The other night we were watching TV on the couch, switching channels between America’s Funniest Home Videos and Jeff Foxworthy on Comedy Central.

“Mommy, what’s a redneck?” Girl asks me, after Jeff Foxworthy has used the term for the 20th time.

“Uh, I guess, uh, it’s a not nice word for poor people. Don’t call anybody that,” I say lamely.

Tonight, I have a better explanation for her, delivered in Foxworthy style:

- You might be a redneck if you sneak out to the fireworks stand when your wife and children are out shopping and come home with this:

- You might be a redneck if you buy this just because of its name: The Junior Redneck Party Pack

- You might be a redneck if you shoot it off the day after the Fourth of July, just for the hell of it

- You might be a redneck if you can’t even wait til it’s dark to shoot it off on the Fifth of July, just for the hell of it

- And, you might be a redneck if your very favorite rocket in the whole Junior Redneck Party Pack is named “Butt Ugly.”

It was a rare down day today, so Girl and I went to the Vietnamese nail place to have our toes done. They always insist on painting dainty white flowers on Girl’s tiny lavender toenails, and I oblige them since it’s about the only thing they say in English. They talk to each other the whole time in their language, probably laughing at how much I am willing to spend on Girl’s toes. Really, I take Girl along just because I want the company of someone who will speak to me in English.

We are home exactly 2 seconds when our dog comes and sits on my big toe and messes up my paint job. Luckily I have some gloppy pink nail polish with which to fix it, giving my toe the homemade appearance I was attempting to avoid by going to the Vietnamese nail place in the first place.

Girl’s dainty white toe flowers last about 20 minutes longer. She decides to put on sneakers to go outside and play because she doesn’t want fire ants biting her feet.

Of course the sneakers rub off the upper-most petals of the dainty flowers. Of course I have nothing resembling white nail polish with which to fix them. Except Rust-o-leum appliance touch-up paint, which comes in a little bottle resembling white-out. That touch-up paint has lasted about three years on my stove. Not sure Girl will want her dainty white toe flowers to last quite that long.

Shatter your self-imposed limits!!! The process of change touches almost every area of your life and paradoxically challenges you to establish a long-term plan.

This is my horoscope for 2010. I’m a Capricorn, which means I’m not used to seeing horoscopes like that one. Capricorns are the Poindexters of the Zodiac. We’re practical, predictable. In fact, we goatheads are downright boring, astrologically speaking.

So, true to my Capricornian nature, I have no intentions of shattering anything in 2010. Baby steps, small improvements are my plans for this year. New carpet instead of a new house. Call people more, Facebook less. More yoga, less working through lunch. More vegetables, less red meat. Love more, complain less.

I am also completely ignoring a book I received for my birthday: “Skinny Bitchin’ – A Get Off Your Ass Journal to Help You Change Your Life, Achieve Your Goals and Rock Your World!”

I don’t want my world to be rocked. I like my world as it is. I also don’t want my ass kicked by a skinny bitch. FYI, the Skinny Bitches are two writers who look like Barbie dolls. Their claim to fame is a tough-love diet book. Here’s a pearly nugget from their latest tome: “Whatever you’ve been dying to do or try but have been too scared, today is the day! Carpe diem, bitch!”

Sooooo happy not to be sitting a cubicle away from this person. I’d be dying to kill her.

Corpus delicti, bitch!

Ten years ago on New Year’s Eve, I wasn’t partying like it was 1999. I was hunkered down expecting the lights to go out and mass chaos to ensue. I had been suckered in by the Y2K scare — remember that one? I spent most of 1998 covering the high tech industry for an Arizona newspaper, and Y2K was THE story. It was supposed to be the end of the world as we know it.

That night we stayed home with Bob’s young kids who had come for their holiday visit. Most of the night we sat on our big leather couch, waiting to see what midnight would bring.

As everyone knows, real disaster came, but it wasn’t on New Year’s Day 2000. It happened a little more than a year later on a bright blue September day. And there’s no way that any of us could have been ready for it.

Fast forward to tonight — I’m still staying in, still sitting on the same, now dumpy, couch with a couple of young kids on New Year’s Eve. But I’m grayer, fatter and maybe a bit wiser. Much has happened to me over the past decade, most importantly Boy and Girl. If motherhood has taught me anything it’s this: It’s never the terror of the night that gets you — it’s the arrow that flies by day. The expected horror almost never happens, but the unexpected catastrophe sometimes does, and there’s no way to be ready for it. So there’s no point to live in fear, is there?

I’m not afraid of what 2010 will bring. This is not a night for hunkering down. It’s a time for looking up.