RESOLUTION

Because my mind inhabits the land of Make Believe, where actual change and self improvement are considered real possibilities, I go to sleep every New Year’s Eve with the vague but misguided hope that when I awaken to the New Year I will be a new and upgraded version of Jeff. This year I was disabused of this notion in near record time, exactly 5 a.m., as I was cleaning dog vomit from the carpet in our bedroom.
You see, I know better than to feed our dog, the noble Kebu, bones and gristle. But since it was a holiday and the season of giving, I suspended my better judgment and gave her a treat, specifically the scraps from my dinner plate. I let her loose on the deck with a steak bone and then went back to whatever football game I was watching at the time and forgot about her.
Big mistake.
When you leave Kebu unsupervised with a bone for an extended period of time she chews the bone down to smithereens and then swallows all of it. And I know this. However, my careless disposition frequently takes control of my simple brain at inopportune times and I do really stupid things.
And so it was that I was awakened from a sound sleep in the early morning by a sound you really don’t want to hear in your bedroom -- your dog retching up bone shards. And yes, friends, those words sound just as ugly as the racket Kebu was making.
Simply appalling.
Enough to make you leap out of bed and rush about like your hair is on fire. Which is just what I did. I tore downstairs with the retching Akita behind me and let her outside, where she continued her upchucking with a look on her face that said, I’m utterly aghast that you have to witness this undignified display, but really, I simply must heave up this last scrap of bone fragment.
So I’m standing out in the freezing rain on January 1st in nothing but my pajama bottoms while the dog I dearly love is gagging up her innards because I was too stupid to take away her bone.
And I thought to myself; “Self, how did we come to be here”?
And my Self answered; “You have screwed up again, Bunkums. And, oh, by the way, your morning is about to get even worse, for once you come in from the dark frigid outdoors, you are gonna have to jump on that dog puke pronto, or you will have a stain in your carpet that will never come up.”
Which is how I ended up on my hands and knees furiously scrubbing up the bile stain from the carpet on New Year’s morn, all my resolutions to be a new and improved Jeff lying shattered on the floor around me – not unlike the splinters of steak bone that I picked from the nap of the carpet.
It was at that precise instant that our darling daughter awoke screaming holy hell as she began to cut four new molars in the back of her mouth. A screeching that has not subsided twenty nine hours later; but who's keeping count?
Welcome to the New Year.
Welcome to my world; the magical land of dog vomit, shrieking babies, dull grey mornings and misaligned hope.