Things You Can Count On: After The Merry (1)

A) The Rubber Band Effect

1) Though you know you stashed those far-too-small-jeans-you'll-fit-into-someday way back into the furthest corner of your drawer, it will shock you that somehow they have landed on the top of your folded laundry.

2) Um? Wha? How'd that happen? you'll think as you peel them off your bod. Weird.

3) Oddly, the new skinny cords you try next must be the old skinny cords....

4) And every striped t-shirt you have seems suddenly on acid -- horizontal stripes going all Dali on you, stretching and bulging where they never did before.

5) You will take a deep breath, put your big girl panties on (in more ways than one) and check the tag on the jeans.

6) Oh shit.

7) Just as the morning after (everythingyouate) always comes, so do your rubber bands -- one looped around a button, one through a button hole -- and sweet relief, you can carry on.

B) The Bomb that Blows and Blows and Blows

1) You will bag up trash.

2) You will bag up trash again.

3) You will find heaps of trash outside your kitchen door.

4) You will shake your fists at the heavens -- damn you toy packaging maker people!

5) You will never have enough batteries, because someone has thrown them out with the trash.

C) Santa Still Sees You, Suckers

1) The sugarplummish of your kids will quit about 48 hours after The Best Day of Their Lives.

2) Your kids fights will not only begin again, but be re-charged -- like their angst was off in a room, reenergizing. Booting up.

3) All hopped up on happiness and joy and a brand new toy, your children will behave like wretched brawlers who never learned love or to share.

4) EVER.

5) Also, your children will suddenly turn deaf to your good-mother-disciplinary-actions so instead you will resort to HIGH VOLUME PARENTING.

6) You will call your sister in tears, waving your white flag of exhausted surrender.

7) Hoarse and done, you will laugh because she will let you.

D) We'll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet

1) You will ring in the next decade with people you love. You will play cards with your nephews.

2) You will not be with the people you have kissed at midnight for 15 midnights in a row and you will feel lonely for them, yet not lonely.

3) Your husband will really kiss you and you will really kiss him.

4) You will whisper to him your fortune for the future. He will keep his arms around you, lingering there longer than he has in a while.

5) He will start a new job in days.

To be continued...