On the twelfth day of Christmas...

...the final picture:

We hope your holiday season was wonderful! Now we are faced with January...new diets (I need to lower my cholesterol about 30-50 points in the next 4 months or so), new resolutions to keep, and yes, even the possibility of ANOTHER ICE STORM tomorrow night! BRING IT ON!!! We are ready for it now...not that I ever want to go 10 days without power again, but just in case...

I don't really do much in the way of "limitation" resolutions because I don't ever stick to them. Instead of NOT doing something, try a resolution to do something different. A few years ago, I resolved to go back and read the "classics" - you know, your high school reading list. As I read each book, I purchased it in hardcopy thinking I would have a wonderful library by the time EJ hit middle school. Sadly, I've not read much of what I intended - maybe a dozen or so titles. Perhaps I'll try to find more time to read this year. Or at least reading something other than good children's literature. Or something other than the book I'm wrapping up now (Artie Lange's Too Fat to Fish).

As for the cholesterol-lowering thing, I did a lot of reading over the holidays to look for super foods to eat in this category. Grapefruit are on the list, despite the fact that you can't eat grapefruit with most cholesterol statins (I'm not taking those...yet). And beans. Lots of beans. In fact, one healthy cookbook that I have said you can lower your cholesterol by about 60 points in 3 months if you eat a cup and a half of beans every day. I don't think so. And of course, oats are good too, but I only like them in cereal (not hot oatmeal) or oatmeal cookies, which probably don't count. I suppose it would help if I moved a bit more too. I did get a nice pedometer from Santa that I should start using.