EDITORIALS
January 3, 2009

Another new year has rolled around, and I’m actually going to try to stick to my resolutions this time.
I usually come up with a couple of good resolutions every year. One year when I was a teenager, I vowed to spend more time with my family. Then there was the year that I was going to cut off my soft drink consumption completely. I think one time I even tried not to gossip about all the happenings in town.
By Valentine's Day, all the resolutions usually went out the window.
As a teenager, I thought I was too cool to hang out with my family. I resolved to fix that. After a few heated arguments over what movie to rent, that resolution was over within a week.
Then the soft drink consumption resolution went out the window within a few days. As a teenager, I would drink about eight Coca-Colas a day. I know what you are thinking. But I have successfully cut down to about three drinks a day now. So that resolution took about a decade to complete technically.
The gossiping one never really started because usually New Year’s Day is spent talking with the girls about who did what the night before.
This year, is going to be different though. I have vowed to start living a more healthy lifestyle.
Instead of three soft drinks, I will try to have two. I know that isn’t a very big step, but this is a weaning process. Stopping cold turkey could get me fired or admitted into an institution. I have to have my caffeine every day.
I will remove the abundance of sweets out of my kitchen pantry. I will no longer be a slave to the tube of chocolate chip cookie dough, which I usually eat raw. That can’t be healthy.
I will buy the non-sugar snacks and actually not add sugar to them when I get the bag home. And I will not be tempted to drizzle Hershey’s chocolate syrup down my throat at random times. Yes, I did that once after I walked about two miles on the tread mill, effectively canceling any progress I had made.
My goal this year is to try to at least exercise five days out of the week. I could walk with my son James in the stroller through the downtown area of Yazoo City. When it’s raining, I could put a few miles on the tread mill. I even bought a pilates video a few years ago that I can take the plastic off and put to use.
I am not going to go so far as vowing fried foods off my list completely. I live in the South, and I don’t think it’s possible. But I am at least going to slack off on the grease.
I came up with this resolution solely to become more healthy. I am so worried that my lifestyle now will hurt me when I get older. Eating an entire box of brownies, adding the bacon grease to my green beans and following up a hearty meal with a Snickers bar on the couch to watch Paula Deen on the Food Network can’t be good. And I’m sure that I will pay for it in the future.
My husband Jason jokes with me and tells me that my New Year’s resolution should be to treat my husband better. I think I will call him on his shot.
Jason will soon be sitting down to a plate of grilled chicken with no crispy crust. There will be no more fried okra. The homemade chocolate pies will be a memory.
He may even be treated to a shot of wheat grass for dessert.
Then I can explain to him that I am “treating my husband better” by providing him with healthier food.
But seriously, I just hope that I can stick to my resolution this time.
But please pay no attention to me if you see me at Sunflower bakery eyeing the cupcakes. Pay no mind if a few Snicker bars fall out of my purse. And I advise you to step back if you see me pop open a Coke.
These are tell tale signs that my resolutions have failed once again. You might want to give me a minute to regain the strength that I have lost.
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Jamie Patterson is a reporter for The Yazoo Herald. She can be reached by e-mail at community2@bellsouth.net

I hope I never let lost luggage make me act like a total jerk

Please, Lord. Don't ever let me get so frustrated and downright mad that I react as one rude female did. Remind me that lost luggage - I prefer to say "misplaced" luggage - isn't as bad as it's made out to be.
Our plane had just landed after a two-hour flight from one of the nation's busiest airports ... Orlando, Fla. Home of you-know-what, which is the destination of 98 percent of the free world.
Believe it or not, all 98 percent chose Saturday, five days before Christmas, to book a flight out of Orlando.
We're talking more people in what are usually the airport's very large, open spaces that were instantaneously transformed into very large, packed-tight-with-people spaces.
With crowds the likes of those - and let's not forget the hundreds of cancelled flights due to the weather - it's little wonder airline personnel didn't throw up their hands and run into the sunset shoutin' "Uncle! Aunt! And all your relatives!"
How they were able to get tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people out of the airport that day and safely to their destination is beyond me, not to mention luggage that had to number in the hundreds of thousands.
Miraculous is the only word for it. Truly one of the world's great wonders.
"If I'd known this airline was incapable of successfully getting luggage from one point to the other, I would have gotten on another airline," the frustrated and downright mad, not to mention horribly rude, lady yelled to the clerk behind the airline's ticket counter. The poor guy looked like a whipped puppy as he attempted to expedite one passenger's lost luggage claim process.
Standing at the end of a line of some 10 for 15 others who were in line to file lost luggage claims, the rude lady continued her tirade.
"I'm not the only one who's upset! We're all upset and we want some answers ... now!"
With some softly spoken but well-chosen words, an apparently well trained female supervisor addressed the loudly complaining passenger.
"There are a lot of us and we're upset about this!" the rude lady insisted.
"But you're the only one talking. Please just wait until your turn," the supervisor calmly fired back, thereby successfully shutting her up.
Main Most and I made it back to Jackson with only one of four pieces of luggage, which happened to be a small suitcase filled with our dirty clothes. Lost were a suit bag of our hanging up clothes, a carry-on bag that we didn't carry on, and a large suitcase.
Maybe if we weren't on our way home and in a distant city instead, we wouldn't have been so nonchalant about the misplaced luggage. I mean, we had more clothes and toiletries at home, so we could pretty much do without the other three pieces of luggage for a few days.
Only one other time did we have to deal with misplaced luggage, which managed to find us, thanks to very courteous and efficient airline personnel, less than 24 hours after we landed. We had traveled to a North Carolina city and, wonder of wonders, we survived the first day without airy a cross or ill word or the slightest injury to our persons.
Actually, it was, as was our most recent misplaced luggage incident, an almost enjoyable learning experience. Instead of offering an excuse to be rude and express righteous indignation, misplaced luggage can be a positive experience. OK. Maybe a MILDLY positive experience.
Think of the pluses.
* You don't have drag heavy suitcases behind you as you walk three or four miles to the airport parking lot.
* You don't have to unpack until you've had a good night's sleep and are freshly energized for the task.
* You can put off the nasty task of clothes washing since all your clothes are 1,000 miles away sitting in an undisclosed airport.
* Without most of or all your toiletries, it doesn't take nearly as long to shave or "put on your face."
* It's a lot easier selecting what you'll wear when the only thing you have to wear is what you wore the day before.
* You have a great excuse not to take the vitamins or medicines you packed in your luggage, which the airlines warned you not to pack in the checked luggage.
* You can brag about how patiently and Christian-like you dealt with the misplaced luggage dilemma.
* Makes you realize that even normally well-oiled systems like that of the airlines' baggage handling sometime breaks down.
* Teaches you that airlines will go to great lengths to return your misplaced luggage, even if it involves airline personnel driving hundreds or thousands of miles to personally deliver it to you.
* Reinforces an unchangeable fact of life: You can scream and kick and fuss all your want, but it won't get your misplaced luggage back to you any faster.
Thankfully, our missing luggage was delivered to our home two days after our return. The courier was most gracious and apologetic, which prompted a concern: Should I have tipped her even when she was merely rectifying an error caused by the airlines who, no doubt, was already generously compensating her?
Right or wrong, I didn't. Even still, she was every bit the composed lady, which tells me she evidently hadn't had to do battle with the rude lady yet.
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Vernon Sikes is a correspondent for The Yazoo Herald. He can be reached by e-mail at vernon_sikes@bellsouth.net.