First, welcome to 2019. I hope it’s your best year ever.

Second, and to get it out of the way, my resolutions are as follows.

1. Lose 20 pounds.

2. Obey the wife.

That’s it. No grandiose plans. No promises I can’t keep.

Here’s the explainer on No. 1.

I am happier skinnier, and after quitting smoking in 2007, gaining 40 pounds and losing 60, my pants are once again starting to fit a bit tight around the waist.

I blame this phenomena on my inability to exercise portion control around anything that doesn’t eat me first. I particularly like pinto beans and cornbread.

And grits and eggs and biscuits and gravy.

And porkchops.      

Fortunately, I have not yet gotten to the point where I have to lay down on the bed to get my pants on, but I heard it can happen.

I heard it during a Christmas party circa 1990 back in Germany, when my first sergeant in C Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery (Lance) said his wife hadn’t shown up yet, but only because her butt had gotten so big she had to lay on the bed to get her jeans on, and that usually took a while.

I certainly do not want that to happen to me. I have enough trouble these days making sure my boxers are on with the front side in front the way Fruit of the Loom intended. If I had to lay on the bed to put my pants on I’d probably never get to work.

I’d just go back to sleep.

Eventually, I might get fired. And then where would I be. Asleep, probably. With my boxers on backwards.

Here’s what I got on No. 2, which you may recall is obeying the wife. In short, I need to just go ahead and do what yard work or toting my wife wants me to do, at least whenever she’s looking. Which is most of the time, and I am certainly a better human being for it.

That’s it.

That’s what I hope to do in 2019. What I resolve not to do in 2019 is probably a much longer list. I won’t bore you with the details.

Suffice it to say I resolve not to become a practicing Republican or Democrat, or cut cable, or jump out of an airplane, or turn into a Hindu, although the latter does have some attraction. I like Hindus.

Now, for some random hooey in an effort to hopefully get it out of my system so I can get down to important business in future issues.

First, raise your hand if you went to a New Year’s Eve party.

And by party, I mean a real party, not some rowdy teenage silliness like the get togethers inflicted on the world by my large female neighbors who like standing around a giant bonfire in their backyard hollering to Luke Bryan songs at 3 a.m.

That’s right after they finish up playing tackle football and cranking up four-wheelers to haul more pallets to the fire.  

I’ve forgotten where I was going with this, but never mind.

Instead, just know if it were up to me we’d all turn into labrador retrievers. I think the world would be a better place. More likeable, anyway.

Everybody likes labs. Don’t believe it? Tell me have you ever met a lab you didn’t like? I thought so. Besides, Old Yeller was a lab. I think.

But if we had to stick with humanity, I’d go with turning into Native Americans.

They had the right idea on how to live - camp out, hunt, fish, ride horses, eat berries, let the wife do all the hard work, and honor Mother Earth - and look what happened. Us white European people turned up with our powdered wigs, advanced weaponry, planning and zoning departments and hedge fund managers and started bossing people around.

Look where it got us. Now we’re stuck in traffic half the day trying get to work while the polar ice caps melt and there’s a plastic garbage patch half the size of Effingham County floating around in the middle of the ocean.

Either that, or we’re getting run off I-95 by 30-year-old-living in Mom’s-she-shed idiots-in-giant-pickups and tattoos who have to get to the outlet mall before it closes to get more vape oil.

Heck, if I were Mexico I’d pay for a wall to keep us up here.

Finally, this question.

Why do we work five days and only get two off? Who made that rule up?

I guarantee you it wasn’t any of us who actually work five days a week. If it were up to us, we’d work one day and have six days off. Or at least go 50-50 with this work/life balance deal. Three and a half days on, three and a half off. That’s a fair deal.

Whitten is editor of the News.