That feeling you get when you FINALLY finish the end of a bottle of moisturizer.

I'm a fan of moisturizer. I use it daily, so I buy the big, big bottles that inevitably have a pump top. The pump top is totally convenient, until a few months later when the moisturizer stops coming out.

My moisturizer of choice -- and the darn pump!

"Oh great," you might think, "it's done!"

Except that it's not. There's at least another two weeks' worth of moisturizer in the bottom of that big bottle, but it's not enough for the pump to get at.

So what do I do?

Turn the bottle over (leaning it precariously against other toiletries) and let gravity do its thing. The next time I need it, I have to unscrew the top and thwap thwap thwap the opening down onto my hand to get the lotion out.

I repeat this step DAY AFTER DAY FOR ETERNAL DAYS, as this bottle has become the Unending Bottle of Moisturizer. Just when I think it's finished, I thwap thwap thwap another giant blob of perfectly good lotion.

I consider just throwing the remainder of the bottle in the trash. But that would be WASTING IT, my mother's voice admonishes me in my mind. No one would know! I think to myself. My hand grips the bottle, hovering over the waiting trash can. But I can't.

Thwap thwap thwap.

But just when I'm ready to give up, just when I've convinced yourself that there will never be an end to this torment,  I thwap thwap thwap and ... nothing.

Hallelujah, it's finally done.

I feel like my life has been that bottle of moisturizer lately. A couple months before the wedding, I officially hit the "pause" button working on my novel. I thought that, after returning from the honeymoon, I'd get to sit down and begin writing again.

Then I spent a week doing laundry and cleaning up the piles of wedding stuff that had accumulated in my house.

Thwap thwap thwap.

Then I had a copyediting job for five days.

Thwap thwap thwap.

Then I wrote out seventy-ish thank you cards in a week-long marathon.

Thwap thwap thwap.

And of course, I made plans with some of the people I'd been neglecting for three months when wedding took over my life.

Thwap thwap thwap.

And then ... there was nothing left stopping me. And I got that finally-finished-the-moisturizer-bottle feeling, except times a million.

Hello, pretty novel. 

I'm back.


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What gives you that finally-finished-the-moisturizer bottle feeling? And how many of you also insist on finishing every last drop of moisturizer / toothpaste / shampoo / condiment, like me? Leave it in the comments!