My New Year’s resolutions: More fun in ’21!
By: Jeffrey Denny
Tags: Commentary, 2021, New Year Resolution, 2020, Humor

Unsplash/Immo Wegmann @macroman

My New Year’s resolutions: More fun in ’21!

Jeffrey Denny

Since the Covid vaccines will instantly end this historic pandemic, I hope your 2021 resolutions are as exciting as mine:

Get out more.

My home, furniture, appliances and plumbing are telling me they need a break already.

“What’s up?” I ask my fridge every ten minutes. “Just chillin’,” my fridge replies with attitude. “Ok,” I retort, “How about if I just order delivery until your contents rot and you stink? How you like me now?”

I totally owned my fridge. But every great relationship needs some time off.

Love more.

I’ll give friends, colleagues, passing acquaintances and even strangers a long, lingering hug and wet, open-mouth kiss, like a sailor dipping a reluctant dental assistant in Times Square on V-J Day.

“V-J Day” sounds Urban Dictionary now, but it wasn’t then.

So no, I won’t grab and kiss in a creepy Weinstein way. I just want to show how much I appreciate and missed my peeps and other peeps. Real peeps, not the eponymous and often disgraced Easter treats.

Normal emotionally healthy human peeps surely will welcome my affections and respond in kind, while the fragile ones might get huffy and sue.

Take new chances.

I’ll finally ask out my FedEx delivery driver who has brought me delightful gifts I ordered nearly every day from the jungle wilds of the Amazon.

My fair FedEx maiden has been mad flirting with me all year. She puts my packages right on my stoop and then saucily knocks, lightly, just once, barely daring to express her passionate yet illicit yearning.

How her tap makes my heart leap and sing and dance like I’m in a Nutcracker performance by a local children’s theater online!

By asking her out, I mean out-out, like to a surviving restaurant, maybe even with indoor seating because baby it’s cold outside and we should avoid hypothermia on a first date. I’ll offer to pick her up and drive. She’ll melt because she does enough picking up and driving all day.

Schedule that rhytidectomy.

This is what philistines call a “nip and tuck.”

Being obsessively mesmerized like Narcissus by my horrifying image on Zoom calls has made me realize I’m not as Clooney as the fogged bathroom mirror lied like Fox News.

Yes, Virginia, even Clooney had work done.

Brush and floss at least three times a week.

Covid masking has protected us from being judged about our oral health.

Yet after inhaling my exhaling, I realized my breath is as fresh as year-old seafood and my teeth are as Crest Optic White as new fallen snow tinted by a Weimaraner.

Yes, I care that my oral care professional has reported me to the American Dental Association, and I’m now on the “watch list” for excessive plaque that threatens my gums and our national security.

I resolve to be better to stop the ADA’s black helicopters from hovering over my home, but mostly to get CVS to cease and desist in sending me 10%-off coupons for Arm & Hammer toothpaste that surprisingly tastes like baking soda.

Take a wine appreciation class.

I would love to have sommelier-level knowledge of the finest wines, especially since my accountant expects my VCPH (Vino Cost Per Hour) write-off to drop precipitously when the Covid is over and done.

Bottom line, I need to buy better wines to invest my wine dollar wisely.

Thus I vow to splurge on the $7.99 Josh Cellars Cabernet (“Jammy aromas of grandpa’s slippers with an equally juicy palate” — WineKindaSewer.com).

Cease my vomitous wordplay.

Such as, “WineKindaSewer,” a bad pun on “wine connoisseur.” That is, if I still want to have friends, colleagues and passing acquaintances.

Wear big boy pants again.

No more boxers on Zoom calls or driving to the grocery pickup.

I can still be comfortable thanks to clothiers that now weave elastane, a stretchy synthetic fiber, into everything.

Elastane is made from petrochemicals that are bad for Our Earth, but hey — that’s the price Our Earth must pay so every gent over 45 can wear 32-waist jeans like they did in college.

Eat better and exercise more.

I’ve been resolving this for years. After a year of Covid hibernation on doctor’s orders, it won’t be easier.

I’ve now trained my body to expect murderously delicious carbo fat salty Grubhub delivery food I hand-jam into my gaping maw like a big fat gluttonous gout-ish Louis XIV, sans le couteau, le fourchette and la cuillère — aka, hold the utensils, I’m trying to save the Earth.

Also, I forgot my Peloton login password again so I can’t use the $2,500 machine anymore after waiting months for it. But it looks awesome in my basement and is certain to make visitors, if I ever have any, think I’m awesome too.

Live every day like it’s my last.

After the life-changing 2020, I resolve to liquidate my dwindling assets to begin working through my bucket list.

I shall plan a lavish vacation to climb Machu Pichu but not actually climb Machu Pichu; I just love saying “Machu Pichu” and bragging that I went to Machu Pichu and it completely changed my perspective on life.

I shall purchase a beautiful classic 1966 air-cooled Porsche simply to fund the college educations of the children of German motorwerks mechanics.

In tribute to the brave J. Alfred Prufrock, I shall eat a mealy peach from a Harry & David gift basket and wear $200 AG jeans with elastane with the cuffs rolled up like their keto-poisoned models do.

Most of all, both on my bucket and 2021 resolution list, I shan’t do anything I don’t want to do anymore.

As Covid-2020 taught me, nothing is the new something. So I resolve to continue doing as little as possible in the New Year. That’s what I call fun!

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.