I have been in the process of organizing old digital photos to transfer to an image storage site (Flickr), and I have had fun looking through the past few years. A lot of smiles have come from Sophie's first year with us, when she was all round eyes and fluffy tail (she grew into them, let me tell you).

It was August 2006 when a surgeon told me that I was probably unable to have children. I latched onto "probably" quite desperately as I recovered from that series of surgeries. Probably meant there was still a chance.

That next year was dedicated to figuring out the nuances of everything that was wrong with me. Of course, being that I have a very rare genetic disorder sparks a lot of interest from various specialists. I bet that I didn't really need half of those appointments, and I did start to feel like I was a bit of a freak show for the medical community's entertainment.

It was through the course of those appointments that probably turned into a definite no…any slight chance that may have burned was promptly extinguished. Then came Sophie…and so begins the life of the most spoiled cat on the face of the planet.

I haven't always been one to make decisions. In fact, I would say that I've spent most of my life being completely and utterly wishy-washy. It was never about having opinions…it was about the abject fear that I would make the wrong choice.

My behavior changed sometime during my late 20s. I couldn't tell you the catalyst for sure, as the second half of my last decade was like a remodeling project that just wouldn't end. I'm hardly even the same person!

But irony strikes again: I married a waffler.

I am suddenly in the position where I want to violently shake him until a decision falls out. How quickly I forget that I used to be THAT person. Instead, total frustration blinds me.I am not talking about big decisions, obviously. You should spend considerable time deciding on a new life direction, but you can probably flip a coin between Ruffles and Lays without the world ending.

Time is weighted differently in my new perception of life. I would much rather live with a decision that could have been better than waste months trying to figure out what to do. I guarantee that your guest doesn't spend time thinking of the Lays while he stuffs his face with the Ruffles, but those long moments of uncertainty in the snack food aisle are lost to you forever.

Nick has been looking for a new pair of winter boots for months. He has found several that fit the bill, but he has yet to buy any of them. It's like those brides who try on too many dresses and suddenly none of them look right: he's in winter boot overload. He has been asking my opinion on this pair or that as he conducts his extensive online research. I gave him decent feedback in the beginning.

I say decent because I really don't have any sort of opinion on what he puts on his feet. Yet, I gave him my thoughts as if I would be given the credit or blame for his foot wardrobe. Heading into month two of the research, I started giving him a simple thumbs up or thumbs down depending on which one I gave him for the last product he showed me. I threatened him a few hours ago that one day I would just come home with a pair of boots and HE WILL WEAR THEM—even if they're the wrong size…that's just the price you have to pay for not making your own decisions.

This all boiled to the surface today over a series of text messages with my cousin. She sends me a picture of a bare spot in her apartment and asks what she should buy to make that space feel complete. I tell her a bench with storage would be aesthetically pleasing and practical: two birds, one stone. She loves the idea of a bench. Where can she buy an inexpensive bench with storage she wants to know. I confer with Google, and we find the perfect seller.

Upon sending a picture from bench-people's website, she falls head over heels in love with one of their products. I mean, it's almost indecent how much passion she has for this bench. She thinks it's perfect, just perfect. Even better: it's within budget! She confesses that she wasn't thinking of a bench, but now she sees only THAT bench in her empty space. Michelle and the bench sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G…

"Good deal. Are you shopping today? Do you want company?" I question in reply. She does want company, but…only…is this the right choice? She reneges, backtracks. Maybe there is something better out there…maybe…maybe…maybe…

"Oh no," I thought sadly. Et tu Brute?

Reading my silence correctly, she writes, "I need help making decisions. You're THE DECIDER! We're so lucky to have you!" She's just lucky that in my Laura 2.0 revamp I haven't shaken my weakness to flattery. Watch out for 3.0 though—you're not going to want to mess with her.

Meanwhile, I may decide to use "The Decider" as my wrestling stage name: "Meek and Moody" isn't putting the fear in anyone's eyes.

When I was a child, I was the artistic sort. I wrote my first short story—with illustrations, mind you—before I made it to second grade. At the time, because everyone should be making big life choices before second grade (naturally), I was torn as to whether I was more of a writer or more of an illustrator. In the end, writing stayed with me a bit longer…most likely because my writing became more sophisticated with age, but my sketching never did!

I still take to drawing occasionally. Well actually, I take to drawing more than just occasionally if you count all of the doodles I scribble on scrap paper while in phone conferences. Roll your eyes all you want…everyone is always surprised at all the information I retain without taking notes in those meetings! (It works!) The little doodle over to the right was Sophie-inspired, but with an extra-fluffy, excited-looking tail because that's how I like 'em.

I'm always a little surprised what I end up doodling when I dedicate my logic elsewhere.

Anyway, I always had fanciful stories in my head as a child. I wanted so badly to tell my mom all about the fantasies living in my mind, but I often felt frustrated because I didn't have the words to paint the stories well enough. I wanted everyone to see the faerie prince enchant all those flowers at dawn so that they would open and sing for the butterflies—but since I didn't have the words, I tried to recreate the image. I filled entire sketchbooks with my imagination.

I wonder, at what age do we stop seeing the unseen? If I still see, I've stopped acknowledging. The ability to run alongside your imagination is a gift that we have for such a short time, and I wish I still had those sketchbooks. I think they would be refreshing in contrast to my realistic, easily-described, all-business world. Hopefully I'll "wake up" from a phone conference one day and find that the faerie prince still lives in me after all.

We did not decorate for Christmas last year because we left for Florida on December 26th. We did not want to return in mid-January to a house full of Christmas tchotchkes that needed to be cleaned up. So, we were the grumpy couple who went home to a sterile house where we sat in the dark quiet of cheerlessness.

Anyway, that's what I remember the most about last Christmas. I think Dickens summed it up quite well (if I've got the line right): "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it." I'll tell ya—cheap and a whole lot easier on the effort scale, too. I was headed that way again this year, remembering the effort I didn't have to expend. I can be a bit miserly with my effort you know; I don't want to throw it away just anywhere. Sounds like I need a good kick from a few ghosts, eh?

Well, I really didn't want it to come to that (the hauntings), so I made a point to put up the tree today. Nick had a bad case of DOMS that kept him couch-bound most of the day, but his comments on how I was doing everything (and how it could be done better) were invaluable. Sophie helped me, though. She was very excited to see the tree since she was denied last year.

And at some point during the process, I lost the sarcasm and started having a lot of fun. I became so disgustingly cheerful that I stopped scolding Sophie for taking swipes at my ankles every time I passed while stringing the beads. Go ahead, trip me! Attack my toes! Gnaw the branches! AND MERRRRRRRY CHRISTMAS!

She's hardly left her place on the tree skirt since she and I finished wrestling while I tried to straighten the darn thing. I think she likes the heat from the lights. In any case, she's a cute little present to have sitting under our Christmas tree!

We have a room that is largely unused.

Well, I shouldn't say unused: it simply has no respectable purpose. It's the catch-all of the condo, kind of like that one drawer in the kitchen that attracts pens, paperclips, safety pins, pennies, and whatever else we happen to find lying around. We call the room an office, but the desk only takes up a teeny bit of the space. We used to have a futon in there (so it could have been used as a guest room, I suppose), but Nick sold that to my cousin a few months ago when she moved into her own apartment.

So, what has been sitting in the room? Baskets of clean, folded laundry belonging to yours truly. You know me and closets. I must defend, however, that I have not had a dresser since I moved in with Nick. I grew up with a big closet and two dressers, so it was a bit of an event figuring out how to store all my stuff with only a closet to work with (albeit a really big one).

I do not think my volume of clothing is absurd for no one has ever questioned my storage needs—heck, when I moved into my aunts' home, my dad came out and built additional areas to hang my clothes without any reaction (though, he may have just been dulled to clothing volume because of my mom's collection).

Nick, on the other hand, seems to think I have a lot of clothes. I find this laughable because his closet is all but bursting at the seams; he has four or five long containers that slide beneath the bed; AND he has a five-drawer dresser. All storage areas are full. (Of course, he doesn't switch out winter and summer clothes like I do, but still.)

Anyway, my storage system in this dresser-less existence was an impressive combination of baskets and stacked containers, but it required constant vigilance.

All that changed when I realized that I could fit a dresser in the room with the futon gone. That's right: after nearly six years, I have a dresser! It's wonderful! I spent a day reorganizing my clothing and other miscellaneous bits then decided that I might as well claim the whole room as sort of a closet-entryway…second-closet…outer-closet. By that evening, I was calling it my closet proper, and Nick was all, "Wah!?"



And behind the door:



I have found myself wandering into this room more, lighting candles and buying Wallflowers. It's absolutely sinful. I think Nick is in a state of bemusement. I did let him retain a tiny corner of real estate to keep his computer desk…see? I can share.