Melting my resolutions away.

One of my resolutions this past year was to get in shape.

“I’m going to run,” I told my brother. “I want to do a race.”

“You know you actually have to run those,” he told me. “Wait. Do you even know how to run?”

And when he saw how upset I got, he said, “Well seriously. Do you?”

Undeterred, my mother and I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods later that day and tried on the cheapest pair of running sneakers we could find. They were neon orange and for the first time in my life I said, “I don’t care what they look like, I just want them to fit,” to the sales clerk.

On our way out the door, we ran into my father and my brother, who were supposed to be clear across town picking out a new refrigerator, but somehow ended up at Dick’s looking for us.

“Hey! What you got there?” my dad asked and pointed at my bag.

“Running sneakers,” I told him.

“Running sneakers?!” he screeched. “You run?! Oh I gotta see this.”

Motivated by aggravation and pure spite I ran for miles each day over the next two weeks and I stopped only when my knee swelled so much that I couldn’t walk down stairs and part of the sole of my foot rubbed off and I had to limp.

But long story short - I kept the resolution. I even ran a 4 mile race in April and managed to get on the 11 o’clock local news. I was the girl who nearly ran into the camera man as I tried to avoid plowing over the person in front of me who tripped over a curb.

I was distracted because seconds before the race started my brother said to me, “Does your head ever pop?”

And I said, “What the heck are you talking about?”

And he said, “You know - like popping your knuckles, but in your head.”

“No, I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “Happens to me all the time.”

And then he took off sprinting while I shouted, “No seriously, you should get that checked out! That shit aint right!”

And that’s when someone else fell in my path, and I hopped over him - all while the news anchor taunted us with something like, “Oh watch, don’t trip!” on television.

But luckily I won’t have to put myself through that trauma again, thanks to a helpful New Year’s resolution suggestion from The Melting Pot.

“Rather than falling into the annual trap of resolving (and then failing) to lose weight, get out of debt or start to exercise, The Melting Pot agrees with recent polls conducted by General Nutrition Centers, Quicken and others that show that more than 50 percent of Americans vow to appreciate loved ones and spend more time with family and friends this year.”

Precisely. Who needs to pay their student loans when there’s a vat of cheese needing attention?

In keeping with this suggestion, I lugged out a fondue pot from the back of my closet, bought six types of vegetables and a Sterno can.

My girlfriends are coming over on Dec. 31 and this year’s theme is “New Year’s Cheese.”

Running can wait until 2009.