How to Survive a Year

Well, we have made it through the holidays and it is time to start a brand new year. In order to assist you with upcoming activities and expectations, I have made you a month-by-month list of requirements. I am helpful that way.

January

New Year’s Day:

Welcome to the New Year everyone! If you manage to stay up until midnight, there will be paper hats, noisemakers, and champagne. New Year Resolutions will be made. Feel free to make as many resolutions as you wish as they can be ignored throughout the year.

Also, you will have put up a tree for Christmas that you should take down sometime this month.

February

You should definitely be ignoring your resolutions by now, so go ahead and cancel that gym membership. Also if you haven’t taken down that Christmas tree yet, you suck. Who cares if it was not your idea to put it up in the first place, take down the damn tree! Feel free to wad up all the lights carelessly as you won’t have to worry about them until next Christmas.

Valentine’s Day:

 You will be asked to address twenty valentine cards to the kids at your son’s school. You will have no idea who these kids are, just copy the names from the list the teacher gives you. Your kid will come home with exactly the same number of cards in his backpack, which you will then throw away. Don’t question the logic of this, just do it. There could be a romantic dinner in your future. Maybe flowers.

 March

Any flowers you got for Valentine’s Day will be dead. Find them and throw them out.

St. Patrick’s Day:

I’m not sure what day this is on, but you will need to remember to wear green. Wear green for the entire month just in case. Some people may ask you to meet them at an Irish pub for a pint and some corned beef. There could be green beer, which will seem like a good idea, but you should really go with a stout or an Irish red ale. They are much more authentic to the tradition than Bud Light with green food coloring.

April

April Fool’s Day:

Don’t believe anything anyone says. Pretend this is somehow different from every other day.

Easter:

Colored eggs, rabbits. Peeps. People dress up and go to church. If you are very unlucky, there will be hats. I’m pretty sure the whole Easter hat thing is dead, but as a general rule, you should avoid wearing fancy hats if at all possible.

May

Locate all the Peeps from Easter and throw them out. No one is ever going to eat them.

Mother’s Day:

Send your mom a card, and maybe some flowers. Stay out of any place serving brunch as these locations will be filled with women wearing corsages. A corsage is the dumbest thing ever. If anyone ever gives you one, you should immediately stab them with it.

June

Father’s Day:

This is not as big of a deal as Mother’s Day. Dads will take advantage of their right to sit on the couch and watch television. It is important to humor them by pretending that is not what they would be doing anyway. No one ever expects a dad to go to brunch wearing a corsage, which I find extremely unfair. You can’t tell me that people enjoy walking around with flowers pinned to their clothing. It is ridiculous.

July

Independence Day:

Your neighbor will invite you out to their place at the lake where he will make a speech about freedom, then try to kill everyone with fireworks. Make an excuse not to go.

August

If you are me, you live in Texas. August in Texas is an impossibly hot month. People will celebrate by taking pictures of their car thermostats with their phones to post to Facebook. I usually track these and send a notice to the winner. There is no prize for this contest, just bragging rights that you somehow did not get heat stroke from entering the roasting-oven environment of your car.

No one will feel like doing anything this month. You can’t even wear a corsage because the burning hot sun will strike it from the sky causing it to melt into your clothing. Which is why they won’t even sell you a corsage in August, probably.

September

School Starts:

In complete denial of the fact it is still freaking hot, stores will begin selling back to school clothes and jackets. Stores will also be selling lots of notebook paper, erasers, and crayons. If you are me, you will locate the most enormous box of Crayola crayons, then open it to smell the new crayon smell.

October

Halloween:

Stores will be selling costumes and scary zombie yard decorations. They will also begin putting up their Christmas displays. This is the perfect opportunity to go through each store adding skeletons to the baby Jesus manger scenes.

Decorate your house with spider webs and skulls. If you tend to have actual spider webs and skulls in your house, then win for you. Do nothing.

Carve a pumpkin into a face with crooked teeth. Save the seeds because you say you are going to roast them. Stock up on candy to hand out to kids. Pass out the candy. Take your kid around the neighborhood gather up candy. After all this effort, the amount of candy in your house will be exactly the same. Do not question the logic of this, just do it.

November

Take down the spider webs and skulls. Find a storage space for the scary yard zombies. The guest room closet is ideal. Turn your carved pumpkin so the crooked teeth face a wall. It is now a fall harvest display.

Thanksgiving:

School children will color Thanksgiving pilgrims and make turkeys by tracing the shape of their hand.

You may be asked to attend a formal dinner with extended family. If you are very unlucky, everyone will hold hands in a circle for what seems like eternity so that each individual can mushily announce whatever it is they are thankful for. No one will admit that is a form of torture. Try to think of something to say that isn’t too saccharine or embarrassing.

Following the awkward hand holding session will be a prayer, and finally, the ridiculously large dinner. You will watch the people who have been bitching about carbs all year long eat rolls, cornbread dressing, AND mashed potatoes…. at the same time. If you are lucky, there will be eight types of pie.

December

There is no excuse for that pumpkin now, and it is starting to smell. Throw it away. The seeds are probably in the back of the refrigerator somewhere. I’m sure you’ll get around to roasting them eventually.

Christmas:

You will put a tree in your living room and decorate it. It will not be providing shade. Don’t question the logic of this, just do it.

You will open the Christmas decorations stored from last year and wonder who the hell wadded up all the lights into a tangled mess. You could go out and buy new ones. Alternatively, you could spend the day untangling them and figuring out which of the bulbs on the damn thing is making all the other bulbs not light, then go out and buy new ones.

About mid-month, people will start asking if you are done with your Christmas shopping yet. Stores become overly crowded and at the same time start playing sappy, often religious-themed music over their public address systems. Twitter the names of these songs to your followers as you stand in line. Misery is best when shared with friends.

You struggle to wrap things that are oddly shaped, then your family comes over and gifts are exchanged. You will receive a few awesome unexpected things, one thing you didn’t know you needed, and some really dumb things you have no use for. Your trash/recycle bin will be obscenely full with paper and cardboard boxes on the very week no one shows to pick it up.

Congratulations!

And then, like magic, you are done. You made it. Congratulations to you!  Now… start over at January and repeat for the rest of your life. Don’t question the logic of this, just do it.