I looked up when she came in the door, this girl in her twenties wearing jeans and an old tee shirt, blond hair pulled back in a messy pony tail.

“Can I help you?” I asked, thinking I sounded like a stereotypical sales girl.

“Uh, yeah.” She leaned forward against the counter between us. “Do you have any job openings?”

Since it’s not my place to make personnel decisions, I told her when Those in Charge would return. “Or,” I added, trying to be helpful, “You could always drop off a resume.”

Her eyes lit up. Ah. This was the perfect solution. “Great! Where can I get one?”

For a second, I couldn’t speak. Perhaps I’d had an advantage, as the daughter of small business owners, but this seemed like common knowledge. Then I reminded myself that she probably thought I meant to say “an application”. I tried to decide how to phrase this tactfully, in case she truly had misspoken.

“Well, actually, I’m not sure where the applications are,” I told her slowly, thinking aloud, putting a bit more emphasis on applications. “But if you write up your resume, then you can come back with it.”

She wrinkled her brow in confusion. Okay, so apparently it was possible that someone in her mid-twenties might not know what a resume was. Maybe she’d never needed one before. But she must have had other jobs. I tried again. “You know. A resume? Where you list all the jobs you’ve had?”

“Oh. Okay.” Her eyes drifted toward her hands. The left moved vigorously, picking at the cuticle on her right thumb. Then she looked up. “By the way, what do you guys do here? I’ve done lots of cashiering. I have tons and tons of experience with it.”

I glanced around the room, which held plenty of evidence of our products. Itching to explain the finer points of job-hunting — including dressing professionally, researching the company, and preparing the appropriate paperwork — I summoned up a kindly smile and briefly outlined our tasks, none of which included working the ancient cash register hunched on the counter between us.

“That sounds fun!” she chirped, swinging her sagging pony tail in her enthusiasm. “I’d like that a lot.”

Moments later she skipped out the door, full of cheerful promises that she would return later that afternoon to pick up an application. I never saw her again. Perhaps getting a job the traditional way just turned out to be too much work.

It’s beautiful out — a clear, blue, bird-filled day.  A light breeze teases the undropped leaves still clinging to their branches, and sun has conquered snow in all but the most shadowed corners of every lawn.

It’s also cold enough to freeze the hind end off a penguin, which is why I’m lounging in our living room gazing out at the world rather than jogging or taking a hike or riding a bike through it. Although I should, just the thought makes me shudder and my veins ice over.

The indoor options are nearly as bleak. If I spend one more minute on my exercise machine I’m liable to find myself a good smelter and have it rendered into scrap metal, or whatever it is you do with annoying machinery. Short of jumping jacks, weight-lifting cans of ravioli, or doing laps around my kitchen, any other exercise choices require leaving my climate controlled house for the big, bad, wintry outdoors.

I’m a shivering, sniveling wimp when the thermometer dips below forty^[1], so this would normally be an easy choice. But eleven days ago we crested the hill and skidded over into 2009. After the food-fest that stretches from Halloween to Christmas, I’d been mumbling about losing my more Rubenesque qualities and getting back into shape and now, to my consternation, I had a convenient start date.

Despite the timing, I wouldn’t say I made a resolution, exactly. More like a vow^[2] recklessly proclaimed at the same time so many others were resolving the same thing: I would lose this winter weight or starve in the attempt. And with my kitchen skills, starvation was a very real possibility.

Since limiting calories goes hand-in-hand with exercise, I dragged my workout clothes to the front of my closet several days before the first of the year. Then I primed the exercise machine I’d forgotten I hated. I also made A Plan, which everyone knows is nearly as important as actually Carrying Out The Plan. Then I waited for the new year to begin. The waiting is the fun part, before the hope and excitement have been tempered by reality and, most importantly, before the actual sacrifice begins.

The first of January had its pleasures as well. Filled with promise, I bounded from bed — or would have if I’d had a proper night’s sleep — and sauntered into the kitchen to prepare a healthful breakfast, complete with vitamin pills big enough to choke a horse. When lunch and dinner came around, I prepared them as per The Plan, too, then dutifully entered all calories into my chart. I even exercised that afternoon.

Optimism carried me through three days, and pride through another four. Now I’m surviving on sheer, brute strength, and other than occasional lapses and, of course, the Great Exercise Dilemma of 2009, things are going pretty well. I’m only occasionally starving, and I’ve already lost an entire pound, enough to make…well, no difference whatsoever. But I’m nothing if not determined, even when cold and tired and hungry, which is exactly how I keep ending up.

**Update**
11:14 a.m. – 1:03 p.m.

1. As it generally does this time of year. After three years in the Rockies, you’d think I’d be used to it. [↩]
2. The difference is this: Resolutions are made to be broken, whereas vows are binding and, frankly, much more dramatic. They’re often louder, too. [↩]