I'm rather proud of myself and so I am gonna have a gloat in your face moment if I may, purely because it's day 3 of the New Year and so far I have not crashed and burned as far as my New Year resolutiony thingamajigs go.
OK so my resolutions were hardly back breaking material, but still, I've usually managed to break at least half or more of them by now and yet the only one I have broken this year so far is the no Vodka on Wednesdays thing which was part of the being more respectful of my body promise to myself..... but come on, really - no vodka on Hump Day?? That was pretty lame anyways.
I'm still in holiday mode and I put it down to the mid week public holidays and the fact that the kids are on school holidays and therefore routine is nothing more than something I vaguely remember from a long long time ago... or two weeks, give and take.
I'm trying to get into the habit of working until 1.00pm and then after that I'm completely in the hands of the kids and whatever they want to do so long as it doesn't involve glitter, dead bugs or multiple trips to the hole in the wall where you go to get 'the free' money.
They know that if they can just refrain from killing each other until after lunch then the promise of good times in the afternoon is dangling before them like a carrot in front of a hungry something or other.
So I have this relaxed air about me at the moment and I have to say I am totally digging the chilled out mama routine very much. Although the check out lady as Coles might think I was perhaps a little too chilled out on New Years Eve.
I was at the checkout and I was chatting to two of our best friends in the whole wide world who we don't get to see that much because they live like 60 hours away (7 hours really but who's counting when you get past 2 hours?) and I was more excited than a bum full of farts because they were going to be joining us and our other besties later that night to celebrate the New Year.
I was a little beyond excited and still calling out to them two checkouts over when I realised it was my turn and I was slowing down the check out line. I went into Speedy Gonzalez mode and started chucking all the contents of my trolley onto the conveyor belt Jackie Chan style complete with sound effects and a little hand choppy choppy just to prove to the people waiting behind me that I was really sorry for holding them up and I was going to go super fast now.
The lovely check out lady started doing her bit and scanning my goods, when I just randomly start putting everything back into my trolley.
No biggie you say, except the things I were putting back into my trolley were things she hadn't yet scanned.
Back goes the hommus, the Jatz and the Indian dal salad and the nice lady is smiling at me and so I smile back as I reload the trolley with the smoked salmon and the baja mix and no flipping idea what I was doing.
She smiles at me again perhaps a little less enthusiastically but still a very pleasant smile, and again I smile back thinking what a lovely interactive manner she has with her customers.
And then she points to my trolley and the items I'm merrily chucking in and she very politely (bless her) enquires "Excuse, but are you going to pay for those?"
I stared horrified at the trolley and at then at the couple waiting in line behind me who I'm sure are now cursing themselves for lining up behind me and I replied "Um no, clearly I was intending on shop lifting these today if that's ok?".
WTF???
Bless her, she was very patient with me and luckily I wasn't in the mood to humiliate myself with any further brain farts and I promptly stacked it all back neatly onto the conveyor belt so she could scan them.
I have no idea what I was thinking, and seriously it's not like I was REALLY going to swipe a trolley full of cheese and dips whilst my grommets were watching on as they rode the guide dog money box and sucked on Mentos and Chupa chups that I actually did forget to pay for in a truly honest mistake sorry Coles.
Come ON???
My only reasoning was it was New Years Eve, I was excited and it was a sign that I really REALLY need to make sure I stick to my New Years promise to just slow down and let my tightly wound brain unravel a little.
And so that's what we've been doing these past few days... just taking it slow and steady, and if I have my way we will be doing a bucket load more of it throughout the whole holidays.
Besides, what could be more important than hanging out with the squids and discussing things like why snot is green, why chairs aren't called pillows and conducting experiments like holding your nose and blowing hard to see whether your ears pop or you fart first.... and other really important stuff like that.
On a serious note, who came up with the word snot? How weird is that word!
