I have a housekeeper, and I am not ashamed to admit it.
I used to be ashamed to admit it. People would say in the whiniest voice imaginable: “why don’t you just clean it yourself, I do!” Or: “I just couldn’t trust someone else to do my job.” And then I’d feel as though I had to justify, even to complete strangers, why we have a housekeeper.
But not anymore.
I often see people posting on Facebook and Twitter as we close in on the new year about how they’re going to resolve to get more organized in their lives and their homes. That they plan to start the new year with resolve to keep their house clean and orderly; to finally have that magazine-worthy home they’ve always dreamed of having, and by their doing.
I won’t argue that a clean house feels nice. For all of 30 seconds until someone messes something up, or another load of laundry needs to be done. And then the aches and pains of hard, back-breaking labor kick in, and it’s like: why the fuck did I just do this?
So I implore you, people of the Internet…
Countdown to 2016
Part Two
Do Not Resolve To Clean More
There are a lot of reasons why resolving to clean more is just dumb.
To begin, it implies that your lifestyle is dirty or something to be ashamed of. Now I should probably take this moment to say that we aren’t talking about hoarders. Bonafide-eligible-to-be-on-the-next-season-of-A&E-Hoarders people. No, those people do need to clean more, but moreover they need to get help.
I’m talking about the people who let the dusting go once in a while; that allow the things to stay on the counter or the kitchen table for more than a day or two. Or that – like me – hire a housekeeper to do the deep-deep work.
Unless you have a number of dead, smashed cats under your piles and piles of collected garbage, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way you live your life. Cleaning more, or getting more organized – unless something in particular bothers you – is then nothing more than another distraction from what’s important in your life.
When I was in college, I worked in a pharmacy with a guy that always justified the things he did with the question: “will I regret this when I’m on my death bed?” It was a good way to look at the world, and I caught on quickly. He used it to justify not working huge blocks of overtime so that he could instead spend that time with his kids; and I think it applies to cleaning house too.
On your deathbed, what are the things you’ll regret?
Not traveling more;
Not asking your lifelong love to marry you;
Not spending enough time with your kids;
Not reading enough books, listening to enough music, watching enough movies, or whatever your passions may be;
The list has the potential to be endless…
Although, never – in my entire life since learning this deathbed lesson – have I asked someone what they will regret on their deathbed and heard them say “I wish I had vacuumed the floors and scrubbed the counters more.” Seriously. That would be fucking dumb.
For me, I think the childhoods of my kids are going by so quickly that to waste my time mopping floors and scrubbing bathtubs would be a great disservice to them, as well as me. What kind of a mother chooses to obsessively perfect her home while her kids don’t give a single shit about whether it’s a little dusty or some pillows are out of place?
Sure, everything within reason, and it’s a slippery slope where letting things go a little turns into a complete and utter pig sty. But if there is one trite inspirational quote that has gone viral recently that I identify with, it’s this:
So hire the damn cleaning lady, and consider how much you won’t spend in cleaning products and the price of memories well worth it. And if you genuinely cannot afford it, I offer you the song of my people:
Happy fucking New Years. Seriously. I hope you have a really nice fucking 2014. Eat a dick.
That was directed at my 30-something friends, 30-something bloggy people, and 30-something colleagues in this illustrious career of a pajama jeans-wearing, ass-wiping Stay At Home Mom. The rest of you can skip the dick eating. Unless of course that’s your thing (GROSS).
It was only recently that I became physically able to say that I am 31. I mean like a couple of weeks ago, and even then it was ugly because I couldn’t remember if I was 31 or 32. Pretty fucking hideous state of affairs, huh?
I’m already back to saying I’m 28.
As I see it, I’m a fucking war hero. I survived that phase when everyone was getting engaged and/or married. I mean every damn weekend someone was posting photos on Facebook of their engagement rings (ain’t nobody doin’ that no more). Engagement pics were up next, and then of course the wedding planning status updates and social media meltdowns leading up to the big event.
I didn’t get invited to many of the weddings, though to be fair I didn’t invite many to mine. The ones I did – where I actually attended – were equal parts intolerable and lessons in banality.
And the drum of growing up marched on with its beat. I held my head high as my husband and I have slowly, but surely, become two of the few people we know that does not own their own home. I smiled as suddenly everyone was becoming those people that go on cruises for every, single, fucking vacation they take.
Currently, I am navigating my way carefully through the early divorces, and the baby-belly pics. I’ve learned to “hide all” from friends that share their nude popped-belly-button photos. I’ve managed to avoid conversations about breastfeeding while out for dinner and drinks. Everyone does it, why the shit do we have to talk about it? That’s what Le Leche support groups are for, not fucking girl’s night at the local Applebees.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m definitely excited for all of the people I know that are going through these awesome stages of life. And for the parts that I am partaking, I am happy for myself too. This is what it means to be in our 30s – all these great things (new jobs, new lives, new families, new experiences) and more.
But do we have to fucking remind ourselves of this every step of the way? That we have moved on beyond those treasured years of our 20s, when we didn’t always need caffeine to get going in the morning? When we could go out and have a few drinks and dance without having to call the goddamned babysitter to see if anyone puked? Can’t we just allow ourselves to stay nestled in the security of feeling like we will be young forever, rather than reminding ourselves constantly that time has not paused, and will not ever stand still?
I hope you all can sense at this point that my 30s felt up until this point that they could not get any more annoying. I truly thought they wouldn’t. Then New Years Eve 2013 rolled on in and it got even fucking worse.
I logged onto Facebook at some point today and what did my newsfeed unveil to me but post after MOTHERBITCHING POST about staying at home in pajamas. “I wonder if I’ll be able to stay awake to midnight!” was perhaps the most commonly said phrase by people I know in their 30s. Suddenly people that were posting shit-faced photographs of themselves in the bathtub on New Years Eve just a couple of years ago are wearing their goddamned matching flannel pajama sets and playing Scrabble in bed. SCRABBLE IN BED.
Now sure, I stayed home this year too. Quite frankly, it’s the best thing to do on the most dangerous night of the year. Also, I’m tired and fucking lazy, and while we did have plans to go to a family party we ended up staying home instead and just hanging out. Truth be told, I cleaned until about 45 minutes ago. But was I yucking it up left and right about how old I’ve become? “OMG we have become soooooo old we will have to sleep a week to make up for staying up past midnight!!!” How I have passed on through this right of passage that apparently says that to prove you’ve become some old piece of shit you have to suddenly tuck yourself in before 6 pm on a night you used to let last until 6 the following morning?
Ugh. Seriously. Eat a dick people.
I get it. We’re all getting older. We’re getting more tired. We have more responsibilities, like kids and shit. We are done with the nonsense and the games, and drinking and partying all night just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We’ve been around the block a couple of times.
But looming over all of this is an image of my future: a future New Years Eve that all this pajama-comfy-night-wonder-if-I’ll-make-it-to-midnight-Facebook-bullshit says is speeding towards me at an unprecedented rate. That image is of me as an old woman. An old woman sitting in my easy chair, hair in curlers. My New Years Eve will be spent not partying but watching the Perry Mason NYE marathon. I’ll sit there while my dog licks toe jam off my feet, eating frosting directly out of the can until I fall asleep around 9:45 only to drool all over myself until one of my seventeen cats wakes me up to go to bed. I get that this is what’s probably next. Who knows when it will strike, but if only my 30s could just slow the fuck down with all this getting-old bullshit and let me just enjoy my warm, naive ignorance for a little while longer.
Happy New Years. May 2014 be as full of denial as I clearly hope it will be.
I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions. Never have.
The crux of my argument is simple: if I want to be a better person in X area, I should just do it.
The new year is no more a new start than the morning is. It’s just time and my philosophy degree tells me that time is nothing more than an illusion. That may be too philosophical and pithy for most of you, though; and the truth is that I just don’t give a fuck about resolutions. Either I accept who I am or make better things when I realize I want to – not have to have some special day or social convention to con me into doing it.
I find New Years Resolutions to be so vain and self-aggrandizing sometimes too. They’re always about looks (I resolve to lose weight, take better care of my skin, wear skirts more often…); or narcissistic goals. I don’t mean that all goals are narcissistic or bad, I just mean that so many people I hear making goals for New Years Resolutions seem so self-centered and exalted about it. I read one on Facebook the other day that was the absolute worst: I resolve to have the most gorgeous children on the planet. Really? Because you and your husband aren’t exactly lookers – if you know what I mean – so maybe you should tone it down and just resolve to be good people.
I don’t know. That’s just me.
Off my soap box, I’m making not only ONE but TWO New Years Resolutions this year. Because I like hypocrisy and sounding like an idiot when I just lectured for paragraphs about why I don’t make resolutions.
I promise none of these will make me a better person, though. Or hot and sexy. They also won’t make me the best at anything, except for possibly make me even more of a misanthropic asshole than I already am.
Okay, here goes:
Hang Out With Fewer Assholes
I posted about this on my Facebook page the other day and I will be damned if I’m going to fail at this one.
I am just so sick and tired of hanging around assholes. Toxic waste of human beings that just drag me and my family down with drama and unpaid bills and bullshit absolutely no one on this planet has time for.
This resolution came about after my husband and I got stiffed for a whopping $200 at my kid’s birthday dinner with ice skating the week before her birthday. We made it very clear to everyone we invited: everyone pays their fair share of the bill, the tax, the tip. If you don’t want to do that, then you can come over to our house for a little BBQ on us on her actual birthday – the idea was to have a kid’s activity with pomp and circumstance with out having to shell out all the dough for the activities and the entertainment and the treat bags and such.
And yet somehow, we got stiffed by a few of the people that were there. Stiffed big – so big we had to cancel some of our out of town plans in January.
So after that, just one incident in a long line of incidences that we have absolutely had enough of, I am resolving to hang out with fewer assholes. Life is too short to spend it with a bag of dicks.
Eat More Cupcakes
I joke a lot about emotionally eating, but in reality I rarely eat anything. I pick all day and then only sometimes get enough calories to sustain the busy life of being a mom with a husband who works ALL. THE. TIME.
The problem is simple: I live in California and feel an enormous amount of guilt every time I put fork to mouth.
I hear people say something seemingly nice like “you look like you’ve lost weight!!” and hear “finally chucked some fat off that huge ass of yours, eh Heather?!”
I know what you are thinking: I’m clearly suffering from major body issues. Get over it, who isn’t?
I’m so tired of being hungry, though.
I’m even more tired of making food that I don’t eat. Constantly, I am cooking and baking for family parties or friend things; or just making food at home for my husband – who on some days consumes upwards of five, large meal servings. And I never eat the desserts I make. Ever. Like ever-ever.
Well that shit’s about to come to an end. Either I’m going to stop cooking for others, and since that won’t happen because I’m bored and also have a major guilt complex – I’ll be eating more.
Dressbarn, here I come. I’m eating more cupcakes.
Are you making New Years Resolutions this year? Like really bullshit and vague ones, like you do every year; or something really serious like “get a job and move out of my parents’ basement?” Chances are if you are, I think you’re a tool; but then you have permission to thing I’m a tool for making my two resolutions too.
In any event: Happy New Years Bitchees… after the clock strikes 12, I’ll have a really big surprise for you. I mean, not really 12… you know, I’ll probably be out by then, my New Years kiss will be my husband groping me in his sleep; I’ll roll out of bed like I usually do somewhere around 9 or 10. The surprise will be then. Can’t wait!
Do you like setting yourself up for failure? I sure know I do. I used to think that if I never tried at anything, then I would never fail. Then I realized that never trying was in a sense failing too, so I started trying but realized that if I were to succeed then I would never know what to do with myself. So I try but set myself up to fail so that I don’t run the risk of not knowing just what in the hell I do once I do succeed. And then I still never have to fail because by setting myself up to fail, I in a way actually do succeed at something, but not something so terribly successful that I am lost once it’s all over. Technically.
Follow my logic? I know, it’s hard being inside my brain sometimes.
So 2012 may or may not have been a major year of failures for me. It depends on how you look at it. I published a book, that was pretty rad. But it wasn’t the book I wanted it to be – it was a memoir, geared towards the readers of this blog; rather than the Great American Novel (or whatever you want to call it). I really wanted it to be that big novel deal. I planned on reading 50 books, since I had completed my goal of 40 in 2011. That was a big whopper, because I fell into a funk around the spring and read a total of 5 for the year. I tried knitting scarves for all of my family as well. I knitted two.
I know. I’m a total loser.
Moving along to the New Year coming up. I’m not too into New Year’s resolutions – the concept is just so stupid to me. I think that is because the majority of people who make these life-changing “resolutions” are resolving to do things they (a) know they will never do; and (b) should be doing anyway. And the concept reeks of always thinking there is something inherently wrong with ourselves. “I’m going to lose weight.” “I’m going to drink less.” “I’m going to be nicer to my husband.” All those resolutions are nice, sure – but we are who we are, and even if there is something about ourselves that we’d like to change, to call it a “resolution” is like saying we are lesser people because of whatever the circumstance is that we want to change. I really think that we should be comfortable with the life we’ve chosen. Even if we want to change it, we should first make the resolution to accept where we have come from.
As I said: I know, it’s hard being inside my brain sometimes.
Now just because I am not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, per se (or at least calling them New Year’s resolutions); and even though I do like setting myself up for failure, I still know that it’s important to make a plan for the year to come as the old ball begins to drop towards midnight on December 31st. Without plans and objectives and things to look forward to, what do we have other than a vacuous day-to-day existence?
Thus, I give you: My Complete List of (Planned) 2013 Failures.
1. Read 40 books. I think I can do this. Maybe. I may cheat and finish the 20 or so books I started and failed to finish in 2012 to get the ball rolling.
2. Move to Chicago. I’m sure that I will fail miserably on this one, even though everyone seems to be on board with our plan to finally make this happen. After 12 years of trying and failing, I just remain a little skeptical.
3. Knit blankets for my cousins Linsay and Clayton to go along with both of their wedding gifts (they are both getting married in the summer); as well as a baby blanket for each of the 11 friends having babies this next year.
4. Have a baby. Yeah right, like that’s going to happen. Motherhood has already driven me to the nuthouse enough as it is; and that would require my husband and I to come within 5 feet of each other. Still, though, the thought crosses my mind more frequently as my clock ticks, and more friends show up pregnant.
5. Cook and clean like a slave less.
6. Take an art class. There was a time when I was an art major; and despite all the times I’ve committed to get back into it over the years, I have still not picked up a drawing pencil or paint brush in over a decade.
7. Use the Internet less. In fact, Sundays are now going to be Internet-free in our house (let’s see how long that lasts).
8. Talk on the phone more.
9. Watch even more of The Simpsons. This is kind of weird. I have a pretty serious obsession with The Simpsons. I have the seasons on DVD and watch them every night before I go to bed. Sometimes I have day-long marathons of the show too – I just think it is one of the wittiest and realistic betrayals of American life. And I always get it when they take jabs at our contemporary American culture.
10. Let myself go. I don’t mean gain 200 pounds, or let my hair get all gross and stringy. I mean be more comfortable. Wear jeans and sweatshirts more. Take more makeup-free days.
11. Publish my compilation of short stories. It’s no Great American Novel, but it’ll do for now.
12. Get a new dog.
13. Learn to play the ukelele.
14. Correct the current Pookies idea that babies get into a mother’s stomach by virtue of “the mom eating the baby, where it stays in her colon until the doctor cuts it out.”
15. Take a mental health trip to a spa or a plateau or somewhere alone. An insane asylum for electroshock therapy will do.
If I don’t get a chance to say it between now and then, I suppose a happy new year to all of you faithful blog followers is in order. To peace. To prosperity. To failing miserably in all our life’s ventures in the year to come.
This post has sadly been removed due to publication and copyright laws. You can still read it, though, by buying B(itch) Against the World for unlimited viewing, plus more great and new posts from 2011. And it’s only $2.99! Click the picture of the cover for more details!
Isn’t that the stupidest question ever – what are you doing tonight at midnight? – said on New Years Eve as if there are any real original possibilities to that answer. Either people are going out with friends and family and getting wasted, going to a party with friends and family and getting wasted, going out with family and friends and acting as designated driver, staying home because they don’t want to risk their lives but having drinks with their significant other cozied up in front of the TV, or going to bed early because they don’t give a shit.
My mom called me this morning and asked me what I was doing tonight as if I truly care about New Years. For me, it’s just another day and a sign that we are officially 3 months and 15 days from my dreaded birthday.
I told her ‘nothing.’
But it isn’t actually because I could care less about the passing of just another day that I’m doing nothing. It’s because I’m a superstitious moron. Call me an idiot, call me superstitious – but when I was 15 years old, I saw this dumb episode of Days of Lives where Marlena told everyone that whomever you were with, and whatever you were doing, at the stroke of midnight was a symbol of what the next year held.
That year, I spent New Years at my mom’s friend’s house, watching movies and babysitting the cat … and I’ve had allergies to cats since.
A few years ago, I went out to a bar with friends and got a flat tire on the way out to the next spot where we were planning on being at the stroke of midnight. I shit you not, faithful blog followers, I got seven flat tires that year, got into a major car accident, and had nothing but car troubles the entire way.
When I first started my second Bachelor degree, I went to a party with my friend Lisa and some random guy asked if we could kiss at midnight. I said ‘why not’ and talked to him for fifteen minutes before midnight hit and he tried to dry hump me on the couch in front of all our friends. That year I dated one weirdo after another just like him.
One year my mother called me at around 10:00 pm and she asked if my boyfriend at the time and I wanted to go out to drinks with her and her boyfriend. By midnight, we had met them, had some drinks, her boyfriend had gone home, she asked us to drive her back, just for her to walk in on the boyfriend with another woman. It was drama-central and (while typical for my mother) not something I wanted to be a part of. The following year my mother subjected me to one drama after another: with the same boyfriend, with her living situation, rekindling her relationship with a former boyfriend (Marvin Gaye’s former drummer, also happened to be married…) and just her usual nonsense.
So you see, despite the fact that I think that superstition is pretty ridiculous and for nothing but fools and the world of “you know they say”s Old Wives Tales, on this one, I stick with Marlena. I’m sticking close to home and maybe even going to bed. Maybe if I’m asleep at midnight I’ll spend the next year catching up and finally ridding myself of my nighttime insomnia.
Of course, we also committed to go to a party so that may actually happen. Who knows what will come of it though. If Marlena was right, the possibilities are endless.
Actually there are really TWO resolutions you should make, the first and very real being more generosity to the poor. The world economy is in a shit-tank, with over 80% of the world’s population living on far less than $10 a day. Only 20% of homeless people in the United States are actually mentally ill or suffering from alcoholism, so get your head out of your ass and stop justifying your stinginess by saying “they’ll just use my money at the liquor store anyway.” Just one day next year (hopefully more), resolve to give up your Starbucks and pass the $5 over to someone with an In Need sign. And if you really and truly believe they are all a bunch of degenerate and ungrateful hobos, rather than give money just get a few extra nonperishable grocery items next time you are at the store and drop them off on your way out. I promise you, they will be grateful.
Off my soap box, let’s get to the one resolution you really SHOULD actually make this year. I know this makes me a total hypocrite, because for the last few days I have done nothing but rip New Years Resolutions and their makers up one side and down the other, but while out to lunch today I realized what everyone should resolve to this next year FOR REALS:
You piggish mother fuckers should resolve to be less slovenly and sloppy while out to eat in the coming year.
I don’t know if it’s that a lot of people are off work and out and about this week, or that I’m going to the wrong places … but today was an all-star day in terms of people that made me lose my appetite while eating in a public venue. To be specific, there were four.
#1 Smell man and his noseless girlfriend were the first to make my gag reflex go – and it was only in the beginning while we were ordering our drinks. Sitting in the booth right next to us (directly behind my father, who is just as bitchy and blunt as I am) sat a man and his girlfriend who appeared to have a nose, but I’m fairly certain was just wearing a prosthetic implant. For if she had a nose she could have smelled this guy and been repulsed, rather than what she was doing – which was sucking face with him in such a way that I saw saliva dribble onto the booth below them. At one point, I thought that the smell man was trying to swallow the girl without a nose whole, but then they eventually stopped and got up to leave only for me to get a good waft of the fact that he clearly had not showered in days.
Now, I’m not one to judge people for unscently body odor. I myself have forgotten to put on deodorant on occasion, or not had time to brush my teeth so resorted to gum. But at some point, you have to ask yourself: am I offending others with my stench? Should I get this checked out by a physician? Would just carrying some stick deodorant in my car help out?
#2 Snotdude brought in the waitress to take our orders and to bring the cup of chicken soup that came with my meal. This is actually one of my pet peeves that I have thought about blogging on before – when people do that horrible inhaling of their snot so loudly and moistly that you know a huge loogey is either about to fly out their mouth or trickle down the back of their throat. In case you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, here’s a 23 second video of an Asian broad sucking it in like this fucking morbidly obese asshole did for a good portion of the time we were eating today:
Again, I can be understanding of someone that has a cold or allergies. But I’m allergic to everything and have a constant faucet of phlegm dribbling from my body – I think I might even be allergic to myself at this point and I don’t even do this. It’s horrifying – absolutely horrifying – to eat your chicken soup with a side of snot.
#3 Some old guy belching his name repeatedly came along just in time for one of the cooks to bring out our food. At this point you are probably thinking to yourself – what the fuck, was she eating at an Arby’s in the deep South? No, no… I was eating in what is generally considered to be a descent place (best pancakes in the country says Esquire magazine) and further someplace my dad and I meet at for lunch often.
At first I thought I was hearing things because the guy was sitting with what appeared to be his grandson and it just sounded like an accidental burp in which the man said the word “burp” while doing it. But a few minutes later, as I was biting into my BLT and thanking God that Smell Man and Snotdude had vacated the premises, an excessively audible belch was emitted from the same old guy, this time the word “Daryl” clearly included. He did it six more times before we left.
#4 And as if the experience could not have been any more revolting, as we walked out a Breastfeeder had popped out her tit to feed her screaming infant. Now before you get all crazy on me and start commenting in fury about how breastfeeding is a woman’s right and a beautiful thing, and how nothing but passionate flowers and exotic dairy come out of the lady’s tits, let me say a few things. First, shut the fuck up. Nothing is more annoying than one of these “breastfeeding is the most beautiful thing and a woman’s right in public”-people. Shut the fuck up. SHUT IT! Second, I don’t actually see anything wrong with breastfeeding in public, as long as it is done discreetly under a blanket or a breastfeeding bib. Third, if you choose not to use a blanket or bib, all bets are off.
If you choose to breastfeed in public but don’t use a blanket or bib, you are a fucking asshole and a public nudist. I’m not sure if I have told you all this story before, but quite a few months ago a woman sprayed me with her boob juice in a restaurant – a little drop of a complete stranger’s bodily fluids landing on my hand, forced to rest there until I was able to get it off in the bathroom. I get that a lot of people believe breastfeeding to be an awesome, beautiful, and natural thing – but there are a lot of things that others think are awesome, beautiful, and natural yet don’t do so openly in public out of respect for others (and in some cases, the law).
But if a woman breastfeeds publicly and in such a way that the entire world is now familiar with every crevice, crease, and montgomery gland on the woman’s nipple, why does she not get cited for public nudity like I would were I to – say – just take off my shirt and sit there with my boobs hanging out? Today I wouldn’t have minded doing that – it was a little warm in the booth and sometimes it’s nice to let my upper body breath. The biggest proponents of breastfeeding argue that “feeding your baby is vital for your baby’s survival.” Okay, sure – but there are bottles that your pumped milk can go into or breastfeeding bibs that can cover that shit up to be respectful of the eyesight and feelings of others, and to avoid any of your boob juice squirting on them as they walk by.
As with everything, there is a happy medium. Here’s a counterexample: allowing one’s bowels to move in a timely manner is also “… vital for … survival” but that doesn’t mean anyone and everyone can just pull down their pants and take a squat anywhere they want – right in the middle of public, where it can be seen and gotten all over everyone that passes by! And if I can rant one more second – the bull shit that women not breastfeeding because of the public’s view of doing it in public is just complete nonsense. There are so many options out there – most importantly, pumping and bottle-feeding in a public setting. There are plenty of times families use a bottle at home, why the fuck can’t they do it when they go out too? Oh I know, because it’s about proving a point and exposing your titties for the world to see.
But I digress…
The bottom line in all of this is that these people are all slobs – slovenly, lazy slobs. Smell man is too lazy to shower or use deodorant. Snotdude is too busy porking down his extra side of home fries to get up and blow his nose in the bathroom. Belching grandpa was just a pig, and breastfeeding tittie lady just didn’t want to be bothered with covering the kid with a blanket. If you have to go the incorrigible route and make a New Years Resolution this year, faithful blog followers, resolve to be less of a lazy fuck of a slob. Please … my appetite will thank you!
3. Knit blankets for my cousins Linsay and Clayton to go along with both of their wedding gifts (they are both getting married in the summer); as well as a baby blanket for each of the 11 friends having babies this next year.
