Heidy ho, folks! Welcome to 2013! I hope its entrance was pleasant and peaceful (or, you know, wild, depending on your vices). Ours was covered in snot, which I was completely fine with, because last year it was covered in vomit. We’re sniffly, but we’re pulling through.
A few small items to address:
I want to congratulate Off Duty Mom for winning the author Elf Pack prize for Momma’s 12 Days of Christmas, and reader Shannon P for the reader prize.
Reader Wendy O snagged the Grand Prize, a Keurig brewing system, and reader Yvonne K won Momma’s 12 Days Stocking Stuffer, a Starbucks gift card.
I will be sending out prizes as soon as the river of snot begins to recede.
Congratulations and thanks everyone for your commitment and participation!
This year was an interesting one. It put me in moods I have never experienced. It had me battling with pest control folk, customer service representatives, my husband, and myself. I learned two major things: 1) Things are not always as they seem (ahem, this house), and 2) Sometimes it’s okay to a) fight for what you know is right and/or yours and b) to turn around and walk away, refuse a transaction, or abandon a process if that’s what’s best for your family, despite the way you may be perceived.
The first comes slightly easier to me than the second. I will tentatively say I’m still working on the second.
And that’s as much waxing philosophical as my congested brain can handle right now.
My particularly shining parenting moment of 2012, fortunately (or, as you’ll see, unfortunately) was captured on video:
You can put down the phone. He’s fine. And he hasn’t sprouted any whiskers (yet). He’s still walking upright, and I don’t anticipate him using the litter box (or the potty) anytime soon. (<Rimshot> Heyooo! I’ll be here all week. Try the lobster!)
Now, onto my New Year’s Resolution…
As I’ve mentioned damn near a thousand times now, I used to be meticulous, orderly, and organized. And, as I’ve mentioned just as frequently, that concept is now virtually nonexistent in my life.
I am not much of a resolution person. I’m more of a sit-back-and-watch-others-make-then-almost-immediately-break-resolutions person. If I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to do something for 364 days, the 365th day will never be the clincher. I had no real intention of making (and, of course, subsequently breaking) any resolutions this year. That said, my purse has been – to put it nicely – neglected for the better part of two years.
And I don’t mean neglected in the Gee, I haven’t changed out this wallet with a newer and prettier wallet in a while sense. Not at all.
In October, and only after tipping the bag upside down to empty it, I found a significant number cheddar Goldfish in the bottom of my bag. I don’t know how long they were there. I don’t know if they escaped from Ziploc bag, if they were deposited by a tiny do-gooder, or if they heroically escaped the terrifying fate of being eaten by my children. All I knew was there were a bunch of fancy-looking croutons in the bottom of my bag for an indeterminate period of time.
A few months passed, and I thought I had been doing well. Yesterday, I, as I had been planning for a few weeks, emptied Old Nelly onto the kitchen counter for what may be the only bath my poor bag and wallet would ever receive. And that’s when it all, quite literally, hit me. A fun-size bag of M & M’s from Halloween, a handful of pulverized fall leaves, a smashed orange jelly bean jammed between the folds of my wallet – the wallet I present to salespeople far almost daily – and a Blockbuster card, in my ex’s name, issued in 2003, landed on the counter with a thump. How’s that for Auld Lang Syne?
And to add another layer of disturbing fact to this tale, as anyone with a purse will tell you, I had to have moved the Blockbuster card every time I changed purses since 2003 in order for it to be in my bag today. So, along with stale food, I have also, at some point, committed to carrying other flavors of trash like invalid identification cards belonging to people with whom I no longer associate, from companies that no longer exist.
I was horrified. I had reached into that bag dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times, and never saw, smelled, or felt the Goldfish, noticed the leaves, the card, or the M & M’s, or saw the jelly bean. My stubby fingers nary grazed the bag’s silken lining. For what may have been months.
I couldn’t, wouldn’t, be known as the Lady with the Garbage Handbag.
I cleaned out the many and varied forms of trash, including several expired coupons, and shook the bag over the trash can. I was finished being the Bird Lady from Home Alone.
My bag was a war zone, except the battle’s long over, the place has been ransacked, and the wounded have been left to die.
Therefore, I declare, on this day of January 2, 2013, in the presence of all my peers, that my handbag shall never, ever achieve the level of squalor akin to the wasteland I discovered yesterday. No food or organic refuse shall enter my bag, and if, perchance, it does, all remnants will be removed within 24 hours. Receipts from 2006 will be disposed of or put in an alternative safe place, and any and all membership paraphernalia from bankrupt corporations will be discarded.
I received a flu shot a few weeks ago. During my appointment, the pharmacist and I were chatting. When he handed me a 20% coupon, I looked up at him with a twinkle in my eye, and said, “Thanks. I will add this to my collection of expired coupons.” I’m proud to say I remembered and used that coupon, both in record time.
And if you see me out and about, I fully expect to submit to periodic purse inspections. In fact, I insist upon it.
