New Year's Blah

As the New Year has approached, peaked and slid past like Mariah Carey's left boob kept threatening to do on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," it occurs to me that I have no real reason to make Resolutions. Nor will I sit on my spreading bottom and commit to not committing to any Resolutions.

I will, instead, ignore the New Year and keep pretending that it will go 'way and leave me alone. Last year was a bust. I had high hopes for 2005, all of which fizzled and frizzled away like an old Alka Seltzer in a cup of lukewarm water.

Why celebrate? I'm at the same job, with the same chubby encasings and the same laziness enveloping me along with my cozy inner critic to whom I snuggle with on a daily basis when contemplating the "what if's" of life.

What if I finished that book I started a few years back? You'll never be published, they will laugh at you, and probably point, too.

What if I stopped eating past nine pm at night?

Won't matter since you pack your jaws like a squirrel with rice krispie treats and Taco Bell tasties.

What if I actually sat down and took the time to learn to knit?

You will have the ugliest, furriest book marks around, oh yeah, and people will point and laugh.

What if I quit my my job and opened up a bridal business?

No one would buy dresses from someone who gets Muu Muu's for Christmas!

What if I went back to school? Got a Master's?

You'd be the old married lady and they'd all be smarter than you and when you couldn't keep up with their young brains - they'd - point and laugh - while making surreal references that you wouldn't understand.

With an inner critic like that, who needs a mother?!

:)

So here is how my New Year started. My sister (she of the shoe-stringed fingers) and I went to a discount store to check the price of some laminate flooring. She promptly picked up a box and I watched in horror as four slabs of pre-fab wood fell out and - LANDED ON MY F'N FOOT (that's for all you O&A fans out there)!!! She then spotted a glorious heart wreath encrusted with marabou feathers which she declared a "must have"and slid it into the baby carriage. It must have been the pink plastic heart dangling from the center that really tickled her fancy. Anyway, so I spot the deal of the century : $1.49 for a 10oz jar of artichokes - I've been paying $5 or more per can at our local Krogers! So I grab four jars and put them in the top of the carriage. On our way out I notice a Pampered Chef Large Stoneware Baker for $19.99 = DROOL! I snatched it and raced to the checkout aisle. Summer handed me one jar of artichokes while Gillian systematically plucked candy boxes from the counter. I looked up just in time to see the jar fall, slow-mo from Summer's hand and shatter in a fit of artichoke and oil splendor. The women working there couldn't be bothered to clean it - so Summer and I left. It wasn't until we got to the parking lot that we noticed a bit of fur sticking from the bottom of the baby carriage. Summer had inadvertently swiped the heart wreath.

Later that day, when she had broken the seat off of one of her kitchen chairs, she wondered aloud what the rest of 2006 had in store for her.

She called me today to say that her two year old clubbed her in the knees with a meat cleaver. And then laughed.

So, no matter how bad I feel about not having budged from my niche in this world, at least I am not a jar-breaking, foot-squishing, wreath-stealing punching bag for a crazy two-year old.

Life is not so bad....

Oh yeah - and Gillian totally peed on Harry.