New Year’s Resolution Gone Awry CategoriesThe World According to Helen

New Year’s Resolution Gone Awry

Okay, this year I’m going to get my act together. Really!  

I am a late sleeper. My friends know to never call me before 11 AM. Nothing ever good has ever happened to me before noon. If the phone rings, it’s bad news or a telemarketer in Sri Lanka is appraising me of my car warranty. If my alarm goes off, it means heading to Richmond airport or traveling on I-95 or going to doctors. Just about all surgeries occur before dawn. I had a hysterectomy once at 6 AM. That was just mean! I might even have more religion if it weren’t for the timing. I was married at 1 PM and am still largely unaware if I repeated my vows.

I am going to get more organized. January 2nd was designated as “Clean The Attic Day”. Now let me offer a bit of advice. If your marriage is already unstable to begin with, forget the attic. Every time we try to attempt this, we’ve been written up in the Ladies’ Home Journal, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Gene starts by stating that you can’t be illogical or sentimental about this stuff. Well, that’s pretty pompous coming from a man who still has his Jack Armstrong signet ring, a book of shoe stamps from the Vietnam War, and his first bow wow. He continues…“If we can’t wear it, frame it, sell it, or hang it on the Christmas tree, out it goes!” At the end of two hours we haul four pitiful items to the curb; a broken VHS, an empty varnish can, one tire chain, and a Rob Lowe pornographic calendar.

What’s this? “That’s our summer cabin inventory.” “What summer cabin?” The one we’re going to buy someday. So far we have a studio couch, a lamp with a bowling pin base, six Jennifer Lopez cereal bowls, two Venetian blinds, and a chair with a rope seat.

“And all this trash?” That belongs to you. Consecutive license plates from 1947, old fertilizer bags, a rusted sickle, a picture of the NY Giants, the medical dictionary wrapped in a plain brown wrapper, eighteen empty antifreeze cans and a bait box trying to tell us something.

I’m trying.

Gravatar image
By

Helen was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was raised in New Jersey and after graduating from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, became a professional fundraiser. She was employed by the United States Olympic Committee, working for the Olympic Council on Sports Medicine. Subsequent to that, she was the Regional Director for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in New York City. Helen now resides in Mechanicsville, Virginia, with her husband of 36 years, Gene and her rescue beagle, Quinn. She has an adult daughter, Alexa, and a four-footed “grandson” Zander, an equestrian show jumper whom she is bankrolling in order to keep him in the manner to which he is accustomed.

3 comments

  1. Thank you so much for the great laugh!!! I almost wet myself laughing because I can relate to it all. As I was reading your article to my husband, he said “the reason you are laughing so much is because our back room is still full of stuff you were going to get rid of”. THIS IS SO TRUE!

    Thanks again. 🙂

Comments are closed.