Holiday Hangover Cure

Did you have one?  I did.  My annual holiday hangover.  No, I am not talking about having been over served 1 too many stiff eggnogs, nor am I talking about that squishy part of you that might be hanging over your jeans today.  I'm talking about that anticlimactic, restless feeling that follows Christmas for me.  Every year.  Without fail.  What to do about it?

Well, first you need to know where you carry your post traumatic holiday stress.  Because you need to purge it.  I carry mine in a series of knots lodged directly under my right shoulder blade.  I found this out when, on our honeymoon cruise, the therapist, as she ran her thumb along them counting them out loud (there were 8), said...Wow, you must be really stressed out.  Huh?  All I'd done is finish my last semester of college, gotten married, and started writing my resume.  In a 2 month time span.  That's all. I just thought I was busy.  But apparently all that joyful change...can knot me up like a pretzel.  Even when I'm having fun.

So now when I wake up and realize my right hand is pretty much numb, I know those knots have taken over and it is time to work them out.  Which is precisely what started happening about 3 or 4 days ago.  You know, right after Christmas.  These days, since as a mother of 3, I perpetually have more to do than hours in the day, it happens a lot.  And so I am the proud owner one of those beige shiatsu massage pillows.  You know, one of those things that look like it's going to smell like Bengay because it belongs to an 80 year old man?  For the past few mornings I have spent hours with that miracle working pillow massaging out my knots and doing productive things like watching the entire season of The Last American Cowboy and Tabatha's Salon Takeover.  Pure relief.

But watching all that hard, efficient, ranch work, made even slacker me feel a little lazy today.  And my knots seemed to be gone so I couldn't really call lounging around all day with my shiatsu pillow productive.  And you know, the New Year is day after tomorrow.  It's time for Change.  Rejuvenation. Resolution.  Don't worry I haven't gone all Type A on you.  If you haven't bailed yet, first, thank you.  Second, keep reading and learn the secret of successful slacker productivity.

People call me many things, but overly organized and structured  are usually not among them.  I'm selectively organized.  Which is really code for being L.A.Z.Y.  As in I detest, with every fiber of my being, to look for things.  It's why I never, ever, put my keys anywhere besides right in their little dish by the front door.  If I have to look for them when it's time to leave, the jig is up.  I'll be the one plopped on the sofa, content, deciding I didn't really need to leave my house that day.  And please never ask me to help you find something.  It will wreck our friendship.  I will start out appearing to be really hunting for your very important lost thing.  And then, 47 seconds in,  I will make some excuse about needing my glasses that are in my car.  And I'll drive home.  Because I probably have a new episode of Tabatha's Salon Takeover waiting on my DVR.  And I need to watch it and work out that stress knot that developed when I agreed to help you find something.  But I digress.  

I decided that among other things (like it being prosperous), I would like 2011 to be more selectively organized.  There were a couple of things nagging at me.  First, I have had to look for my BlackBerry about 25 times in the last week and it is beginning to really bug me.  Second, I really wanted to get rid of the basket by our phone that sits on my breakfast bar taking up more than its fair share of space.  The problem is that it houses important essentials like pens, pencils, scissors, my life sustaining post-it notes and a calculator.  It also accumulated things like bits of paper, shock pens purchased by my boys at the fair in September and random buttons.  The logical solution to this is that all that stuff in the basket could really be housed in what was currently the junk drawer in the kitchen.  And my BlackBerry could live right by the phone.  Even I can remember that.

Well, junk drawer no more!  I bought a little organizer thing at Target (I even measured the drawer before I left - who says I can't learn something from my past mistakes), and emptied the junk drawer of its junk and replaced it with sweet, beautiful, organization.  Can you hear the rejoicing?  Imagine that I found such treasures as an expired coupon from 2006 for fresh meat at Albertsons, 23 cents in nickels, dimes and pennies, all 13 lost mailbox keys that I refused to look for in '03 and paid the post office to replace the lock on our mailbox with a new one, and 10 rulers.  Why we need 10 rulers, I don't know. 

And so I am done.  My New Year's Resolution is complete.   I don't have do anything more.  So the secret to successful slacker productivity?  Be vague.  Be very vague.  I only said I wanted to be more selectively organized.  No specifics, no quantification. And so now, with one drawer, I can lounge around for the entire 2011 year.  Unless the BlackBerry thing doesn't work out.  

Happy Slacker New Year!
~S