This meme is truly not fair to my husband. I think there are times when he would have liked to have been more involved in the gift buying, but my alter-ego, “Karen Controlfreak” would not allow it. Still, this picture reminds me of every man I ever knew growing up. And I mean this fondly. These men worked their asses off for their families, and they always had a smile on their face wondering what their hard work was providing for others. Selfless, in many ways, really.
Here are some other tweets that captured my fancy, this morning:
One day I woke up and realized I am the dragon, not the princess. -@_desert_bones
Your confidence needs to be built from within. If it is built on compliments, it will shatter with criticism.- @WakeupPeopIe
Learn the difference between your intuition guiding you and your trauma misleading you. -@Positive_Call
Me: Ok, I’m wearing a nice outfit, I did my hair and makeup. I guess I look pretty ok! Camera: Bitch, you thought. -@momsense_ensues
Well before I agree to 2022 I need to see the terms and conditions -@frenziedlanes
Have a great week, my beloved readers!! See you tomorrow!!
****Friends, as I was wrapping up today’s post, this appeared in my backyard. Santa came early!!! There’s magic everywhere, all throughout the year. Notice it. It’s there.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’m sorry for the delay in publishing today. We are all fine. I’m just distracted. Much like I am the ultimate impulse shopper, I am also the ultimate clickbait queen, on the internet. And to think, I have the nerve to make fun of our Labrador, Ralphie, when he chases the glimmering reflections of light on the floor, from the sunlight coming through our chandelier. (If you ever have a blindspot to your own behavior, look to what you criticize and/or poke fun about others, and then look for that trait in yourself. If you put down your guard, you will find it. Ugh.)
Since I got so busy going down the rabbit hole of clickbait, I am not in my writing mode. So instead, I started scrambling looking for poems that I liked (since Sunday is poetry day on the blog), written by other people, to share with you all, and I just finally landed on one that I like. Below is a fun poem by the author Brian Bilston, from his collection, You Took the Last Bus Home.
Write a poem, today. Play with words. Play with punctuation. Let your inner creator come out today. Play! Play?!? Play. Play . . . . .
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I figured that we could all use some holiday cheer:
My daughter asked me how to begin her letter to Santa Claus so I suggested she start with, “Hear me out …” (@Dad_At_Law Twitter)
credit: Rex Masters, Twitter
Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish readers!!!
****I know that a lot of you are worried about me and my family, but we are doing okay. A good night’s sleep does wonders. One Day at a Time. It’s the only way to live. You savor and experience your life more that way. Don’t worry. Be happy.****
When you raise a big family (we have four kids), you do a lot of dishes and laundry and driving and PTA forms. You do a lot of juggling of schedules and cars in the driveway. There is a steady hum of noise in the house, always. You are constantly cleaning up messes.
When your big family grows up and moves out, you honestly sometimes forget what raising the big family was like. And then they come home for the holidays, and you are swiftly reminded. As you are doing yet another load of laundry and the dishwasher is running yet again and your husband is vacuuming for the third time in one day, and you have to yell out over all of the noise for someone to move their car so that another car can get out of the garage, and you are trying to remember where everyone is and where everyone is supposed to be, you take a pause and you smile to yourself. You are reminded that you made it through 12 years of high schoolers, relatively unscathed. You are reminded that you helped to give a good, solid start to four wonderful people who are already making a difference in this world. You pat yourself on the back with sheepish pride. And although you realize that you certainly don’t have the energy to do it all again, you are incredibly happy that at one time in your life, you did have the energy to raise a big family. You realize that your big family helped to make your heart grow big, and a big heart is full of love and love is the stuff that sustains you, and that thought is what carries you through the final folding of towels and sheets, from the recent reunion of your big, beautiful brood.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Happy Friday!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! Happy Black Friday!! Honestly, I have never shopped “in person” on a Black Friday. Usually on Black Friday, I think of things and products that I have been meaning to buy, or that I buy regularly, and then I check on-line to see if there are any steals to be had on these items. I haven’t come across anything amazing so far, but at the age of 50, I already have too much stuff. The incentive to shop a lot (even on-line) on a Black Friday just isn’t there for me anymore. In fact, my favorite thing in the world, is to spend time with my family and my eldest son is flying back to his home tomorrow, so I’m going to keep this post short. No favorites today, I’m sorry! I’m going to savor being with my favorite people today. I hope that are able to do the same. See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I’ve been seeing a lot of funny memes on Twitter, making fun of the “inevitable” annoyances and aggravations that can occur when everyone gets together and groups around the table for holiday meals. We’re having a small Thanksgiving this year, being just the six of us in our immediate family. We are used to each other’s quirks and proclivities, so I don’t anticipate any real upsets. Honestly, since my older two boys haven’t been home in a while, I am still walking around with a silly perma-grin on my face, and a giggle always at the top of my throat.
Still, it’s amazing how the random brouhahas can seem to blow up out of nowhere, whenever two or more “adults” are gathered, in the spirit of hope and good cheer. Ghandi said to “be the change” you want to see in the world. Perhaps, it would be easier to start small. “Be the change” you’d like to see around the Thanksgiving table. What would that look like? If I could pick out my ideal holiday dinner companions, they would be kind. They would be fun and funny. They would share the conversation, not dominate it. They would not use the dining room table as a pulpit or a political lectern or a spotlighted stage. They would not employ veiled passive-aggressive statements and judgments. They would savor the moments, and the food and the drink, instead of gorging and rushing to the end. They would be grateful and gracious and peaceful and helpful and pleasant and polite. They would roll with the punches and keep perspective. (So what if something got burnt or something got spilled or the dog ate a crescent roll?) They would be quick with a laugh and a compliment and a hug. They would be self-deprecating, and quick to offer the benefit of the doubt. Instead of trying to make everything a “Hallmark image”, they would look around their table using only the eyes of their souls, in order to see and toexperience something far greater than any uncomfortable, staged, fake event. These dinner companions would be nothing short of wonderful and lovely.
Now, finally, at this middle-aged staged of my life, I fully understand and accept that the only person’s behavior which I can control, is my own. I suppose that I have created a good formula above, for whom I would like to see at my holiday functions. What I know, is that I have created a good formula above for who I can aim to be at my holiday functions. It looks like I have my work cut out for me, and this work doesn’t have anything to do with cooking or cleaning and setting tables. This work is all about focusing on keeping my expectations about others in check, and yet also, keeping high aspirations for myself and my own attitude and behaviors.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
One of the astrology websites that I like to read (Astrotwins), posed this question yesterday:
“If you could accomplish three things by the end of 2022, what would they be?” A true running marathon will not be on my list. Not in 2022. Not ever. A Netflix marathon is likely to just organically happen, without any intentions involved, especially if a series grabs my attention and my rabid impulsion “to see what happens next” gets to the best of me. Regardless of any kind of marathon, the above question in bold, is a good question to marinate on, at this end time of the year. Our youngest child will be graduating from high school and starting college in 2022. It’s going to be a brand new blank slate for me. I would like to accomplish a healthy, assured beginning, out of the starting gate of The Empty Nest arena. Here’s another good marinater that I read over this weekend:
“To remember who you are, you need to forget who they told you to be.” – Native American
Of course, Mondays aren’t necessarily great deep thought, marination days. The only thing that any of us really need to marinate this week, are our turkeys. Have a magnificent Monday! See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Happy Friday, readers! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! What a great Friday we have here, with anticipating Thanksgiving right around the corner. Fortunately, our two older sons will be coming home, so all six of us will be enjoying our holiday together. This makes me feel extremely grateful. In other good news, Ralphie, our Labrador-who-is-quite-unhappily-and-totally-against-his-will-on-a-diet lost 11 pounds in two months. (much better than I did) His diet is clearly working! Ralphie still has about 10 pounds to go, and he still tries sneaking the other fur babies’ food every chance that he gets, but he is looking healthier and trimmer every single day. We are so proud of our Ralphie! While not trimming much off of any of my own body fat, I did trim 17,000 emails out of my inbox yesterday (and that is honestly, an understatement). I never bothered to delete emails for quite some time and then I started getting warnings from Google that I was running out of storage. I hemmed and I hawed but I finally just hit the delete button and I trashed 17,000 emails. Honestly, once I got past my nervousness, it felt incredible liberating and freeing. If only cleaning out my closets and drawers could be this easy!
Yes, I notice that I am quite chatty today. What can I say? It’s my favorite day of the week. Here is what you really came for, my three favorites for this Friday. Please check out more favorites in my previous Friday posts and please share some of your own favorites in my Comments section:
LitezAll COB LED magnifier – I’ve reached the age where magnifiers are easily in my top ten favorite things category, all of the time, and this is the best magnifying glass which I have ever owned. Why is this one so great, you ask? Because it is huge, lightweight, and because it has three bright LED lights that shine on whatever you are trying to see. And what’s even better, it’s cheap. I got mine at Ace Hardware but you can order one from Walmart or Amazon, as well.
n:p beautiful volumizing dry shampoo – Even when my hair is perfectly clean, I use this stuff. I love how full it makes my (honestly, kind of thin and fine) hair seem to be. In the words of my mentee (5th grader), “I want fluffy hair, like yours.” (What can I say? I grew up in the eighties.) Seriously, when you apply this dry shampoo, it sounds like you are taking a blow torch to your head, but the results are terrific (if you like fluffy hair, like mine). And even better, it doesn’t flake, like a lot of dry shampoos have the tendency to do.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson – This book is really good, but it is not for the person who blanches at the f-word. The f-bomb is used in this book, as often as the word “the” is used in my blog. It’s a fun, light read with the key message “to lighten the F%ck up!”. The book was honestly recommended to me by my 17-year-old daughter, who had the book recommended to her, by one of her best friends, who was given the book to read, from her own father. (We love this friend and her family. I think that my daughter’s friend’s father knows that our girls are a tad high-strung and a little over-achieving at times, to the point that it crosses over to slightly unhealthy. At first when my daughter told me about this, I was like, WTF?!?, but after starting to read the book, I was like, “F@ck yeah!”) Here is an excerpt:
“Then, as we grow older and enter middle age, something else begins to change. Our energy level drops. Our identity solidifies. We know who we are and we accept ourselves, including some of the parts we aren’t thrilled about. And in a strange way this is liberating. We no longer need to give a f@ck about everything.”
Happy Friday Friends!! Only give a f@ck about the stuff that matters! Thanksgiving is great time to ponder what really matters to you. See you tomorrow!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
When I let someone in traffic and they don’t wave, I picture myself using their guest soaps. – @a_simpl_man (Twitter)
This morning, this tweet literally made me laugh out loud, in recognition of myself – in more ways than one. I always find myself getting into a little tiz when someone doesn’t acknowledge my various small acts of kindness and consideration. But then I start admonishing myself that “I should do good, just for the sake of doing good, not for the appreciation and the pat on the back.” And then I spend more time thinking about how I really spend way too much thinking about situations like these, anyway. “For goodness sake, just let the guy come on to the road, and move on. Life is too short to waste time on overthinking about teeny perceived slights, by strangers. Grow up already!” Sometimes I honestly even waste my time spending it on the question, “Did the person I let on to the road, actually wave a thank you to me, and I somehow missed it because we were at a bad angle to each other?” Seriously. I can be that neurotic.
On the other hand, when someone lets me into traffic, I become almost frantic about making sure that they see my “wave of thankfulness.” I want to make sure that they see my gratefulness, so I become this crazy caricature of myself, waving like a maniacal buffoon. Sometimes I even stick my hands outside the window or through the sunroof, to make sure that the driver sees my symbol of gratitude and acknowledgement that I see them as one of the kind and thoughtful and patient people, that in my mind, makes this world a better place. Then, I imagine that the driver who lets me into traffic is thinking, “Calm down lady. It’s not like I bought you a new car. Take a chill pill.” And then once again, I get mad at myself for spending way too much time overthinking inconsequential happenings in my daily life, such as these.
This tweet also gave me a giggle about guest soaps. I grew up with guest soaps in every single bathroom of our house. And we knew NEVER to use those guest soaps, nor the fancy towels arranged pertly, by the ornate soaps. That would have been a deathwish. Those guest soaps sat there in their designated dishes, until they were infused with dust, stuck to the dish like they were super-glued onto the dish, and their once vibrant colors, faded to dingy dullness. These guest soap molds would start coming undone by time and by air, to the point that a soap which was once an intricate, detailed, lovely, expensive mermaid, was now nothing more than an oddly shaped lump that would more easily pass for maybe a hint of a manatee (and soon, even that became a stretch of the imagination).
I personally have Christmas guest soaps that I have owned for more than two decades. I put these soaps out in our powder room, every single year in an intricate Spode Christmas china soap dish. These soaps are clear glycerin with words like “Joy” and “Merry” infused inside of them. Last year I noticed that the clear glycerin has turned more into a muddled, dirty, grayish brown. These guest soaps have become so unsavory, that of course, now, no one would ever even dream of actually using the soaps, for sanitary purposes. (what an oxymoron) Still, I’m attached to these gaudy Christmas guest soaps. I contemplated it, but I just couldn’t throw them away last year. I will unpack the guest soaps again this year, and I will put them in the Spode dish, and all will feel right in my world this holiday season.
The other odd thing about fancy guest soaps is that they almost look edible, like fancy chocolates. When I was a kid, these soaps were scarily tempting to put into my mouth, to try and eat them. (It’s kind of like when you were a kid and no one could convince you that the Hershey cocoa powder would not, at all, taste like delicious hot cocoa packets. I think I had to learn that lesson more than once as a kid. I was a slower learner, in these ways of life.)
So, I just realized that I have spent about 40 more minutes of my life contemplating minutiae. And that’s okay. Just like waving or not waving to polite strangers, or using guest soaps or not using guest soaps, does not totally matter in the bigger scheme of things, it sometimes feels good to spend some time on “the small stuff.” Still, at the same time, it’s good to remember Richard Carlson’s famous, important, poignant line, “Don’t sweat the small stuff and it’s all small stuff.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We didn’t get many trick-or-treaters last night. My husband read that only 16% of parents planned to take their kids out trick-or-treating this year, as compared to 12% last year. COVID does not want us to have any fun. At least the percentages are going up, slowly but surely.
Have a great week, friends!!! Happy November!!!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Surround yourself with people who pray for you behind your back .. those are yourpeople, those are your tribe
@TammyAIDip, Twitter
I feel your prayers, my friends. Thank you. Working through the trauma that comes with my youngest son’s epilepsy is a process, but the process feels lighter with the loving and kind energy of prayer and well wishes, moving through it. Again, thank you. I treasure you, my tribe.
“I always like for other kids to know that my kids’ mom is a little bit psycho.” – @emily_tweets, Twitter
I love this tweet. All of my children and their friends know that I have my quirks, and that I usually proudly own my quirks. I think that it is my middle son (the matter-of-factual medical school student) who would most deeply relate to this tweet shown above.
My middle son is reserved. His teachers used to love to accuse him of being shy, but that’s not honestly the case. There is a big difference. My middle son is confident, he just doesn’t care for spectacles. My middle son has a stealth self-containment. In the midst of chaos, he isn’t chaotic, but it turns out that he is often that sneaky instigator of the tumultuous happenings all around him. You know the type.
When my middle son was in elementary school, parents took turns organizing surprise “Fun Friday” activities for his kindergarten class. Now my regular readers know that I love Fridays. Fridays put me in almost a holiday kind of spirit. I get giddy, sometimes even ecstatic, on Fridays. And my closest friends and my family know that, unlike my middle son, I’m not particularly reserved. So on my turn of heading up a Fun Friday for my son’s class, I decided to go all out.
My middle son is an automobile enthusiast. He’s going to be that guy whose garage will always be more pristine, and probably larger than his house. He has loved cars since he could steadily hold one or two brightly colored Matchbox race cars, in his precious little chubby baby fist. He can name the make and model (and probably even the year) of any car he sees, like he is a walking Blue Book. So it was inevitable. I decided that I would go all out with “the car theme” for Fun Friday.
We were living in Charlotte, NC, at the time, and we had friends who worked at NASCAR, so I asked to borrow a racer’s suit. I also borrowed another friend’s motorcycle helmet. That Fun Friday, I proudly promenaded down the hall of the elementary school, donning my race gear, like I was a model on a catwalk. I had bags full of activities and stuff, all related to cars, that we were going to enjoy in his kindergarten class’ Fun Friday. And I, on that particular Friday, wasn’t just wearing a race car suit . . . . I was a race car driver, and a good one. On that day, me and Jesus, had the wheel.
I confidently opened the door of his classroom, where the children were sitting on the floor with each other working on a math activity. I stood in the doorway, hands on my hips, and then I whipped off my heavy helmet with panache. I smiled broadly (and probably in my son’s mind, a tad fanatically), as I eyed him, wondering, with glee, what he thought of my surprise entrance.
My middle son looked at me, eyes widened, and he gasped in horror. He turned to his friend sitting next to him, and in a loud whisper aimed towards his friend’s ear (and anyone else in close proximity), my son firmly pronounced, “Yeah, don’t mind her. She’s a little kooky!”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
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