Blog Archives

So for the conclusion of sappy week on asmrsmom.com (I promise to move on to higher ground next week) after five months of cohabitation, elation, frustration and mostly infatuation, the troops are moving on.  My grandsons that came here at four months and barely over two, are now practically grown men at nine months and two and a half.  And their parents are ready to fly the coop to their new home.

I thought I had been living for this day but now that it is less than two weeks away, I am facing it with very mixed emotions. Like anything, we seldom appreciate what is sitting in our lap until it is empty.

The thought of no pitter patter of little feet, knee high hugs or the sound of, “Is that you, Yaya?” when I open the front door is a void I can already feel.  The upcoming silence is palpable and their absence as real as them still in the house.

On a brighter note, they are only moving less than a mile away. (I know. Seriously.) I can pop in and out of their lives at will and I will still be nursery school bus driver number one. But as close as that all feels, I realize it will not be the same.  All too soon they will move beyond the thrill of a Yaya visit to hockey sticks, soccer balls and after school dances. High school football pep rallies, college applications and marriage proposals.  And before I now it, I will not be, “Is that you, Yaya?” but the obligatory phone call or Sunday visit at the old folks home.

I know I am rushing ahead of myself here and life doesn’t move at the pace of one paragraph.  But then again it does.  So my hope is that in the recesses of their little brains, they will see a picture, recall a story and think of a time that they lived at Yaya and Pops’ house.

And remember it fondly, with affection, as I will.

Photo courtesy of:   Bill Hale

While I’m on the subject of West Virginians, my mom who I have spoken of before, taught me many things about living, dying and all the stuff in between.

Especially pivotal moments to go into action were life and death. She’d remind me there are two things you can’t do for yourself, bring yourself into this world or carry yourself out, and those are times we need to pitch in and help others.

Since I was the baby of the family, I don’t remember many dinners we made to take to new mothers but I do remember the funerals. Whether you knew what to say or what to bring, the main thing was to show up with something–a pineapple upside down cake, potato salad, deviled eggs–hug a lot and talk about the person who died.  Preferably remember a funny anecdote they were involved in or something they said.

Nothing sad people like more than remembering someone they’ve lost with a smile.

My mom’s dad, Grandpa Kyle, was the king of telling a good tale on someone.  Even himself. He would start in about some “old boy” who was probably half his age since he lived to be 103, but to him everyone was always older.  Probably why he lived so long.  He always had an old pal to catch up with.

Anyway, he would begin a story and before he could get to the punch line, he would start laughing.  He would try to keep the rhythm of the story but the point was garbled in his chuckles that soon led to tears.  He was a laugh until you cry guy. My mom’s whole side of the family is. It’s a very endearing quality actually.

He’d hike himself up on his right thigh and pull out the hanky he always kept in his left hip pocket, remove his wire rim glasses, carefully one ear and then the other, wipe his tears and then shine his glasses, since they were already off and in his hands, and keep on going until we had all lost the point of the story but were all caught up in his tears of laughter.

Toward the end of his time on this earth, he asked my mom’s sister, Aunt Mary, why the people in the assisted living (which he didn’t go to until he was over 100) all called him Ed.

The tale he heard went something like this:

“Because, dad, that’s your name.  You are 103 years old.  You were born in 1886 and it is now 1989.   You saw a time where there were no gas powered cars, you witnessed the First Transcontinental Railroad and lived through eight states being added to the union. You and your brother, an architect, built many of the finest buildings in this town including your church, where you spent 80 some years in the choir.  You lost a wife and your mother in one week during the flu epidemic of 1918.  Left with four children, including a six week old baby, you moved in with your sister and allowed your architect brother, who was childless, to adopt your baby daughter.  She calls him Dad and you Pop and feels equal affection for you both. You went on to marry two more times and have three more children. You have outlived all your wives and a few of your children.  You are a carpenter and have worked on your own, for yourself, most of your life. You can still hammer a straight nail and strike a plumb line.”

When she finished, Grandpa, who had never cursed a single word in his life, crossed his hands on his chest, shut his eyes and said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

My brother, who spent many hours with  Grandpa in his workshop or just shooting the breeze,  spoke at his funeral.  I am sure he thought about that idea carefully and assumed it would not be a daunting task as Grandpa had lived such a full and and unnaturally long life. He had planned, I am sure, to tell tales of Grandpa’s escapades, his joy for all things great and small, and his sincere interest in anyone and everyone that no doubt kept him around so long.  I’m sure my brother thought he, too, might bring tears of laughter channeling the Kyle gene and being a great storyteller himself.

But he surprised himself because he cried tears of grief remembering this wonderful and unusual man.  And I learned a couple things that day.

Unexpected tears are the best, most honest you will ever shed. And no matter how long you have someone in your life, it is never so long you are ready to give them up.

My sweet mama is inching up on 90.  My brother can be an old curmudgeon but I know I will miss him terribly if I am still around when he is gone. I just had a big birthday that had a “O” in it. And I don’t know how I became a grandmother when I still feel like the grandchild myself.

I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry at this moment. Maybe in Kyle style, I’ll do a little of both.

My husband and I recently spent a Friday afternoon at the King Spa and Sauna in Niles, IL.  Run by and mostly frequented by Koreans, it is a chain. There are others in LA and Houston. I heard of its healing powers years ago and then recently we both seemed to have it come up in random conversations, so we had to try it.

Choosing a Friday afternoon created an authentic orientation as the spa is a sort of Korean family enclave on the weekends.  And when I say weekends, I mean–all weekend.  Yes, people, families pay the twenty five dollar per head admission fee and stay there for hours, or days.

Here’s the set up. You enter at the front desk and pay your admission fee and receive a key. Men go one direction, women another and you enter single-sex locker rooms.  Your first locker at the entrance to the locker room is for your shoes only. After those are tucked away,  you enter barefoot to the larger locker room where everyone, except a handful of Korean attendants, is naked.  Women spanning ages eight to eighty, are walking around nonchalantly in their birthday suits.  Mothers, daughters, friends, sisters of all nationalities, all walks of life–you name it– are milling around lockers, hair/makeup stations, sinks–all nude. It is amazing how quickly I felt stupid with my clothes on. Maybe took me twenty seconds to get in the groove and shove everything but my key in locker #109.

You then sign up for a treatment.  I chose the one raved about on Yelp, called the Queen Scrub.  You pad through glass doors to the “wet room” which contains four hot tubs of graduated temperatures, a sauna, a cold dip pool and open showers lining two of the walls.  Everyone is required to shower before moving toward any of the facilities and nowhere, nowhere, is there a towel except for a stack of hand towels that are now on the other side of the “wet room” doors.  More attendants “point” orders, as very little English is spoken here, and you are directed to shower and soak until your appointed treatment time.  I got a little hot and spooked, sitting toe to toe and practically cooter to cooter with naked strangers, and hopped out of the hot tubs after fifteen minutes motioning toward the scrub area, a line of plastic-covered massage tables along one wall. I was quickly hand-motion scolded and told to re-immerse but after by best Betty Boop body cover up imitation I was scuttled off to Sunny’s table and told to lie face down, again on a hand towel.

This woman, dressed only in matching bra and underwear and purple Crocs, had nothing in common with her name. She must have been North Korean or had distant cousins in Nazi Germany, because from the second I lay down on her table, I was hers.  She first poured some pretty soothing buckets of warm water over me and then pulled on rubber gloves that looked to be coated in sandpaper or Brillo pads and began to scrub me down. Everywhere.

If Sunny has never skinned a cat or gutted a deer alive, I would be shocked.  I was flipped and scrubbed with her prickly paws until I was sure I would bleed out on the table. Thank God it was vinyl.

After several thorough scrubbings front and back with much flipping and turning, (I will say no more here than a friend of mine finished this part and said she may have had her first lesbian experience and had lost three skin tags) I was washed with several more buckets of warm water, patted dry-ish and given a thorough massage with baby oil. The baby oil actually brought back memories of my own babies and summers spent on the sundeck of my local public pool growing up.   The rub down was polished off with a cucumber something applied to my face and one last flip where she washed and cream rinsed my hair.

Then off the table to another mandatory shower and back through the glass doors to the locker room where I was given two hand towels and the yummiest thick pink cotton gym uniform/ hospital scrubs to wear into the unisex “hot rooms.”

This was actually one big room which contained a Korean restaurant at one end and seven or so sauna mud huts scattered throughout the space.  Oh, I almost forgot the movie theater filled with lazy boy chairs playing some G-rated movie for the kids and sleeping adults.  The center of the room was dotted with giant chairs and couches where clusters of people/ couples were chatting, dozing, reading magazines, staring into space.  I found my husband, his jammie scrubs were grey, and we tested out the sauna huts whose floors were lined with bamboo mats and each had a special scent or material covering the walls–amethyst, cedar, gold, mud, salt to name a few. The medicinal values of each were posted outside their Hobbit-sized doors.

All in all, I would call my first experience at King Spa successful. I left limp-noodle relaxed, except for a few skin lacerations between my shoulder blades, and received a wonderful lesson in giving up control and expectations.

Not to mention the two layers of skin I left on Sunny’s table.

As I mentioned earlier, my daughter and her husband are rehabbing a house around the corner. Through my own aesthetic visions or their lack of time to pursue their vision, I have become their project manager. I love doing things like this. And it is so much easier to do a house thirty years after you have done one yourself.  I did my first house piece-meal, a room at a time, a dollar at a time. With the housing market as it is, they got a great deal and are able to do all the messy stuff before move in day. And I love the challenge.

But, if I start talking Burlap vs. Ostrich walls and Ancestral vs. White Dove trim, their eyes glaze over and they say they hear a baby crying, even if it is the neighbor’s.  I, on the other hand, see the project as a giant puzzle just waiting for me to fit the pieces together.  I envision a beautiful little cottage like the one that I can see on the puzzle box cover.

When I told my daughter it was time for lighting decisions, I saw the sheer panic in her eyes. But when I said we could find most of them at Lowe’s, I saw the grip on her wallet relax and she agreed to go only if her good friend Selvin, visiting for Christmas from California, could come. Selvin shares my interests in the aesthetic.  He also had a camera to take pictures of our options so we didn’t have to lug 10 boxes home and return five fixtures that didn’t fit because of color or size.

I’ll share with you a little trick about Lowe’s house fixtures and hardware. You can get great stuff there for half the price of a place like Restoration Hardware.   But you have to be careful of two things–weight and material. Some of their lighting looks great from the ceiling display and is feather weight plastic when you open the box at home. Same with kitchen knobs.  Pretty on the wall but you must hold them in your hand to see if they are at least heavier than a marble.  And I mean the super size ones, not the little guys that come with a Chinese checker board.

My only stipulation for this outing was that because of my foot cast, I would have to ride the “Call me please, Jenny Craig” cart. My daughter rolled her eyes but when she saw I was dead serious, she said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.’

Before you judge my name for said cart, I will explain that every time I see someone in one of those contraptions, rarely, I mean very rarely, are they infirmed or carrying a big green oxygen tank.  No, in my experience, they are usually about 200 pounds overweight and cannot walk on their over-burdened knees or hips far enough to buy a light bulb. My judgment might also have to do with the fact that I own a house in West Virginia, the third most obese state in the country,  and the Walmart there has more riding carts than grocery carts.

As our party of three arrived at Lowe’s, my daughter and Selvin walked ahead to start scouting fixtures and I lagged a bit behind hobbling over to the riding cart section.  When I finally caught up to their aisle in my mean machine, I turned the corner with a “Look , Ma, no hands!” pose and didn’t realize until Selvin texted this picture yesterday, he was playing paparazzi rather then snapping images of floor lamps.

Some say a picture can say it all, and this one does.  The last few posts, I have talked about “needing a little help” and I didn’t even notice the sign on the cart until this photo arrived.

We had a great time. We found a few fixtures. I went aisle to aisle in my cart.  It even had a horn for close calls, which most often happened when I was tailgating my daughter’s behind.  For a few hours, I was thinking about everything and everyone but myself.

And oh, it was such a relief.

It was brought to my attention that the web address for my LOL Downton spoof would not open so I am posting it here. Also love the irony that the site is called the HappyPlace.com.  Who needs Abilify when you can just go there in one click?

After my last post, I have been touched by empathic responses to my depression and winter” blues.” Some readers reached out to pull me out of my doldrums and I heard from others sinking in my proverbial boat. All of this reinforced my intentions. I was trying to articulate the darker side of all of us and let you know I am not all pumpkin pie and eye shadow tips. Not that anyone who really knows me thinks that for a second. I always say my house is like me, everything perfectly tidy and in its place but if you open a closet, all the real stuff is shoved out of sight in a jumbled mess.  I’ve been working a bit on my personal “closets” since that post and I can at least shut the doors now without using my hip. So things are looking up.

I was watching a commercial about depression tonight and noticed Abilify is a drug to add to your present anti- depression medication.  I was  musing about what drug I might choose to add it to when I saw that Abilify is accompanied by an over involved eye-balled umbrella handle that follows you through your newly uplifted life.  I decided to stick with the “pull myself up by the bootstraps” technique first rather than rush into drugs that come with talking rain gear.

Not that I am against them.  I’m actually a fan.  Serotonin, that chemical that keeps your brain synapses hopping and maintains your happiness quotient, can run low on charge like your car battery. And no matter how many times you try to start the car, sometimes you just need a jump to get it up and humming smoothly again.  (That is psycho-babble for serotonin doesn’t always go up to good levels and stay there every time you think happy thoughts and drugs are often the perfect solution.  Miracle workers really.)

Anyway,I just wanted to check in and say that some non-drug related jump starts I have tried, and one that had amazing results for my foot recovery as well as my mood, was having a Downton Abbey marathon. As I mentioned before, I have never watched the most watched television show in recorded history and rarely even watch PBS. I know your respect for my intelligence just dropped from near genius to that of a river rock, but I am into admissions these days and actually finding them liberating. I mean until I looked for the first two seasons on Netflix, I thought it was “Down-town” Abbey which is probably why I could never find the show in the first place when cruising the alphabetical TV listings.

So when I finally found it and watched the first show, I was hooked.  The filming, the costumes, the countryside by themselves are mesmerizing, even if you leave the show on mute.  But the plot is simple and real and human, just like all of the characters.  I started at 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning and finished the first season by 3:00 AM.  (That included getting up three times after midnight to watch the last three episodes.) By Tuesday, I was all caught up on season two and had given my foot, and mind, a well-earned rest from reality and the daily grind.

For now, escapism is my solution to the blues and if you are one of the other dinosaurs who has missed Downton Abbey, get on board. You will not regret it.  And for those of you who have been watching for the past two years, this site will slay you.  I laughed out loud.  (Not LOL.  The real thing is louder and much healthier.)

http://www.happyplace.com/20382/dowton-abbey-facebook-recap

Poor Edith!  And I thought I was in a sad place…

Since I wrote last, I tried my best to keep my Blueberry Christmas vow.  I let my grandson trim the tree with me and didn’t move the ornaments he placed. Not even secretly after he was in bed.  Huge advancement in fighting my OCD perfectionism.  I started Christmas shopping the week before Christmas and with the help of my best friend Amazon, everyone had a present wrapped and under the tree by the 23rd.  A land speed record for me.

I had my annual Christmas Eve gathering and didn’t panic when it started at five and all  the food was not on the table and extra hands in the kitchen had not arrived. Overall, I hung in there, foot in cast and all, and we had a great holiday.

But in the midst of the holiday festivities, I had a nagging, uncomfortable aching behind my smiles and laughter.  It started when my mother told me a childhood friend’s twenty-five-year-old son had been killed in a motorcycle accident in LA, the day before Thanksgiving.  The vision of their perfect child sliding under a city bus replayed in my mind, especially late at night. With my son’s battle with cancer, the reality of someone experiencing what I fear most pushes my worst nightmare to the forefront of my mind rather than staying neatly tucked in the back behind my obsession with death by tornado where I like to keep it hidden.

The news of the December 14 shooting in Connecticut was the icing on my sad sack cake. Watching the press coverage of all those faces of anguish and horror and shock sent me back to, May 20, 1988, when a babysitter named Laurie Dann entered my daughter’s second grade classroom and shot five children, leaving one dead. For one of the longest hours in my life,  I didn’t know if my little girl was dead or alive. Her school shooting, too, was a Friday.  Her school was also entered around 9:30 AM. I couldn’t look at those innocent faces. The parents’ twisted expressions of unthinkable grief.  I am haunted by their unopened presents under the tree and the hopes they had for their babies. A town forever changed. Lives that will have a gaping hole in every family portrait. Every uncelebrated birthday.

Yearning for a quiet place to take a deep breath, sit with a cup of morning tea, I found I had no place to do it.  I stopped seeing my house as a happy, joy-filled place full of giggles and wonder.  Instead it felt like a wild, jumbled jungle of two-year-old toys, two-year-old pitter patter, two-year-old constant chatter, six-month-old smiles and spit up and “cry it out” at bedtime.  Booster seats and potty seats left me looking for my seat.

It’s that time of year to dust off, haul out, DVR, On Demand, Netflix, scour HBO–however you find them–bring on your favorite “get you in the spirit” Christmas movies. I have some perennial favorites.  Some I watch over the next few weeks, at least once if not twice, and a few are sacrosanct for  Christmas Eve.

One of my Christmas not-to-miss is The Family Man.  It’s Nicholas Cage at his best.  Not raging though a burning building with a handgun or jumping off a cliff to the top of a rail car but a kinder, gentler, more likable Cage. Maybe it’s playing off one of my top ten favorite actresses Tea Leoni that softens his edges or his angel incarnate Don Cheadle  who I love in anything, but especially in this. The kids are adorable, Chicago born Jeremy Piven is spot on.  It’s great.

Also, love The Holiday.  Cameron Diaz who can get on your nerves in other movies does not in this one.  She’s worth a watch just to see her clothes.  Jude Law is Cary Grant gorgeous, complete with the thick, black glasses.  I learned after about a dozen viewings they told him to study Grant and emulate his mojo.  Even knowing that , it doesn’t bother me at all. He woos me as well as Grant did in An Affair to Remember.

Which brings to to another holiday must flick.  An Affair to Remember is 1950’s Hollywood subtle verbal sexual innuendo and on-set ocean backdrops at its best.  Deborah Kerr’s accent and demeanour is mesmerizing. As is Cary Grant’s, but his always is.

I don’t know why Dyan (born Dianne) Cannon had to go and talk trash about him posthumously.  He is probably my all time favorite male actor.  I don’t care what drugs he took or who he preferred beside him in bed, he thrills me. On a very base level just by walking into a room. Which he does at the end this movie with such aplomb that I am brought to tears each time.  His desperation.  His recognition at that moment is palpable. Maybe Dyan/Dianne was just jealous he didn’t have a bad facelift like she did and starve himself into adolescent jeans to stay attractive, as she did.  He just had it naturally until his 80 plus deathbed.

His other Christmas favorite, The Bishop’s Wife, is a classic.  Much more Christmassy and idealistic and very Hollywood of the time.  David Niven is at his perfect mustached height and Loretta Young says it all with her eyes. It’s sweet. Gets you in the spirit. And you’ll want to do good, at least until the next morning after watching it.

Anything with Cary Grant just makes me want to button my middle button and say things like, “Dahhling” and “We musn’t.” God, he slays me…

Hugh Grant, no relation to Cary, could not be more Hugh Grant than in Love Actually.  A bittersweet tangle of love tales set in England.  Still a feel good movie.

Oh, I could go on and on and we all have our favorites. Love Family Stone. Love Dianne Keaton in anything. Who can resist Will Ferrell in Elf ? Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street?

But my last two, my Chrismas Eve essentials are (drum roll): White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life.  

White Christmas was actually the first VHS movie I purchased when we bought our first VCR. It was probably mid-July and my son was about eight or ten. I loved the movie and he loved the war scenes and he can still do a pretty good harmony on “Snow, Snow, Snow,” complete with train clickety clack and white napkins.  And no one can beat my sister and me on “Sisters.” Blue fans waving,  I go back and forth between Rosemary Clooney’s red lips or Bing Crosby’s rendition with sock suspenders.  It’s all good.  It’s perfect .  It makes you laugh and you will for sure cry when the men rise and say, “Atten-hut!” for the General.

And nothing really needs to be said for It’s a Wonderful Life other than Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed prove over and over that it is. “Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.”

So dig in, amp it up, stay up and watch them all.  I promise they will all inspire and none of them will do a thousandth as much for your spirit on Dec. 26th or July 4th. It’s a once a year indulgence and be sure to indulge.

There is always something new in each of them I have missed before.  It wasn’t until last year I realized Bert and Ernie got their names from the cab drivers in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Ok, so I was changing diapers during Sesame Street and the early days of It’s a Wondeful Life. Or sleep deprived or both…

But not now.  I hear Danny Kaye tapping his grey suede shoes and the conductor announcing we’re comin’ into Pine Tree. Gotta run!

So Last Christmas , being a new Ya Ya and all, after much searching , pleading, money changing and bended-knee begging, I found a real live Santa to come to our house on Christmas Eve to surprise my grandson, Charlie, then a year and half old.  We have an annual party each Christmas Eve for a few friends and relatives which started out as a one time deal and has become a sacred tradition in our family.

Anyway, I thought this Santa appearance was going to be a  brilliant idea and spent all of Christmas Eve day anticipating the glory of his arrival. I didn’t tell my daughter or her husband or the rest of the family, thinking the fewer who know, the the more joyous and  authentic his appearance would be. He dressed in the garage using a hand mirror propped on a stool that I had carefully hidden from view. He strolled the yard with his big black boots and bowl full of jelly belly and waited patiently until his appointed entrance time.

As the clock stuck six, he came “Ho Ho Ho-ing” through the door to no one. Zippo, zappo.  Not a soul. I was frantically heating appetizers in the kitchen, my husband was setting up the bar and my son in law was pushing match books under the legs of said bar table, as it was wobbling uncontrollably under the weight of the 5 gallon Grey Goose and Jim Beam bottles my husband insisted on purchasing for the event at Cosco.

My daughter was upstairs readying my grandson for his first real Christmas party and unfortunately when the big red furry guy arrived, Charlie was still in the bathtub.

So I offered Santa some eggnog and kibble for his deer and seated him on the living room couch where he waited patiently for precious grandson number one to come downstairs.

Now I am sure you are all chuckling before I deliver the punch line. Of course Charlie was petrified of this huge stranger with the big white beard and floppy red hat and cried historically, hugging his mother’s shoulder and begging him to go away.  But YaYa prevailed to elicit at least a tiny high five exchange between the two of them and an almost sit on Santa’s lap, albeit, thirty seconds with daddy holding Charlie mid-air in a quasi-seated position.

So this year, we are talking up this Santa guy earlier.  Showing Charlie pictures.  We took him to a distance viewing last weekend at our local village green. We’re reading Santa Christmas books.  Explaining where he lives and how he makes a living making toys for little children.

So last night we were driving home from a family outing to buy our Christmas tree.  Charlie was sitting in his car seat recapping the event. He was talking about the outdoor fire, the cider, the buzz saw he was more afraid of than last year’s Santa. And then there was a pause in the conversation and he asked where Santa lives and his mom said quickly, “Oh, in the sky.”  And Ya Ya quickly corrected mommy saying, “No, that is Jesus who lives in heaven, Santa lives at the North Pole.”  To which my son-in-law mumbled under his breath something like, “We get those imaginary people mixed up.”

Oh, man, do I have my work cut out for me, educating my grandsons about Santa and Jesus. If I leave it up to their parents, they’ll think Santa has  twelve disciples and Jesus had his last supper with a bunch of elves.

Does the generation behind me think all the religion and tradition and bigger than ourselves stuff I tried to impart to them in their upbringing–weekly Sunday school and confirmation–was all a bunch of bunk?!

Let’s see.  It took a week  and a couple hundred bucks to find Santa last year, so if I start now building the manger, put a “No Vacancy” sign on my Inn and truck in a few sheep and a donkey, maybe, just maybe…

As we start a new month, a new season; a hectic busy crazy overwhelming emotion-filled family time of year, I thought of this picture I keep on my microwave.

And I decided perhaps this Christmas season I will have a new mantra, “blueberry cobbler.”  The day my grandson got his first taste of that gooey, juicy, crunchy sugary delight, he dug in with both hands and only came up for air to scream,”More, daddy, more!”

The lesson here is obvious so I’ll try not to become too moralizing and didactic.  I think the picture speaks for itself. (But I am incapable of letting it do all the talking.) We as adults forget, or have lost the ability, to dig in and embrace our perfect moments as they come. Unexpected, unassuming,  they are often sitting right in our lap as we drive onward to the next thing on our list, answering the cell call and text that are coming in simultaneously as the light turns green.

So I don’t know about you, but I am going to attempt a Blueberry Cobbler Christmas. Focusing on the joy in the moments, even if the presents aren’t under the tree and even if the tree is still in the garage in a bucket.

It really is what it’s all about, isn’t it? I’m goin’ for it and hope you’ll come along.

And if I weaken, which I invariably do on most resolutions, clear the aisle for me as I scour the grocery shelves for cranberry sauce on Christmas Eve or hunt for that last roll of red anything in the wrapping paper section of the Container Store.

Or better still, grab me by the shoulders and say, “blueberry cobbler.” And I’ll give you a big sticky, purple- faced hug.