And the pendulum swings back.....

Today I was blessed with an upsurge.  Whether of hormones or hopefulness I cannot say, but hey, an upsurge is an upsurge, aye?  I always try to enjoy them, and they don't come along like they used to.  When they do come along these days, I say Tally-Ho!

Today I woke up to big, flat flakes of snow falling.  It was beautiful.  For the first time in years, well, at least a year, I was excited when I woke up the boys. 

 "Look outside!  Hurry!  You don't want to miss it!"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing!  Hurry!"

And just like that, we were all not only up, but completely awake and happy, looking forward to the day.  By this afternoon it was beautifully sunny and not freezing.  A lot of the leaves are still on the trees and it was just beautiful.  The leaves have really taken their own individual sweet times this fall and I for one have enjoyed them IMMENSELY.  Also, it has conveniently made putting off raking more leaves easy, since they haven't all fallen yet and you'll just have to do it again.  *wink wink.

So tonight, having been in a mood to shed stuff anyway, I am going to drag out the Christmas decorations, and maybe put up some lights that can go as well for Thanksgiving.  

"The lights!! THE LIGHTS!!!  YES!"  That's the person inside my head, who cheers me on and keeps me on track.  Sometimes they are a bitter, jaded, sarcastic but realistic person that makes me laugh and rail against fate simultaneously, but not when it come to lights.  The other side of the coin in this person is that they also get up and twirl around (inside my head) and stuff, getting me excited enough to get up off the couch, put down my book and take up hammers and staple guns and do.......stuff!  I would take up a lot more than that but I can't afford power tools.  So sometimes I bake stuff instead.  There is no telling where this enthusiasm will take me at any given time,but here, on this day, the enthusiasm is for lights.  Which will segue nicely into the holiday season.  Which is upon us.

The lights always help.  I put up some inside also.  For some reason being in my warm house when it's cold outside, sipping a hot drink, baking, tending my home fires is SO MUCH more enjoyable with low lighting in the form of pretty little twinkling lights.  I'm going to pour some Kahlua in some coffee, finish making my list, listen to the music I love the most, and start wrapping what I've already got.  This is doubly exciting because I will be able to skip the step of hiding these things, guaranteeing me being able to skip that particular, horror-filled, terrifying step!  WIN-WIN!!

I can do this.  I can even enjoy it. 

I will journal about it and then, when the pendulum swings back into the dark, cold, please just let me go to bed and stay there zone, I will be able to remember this time, these feelings, this day and all that it included.

The older I get, the more I realize what a gift having your parent's words after their death is.  It's a gift that we, probably naturally, do not think about.  I have always kept a journal.  Many have been burned, you understand, but I finally got to a point where I didn't feel bad anymore about how I felt.  If, on the chance that someone read those words and got hurt by them, well, those words were not meant for your eyes and sorry as I am that you got hurt, you brought it upon yourself.  So be it. And now I feel just great about it.  Of course, now I live with people who respect other people's privacy.  It could be coincidence.  Whatever. 

I still keep my journals.  There my children will find the "real" stuff.  Hopefully when they need it.  

I often give journals as gifts, especially to new mothers.  I tell them that now their real life begins!  I encourage you to keep one, even if you only put in it what you want your children to know someday.  

If nothing else, it will be a load off your mind in anticipation of the day when you will no longer be with them.  Do it for your peace of mind.  Do it so you won't forget.  Do it for yourself.  Do it just to keep an accurate record.  The worth of an accurate is above rubies.  

You really are worth it.

And now, get ready for the holiday season and all the flour, sugar and twinkling lights that you can cram into it.

Here is one of my favorite songs that fits just such an occasion as tonight.  Enjoy!

Winter again.....for the next 6 months.......

ARG!  It's cold, wet and windy again. The dead limbs are blowing out of the trees.  The leaves are piling up.  And I have raked, blown, and burned twice already.

It makes me wish I had a roaring fireplace and a hot toddy. 

Not really. 

I don't even know what a hot toddy is, and the closest I ever got to a fireplace was a wood stove, which I loved dearly for the heat --but the cleaning involved!  Not really worth it.  Just my opinion.  You can't beat the heat but the clean up never ends.  Nevah!.

This morning the wind blew my umbrella wrong side out.

It's dark when I get up and will soon also be dark when I come home.

I hate this time of year. 

It's like being trapped in a dream ( of lethargy and apathy) unable to move (not that you care) while the whole time you can see Christmas (AGGG!  SCARY CHRISTMAS!!) bearing down upon you. 

I wish I was a bear. 

Mostly for the hibernation.

OK, completely for the hibernation. 

Also, they give birth to their cubs while they are hibernating.  After they have pigged out all summer and gotten really fat and soaked up all the sun and summer breezes.  Their cubs are born the size of walnuts.

 I think I could handle that. 

I know I could handle that.

Bears have good lives.  The rest of us have Christmas.

Can you tell I hate this time of year?  Nothing against Christmas but it's the pressure. 

The cleaning, the cooking, the hiding, the wrapping, the trying to figure out where you hid it so you can wrap it.  The not being able to stay in bed all day. 

The getting sidetracked in the crap that's been in boxes in the basement for the last 20 years while you look for the stuff that you bought and hid away.  You think you remember buying it.  You meant to buy it.  Maybe you forgot that too.  Maybe you dreamed it!

GREAT!  Now you don't have what you thought you had, or maybe you DO have it, but you just can't find it.  At any rate, it's just like the dream.  You know have to get busy, and yet you cannot move, frozen in dread.

Every year I start in on my Christmas shopping only to realize that I need extra stuff for the Rock Star because his birthday is Dec. 1.

I do not forget this.  NO!  I don't. 

I remember it but forget to get a gift bought.

Then, once I start buying every body's Christmas, I remember that  his birthday hasn't happened yet, that  I have simply been working ahead on that blasted list in my head.

And I skipped a step.  An event.  An event that needs a gift to accompany it.  That's when I  have to take a couple things out of the Christmas stuff  for the birthday gift. 

Because I looked over it in the pressure of Christmas.  Looked over, you understand? 

Not the same as forgetting.  Not.  the.  same.

And then he, poor first born child that he is, is short a couple of gifts for Christmas.

Why am I (and all mothers, I believe) obsessed in keeping everything strictly "even"?????  Because it's right, that's why!!!!

This is just one reason to keep some extra gifts around.  The Home Shopping Channel is great for these. Buy cheap anonymous stuff that would work for practically anyone by the hundreds, just don't forget where you put them. 

Last year I got him a crock pot. 

Sad, I know. 

Even sadder?  .............He liked it. That's how old and responsible he is now.

My little boy is gone.  Now I feel like crying.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the menopause.  Maybe it's just that I'm not a bear.

I have to go dig my Kahlua out of the closet, pour some into a cup of coffee (that's as close as I get to a hot toddy), and surf the net for great deals with no shipping.  This is my life.  Eat your hearts out, bears everywhere.

Why do I keep my Kahlua in my closet, you may ask?  Well, ever since I found the Crown frozen in the freezer that's just the way I do it.  My liquor is now on the top shelf in an old purse, behind my memory book from high school.

And yes, I know Crown doesn't freeze.  Unless you add water to it. 

When boys are about 13 they don't think too far into the future, which is both is both their blessing and their curse.

Ok, my blessing.  Their curse.

It could be worse.  The other day they asked me if you smoked or snorted weed.  They both graduated from the Dare Program.  No comment on what they learned in it, but at least you can see why I do not just go to bed this time of year, much as I think I deserve it and would LOVE to.

 I have liquor to to guard and presents to find.  I think......

I hope I have enough energy for the next few years.  I do not think they are going to include much sleep.

It's that time of year.  Again........Yawn.  Hang in there.  

Respect: I Miss It!

This is a rant.  This is also my departed mother's birthday.  Perhaps that is why this hit me so hard. This is always a hard day for me.  That's all the apology I will offer up.

Today, I took a call at work.  It was a concerned daughter calling with very bad news about her father.  She was calling her ex husband, out of a VALID concern that her children would hear this bad news on the STREET, through the GRAPEVINE, and she wanted to stop this from happening, as they would be unprepared for it, and there is no GOOD way to hear that kind of news, and she wanted to come from a parent.

Now, I don't what the ex husband said before he left, but I sat the rest of the afternoon and watched gossips pass this information around, even calling people at home to alert them.  I mean honestly!!

I am not trying to take anything away from people who are genuinely concerned.

FYI:  People who are genuinely concerned call the PERSON involved, not EVERYBODY ELSE.  

I do not know whether the children heard it on the street, but it certainly is a possibility with the way people hurried to pass the news around.  Perhaps you have never had to deal with the GRAPEVINE when someone you love is sick.  If so, YOU ARE BLESSED.  Know it!  Take a moment and thank God for your blessing.

A great deal of people have genuine concern and sorrow.  Then there are the people who come to see your loved one only to rush off with the latest story of how bad they look, or how bad they are doing, what a shame it is for poor _______.  This makes the sick person's family want to go on a rampage where tongues are cut out.  Yep.  It does.

Dealing with a loved one who is facing death is heart rending enough without having to deal with all the stories that get repeated and distorted along the line.  This is the one aspect of a long illness no one ever talks about.  Indeed, a lot of people don't even think about it.  It's like a secret club.  The only people who dare to speak of it have been through it already. 

I once thought I was going to have to get into a throw down at Wal Mart with one of these people, who kept insisting they just wanted to come "one more time", "to say goodbye", when my mother had already drawn the line on visitors and I know for a fact that all he wanted was the story because in his small little mind, he could use that story as currency at the local restaurant.  I didn't have to get into a throw down with him, but let me tell you, I would have gladly grabbed a bat and busted his head with no thought for the charges that would have no doubt been filed against me.  And he would have had it coming, if you ask me.  I could have taken my chances with a jury in Linn Co. and probably gotten off.

With that said, take a moment and think before you pass on gossip.  I don't care if it's true or not.  Any kind.  Take one moment and consider the privacy of the family.  There might be people they would like to be notified first so that they don't hear it on the street.  They might want, oh, maybe 1 day, or two, to deal with bad news privately, as a family.  They might not thank you for spreading their sorrow before they have had time to wrap their minds around it.  They might even not consider it any of your business to even know it, let alone spread it around as fast as possible.  They might not thank you for throwing it in their face as soon as you see them when it's all they can do to get their god forsaken groceries bought without crying.  They may have trained themselves to only cry in their car, because it's the only privacy they have where they will not upset their children.

Your words have power.  They can cause hurt that you may never know about, but can never make up.  I once watched a movie called DOUBT that had a scene where a woman confessed to gossiping to a priest.  He told her to take a feather pillow to the top of her building, slit it and let the feathers go and then come back the next day.  When she came back the next day she said she had done as he instructed.  Know what he said then?  He told her to go gather them all back up again.  In other words, there was no way to take back what she had done, no matter how hard she might try.  It was a quite brilliant movie, I thought.

It's not like everyone isn't going to find out anyway.  It's hard enough without having to make sure you have your "game face" on before you leave the house. 

If you are really CONCERNED, have some RESPECT. 

I don't think some people even know what respect is.  They certainly do not seem to have any respect for themselves.

Much hurt is done with gossip.  It seems to be the one sin no one ever feels bad about or any need to feel contrite for.  Think about that for 1 minute.  And in case you are under the impression that you are looked up to because you told it first?  Not exactly. 

Everybody already knows exactly what you are.