions for the year. I’m starting the day after Christmas because I’m on vacation this week, and what better time to start resolutions than a week on vacation?

The resolutions have to do with the same struggles that every middle-aged parent with a job has: lose weight, exercise and cut down on clutter. The fourth is less universal: make the garden look less like the side lot of a junk yard.

Here’s how I’m going to do it: I’m going to eat less butter and sugar and make fewer trips to the office vending machine when I’m stressed over a news story. I’m going to make sure that I always bring a healthy but satisfying lunch and always have nuts and fruit available at my desk. I will eat the nuts in moderation.

There will, sadly, be less cheese and no alcohol between now and Valentines Day. I’ll make exceptions for New Year’s Eve and my birthday.

There will be more exercise. I’ll find time to weight train at least once a week and do a stretch class twice a month. There will be cardio exercise twice a week, until I score an elliptical machine when the number will rise to six. With my youngest now 10, I’m on the cusp of being able to leave the house to go to the gym without worrying about tearful telephone calls from a frightened daughter.   

If I succeed, I’m hoping that my suddenly matronly waistline and, even worse, matronly arms will disappear. I’ll never look like the athletic lovelies in the Title IX catalog but I’ll make a run at it. And a thinner me will mean that when I try to do the splits (HA!) and put my chest on the floor (double HA!) that the main obstacle will no longer be a stiff ring of belly fat.

Now for the clutter. I resolve that between now and Jan. 1, 2013, I will dispose of 15 things a week. Books that I have moved from apartment to apartment to house for 20 years without cracking the spine will be either given away or recycled. Three copies of Shakespeare plays? Two will disappear. T.S. Eliot’s dull “Cocktail Party”? Gone. Earrings that I never should have purchased will be donated. That includes the ones that make my ears itch. Toys that sentimental children outgrew years ago but want to keep will be either disposed of or donated, depending on their condition. Chutes and Ladders? Gone. Go Fish for toddlers? Gone.

Last, our tiny yard will improve. I’ve been told that my big tree--a butternut I think--needs to have a less compacted yard and I aim to poke holes in the lawn to help it out. I also aim to replace a peach tree that never produced with a fig tree that will.

The tomatoes this year will have a proper netting to deter squirrels. The grape vine, which feeds cardinals but not us, may go in favor of climbing green beans. And we will take the time to pick the green beans and eat them, unlike last year.

Likewise, there will be lettuce that we actually take time to use for salads. And jalapeno peppers. And there will be morning glories, because there’s nothing better than a morning glory climbing a ragged wood fence.

I’ll use this biweekly column to keep myself honest. Every two weeks, I’ll report on progress. I’ll report on weight lost or not lost, exercise done or missed and items disposed of. And I’ll report on what I’ve done to improve my yard.

I invite any readers with the same struggles to join me in all or in part. And let’s do this in a light-hearted way. Let’s not obsess about weight but do our best and if we fall down on the job, we’ll just try again.

After all, what’s the cost of failure? Our weight, health and clutter will stay the same. And that’s not bad either, After all, we already have wonderful lives.  

So, join me, won’t you?