May this Christmas end the present year on a cheerful note and make way for a fresh and bright New Year.
May your Christmas sparkle with moments of love, laughter and goodwill, and may the year ahead be full of contentment and joy.
The gift of love. The gift of peace. The gift of happiness. May these be yours at Christmas.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
~Albert Camus
People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
Anton Chekhov
Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
And the grinch, with his grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
~Dr. Seuss
I believe so whole-heartedly in the above piece from the infamous Grinch. Pause for a moment and think what it is you can do to give that isn't tangible.
May your December be filled with sparkles.
I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can only love one person at a time - just one, one, one. So you begin. I began - I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up forty-two thousand...The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family, the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin - one, one, one.
~Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Well wishes of a Happy Thanksgiving to my friends just south of the border today.
May you enjoy good food, great company and many thankful thoughts.
The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.
Whatever I do, I hope it's quality, I hope it's something that's class.
I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.
~All quotes by Garth Brooks
(how I'd love to catch his Vegas show)
Does it ever. While I'm no where near a music connoisseur, I will listen to just about anything and I find this spills over nicely into my flow of life.
In any spare moment I can swindle, I'm buried in my studies. Life is busy and finding a balance is hard. The pursuit of any designation requires determination, perseverance and some mad study skills. Add to that a busy household, two active kidlets, a hubby and the dog and it's a recipe for this mamma to lose most of her mind.
The Study Music Project created this play list which I find helps me zone in. When I hop on the one-track-mind-train into the books, this music blocks out the noise around me and sets me up in the study zone. It's also an nice play list for so many other occasions. Maybe you're an artist needing something with a soft flow or a writer who hears unwritten words in the melody. Perhaps you're hosting a few people for dinner and want something in the background. It also works if you've got a friend coming for tea. Grab a book and curl up in a cozy chair. The potential for this play list is endless.
I hope you enjoy.
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
~Alfred Tennyson
The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.
~Author Unknown
The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the of your own arm.
~Fred Dehner
It was a dark night. The air was crisp with a creepy feeling. Goblins, ghouls, zombies and the odd zebra were on the prowl. Mixed in was Rookie, the super dog, and Grandpa (just in case). All leashed up and away we went, an odd bunch for sure.
These two not-quite-monsters were troopers and Rookie was great. Grandpa took it all in with a sparkle in his eye that sent me back 20 years to when I was one of those almost-monsters dashing about. I only hope I was as gentle to my sister as my son was to his. Trick or treat mixed with a healthy dose of please and thank yous brought in a couple bags full of loot.
But see, I'm not big on the whole Halloween bit. I dodge horror movies like the plague and have been known to jump at the site of my shadow. My overactive imagination affords me a very generous dose of terror thankyouverymuch. So, at the first chance, I dodged the boo.
Near the end of our group adventure, I split away with my dogphew. He needed some good ground pounding. We walked fast. I can concoct this story or that about why but the truth is, I was nervous. My shadow was, after all, following us. My arms pumped the air with determination, my legs fought fierce and my knee screamed. While it has healed from the surgery I had 10 months ago, I'm not sure it has actually recovered. I pushed on, knowing the experience would be good for both the dog and my mind. As we rounded the bend on the home stretch, we picked up the pace. It was a run home.
Up the front steps and inside, he dashed for his dish, tongue hanging and slopping up water like it was going out of style. I gasped and heaved falling just shy of sharing with him. My legs burned. They felt raw. I paced slow, scared to sit thinking that perhaps stopping would make it worse. Before too long, the burn subsided and the jello set in. Mush was all that was left in my legs.
Much later that night I was laying in bed. As I slowly unwound from all the day offered, I kept coming back to the feeling after my walk/run. My head was clear, my heart was calm. The light bulb sparked and illuminated. I might have found another trick to tuck away in my life toolbox. I might be beginning to understand what the appeal is to running.
A balmy 10C (50F) here today. It's hard to think that the forecast includes words like "flurries" for the weekend.
November is off to a smooth start. Here's what I'm striving for this month:
It doesn't seem over-the-top but given the schedule I'm working with, it's going to be an adventure for sure. All right, Movember November, I'm with you here. Let's roll!
When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
'tis near Halloween.
~Author Unknown
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
~Emily Dickinson
When black cats prowl and pumpkins gleam,
May luck be yours on Halloween.
~Author Unknown
Over the weekend, we went to a celebration to welcome a sweet new wee one. The children played, the men watched football and the ladies gathered together cooing over the little man who slept soundly through it all. Intimate, serene, and comforting are three words that immediately come to the surface when I try and describe it.
As pictures have popped up sharing peeks into the afternoon, one very obvious pattern shone across the faces of everyone that held him - calmness. The new mom showed all the telltale signs of such, tired eyes, exhausted from the dramatic changes in schedule, the tenderness that postpartum affords us but she, too, radiated calm.
Maybe that's just what babies were meant to do.
That right about sums up my Thanksgiving Long Weekend. Despite the extreme winds today, the weather here on the prairies is over the top amazing. Sorry all my South friends, I'm soaking up every second because I know they are fleeting moments. It won't be long before stale grey skies stare down on us and white blankets our world.
Tonight is cramming in everything I possibly can in preparation for my economics exam tomorrow. I scheduled it. There is no one but me responsible for the Saturday of a long weekend choice. I am feeling OK but the jitters are creeping in. One more night and this part is done. One more...
Hockey! Hockey! Hockey! Yell it from the rooftops! Let the whole world hear. Welcome home, NHL. More on this later.
Monday will round out the weekend with a house full of chatter and a table warm with food. Family is what you make and it's time to stop and remember to be thankful for everything and everyone we have.
We are all a little weird, and when we find someone who's weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
~Dr. Seuss
Happy anniversary to my love!
This morning started out like junk. Before 8AM I had managed to explode an entire bottle of coffee creamer, the really sticky kind, in my bag. It leaked all over my textbook, marinaded my cell phone, wrecked my day planner, soaked my keys and ruined my course notes binder. To add insult to injury, it leaked all down my pant leg and absorbed into my sweater. Because I'm not close enough to work to run home, I sat all day in the mess.
Mid-morning, I received a very disheartening email. The words written therein hurt. I usually try and fluff off the negative like water on a duck's back or take it in and grow from it. Today, it didn't work. Follow up said email with a phone call that was none too pleasant and let's chalk today up as one that just needs to be over.
Let's toast to a better day tomorrow.
...my sweet son will walk into his classroom fresh and ready to start a new year.
...I will wonder for a moment or two why August disappeared and how it's taken me eight September days to really understand this.
...I might add laundry to my long list of things that need to get done.
...I will read.
...music will fill my heart and soul.
...I will walk a step slower.
...I will wait patiently for my packages.
...I may finish the report that I've been much too lazy about getting to.
Let's tread lightly.
Please go slow.
There's no need to rush.
And do keep your voice low.
It's slow going for me today.
One foot in front of the other.
One step and then another.
Do be careful.
Please be safe.
I'll be back in the morning.
A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.
~Arnold Newman
The important thing is not the camera but the eye.
~Alfred Eisenstaedt
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.
~Ansel Adams
