SO i spent my fresh, clean first day of the new year haggling with used car salesmen and ended the day eating a gyro in a gas station. I am torn about that, on the one hand i am thrilled to have found a supply of freshly made Greek yogurt, on the other hand I am totally creeped out by the fact that it is in the gas station next to my house.

I guess that when it comes down to it i am a glass half-empty girl.

New Year, the holiday for neurotics

New Year is one of my most favorite times of year. I love that everything gets a clean slate, that all of your bad habits are a thing of the past and somehow, this year, things will change. I love the Rose Bowl Parade, cleaning out my closets, and having a day off work that you don't feel compelled to spend with your family. But most of all I love the list making. Nothing in this world makes me happier than making lists, and posting them and then crossing things off of them. I make lists for everything; long-term projects, short-term projects, things to do before I die, grocery lists for every store in town (should I ever need to stop at the west-side grocery store I have a list that reminds me what products are sold there that are not sold at my store). The list goes on and on. I even just love to say the word list. I make them when I am anxious to relax me or when I am excited (what to do with Chad's bonus check!).

I recognize that the lists may be the most obvious manifestation of my particular brand of crazy, but I can't give them up. My lists are my measure of my accomplishments, how far I have come in a year. It is the best way for me to pause for introspection when usually the only direction it seems like I go is forward, full speed ahead. I will spend the next week combing through all the lists I have hidden in my datebooks, notebooks, white boards and cork boards to make the list of where I am going this year. If I hit a snag there is always the do-over of Chinese New Year. How can you not love a holiday that requires you to sweep out your whole house? Because if there is anything I love more than a list, it is a list that states the order in which I will clean my house.

Sean is Old like me

Happy Belated Birthday Sean! The most wonderful gift on the planet is already in the mail.

Peacemaker

I wouldn't consider myself the most devout Catholic. There are a lot of things about my faith that really speak to me, and a lot of things about my church that really don't, the whole we don't like gays thing, relegating women to supporting roles, banning birth control, etc, etc. However, I am a person who can take the good with the bad so every year my husband, child and I trudge ourselves to Christmas mass. Every year I go just to hear the words of Isaiah, "They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful."

If I am honest with myself I would have to say that I don't really believe in God. However, I do believe that the story of Jesus is probably one of the greatest stories ever told, and like all good stories, it does not need to be true to be powerful. To imagine that a whole society of people were swayed to believe through the power of mere words that a child had been born to bring peace to the world is pretty amazing. Those words are still powerful enough today that people still await a God-Hero. What is a Wonder-Counselor? Something that has to have a happy ending I think.

Shoppers behaving badly

So Chad and I made the mistake of trying to make a return at the mall on Saturday where we were trapped in the mall parking lot for an hour and half. Yes, you read right. It was like quicksand, you pulled in and suddenly realized that you couldn't get out. We passed the time and kept the hysteria at bay by photographing mall parkers behaving badly.

The first shot is every single car surrounding this spot parking over the yellow line, the second is a person who apparently just abandoned their vehicle in the middle of an aisle when they couldn't find a parking spot. Also witnessed but not photographed, someone parking horizontally across the first four spaces in an aisle and a woman in a full length fur coat and boots going into the kohl's. With a Bluetooth earpiece in. I have seriously never seen anyone look so ridiculous, until she used her cart to literally ram another woman out of the way of the doors.

At about forty minutes the time in the car became less about shitty mall parking (where are the urban planners when you need them) than about observing a grandiose a social experiment. Between the woman honking and giving Chad the finger because somehow he was the one person in the stopped dead traffic who should have been moving and seeing all the minivan Dvd players light up one by one you learn a little bit about who you are as a person. Chad and I listened to Christmas music, talked about whether or not we could afford a new car and were generally grateful to just be forced to do nothing. Okay, maybe a little irritated that it was in a mall parking lot, but mostly grateful. It may be a comment on our over-scheduled lives that any down-time is appreciated, but I choose to believe that Chad and I are made for each other and can be happy stuck together in a rental car in the middle of a mall parking lot.

Olivia, on the other hand, took one look at the angry mob out the window and decided a nap would be a good idea.

Here Comes The Sun

I know that it is basically a winter shit storm here right now, but something very important happened this week that somehow makes all the difference. Winter solstice. I know it is probably because I live in hippy-dippy Madison that I give the solstice any credence, but just knowing that what little sun there is will last longer every day now is the mental boost you need when even the radio dj's are yelling at their own meteorologists to shut up. I seriously heard that yesterday, it was awesome.

Besides, now that I have already had my mid-December crying meltdown about the snow I feel that I can embrace it.

Out with the old

One of my favorite things to do around the holiday season is to purge. Usually my mom takes Olivia for a couple of days after Christmas and I clear out anything and everything that can go to Salvation Army and find places to put the mountains of crap that child receives every year. however, this year my mom's administration at work is being bastard coated bastards and not letting any of the nursing staff take time off for the months of December and January. So I am taking advantage of Chad being snowed in with 10 inches of snow to try and clear out.

The only problem is that now my husband and child are witness to this process and are clinging to every holey t-shirt, broken toy and never-used item that is in this house. So i finally just busted out that there will be nothing new purchased or brought into the house until this stuff is gone. Maybe I should have been doing this before Christmas all along.