Let me just start off today by belting out a big ol’ southern girl “yahooooooo”!  I’ll bet a lot of you out there are yahooing right along with me and it’s all because Christmas, that most revered, beloved, mother of all holidays is finally behind us.  (And for many of us, I mean BEHIND us, right on our giant tee-hineys, straining the seams of our pants.)

As much as I whine about Christmas, I adore New Years.  I love it that the world is, collectively, as a whole, scaling back.  We are trying to be good, trying to eat right, exercise, give more and be nicer.  We are back at work, almost back at school and getting out of the pajamas that we’ve been wearing for the last week.  It’s as if the whole world is emerging from the flu. 

The past few rainy, lazy days I’ve watched more TV than I’ve watched all year.  Television causes me to worry for the plight of Earthlings everywhere.  We are truly a dumbed down group of individuals.  I can’t solve that problem.  I have few answers, but I do know that we would do well to remove TVs from our homes.  Maybe I’m coming into this discussion late, but I am gobsmacked to see the weird reality shows that have actually made it on the air.  There are shows about people who hunt Big Foot, make something to do with ducks, go through people’s storage units, make moonshine (which, I confess, has caused me to want to build a still) and, of course, that poor little redneck girl, whatsername. 

The show that speaks to me, though, is Doomsday Preppers.  I confess to having a little doom inside me.  For years, I’ve been buying the odd can of vegetables every time I go to the store and sequestering it away on a shelf in the basement.  Last night, the Goose and I decided to clean out the storage room and I was confronted with 412 cans of soup and canned spinach dating from 2002 “just in case”.  We don’t even eat soup.  

Thus, today I am following my own advice and continuing to clean and scrub out the basement, Lysol every nook and cranny and cart numerous loads of cans to the barn for  my hog, Orson, who will be delighted at the changes in his menu over the next few months.  

Friends, this is the time to shed our junk, both from our closets and our personal trunks.  Time, for the love of all things holy, to stop wearing red sweaters.  Take the bows and antlers off our cars, throw away those tins of cookies from the neighbors and, most of all, to retrieve the poor deflated snowmen and Santas from our yards.  Hold up our heads when we pass neighbors we partied with during the holidays, even if we don’t remember why we should be embarrassed in the first place.  Pull out our garden catalogues and dream of spring, start hinting early for Valentine’s day, stop coddling our children and tune up our nagging voices about their math grade.  Eat a salad, pass up a drink and give our livers a little vacation.  

My homies, this is the time to clean every closet, every drawer and scour every cabinet. There is something inside me that causes a little bird to leap in my heart when I see a stack of new drawer liners and sparkling cabinet organizers.  Don’t judge me, we all feel it whether we admit it or not. 

This is the place, where if I had the technology, I would insert a little link that would turn on the theme song to Poseidon Adventure (or maybe it was Towering Inferno?), about there being a morning after, and we would all take a deep collective breath, put on a light blue shirt and whip out our scrub brushes to sally forth into this brave new year.  Remember, we only have to be good until Super Bowl at which time we can fall off the crazy wagon again. Happy New Year, y’all!