1. If you happen to be home on a Sunday afternoon and are expecting a camera crew from a major national magazine to stop by, you may find it beneficial to empty the liquid from a glass like this into your belly. Twice.

2. Then you’ll still be nervous.

3. If the photographer has told you that he will be shooting pictures in your kitchen and in your garage, make sure you spend two days cleaning your kitchen.

4. Then realize that you haven’t touched the rusted paint cans, dried leaves and random pieces of cardboard in your garage until two hours before he arrives.

5. At which time you may beg your husband to clean it for you.

6. There may also be be shrieking involved.

7. If the magazine for which you’re posing has a circulation of roughly 4 million, you may find it is a perfect time to a) wax your own eyebrows, b) experiment with liquid eyeliner and c) forget to test your hairspray nozzle so that it doesn’t so much spray as it does shoot a solid stream of liquid into your fresh curls.

8. As soon as the crew sets up their equipment and has your kitchen completely blocked off with lights, wires and big umbrellas, your kids will tell you that they’re hungry.

9. If you happen to be busty then, by all means, pick a button down shirt for the shoot so that every time the photographer asks you to put your hands on your hips it pops open at just the right spot.

10. Then it will be like you’re posing for an entirely different type of magazine.

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1. You know you are a true chocoholic when you realize there isn’t a chocolate nut cluster in the world that stands a chance against you.

2. Or, a peanut butter blossom.

3. If your son has never had an instance where he has scratched his crotch in public, you can be sure he will do it for the first time in the middle of his school Christmas play.

4. When he’s standing directly in front of the principal.

5. And, you can be sure he’ll do it for a second time when he’s performing during the children’s Christmas Eve Mass.

6. While standing in front of an entire congregation.

7. And your priest.

8. You may underestimate how bad of a charades player your sister says she is, until she acts out West Side Story by simply belting out, “Maria…”

9. If your daughter gets a camera for Christmas, it’s possible that she will think she is the next Annie Lebovitz and you will have to pose for pictures for days on end.

10. And, during those days on end when you’ve been living off of beer, wine, egg nog, rum, Bailey’s and apple pie, you probably won’t look very pretty in those photographs.

11. When you are 38 years old and your parents still spoil you, you’ll feel like a kid again.

12. If you are participating in a White Elephant gift exchange, you won’t feel so bad about contributing something tacky when you receive a clock from 1982. With dust on it.

13. If you have to make three different trips to the carry out in the middle of your family gathering, you will realize that you are related to a forgetful bunch.

14. Either that, or they drink a lot.

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1. If your 75 year old mother is preparing to move and keeps telling you how hard it is because she “has so much stuff”, you won’t believe her until you see it for yourself.

2. Because apparently you can’t have too many vases.

3. Or soap dishes.

4. Or canister sets.

5. And, clearly, everyone needs a set of everyday dishes and three separate sets of fine china.

6. Your sister, who lives with your mother part-time, and who was home ALL summer, may suddenly disappear to northern Ohio for “grad school” and “trade shows” and won’t come home from the time your mother decides to move, until one week after the move is completed.

7. Which leaves you to pack her stuff up.

8. And, when I say “pack” I mean put her things into hodge-podge boxes, cart them across town, lug them into the new house and up a flight of steps, then throw them in a corner.

9. Your sister is lucky you love her.

10. Because she’s a pack-rat.

11. You may be really excited to have this Friday off work, only to realize your mom really wants you to paint her new living room and dining room.

12. Your mom is lucky you love her too.

13. And when your mom lives just two minutes away instead of 25 minutes away, all of this will be worth it.

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1. After three weeks, “taking it easy” becomes completely overrated.

2. Daytime television is horrible, but middle-of-the-night television is even worse. At one point, you may find yourself so desperate that you watch an episode of Three’s Company. Shudder.

3. After two chest x-rays and a lung scan where you have to breathe radioactive gas through a tube, you’ll realize that if the flu, pneumonia or possible pulmonary embolism won’t kill you, the radiation eventually will.

4. Chicken and noodles is good.

5. Pain medicine is even better.

6. You may be so out of it that you won’t realize new carpet is being installed until it’s already been laid, covered with mud and cleaned up.

7. When no one will come near you, your dog’s affection is absolutely wonderful.

8. Even if that dog stinks.

9. Once you feel better and tell people you’re no longer contagious they will still take two steps back if you come near them.

10. You may come home from the hospital to find flowers, home-cooked food and groceries all over your kitchen.

11. And then you will realize how lucky you really are.

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