11:00 PM

To buy salsa or not to buy salsa? This is what I ask myself at 11 o'clock at night on New Year's Eve while standing in an empty aisle at the corner grocery store. As many are filling the streets of Seattle to celebrate new hopes and dreams, I'm pondering whether or not spiced and diced fruits and vegetables will ruin my soon-to-be plate of microwaved nachos.

This is what my life has become. Junk food dinners. Oversized sweatshirts. Pajama bottoms tucked into snow boots. Undergarments a maybe. Bathing an option. Eyebrow plucking a mere possibility. And all these aspects of my grooming uncertainty come together like a perfect unibrow to create the unique individual that is me—a woman standing in a grocery aisle deciding if tonight is going to be a spicy evening or not.

I pull a jar of chunky salsa from the shelf and throw it in the shopping basket. What the hell—it's New Year's Eve. Let's make tonight hot and tangy!

The automatic doors to the main entrance of the store slide open and three young women adorned in fabulous cocktail dresses and cardboard tiaras disrupt my solitude with their girly giggles and excitement. I watch The Three Tiaras slightly enviously as they make a beeline for the aisle of alcohol, wobbling like newborn calves in their gorgeous stilettos. Height-weight proportionate? Check. Flawless skin? Yep. Lustrous, long hair? Of course. It's like they stepped right off the pages of a Disney Princess story—the three beautiful stepsisters on their way to a royal New Year's Eve Ball.

As the grocery store's automatic doors close, I catch an unfortunate glimpse of my reflection in the glass panels. Unlike The Tiaras, I look like the dirty housemaid left behind to clean the bathrooms with the toothbrushes belonging to my metaphorical, party-hopping stepsisters. 180 pounds of flesh draped on a 5 foot, 4 inch frame. Skin like an old, flaky croissant. A knotted bun on the top of my head with hair sticking out in every direction. I'm a train wreck--a disastrous image I immediately look away from. If I can't see it, I don't have to believe it. Denial is this girl's magic pixie dust.

Just as I'm starting to really feel the acceleration of the self-pity train, an exhausted woman with two small children enters the store. The little girl with a lion's mane of untamed frizzy hair shivers from the snowy, winter cold. The younger boy standing next to her in filthy patched jeans strikes me as being so tired and weak from possibly hunger that his straw-like frame moves with an unsteady balance. And although she displays an outer shell of sturdy tin, the woman holding the hands of the two little ones has an appearance of defeat and hollowness lingering in her eyes. Emptiness. Invisibility. Belonging nowhere. Oh, my. It's as if the essence of home and kindness is just a distant memory for these battered souls—nothing more than a sepia colored dream.

The Forgotten Kids wiggle free from their mom and race to a display of brightly colored New Year's Eve noisemakers, testing every single one to discover the unique sounds each trinket produces. Flustered by the loud clamor and sudden flood of begging to purchase two holiday toys, Forgotten Mom shuffles her disappointed babies off to another part of the store.

Observing the obstacles the Forgotten Family seems to encounter makes me feel like an asshole. Clearly there are things I complain about that others in this world are desperate to have. Like this jar of salsa. I'm getting dramatic over which batch of spiced tomatoes I want, while Forgotten Mom is probably trying to figure out how to feed her children with the change in her pocket. I'm such a--first world asshole.

It's all about perspective. 

Perspective is a powerful force. In fact, it's the Magic Genie for the 99.9% of us living in the real world instead of a fairy tale land. Just a slight change in attitude can transform depressing moments into brighter situations. But for whatever reason, I can't seem to remember this amazing truth on a consistent basis. Most of the time my attitude drifts towards the cynical end of the spectrum, because my Perspective Genie is highly influenced by a powerful Darkness within me—my inner Evil Queen.

But not anymore.

Listen up, Evil Queen. I'm done with your cynical visions for my future. You're out. Perspective Genie is in. Together the inhabitant of magical lamps and I are going to clean up the nasty spells you've cast in my head—the destructive thoughts. This internal purging will be my New Year's Resolution this year. It's time to start living the life I was born to live—a happily before, during and ever after life! It's time to polish your Royal Mother Effing smudge off my happiness.

With salsa in my basket and determination in my heart, I march off towards the produce section. 

*********NACHO BREAK*********

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