Five Little Monkeys

I've been carrying around a lot of monkeys lately - things that I just can't get around to making myself do. So over the weekend I decided to grant myself amnesty - no recriminations about what hasn't been done to date - and commit to shedding one monkey per day, for the next five workdays. Five days, five monkeys.

Monday's monkey: getting my bills out at work. Done and done. And not too terribly painful, either. Added bonus - I can turn in expense reports without feeling like a total schmo.

Today's monkey: well, actually there was more than one. I remembered to call the credit card company and request a new card. It's a zero balance card, and the plan is to put all of our family birthday and Christmas gift purchases on it, so that I can track spending. Yeah, right - I know it won't work. I purchased some gifts previously, so already we're dealing with a carry forward, and I'm sure that I'll use it for something non-gift-related . . . multiple times . . . purely for the sake of convenience, but I think I should at least get points for having the thought. By the way, when I mention family birthdays above, I mean "all of the birthdays except for two" (mine in April, and bro-in-law #1's in August). We begin in September with my grandmother's birthday, then we have Parker's in October, my husband and my mom on the same day in early November, Connor in late November, my dad and bro-in-law #3 in early December (again, on the same day), my mom-in-law a few days before Christmas, bro-in-law #2 on Boxing Day and sis-in-law the day after New Year's. Do you have any idea how hard it is to think up totally distinct (and distinctive) birthday and Christmas gifts for that many people, that close together? Hence the need for some organization and tracking . . . .

I am about to knock off Tuesday monkey #2 and forward some investment instructions to our financial planner. Honey, if you are reading this, no, those aren't the instructions you told me to give to our investment instructions a few weeks ago. Because I totally accomplished that task the day that I told you I accomplished it.

Wednesday's monkey will be to enter all of my billable time for the month of September a day in advance of month's end. You will know when that happens by all of the flying pigs circling the Metroplex.

By the way, if you think the monkeys pictured above are as cute as I do, AND you crochet, visit CraftyAnna's Etsy site, and she will sell you the pattern. (Yes, I realize that there are seven monkeys pictured. One is the momma monkey, and one is the doctor. Duh.)