Wanda Says…Just because

February 6, 2015 / Wanda / Leave a comment

I really needed to be reminded of this today. Happy Friday!

Wanda Says…No Bandits!

February 4, 2015 / Wanda / 6 Comments

My daughter Bryn is ten years old and in the fifth grade. We live one block from her school. At the beginning of the school year she begged me to let her walk to school by herself. She had a convincing argument. She said, “It’s only a block, mom, and I’m old enough to walk a block by myself.” (To be read with the required level of pre-teen sarcasm and eye rolling).

She’s right, of course. When I was her age we played outside every day after school, running around the neighborhood, riding our bikes everywhere. As long as we were home by the time the street lights came on, our mom wouldn’t stand in the yard shouting our names until we came running. She is old enough to walk a block, and farther, by herself.

But life today isn’t the same as when I was her age. The dangers are real, and I do not trust the general population with the safety of my children. I think most people are genuinely caring and look out for kids in their neighborhoods, but it’s the person late for work that accelerates too quickly down their driveway without watching for school age kids on the sidewalk, and the child predators who look like nice people just wanting to stop and chat for a few seconds that scare the shit out of me. I feel bad that she isn’t allowed to run the neighborhood like I did at her age, but none of her friends are allowed to do that either. All of her friend’s parents are just as cautious as I am.

But she’s ten, and she is responsible and knows how to cross a street, watch for traffic, and not talk to strangers. I can’t choose to hold her back from something that is developmentally appropriate and allows her to grow because it scares me. So the least I can do to allow her some measure of independence is to let her walk to school by herself. She loves it. She feels like such a big girl, and I love seeing that look of satisfaction on her face when she walks in the door after school.

But I hate it. I hate not being there to watch over and protect her for the four minutes it takes her to walk one block.

I silently stress out every morning when we say good-bye at the front door. I watch her walk down the driveway, and I don’t stop watching until she rounds the corner and is out of my line of sight. And then I surreptitiously keep my eye on the clock. I know that as long as the school doesn’t call here by 9am that she made it safely. I start watching the clock again at 2:30pm. She’s usually home by 2:40pm, and then I take a deep breath and relax.

This is what I look like when I’m protecting my kids. For real.

I know this sounds obsessive and crazy. Especially to a younger person who has never had kids. But having children changes you. Having children brings out your protective instincts in a way nothing else can. I became the mother bear. I am that dangerous female Grizzly that will rip your throat out if you even think about physically harming one of my children. And I’m not alone. Thankfully, I’m in good company with all the other Grizzly mothers at Bryn’s school. We all agree that allowing our children to walk to school at a certain age is a necessary risk to help them mature, grow and learn to be responsible for themselves and recognize potentially dangerous situations and how to handle them. They need to know how to apply and use all the advice we’ve given them. “Look both ways before you cross the street, don’t talk to strangers, be aware of who’s around you and if someone approaches you and tries to get you to go with them, you drop your backpack, scream for help and run like hell is chasing you.” Well, I didn’t give her that last bit of advice in exactly those words, but she got the message.

So, I let her walk to school. The first few weeks were the hardest for me. About three weeks in I was sort of grilling her at the dinner table, trying to be nonchalant and casual about it. I didn’t want to be up in her face with overly detailed questions, but I wanted to know how it was going. I was obsessing, and I guess I wasn’t as subtle as I’d hoped because she looked at me and said, “It’s good, mom. There’s no bandits!” As she said this, she winked at me in a jaunty way and made finger guns. LOL!

In that moment she made me laugh out loud with her cheeky sense of humor, eased my fears and reassured me that she truly is a big girl, which broke my heart a little too. Now every morning when she leaves for school and kisses all of us good-bye, we all say, “No Bandits!” 🙂

Wanda Says…I lost my mind, and joined a gym.

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015 / Wanda / 5 Comments

I did it.

Today, I did what I swore for years I would never do.

Today, I bought a gym membership. And signed a contract. For one year. And paid money (or a small piece of my soul) to have several sessions with a personal trainer.

Whhhhhaaaaatttttt??????????

I know. I must be out of my fucking mind.

This vector is proof that I’m not wrong in my opinion of this.

I hate gyms. I’ve always hated gyms and the culture of organized fitness clubs. I find the atmosphere in these places to be very intimidating, shallow, competitive and judgey. I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts, but I will say it again….it does not motivate me or make me feel good to work out next to a person wearing panty shorts and a sports bra. Or a guy who looks like He-Man on steroids and refuses to put on a shirt.

While I can appreciate the hard work it takes to maintain that level of physical fitness, and I can admit to a small amount of envy for my own lack of mental strength and stick-to-it-ness in achieving my own fitness goals, it’s more the flaunting of flesh and show-boating that turns me off. It’s the fact that the gym is as much of a meat market and pick up joint as any trendy Hollywood club. It’s the cancerous feeling that screams if you don’t look like this, something is wrong with you and not the culture these attitudes create. (And for the record, I have several really fit, attractive friends who work out in gyms regularly and they admit this environment is also a turn off for them as well, so I’m not just making this shit up, folks).

Anyway, although I prefer to work out at home, that hasn’t been working out too well for me. It’s too easy for me to find a thousand excuses to put it off because I have so many other things that need to get done. I don’t have any real accountability, and I’m sick of feeling like a big, fat cow. I’ve been holding onto this baby weight for too long and its aging me. I feel it in the slowness of my steps and the daily fatigue that is not commensurate with my activity levels.

So at my husband’s suggestion, off to the gym we went. We took both kids and had an appointment to take a tour. Dan chose an upscale, popular gym in our area that has several amenities he thought would appeal to me. Amenities that make this gym feel more like a resort than just a fitness club. There’s a restaurant/café and day spa on the premises in addition to the pools, basketball courts, group exercise rooms, daycare, and equipment areas. There is also a women’s only workout room, which Dan thought I would really like.

This is NOT allowed.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the gym. There were a lot of middle age to older people working out and most of the clientele were dressed in appropriate workout gear. And it turns out that this gym has rules with regard to how you’re allowed to dress in the public areas of the club. There was a whole list of ‘gym etiquette’ rules the sales rep gave us to review that had my head spinning and challenging all my preconceptions about what this gym experience would entail. (Most of you probably already knew many gyms did that, but I’m the ignorant one because I’ve refused to step foot in a fitness club for years).

I began to feel hopeful that maybe this could work. Maybe I could actually join a gym and not feel like Martha Dump-Truck working out in my baggy t-shirt and sweats. Maybe there would be real people working out next to me, and not caricatures of Ken and Barbie, and I would feel supported in my efforts to lose weight and be healthy instead of judged and laughed at for being the only person in the room who doesn’t have a clue how to use a spin cycle.

We also met with the personal training director, and he was incredibly attentive and considerate toward my concerns with working out with a trainer. I admitted that I need someone with experience to help me set up a fitness plan and check in with me every month so I can keep moving in the right direction. I need someone to push me and kick my ass a little. But I adamantly explained that I had no interest in working out with a 25 year old that had never had kids and had no personal experience with how the body changes in middle age after having children. Again, he totally understood and said he had a few trainers he thought would work really well for me.

I was shocked! I couldn’t believe that this could be so simple. That I can have a trainer who is a middle-aged woman with kids, and understands how the body changes after advanced maternal age pregnancy, and I don’t have to work out next to Adam Ab-Crusher is more than I could have hoped for!

Until……I toured the women’s locker room. Sigh.

I guess it was too much to expect that everything would be perfect. The locker room was as nice and well-appointed as any locker room at a high end spa. It was clean, beautifully decorated with a state of the art steam room, sauna, private whirlpool in the room for women only and curtained changing areas to protect your modesty, if you care about that sort of thing. What I found shocking on this part of the tour was how many women didn’t care about that. Their modesty, that is.

To quote my friend Stacia, who is intimately familiar with gym locker rooms, the atmosphere is very “YWCA circa 1964.” All the younger women were decently covered with towels or their clothing. However, most of the older women were strolling around naked from head to toe, with the only towel they had wrapped around their head. Bryn was with me on the tour and she got quite an eyeful. To her credit, she kept her composure and didn’t say anything to reveal how embarrassed she was. It was a lot of National Geographic style boobies and gray pubes on display for everyone to see. Now, I was raised to appreciate my body and not be ashamed of it, but I was also raised to have a sense of modesty in the presence of others. These women had no problem being stark naked in front of complete strangers! While I could never do that, no matter how good I looked, I would still kill for that kind of confidence!

So, the upside to all this is that I don’t have to work out next to someone wearing panty shorts and a sports bra, and I get to have a trainer who will understand my body and how to help me change it. The downside is that I have to share a locker room with naked grannies who like to rock what they’ve got.

LOL! Wish me luck!

Wanda Says…I would like your opinion, please.

January 28, 2015 / Wanda / 17 Comments

Again, this isn’t a real post. I would simply like your opinion on something I’ve been mulling around in my head.

With regard to blogging, do you feel more of a connection to a particular post or blogger with whom you interact when they post photos of themselves, family, life, whatever, in and around their blog? Does seeing the photos make them more relatable to you? And if so, why?

This is something I’ve been going back and forth with since I started my blog. I write about a lot of stuff with my kids and family, but I am always hesitant to put real photos of them or myself on this blog because it’s a public medium. I do have the one small image of myself on my home page, and even that small photo was difficult for me to allow. I don’t know….I guess I feel more exposed when there are so many real photos floating around the internet, and there is a small measure of security in physical anonymity, especially since I write about personal things and experiences. And I don’t do selfies.

On the flip side of that, I can understand how it would be easier to relate to a person when you have visual cues and context to go along with a post. I know I enjoy seeing pictures on other blogs, and it always makes me feel like I’m making too big of a deal out of it on my own blog. I do post family photos on my private Facebook page, but I am very careful with security settings and I am conservative with what I post. On a blog, no matter how conservative you are, the whole world can still see it.

So what do you think? Do real pictures make a difference? Do you enjoy a blog more, or a post more if you have real pictures to help tell the story?

Thanks for your help! 🙂

Wanda Says…I have a cold, and other stuff.

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015 / Wanda / 8 Comments

Hello, world.

This isn’t a real post. Things have been crazy at my house, so I’m just checking in on Wanda and playing a little catch up.

Two weeks ago my son caught a cold, which he passed on to both me and his sister. Dan is the only member of our family that has not been sick in the past two weeks. Both kids seemed to rebound quickly, although they are still experiencing the typical lingering effects of a cold.

I am a different story. I am a hot mess.

For whatever reason, this cold virus hit me much harder than it did the kids. I can tell that I look as bad as I feel by the way my husband looks at me. His look says, “I feel so bad for you, but please stay out of my air space.” My nose is red and chapped. Skin pale. Limp hair. Dead eyes. You know the drill. My voice is gravel and my throat hurts because I’ve become a mouth breather. I’m pretty sure that when I try to sleep I sound like Darth Vader.

Sadly, life doesn’t stop for a cold or my shitty complexion. Tomorrow I have to teach 30 fifth graders how to make compost in a gardening lesson at my daughter’s school. And Friday Dan and I are having dinner with his boss. His boss, who happens to be the CEO of the entire company. Great. This dinner has been planned for a month and I can’t cancel. It doesn’t matter that my nose looks like a neon sign of germs and my pockets are stuffed with used tissues. Time to break out that tube of face spackle I bought from Sephora and work some magic!

Prior to getting sick, I was already in a funk. I know I promised to break up with depression this year, but that dirty little liar just won’t take no for an answer. When I get depressed I get behind on everything, and I have a hard time finding anything I want to write about. I’ve seen this theme floating around WordPress lately. It seems a lot of us have been battling with the big D. Could it be the time of year…like the post-holiday blues, or something? I don’t know, but I’m trying to spend some time today catching up and reading what’s been going on with everyone else in the world. That helps. It always makes me feel better when I connect with others. 🙂

Wanda Says…On the subject of Dutch Ovens and growing up with boys.

January 13, 2015 / Wanda / 16 Comments

I have two brothers.

I am the middle child of three and grew up sandwiched between two rowdy, rough and tumble boys.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how growing up with my brothers and the experiences we’ve shared has shaped my personality. Growing up in a house outnumbered by boys is not an environment where you can afford to be delicate or have a thin skin. In our household everyone had colorful, strong personalities, and it was very much an emotional and physical battleground for attention and personal space. There were three of us, so two were always ganging up on one, and being the only girl, I often got the short end of that stick.

As a child I was very gullible and believed everything my older brother told me. He once told me if I ate the crust of bread I would turn into a werewolf. I believed him and refused to eat bread crust for several weeks. He also told me that if I didn’t wear a training bra, my boobs would grow under my arm pits because the bra “trained” my boobs to grow forward. After a week of refusing to take off my training bra, even in the shower or to sleep, I had to confess to my mother my fears of having arm pit boobs. She punished my brother for his lies and I could finally sleep without having nightmares of waking up with a deformed chest. These are two small examples of how my brother liked to dupe or manipulate me, and because of his special training, I like to think as an adult that I’m more savvy when it comes to seeing through people’s bullshit.

Screw you guys.

I am desensitized to the smell of man farts and have been since I was seventeen years old. There are only so many Dutch Ovens a girl can survive until she completely loses her ability to give a shit. Great, you shit your pants next to my head and threw a blanket over me to trap the smell. Good for you big boy, can we move on now? But don’t forget to sleep with one eye open. Of course, I am now married to the one man in the entire world who doesn’t think it’s polite to pass gas in front of anyone. I believe this is Karma rewarding me for all the fart related suffering I endured as a teenager. However, I do have a four year old son, and so far he is not following his father’s example in this regard. But then again, neither is my daughter.

Male nudity doesn’t faze me, at all. When my brothers were teenagers they became more conscientious about their state of dress around me, but that didn’t stop them from engaging in typical, immature male behavior. There was enough mooning, bull dogs, flashing, pressed ham and dares to streak across the neighborhood to prevent me from ever being curious about dangly man parts.

I am not capable of being a doormat for anyone. Growing up, I had to learn to hold my ground with my brothers. We fought a lot. Sometimes with words, and sometimes physically. My mom was a single mother with three kids and she didn’t have the time or energy to be a referee for every little thing. I remember when I was maybe eight years old, my older brother would hold me down and dangle a stream of spit over my face, waiting until the last second to suck it up into his mouth. I hated this. It felt like torture. One time in particular, I had had enough and I snapped. I can clearly remember the anger and frustration over not being able to move while he pinned me to the floor and taunted me in the way only siblings can do. My anger became physical, and somehow it fueled my strength. I kicked my legs up and over his shoulders pulling him down backwards. Then I pinned him to the ground and spit right in his eye! He cried and screamed, and I felt soooooo good. I was victorious! I was David and he was Goliath and I bested him with my legs and a wad of spit! Then my mom grounded me for un-lady like behavior, so that took some of the euphoria out of my victory, but that was the last time he ever did that to me.

While growing up with my brothers could be frustrating and traumatic at times, I remember always looking up to my older brother when I was young because he knew how to do all the things my younger brother and I couldn’t do. He could work the TV and VCR. He knew what channel everything was on, and when we finally got cable he and I would sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and watch HBO and Showtime when our mom was asleep. One time, we snuck out of bed and watched A Clockwork Orange, and we both agree that movie scarred us for life. Another time, all three of us took our mom’s tape recorder and we sat in the boy’s bedroom and made a swear tape. We took turns saying swear words and recorded ourselves cussing and laughing so hard we couldn’t breath. It’s hard to believe how funny we thought the word “butthole” was. I also remember we liked playing hide and seek in the house, and on one occasion my younger brother hid in the clothes dryer. So I slammed the door closed and turned it on to get him back for wrecking my brand new yellow bicycle. It had rainbows and streamers all over it, and he wrecked it trying to jump it off a homemade ramp in the driveway. Again, I was outnumbered by boys and felt such victory in that moment! (I only let him thump around in the dryer for about ten seconds, but those ten seconds were sweet!)

Although I would have denied this as a sixteen year old, the truth is that I loved growing up with my brothers. There were cycles of bonding and revenge, maturity and immaturity that bound the three of us together. My brothers were very protective over me as teenagers, taught me how to defend myself, to be independent and take shit from no one, especially them. To this day my older brother is one of my best friends. We talk on the phone several times each week, and sometimes a few times a day.

For good or bad, Dutch Ovens or unending laughter, I wouldn’t trade my brothers or our memories for anything. 🙂

PS–My older brother called me today as I was writing this post and I told him what I was writing about. He said, “Do you remember when I used to hold you down and do the spit stream over your face?” Ahhhh, good times.

Wanda Says…Pilates is hard.

January 12, 2015January 12, 2015 / Wanda / 8 Comments

I’ve always wanted to try Pilates, but honestly, what little I’ve seen of it really intimidates me. I’ve never seen curvaceous women or people who need to lose weight doing Pilates. It’s always super sculpted women with flat and tight everything rocking those moves like it’s no big deal. It’s always left me with the impression that Pilates is one of those workouts you tackle after you’re in great shape, not when you’re trying to get into shape.

My neighbor and good friend recently suggested I attend a Pilates class with her. I wanted to go but I was afraid, not fully knowing what to expect, that I would make a complete ass out of myself. I am one of those curvaceous women you never see doing Pilates. Plus, even when you use a workout mat, when you have big boobs, laying face down on the floor and smashing the girls into an unforgiving surface is not something to look forward too. So, just to try it out in the privacy of my own home first, I got a beginners Pilates DVD so I could do a few of the workouts and really see for myself what it was all about. Let me stress, the workout I got was for beginners.

Holy workout hell!

It doesn’t look hard at first, until you try to balance on your tailbone with your arms and legs fully extended in the air. Or balance on your side and hip and lift your legs and shoulders off the ground using only your stomach muscles. That’s when shit gets real.

The core basics workout was insane. I realize my core needs work, but I couldn’t get my body to do half of what the instructor was doing. My muscles just wouldn’t respond to my brain’s command to lift my legs and my upper body off the floor at the same time, and every exercise was a variation of this move. Additionally, my lower back and tailbone are sensitive to pressure, so there is no way I can properly balance on my tailbone without experiencing pain. Even now, over an hour after finishing the workout my neck, shoulders and tailbone are still pulsing with discomfort. I’m sure I was doing it wrong….but you have to have abs of fucking steel to do these moves. In fact, hold on…I need to get an Advil.

Maybe if I found a class that stressed it was for beginners it would be better, but for now I’m going to go find a heating pad and raid my husband’s medicine cabinet for some Bengay and call it a day.

Pilates=Epic Fail.

Wanda Says…Oreos are my crack.

January 9, 2015 / Wanda / 23 Comments

I’m addicted to Oreos. These cookies are my crack.

As a rule I try to keep junk food out of the house. It’s unhealthy, and the more sugar and preservatives a food has in it, the more likely I am to want to devour it. So I don’t buy junk food as a means of self-preservation.

Today, however, in some misguided attempt to believe I had a shred of willpower in my body, I decided to buy a package of Oreo cookies for the kids. Yes, that’s right, I did it for the kids. I did not buy them because I love all things sugar and have a weakness for chocolate cookies. Not at all.

This afternoon I pulled out the cookies and thought I would just eat a couple. Within a few minutes of opening the package I realized I had eaten five cookies. Five cookies! In like, three minutes. Holy Shit! Oreos are like crack for people who have never done crack, but I think this must be what it feels like to do crack.

Oh. My. God.

I could sit down and eat this whole damn bag of cookies. I started having thoughts of hiding them and not telling the kids I bought them so I could savor them and enjoy each delicious cookie myself. They can’t appreciate these cookies like I do, so really, if I share them, then I’m just wasting them. And I refuse to waste anything this delicious.

Wait…when did I become this crazy, cookie hoarder? No, this is not who I am! This is not who I want to be!

I really do wonder if the Oreo cookie makers put small amounts of a crack-like-substance in the cookie to make you go crazy for them the second they dissolve in your mouth. Or a substance that makes you lose reason as well as your sense of time, so you can eat one cookie after the other and not realize what you’ve just done or how much you’ve consumed.

In the end, after I’d shamefully eaten eight Oreos, I pulled my shit together and put them away. Not only did I put them away, but I wrapped them in a way that would prevent me from just reaching in the cupboard to grab one more. I made it so that it would take a herculean effort for me to extract a cookie from the packaging.

But I’m still thinking about those crack cookies.

I have a problem.

I am officially adding Oreo cookies to the list of items I’m breaking up with in 2015.

Wanda Says…Happy New Year World!

January 4, 2015January 4, 2015 / Wanda / 14 Comments

Happy New Year World!!!!!!!!!

I love starting the new year with good intentions. I love the idea that everyone gets a do over. A chance to make better choices, or form a plan that somehow allows you to improve your life in some way. So it’s fitting that my first post of 2015 will be about my New Year’s resolutions.

I know what you’re thinking. How trite. How B-O-R-I-N-G. So typical. So many people make resolutions and never keep them, myself included. But I love the act of evaluating my life and the events of the previous year to set my course for the future. I love the act of making a conscious choice to stop fucking shit up.

I think the reason so many people fail at their goals for the year is that they set their expectations too high. I am also guilty of this and I can recall with painful clarity the moments over the years when my resolution failures became inevitable. That moment every January 2nd when I said to hell with it and ate the cookie, cake, dessert, wine, pizza or other fried, delicious thing that officially broke the diet I started that morning. This year I endeavor to break the mold. This year, my resolutions will be completely attainable. Low hanging fruit, so to speak, but fruit, nonetheless.

1. This year I will start my diet…..again….right after I finish eating the Godiva chocolate basket my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. It’s Godiva. I’m not sharing it with anyone. It’s mine. I’ll work on being thinner after that delicious goodness is gone. (Notice how I didn’t say I would lose weight? I just said I would start my diet again. See? Low hanging fruit).

2. This year I will do less laundry. Bryn is old enough to learn how to do her own laundry and it’s time she started pulling her weight around here. One less basket of laundry for me to wash and fold for someone else is one less week of procrastination a month. That’s huge progress for me. I can already tell it’s going to be a fabulous year!

This cat can sew better than I can.

3. This year I will learn how to sew. Bryn asked for a sewing machine for Christmas and her grandmother got her one. It’s a real sewing machine and I need to help her learn to use it. We will take a sewing class together so that I can learn alongside her and help her if she runs into trouble when she starts using her machine. This is a sacrifice on my part because I have absolutely no interest in sewing, whatsoever. But I look at it this way…….when the zombie apocalypse happens, people will need clothes when theirs get all nasty and torn with zombie warfare shit all over them, and as long as I know how to sew and make clothes, people will want to help keep me alive. It’s a survival skill.

But this is a more realistic outcome.

4. I will grow a real garden this spring and use the canning equipment my husband bought me two years ago that’s sat untouched in the garage. I’ve had a budding interest in gardening and canning for some time, and God only knows why. I can’t imagine a hobby that more clearly declares that I am officially a boring, old woman. It must be my Midwestern genes kicking in because no matter how hard I fight it, my instinct is to embrace the domestic goddess within me. My head says, “I just want to paint my nails, lose weight and go buy leather pants,” and my heart is all, “No, you need to grow vegetables in the dirt, can delicious, preservative-free food for your family and plan for your future!” (Sigh). I think the domestic goddess is winning, and last year I had some success growing tomatoes and zucchini in my container garden. The canning process still intimidates me, but again, it’s a survival skill. If I can learn to do this, I will know how to grow and preserve food when all the restaurants and grocery stores have been looted in the apocalypse and there is no food to be found.

5. I will drink more wine. Wine is good.

I stole this picture from Facebook.

6. I will attempt to curse less. Wait, what? No, scratch that. That won’t happen.

7. When my husband loads the dishwasher in a way that makes my OCD crazy, I vow that I will not rearrange everything the way that I want it. Unless he isn’t home. Then I will totally rearrange the dishes so they fit perfectly together they way the puzzle making dishwasher basket designers intended.

8. And lastly, this year I am officially breaking up with wheat, depression, family drama, Spanx, people who take themselves too seriously, and my bathroom scale. 🙂

Also, to those of you who follow my Wanda, I just want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. The past five months of blogging has been more rewarding and fun than I could have imagined. I have loved reading your blogs and learning about so many of your lives around the world. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Wanda Says…Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2014 / Wanda / 4 Comments

Merry Christmas world!!!!!!

This is the letter my kids left for Santa last night, along with his cookies and carrots for the reindeer.

I love how she waited until 8pm on Christmas Eve to write a letter to Santa with requests for specific items. (Insert eye roll here).

And this was the conversation between my husband and me after the kids went to bed….

Me: Dan, eat those cookies the kids left for Santa. You have to eat all of them. I will eat the carrots for the reindeer.
Dan: Why do you get the carrots?
Me: Because I’ve had enough sweets today. I feel like the Grinch, except instead of my heart, my ass has grown three sizes today.

Anyway, our family is enjoying a wonderful Christmas so far. Everyone slept in this morning so I got to enjoy my coffee in peace and quiet while listening to Christmas music with the dog. It was heaven. The kids woke up and loved opening their gifts. They were pretty excited despite not receiving the items detailed on the letter above.

Now that the morning flurry of activity is over, I’m thinking of my loved ones. I am thankful for the wonderful, and sometimes challenging people that I call family and friends. Something happened yesterday that really effected me in an emotional way, and that got me thinking about the meaning of Christmas and what this holiday means to me.

I love Christmas….not for the presents, parties or any of the commercial hype. I love Christmas because it represents a season of love, hope and kindness. It makes me sad that we need a designated time of year to remind us that that’s what life is really about. It’s about coming together as a community, a family, or even just as friends to be a part of something that is bigger than ourselves. It’s about giving to others, simply for the joy of it, without expectations of reciprocity. And in this day and age where selfies make up the bulk of a person’s personal photos, people spend more time with their smart phones than they do with other people, and attitudes of self-entitlement rule the world, I think that’s important to remember. Life is bigger than just you or me. Life is about all of us, and we all have to contribute something and interact with each other to make it wonderful and fulfilling.

I don’t talk about this a lot because I feel my spiritual relationship with God is private. But I am willing to share this because it’s Christmas, and maybe it will help someone else the way it has helped me. A couple of years ago I was praying. I was experiencing a lot of depression at the time and I just needed some help, some guidance. So I was praying to God and I asked him, “What is my purpose? What am I supposed to be doing with my life?”

And very clearly, a voice responded to me and said, “Be the light. You need to be the light.”

Be the light…for my husband, my children, my family and friends. Maybe even for someone I don’t know or have never met.

Merry Christmas, and I hope each and every one of you finds a way to be the light for another person.