I'm not really one for making New Year's resolutions.

It seems to work better for me to recognize - at whatever point during the year - that something needs changing, then sit on my ass until the problem gets bad enough that I'm forced into action. I like to think I'm waiting until I'm emotionally ready to effect change. Whatever that means, it never seems to fall on the first of January.

Like, it's not at the end of December when I become concerned that I look like a fat, segmented insect in a bikini. That shiny little ray of inspiration usually dawns on me in March or April. And in case there was some question over just how resolute my resolutions are, I have the same pupae in a bikini feeling every single spring. Me, I lack follow-through.

Except, notably, on the subject of men. And who knows where that willpower came from?

Anyhow, I am very seriously considering adopting a New Year's resolution - just for the sake of being a joiner. To see if I can hack it. In the meantime, what are some of yours? You know, in case it comes down to the wire and I have to borrow one.

"I will have you know that if you change your relationship status on Facebook before telling ME, I will kill your cat."

"Gruesome! And, don't worry, I'm not changing my status."

"I'm not saying you have to call me or anything. But the time stamp on the email had better be a solid minute before you post it on Facebook..."

"You'd really kill my cat?

"Well, I'd have to come to Dallas to do it, so it'd be a win for you that way."

"You're sick. And I love it."

It's hard to believe that tomorrow is Christmas, when we spent this afternoon walking around in the 60-degree weather, peeling off layers, until I was bare-shouldered in the December sun. This year, I will be writing my thank-you notes to Santa for the gift of global warming.

The Texas half of my family won't actually be celebrating Baby J's birthday until the 29th, but for those of you who don't have to wait for little sisters in Uhauls to arrive, I wish you a very merry Christmas. May Santa bring you unseasonably warm weather.

(For those of you in the UK, you can read a bit about my last year's Christmas in the December issue of Cosmo. I haven't been able to get my hands on one, but let me know if you see it!)

Happy holiday!

For months he'd been saying it was inevitable. We were going to hook up.

"No way," I'd said. "Our friendship would implode." There were illustrative hand-gestures and sound effects.

"Not necessarily."

"Yes, necessarily."

We'd go round and round and then, finally, he'd concede that I was right. If we hooked up, he couldn't tell me the sordid details of all his other hook-ups. And those were some of our best conversations.

One night, the tequila shots came out, and so did the old hooking-up discussion. He went over the same material as before - how he'd miss being able to tell me all his scandalous stories, how he liked our friendship. Only, this time, he was standing behind me, with his nose mere inches from my hair. If we were going to be just friends, he said, it wasn't fair that I smelled so good. Standard tequila conversation.

"That first kiss would be really awkward, though," he said, almost to himself.

Enough! I thought. And without saying a word, I turned around and kissed him. Just like that.

Huh," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Wasn't awkward for me."

And by the dazed half-smile on his face, I could tell that awkward wasn't the word he was thinking of either.

When I pulled up to the stoplight at the intersection of Greenville and Mockingbird, he was there on the traffic island, an old black man in a wheelchair, looking for a hand-out. But it wasn't my spare change he was after.

"Ma'am?You got any lunch left over?"

"No, I'm sorry," I hollered back through my sunroof. "I don't."

I haven't even had lunch myself, I thought, realizing that I was experiencing a growing tummy grumble.

If you know me at all, you know I can't be hungry. I just can't. I go from content to starving in a blinding flash and then everything goes completely to hell. I have a total emotional meltdown. I was thinking about this when I pulled into the parking lot at Walgreen's - about how desperately hungry I suddenly felt. Instead of grabbing the to-do list from my purse, I quickly counted the crumpled bills in my wallet and threw the car into reverse.

Burger Heaven. That sounded good. At the window, I ordered a Number Two - plenty of ketchup - and a Coke.

"No, wait," I said, carefully weighing the options. "Make that a Diet Coke."

When the light changed to green, I inched forward, braked, and turned on my flashers. The van behind me honked, and my heart raced. I'm sorry. I cringed, but slid the car out of gear and pulled up the parking brake. I opened my door; he honked again.

"God bless you." The old man wheeled forward to take the fast food bag, and my right hand. "God bless your heart."

"Thank you. Have a good lunch."

He held my hand for another second or two, and then I walked back to my car. The light turned red again, but the honking had stopped. The man in the wheelchair pushed a straw into his soda, and I watched from my heated seat, wondering for the second time if maybe he'd lost his legs to Diabetes. Coke, Diet Coke. It seemed like such an important decision.

Until he took a drink. And my world crumbled.

No one should ever have to look that grateful for a stinking Diet Coke. He never once opened his eyes, just sucked away at the straw, smiling between sips.

When the light changed, I drove back to Walgreen's, sat in the parking lot and cried.

Heather: disturbed by Kiafest
Brother Jason: shopping Kiafest
Mom: what's Kiafest?

Jason: Poor mom, doesn't watch TV.

Heather: Those commercials where the salesman is flashdancing? Kill me. And not in the good way.

Jason: Yeah, they bugged the hell out of me last year.

Heather: I worry that mom is not aware enough of her surroundings. Kiafest could be going on and she would have no idea.

Jason: We may need to think about a live-in current events nurse.

Heather: Yeah, maybe you're right. I just don' t have the kind of time it takes to care for her multi-media needs. Can we afford in-home care? I think it's time to call a family meeting.

Jason: I mean, does she even know about the Dodge Sales Event, or Toytoathon? Maybe she could move in with me and Jamie. The rest of the family would have to pitch in for care costs, but it might just have to happen.

Heather: The cable bill, we could split that.

Jason: We'd have to upgrade to HD - that might be a hefty cable bill.

Heather: She's our MOM. We can't not. I mean, what if she gets WORSE?

Jason: But they didn't even have HD when she was a kid. How can that be considered a necessity for her? No, you're right... we have to.

A couple weeks ago, Mike J and I had dinner at a local pub, and afterward, I came home and crawled directly into bed. An hour later I woke up, feeling like something was not right. After a quick assessment (ooh, I think it's my stomach), I rolled over to swing my feet to the floor, and threw up all over myself.

Attractive, right? I don't think I've had such little control over my puke power since that time in the third grade when I yakked all over Mrs. Ashby's shoes. But this was only the beginning of the night's adventure in pathetic.

I scrambled for the bathroom, where I spent the next two hours begging for death. I'm no stranger to the glorious experience that is food poisoning (Boston 2003, Morocco 2004) and I knew where I was headed. To the hospital for Compazine and an IV full of saline. Only, these days I don't have health insurance, or a roommate, and I was in no position to get myself to the living room, much less to the Emergency Room.

I texted Mike, on the off chance that he would still be awake. Nada. I texted Jamie, who works nights. Nada. So I curled up on the bathmat and cried. Hard. Here I was, almost thirty years old, and completely alone. And for a girl who really likes alone, I was not digging it at all.

Finally, at a quarter of two, I called my mom.

"Mom, I'm really sick," I bawled into the phone. "I'm sick and I don't know what to do."

She said something about urgent care, which I couldn't process because I was thinking really important thoughts about crawling back to the toilet. And then she said the magic words,

"I'm on my way."

It was 1:49. It takes 30 minutes from her door to mine. I grabbed my watch from the bathroom counter and counted. Forty-nine, fifty-nine, oh-nine. Then I crawled back to the toilet, and buried my face in the bowl until help arrived. And when it arrived, she bundled me up, put me in the car, volunteered to pay for a trip to the ER, and listened to me bawl about being alone and pathetic.

"When you're this sick, you're always alone."

Man, you can always count on Mom in times of crisis. If for nothing more than really solid words of wisdom. That, a spare bed and ginger ale, with a bendy straw.

A dozen or so hours I was back on my feet and feeling much less pathetic. I was done feeling sick and more importantly, done feeling sorry for myself. Because on the upside of upchuck, Mike J, moved by the guilt of choosing a bad restaurant, finally Top-Friended me on MySpace. See? So not alone.

"I think my heart actually swelled."

"I know."

"Really. I mean, I felt it grow. How often does that happen?"

Almost never. I mean, I sometimes wear a cynic suit, but in reality, I am one of the most easily-delighted people possible. I cry at commercials, I love babies, I smile at children - even the horrid ones - because I can't stop myself. But what I experienced when Jamie and I went to see Enchanted this afternoon was some other-worldly, ooey-gooey, heart-expanding glee. Ooh, Disney, you're good. Very good. That shit was romantic.

Rated G swoon.

I was still experiencing an enlarged heart when I got home, so I popped in a CD, snapped on a pair of yellow plastic gloves and cleaned the kitchen to Harry Belafonte. I did the Rumba. I scared the cat. And I thought about how I need a hoop skirt and how more movies need over-the-top, totally unbelievable musical numbers in the middle of Central Park. Then I poured a glass of wine and turned on a grisly crime drama.

Because I knew if I sustained that kind of momentum, I'd end up writing sappy Christmas cards or forgiving ex-boyfriends. And I didn't want to be responsible for throwing the planet out of alignment.

When he climbed in bed next to me, I thought, no big deal. The five of us had come back to Venice hostel that night in various stages of drunk, and it was cold in the attic dorm room. Really cold. Obviously he just wanted someone to sleep next to. I mean, I was ten years older than the kid, so there was no way he wanted...

That's when he started rubbing my arm. And kissing my ear.

"I think you need to go to your bed," I said, ripping the yellow spongy earplugs out of my ears and inching away. It was a twin bed; there wasn't really anywhere to go.

"Do you really want me to?

"Yes! Yes, I really want you to!"

I was not about to turn Mrs. Robinson in a room full of sleeping strangers. He was out of his gourd!

And what he said next will go down as the biggest pillow-talk backfire in the history of... well, ever. The best worst line. Sliding his hand down my arm, he lowered his voice and said,

"Come on, Heather. You can be twenty again."

"Out!"

I can be twenty again? Flattering! And, uh, no thank you. I wouldn't be twenty again for a lifetime of spa pedicures and a day pass to Detective Elliot Stabler's wardrobe trailer. That is how much I do not want to be twenty again. I love my not-twenty crows feet and the age-acquired good sense to not hook up with a college kid while his friend is sleeping five feet away. Twenty again! Gah!

Besides, at twenty, I was Mormon and extremely uptight. And I'm betting he didn't climb into bed with me so we could pray together.

"No such luck."

I smiled down at the scruffy-faced guy in 38H. On my way down the aisle, I'd watched him eying the window seat with high hopes. A whole row to himself for the ten-hour flight from Rome to JFK. Like I said, no such luck. He helped me heft my bag into the overhead bin and the small talk began.

He was Brad. I was Heather. He was really handsome. And I was... well, I'd been living out of a backpack for way too many weeks, and looking rough. I was not in a position to flirt, or be flirted with, so we stuck to the basics.

"Is New York your last stop?" he asked after I'd settled in.

"No, I live in Dallas," I said.

"Me, too. Where in Dallas?"

"North Dallas," I said.

"Me, too! Where?"

"The Village..."

"Me, too!"

In the end, we figured out that Handsome Brad lives across the street from me. What a coincidence! And what relief! Because now all I have to do is prance up and down the street, three or four times a day, in my favorite ass-tastic jeans, until I run into Brad. You know, to prove that I do wash my hair and own clean clothes.

And then it's gonna be game on.

"It'll be like Wedding Crashers... only, you know, with Christmas parties."

Jamie laughed, but I meant business. See, I believe it's one of the world's great injustices that a girl with a closet full of little black dresses - a girl who loves nothing more than to get gussied up and spun around on a dance floor - doesn't have a fancy holiday party to go to. Think Tiny Tim without his Christmas goose.

Totally tragic.

Friday night, Laura, Jamie and I sat around a table at the Tipp, discussing how we were going to right this colossal wrong. I was willing to do what it took. If crashing wasn't going to work, well, I was this close to hiring myself out as an escort for the season. And that's when the Universe intervened.

They'd been watching us from across the bar, and had even performed not-so-sly flybys of our table on the way to the men's room. But when the two older guys finally came to talk to us, it wasn't to deliver some cheesy, overused line. It was to deliver invitations. To a black tie charity event.

"We have to go!"

Laura couldn't be persuaded, but after a little coaxing Jamie got on board. And Saturday night, after a little schedule shifting and a quick wardrobe change, Jamie and I were on our way to White Rock Lake, primped, preened and... a little nervous.

"This is only mildly crazy, right?"

"No," Jamie said. "It's totally crazy. But that's what I love about it."

At worst, we figured, the party would blow. We'd go in, make a charitable donation, take advantage of the open bar, get bored and go home early. And at best? Well, two hours later, when I found myself on my fifth glass of holiday punch and on round II of The Plastic Surgery Game (fifty cents for spotting an obvious boob job; a buck for a face lift) with a dozen or so men in tuxedos, I decided the evening had more than qualified for an at best rating. The rest of the night is just a little fuzzy, but it involves champagne and dancing and breakfast at 3AM in Cafe Brazil with Jim the Insurance Guy and his sidekick, Trey the iPhone Man.

My feet are blistered, my head is thumping, and lethal amounts of Pad Thai were required to soak up the mess of holiday punch that was still sloshing around in my stomach when I crawled out of bed this afternoon. But isn't that the way all good holiday stories end? Well, that and a good goosing.

God bless us, every one.