Winter break – that magical, mystical time between holidays when schools are closed, work slows and I can think, dream, breathe and relax. This Christmas Winter Storm Elliott shut down most of North America, changed travel plans and lives, some tragically.
When did we start naming winter storms?
I thought we only did that for Hurricanes. Winter Storm Elliott. Sheesh.
Makes me think of Elliott, our school bus driver; Elliott carried my sister on and off the bus after she broke her leg. Elliott would turn the bus around if we forgot something important, like a slipper or class project. Elliott would loft a stern look and a raised eyebrow at the “big kids” in the back and that was enough to settle them down. Elliott was a constant from my childhood. He’s a local farmer who loves a fast Polka, his wife & family, curling and a good pie. I’ll bet he wonders about winter storms being named, too.
Thinking ahead to 2023, and dreaming up new goals, I was gob smacked by something: a lack of magazines. I usually buy a stack of magazines every December as I prepare to create a new Vision Board. There aren’t many now. A few collectible types but not the “usual.” I guess everything is virtual now. Sad.
Some of my past vision boards
Enjoying my time off work with few plans except reading, walking, sleeping, and not talking much. My professional role is verbal, with so many calls all day, every day. Just a few days of NOT talking gives me a powerful reset.
A new year is upon us. I’m leaning in, looking forward, dreaming new dreams and setting new goals.
I’m cleaning out the clutter, giving thanks for the good, releasing habits, clothes and people that no longer fit.
So .. hubbs and I bought a house – a new house – and what we hope is our forever house.
When we moved into our current house, this was the only one we looked at. I knew, instinctively, that this house would become home. And it has. I don’t need to move, I was/am content here. But Hubbs never was. I loved the neighborhood, and “my” trees on “my” walks. He has been “meh.” I love the yard, and the big ole trees out back. He looked out and saw work to be done. I loved our easy access to things, he finds it too busy. So about 6 months ago, he started with, “we should take a look around” which, in our marriage translates to, “help me figure out how to look up real estate.” 🙂
I resisted.
I didn’t really want to move.
I love the view from my kitchen sink.
I love how the morning sun comes up over the patio and the western sun drifts over my reading chair.
I love the mature trees, the abundance of birds, and my walks.
But I agreed with him that our home, while warm and inviting, can feel small when the kids and grands are over. There are lots of rooms but not all together; we end up with some of us in the kitchen or game room or outside, but there’s only one room that has us all together and that can feel tight, too.
So what do you do when one half of the partnership wants to make a major change?
You agree to “take a look.”
And so we looked … online … and, over and over again, searches netted the same results. Older, larger, two-story houses that needed work. A lot of work. Work and updates that take money and labor – and in a pandemic with supply chain issues and rising prices. Add “low inventory” + a bidding war and suddenly our house was looking pretty great! See we did all major updates before we moved in – paint, new floors, new kitchen, new furnace, water heater, roof, appliances, and later, we even moved the laundry upstairs and added on. We realized our house is like new compared to the “inventory.”
So – what to do?
the market is crazy!
Expand the search.
I’ve been working remotely for 2 years. When/if we go back to the office, I’m not going to be there much, as my new assignment has me covering 2 states. And before the Pandemic I was in the office maybe 2 days a week, max. When we bought this house part of its appeal was proximity to the office/highway etc. That was 6 years ago, and things have changed. Oh, how they’ve changed!
A funny thing happened once that search expanded, I began seeing new cottage-style homes pop up. Brand new – as in under construction new. Stand-alone condos in a Homeowners Association (HOA). These are first-floor living homes, like we enjoy now, but in a brand new house with an open floor plan, which we DON’T have now.
I showed Hubbs the results and, not surprisingly, he recoiled at the “condo” idea. My response – coming from the one who doesn’t need/want/desire to move, was “you need to do the math.” He is our math guy – the finance guy – the planner, financier, “run the numbers” guy. He already contracts someone to do the lawn and snow removal + we pay separately for trash pickup, water, etc. Yes we’d have a big house and not much yard but which part of the yard do we use? The patio. Neither of us enjoy gardening (I pulled enough weeds in my Mom’s half-acre garden to cover me for a lifetime – and so did he).
Back to “I’m not moving just to move – but I will move if we’re smart about it and that means – a new, bigger house with an open floor plan, less maintenance and near our kids.”
That’s the part I left out — youngest boy & his wife live in the town where the condos are located. Another part I left out — the town is Hubbs’ hometown. In fact, the field where the new subdivision is being built is one he and his best friend played in as boys; the hill across the street, behind the Lutheran church? That was “their” sledding hill. He could walk to his child hood home if he chose to; we could walk to our sons home if we chose to.
So … over Christmas break, we took a drive by “just to see.” A few days later, we toured a spec house being framed and, the following week, we signed a purchase agreement. What started as his idea became my idea, too. Sometimes you just have to widen your search.
Near my home desk is my 2022 vision board, which I see every day. Themes for this year include:
Community
Small town
Namaste-healthy
Daily walks
Books
Happy home, family time
Good living
Explore new ideas/places/ things
Follow spirit nudges
Dream it, do it.
Things have a way of working out as they should and now, I’m excited to say, we’re moving. What was his idea is now mine, too.
September brings many changes, not the least of which is the arrival of Fall colors. But even more exciting, here in my neck of the woods, is the arrival of two important happenings: crystal clear blue skies and low(er) humidity. Ahh ~ bring on happy smiling skies, outside walks, Breck-girl hair and comfortable sleeps.
Every year I declare Fall as my favorite season: The colors, the smells, the tastes – yep – it’s my favorite. It’s the one season I missed more than any other when we lived down south. In Texas, the seasons were: hot, hotter, surface-of-the sun hot, and slightly less hot. I loved many things about living in Texas but always, always I longed for Fall.
“Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.” [Indian Summer]” ― John Howard Bryant
Sometimes I sleep in on the weekends ~ I still wake early and usually I get up. But sometimes, like today, I do “tuck and roll” if only for a little while. I did so today, and with great delight, dreamed of Mom. I was back in her farm kitchen and she was teaching me how to make bread. I was an impatient teen, not paying as close of attention as I should have. She had something to teach me and I listened. But not well. When I awoke, the dream felt like a visit. And even though I don’t bake or eat bread now, perhaps the lesson was in the listening.
“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” ― Laurie Colwin
I’ve been catching up on past episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown.” ~Sigh. I’m late to his party. He was such a scamp, so much fun, with that wicked smile and sense of humour/adventure. If only he’d known it.
“I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.” ― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
As the grand-kids circled their favorites in the Toys-R-Us flier recently, youngest boy posed a serious question: “Should we really be encouraging all that?”
He wondered about kids getting their hopes up only to not have the big guy in red come through. They’ve been through so much, he said, his eyes saddened.
My response, ” Kids need to dream.”
As a girl, I remember the much-anticipated arrival of the Sears Wish Book. My sisters and I fought over who got it first – oldest sister always won, middle sister and I shared. We weren’t allowed to “dog ear” pages; instead we were encouraged to write down item numbers and page references so Mom could share our finds with Santa.
So what if I pored over walnut jewelry boxes with little ballerinas that danced when the lid lifted? So what if I was a girl without jewelry?
So what if the outfits I coveted would not have fit my gangly 12-year-old body? So what if the corduroy jacket was impractical in -20F temps? So what?
I spent hours looking through the toys, the fashions, the luxurious velvet robes, the gift sets, and the gifts under a certain price. Reading, reading, reading. Touring the pages, I learned what items were where. By the time the holiday arrived, I was a Wish Book Tour Guide.
I was a realistic child; I knew I wasn’t going to receive everything I’d referenced but part of the fun – the magic if you will – was the idea that I could. Part of the fun – a big part of the fun – was the anticipation.
No, kids needs to dream. Kids need to ooh and ahh and wonder. Kids need magic and so do I.
What do you dream about? Do you remember the Sears Wish Book? Is it wrong to encourage kids to wish for things?
Growing up in a farm family of five kids we not only rode in the back of a truck, we drank from the hose and the tap down at the barn. We lived in a house with lead paint, climbed trees, jumped off barns, tied a toboggan to the back of the snowmobile and let ‘er rip, rode our ponies bareback and more.
I remember being around 12 and thinking it would be cool to smoke a cigarette – ick – glad that habit never stuck and no, I never smoked more than 1 or 2 puffs of it. Cough! Gag! Sputter! Bet you’ll never guess our hiding spot while we tried this out? The hayloft. Dry as tinder – surrounded by bales – and it made perfect sense at the time -but I shudder about that one now.
I also remember swimming in a fast moving river, skating on a (mostly) frozen pond, snowmobiling by moonlight, mowing the lawn in flip flops and running quickly through the bull’s pasture.
We did it all and lived to tell the tale My kids have only done a few of these things and the grands, even less. Somehow I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
The freedom I grew up with gave us opportunities to make decisions for ourselves – good and bad. We learned the consequences of our actions. We saw what can happen when things go terribly wrong. We saw what can happen when … they don’t.
When my brothers and sisters and I reminisce about these adventures, Mom just shakes her head and covers her ears.
Google.images.com
How about you? Did you survive … or thrive? What was the last thing you did that made you feel like a kid again?
Yep, it’s back. Random Five Friday. Why? It’s random – it’s easy – it’s fun. Here we go.
1. Portobello mushrooms. Why haven’t I tried these before now? Oh, they’ve been around, but I’d poo-poohed them as new age/hippie-dippy food. Not so, my friends. Sauteed with Bok Choy & other veggies + a splash of teriyaki sauce = a chewy, crunchy and tasty dinner. Yum.
… These are regular mushrooms; I got wise AFTER this dish was made
2. Hair. When I get up every day, one side of my hair looks like it went to a party, partied too hard, and fell into bed. The other side looks like it stayed in, balanced the budget, and read books. And … the sides take turns. I’d like to know what this is all about.
3. Daylight. There’s more of it. We’ve turned the corner, peeps. When I leave the office at night, it’s not as dark as it was. Driving home in twilight feels like we’re emerging from winter’s tunnel. Ahh.
4. Permission. My regular readers know that I ventured off to my favorite bookstore last week and emerged with a bag of delights. I started reading a highly acclaimed book the next day and … meh.. I just couldn’t get into it. I either wasn’t in the mood or the story simply wasn’t that compelling. I put the book back in the bag and chose another. It was that easy and it’s taken me 50 years to be OK with doing so.
getting older has its advantages 🙂
5. Something I’ve noticed lately is how much we talk about sleeping. It’s a safe topic, one you can reference at the water cooler, “Didn’t get my rest last night” or “Boy, I slept great last night.” There’s hardly ever an in-between.
Then I read this and thought … man, this is it. This, my friends, is truth:
I invite you to join me in something I’m calling the Adequate-Sleep Life-Enhancing Experimental Project (ASLEEP). The requirements for membership are simple: we sleep until we aren’t tired, whenever possible. And I mean WHENEVER POSSIBLE, as in, if you show up at your best friend’s wedding tired, you take a pillow and sleep through the ceremony. Better yet, don’t show. Man up. Stay in bed. – Martha Beck
paws up!
How about you? Discovered any delights lately? Does your hair travel to far-off adventures without you? Are you seeing more daylight in your days? What have you given yourself permission to do? When’s the last time you felt rested?
I woke to an unfamiliar sound today: that of raindrops at the windowsill. Not a lashing and barely even really a storm, just a gentle autumn rain softly coming down.
Hitting the snooze button, I rolled over and smiled my way into another 10 minutes of slumber.
Because such a sound only invites more dreaming, don’t you think?
:: image from Pinterest ::
“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.” – Langston Hughes
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How about you? Is it raining in your neck-of-the woods?
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