It’s time to tell you that my “skip sugar” resolution for the month of December paid off. Three pounds lost. Try it. You may find a little thing—a no candy, cake, pie, or cookie deal—could work for you.

However, all is not well. At my yearly physical last week, my doctor told me, even if there’s no family history, I am entering the decade when my age is a risk factor for heart disease. Comforting, isn’t it. He asked about my diet and what I did for exercise. If I don’t downsize the former and upsize the latter, I may have to consider medications for those cholesterol and blood pressure numbers that have been creeping up. With great haste, I assured him I was serious about lowering both those numbers, and that I was ultra serious about not taking medication, and, yes, I was determined to follow through with diet modifications and walking. So I staved off the prescriptions for now with his promise of a review again after a few months.

If you didn’t hop on my skip sugar train, maybe after your holiday scale demise, you’d like to hop on my jetliner to lower my numbers over the next six months. June can be our goal!

Aside from persistent health-based resolutions, I have two sets of resolutions I’d like to share. First, a literary editor at the Chicago Tribune suggests a list of twelve classic books to read. As I scanned the list, I found myself feeling more and more troubled. I’d read only one. And so I could fault my life once again of eating, drinking, and sleeping nursing. I am happy though that the book club in my building usually builds in a classic each year. In April, we’ll be reading J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. For many it’s a review; for me it’s a first-time read.

Second, a clinical psychologist blogged the next set of resolutions. At first read, this post, To Your Good (Mental) Health: One Hundred Resolutions for the New Year, appears brief, concise, simplistic. Ponder awhile, though, and you will be startled at the depth of each thought. Imagine, if each of us adopted these resolutions, the world could be a more content, more compassionate, more altruistic, more trusting, more thankful place. More of a lot of good things.

One more thing—my fingers are sliding and tapping around these holidays with new technology. An iPhone and a Kindle have taken over my free time. The day before these were to arrive, I told my husband, “After tomorrow, our lives will never be the same.” Looking a tad worried, he peered over his newspaper. “Why?” I thought about saying something drastic like “I’m thinking of going back to school” (he’s threatened no more degrees) or even worse, “I’m thinking of taking a year-long solo trip around the world”. But I stayed in reality and addressed the problems, and then the joys, of turning our lives over to touch technology.

Wish us well. And I wish you well this year, whether it be with improvements in your health; your reading habits; your every day thoughts, feelings, and actions; and/or the things you promised to yourself last night at midnight.

And, just what were those things??? Document them here!