Goodbye..........

2010.  You've been a good year.  A year full of change and excitement and new adventure.  This will likely be my last post of 2010 as I doubt I add anything insightful on New Year's Eve.  And my apologies to my 5 followers - for going AWOL the last week.  I got hit by a train.  On Christmas.  And am just now starting to feel like a human being again.  In celebration of this recovery - I'm having a drink!  Which will no doubt cause me to slide back into my fogginess and slumber.  Oh well.  The only thing I have to do tomorrow is celebrate the old and ring in the new!

What a holiday season it's been.  I started off full of energy and spirit - working hard and listening to holiday tunes and baking cookies and filling the house with holiday cheer.  And then.  The Prodigal Son got home.  And that was fun!  For a night.  And then we haven't really seen him since.  Although he has only left the house twice.  There's something depressing about living under the same roof with another person and never seeing or talking to them.  Watching them live their life parallel to but separate from your own.  A life you're not really a part of.  I suppose this is how it is when you have adult aged children living in your home.  I'm thinking that maybe he should get his own place this summer and just stop by to visit from time to time.  I imagine this is God's way of preparing you to part with them and let them go lead their own lives.  I thought I would feel alive when he returned for a month.  I had big plans for us!  We would work out together.  Sing.  Drink a few brews.  Walk hand in hand through the grocery store.  But alas.  I feel dead with him here.  He sleeps all day and plays XBox all night and his friends come and go through here like we have a revolving door installed.  They're addicts.  XBox addicts.  And the energy they put into that game is sucking the life right out of my home.  I haven't heard any singing.  Or seen any dancing.  Or told any stories.  It's like a live version of Night of the Living Dead.  He leaves on January 9th.  I'll be happy to pack him up and send him back to HIS life.  The one that I drop in on from time to time.

We had a shlood on Christmas Eve (that's when the toilet overflows) - and that sent me into orbit because I've been telling the husband to replace the piece of shit for 5 years.  I have been telling him the last three months that it's getting worse and worse.  But he keeps telling me to "just wait" - blah blah blah - FUCK THAT.  From now on  - he either fixes the shit OR I'll hire someone to fix it.  I'm sick of living in a shambles of a house because he's "waiting on something". 

We did get to experience two angels at Christmas though!  The best damned cat we have was hit by a car the Wednesday before Christmas.  The first angel came in the form of my cousin's husband who fixed the cat's leg - for free!  YAY!!  She's in full recovery now and hopefully in a week or so we will see her moving around like her old normal self. 

The second angel came in the form of a stranger - who located the brunette's class ring in the mall bathroom (where she left it after washing her hands) - and happened to have a relative who attends the same school and was able to hunt down the brunette to return her ring.

But it was the loss of the ring itself that absolutely threw me forcefully back into reality.  The reality of the fact that I over-spend and over-give to my children.  In some lame attempt to give them what I perceive I did not have.  I've purchased $1,000 worth of trophy rings (2) for the Prodigal son.  I'm pretty sure he doesn't know where one of them is.  I gave him an iPod docking station for Christmas - he gave it back to me because he washed his iPod I gave him last year and therefore doesn't have any use for the docking station.  The brunette lost her class ring - the one she didn't have to wait until Christmas to receive.  Nor was it part of her Christmas gift.  (Fortunately that reappeared thanks for aforementioned angel).  But I give and give and give.  Do you know what they got me for Christmas?  Not one fucking thing.  Not even a god damned homemade card with their handprint on it.  Nothing.  A note on a post-it saying thanks for all you do and I love you would have sufficed.  But NOTHING. 

And I watched on Christmas Day as the children in our family tore open their gifts - ripping them - grasping for more boxes, drooling over the glitter and bows.  And when it was over - they ran off - leaving their gifts behind amid the piles of trash.  Off to play with something else.  Or talk on their phones.  Or text.  And then I looked at the adults.  The people who give all year to these little imps.  And we'd each received a small stack of things that we were very much appreciative of.  But it made no sense to me.  We couldn't afford to lavish each other with gifts because we'd given it all to the beasts throughout the year, yet they got the haul at Christmas also.  So in 2011 - it's a new day.  I'm NOT giving to my kids as lavishly as I have in past years.  They need to work.  And learn to make sacrifices.  And wear clothes that don't have designer labels on them.  And more than anything they need to learn the satisfaction of THE WAIT.  And at Christmas, they'll get one nice thing and that's IT.

Because baby, mama has waited 5 years now for a bathroom that doesn't have mold in the shower stall and a leaky floor and shitty (no pun intended) toilet - and this is MY year.  MY YEAR.  We're going to stop spending needlessly and start fixing and caring for the shit we have - namely this house.  And the great purge of 2010 will continue into 2011 - starting with the clothing.  And this means, my friends - that I CANNOT BUY ANY MORE CLOTHES OR SHOES.  For at least a week.  Oh hell, let's see how long I can go.  A few years ago I went all year without buying any - and guess what - we took a 10 day family vacation with the money I saved!  So back to the budget.  And the drawing board.  And into the new year.

I don't know how many posts I had in 2010 - but I can say that this blog is honestly one of the FEW things I ever started that I actually continued.  Maybe I will find its meaning next year.  Maybe it will be writ with humor and hilarity!  Or maybe I'll just whine and cry.  Hopefully I cried myself out over Christmas though.  Thank God for a husband with strong shoulders that allowed me to lean on him for those weepy days.

I'm going to continue with this blog in 2011.  I'm going to continue with my list making in 2011 as it's helped me tremendously in 2010.  And I hope to get off my ass, put down my smokes and beer and get out and live!!!  (Even though I'm scared to go out and live - I think the blonde would like to experience the world some and I'd love to be the one to show it to her - she still likes me). 

I'm getting a new bathroom.  I'm getting a new kitchen floor.  I'm getting a new roof.  And I'm going back to doing shit MY way.  Thanks for taking this journey with me and I wish you the best of 2011 also!!