You know when you leave a bar of soap in water too long and the bottom gets all squishy and useless, becoming at that point exactly what a bar of soap should not be? Well, as you probably know, that useless degenerative paste is our President. I mean, if soap scum could be a white supremacist, misogynistic, neo-fascist with poor grammar skills.

So everybody settle down with the New Year’s resolution situation.

America, take it easy. Not only do you have slippery soap scum as President, you probably have at least one family member excited about it.

For two years, my American friends committed to reality as opposed to collective partisan delusion, you’ve endured a President who behaves worse than you’d ever let your kids behave while listening to you mother say things like, “Yes, he’s a buffoon, but look at the economy!”

For two years, you’ve wondered what the hell is wrong with these people, how it’s mentally and spiritually possible for them to believe Captain Pussy-Grabber is the man leading our country “in a better direction.”

For two years, you’ve watched Trump hold his Mein Kampf rallies with thousands of gleefully hopping white people chanting hate rhymes, and while you watch them, you realize you’re supposed to raise kids on a planet with these emoji-loving humans, the same ones who lie in bed at night inventing pizza pedophile Clinton crimes.

(Yes, hopping. Whether figuratively or literally, they seem like the type of people who hop.)

And here we are at the end of 2018 and everyone is telling us to “do better for the New Year.” Have we not endured enough without the addition of arbitrary self-improvement requirements?

America with decency, you have done enough. You’ve run a motherfucking marathon barefoot on Legos.

We’ve survived, and we’re tired. Personally, I’m sticking with low-hanging resolutions and suggest you consider the same.

Here are mine:

1. Cut down my coffee consumption for a “more healthy alternative.” I’m kidding. I will however consider buying organic half-n-half for my six cups of daily coffee. If it’s on sale.
2. Continue my streak of occasionally allowing a vigorous unfollow to replace the complex, nuanced diatribe I just wrote to a woman in Minnesota with feathered hair who thinks Nickelback is a good band and Jesus elected Trump.
3. Buy some fucking bins for something.
4. Put some shit in the bins.
5. Fold a fitted sheet once.
6. Wear my gym clothes three times a week.
7. Turn forty in March.
8. Complete ten pages in one of those eclectic adult coloring books of jungles or fish or whatever.
9. Watch every episode of Black-ish next to my children because it’s bonding.
10. Take 150 baths.
11. Yell at my children 2% less.
12. Do not eat simple carbohydrates I’ve discovered in the kitchen between 1am-4am because I can’t sleep thinking about the nation degenerating into steaming piles of dog shit. Eat peanut butter or cheese or something.
13. Convert three more people to the use of CBD vape pens to treat their insomnia because there is no joy like hearing your 69-year-old aunt ask you where she can get that “weed sucking thing.”
14. Only spend thirty minutes a day scrolling trending topics on Twitter then staring out the window wondering where it all went wrong.
15. DO NOT READ EMOJI-OBSESSED TRUMP SUPPORTER #QANON MORONS AT ALL EVER JANELLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVEN IF YOU LIKE PAIN WHICH YOU CLEARLY DO BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SEEM TO STOP.
16. Make a vision board of ways Mitch McConnell may face a sudden and untimely demise.
17. Make a vision board of ways we can help Ruth Bader Ginsburg not die.
18. Read books that aim to not make me smarter.
19. Put stuff in my phone calendar and then look at it occasionally.
20. Miss three school commitments instead of five.
21. Go on nature walks with my kids once a month, or put on a shark documentary or stand in the backyard grass or whatever.
22. Recommit myself to my marriage by not divorcing for another year.
23. Try to remember not to let my third-grader wear my “I gave a fuck once” socks to school again.

Low-hanging resolutions, motherfuckers. For Jesus.

***

ACTUAL 2019 GOAL: Write another book. Or something. 

Until then, will you check out the one I already wrote?

1. On the first Saturday of December, decide to “put lights up” and “get the tree today” and prepare for it by lying on your bed and texting a friend about her afternoon plans and how you’d rather do that.
2. Wonder if there’s some way you can avoid “getting the tree today.”
3. Keep doing that until 2pm.
4. Realize if you don’t get the tree today you’ll have to do it on a weekday after school, which sounds like hell.
5. Head out to locally owned Christmas tree farm at 2:30pm because you are a thoughtful progressive who wants to support local business. Engage in deep tree analysis based on needle-type, bushy/not bushy, whether or not there’s a “good side,” how many holes exist in the branches, how dry it already is, and, my personal favorite, the fucking price.
6. Find tree whole family likes only to realize it’s $80. Head to second family owned Christmas tree farm because you refuse to give your money to Home Depot.
7. Experience same at second place.
8. Feel your soul leaving your body as you drive to Home Depot.
9. Find seventeen trees that five out of six of your family members like while trying not to lose toddler in tree rows and/or parking lot since you are, in fact, in a fucking parking lot. Listen to your teenager shame you for having no soul whatsoever, buying a tree from a corporate parking lot “farm.” To which you respond, “I know. I felt it leave my body.”
10. Realize you no longer care what the tree looks like or who hates it and finally buy one. For $40. Thank you, Home Depot.
11. Get home and remember you didn’t clear a spot for the tree or get the Christmas boxes out because you fucked around on your phone instead.
12. Clear a spot for the tree and bring all decorations in and untangle lights and want to die.
13. At 4:45pm, begin putting lights up on the house. At 5pm, notice it’s dark. Ask yourself why you laid on your bed all morning instead of addressing your life.
14. At 5:15pm, watch a teenager scream and storm into the house while you point out that he’s “ruining family bonding time.” In doing so, make things immediately worse.
15. Argue with your partner about light placement, find yourself unable to locate necessary extension cords.
16. Drive to Walmart to buy extension cords. If you had soul left, it’s gone now.
17. 6:30pm! Get lights up! Nailed it. It’s super janky but who the fuck cares?
18. Feel Christmas spirit as you stand in front of the house Griswold-style and watch daddy flip the lights on. Think about how your 17-year-old is nearing the last years she’ll do this, maybe. Cry?
19. Watch the other teenager get angry. Good feeling gone at second storm into house.
20. Want to go to bed but remember tree situation.
21. Decide you just need to get the tree in water so it’s not a fire hazard in two weeks, and we’ll decorate tomorrow “I promise!”
22. Search garage for tree stand.
23. Do not find tree stand.
24. Remember that last year you got rid of tree stand because it was a piece of shit.
25. Wish you could do life over again or at least that single moment because a piece of shit stand is more than you have now.
26. Yell at somebody.
27. Listen to husband offer to take all the kids to Target to buy a tree stand. Tell him he is your Lord and Savior.
28. Clean the fucking house a little since you neglected it all day, build a fire, and really feel that Christmas spirit, alone, in the house, in sweet, sweet silence. Alone. In the house. How Christmas is supposed to fucking be. Wait.
29. Watch your husband return. Move shit out of the way for the tree. Puke at what you find beneath furniture.
30. Observe your husband on the ground trying to get the new tree stand to work. Suggest he stop saying “This motherfucker does not work!”
31. Sit on couch and offer super helpful directions that increase “motherfucker” utterances.
32. Have one kid hold tree while you stand across the room and attempt to get it straight. Eventually also realize you don’t care.
33. The next day, when you’re supposed to be decorating it, write a blog post to your friends.

And, you’re done!

*****

Hey! Today is the last day to buy my ebook for $2.99

on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Don’t miss that shit!

(It goes back to $13.99 tomorrow.)