bless me father for i have sinned

Last year's resolutions, made right here on the blog, were mostly craft related, and mostly fell by the wayside. I know it's only right to take responsibility for one's own actions, but I blame Black Sheep Knittery. Not to kick it when it's down -- it's now closed -- but it was that damn sale that derailed me. I mean, for real, how many sales have you seen that go on for 3 months? They kept pulling more and more fabulousness out of some mysterious warehouse and prices kept falling. In the end, they were practically giving things away. Practically. After about 10 trips and 2 parking tickets, one of which I kept forgetting to pay for months (the City of Los Angeles just loooves that), I'll bet I separated myself from a thousand bucks. That sale was like the first leak in a rusty radiator. Once it sprang, other holes followed. Sick from the whole cloying affair, I hardly bought any more yarn. But I did lose track of my fabric and pattern purchases, my late night Internet raids, my Japanese craft book orders. When one resolution goes to hell, others tend to follow. It wasn't long before the demise of Eye Candy Friday and Snap A Dozen Days. So well shit. I'd plain old like to do better with my resolutions this year.

Toward that end, I present Sappmama's Log of Sin, in which I keep track of how I'm doing with one of my most difficult resolutions, #2, the one in which I'm not supposed to talk about people. I figure monitoring my transgressions will help me curb them. Awareness, I am told, is everything. Pragmatism is really at work here. Eventually I'll get tired of counting how many times I gossiped about somebody and shut up.

Yesterday, my first day back at work and therefore my first day back out in the world, where opportunities to dog people abound, I only said one bad thing. It was about how stupid students are for not putting their names on their tests (I mean, come on, two in one class -- of adults?), but that's it. Whenever anyone else said something mean about some absent person, I may have smiled so as to appear sociable (so much of "sociable" is about issuing verbal smackdowns to people we claim to like), but I was quiet.

Today, however, was a different story.

TODAY'S SIN LOG:

• When my boss asked someone to make a snarky remark to a co-worker upon his return from an extended lunch break, the other person refused. And I volunteered. Upon hearing my snarky remark, the leisurely lunching co-worker noted that our boss had gone on one of her own infamous lunches. I heartily backed up his "And just where is she?" with a "And how long will she be gone?" (This is a double, and aptly demonstrates my wily and two-faced side.)
• I tailed the above remarks by adding that my co-worker could always choose to skip lunch altogether and just take naps at his desk, like our president.
  
• While talking about a recalcitrant student who'd soundly rejected me when I reached out to him last quarter, I declared the kid a stoner and an ass and did a doofless imitation of him using his stock refrain, "I don't know the answer. I'm kinda tired today." Then I said, "Tired? Fuuuck you!"
• While briefing John, my replacement, on a student whose attendance and attitude are, to put it nicely, lackadaisical, I astutely said, "I have never in my life seen anyone so persistent about making a consistently poor effort at doing something."
• I called Amy Winehouse crazy.
• When someone honked at us when Bubs pulled over so I could hobble out of the car, I yelled, "Good for you! You've got a fucking horn! Fucktard!" (This one might have been excusable, had it not been for the fucktard part.)
  

Tomorrow I will stop this backsliding. I will speak ill of no one. I will call no one crazy or a fucktard; I will not agree with others that anyone else is a crazy fucktard. This should be simple. Seeing as I'll be alone most of the day.