Month: December 2016

Squad Goals: Laundry

~ sharingmoxie ~ 1 Comment

squad-goals

Dear Taylor Swift,

I like you, but your idea of squad goals, and all of these carefully crafted pictures, make me feel like a mushroom turdball. I enjoy the concept of wanting good things for your friends, though. So, Taylor, these are my squad goals: the great, bombastic, luxurious, off the hook things I wish for my friends…. (let’s compare).

  1. I will never make you wear a bikini and jump in the air wrapped in flag towels, but I will expect you to suit up and swim. No matter what your body looks like, you’re good. Just jump in the damn pool and then we’ll have a cocktail.
  2. I wish clean laundry baskets for you. I know you work very hard and most days it seems like you are behind before you ever even get out of bed. Savor the moments when you feel like you have your shit together. (this empty laundry basket lasted 8 minutes tonight).img_0157
  3. I hope you look up from your phones, your computers, your work, and see your peeps that are outside your door waiting to spend time with you. Just close your stuff for 15 minutes and listen to them, really listen. You won’t regret it.
  4. I hope you get time to yourself that is not limited to going to the bathroom or taking a shower. Your squirrel cage needs time to unwind and you deserve to take these moments.
  5. Spending time with your friends is important. Make it happen. We may not dress up in leather mini-skirts and rock the club scene, but we have fun. You need this Miss Mini-van.
  6. Stop scheduling plans, adventures, trips, goals for everyone else. Make your own. You’re worth it.

Taylor, your bar is set pretty high. As you can see, my squad goals are pretty pedestrian. You do you, and I’ll support my squad the best way I know how. As a favor though, if you’re friends with the pixies and the fairies, please tell them to stop stealing all our socks. It’s ridiculous. Can’t we just get along? They take one and leave the other. Insane. They already have enough pony tail holders and missing scotch tape to cross the river Jordan. We just want our socks to match again.

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Thanks, T. You’re the best.

Keep sharing moxie.

Want. Need. Wear. Read.

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The Christmas gift-giving concept is straightforward: something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read. It sounds simple. It should be simple.

I pitched my idea to my firstborn and, ever the rule follower, she promptly gave me a bullet point list. 1. Want-Bookniture, furniture made from books. 2. Need-Shopping money for Paris.

I stopped reading at number 2.

I tried with my preschooler. “I want a drone.” What do you need? “I need a drone.” This prompted a discussion on the definitions of want and need.

Is this a hard question? I turned inward. What do I want? What do I need? Nothing, really. My children don’t truly lack for anything, but I don’t either. So what do I want? Time. Uninterrupted time with them, with my sisters, with…my favorites. What do I need? The same thing, time.

I realize that now that my list-making days are over. I’ll be asking for the same thing every Christmas from now until the end. I want time with the people I love. I’m going to be vocal about it, too, so my children start to begin to get the idea that this concept of time is important. As in, “my mom has been asking for time with us for the past 20 years, it’s sooooo obnoxious, it’s all she wants.” I’m not some paragon of sainthood, but I realize that my children will only live under my roof for a short period of time. I will always want more time with them, especially at Christmas, and I’m perfectly comfortable making them feel guilty as hell if I don’t get it. It’s all I’m asking for.

I just spoke with a colleague yesterday that hasn’t had their children all together for 10 years over the holidays. She wants time. There is a lovely young woman in our community that was just diagnosed with cancer. She wants more time, god, she deserves more, please.

Christmas is a magical time for some, for others they’d like to just get through it. It’s financially and socially stressful and is less a celebration of true love and selflessness than it is of consumerism. Grinchy, grinchity, grinch.

When it comes down to it though, our deepest wishes, the theme is often the same. You want more time, you were deprived of more time, or you haven’t found the right people you want to spend time with.

For all of you, dear readers, I hope your Christmas is filled with time. Time with the people that make you laugh till you cry, drive you insane, make you snort with derision, and fill your heart up. Find your tribe. Love them, fiercely. Merry Christmas, friends.

Keep sharing moxie.

 

Christmas Card Competition

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christmas-catString me up by toenails, I mailed out my Christmas cards today. I’m THAT person. The obnoxious one that sends Christmas cards every year. Early. I’m sorry. Before you pelt me with olives, let me assure you, I do not have my crap together in any other way.  

I have posed with a shovel, made my friends take pictures of me when I was single and sent them out with aplomb. If I had a cat in the 90’s, no doubt I would’ve been this super festive twee love pictured to the left.

Somehow, though, my favorite time of year to visit the mailbox has lost a bit of luster. I think it’s gotten a little too competitive. My sister gave me a look of unbridled (yet, well deserved) disgust when I handed out Christmas cards at Thanksgiving last week. The personalized return mailing labels with our family photo emblazoned on them? A bit much, perhaps. My family is not as bright and shiny as we appear on the thick cardstock. Yours isn’t either, precious. None of us are Christmas card perfect. We just aren’t perfect, period. So let’s just write a Christmas card disclaimer, like a surgeon general warning on a pack of ciggies: these photos may be dangerous to your self-esteem. May cause you to vomit a little in your mouth. Smiling is good for your health, so smile, piss ant, and be glad someone mailed you an actual card.

In my heart of hearts, I know that my favorite Christmas cards are the ones that make me laugh, the ones that celebrate joy. The family that mocks themselves a bit. I loved it when a friend of mine had her husband wrestle with a barn cat one year for a photo shoot in striped sweaters. Admittedly, my humor veers towards David Sedaris.

Let’s make our goals certain and true: try to  make people smile and be glad they’re friends with you, rather than wanting to bash your perfect face in when they open up your Christmas card. My labels are pretentious this year, the contents inside- flagrantly braggadocio, hopefully the cover photo redeems the hot mess. So, from my family to yours…Merry Christmas from Bossy Boots & the Pot Stirrer.

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Keep sharing moxie!