Days 6 & 7- The 24 Days of Christmas Miracles Campaign (Or "Whoa Momma!")

My Mom. When she saw this picture she said,
"That looks like a picture of a fat woman laughing."
But I think she looks beautiful!

I have decided to only post once for the weekend, so you will be seeing two days condensed into one post that will probably make it online somewhere north of 8 PM on Sunday evening, seeing that I excel at procrastination. Saturday's Christmas miracle came in the form of a Christmas gift-the gift of my annual holiday season stomach virus. This year is actually the third year in a row I have contracted a stomach virus during the month of December. Last year's arrived on Christmas night around 11 PM, and left me so ill that I still didn't feel like eating two days later. If you know me, then you know that hardly has one day, much less two days, ever passed when I didn't think about food!

I won't go into the details of all the festive fun, lest to say that I got into the holiday spirit by consuming only red Powerade and diet ginger ale in a green can. Also, I ate a few saltine crackers. This morning I ate a bagel, but I have actually not been truly hungry all day, and what's more, I have miraculously lost three pounds since Friday! If only I knew the secret of not being that hungry all the rest of the days of the year, but I'm only able to swing this during holiday stomach virus time. You may ask, "Was all the misery of the stomach virus worth losing a measly three pounds?" To which I would respond, "Yes, yes it was." I have been stuck around the same weight for a couple of weeks now, and the scourge of Santa arrived and got me back on track in just two days!

Perhaps even more astonishing than the miracle of my three-pound weight loss, was the miracle of cleanliness that occurred today. My mom and I went to Goldberg's this morning, and when we came back to my house I commented that the entire place looked like the inside of a WalMart at 6 PM on Christmas Eve. (Have you ever been to WalMart on Christmas Eve? Just don't do it, man!) My mom, true to her role as mom-therapist, let me complain about the disgusting state of my house for a few minutes, then suggested that we clean up my living room. We had already gotten down all of my Christmas decorations, meaning I climbed into the attic and handed all of the tubs down to Mom, you know, so that I wasn't killed in climbing up and down the ladder.

Then we straightened, dusted, rearranged, shoved some things into closets, threw some things away, and generally made the room look 957 times better than a WalMart looks, well, than a WalMart looks anytime. My mom even swept the entire room and got all the pet fur off my carpet. So, while today's miracle is certainly one of cleanliness, it is also one of awesomeness, meaning that I am lucky enough to have the best mom ever! My mom is so great that when I found an old card that my ex-husband had given me (One in which he actually wrote something nice!), she let me be a little sad for a minute and then told me "Let's get rid of it so you're not finding him every time you clean." She then said that it was just hard because it made me think of one of the times he'd been nice. I had to laugh then, at both the truth and the sadness in that statement, but mostly I had to be glad that I have a mom who gets it. Not every woman is lucky enough to have a mom she even wants to spend two consecutive hours with, much less one who she can talk to about men and who will help her clean her house. I am truly fortunate that my mom kicks ass! And that, my friends, is nothing short of a miracle.