Next July, my husband and I will be celebrating our 10th anniversary, and this time, we’re going to do it in style.

We’ve never really been big on exchanging anniversary gifts. For our first anniversary — the paper one — we exchanged Tom Clancy novels. On our second anniversary, the Cotton one, we picked up a 2-pack of “His” and “Her” hand towels at the dime store.

New parents by our third year of marriage, we were both too tired to bother thinking up any way to celebrate the Leather anniversary. Instead, we agreed we’d just celebrate the really big ones: ten, twenty and so on.

So, with our tenth anniversary approaching, I’ve got my heart set on a romantic cruise. Unfortunately, since none of our extended family members are up to watching our son for four days and three nights, we’ll probably wind up on one of those family cruises that offers some kind of kids’ camp while parents get blotto poolside or in one of the ships 24/7 bars.

I can’t remember the last time I wore a bathing suit in public. I sure know that there’s no amount of booze that’ll talk me into wearing one at this point.

But ten months is quite a long time, diet-wise, even if I do want to ultimately lose 35 pounds. That’s less than a pound a week, actually, and that seems like it ought to be quite doable.

So, to hell with my hatred of exercise. I may never like it, but if it’ll help me get into the kind of slinky black bathing suit designed to be seen in — without ever touching water — then I’ll do it.

Starting tomorrow. I swear.