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Being so predictable no matter the year

I am so predictable this time of year.

No sooner does the clock strike midnight and usher in a new year than I resort to a very familiar pattern.

I embrace much of it for the most part, except for that first time I stand on the scales to see how much ho-ho-ho has caught up with me and decided to stick around.

December is a trying month for my taste buds — I try a little bit of everything, unfortunately.

I take a deep breath and step gently on them, squinting to see the digital numbers and repositioning the scales to another part of the room to see if I get a reading more to my liking somewhere else.

Sometimes I compute the multiple results for an average I can make peace with on the first day of a new year.

Everyone else is responsible for my holiday weight gain, or so I tell myself in my own defense.

Years back, I quit baking Christmas cookies and nut rolls and pumpkin rolls, thinking that would make a big difference and I could hold steady, be protected from the pounds, but I’ve been wrong, predictably so.

Never mind that I live with a food pusher — a.k.a. Better Half.

Try this. Try that. Have another. Taste this.

And “friends” bring me gifts of sweets, fully well aware that my willpower in December is like a Snowbird gone South. Not in the house. Nowhere in sight.

I mean how am I supposed to just say no to my friend Pam’s homemade chocolate covered peanut clusters?

If I were Superman, homemade chocolate covered peanut clusters would be my kryptonite.

I swear a plate of those has octopus tentacles that grab me and won’t let go until the plate’s empty.

How am I to arm wrestle with an octopus and come out the victor?

I seek distractions from the scales and find them everywhere this time of year, again predictably so.

There are Christmas decorations to take down and weed through and downsize.

There are shelves to clear.

Cupboards to conquer.

Stuff to sort.

Deeds to do.

Goals to go for.

Roads to run.

Files to figure.

My mind, meanwhile, is a chalkboard ready to be erased and welcome new information.

(Better Half might lovingly argue it’s always a bit on the blank side.)

Then comes Jan. 2.

And I’m suddenly very sleepy, like Dorothy almost at the gates of Emerald City except for that field of flowers that makes for such a comfy mattress.

I wonder how many calories a person can burn napping.

I am so predictable this time of year.

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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