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By Bob Niles

Cries of “Happy New Year” fill the entire room and what little gray matter I have left between my ears. All three hands on the clock incriminate 12 as the reason for all the hoopla.

The start of a new year, the chance to start anew. January the oneth.

Two minutes later I break my wife’s New Year’s resolution (for me) as I trace a line with my belt buckle all around the first three inches of the midnight buffet. She decided one of my New Year’s resolutions was to cut down on my calorie intake. Lose 30 pounds. I countered by promising never to eat more than I can lift at any one time, which my plate, at his very point in time, is challenging me.

Plate piled high, veins in my forearms and forehead protruding, I carefully navigate toward a feeding area and trip over a sleeping grandkid. Second New Year’s resolution breaks as I attempt to stay upright and verbally express my disappointment as grandma’s now broken, country estate pattern hits the floor. The once sleeping angelic cherub turns on me and announces that another loonie was to occupy the potty mouth jar.

In my defense, it wasn't an adult swear word I used as my, not one, but three, chins and midnight snack were hitting the floor. But it's a word the grandkids had started to use as an adjective a little too often. Sometimes three to a sentence. So it came to be that loonies would suffer in an airtight jar at the top of the shelf every time that word and certain other words were used.

Two New Year’s resolutions down and the hands on the clock were closer together than my thumb and index finger. How many more resolutions would end on this night? How many were there? My wife had made me a list, but I left it at home. That in itself could be a violation of a resolution. I have come to believe that New Year’s resolutions are a woman’s thing. Let's face it, ladies, if it were up to us guys, we would just keep going wayward in all our bad habits.

We could be 30 pounds overweight, walk naked past a full-length mirror, suck in our gut and with two fingers pointed at our reflection, like the bartender from The Love Boat, make a clicking sound and pity the poor woman who could refuse this.

If a guy ever starts to feel like he might be getting a bit too excessive in any one bad habit, he just looks for an example worse than himself and finds comfort that he isn't as bad as "that guy."

When a woman perceives herself overweight, she is always jealous of skinnier women and will set goals to lose weight. With guys if, let's say, he's 30 pounds overweight and might somehow feel less than perfect, he doesn't look at a healthier male as a goal but rather finds fault in his choice of vehicles to better his self image. "Phffft the guy drives a 64 split window Corvette. Thing has a huge blind spot!" So what if he's gone from eye candy to eye broccoli!

Happy is the couple whose wife has dropped that promise girlfriends make to each other: "I'm going to change him."

You know that promise all you women make when you announce to your friends, "If he asks me to marry him, I'll say yes. Oh, I know he's always kidding around, he's overweight, has no sense of style and his hair is a disaster, but I promise you once we’re married, I'll change him into the man I've always wanted."

And with the start of each new year she revisits that challenge she’s placed on you by encouraging you to look inward and make a resolution to do better. Or she can take a more proactive approach and make a list. It seems like this may be the only day of the year it's appropriate. Oh, sure, she thinks a change is needed every time she look at you as you watch Scooby-Doo cartoons, all in your sweat pants finery, with a matching ripped T-shirt. That once crazy head of hair, now all wispy and thin as it clings on, fights the good fight to remain on your head. And it's not like you can't grow hair because now your back, ears and nose all support some sort of exotic growth. Well at least you don't laugh so much anymore. Life sort of solved that problem.

Ladies, as you enter your “stop-n-start” season of resolutions, we on the sidelines wish you well. As you stop the many things you perceive in your life as wrong or bad, and start to do better in mind, body and soul, please go forth knowing we are somewhere behind you. We might notice your hair is cut different, or you've lost a few pounds or you've adopted a favorite frock rather than buy a new one.

We might. Then again, we might not. But please forgive us because we're men. This is a rough season for us as you go about trying to better your life and improve us along with that effort. You go, girl! Do your thing! We're happy minding the small things that somehow take up our time.

Men, take comfort as you watch your wife and her girlfriend power walk out of the driveway. They — and many women like them — are walking and jogging around the neighborhood while you sip coffee with a doughnut in hand and survey their struggles from the comfort of your domain.

To us, January oneth means college football. It’s not a day to get all excited about changing things around. Relax.

— Bob Niles

A retired plumber from the Vancouver area, Bob Niles is a stay-at-home grandpa. (The grandkids are in school, and he’s at home.) His wife says his most annoying feature is that “he doesn’t ask for directions — and a thousand other things — and leaves the seat up.”