Author: admin

Santa’s Snail Mail

We are starting to get our holiday cards in the mail.  I love getting them.  I’m always shocked that other people’s kids grow up, go to college, get married . . . I understand that the growing up process is happening to my family, but it stuns me a little bit every year to see the Christmas cards with everyone else’s families doing the same thing.  Still, I love rooting through all of the catalogs and credit card offers in the mailbox, for an envelope with some familiar hand-writing and a Santa stamp.  I rip the envelopes open, like an excited 5-year-old ripping off the Christmas wrapping paper, of an anticipated, desired gift.  This is because these cards are an anticipated gift of the season.  They never disappoint.

A friend told me once that when someone sends a family picture on their holiday card, you can guarantee that the mom will look great.  Everyone else in the family can look a little “off” – not looking at the camera, smiling a little too hard, someone’s head cut off, but if the family picture is being sent, the mom of the family, is looking good in it!  It makes sense.  Most of us female heads of household are also annual Christmas card designers.  If we’re going to go to all of that time, money and effort, we might as well feel great about the finished product.

I went to the Shutterfly website where they have a webpage dedicated to what to write in your Christmas cards.   There’s a whole list of sweet, meaningful sentiments.  They also list some funny things to write.  Here are a few that made me giggle:

  • Why are Dasher and Dancer always taking coffee breaks? Because they are Santa’s star bucks. Happy Holidays!
  • When you stop believing in Santa Claus is when you start to get clothes for Christmas. Happy holidays!  (This one made me laugh because my kids were never good at “hiding their disdain” when they opened up a box of clothes.)
  • “You know that you’re getting old when Santa starts looking younger.” – Robert Paul
  • Get your fat pants ready, it’s Christmas!

I hope that you all are enjoying the delights of the season, like the cherished cards from family and friends. Please let me know in the comments section, if my friend’s hypothesis is true.  One last idea from Shutterfly:

  • “Christmas is a time when everyone wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.” -Phyllis Diller

 

 

To Thine Own Self

I think the reason why President H.W. Bush’s memorial is hitting so many of us so hard is because we are searching for a simpler sincere truth.  We are searching for common values that can resonate with all of us, from our deepest inner beings.  I don’t discuss politics with my friends.  I don’t consider myself a particularly politically-oriented person, yet so many of my friends, in all different age groups, whose political leanings I honestly could only guess at, have expressed a certain wistfulness for the days when our country seemed easier to define.  We had a unified pride in the United States, while still understanding that we had differences in opinions.  The vision and love and respect for the United States seemed to be more of an understood commonality back then, than it seems to be now.  A friend of mine who now has a grandchild, told a few of us, those of us who are mothers in our forties, that she hopes that we have raised a generation of children that will bring things back to a simpler, respectful honor.  I do, too. . . .  I do, too.

President Bush (’41) was supposedly a wonderful letter writer.  He hand wrote many, many letters.  I think that is the wonderful part of being naturally inclined to write.  I told my husband recently that one of my favorite things about this blog, is that my children and grandchildren will have my voice.  They may better understand me and thus, my influence on them, by my writings.  That is why I aim to be as authentic as I can be, when I write.  I want them to know me, at my very core, goodness and flaws.  I want them to glean understanding of me, my points of view, my interests, my cares and loves, so that they can better understand how I may have touched their lives.  I think that it is a blessing to have the need to write.  I am so grateful for this inclination.

I watched an interview with Jenna Bush Hager, in which she was introducing her new baby daughter to George and Barbara Bush, her grandparents.  Jenna asked her grandfather what words of wisdom that he thinks of, to give to the newly born babies of this world.  He thought for a moment and then he stated very firmly, “Be true to yourself.  To Thine Own Self Be True.”

The Art of Living

This was a tough weekend.  It put my emotions over the top this morning, to open the news and see the picture of Sully, President George H. W. Bush’s service dog sleeping by his casket.  RIP – President Bush, a true American patriot.  It does warm my heart to picture President Bush and Barbara Bush and their precious daughter, reunited.

Losing a pet is so tough because they are such a part of your daily routine.  Lacey loved to sleep under my desk, by my feet, while I wrote.  I loved the feel of her warm fur on my bare feet, while I was writing.  Please excuse my writing for a while until I find my footing again.  I lost a little bit of my heart and soul yesterday.  I know that you are not supposed to have favorites and as an animal lover, I have had the privilege of sharing my life with many wonderful pets over the years, but Lacey was very special to me.  She and I shared a unique bond.  She was my favorite and I am heartsick.

I was reading that grieving tends to bring up a lot of your other unresolved grief.  By middle age, unfortunately a lot of us have a fairly big pile of unresolved grief, as most of us have not perfected the skill of accepting our sadness and allowing ourselves to move through it.  Maybe each new grief should be looked at as a chance to resolve old pains and to smooth down some oozing scabs on the heart. These scabs can then be made to be less fresh and vulnerable, and turned to smoother, fainter scars.

Shakespeare said, “A light heart lives long.”  I imagine a heart with some mostly healed scars is lighter and beats easier, than a heart with oozing, gaping wounds and dark, crusty scabs.  I plan to look at this time of grieving as a chance to make my heart lighter by working through my pain, so that my unresolved wounds can turn to fainter scars and my heart can feel light again.

“All the art of living lies in the fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” – Havelock Ellis

Lacey – Love

We lost our beautiful collie today.  My heart is breaking into a million little pieces.  We got Lacey about nine and half years ago.  I had put an ad on Craigslist looking for a family dog as our Irish Water Spaniel, Little Bit, had recently passed.  Having four young children at home, I was hesitant to start at the puppy stage, so I was looking for an adult dog who could fit into the mix of a chaotic, boisterous family.  A woman on a farm contacted me, letting me know that she had a collie who needed a new home.  Her donkeys had been kicking Lacey, who had been given to her by another family and the whole situation wasn’t working out.  When I arrived at the farm, Lacey was in a rusted pen with a few chihuahuas.  She was covered in fleas and had a bare spot on her back where the donkeys had been kicking her.  She was timid and jittery.  People rush to judgment when I tell this story, but truthfully everyone on the farm, people and animals alike, seemed to live in the same conditions.  It was just their way.  Truthfully, they were kind, and they gave me Lacey, and for that, I will always be grateful.

I didn’t have any intention to keep Lacey when I took her home from the farm.  She really wasn’t what I had in mind, as our next family dog.  I just knew that I couldn’t let her stay there.  I had every intention of taking her to a Collie Rescue organization, but as I treated her and got to know her, I never got around to making that call to the rescue.  I fell in love and connected with her, within a few days.   I’ve loved her ever since.

Lacey was beautiful.  We never once walked her without people commenting on her elegance and loveliness.  She was always a little bit timid, but in times that she felt protective of us, her family, she threw her timidity right out of the window.  I never doubted that she would have taken a bullet for any of one of us.  Like all family dogs, she was there through so many milestones in our lives, the exciting ones and the painful ones.  She was that constant, gorgeous, steady being with soulful eyes and long, soft, warm fur – there for us always, during the storms and the calm.  Lacey would walk with me and my husband, forever, as long as we needed to, whenever we were working our stresses out, through walking.  We walked for miles and miles and miles, together with Lacey, throughout the years.  She loved our walks.

It feels wrong to be able to be writing this.  It feels wrong to send out the Christmas cards with her picture on it, but then it would feel wrong not to honor her either.  I guess everything just feels wrong right now.  Lacey, thank you for everything.  I love you with all of my heart.  Play and run in the green, grassy, fields, in perfect restored health.  Until we meet again, beautiful . . .

Deck the Halls

(Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit) We might start putting up our Christmas decorations today.  I’m not sure that I’m ready yet.  At the risk of sounding Grinchy, I get a little bit claustrophobic if they are up too long.  My daughter can’t wait to put up the Christmas decorations, although from little girl on, she thinks that we are way too understated when it comes to lights and inflatables.  I imagine that her house might end up on the TV show, The Great Christmas Light Fight.  It will be like walking through the Macy’s Day Parade to get to her front door.  I hope that she never loses her enthusiasm.

My favorite decorations by far, are our Christmas ornaments.  We have collected them from day trips and vacations that have all held special meaning to our family’s collective memory book.  Many of the ornaments are handmade by the kids, when the kids were quite young.  My middle son always felt that whatever he had made at school, was a true masterpiece and he carefully brought everything home and looked for grand spots to showcase his work.  One ornament that he made in preschool was a large coloring page.  It depicts an angel and it says “From Your Little Angel”.  It appears that he took about two seconds to color it, as only the angel’s face is colored, in a dark, scribbled blue, with little care to stay in the lines.  I imagine that there was a buddy playing with Matchbox cars or something, that he was probably wanting to get to, as coloring was never a huge interest to my boys.  Still, he treats this ornament as a masterpiece to this day.  So do I.

My daughter and my eldest son have always been artistic so they have a fair amount of homemade ornaments to deck the tree out with too, but my youngest son maybe has 1.5 – 2 handmade ornaments, to his name.  He was the kid that I had to find the “important papers parents have to sign”, balled up at the bottom of his book bag, and shake off the cookie crumbs and hope that the papers weren’t mixed with a crushed banana.  So my guess is, that very few of his handmade baubles actually made the bus ride home, in one piece.  It was just last year, that he came to the full realization that the tree was adorned with mostly his siblings’ creations, so at age 17, he got busy making up for lost time.  He made large, obnoxious, colorful decorations, prominently displaying them on the tree, signed with his name so large and arresting, Mr. Magoo couldn’t have missed it.  John Hancock would have been impressed.  My son makes me laugh.

I am always shocked that Christmas decorations show the wear and tear of aging, just like everything else.  I mean, we keep them displayed for about three weeks, we walk around them gingerly, as they are precious family heirlooms, and then before the new year, we carefully wrap them up, like mummies and put them back in the tomb of our our attic.  Still, every year the decorations are a little more faded and dated, the Santas’ beards are little more sparse, and at least one or two ornaments get broken and become a memory of what used to be.  Nothing seems to escape the aging process, even being hidden away in an effort to be preserved for eternity.  Maybe that’s why the holidays are so nostalgic.  They are a reminder of the cycle of life and that nothing is immune to this natural cycle.  Nothing.

I can’t end this post on a melancholy note, though.  There is too much good fun and laughter to be had, as we unpack our decorations and all of the memories that get unpacked with them.  There is hot cocoa to be drunk and Bing Crosby to be listened to, while we do it.  There is a tree farm waiting for us to arrive, to start squabbling amongst ourselves over which tree we should buy this year, to hold and showcase the children’s masterpieces.  Maybe I won’t get claustrophobic if we start decorating today.  Maybe it will be wonderful to be surrounded by the blue-faced angel and the Santa with the sparse beard.  Maybe we should even put out some more lights this year.  Why not?

 

The Friday Happy Dance

MONDAY Y U NO FUN FUN FUN LIKE FRIDAY? – The Joke Cafe

Friday’s back!!!!!!!!!!!  Isn’t she beautiful?!?  It’s Favorite Things Friday here at Adulting – Second Half!  Before I get started on to describing my three favorite things for today, new readers, I try to keep in light on most Fridays, by describing three things/apps/websites/songs, etc.  that I find just adds to the deliciousness of my life.  I encourage you all to mention your own favorite things in the Comments section and please check out previous Friday posts for other good ideas for a Friday uplift.  Come on now, share the love!!  It’s Friday!!

Reminder, the Salvation Army bell ringers are back in full force.  I know that a lot of us don’t carry around cash anymore, but if you find the Salvation Army to be a good, worthy cause, start collecting your extra change and throw it into your purse to later throw into those red cauldrons.  I’ve worked very hard on my “addicted to pleasing” personality this year, but I’ve learned that I still have a long way to go, when experiencing a Salvation Army bell ringer this week.  I did have change and I did give on my way into the store, so on my way out of the store, I felt the need to LOUDLY remind the bell ringer, as well as all of the other shoppers within earshot, that I had given already on my way into the store.  Okay.  Was everyone supposed to stop and applaud for me?!  Was I supposed to all of the sudden sprout some wings?!  At least I was very self-aware in that moment and I most likely turned as red as the Salvation Army cauldron.  As I’ve said before, I’m a work in progress.

On to the reason why you stopped by today – Favorite Things Friday!!!  Here we go:

The Body Shop Satsuma Body Butter – I was at the airport this past weekend and I got a glimmer of Christmas past.  Years ago, I was at the airport and I glanced down and stared at my bare legs, aghast!  They were a dry, scaly mess!  So I popped into The Body Shop and asked for an emergency solution.  They recommended a tub of this stuff and it is amazing!!!  So I scooped some up again this weekend and I was lucky enough to catch it while it was still on Black Friday super sale price.  This is another one of those items that smells so incredible, you have a hard time not dipping a spoon into it.  The consistency is dream-like and it makes you feel so smooth, amazing and it makes you smell citrus-ly clean!  Love it!!

CoolSnowGlobes – Now, my northern readers might want to hit me for recommending these snow globes.  I currently live in Florida, so I actually miss the snow sometimes.  I bought a Winter Evening Snow Globe from this website a couple of years ago.  This snow globe is so lovely and peaceful, I keep it out all year to remind of the good, quiet, peaceful parts of a snowy night.  There are so many cool snow globes to choose from on this site.  These are NOT cheap, plastic-y globes.  They are keepsakes.  This site will even make you a custom snow globe.  Embrace the globe.  Shake, rattle and roll!

Nature’s Lovers twitter feed – If you can look at just three images on this site and not smile, I’m seriously worried about you.  If you want to be reminded how amazing our world is and how incredible God’s creations are, just spend five minutes scrolling through this feed.  This is like going to the best zoo, the most amazing safari, the most gorgeous farm, the lushest gardens and jungles, all at the scroll of your mouse.  This is a guaranteed smile and gasp of awe, every single day.

“I just cannot imagine my week without Friday.” – WishesGreeting

Have a wonderful weekend, my friends!!!

Beauty in Brokenness

I read a book recently that talks about the Japanese art of kintsugi.  Kintsugi is the process of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer filled with gold dust and other precious metals.   The kintsugi process has such a lovely result, that people have been accused of purposely breaking their ceramics so that these items can be repaired with the tell-tale look of the gold lines running through them, like a golden web or a yellow brick road on a map.  The Japanese often consider the repaired ceramic pieces to be even more beautiful and valuable than before, because their kintsugi shows that the pieces have a history and are worthy of being fixed.

Many people consider kintsugi to be part of the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi which means embracing the imperfect and flawed.  This passage is from The Book of Life website:

“In an age that worships youth, perfection and the new, the art of kintsugi retains a particular wisdom – as applicable to our own lives as it is to a broken tea cup. The care and love expended on the shattered pots should lend us the confidence to respect what is damaged and scarred, vulnerable and imperfect – starting with ourselves and those around us.”

Kintsugi is an excellent reminder that our scars and our hurts and our pains have lead us to a beautiful wisdom and a resilient strength.  When we reach middle age, it is nearly impossible to have not gone through some trials, many that may have brought us to our knees.  But we are still standing, and what we have gained in the process of making it through our struggles is actually a beautiful and a shining example to others on life’s journey, that it is possible to make it through the hard times and to be even more magnificent for it.  We should wear our battle scars with pride.  We should envision them as golden veins of hope and endurance.  We should embrace what is less than perfect in ourselves, and in doing so, allowing others to do the same for themselves.  Perhaps kintsugi is like a golden maze of veins in a heart, making it easy for love to flow through, even the most broken of anything.

Along Came Throw Pillows

Somethings that I absolutely love in life are throw pillows.  I can’t get enough of them.  I think it would be wonderful to live in piles of throw pillows with a few warm, fuzzy throws and blankets lying around to add to the soft, colorful, wonderfulness of it all.  I’m from Pittsburgh and the last time I was at the Warhol Museum, they exhibited Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds.  Basically, the exhibit is giant silver Mylar balloons floating around the room as you are walking through it.  It’s magical!  I imagine the same sort of happy effect if you lived in a pile of throw pillows.

There is a scene in the movie, Along Came Polly in which Polly (Jennifer Aniston) decides to liberate Ben Stiller’s character from his routine of removing and storing several expensive, goose-down throw pillows from his bed every night.  They end up taking a knife to the pillows and feathers are flying everywhere.  Ben’s character does the math and realizes that he spends about two days of every year of his life, removing and storing and then replacing these throw pillows on and off of his bed.  Interestingly, if you look up this particular scene on YouTube and then read the comments underneath the scene, there are a lot of others, like me, who get a bit defensive about throw pillows.  My husband would side with Polly on this one.  The few times that we have seen this movie, I notice that he laughs extra loud and hard at this scene and looks at me, pointedly.  He thinks that we have way too many throw pillows.

You can never have enough throw pillows.  They can make an old couch look new.  They add new life to frequently washed bedding.  They decorate furniture for the holidays.  Throw pillows are easier than paint to add a whole new color scheme to your room.  I get moved by throw pillows.  One time we were in Victoria, Canada and I noticed a throw pillow depicting a baby polar bear cub, featured in a shop window.  The shop was closed, but I became obsessed with owning that pillow.  I was at the shop the first thing the next morning and would have taken a later ferry and missed a flight home, just to have that pillow.  It happily perches on a couch in my bedroom to this day.  Throw pillows make for wonderful reminders and souvenirs of happy memories in one’s life!  Throw pillows purchased on vacation are like happiness squared.

I like going into stores like HomeGoods and Pier One Imports, and seeing shelves of throw pillows arranged like a rainbow.  I’m always nervous about pulling one out though, because that usually equates to all of them falling all over the floor.  Maybe that’s how I got my idea of living in a pile of throw pillows.  Throw pillows are an instant hug, softness for life’s edges, and a burst of color when you need it the most.  Don’t you agree???

If You Build It . . .

I started writing this blog on an emotional whim when my first “baby”- the bearded, 6’2″ baby with curly red hair, left the nest. I expected it to be another form of a journaling for me, which I now realize I have been doing most of my life in one form or another.  At first, I told just a few close friends and family members that I had started a blog and then before I knew it, my readership started to grow.  For some reason, the movie, Field of Dreams with Kevin Kostner started popping into my head.

In the movie, Kevin’s character looks out into a vast cornfield in Iowa.  He is considering building a baseball field and he hears a voice whispering to him.  Now for the longest time I thought the line that he heard was, “If you build it, they will come.”  The ego part of me was getting excited about other people being excited about my blog and I would repeat that line to myself on the daily.  Then I would refocus myself, reminding myself that while it was nice for other people to affirm my writings, in the end, my blog was a tool for me to grow and to learn and to self-reflect.  Readers were the “cherry on top” who had really come to read the blog to support me, but also to hopefully glean some understanding about their own feelings and insights during this transitional, uncomfortable, skin-shedding, middle stage of life.  I now realize that together, my readers and I, are creating a community of awareness, familiarity and comfort, and of shared experience and emotion.

I looked up the particular Field of Dreams scene on YouTube and it turns out the quote really is, “If you build it, He will come.”  Some claim that this is a biblical reference and some claim that this refers to the ghost of a past famous baseball player.  I consider myself less of a religious person, but very much a spiritual person.  I see God not as a he or a she or an “it”, but an impossible to put into words, all-loving presence who is implanted into the hearts of all of Life.  I believe God is in all of creation.  So, it easily follows, that “If you build it, He will come.” God loves creation.  God is creation. I believe that God is in the heart of all of Creation.

In the end, I have this blog that I love writing.  I have a community who seems to enjoy relating to it.  I still have a voice whispering to me, “If you build it . . . ”  I have my blog of dreams.

 

 

 

The Best Gift

I think that sometimes the best gift of the holidays is the true appreciation of your regular life.  You think that you want everything in excess:  food, drink, company, stuff, lights, decorations, activity, invitations, shopping, gifts, etc. until you are totally gorged and then the feeling of being back to your regular routine is one of the best feelings in the whole wide world.  It’s nice to see and experience your regular, routine life as a peaceful, wonderful gift.

A friend of mine texted this Facebook post to our friend group yesterday:

“The happiest people I know are evaluating and improving themselves.  The unhappy people are usually evaluating and judging others.”

This time of year tends to bring out the extremes in people, the best and the worst in us all.  I think that’s a great quote to keep in the back of my mind, the mind that I want to keep happy and peaceful, and the only mind I have any control over.

Happy Cyber Monday!  If anyone is offering a discount on cash today, please let me know via the comments.  Cash seems to be what my kids want for Christmas this year. 😉  Have a great day, my friends!  It’s so nice to be back with you in a regular kind of way.