Lucky New Year

Happily, I get to start the new year off with a bit of a good news blog. The month of January has kicked itself off on a bright note, which is lovely and also unexpected. I have a history of crappy luck. Besides, the holidays can get crazy when you live away from home, turning what should be an enjoyable visit into a nightmare of buying, eating, driving, cooking, screaming mayhem. Thankfully, Eric and I got to spend two whole weeks back in R.I., so we were able to be lazy and casual about the whole thing. We also spent a good amount of time on D's new Wii Fit. This allowed us to begin the new year feeling optimistic about our selves, our new health goals, and our soon-to-be-renewed, svelte girlish figures.

We returned home to the first lucky gift. Free things! We all know I love free stuff, and it has nothing to do with our crumbling economy. Eric calls me the klepto, due to my habit of walking off with soap and showercaps. He will tell you that I will pocket anything that isn't nailed down, but that is only true if the "anything" is sample sized. So anyway, somehow I won a cookbook, and since cookbooks in all forms make me fabulously happy, I was thrilled. It is Hello, Cupcake!, quite possibly the cutest cookbook ever printed. I spent at least an hour reading it, pouring over the adorable creations I could whip up on a whim, and then realized that any such whipping would destroy our svelte-ness. I quickly hid the book between copies of The South Beach Diet and Biba's Italian Kitchen.

Then I got an email from Babette of Bakespace, letting me know that I won a holiday contest, for which I will receive a bunch of crap from some Christmas movie starring Debra Messing and John Leguizamo. The appearance of the latter means I will probably never sit through that movie. That voice is almost as painful to my ears as Owen Wilson's. Shiver.

The next bit of luck is only half lucky, since I don't yet know how it will pan out. I have been working as a long-term substitute since the beginning of the school year, and the full-time position finally opened up. I've been groveling around the community looking for support and any tiny edge I can get. I don't have much, since I don't know anyone in this town, but lo and behold... I called the mother of one of my students to ask if she would write a recommendation for me. She said, "You called the right woman!" Two school board members go to her church, the Superintendent is her neighbor, and another board member goes to her gym. Sweet. Now I just need to cross my fingers, since the job posting closes today. If the luck holds out, I'll score the job, and we all know what that means... Baby fund! But if my husband asks, it's for the big screen TV.