Warning: This is an R-rated posting. If you are offended by words like "cock," "dong," "pecker" and "sheep," read no further. Frankly, I don't like these words much myself. But there's no getting around them in describing this inaugural mission.

As acts of bravery and adventure go, this one was anticlimatic.

Last night, I spent about an hour in a sex shop, walking out with two items - one for a friend (I swear) and another for whomever in my circle next celebrates a birthday.

Technically, I accomplished my goal. Unfortunately, I did not feel a moment of embarrassment, a twinge of titillation or even the urge to giggle.

Here is where I likely went wrong:

I chose the store with the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages. But it's in the most well-heeled part of town, and a conservative one at that. A north-end sex shop can only get so bold. I should have expected what I got - an artfully decorated boutique-style shoppe with pretty lingerie displayed in the windows, and a small "18 and over" room properly placed in the back of the store.

I should have headed south to the obviously seedy First Amendment, a store that proudly identifies its offerings with a sign displaying a vampy woman and a big, dark, triple X.

The clerk at the north end boutique said kids commonly accompany their parents into the front room - a fantasy area of high, feathered heels, translucent pajamas, curious costumes and edible treats that look and smell like candy. By contrast, I suspect taking a child to First Amendment would be grounds for a child abuse arrest.

Alas, a bad choice I realized as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Nevertheless, I did the best I could with it.

There were two people in the store when I arrived: a customer - a curvy 40'ish blonde woman - and an incredibly young-looking, make-up-free clerk whose glowing skin and shiny, long red hair said nothing more sexual than wholesome, All American Girl.

I looked at the costumes, none of which seemed original or much different than those on Wal-Mart's Halloween racks. These came only with different price tags. $72 for a Catholic school girl get-up. I could buy knee socks, a short plaid skirt and round-collared white blouse at Goodwill for less than $10. The want-to-be-bad-but-I-fear-I'm-doomed-to-hell-if-I-do-it look was something only an ex-Catholic could carry off; that, for me, came free with my past.

I checked out the heels, ideal for the upcoming brunettes-go-blonde day, taking a particular shine to the five-inch, glittery-pink stilettos with a Playboy bunny stamped into the heel. Much as I like heels, I knew these babies would toss me to the floor in five seconds or less. A flat-on-her-ass 41-year-old woman in a short skirt is pitiful, not sexy.

I stepped into the back room, and smiled. I had entered Silicone Valley. Vibrators in shades of pink, blue, red and flesh tones hung from two of the three walls. Each had a name: Butch, Cosmo and Hank. One let's-get-down-to-business model called itself simply: "Eight-inch Dong!" (Can "dong" really be trademarked?)

X-rated DVDs took the remaining wall. In the middle were rotating stands of toys that baffled, amused and intrigued. I stared for some time at The Pecker Leash, which included a small, black leather collar attached to a chain. The photo demonstrated its use. I shall not describe it. I found a Do-It-Yourself Adult Movie Kit next to a Horny Little Devil Kit, tucked beside the Idiot's Guide to Tantric Sex and several penis pumps, one of which instructed it was "for when you just want to pump it up!"

Fortunately, I had a semi-legitimate reason to be there. An out-of-town friend with no access to such stores asked if I could find vibrating "eggs" during my expedition. Her penniless boyfriend wanted her to have them but, she confessed, she had no idea what they were. Nothing in the back room looked much like an egg to me. I would have to ask.

In cowardly fashion, I waited until the sole customer left before approaching the clerk I was certain carried a fake I.D. She nodded at my request for "eggs," and led me back to the 18-plus room. She crouched next to a display of the most un-egg-like items in the store. They appeared to be small vibrators, designed to work in concert with other erotic toys or solo.

"They all have slightly different features," she said, examining the packages.

"What does your friend do in the mountains?" Before I could answer, she drew my attention to a mid-priced model. "Now this one has an extra device that can be used as a cock ring."

I nodded knowingly, but in truth, am still uncertain what that is.

"She sells real estate," I said.

"I just love it up there. Does she ski all the time?" she askd, plucking another item off the carousel.

"Here's a travel size." She held up a vibrator disguised as a lipstick tube. "I think this is just the cutest."

I shook my head. "That shade just doesn't work for me.

"She doesn't ski much anymore. Once you live up there a while, skiing loses it appeal. And the winters .. brutal," I said.

"Oh, I bet they are," she said. "And there aren't any adult stores up there. That would suck.

"Smell these! They just arrived the other day. Finally, they make them flavored for women. They smell like candy. Pocket sized, and resealable! You can get a good five, 10 uses out of these little guys."

I smelled each color. The strawberry smelled like strawberry. The rest, not so good.

Back at the cash register, she opened the "egg."

"We battery test all our items before they leave the store because, obviously, we don't take returns."

I heard a low hum and saw the package shudder. "This one's just fine," she said.

I took a final look around the store. Something for Laura was one thing. To make this assignment legit, I felt obligated to buy something for myself, too. My eyes brushed by the Inflatable Party Sheep, the testicle-shaped cake molds and rubber-tipped nipple clamps. I chose, finally, the Pecker Cake Toppers, 12 flesh-toned decorations including a heart and the numbers 1 through 10, all depicted with penises bent into shapes that would make the manliest of men sob in pain.

The clerk wrapped them in gold-and-silver tissue paper, and sealed it with a gold store sticker. She placed them just-so in a gold bag with stiff ropey handles.

I felt cheated. Where was the crinkled grocery bag about which I'd fantasized? The hand-written sign stating "Cash only!" Where-oh-where was the pierced, tattoed, wife-beater-wearing male clerk with gravelly voice and eyes that undressed? And why did I leave feeling like I'd just completed an everyday business transaction? Striding away with head held high instead of slinking out with my collar pulled tight around my face?

I admit, I've fallen short. Disappointed myself and stepped through this first month of 2006 without sweaty palms or a scandalous story.

I swear I will do better in the months to follow. Meanwhile, I think the fact that I've at least completed one quest is reason enough for a cake - topped, of course, with an assortment of pliable, plastic penises.

They say confession is good for the soul. This then, is a heavy dose of spiritual enrichment.

I threw the word "bipolar" in a few entries back to see if you were listening, and I knew by the dramatic, collective, yet oh-so-silent intake of breath that you probably were not.

So I draw your attention back to it.

I have bipolar disorder, but I consider myself blessed. Not only for the person it's made me but because I have long stretches free from the depths of this illness. I know that some people are nearly incapacitated by it, unable to work, unable some days even to get out of bed. I'm fortunate because I can work fulltime, and usually am aware of my mood swings and when my medication needs tweaking.

I've been to the dark edges of both sides. On the blackest days - the most recent bout four years behind me - even the simplest tasks made no sense. Last time around, had it not been for a previous employer's kindness and loyalty, I would surely have lost a job. Caught in mania's highest grip, I moved at warp speed. In college, I was for months a full-time student with seven part-time jobs and an almost nightly alcohol-infused social life. And like Willy Wonka's elevator, I once blasted through mania's glass top into a world beyond logical description.

I've come to realize I should avoid high-stress situations. A sticky wicket indeed because I am easily bored and sometimes welcome drama with open arms. I like life to be nonstop. But when it spins out of control, I fall apart. This makes it a balancing act. Strangely enough, the balancing yoga poses remain my greatest challenge.

While I ran from my diagnosis most of my adult life, the first clue that it was part of me was difficult to ignore. It started in my junior year of college - a long bout with an unfamiliar feeling from which there was no escape. Life was gray. Numb. Hopeless. Nine months later, I shot from that into euphoria, and almost immediately to psychosis.

My parents hospitalized me. I only now vaguely understand how difficult a decision that must have been. Then again, the day before the hospitalization, I took their car and tried to flee to Colorado where I was sure a college crush was waiting to marry me. My sense of urgency about this was all-consuming, and I don't know what made me stop when my dad stepped in front of the car. So perhaps their decision wasn't so difficult after all.

I landed on the sixth floor of St. Francis Hospital in my Wisconsin college town. The sixth floor had been nothing to me before but the subject of jokes among my college friends and I as we cruised by the hospital on the way to the bar.

I stayed on the sixth floor for two months, uncontrollable for a few days, and later, packed with drugs and incoherent. Doctors told my parents I likely would always be that way.

I thought I was Farrah Fawcett Majors for a while - my least favorite Charlie's Angel. But most of the time, I thought I was the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary delusion, I've since learned, is common among psychotic female bipolars. All that and I wasn't even original.

The details of that fall - written about in a half-finished book that likely never will see daylight - probably seem horrific to many. But to me, almost 20 years later, they're just part of my history. Something I cannot and would not change. After all, how many people get the chance to be God's right-hand girl?

I went back to college the next spring, graduated and moved to Colorado. I threw the lithium out my car window on the way, determined no doctor would squelch my emotions.

Four years ago, in the midst of a second major depression, I was once again diagnosed bipolar. A second diagnosis from a different doctor in a different state. The Colorado doctor really pissed me off. The first one, after all, could just have been wrong. This one made me face it.

Every day since, I've taken a fistful of pills each morning - vitamins, fish oil for brain-balancing Omega 3, an antidepressant, and a mood stabilizer. And a couple at night - both sleep aids. I fiercely dislike the sleep aids, a fairly new addition to the regimen that I blame on that cursed 40th year.

I've accepted the reality of the hated meds. The dilemma I now face is much harder. Truthfully, I like to think of bipolar disorder as just a little excess on both sides of the spectrum. Conversely, I like to bitch about the stigma, and how it needs to be shattered. I bitch about this to a select few. That makes me a hypocrite.

Further proof: I volunteer a few hours a month with the local Bipolar/Depression Support Alliance, leading a support group, answering phones, and serving on a committee. But when someone who knows nothing of my disorder asks me what I'm doing on those days, I say only that I have an appointment.

I'm proud of my volunteerism. But too ashamed to say where it is I volunteer.

If everyone moved at this rate, the stigma would come toppling down in two or three centuries.

I have miles to go on this journey to full-scale acceptance. But I have learned deeper compassion, I think, through this disorder. I have learned, too, to spot a fellow bipolar - admitted or otherwise - in the space of a few conversations.

Even though most of you reading this already know about my condition, this post makes me nervous. My heart is hammering as my hand moves toward the "Publish Post" icon. But it's a start, perhaps, toward telling others. Toward speaking out about it, ideally someday in a public forum. Maybe even toward finishing that book.

My dog, cat and I went for a walk in the falling snow tonight.

Yes, that's right -- my cat goes, too.

George walks with Ally and I in rain and sun, dark and bitterly cold.

I used to shorten my walks when George first began accompanying Ally and me, conscious of his very short legs and a lung capacity I foolishly thought was compromised by size. Then, after several attempts to carry him in which he kicked and struggled to be free, I realized he likes our evening strolls. He follows Ally and me up and down the streets of our hilly neighborhood on walks that sometimes last 90 minutes.

Passers-by sometimes pull over, peering out of their car window to ask, "Is that your cat?" Yes indeed, I say, that's my cat. "He thinks he's a dog," I say this part in a loud whisper, so they understand how delicate is his image, and how deeply entrenched this conviction is in his wee kitty head. They laugh uproariously and pull away, shaking their heads.

Tonight's weather seemed to suit him especially well. I think it suited all three of us well.

We walked on sidewalks deep with snow, snow so fresh that almost no one had yet shoveled it. George alternated between lagging behind, sometimes crying piteously for us to wait, and sprinting past us, his tail fat as a bottle brush with excitement. He ran repeatedly off the sidewalk into the deepest snow -- more than knee deep on a cat. He chirped when I bent to pet him, so happy he didn't just bump his head against my hand but stood on his hind legs and arched his orange neck grandly to do so.

He's a strange little fellow, with an admirable and comedic spirit. I already know he's the best cat I'll ever have.

Ally loped ahead of us for the most part, sometimes giving short chase to nervous rabbits, sometimes dragging her snout through the fresh snow and snorting as it went up her nose. She dropped and rolled in it on her back, turning for a moment from black to white, two coal black eyes looking out from her snow-packed face.

She's a fine pet, too, with a serious and gentle soul. A dog trainer who met her told me she would kill to protect my son Robby and me. But I realize, with some measure of guilt, that she hasn't crawled under my heart like her quirky little brother.

Their antics were the highlight of the walk. But the snow gave its own strong showing. It fell lightly, undisturbed for this night by wind. It swirled in quickly passing clouds as overburdened tree branches let loose their load. It turned bare trees into works of art, and evergreens back into Christmas-card models.

We live in a dry climate with warm winters, a mere two hours from the mountains in which I lived for 13 years. I hated those 8-month mountain winters with a passion. But these winters, with their balmy December and January days, don't seem right either.

Yesterday, the temperature was above 60. My friend e-mailed, "What a stellar day for January!" I agreed for the most part - it was a stellar day. But not for January. January should be snowy, the air nippy, the roads a little dicey - if for no other reason than to make me feel extra-special smart for having studded snow tires. It should also be cold enough for me to wear the really cool, but oh-so heavy, sweaters I accumulated during those many years of mountain living.

But most of all, it should be winter because without it, the change of seasons is too subtle. It lacks drama, something I cannot abide. We pass from one beautiful day to another, days slowly growing longer, temperatures rising slightly. Summer is precious, and my favorite season. But it's precious because it feels fleeting. It's special because I just can't get enough of it. Without winter, it loses some of its golden glow.

George is curled up on the floor near my computer now, comfortably weary from our snowy trek. Ally is loudly worrying a rawhide bone downstairs. I'm snug in my bathrobe, looking out at streetlights turned pink by low-hanging clouds.

It promises to snow all night. I can only hope.

It's mid-January and the clock is ticking for me to complete this first month's exploit. It's ticking even more loudly on a decision as to what the deed may be.

Ideas continue to trickle in from a variety of what I believe are friendly sources: "Buy a round of drinks for the bar!," said a woman on a barstool next to me last week. "Have sex in a public place," e-mailed a married friend. "Have sex, period," she added snidely. "Quit a job you hate," said an equally embittered co-worker who knows that this is a 2006 mandate for us both, not a feat of whimsy.

I was too hungover Sunday to deal with an Evangelical Christian service. But still, I hoped to accomplish some sort of derring-do. It was an ideal weekend. My son was with his father; a good time to do something that would otherwise embarrass and potentially scar him.

So I suggested to a Sunday shopping compadre that perhaps we could visit a sex shop and knock that one off the list. However, I realized that in order for it to be considered something new and daring, I need to do that one alone. Further, I think I need to ask the clerk a question, such as: "I'm allergic to latex. Do you make this in any other material?" or "Is this one-size-fits-all?" The thought alone makes me distinctly uncomfortable, but that's sort of the point of all this - testing my own boundaries and all. Together, she and I would just be two grown women giggling over dildos. And leaving her sitting in the car alone in front of a seedy business seemed cruel, to say the least.

Sadly, I squandered the weekend drooling over men in sports bars and shopping the spring sales. My most ribald experience was passive; watching "Brokeback Mountain" at the independent downtown theater seated next to two gay men. All most fun, but definitely nothing new. And the drooling, nice in its juvenile way, did not extend to speaking to a single one of the men. Kissing a guy from all 50 states appears unlikely. At this rate, I'll be lucky to kiss a guy from an adjacent zip code.

Every once in a while, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into this blog and post something serious, like this. As much as this site is dedicated to making 2006 more fun, life is not always a party. Sometimes, it's a poem.

The words of this poem are sad and sweet.

Tuesday, I had lunch with a woman I'd last seen 18 years ago. Sylvia and her son Ryan, then 10, our landlady Ginny, and I shared a house in the late '80s. Ginny, a divorced woman in her 60s, owned the cabin in the town in which I held my second job. I leased a small bedroom from her. Sylvia and Ryan leased the basement efficiency apartment.

Sylvia was freshly divorced then, almost 10 years my senior, working hard to support herself and her son, dealing with a difficult ex-husband who castigated her relentlessly. I was fresh out of college, excited by my career, drinking to frequent excess and still perfecting the art of flirtation. Children were not on my agenda. Neither was divorce. Her life seemed worlds apart from mine, tinged with a sadness I did not want to touch me.

Nevertheless, we liked one another. I remember little of our conversations, only that Ginny, Sylvia, Ryan and I shared some nice moments in that 1920s cabin. Four generations under one small roof. Three compact cars vying for space in the short, narrow driveway, the last one home for the night (inevitably mine), typically parked on the shoulder of narrow, winding Shady Lane.

I lived there less than a year before moving two hours away to a ski resort community, invited there by the man who is now my ex-husband and son's father.

Sylvia and Ginny took me to dinner at the area's finest restaurant before I left. I remember only because I have a photograph of the three of us, nicely dressed, clinking wine glasses and grinning wildly for the camera. My mind, no doubt, was already forging ahead to the life that awaited me with my then-boyfriend.

I forgot Sylvia for years, remembering her only for a few seconds at a time when I flipped through the photo album and glanced at the picture.

Almost three years ago, I moved back down the mountain.

A week ago, as I was leaving the county office building, a woman called my name. She was stooped, with short, curly hair that was more gray than the brown it obviously once had been. "Do you remember me?" she asked, peering up into my face.

Instantly, miraculously, I remembered Sylvia and saw her in this aging woman's face. She was now a county employee, working in the assessor's office. Ryan was 28, and a mortgage broker. She asked about my son and my divorce; I had no idea she knew about either of these developments in my life.

Sylvia and I had lunch Tuesday. She lives, she said, in a small apartment with "no personality." She loves her job and recently was promoted.

"I never met or married," she told me. "I just look like an old lady, but really, I'm only 50."

She's had five back surgeries since last I knew her, one in which doctors mistakenly cut an artery in her leg. They inserted a tube they later realized was made of material harmful to human bone. She is, as a result of all this, permanently disabled, forever stooped.

"The doctors are sorry," she said, rolling her eyes and smiling. "They told me they're sorry."

Her share of the settlement from a class-action lawsuit was minimal.

At one point, she lost the use of her arms and legs. For a year, she moved only with a walker.

"But I got my arms and legs back," she said. "It could have been so much worse."

Ryan, she said, had gone through several years of drug addiction, years in which she woke daily not knowing if he were stilll alive. He survived.

Her sister did not. She died of breast cancer, and Sylvia - still working to regain her own mobility - cared for her round-the-clock for the last three years of her sister's life. Ryan, meanwhile, slowly climbed back into sobriety and society.

"I had some dark years," she said, her expression serene. "But these are happy years. Things are good now."

Another sister lives nearby. The two take a walk every evening. She sees Ryan regularly.

"He's so excited to see you," she said. "He always thought you were cool, too."

"You were always in my thoughts; I want you to know that. I've wondered about you so often. I'm just not good about keeping in touch."

I offered the appropriate response, but flushed with guilt, thinking how - with almost absolute completeness - I had forgotten Sylvia and Ryan all those years.

We parted on the sidewalk. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm happy now. Believe me." I looked at her relaxed face and smiling eyes, and I believed.

She walked back to the county building as I headed for the city parking garage. I watched her go, her back bent, head cocked up, arms clasped behind her back. She would never stand straight again. She likely would stay single, content to walk nightly walks with her sister and talk with her son, and work a job in which she felt needed and productive.

She does not move with grace anymore, but there is no one I currently know more graceful in spirit than Sylvia. She is a living lesson in peace and acceptance that I, a strong and able-bodied woman who is almost never completly content, am only beginning to learn.

Before this goes any further, I think you should know a little bit about me.

I am a 41-year-old single, bipolar, shopaholic, overly analytical, clutter-phobic, insomniac mother of one with a relationship rescuing complex. Meyers Briggs says I'm an ESFJ personality: The Caretaker. A people person with a strong need for approval. The "need for approval" part is my Achilles' heel.

Physically: I have great legs. Nice eyes, a nice smile, my father's nose (not a good thing), challenging hair and a small chest. Really, if you start from the toes and pan up, it's all downhill beyond the legs. Or if you just put me on my head, it's a direct downhill, and not nearly so difficult to explain. Not a dramatic, avalanche-inducing downhill, but my legs are as good as it gets for me and I accept that. I also know how to work it, and feign innocence about doing so.

My belly button is pierced, the victim of a 40th Vegas birthday celebration.

I have a fulltime job that includes required, daily, formula-variety writing.

I have an amazingly perceptive, smart, good-humored and cute 10-year-old son. I know every mom says these things about her child, but if you continue reading these posts, I'll convince you it's true.

We have a dog with an unrelenting funk, a cat who thinks he's a dog and two gerbils.

I drive a gold Saturn sedan with a spoiler and a sunroof that I thought was a pretty sharp car until we began meeting its identical twin at every stoplight in the city. I feel embarrassed, and frankly a bit angry, every time this happens.

I do yoga, which I think makes me sound spiritual and wise until I admit that I've never achieved the vast emotional benefits everyone talks about. Just taking slow, deep breaths is an enormous challenge.

I'm blessed - a word I never say aloud - with a wide and varied circle of friends.

My last serious relationship is four years in the grave.

I hate the words "blogging" and "blog."

Details on some of this stuff to follow. But that's plenty enough about me for now.

Back to the plan.

This is the plan: In each of the year's 12 months, I'll do something I've never before done. Ideally, with friends in tow.

What these 12 acts are remains undetermined. Suggestions are welcome. Votes even may be taken. Veto power rests with me.

Skydiving? I think very probably not. I've bungee jumped. That, and the thing-at-the-carnival-where-the-bottom-falls-out-when-you're-spinning add up to more than enough gravity-related stunts for a lifetime. So no skydiving. No riding a bull named Fu Manchu either.

Two of my fellow auburn-haired friends are anxious to join me in the only idea that so far has gained unanimous approval. The book's suggestion: "Dye your hair blonde and see if they really do have more fun." Since each of us deals with the public daily, that seems a bit extreme. Wigs, however, will do just fine. Blonde for a day it is.

Most of the other ideas are not from the book. Once things got rolling, it seemed a shame to limit them. But they are still flitting about in my mental air, waiting for a commitment from me. Unassisted, this could take a while; commitment is not my specialty.

Attend an Evangelical Christian service, suggested the most conservative and Christian friend I have. I like this one because I've heard that not only do these folks do some magnificent cartwheels, the music - and the sound system that carries it - is rumored to be stellar.

I'll come clean: I like church music -- but in a church only. As long as I'm confessing, "Amazing Grace," and a whole host of other, extremely traditional hymns, moves me to tears. But I keep quiet about all this to protect my sacrilegious reputation as a recovering and bitter ex-Catholic.

The Catholics, however, have the best music in town. It's what kept me going long after I stopped believing the theology. But in keeping with my commitment issues, I am now an Unitarian. I'm content with the messages, appalled by the music. Lyrics, melodies and singing -- the whole kit and kaboodle is lackluster. Unitarians readily admit this is true; it is the one thing we know for sure.

Digression again. Sorry.

Among the other ideas: Work at a construction site for a day, fix and deliver a meal to someone who lives in a tent, rent a really hot car, head to the airport and fly anywhere, create a holiday and plan a celebration around it, eat something featured in "Fear Factor", pay ahead for half a dozen McDonald's orders and quietly watch reactions, try snowboarding, wear a mini skirt, stiletto heels and a feather boa to the grocery store, sing solo at a karaoke bar, kiss a guy from every state - in a year, not a month - peruse and make a purchase at a sex shop, put coke in my eyes and speed down a rural highway. OK, that one's a joke, but I know someone who did it -- someone who likely is reading this. Go a month without a drink. OK, that one's a joke, too.

A Starbucks, a police officer, and a super Wal-Mart somehow must be included in this year's misdaventures as well. Just how I don't yet know. But I bet someone in my wee readerland does.

Now that you have the idea, I think I should tell you something about me. It may help you understand why I feel compelled to potentially and publicly embarrass or maim myself. It may even help me understand.

But that is for another day. Night has fallen and I can't get "Amazing Grace" out of my head. Retribution, I suspect, for a wretch like me.

My friend handed me the book with an apology.

"My mom sent it to me," she said. "I don't know what she was thinking. Maybe you'll get a laugh out of it. Then please, just throw it out. Or do whatever you want."

What was her mom thinking indeed. It was one of these 3-inch-by-3-inch impulse booklets you stare at while waiting in line at Borders. The title, "What Every Woman Should Do Once," roller-coasted across the cover in playful cursive letters. A blonde cartoon woman in a red sequined dress and red heels perched on a love seat, a cat at her side, manicured nails holding a paper so long it curled to the floor. Her lips were pursed in a knowing grin.

I set the book aside, and didn't pick it up for three days. It sat on my kitchen counter, an incredible annoyance to a neat freak. I couldn't throw it out; it was, after all, a gift. Finally, I opened the thing and read it through. Once. It took about 90 seconds.

On each stiff page were no more than a dozen words, accented by drawings in the same cartoony style as the cover. A pair of pink-tinted sunglasses, a lime-green purse, black stiletto heels, an orange perfume bottle. All of them annoyed me; one disturbed me: a purple lipstick tube, its red contents cranked to maximum height.

"Smoke a cigar," the book urged. Done that, I thought. Swisher Sweets in college surely counted as cigars. "Make snow angels." I snorted. "Invent an interesting past." Why tweak with perfection? "Tell a man you love him first." I paused here, this was considered unusual?

I had done 10 out of 52. Not a bad percentage really, particularly when taken from such a stupid book.

I put the booklet aside. Two hours later, I picked it up again. Flipped a couple more pages. Tossed it into the garbage can. Snatched it out 20 minutes later.

"Kiss a guy from ever state." "Dye your hair blonde and see if they really do have more fun." "Head to the airport and fly - anywhere." "Have a three-martini lunch and go back to work refreshed."

It was ridiculous. Of course.

I looked at my "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" calendar and saw that it was mid-December, the end of a very twisted year. I needed a straight shot of something new, an infusion of fun, a sidestep from a largely looming mid-life crisis.

Perhaps I needed to do a few more of the things every woman should do once. I brushed the coffee grounds off the little book and looked at it with growing affection. This, I decided, was my ridiculously perky pocket guide to 2006.

Awkward Pose

"Awkward" is a yoga pose, an elevated squat in which your arms are held rigid in front of you, and your derriere stretches back, searching for a chair that never materializes. Even nice rear ends look bizarre, hovering in such an aggressive thrust.

In my class, the instructor always urges us to search even harder for the chair, to sink the hips deeper.

"You'll feel like you're going to lose your balance and fall backward," she says, "but trust me, you won't." She reminds us not to be quite so grim about it all. "Relax your face," she says in a soothing tone. And occasionally, "Smile. See what a difference it makes."

It's hard to smile when your thighs shake and burn. But if you can manage it, you forget for a second the torturous position in which you've voluntarily put yourself.

If you haven't seen it, you get the picture -- awkward pose is not among the graceful postures they select for the cover of the yoga video box. But viewed from certain angles, there's beauty to it, a grace in the arch of the back, and the V it creates between thighs and chest.

There's also a hint of desperation in the reach of the arms -- at least my arms. They're saying, "Give me a rope. Something, anything, to keep this body from falling." But I get through it every time, some days with ease and pride, some days with gratitude that it's over.

Awkward pose is, in short, my life.

In my 41 years, I have lost my balance and fallen backward more times than I can recall. Often, the effort to stay balanced makes my head spin and leaves every part hurting. From the outside, it looks kind of strange sometimes, even uncomfortable to sustain. But there are moments of beauty and grace amid the wobbly, repeated attempts to stay in the right posture.

Month by month, year by year, trauma by trauma, I'm gaining strength. And do I imagine it, or does my butt look better through it all?

Here, with you, on this new blog, I'll try to regain the sense of humor that once was so fine and lately seems dulled by complicated poses I should never have tried, and tough decisions that knocked some wind out of me. I'm reminding myself to breathe deep. Relax my face, and smile. See what a difference it makes.

With that mantra in mind, this year hopefully will be is a successful experiment in serious amusement. For further details on this haphazard plan, turn an e-page to the as-yet-unwritten Entry #2. Must admit, I'm curious myself.