Merry Christmas

Christmas.  In the stores, magazines, and commercials you see perfectly decorated designer trees surrounded by beautifully wrapped presents with ribbons Martha Stewart can show you how to make, amazing looking food, and well behaved children.  Do Not believe the magazines.  Christmas is not a commercial.  It is not airbrushed food.  And it definitely is not perfectly behaved children.  Christmas is about having a heart of awe and wonderment.  Whether Santa visits your home or you have an elf sitting on your shelf Christmas is about so much more.  Try really hard to remember your amazement as a child looking at the tree for the first time after the lights and decorations were added.  The thrill of anticipation.  For some of us it’s more difficult to remember back that far but really try.  You beat on your sister a little less.  You complained a little less.  You didn’t care if the gravy was lumpy or the turkey was dry.  Because Christmas was about more than that.  Christmas is still about more than that.   This time of year is magical.  Here in Missouri it’s cold and you always hope there will be snow.  There usually isn’t, though this year there is still ice clinging to the trees and grass.  And in the sunlight it’s magical.   Christmas isn’t about filling the malls and spending your entire paycheck.  Though the gifts are an awesome bonus!  Christmas is about love, peace, and harmony.  With each other but also with ourselves.  Love yourself.  Love your family and friends.  If the gravy is lumpy don’t sweat it, just pick around them.  Whether you took gift wrapping classes from Martha Stewart or like me it looks like a monkey wrapped the gifts, so what.  The paper gets ripped off and tossed anyway.  Wrapping is just window dressing for the real gift that is inside.  Celebrate Christmas from the heart.  Even with the difficult people, you know who I mean, try to see them with your heart.  Be content.  Try to find time to actually enjoy Christmas and soak in the magic.  Watch the lights twinkle on the tree. Sing a Christmas song just for yourself.  Sit in the floor and play a board game with someone.  Smile.  Celebrate Christmas with your heart.  From My home to yours Merry Christmas!

Grateful Traditions

Thanksgiving Day.  Today is the day that we, as American's, have set aside to take time to be with family, eat Turkey, and be thankful for all that we have.  It is a day to travel.  A day to eat.  A day to plan your major shopping plan of attack for the sales.  It is the least commercial (or has been traditionally at least) of American major holidays.  Thanksgiving has always been my favorite of holiday as well.  

Thanksgiving doesn't care what your budget is or how many presents you can bring to the party.  Though the ability to make something off the charts awesome in the kitchen is respected.  Thanksgiving doesn't care whether you are gathered with two people or twenty.  Thanksgiving doesn't care if you are eating a turkey sandwich by yourself watching movies.  Thanksgiving cares about what is in your heart.  Hope beats bitterness.  Love beats apathy.  Peace beats revenge.  Rich, poor, hopeful, apathetic, alone, or with many; Thanksgiving doesn't care.

Right now, to be perfectly honest, I'm suffering for something akin to ADHD on crack.  That really makes it hard to develop and type coherent thoughts.  My coffee limit is about 2 cups a day, preferably in the morning.  However, I had about 3 cups in 20ish minutes after lunch.  I have so many things I would like to convey to you but they are sorta jumbled in the attention deficit that is happening in my brain right now.   

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday.  Just the premise of a holiday that is, at the foundation, about gratitude and giving.  It's quite cliche to say this, however despite how bad we feel about our lives are they could always be worse.  Regardless of what we feel we don't have but want/need we could have even less than we do.  I told you it was cliche and possibly even trite.  There are times in all of our lives that we think it can't get any worse.  There are times in all of our lives where we feel like everything is falling into place.  Most of the time we live somewhere in the middle.  The key to contentment, in my opinion, is to be grateful right where you are.  We don't need a holiday to be grateful for what we have.  It helps.  Many have started participating in the 30 days of thankful on social media.  Gratefulness for 30 days is a step up from 1 day.  But that leaves 11 months for us to remember to stop periodically and just be.  Be in our moment, grateful for what we have, thankful we have the opportunities we have.  Even if they aren't what we want, where we want, they are still better than the other options out there.  

Eight years ago Ma and I made our first Thanksgiving Day trip to Backroads Pizza and Grill in Hawk Point Missouri (outside Troy...near St. Louis).  Just the two of us.  A cousin owns the restaurant and that side of the family all chose to meet there for the day.  That was the year that Grandma had passed away and it was Ma's first holiday as an orphan.  I don't think it matters your age, the first holiday's without a parent is a big deal.  I personally actually like this particular branch of the family.  I enjoy spending time with them listening to the chatter and just absorbing the ambiance.  Eight years ago Ma and I started a new holiday tradition.  Traditions become traditions because they just feel right.  I had no grandparents to spend the day with anymore.  And going to visit this branch of the family, specifically Great Aunt Gladys who feels more like another grandma than anything else.  Hawk Point and Thanksgiving go together like pumpkin pie and hotel rooms :D  (Remind me to tell you about hotel pie one day.)  Thanksgiving and Hawk Point is a tradition I hope continues for many more years.  It just feels right.

Today I am grateful for coffee.  Even if it helped to create a disjointed soup of a blog that I'm not even sure I can follow along.  I am grateful for my car which gets me where I need and want to go, most of the time.  I am grateful for my day job that I love.  I may not always be the best or even close to right but I enjoy my job and the people I get to spend time with every day.  I am grateful for the Fizzy Pop Collection.  The FPC gives me opportunities to engage in different social arenas and outlets that I might not otherwise engage in.  It allows me to be as creative as I want to be when I want to be creative.  I am ever so grateful for my family, ok most of it :D  My family, past, present, and future play a role in who I am in this moment and at any moment in my life.  I'm Granny, Grandma, Ma, and many others all wrapped into one.  All of that makes me who I am for better or worse.  I am grateful for my friends.  My chosen family.  Every person I have allowed in my life through the years has helped to shape who I am. I am thankful for those friends I can connect with randomly or consistently and always know where I am like it was moments since we last connected.  I am grateful that I can write about my gratefulness and share my gratefulness.  

And you know what, I'm grateful for coffee :D  If you actually made it this far and aren't really sure what the message was have some coffee and try again.  I swear it makes sense when you are on caffeine overload!  I am grateful for each person who has the opportunity to do anything they desire on the internet and they chose to read this. Whether you see this today or three months from now share with my your grateful.  What are YOU thankful for?

~~Jan~~

Driving into the Storm

A week ago the Oklahoma City area was getting hit, again, but severe weather and tornadoes.  Most anything that hits Oklahoma goes through here as well.  And as I left Bolivar to head to work in Stockton, Cedar County became warned.  Around here ‘warned’ only means one thing, tornado warning.  Severe Storm warnings don’t hold near the weight as the big T does.  I didn’t really have any choices; I had to go to Stockton.  And it’s not like that storm wouldn’t be in Bolivar soon enough anyway.  As I was driving I watched the sky, not for fear of a tornado dropping on my head out of now where ala ‘Twister’, but because it was so interesting.  On either side of storm the sky was dark and murky like you expect a storm to look like.  However, in the middle the sky was a robin’s egg blue.  Oddly enough, that is where the storm was, right over Stockton.  I hit the wind before I hit the wall.  Once I reached the storm edge it was as if I was driving into a wall of wind and rain, cutting my speed literally in half.  Did I have a choice about going that night?  I guess that depends on who you ask.  Working that night was my responsibility.  I know that the individual I was replacing at work believed it was my responsibility too, and was grateful to get to go home.  But, of course, that got me thinking.

How often do we drive ourselves into the storm when we don’t have to?  And I don’t mean a weather storm.  How often do we put ourselves into situations that blow up around us or spin out of control?  How often do we choose to be in those situations as opposed to not having a choice?  I don’t mean the drama queens of the world who are the ones that seem to always be the center of the storm.  Not every choice puts us into the storm, and not every storm is by choice.  They vary for simple rain storms to severe weather to the big T.  As I look back over the multitude of storms I’ve driven into throughout my life I see storms that I knew were brewing and I chose to go into them anyway.  Convincing myself it was just some rain, nothing major.  While in reality, they were major enough to change life gears for a while.  I remember storms that seemed to come out of now where, unexpected, unforecast.  They too changed the course of my life.  Some storms clear the skies and create a positive after impact, but most don’t.  I know for a fact I would not be sitting here right now, in the life I have today had it not been for the storms I drove into.  And while so many times I wish I could change things I have or have not done I don’t know that I would.  And sometimes I wonder if it would have made a difference at all. 

We end up where we are in life for a reason.  Our lives are based on our choices, the choices of others, and to some degree the storms we weather.  I firmly believe that while not everything is set, some things are meant to happen.  And if we avoid it once it will eventually catch up to us.  Once I drove into the storm last week the sky changed, my perception of my environment changed, and of course my mind was working overtime.  Everything was dark, murky gray.  There were no dark storm clouds or robin’s egg blue sky.  There was gray, rain slashed gray.  And slowly but surely I made it to my destination once the warning was over and the rain had slacked off.  I drove into the storm but the heart of the storm missed me.  We don’t always get so lucky.  And sometimes, when the timing falls perfectly, we miss the storm all together.

If only....

We all say it, think it, and at times lead our life by it.  If only..... you fill in the gap.  If only I had more education then I would have a better job and could give my family more.  If only I had more money so I could travel.  If only I had more time to do the things I pinned on Pinterest.  If only.... We all have them.  Some more than others.  I had an if only day today.

If only I had more time seems to be the mantra.  If only I was more motivated.  If only sleep wasn't necessary.  If only.  A friend of mine gave me some new fortune cookie slips today and then asked how the novel was coming along.  I've been collecting them for quite a while now with the intention of writing a novel based around them titled, oddly enough 'Fortune Cookie'.  It's a great premise, I've got the basics mapped out and have storyboarded quite a few of the slips.  But I've not finished it.  I got my grand 50K words for Nano.  But most of that was filler that will disappear in editing.  Of course that made me think of 'Finding Galena'.  Another amazing (I think anyway) story concept that is sitting just over 50K words (again mostly filler...seriously I can get about 1000 words out of making a sandwich!).  Another friend refuses to read anything I write until I finish Galena for her.  If only I had more time, I'd write more/again/etc.  If only.

If only I had more time.  If I had more time I'd read more.  I love to read, have been reading since I was 4 years old.  At 7 I was reading at almost a collegiate level.  I can breeze through a book in a matter of days (or less) despite how 'thick' it might be.  I go through reading phases where I read more than other times but I always read.  Now, well I haven't picked up a book since summer.  Wait no, fall, when I read through a Danielle Steel in an afternoon.  I would love to get into book reviews.  I've done a few early last year but not really gotten into doing them.  Then suddenly the clock went haywire and time to read was impossible to find.    If only.

There are lots of if only's in my thought processes lately.  All the things I could do if only x, y, z.  Time is a hamper, this is true.  But motivation is a bigger hamper.  I work all day and when I come home I just shut down.  I lose myself in mindless computer games and DVR movies instead of doing laundry or even general cleaning.  I talk to the kids while they want to watch me play mindless computer games (Munch is always wanting me to play Plants vs Zombies for him.)  When I finally lay down for sleep my mind is still awake because I worry about the next day, week, situation, whatever.

If only I were more motivated I'd have more time to do the things I want to do.  Motivation is difficult.  But achievable.  Over the next few months I hope to make some major changes that will benefit me in multiple ways, including the if only stage.  Hopefully changes bring motivation.  And I can do more reading, writing, blogging, heck even cross stitch.  Hopefully I can actually start working with effort toward learning to knit and crochet again.  And motivation to achieve the things I 'want' to do will translate into motivation to do the things I need to do.  Motivation is not a work issue.  Work is amazing and I am constantly striving to do more, be more, do better and be better.  The Fizzy Pop Collection has no motivation issues.  I'm constantly plotting and planning and pouring new ideas and delivering candles.  Life just needs less 'if only' and more 'why not'.

What are your 'if only's'?