After a quick review of last year, I am happy to report that I cleared New Year’s without breaking any of my three main resolutions for 2022.
They were: - To not eat liver any time during the year.
- To not visit Kazakhstan - To lose some weight.
I always include the anti-liver resolution because I know I can keep it, and there is a certain comfort in knowing that I am guaranteed to keep at least one resolution. It implies the kind of selfcontrol and discipline that I always wanted.
But, frankly, liver makes me ill. I have it eaten it twice in my life, once willingly and once not.
My mother loved liver, especially chicken liver, and would fry a batch from time to time. It always smelled so bad that I never tried it until one time when I was maybe 10 or so.
She offered me a piece with the old “just try a bite and see if you like it” gambit.
Fortunately, the back door was four steps from the kitchen table, and I made it outside before ralphing.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving 1975, when I was stationed at Webb Air Force Base, in Big Spring, Texas.
The Air Force had just built a new mess hall and opened it on Thanksgiving weekend to much fanfare.
They had the cooks and servers in dress uniforms and a big ice sculpture of a cornucopia on a central table.
The Thanksgiving food looked delicious and I was prepared to grossly over-eat on turkey, dressing and sweet potatoes.
The dressing was especially appealing - nice and dry and you could smell the extra sage several feet away.
As I went through the line, the server either didn’t ask if I wanted giblet gravy or I misunderstood, but I wound up with a dipperful.
My first forkful was a big hunk of dressing dripping with gravy, which included a wellcamoflauged piece of liver.
Again, I made it outside just in time. That was coming up on 48 years ago, and I will be a happy camper if I can go another 48 years without eating liver.
As to Kazakhstan, I don’t have any particular problems with it, but it just seems like a good place not to go to.
And the weight. The last few years, I have watched the scales creep steadily higher, so I resoluted, to coin a word, to drop a few pounds.
And I did. I was down 20 pounds at one point, but the holidays tripped me and I closed the year at -17.
Most of it was due to adhering more closely to a diabetic-friendly diet and avoiding biscuits and potatoes, but I’ll take it, and I’ll be delighted if I can drop another 17 in 2023.
And now it is time to post my resolutions for this year.
I am going to keep the same three - not eating liver, not going to Kazakhstan, losing some avoirdupois - and I am going to roll the dice on a fourth one.
This is a serious one, and it’s one I tried a few years ago.
In 2023, I resolve to do at least 10 good things or acts of kindness for a specific person I have chosen without letting anyone know I was the benefactor.
I discovered a few years ago that anonymous acts of generosity or kindness are the best ones because the recipient will spend time trying to figure out who showed them favor.
Having the whole world as a list of possibilities lifts their spirits even more than the acts.