I got up at 5:00 this morning and was, like, "A new day!" Suddenly I felt tons of hope that today was when I'd finally stop acting like a time-wasting, dessert-eating, non-exercising, tv-watching, procrastinating slug.

It felt like a whole new day. A whole new me. As though I could--with God--conquer any lousy habit out there and for the first three hours all was right with my world.

And then I opened our daughter's cell phone bill, the only bill of hers which Tom and I still pay.

$324!! Ack! Ack! Ack! Usually it runs around $61.

Well, I emailed Naomi and asked what in the world??? I asked her to get back to me asap. But man oh man, I did not want to tell Tom. Bills make his stomach hurt. シ

I am the bill writer-outer in the family, though if there's a big bill problem, he is the fix-it-over-the-phone guy.

Naomi emailed me and asked, "Are you kidding me?" She had no idea what had gone wrong. So there was nothing left to do but to tell Tom.

And the morning had started out so well. Darn.

But alas! After all these years, I've figured out a few things. I'm no fool. I realized this was just another test. Would I mope around and mutter, "See? This is what happens when you get a tiny breakthrough!" And would I bang a few pans around and say, "See if I ever let myself feel hopeful again!"

Or, instead, would I, (as I did) say, "This is just a test! This is just a test! My faith in this being a whole new day for me is only being tested. To see how real it is within me."

Sometimes I almost feel like I am cheating at Life. Like I stole some answers from the teacher's briefcase, or something.

So what happened? Tom did the phone call thing, found out the huge fee had to do with Naomi's eating away of the rollover minutes for three months--and after some finagling and promising to start a two phone account in January (instead of a single one, long story) and after lots of mercy on AT&T's part, well, they are only charging us $104.

We can handle that.

This is just a test! This is just a test. Words that can change everything. At least, that's what I've found.

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re: The above photo.

 Remember that ash try stand thing I bought at a yard sale this summer to set glasses on while sitting at our coffee-table-less love seat? Well, now that we have enough end tables for that, Tom had the terrific idea to make it into an umbrella stand. I love it!



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