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Monday, January 3, 2011

i love winter







It's true.  Really.  Really, it's true!!  I love winter!  Just when others begin to experience the peak of the winter doldrums....when the ground is a frozen solid mass, the trees are bare, the air chills to the bone and the wind snaps like rubberbands on your face....I am at my most determined.

The holidays dazzle me with the glitz, glam and sparkle.  The lights twinkle. The shiny giftwrap crinkles.  The house smells like fresh baked bread and cookies and a cup of tea is always steeping somewhere.  It goes on like this for about a month between the day after thanksgiving and the day after christmas.  Poof!  The day after christmas....the tree comes down, the ornaments get packed away, little white lights are forbidden from engaging in anymore bantering twinkle as they are tucked neatly into mr. rubbermaid.  And just like that,  I have an epiphany every year!  For some reason, it coincides with the new year resolution nonsense but I swear it is an epiphany all my own and unrelated to any resolve in the new year!  I promise.  It's clockwork.

This year I experienced the same gutwrenching eyes wide open epiphany I have experienced in past years.  I looked around my house and said to myself, "self!!  good lord where did all of this crap that you have no use for come from?  why have you spent so much time and money foolishly engaged in engorging yourself with junk?!!"  Then it begins.  I slowly begin to calculate the mathematics behind the thoughtless consumption of said items.  Lo and behold, the mathematical calculation I speculate is one I don't like!  Instead of ignoring it though, I whip out my checkbook and start balancing it....ha!  I didn't know anyone other than my dad did this anymore but here I steadily sit with pen in hand and registry open calculating numbers and decimals galore!!  So it begins....the long journey where I am mindful about my purchases and ignore the impulse driven madness that sometimes consumes me when I read signs that shout SALE or open up a groupon for an item that I can't possible conceive living without!!! 

This year I do resolve to remember this epiphinay in April when the weather starts to break and the fingers itch to return to the soft supple leather of my wallet that houses the cash and credit that has often been used to purchase all the mindless that items that end up finding a forever home at the goodwill. So in some ways, my annual epiphany has trumped itself into a resolution that I never planned on even making.....cheers to unplanned resolutions and meeting the day with resolve and determination!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

My husband still balances the checkbook. He does it twice though. Once online and once in the actual register. He can't help it though he's pre-programmed to make sure every cent is accounted for.