Starting Over

Part of why we make and need New Year's Resolutions is because we have behaved so poorly and been so irresponsible and negligent in honor of Jesus' birthday, because that is how we show we love Him, that it is going to take some serious resolve just to begin life again as we knew it before the hurricane known as The Holidays struck.

I need a fresh start. I know, most of you fresh started on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Me, I'm procrastinating. My brother, niece and nephew fly home tomorrow. Then I've got about 36 hours to pull it together, make a plan, and gear up before the First Real Monday of 2013 launches.

Monday morning, school resumes. Monday morning Eldest Daughter and I will start a new fitness journal/plan together. Monday is the beginning of the week in which all the activities and classes that paused for The Holidays unpause. Monday, Monday, can't love that day.

Frankly, I'm nervous. But ready. One cannot live in holiday mode forever. My children's brains are melting. My pants are getting tight again. The laundry mountain is growing (no one has been doing chores around here, and there has been travel, and cleaning, both of which produce more laundry, somehow) and someone, Someone, I say, someone is going to have to undertake to climb it. That Someone is likely to be me. We could lose a child in there, I tell you.

We are not in as bad of shape on dishes, in part because, well, we have to eat. And, for one of my first amazing and super acts of the new year, I bought more spoons (**applause**). But my refrigerator is a collection of various shapes and sizes of storage containers filled with generations of food-that-once-was-but-is-now-growing-whoknowswhat. And my countertop has 15 empty stockings and 15 almost empty holiday tins from Grandma, containing only candy no one really wanted, necco wafers and such, all taking up space we normally reserve for whatever objects we take away from the toddlers.

Anyway (or any-who, depending on where you're from), I'm just grateful for this whole fresh start New Year's Resolution thing, to give us a pass for whatever lies behind and an official encouragement to look to what lies ahead and press on toward the mark of the high calling of what we were supposed to be doing before we got so distracted celebrating.

Ready, set, go.

(I'm not really ready yet, but, like I told you, I'm starting Monday.)