Appreciate Where You Are

I'm ready to move...or go on another vacation!  I have forgotten what the sun looks like and my feet are beginning to web together.  The sidewalks are blackish green, moldy and super slippery.  I haven't played golf in a very long time, the only exercise I've been able to get has been done indoors, my hair resembles a Brillo pad and I'm running out of ways to entertain myself indoors!  Can you tell?  I know some of you are up north and it is not golf season but have you seen the sun or a blue sky in the past 2 weeks?  What do they look like?  Can you send pictures? 

Days and days of this....

Speaking of pictures, I resorted to organizing my many photo albums in the study today.  They are now in chronological order.  No idea why it has taken me 8 years to come up with that clever system!  They must have been in some order originally but through the years and flood preparation measures they have gotten quite disorganized.  I just had to look through some many of the albums while I organized and I gotta say....what a great life it's been!  A few questionable hair and fashion choices but they all made sense at the time.

Looking back through the years I have also come to the radical conclusion that I wish I would have appreciated my youth more!  I should have appreciated the body I had... when I had it.  Why was I always so critical of myself?  Why did I always think I needed to lose weight?  If 40 year old Lisa could have seen herself through 60 year old Lisa's eyes she would have been so much happier with her body, her smile, her smooth skin, her bright eyes and all the other things that she took for granted.  Damn!  I say this to myself as much as to anyone out there criticizing themselves.  We all do it!  Why?!  We should really appreciate ourselves more.  To quote one of my sisters, "We will never again be as young as we are today!"  I need to keep reminding myself that 70 year old Lisa is going to look back some day at 60 year old Lisa and say, "I was so young then!" 

Smile for the pictures...you will never be this young again and you look fabulous!   Oh, and if the sun is shining where you are, give thanks and go play outside... I would!
This has been your rainy day public service announcement.

What Makes You Smile?

There have been years we have gone to Park City for our annual ski trip and arrived to brown grass and slushy slopes.  One year TJ threatened to bring his golf clubs when he saw the balmy forecast.  This year no golf clubs were needed...only skis.

Winter golf clubs!

Being the weather nerd that I am, I kept track of the snowfall before our trip.  Things were looking very promising, there was a substantial base and regular new snowfall.   I had high hopes for some amazing skiing!  There are some skiers who love knee deep powder, I am not one of them!  I like my ski slopes nicely groomed with maybe an inch or two of fresh snow on top of them.  I'm very picky wimpy when it comes to skiing.  Deep powder is work if you ask me and even more challenging when you are skiing through a blizzard. 

One of the days we chose not to ski in the knee deep powder,
we watched the professionals instead!

To say we had epic snow may be an understatement.  It snowed over 50 inches the week we were there!  I wondered if we would ever see the sun but on day four it finally showed its face!  Nothing better than blue skies and plenty "groomed" slopes! It was an epic trip if you like snow!

My kind of skiing!  

The other thing that has made me smile lately happens every Friday morning.  It is just as good as waking up and seeing groomed slopes and blue skies.  It is taking Logan to swimming lessons.  I have never seen a more infectious smile in my life than the one he sports during swimming lessons.  He can come out of the water sputtering and gasping for breath but there is a huge smile on his face when he does.  The kid LOVES the water!  I have no idea if he is the next Michael Phelps or the next Jacques Cousteau but he is very close to mastering rolling from front to back and back to front in the water.   He has shown definite improvement over the last few months and never...not once...has he ever hesitated to get into the pool or do whatever the coach asks.  It is a joy to watch him.   *This paragraph is brought to you by a proud grandmother.

Sheer joy!

Smiling halfway under water...

Smiling while others are swimming...

Smiling when listening....

Still smiling!  I think he likes it!

What is it that makes you smile like this?  Do it!

Where Did December Go?

December 2018 will go down in history as the first month in 11 years that I did not publish a single post on the blog.  394 posts, an average of 3 per month ( I had a lot to say in the beginning) and nothing to say in December 2018.  It's as if it never happened.  I wish I could say I was busy exploring some exotic destination with no Internet and could not publish for 6 or 7 weeks....no such luck, unless you consider Mrs. Maisel and The Great British Baking Show exotic destinations.  They occupied a large chunk of my "not blogging" time in December.   I'm not proud.

Here I am, not blogging in December, with Logan at the wheel!

It took a cold the size of Texas to make me finally sit down and address the neglected blog.  I was tired of watching television, took many naps while trying to read my book and felt too crappy to go out and do anything else.  Nothing says post holiday let down like a miserable cold to go along with the miserable weather.  Seems to be a regular event for me.  Different year, same tune...January isn't my favorite month.

Those two paragraphs were written over the last two weeks.  What gives?  No focus whatsoever!  Today I am confined, mostly, to my house.  It is the glorious day before the dreaded colonoscopy.  So far, so good, but I'm only two hours into my day of a "liquid diet".  I expect things will go downhill from here.  I have made my list of things to do to keep my mind off my empty tummy and will spare you the details of my confinement later today.  Suffice it to say, this will be my least favorite day of the year so far.  Hopefully at the end of the year I can look back and still say this was the worst day of the year.  Then  2019 would have been a pretty good year.  Hope springs eternal. 

I decided to go to daily mass today to take my mind off the fact that I could not eat and to ask for all the help I can get enduring the next 24 hours.  ( I am such a wimp!)  Ironically, the first line of the gospel reading was, "The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast."  I guess I am no disciple of John or the Pharisees.  The entire gospel spoke about fasting!  Then, as if to add insult to injury they started talking about wine in the reading.  Way to take my mind off missing lunch and dinner...and wine!  I am not a regular daily mass attendee.  I go, maybe every quarter, maybe more during Lent.  Inevitably whenever I do go, something in that mass that I randomly showed up to speaks to me.  I'm taking this as a good sign.

Last night, after the Saints did not make it to the Super Bowl (still questioning the zebras calling that game but if we were winning by 14 points it would not have mattered) and we ate what I will refer to as "the last supper", I played with my camera.  I thought I would try to capture the lunar eclipse.  The blood moon.  The celestial event of the season.  The skies were perfectly clear.  The weather was very crisp.  The eclipse was between 11 and 12, not 3 and 4 a.m., which made it totally doable.  It was romantic laying there on the driveway with my husband and my camera.  So much better than the football game!

Still a sliver

Going

Going

Gone

Coming back

out into the sun again.

After looking at those photos I've decided my day is in eclipse mode.  I started out brightly and as the day goes on I will eventually find myself in darkness...sometime between 5 p.m. and 2 a.m..  Hopefully by 9 a.m. things will begin to brighten and all will be well with my world again.  Thanks for hanging in there are reading.  I can check one more thing off my list of things to do to take my mind off the inevitable.  Now what?!  Oh....THAT!

Empty Nest = Empty Pantry

'Tis the night before the night before Thanksgiving and I'm already all cooked out!  I did something I never do....I started early.  I don't start early for anything.  Is this the new normal?  Am I going to start being one of those overachieving people who has their Christmas cards ordered before Thanksgiving?  No!  One of those people who makes everything days ahead of time?  Yikes!  A person who does her Christmas shopping before December 20th?  Not yet!  Once a last minute person...always a last minute person.  Except this year.  I'm going to give this "being organized and prepared" thing a try.  Foreign territory here!

Today, as I made the cornbread and the pecan pie bars I realized that my empty nest has also resulted in an empty pantry.  I thought I had everything I needed but when you don't bake or even cook much you lose track of inventory.  I found I was inconveniently out of baking powder this afternoon.  Ten years ago I would have never been out of baking powder... or brown sugar. There was a time in my life that we always had something freshly baked in our house.  I have made many cookies, cakes and brownies in my life but not many in the last 5 to 10 years... except for the holidays. 

Another cooking realization today happened when I looked up at my counter and saw this....

3 generations of recipes.
The handwritten cards, the cookbook and the computer.

 I had to comb through that recipe box to find my mother-in-law's stuffing recipe.  Apparently, the recipe box had been dropped and put back in haphazardly since the cards were upside down and totally disorganized.  Grandson handiwork no doubt.  I took a walk down recipe memory lane reorganizing the box.  So many cookie exchange recipes that I haven't made in years.  I have no idea why I still have most of them.  The chances of me making enchilada casserole from a random card in that box are slim to none.  Pinterest has thousands of them at the click of a mouse.  We have come a long way, baby! 

This year I am thankful for my family, the opportunity to cook for a full house and grandsons who dump out my recipe box!  I hope you all enjoy some good food and some good times this Thanksgiving!

Too Many Decisions

Yesterday I had a private laugh that has continued to make me laugh inside whenever I think about the situation.  It just keeps getting funnier and more ironic!  I figured if it has entertained me for a whole day maybe it will entertain you too.

I went for my annual or in my case, bi-annual, physical exam yesterday.  This could also be dubbed as my most dreaded day in a year...and a half.  I am not quite sure why I dread this as much as I do.  Maybe it is the painful stepping up on the scale part, maybe it is the fact that they put a needle in my arm and take blood, maybe it is the fear of being injected with poisons in the name of health,  maybe it is the fact that I have to take my head out of the sand and face the fact that I am not 30 years old anymore and my perceived healthy habits are maybe... not perfect.  Not sure what it is but I dread this day.  

I took my tired, hungry (because I had to fast for the blood sucking) body into the office yesterday and checked in at the desk.  The very nice young man handed me a clipboard with a stack of papers for me to fill out.  I cleverly replied, "this is going to take some eyeballs" and proceeded to open my purse to get my reading glasses.  Ugh!  Not one pair of my many reading glasses!  I sat down and squinted my way through the paperwork.  When I got to the three sheet health questionnaire that was faintly printed in about size 9 font I considered just going down the list and checking "No" to all of the questions.  "No" I don't have chronic pain. "No" I don't doze off while someone is talking.  No, No, No!  Leave me alone!

The funny part came when I got to a group of questions that I can only assume are gauging my level of senility, ADD or ADHD.  The first question was, "Do you have trouble making big decisions?"  I left it blank and went to the next question.  "Do you have trouble following through and finishing tasks?"  I went back to the first question, pondered and cracked myself up!  Who me, trouble making big decisions?  Try small decisions...like how to answer that question!  Let me just fill you in on my state of mind at that point.

I had just returned from four days in California.  The reason for my trip?  We were looking for a wedding venue!  Our youngest is getting married next summer and they have decided to treat everyone to a trip to the wine country.  We spent four glorious days dreaming about the perfect wedding in the perfect setting.  

Will it be here?   No

We looked at many venues.  We decided not to have it in the senior living neighborhood golf club.  We decided not to have it in a barn complete with horses and a tractor.  We decided not to have it on the crush pad of a winery or under the power lines on the dirt between the vines.  So many choices and decisions!  I had spent the last week making many big decisions so when I came to the question about having difficulty making big decisions I cracked up!  With still so many big decisions to be made, this one question stood out among all the others yesterday.  I checked "yes" and had a private chuckle.   If I only could have explained, I had already used up all of my decisions for the week and this questionnaire put me way over the top!

It will be here!

Fascinating and Frightening

As irony would have it, I heard a TED talk yesterday on this very topic.  Today, I decided to go through the draft section of the blog to see if there was anything worth publishing and I came across this piece I wrote last spring.  Seems I am on to something here, but then we probably already knew that!

From the archives...sometime early last spring:

Have you ever wondered how your recent Internet searches, Facebook feed, YouTube rabbit holes and Twitter feed are shaping your consciousness?  As a social media user I considered this while sitting in church on Sunday.  I guess I wasn't really paying attention to the homily, my mind wandered and ended up on this topic.  Maybe it was the result of reading another request to comment on someone's post about the latest Facebook algorithm.  Maybe it was because I spent much of Saturday searching travel websites for an upcoming trip.  As a result, those sites now send me daily or even hourly notices.  (yes, I know I can control those notices by changing my settings, which I did after the trip was fully planned).  See... the Internet is working its devious way into my consciousness and I think it is a fascinating and frightening topic to consider.

During "that" election I found myself growing very weary of the political chatter, similar to how I am feeling now.  I like to keep my most conservative and most liberal friends(I'll let you figure out who is who) as friends on Facebook even though sometimes their posts drive me to distraction.  I like to think hearing both sides (extremes) keeps me from becoming myopic.  I consider myself a liberal conservative or is it a conservative liberal?  I can never figure out.  Sitting in church I wondered though, if crafting your news feed to fit your opinions and beliefs can eventually lead you to become more extreme. 

Obviously I am not the first person to think of this.
We should all think of this!

If you are a person who loves those recipes that pop up on Facebook and shares them or clicks on the website, you get more of the same type of posts.  Does this in turn get into your subconscious and make you want to cook or craft more?  Mostly they just make me worry about how high my weight and cholesterol would be if I made the dishes.

When I tune into Netflix there is a list of "because you watched ____ you might like ____".  When I go onto my Kindle there is a list of books I might like because I read another book.  The algorithm is doing all of the thinking for me.  I used to just go into a book store or Blockbuster...remember them?! and peruse the aisles and find the books or movies all by myself.  Think of all the great reads or movies I am missing because I am being steered in a direction.  Wandering can lead to some pretty interesting places.

As I planned our vacation using various travel websites I noticed those site's ads were showing up on the sidebar more frequently...even with my ad blocker.  Now I want to plan a trip to Malaysia and Germany and San Francisco....you name it...they all look great!

Does the Internet make us a more extreme version of who we really are?  Does it shape wants, needs and opinions?  Are we all being watched by big brother aka some algorithm?  Are we losing the ability to think for ourselves?  These are the things I think about when I am not paying attention to the homily.  I think next week I'll just pay attention to the priest and see where it leads me.

Reality Check

After an extremely steamy week here in Houston I decided, after binge watching Jack Whitehall's Travels with my Father, to get off my a** and get some exercise.  Regardless of the heat and humidity (humidex for you Canadians) I needed to get outside.  As I listened to my excellent tunes (Imagine Dragons) and walked, my attitude started to change.  Instead of drudging through my walk for the purpose of getting my steps in for the day I decided to find the beauty around me.  There must be some...somewhere...somehow!

My thoughts went to my "after dinner" walks at the shore when the sun was setting and the sandbars were out.  I took so many pictures of the sky reflecting in the gullies and the sun setting in the distance.  I found myself enjoying the late evening sunlight.  Evening really is my favorite time of day.

Not a sandbar but it is as open as it gets around the burbs!

Sand, water and a reflection of the sky....
it will have to do!

I felt a little more pep in my step and decided to walk to the one place I just might be able to get a good view of the sunset. The sky was setting up nicely...just enough clouds and just enough sun.  I walked and listened to my music and kept my eyes open for the positive.  It has been a long, hot, steamy week back in H-town (didn't I already mention that?  It bears repeating!) and I needed a breath of fresh air, even if it was just a mental breath of fresh air.

A suburban gully

I made it to my viewing spot a bit early and had to kill some time before the finale.  Luckily there were fewer mosquitoes than there are at the farmhouse.  The view is still a bit imperfect with the water tank and the electrical wires but what can I say...it was within walking distance of my house and has the most visible horizon.  Beggars can't be choosers.  So I waited.  Yes, there wasn't much going on in my life on this Friday night so I had a bit of time to wait for the sun to set, sweating and swatting a few mosquitoes. 

Getting artsy while waiting

Fitness equipment silhouettes 

Finally the big moment came.  Was it worth it?  I guess.  It was the best sunset I've seen since the night we arrived back in town.  It was also better than sitting in the house watching Netflix for the fifth or sixth hour and I got my steps for the day done. 

But so much clutter!

Better from a distance.

The punchline to this story comes about an hour later.  I walked home and was considering sharing my suburban sunset experience.  I was feeling a bit proud of myself for getting out and making the most out of being back in the steamy south.  You should know that TJ headed back to the cooler air at the farmhouse this morning.  And then it happened.  The pin that burst my balloon.  TJ shared a few pictures from the shore.  They were like a dagger to my heart.  I had just tried so hard to embrace being back here...and then he sends me these. 

I am humbled

What...no power lines?!

No water tanks?  I think he is just rubbing it in!

As I deeply sighed and fought back my green envy monster I reminded myself why I am down here in the first place.  It is not about the weather or the sunset.  I am here because of one very special little girl and she is more beautiful and breath taking than any sunset... anywhere.  I'm here to welcome our newest grand child and our first granddaughter!  I'm here to help out with her big brother and to help her parents out a bit.  The sun sets every night, this only happens once!

Getting to see Logan meet his little sister....priceless!