Do they have a 12-step program for this?

I'm not like the average junkie. I can go for months without touching the stuff, watching others indulge while I sit immune. At first, I couldn't get enough of it. I was buying every month, spending long hours at my kitchen table, glassy-eyed and shaky. Eventually, I plateaued and was able to wean myself. Little by little, I got it all under control.

But every so often, I get the itch.

This weekend, I let the genie out of the bottle. I gathered my scrapbooking paraphernalia and newly-printed Christmas pictures and went on an all-out bender. I felt a little like CraftyMinx must when she gets a new shipment of yarn.

I haven't worked on my scrapbooks for awhile. Truthfully, my kids are out of the "cutie-pie" phase. LegoGuy is all arms, legs, and feet. His babyface doesn't match his gangly body. He looks a bit like a painting by Gauguin -- the perspective is all wrong. Sport's baby teeth are gradually being replaced by adult teeth. They're too big for his mouth. Right now, he looks like a refugee from the Appalachia highlands, especially after he's spent a couple hours playing soccer.

I've been lax taking pictures of late, but at Christmas I grudgingly got out the digital camera and starting snapping. For some reason, we fell way behind in our usual traditions -- we never put up the outside lights, didn't go visit Santa, didn't drive around looking at decorated homes and yards, and watched only a few of our favorite seasonal movies. Perhaps the fact that my mother has now sunk into a deep depression had a lot to do with my general ennui regarding the holidays. Still, I took some pictures when we went to visit friends, went to a cookie-decorating party, and spent Christmas Day with SO's family. I ended up with some pretty neat shots. As I looked through the bundle of photographs, I decided to work on a layout that was vastly different from the last 3 years of pictures in our Christmas album.

As I do before beginning any project, I headed downstairs to the library and picked up a stack of Creating Keepsakes magazines. I browsed through a couple before finding a layout I liked: not too fancy, nothing I couldn't do in less than a weekend. Later, I looked through my scrapbook papers and found a few I could use to set the mood. Then, I came up with a theme and selected a few photos that I wanted to highlight. The rest were trimmed down into smaller vignettes.

Then, my favorite part. Starting the first layout. I'm always excited to see how the first page turns out. If it's good, then I know I have a sure thing, and I'm off and running. If it's not so good, I have to spend more time working it out. Luckily, this time it worked on the first try. Before I knew it, I'd spent three hours hunched over the kitchen table. My hands were shaking from exhaustion and my breathing was shallow. My neck and back were aching. I knew I should stop and get to bed, but there was always just one more thing I wanted to get to before I could put it down.

"Mom, do you know..."

"Can't you see I'm busy?" I hissed. "I'm creating over here!"

The poor child slunk away, emotionally shattered that I hadn't answered one of his daily 257 questions. I, however, was distracted enough from my addiction to get up and go to bed.

"Hello, my name is AQ, and I'm a scrapaholic."