Some people like making New Year’s resolutions. Some people don’t. I know this because I don’t like making them, and my wife does.
Of course, it seems as if she only likes making resolutions for me – I suspect that’s why resolutions are so enjoyable for her.
I would never make resolutions for someone else, and most certainly not my wife. After all, I love her just the way she is, and that includes her hair and weight and all of her clothes, which I believe are all perfect and couldn’t be better, even though I spend lots of time each day thinking about her. And only her. Right, honey?
Anyway, this column is about me and not her, although it’s her resolution for me that I’m writing about. And that resolution is: I resolve that my husband will get out of his rut.
Now, saying someone is in a “rut” generally isn’t considered to be a compliment. And her definition of “rut” seems to track the dictionary’s: a fixed, routine procedure or course of action, especially one regarded as dull and unrewarding.
Now I can understand why someone, such as my wife, would think that watching sports on television most weeknights and weekends could be considered rut-worthy behavior that should be changed, particularly during a sports season other than baseball, which is clearly the one sport worth all of that time in front of the tube.
And I can understand why someone, such as my wife, would think that going to the same three restaurants over and over and over and over again could be considered rut-worthy behavior, even though I’m convinced there are really only three kinds of restaurants: cheap fried-food restaurants, expensive fried-food restaurants, and restaurants that don’t serve much fried food but are too expensive to visit more than once a year.
And I can understand why someone, such as my wife, would think that wearing the same pair of blue jeans and the same t-shirt from Friday at 6 p.m. until Sunday at 11 p.m. (with time off for the blue jeans while sleeping and attending church) would not be acceptable behavior in many fashionable circles, which I don’t spend much time traveling in anyway because once you’re in a circle like that the centrifugal force of all that fashion and money makes it too hard to find a way out.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I will work hard this year to escape from the “rut” my wife says I’m in, all the while being thankful I’m married to someone wonderful like her who would never dream of doing something rut-worthy herself, such as buying enough candles that when laid end-to-end they would stretch to Plano – and those are just the ones I know about.
No, that definitely would not be considered rut-worthy behavior.
