I love purging, but if I have to keep doing it, I think I’m missing some big point of the Universe. I have all of these unfinished projects nagging me. This week, I just don’t want to deal, so I’m not.

1. Our Christmas cards, which cost me $40. Jan. 25 is too late to send them out, and I don’t see myself looking up all those addresses and writing them by hand on envelopes any time soon. So, I trashed them.
2. All of the returns on my work magazine. I don’t have an intern to do the database work, and quite frankly, I don’t have the time or energy to go through six spreadsheets to find the addresses that need to be changed. The mailhouse didn’t include the secret code that ID’s the source database, so screw it. Into the recycle bin you go.
3. Any blog in my reader with more than 5 unread posts. Goodbye Shutter Sisters. I love you, but you’re too prolific and stress me out.
4. Every receipt except for medical ones. For some reason, I have two huge stacks of receipts I have been collecting, I think, to watch my finances. Buh-bye.
5. Mint.com. I’m turning off all emails because I haven’t had time to set up a realistic budget, and I keep getting these stressful emails telling me I’ve overshot my budget for everything.
6. Most of the stuff on my home desk. Unless it has to do with my taxes, it’s going in the trash.
7. Most of the stuff on my work desk. There are piles, and then there are piles. #2 will help a lot.
8. Any work email in my inbox prior to last week. If I haven’t had time to deal with it by now, it ain’t going to happen. My IT administrator will be so pleased, because my email box is about 2Gb big (I get a lot of graphic design attachments).
9. All Facebook friend requests, Farmville requests, etc. No, I do not want to have a snowball fight. Please, I’m already freezing as it is.

1. Instead of getting up with with the alarm, I lay in bed with Lauren and watched home makeover shows
2. Instead of cleaning the toilet today, I will take my daughter to see Poyo
3. Instead of eating a salad for lunch, I will eat movie popcorn
4. Instead of doing the work I thought I’d do this morning, I have written and read blogs and laughed out loud.
5. Instead of watching something educational, I have watched Legally Blondes, a very cheesy sequel to Legally Blonde made by Disney Channel
6. Instead of painting the bedroom wall (a long-planned project), I am painting my toenails and Lauren’s toenails bright turquoise
7. Instead of paying the bills, I will teach Lauren how to use a Philips head screwdriver
8. Instead of putting on makeup and work clothes, I will spend most of the day in my pjs
9. Instead of going to salsa rehearsal, I will spend the evening hanging with my family

1. Step outside your city home to see if you can catch a falling star

1. Notice that insufferable light obliterates all stars, and grab your keys and purse, pull the cord to open the garage door by hand (quietly, quietly) and back your car out of the driveway with the lights off. Never mind that the clock says 12:08. AM.
2. Drive east of the city, and east, and east, until the ink-spill sky becomes freckled, and the half-full moon illuminates the fields
3. Pull off in Watkins, take a county road north until it dead-ends, set up your tripod. Wonder how far east you’d drive before the full sky–not this burlesque show–stripped itself bare before your eyes
4. Stand in the cooling wind and listen to the creatures sing in the tall grass that lines the hardpack
5. Take long, long exposures on your new Diana F+ camera, hoping to catch a sky streak
6. Feel utterly alone, and therefore utterly clear about who you are
7. Scare yourself a little thinking about the creatures in the tall grass. Creatures. CREATURES. Jump into your car. Lock the doors. Drive back to the highway and then east again. The night–the meteor shower–is still young.
8. Pull off in Bennett, the farm town, and drive south past the Dead End sign, park in the turn around next to oversized mailboxes, open the sunroof and kill the lights
9. Remember all those times as a child that you wished upon a shooting star as you, all grown up, wish on one, then another, and another, until you run out of wishes … except for wishing for another shooting star
10. Delight at each and every streak, each surprise appearance. Clap your hands like a child and say more, more!
11. Yawn. Rub mascara off your eyes.
12. Worry that your lover and child will find you gone from the house at 2 am, so turn home, rumbling across the hardpack to the highway.
13. Drive west, toward the illuminated sky, with the sunroof open and heater blowing on your feet. Crank Pink Floyd and push the pedal, remembering all those nights in high school spent racing south on pitch black country roads, windows down and music blaring, running away from your teenage heartache at 120 miles per hour, how you’d stop in the darkness and scream at the blazing stars above
14. Notice how fast 75 feels at age 40, at 230 am, 38 miles from home
15. As you pull into your driveway, look up at the light-polluted sky and realize your daughter has likely never seen a shooting star, and regret not waking her to take her on your adventure