When I was in college, I had some serious goals. Well okay, maybe not super serious, but I had plans, places I wanted to go. I wanted to travel the globe. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to work in hospitals, to help the needy, and rock the healthcare industry. I wanted to do studies on stroke patients, on their swallowing problems, their speech problems. I wanted to work with trach patients and teach them how to breathe on their own, without use of a ventilator. I wanted to work with seeing eye dogs, therapy dogs, and revolutionize how speech therapy was done by using animals in my treatment sessions. Yes sirree, I had plans.

Fast forward a few years, and I still have plans. Goals, which we are told are always good to make. The goals I make now, however, are slightly different.

Here are the things to which I currently aspire:

I want all the contents of my fridge to be edible at any given moment.

I want my car to not smell.

I want my carpet to not look moldy.

I want my toilets to flush. All of them. (Yeah, still working on that one.)

I want my home to be wall-paper free. 2 rooms down, 1 to go–woohoo!

I want to make sure my 6 year old wears clean underwear daily, and doesn’t pick his nose on a regular basis.

I want my daughter to say “Momma”.

I want my dog to be less flatulent.

I want to pay back all our student loans before it’s time to retire on our 401ks that are surely worth 2 nickels.

I want to go an entire day without having to change my clothes because I got slimed by somebody’s tiny sticky hands.

I want to keep my closet clean (yeah, like that’s ever going to happen).

I want to spend more time in my son’s classroom so I can see who he is becoming friends with.

I want to take an hour or longer nap every single day (hey, it could happen!!)

I told a guy I dated once that I wanted to change the world, and wondered how I could do it. He just sort of shrugged and said, “Good luck. I think as you get older (yeah, he was SO MUCH OLDER than I was–a whopping 5 years my senior. Filthy cradle robber….) you’ll find that you want to mostly concentrate on changing your own little corner of the world. And that’s where you’ll find you can really make a difference.”

I suppose he’s right about that. Maybe my non-moldy fridge really can change the world. At the very least, I’m keeping the world safer from dangerous, unknown, mixed breed microorganisms. That should make y’all sleep much better tonight.