2019, Here We Come!

We’re about to roll into the New Year. A year that will hold surprises, happiness and sadness. A year that will bring new babies, new beginnings, endings, and new husbands and wives. A year that brings graduations, promotions and losses. A year that will bring new love, loss of love, heartache and lessons learned.

When we pass from one year to another, especially a year that has seemed more trying, we all wish for a better one ahead. We always hope to walk away from the year that seemed to test our strength and willpower, towards another year that will be kinder to our hearts and our bodies. That we leave the year of sickness and sorrow behind, for another year filled with good health.

The year 2018 is just about over folks, and while I can’t say it was an especially bad year for me; I have had better, but that was a long, long time ago. Honestly, I think the older I get, the lower the bar is set for what I believe to be acceptable and not. I mean, if I can make it through a year with no major sicknesses, no broken bones or sprained ankles from stumbling into holes in my yard or over the curb I didn’t see, my family stays relatively healthy, my children are progressing and moving forward in life, and we all still have jobs and our homes – I consider that to be a pretty banner year.

I no longer take my health for granted like I did from birth until I was about 30 or so. I know there are all kinds of things around the corner, just waiting to jump on me if I get lax in my resolve to take better care of myself.

As a lot of you may remember, I’ve been on a “diet” for several months now – since about the first part of October. My goal was to reach a weight loss of 25 pounds by December 31^st – and while I don’t know yet that I’ll make it, I am down 20 pounds and that’s more than I’ve succeeded in quite some time. I’m still sticking to the nothing but water and my one cup of coffee each day. I confess I did have two glasses of sweet tea with my Thanksgiving meal, but the next morning when I opened the refrigerator and saw the rest of that tea in the pitcher staring me down, calling my name, I poured it all down the sink and back to the water I went.

So I have no real resolutions for the New Year. Some of you may remember me telling you last year about this time to not vow to lose 50 pounds, just try and lose 15, and keep it off. So I’ve dropped 20 and that’s my vow, to keep it off and to keep going. Keep the resolutions simple and doable, your goals reality-based and your disappointments will be less.

The New Year is headed our way and we only have just so much control over what comes with it. Take charge of what you can, and pray for the rest.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Christmas as a Grown-up

Norman Rockwell holidays don’t exist. At least not in my world they don’t. Oh, you can pretty it all up, string some lights on it, and tag with a big red bow – but if real people, real human beings are involved, then stuff is going to happen.

Many of us have been married so long, we finish each other’s sentences and superbly ignore the irritating things about the other. Those things that in quiet times of reflection can send you over the edge.

He clicks his fingernails against one another, but only when you’re trying to watch television. Click, click, click. She glances over at him and stares just long enough that she hopes he “gets it” and stops. He does for a couple of minutes, and then either forgets or doesn’t care how much it bothers her, and he starts again.

She wants to do her pedicure’s right in the middle of the living room, while he’s trying to watch the last NASCAR race of the year. And she’s commentating, all through it, even though he knows that she knows NOTHING about what she’s saying. He would drown her out, but she just gets louder if he doesn’t answer.

They’ve been together for years now, the “duties” have long ago been split and everyone knows their part. So, she wonders why she still has to verbally ask him will he take out the trash, because surely, he can see for himself that things are now toppling over. He acts as if he doesn’t mind, but she thinks – if he doesn’t mind – then WHY WON’T HE JUST DO IT?!

He comes in from work, he’s starving, but he doesn’t smell anything cooking. He tries to remember when all of that stopped. When it just stopped being normal to have a cooked meal every night after a hard day’s work. Ah, now he remembers, he knows exactly when everything changed. When the last kid left home.

When the children are all gone and there is a space between them leaving and grandchildren arriving – you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. Or your empty house. All the things that drive you crazy now – you didn’t have much time to notice it before. Something else was always happening – you always seemed to have some other place to be.

And how much you love Christmas and the other holidays changes as well. Your children are splitting their time between multiple families, all the gatherings are not under your roof, and everybody isn’t going to come home every holiday.

It’s hard. It’s really hard. You talk to yourself and tell yourself, new days are coming, new times, with new traditions – but a part of you is selfish and you want everything to stay the same, be the same, as it always was.

Well that’s not how life really works. So, we look for new ways to find our happy and our joy. New ways to feel the same Christmas spirit as everyone else. It might not always work every single day, but when it does, man is it glorious!

Here’s to wishing you all a Merry Christmas filled with peace, love, hope and many days of absolute gloriousness. 

ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!

I will preface everything I am about to say with this: every single solitary person in my family who is a generation right above me and beyond – is from the great state of Alabama. Most of them were also born and raised in Alabama, some have since moved on and branched out into other states.

But let me also say this to make sure there is no confusion where their loyalties continue to lie: it does not matter where they go, or how far away – they are ALL still University of Alabama football fans. With the exception of one or two black sheep that wandered off into Auburn territory – but we don’t talk about that; its in bad taste.

I, myself, am from Georgia – technically though, as both my parents will tell you – I was born right across the Georgia/Alabama line at St. Frances Hospital in Columbus Georgia; however we lived in Phenix City, Alabama which is where they would have brought me home to; so minor is that technicality, no one even pays it any mind.

Alas, I did grow up in Georgia, so my loyalty is divided. Actually, to get down to the brass tacks of it all, my loyalties are divided three ways. I was “from” Alabama, grew-up in Georgia, and moved to Florida in 1998.

I’m a huge football fan, so when I moved to Florida, I felt like I needed to pick a Florida team to root for; I settled on the Florida Gators. So when the season for college football rolls around each year, I am all over the place as a fan.

BUT – not the night the University of Alabama played the University of Georgia. The Tide ~vs~ The Dawgs. Folks – I was dead in the middle of the Tide that was rolling that night, even if it seemed to take us until the 4^th quarter to start rolling in the right direction.

My house was SO loud that 4^th quarter, I was expecting the neighborhood to petition to evict us. There is no way I could have watched that game in any public forum. I was too loud, my mouth was WAY to salty in language and I would’ve had to go alone, as my husband didn’t even want to be associated with me in our own living room!

He has probably only seen me get like that a few times in our married life. I mean, let’s face it, there are not a lot of do or die games that come along like that – not for teams I really have an attachment to anyway. You would have thought I had our house bargained-up as part of a bet, and we had to win to keep it, the way I was carrying on.

I literally stood-up the entire 4^th quarter, in the middle of the floor, between my recliner and the television, screaming and hollering, fist pumping and stomping, carrying them across the line for the last two touchdowns they needed to move out ahead.

Sunday, I woke-up with a hoarse throat, but still able to holler ROLL TIDE, for every ESPN replay I would see throughout that day. Tide Nation – we are a loyal bunch. 

The Woes of Decorating

I’ll begin where I left off last week, when I was telling you all that I wasn’t ready to decorate for Christmas yet, as Thanksgiving was early this year, which would put Christmas about 5 weeks out instead of four. Which also means, I would have to have my house and how we have to rearrange it for the tree, etc. to be decorated a week longer.

I said I absolutely didn’t want to do that. It was just too long. But if you remember correctly, I also told you that I had visited Esposito’s that Sunday to see all the new Christmas decorations. Well, what you don’t know, is what an about-face I did after all of that!

I got in that place, saw all those pretties, bought a few of them for myself, and before I had even completed my drive home that day, I knew it was going to happen. Yes sir, that tree was going up!

Before I even got home, I was placing calls; one to my son and one to my husband. I knew my husband wouldn’t be able to get all the decoration’s down from that loft in the shed alone, so I hit both of them up at once, and asked them to team-up and start getting it done.

Now last year was the first actual year that my husband and I did everything in the house alone. I’ll admit, I thought it would have gone smoother. It did not. So I decided right then and there, that it wasn’t just a child thing – all the arguing and carrying on about me and my “ordering folks around”. Oh no – this year when it started all over again, I know right then – it’s a man thing.

Right from the beginning my husband kept trying to tell what we did and didn’t need to do anymore, what I did and didn’t do last year, and that we needed to start tapering down our decorating. Um, no.

I had already given in last year and bought a new tree. A “skinny” tree. So we could put the tree in a different place other than in front of his front door – which kept it blocked and locked for 4-5 weeks. Which also made him have to take the back door, and through the carport to get around to the front porch – which he rarely sits on this time of the year anyway.

So when I came home with a few new ornaments, it started. “Where are you possibly going to put those, that little tree won’t hold all of that?” “I thought I told you not to buy anything else for that tree?” THAT remark got him a dagger to the chest with my left eye.

And all through the rest of the decorating he was trying to tell me, what went where – like he remembers past yesterday most days. My gracious, what I thought would go so much better went exactly the same. So I have surmised, and am convinced, that all the drama and chaos is definitely not me, it’s them. 

Another One For The Books

I don’t have any drastic Thanksgiving stories to re-tell. I know that’s almost unbelievable but it’s true. All went fairly well. All the dishes I prepared turned out like they were supposed to, my youngest son who mans the turkey fryer every Thanksgiving cooked two of the best he’s ever fried before, and his girlfriend made a dish to contribute and was a phenomenal help in the kitchen when it came time for clean-up.

We were a smaller group this year but it was a group full of heart and love. Every year that I am fortunate to have my parents, when so many of my friends are already missing theirs, I know I am blessed and I appreciate every minute I have with them.

The day after Thanksgiving I’ll be honest and say I didn’t do a whole lot of anything. All the clothes were washed-up and the holiday dishes from the day before, washed and put away. And I certainly had no intention of any Black Friday shopping anywhere – not even on-line. And I sure didn’t need anything bad enough to get out in those crowds full of crazy!

But that Friday after Thanksgiving,  I was invited over to my youngest sons’ house for a cookout and bonfire. He had already invited several buddies over as well, life-long friends that now lived out of town but were home for the holidays. I had started to beg-off, but he’s not one to take no for answer and it’s always nice to know that I’m welcome at his home no matter who else is on the guest list.

I had thought about putting the Christmas decorations and tree up later that same weekend but Thanksgiving came a little earlier in the month of November this year and I just didn’t think I was quite up to looking at all of that for five plus weeks. So I quickly decided that all that could wait until next week – besides, I hadn’t made my annual trip to Esposito’s in Tallahassee to look for a few new Christmas ornaments yet.

So that Sunday after Thanksgiving, Megan, my son’s girlfriend and I, took off for Tallahassee for that fun adventure, as she had never even been to Esposito’s before! It’s like a winter wonderland, full of every kind of themed Christmas tree you could imagine. Usually no more than two alike of any one thing, so you’re guaranteed to have one of a kind beauties hanging on your tree and if you give them for a gift – they probably won’t have anything else that resembles it.

So you all know what comes next – the scary shed – where all the stuff from Christmas’s past is housed. But that’s a story for another day. And believe me there are always colorful stories that go with the decorating around here. Onward to December….