I’m not a New Year’s Resolution type of person. Change is made up of a series of small steps that permanently alter routines. Change does not come from a drunken, sleep-deprived pledges.
At the same time, I feel fat after the holidays. I ate way too many little cookies and drank too many glasses of wine. A small army of guests marched through my house leaving a trail of Trisket crumbs. Over-stuffed cabinets were opened to locate the fancy dishes and large platters. Another hundred pictures were uploaded onto the computer.
ENOUGH!!
I’m back to the gym routine. I have a fridge full of vegetables. The wine and cheese are gone and won’t be replaced for a while. But I’ve done a whole lot more than that.
Maybe because the holidays were so long this year, my road to repentance has been especially thorough. Kitchen cabinets have been sorted out. Closets purged. I organized my hard drive and synced all my devices. (That was a biggie.) A gorgeous 4 terabyte hard drive is resting on my desk backing up my files at this moment. I am Sparta.
I’ll do some lifestyle posts throughout the week. I feel very Gwyneth Paltrow.

Change does not come from a drunken, sleep-deprived pledges.
Well, marriage is a change.
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I’m feeling old because of heel pain. My Achilles tendon apparently decided to turn into bone in order to stop me from running. I forget the Latin term. To try to heal it, one of the medications I’m taking is nitroglycerin, which makes me feel really old because it’s what they gave my dad for his heart. However, I can now walk down the stairs in the morning without putting all my weight on the bannister and one foot.
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Plantar fascitis? Heelus spurus? I first started getting that when bicycling back when I was young and free and living in Brooklyn. Then I started running a few years ago, and bam, it was ba-ack. There was that lovely time the doctor tried to give me a cortisone shot in my foot and I kicked the syringe across the room–sheer reflex. If you can avoid it, don’t allow anyone to put a needle in your foot.
I just got over the cold from hell and now have to be back at work in 90 minutes. Happy New Year!
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I’ve had plantar fascitis. This is less painful but much more persistent. It’s like a heel spur, but at the back of the heel instead of the bottom.
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Ugh! MH, I sympathize. I just got over tendonitis in my left ankle and now have it in my right ankle. My left knee still hurts from compensating for the ankle when going down stairs. Getting older sucks.
This year my resolution is to eat out more. Last year it was to go to more concerts.
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bj?
It was the pain in other joints that finally got me to seek medical care. I was feeling it in my hips. I should probably have stretched more and not run the second half marathon.
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no, not me this time. But, the second anonymous is me.
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I have never been a runner, but also have knee and ankle pain. I might ask about it someday at the doctor, and probably shouldn’t just assume that I’m old and nothing will ever get better.
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The anonymous is me
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Ooh on the productivity. I sat down to type at my desktop computer and was pleased to be back to my big screens and real keybaord and mouse, in spite of the rain and darkness and the missing ocean. I hope to purge my overstuffed and finally return the Thanksgiving platters to their storage location this week. Congratulations on the backups!
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overstuffed cabinet. I managed to mostly not overstuff my body.
(and, that was me, bj)
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I feel exactly the same as Laura, fat from cookies and wine. But it was worth it. We have one last holiday get-together tonight, then it’s back to the gym and 172 lbs.
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Did you get to the point where there were no more cookies, and you thought, “Where are the cookies? Damn it, the cookies are gone!”
Just me then? 😉
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I did a New year’s 5K, then did another one two days later. Signed up for two more during January. Feeling virtuous. I’ve read that you’re more likely to stick to resolutions the more specific they are. One of mine is not to take the elevator in my office building at all this year. Sounds easy now, but I tend to do things like take several books out of the library and then take the elevator up to my office. Ask me in March how it’s going.
Being all Gwyneth Paltrow is nice and all, but just make sure you don’t do any of that unconscious uncoupling or whatever it’s called this year . .. .
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How do you recommend one purge closets? Anything not worn in the last year?
Has anyone purged a spouse’s closet, and managed to retain the spouse? I’m itching to deep-six some of my husband’s shirts, holes and all, but I worry that might not go over well.
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Hah. I would be proud of a closet purging in which I got rid of clothes not worn in the last decade. Maybe I’ll try.
I doubt that spouses closets can be purged. Mine recently resurrected a muscle shirt tee we bought on our first trip to Hawaii, in 1989.
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I purge all family closets, in a way. I simply leave a pile in one bedroom of things that are bound for Goodwill. This pile mysteriously grows larger – my husband and both teenaged girls will throw things in the pile. Once it’s tall enough to fall over I transfer it to the trunk of my car, where it seems to age another three months before I remember to drop it off.
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I have done cycles of mini purges and waited to see if there was any uproar (or upset or mild query about missing shirts) before actually disposing of the purged items. Still have the spouse.
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Nothing like an injury to show you that you can, too, make time for exercise–even if that exercise is now physical therapy.
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Just get a dog. As personal trainers, they are relentless.
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Yes to that! Standard poodle puppy that we named Pepper arrived in August after a year of lobbying by our nine year old. BEST thing evah.
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No way to skip a walk, I cannot resist the sad faces.
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Kudos! We indulged a bit over the two weeks of holidays. Now it’s back to the Primal diet and upping my daily walking back at the U (when it’s -25C, I can’t get enough exercise by walking the dog as she’d suffer from the extreme cold).
I only wish that I’d been able to tackle my piles of disorder on my nightstand and dresser. I have a backup hard drive that got chucked there during the holiday visits. I need to find the drive and get back into the back-up rotation. Only where did that little thing go? Ah, my kingdom for a desk!
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