New Year's in September

I love September. These past few days have been cool and clear, and you can almost feel the back-to-school energy like electricity in the air. I was one of the few kids who could not wait to go back to school in the fall...all the way through high school. To me, it always represented a fresh start, another opportunity to reinvent myself. It was my "new year".


To this day, I still feel that excitement as September approaches. As much as I love the summer, by mid-August I'm longing for the cool, wood-smoke scented air that signals my fresh start.

And here it is!


I've already got a couple of irons in the fire on the reinvention front. But now it's also time to get back to business on my health.

I know, it's a risk to pile more onto my plate (no pun intended), but it has to be done. Anyway, I've been here before, so it should be easy. And I'm not sure I'm going to go all-out, gung-ho South Beach at this point, just sticking to the basics:

1. Drink the water. It does absolutely no good sitting there in the water cooler. My head and muscles will be so thankful.
2. Moderation, not deprivation. And not overindulgence, either -- I don't care what "they" say, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Just ask my gut. And my husband.
3. Exercise. I don't care if it's just a walk around the block -- my butt needs to unstick itself from this chair at least once a day. And a trip to the fridge doesn't count. Neither does the trip across the room to the water cooler, although that is a good start (see #1).

That's it. Plain and simple. What are your "back to school" resolutions?