January Predictions

Here's my latest column at Blue Mountain Moments: January Predictions. Enjoy!

[yikes -- link expired; so I've copied and pasted below for personal posterity]

January Predictions

By the time you read this little ditty, Christmas will have passed, New Year’s Eve is a day or two away and a Walmart flyer is about to arrive in the mail. Actually, it quite likely arrived today with this very copy of Blue Mountain Moments and is sitting on the counter right now beside your keys and your kid’s backpack. See it? Good. Now, pick it up and check to see if I’m right in my prediction as to its January hot-ticket items.

Those being:

1. Treadmills
2. Diet Aids (pills, shakes, whathaveyou’s) and
3. Storage Bins

Am I right? Just suppose I am. But am I right because I’m a psychic or a secret heiress to the Walden empire? [Because, you see, as I write this essay it’s early in the month of December -- December 2^nd to be precise. Most of my neighbors haven’t even decorated for the season yet. I have yet to shop. I haven’t even really thought about it yet – But wait – Give me a second … and I’ll easily get … into the maddening … the fattening … the splendidlydizzyingholidayfurryofitall that will leave me thicker around the waist and … thinner in the wallet.]

Like I said, I’m no psychic or secret heiress, I just know what’s in January’s Walmart flyer because treadmills, diet aids and storage bins are the same things that are in January’s Walmart flyer every year. And before I draw my bossy-pants, know-it-all conclusions about what these January sale items say about us in our post- holiday, consumer-stricken mélange, I mustn’t forget to ask you for a favor:

Would you mind picking up a few bins for me (stackable, please) if you get to the superstore first? I’ll have to pay you back sometime in April, though, cause its January and I’m sure to have maybe 3 lonely cents in my wallet – 3 cents, a paper clip and some really cold air.

-- By Sarah Johnson