Christmas Is Not Lost

Last month I enjoyed an extended Thanksgiving break while school was keeping everyone home to self isolate in hopes to bring down the number of quarantine and positive cases in the buildings. I feared the struggle of returning would be so real that pulling myself from my warm bed, along with bus attendance duty on a 20° morning would feel like a death sentence. I haven’t had an [outdoor] duty in 10 years. Turns out being outside regardless the temperature is a refreshing addition to the early morning of my day. 

I found myself those last three days before returning to the office just sitting with a cup of coffee in the morning, staring at the Christmas tree, thinking about all the things that I will miss this holiday season. 

I long to sit inside Powell Hall for a symphony performance of Christmas music. Just the thought of watching the violin bows all in sync with each other as they play, Mmmm, ahhhh. My heart ached for mine and King Ralph’s yearly Christmas date to The Rep theater to see a Christmas themed play. I missed an evening of strolling the Botanical Garden for the Garden Glow. I miss the idea of all the cousins, nieces and nephews together in one room sipping cocktails, filling plates with delicious foods and laughing while playing games. I will miss my winter break coffee and breakfast dates with friends. Instead, I  have gotten my symphony music piped through my house via Alexa, replaced the theater with endless Christmas movies on Netflix. The Garden Glow was replaced with drives through neighborhoods to enjoy house displays...  As for the cousins, nieces and nephews, we had a “Christmas Tree Walk.”  We spent an evening blowing up our group text with photos of our trees adorned in lights and ornaments. We saw trees with vintage garlands and one with a most magnificent train board. There were real trees that’s pine scents almost transcended the cell towers. The love for, the longing to be together as a family was evident in each picture of a tree. 

My humble abode  bursts with the look of Christmas. My tree stands tall and adorned in lights and ornaments that remind me of the places we’ve traveled as a family. The vintage ornaments I inherited from grandma are peppered throughout the tree. The defuser puts out a lovely pine scent making the artificial tree feel ever more real. The house eves and shrubs glow in the night with multi-color lights. All that and still there’s a quietness to the holiday season. 

This holiday season is different. This year is different. King Ralph can often be heard saying “Jodi it’s just one year.” He’s right. One year. One year of loving extended family and friends from a distance. One year of masked faces. One year of altered holiday fun. 

We can all handle alterations to celebrations for one darn year. 

There is one thing that won’t change—the love we share with our girls. If they’re our safety bubble of celebration I’ll take it! 

This girl softly smiles and says, “Happy Christmas to all, season of lights and love.” 

And It All Went Quiet

I have worry. Is worry fear? I do not know, but I do have worries. I think we all have some, or a lot. 

 I worry about my husband going off to the police department each day riding in a vehicle shared by others. I worry about my friends who are nurses. I worry about the women who have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, needing surgery and treatment.  I worry about the health of my Make-A-Wish kids that I’ve helped to grant their wishes. I worry about my daughters, my son-in-law....

And while I worry I also miss things, simple things. I miss sitting close to a friend, sipping wine and sharing laughs. I miss hugging my children. I miss kissing their cheeks over and over again until they laugh and giggle and tell me to stop. I miss standing in line at Starbucks for a coffee treat chatting with complete strangers about whatever is happening that day. I miss running into a friend at the grocery store and stopping to chit chat. 

What I’m not missing out on is the opportunity to be more intentional, even at a distance, with the people that mean something to me. Whether it’s a text message or showing my friend for the first time in all of her years of owning an iPhone that she can FaceTime. My best work friends and I have had a great time this week with Marco Polo by having show and tell every night. We showed off our most fabulous shoes,  showed off our most amazing earrings,  showed off our favorite products...adults being silly, laughing.  That is tending to mental health. 

My lifelong best friend and our six daughters have a group Snapchat that we entertain each other with. A snap might be my BFF’s oldest daughter sharing the beautiful landscape from her home in Arizona...or it might be all us sharing our poorly pedicured feet. We reply with lots of laughing emojis. We share texts of virtual teaching, confused faces of remote working, the nurse uniformed to care for the contaminated, and lots of general silliness. These are a group of girl pictures of: connected by love.  

Keeping routine, now that keeps you healthy. I wake up every morning and I make my bed, make some coffee, open all the blinds in the house so the sunshine pours in, I apply mascara and lip gloss and every day at 11am I go for a walk with my lunch buddy— just like we would on any other Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,  Thursday or Friday. Except we are not walking side-by-side. Nope. Instead we send each other a picture of ourselves and say “go!” and go we do for 30 minutes. 

Yes, life is different. Life is still. Life is quiet. But what life isn’t [for me] is lonely. 

Even in this unprecedented time that I hope I, that we, never have to experience ever again...I found a way to let God‘s blessings of good friends shine on me each and every day. Stop, look around, listen to the birds sing, notice neighbors taking walks.  Don’t look past your mailman, grocery clerk or your trash man...be thankful for their service, their commitment to us all.

One day we will wake up and the world will have it’s arms open, ready to embrace us all again. And we will forever be changed by one thing—a virus. 

Mountains or Beach?

When asked the question mountains or beach, I will always reply mountains. That’s not to say that I don’t love the beach, because I do. What’s not to love about the beach...staring out at water that looks like it goes on forever and ever, or that you could swim out to the edge of earth? I do love the beach for about four straight day...not seven, not fourteen. 

I grow weary of sand weighing down my swimsuit bottom, or sitting idle for hours. So you might find it odd that every year for spring break King Ralph and I pack up “The Vessel” heading down to the beach in Alabama for seven days. That is exactly what we do every year. We go to warm our winter bones. 

The great thing about camping at Gulf State Park is that it is so much more than just sand and water. There’s a great pool, playgrounds for the kids, tennis courts (mostly used to play pickle ball), shuffle board and trails.

We spend a great deal of our time riding our bikes. The morning weather is glorious...it’s mostly sunny, but not super hot. The days that are cloudy make it a ride without breaking a sweat. The trails change from paved and canopied by trees dripping of moss to boardwalk over the marsh...where an alligator is likely to be spotted. We bike in the morning to a favorite coffee shop. Then we bike to Walmart to rent a Redbox. Sometimes we just bike to clear our minds and fill our souls with peace and serenity.  After we bike, only after we bike, we head to the beach to grab a couple of hours of sun and sand. I always laze about in a chair with a book in my hand, feet in the sand, and my body dosing itself with Mother Nature’s natural source of vitamin D. 

Here’s what is exciting to me about this trip

1. Last year I was healing from cancer surgery, my boobs held together by stitches and sterie strips. I could not just plop right down in the sand, or rotate myself like a chicken on a rotisserie. Nope. I had to set in a chair, careful not to get sand in my wounds. I was bronzed on my front, white on my back. I looked like yin and yang. This year I’ll have a full balanced sun kiss body.
2. Escaping to a state where there is no confirmed cases of COVID-19. Hopefully people aren’t packing their RVs full of toilet paper and bottled water. If they are, no worries, I stocked The Vessell with its season’s worth of RV quality biodegradable toilet paper.  

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I drafted this post prior to hitting the road. I can report that the sun shines, the bike trails are lovelier than ever, the beach was bursting with weddings (three to be exact) and children were flying kites (including me). I can also say, sadly, this state has fallen prey the toilet paper craze (as the news shows). 
While people continue to fight for toilet paper....my skin has a sun kiss, the pages of my new book has sand granules sprinkled on the pages and margaritas taste better in a Yeti cup with feet in the sand. 
Happy spring break! Stay well friends. 

Snow

It is easy for so many of us to say we loathe the coldness of winter, but it’s hard to deny the beauty that comes with snow. Even if the weatherman swears there won’t be snow, the snow will be so far west it will miss us or it won’t stick. Regardless the (flopped) weather report, snow comes with the slightest shift in the barometer and somehow it sparks the heart. 
I love snow at night...looking outside at the brightness...the moon shining down on the whiteness below. The atmosphere is eerily quiet, as if time is standing still. It somehow feels very magical. It gives everyone permission to pause. To laze about in flannel jammies, huddle under afghans, sip cocoa, and watch old movies. The neighborhood streets fall silent. That is magic of snow. 

Peace Out 2019

How to reflect on the year 2019, that is my big self question? 

2019 is a year that I have never been so excited to say goodbye to.  I am throwing the smelly bag of memories to the curb and moving on.  Instead of reflecting on the struggles and hardships...I am choosing to snapshot the things that helped me to escape my reality, brought joy to my heart, and filled my soul.

January: Sledding in the park with King Ralph, M and her guy

February: Traveling to Washington DC to meet my great nephew

March: A spring break trip south to the beach in “The Vessel” to soak up the sun renewed my fighting spirit 

April: The Make-A-Wish 5k that I walk every year with my constant walking pal was tiring for me, but it was for cause nearest and dearest to my heart

May and June: Cashing in our Christmas gift request of “the gift of time”

July and August: Seeing all the wedding planning come together, with a shower and the wedding on Jekyll Island

July also gave us some escape time to chase lighthouses in the U-P of Michigan and to get in some hiking 

October: Celebrated D turning 25 years old in our traditional fashion of dinner and the theater

November and December: The months were all about family…and food! 

If I were to say I’d never look back at 2019, well that would be a fib.  As hard as this year has been it taught me to appreciate my friends more, love my family bigger and pause to soak in the small things. I stop to dance in the bathroom when I am readying for work, spend hours putting a puzzle together, 
watch a bit of frivolous television, walk to the coffee shop and read under the sun in a lawn chair...you know pause to love life just a little more...reminding myself the joys of being a survivor.

With that said, I look forward to making more memories being made in the new year. So bring on 2020! 
Ready or not here I come! 

Strike. Tag. You’re it.

When I was trapped in my mother-in-law’s sewing room on a warm summer day for eight hours I found trash (tons) and treasures. 

One (wo)man’s junk is another (wo)man’s treasure. 

That age old saying had me loading trash bags and boxes for never ending hauls to the dumpster.  King Ralph was on the move faster than I could sort through the hoard. That day was physically hard on me...that’s a story for another day, but I found one item that I knew would become an ongoing source of laughter to us girls. 

The. Doll. 

My girls are totally creeped by old dolls! So when I came upon a doll of no value I knew it was time the prank train began.  The doll is only made creepier by the exaggerated eye shadow, blinking eyes and blush, her poorly coiffed hair, along with her 1950s era under garments. The creepy doll started showing up in places none of us expected. 

The night we arrived home from Princess A’s wedding I was crawling in bed completely exhausted when I noticed the doll staring at me. The doll had been wedged behind the wall mounted TV, it’s creepy head staring at me. 

The doll has been tucked into beds, left in a car’s backseat...and today I stuffed it in M’s puppy’s tote bag. 

It was hours after M was home that I got a text with the picture of the creepy doll and the word “bitch” typed below. I just laugh. 

Till dolly strikes again. 

You’ve Got to Live With A Smile

I often wonder these days how people can let self created anger and despair rule their life, emotions, ability to function.... 

I question why people believe physical things, instead of memories keep a person “alive.” (I’m not talking genuine memento like a family heirloom). 

Why holding onto useless, unwanted items has meaning, but no purpose.  It’s such a sad, sad state of being to be stuck in...such a dark place...to chose to be weighed down by physical items. To think, to believe, all those items will weigh down the very thing(s) that is altering the ability to live, really live, live with genuine happiness and purpose in life. 

This is exactly what we don’t feel...this exactly how we don’t live our lives here in our meager castle. This is, however;  how people we are directly connected to are living their lives. Because of this, their saddened state has put us in a turmoiled holding pattern. 

To alienate one’s self and make everyone else desire to alienate themselves from you can make for a lonely life. 

To die young and tragic I can see stunting life. To have lived long with unhealthy life practices should not be viewed as tragic or unexpected. 

Where there’s life death is the inevitable. 

Where there is life, live...with purpose, with understanding, with joy. 

While some are over in a corner with the lights off, you’ll find King Ralph and I, and our princesses, out exploring the light of the world.  

You have to live with a smile to die happy. 

Just saying.