Lantern Tree

We went out for a stroll last night, soaking in the holiday awesome, when I stumbled across this:

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A tree decorated with an assortment of lanterns.

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Love

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Love

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Love this effect.

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Happy Chanukah. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.

My World Cup of Father’s Day Memories

Oh, how I wish I had a picture of my dad in his old soccer referee uniform. The one that hadn’t fit for more than fifteen years, but he put it on anyways when his team needed a rally.

My dad had a way of diving in and making our interests his own. When we got into theater, he started quoting Shakespeare, and kept doing so long after we had moved on to other pursuits. Football? Football!? Once my brothers started playing football, my dad became a famous football fan in our town – the guy with the moose gooser – a cannon he lugged from game to game and fired off when ever the Palmer High School Football Team, the Palmer Moose, scored a point.

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And yes, when we started playing soccer, he got into that sport as well. He helped with coaching city league teams, and eventually trained and certified to become a city league soccer referee. My dad wasn’t just a sports fan, he referred to himself as an “athletic supporter.” Of course, he couldn’t say that without snickering.

Years later we had all moved on, but Dad still quoted Shakespeare and dragged the moose gooser to all the Palmer games. And when the US Women’s team made it to the last round of the worlds cup a decade or so ago (And WON!), my dad was right there cheering them on. I went to visit my parents and found him dressed up in that old, fifteen years too small soccer referee uniform watching the game and yelling at the TV screen. But it didn’t stop there, he even flashed a yellow card at the screen.

I miss you dad.

What makes the dad in your life different?

Happy New Year!

2009 turned out to be an awesome year, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2010 turns up.

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Best wishes to all of you for a peaceful, enlightening, joyous, and healthy 2010!

Resolutions: getting organized

Resolutions: getting organized

Over the years, I’ve made resolutions and succeeded, made resolutions and failed miserably, and I’ve even taken the bah-humbug route and refused to make resolutions at all. While there is something appealing about the bah-humbug method, I have come to appreciate the time out each year to stop and think about where I’ve been, where I’m going, and the best next steps to get me where I want to be.

I want to be organized.

Lack of organization costs us so much time and money, and we have none of either to spare. We may be dirt poor college students and every dollar we spend is borrowed right now, but time is the element about which I am most concerned. I have less time than money, and I have no money. How is it that the people around me are constantly trying to figure out things to do with their time? They offer me suggestions on how to pass my time as though they’re doing me a favor. Thanks, I got it covered. They worry I might be bored. Sorry, boredom is a luxury, and I just don’t have time for it.

And that “Sleep when they sleep” piece of (ahem) advice people offer up to new mothers – that’s a cruel joke. If I slept when my daughter slept, I’d never get my bills paid, toilet scrubbed, homework done, or fight the daily battles with our health insurance company – which we pay for out of our student loans so we are also paying interest on the exorbitant sums they extract from us before refusing to cover preapproved expenses.

Where was I? oh, yeah, getting organized.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to get organized before. I have gone down that road many times. I actually enjoy the process of getting organized, especially when I have the time – and money to spend on little organizing toys like pretty file folders and label making machines.

This time, I want to take a different approach. In the past, the road to organization involved adding complication, and invariably, a long list of rigid rules. Not only did I have trouble getting buy-in from my husband on all those rules, it didn’t take me long to rebel either. The cure was worse than the disorganization.

So how do I do this? How do I get organized in a manner that doesn’t turn our lives into a rule ridden hell? How do I combine organization with simplifying?

I don’t have much in the way of answers just yet. We are going to start with downsizing. We are going to get rid of a lot of stuff. Here’s the kicker. Going through stuff (especially when making value judgments on what to keep) takes time, as do other aspects of organizing.

How do I make sure that the act of getting organized does not create processes that take up more time than they save? How do I make sure I don’t get bogged down while going through our stuff? That’s a tough one for me. I’m always finding something fascinating like an old year book, or journal, or photos, that distract me from the task at hand.

Has anyone written a book on organizing for people with ADD? I think that might come in handy. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to draw my attention back away from the distractions, and focus on a game plan for getting our home, schoolwork, school financing, writing, medical expenses, and everything else organized.

What are you working on?

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Dear Gem – Month 9

As I am writing this letter, we have all the lights in the house turned out except for the Christmas decorations, and Christmas movies playing on the TV. It’s two nights before Christmas, and you’re making your rounds of the living room. You check out the tree, then play with a toy, look at a book, come say hi to me, watch TV for a while, and you are just so excited about all of it. Your exuberance is infectious, we find ourselves getting excited over the mundane when viewing the world through your eyes. Christmas is especially magical.

I’ve always loved Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday. But there were years when I was not filled with the holiday spirit. In fact this is the first time we put up our tree in the past three years. Two years ago, I wasn’t in the mood, in fact I had a rather humbuggy attitude because it was right after your Grandpa (my Daddy) died, and that made me mad.

Last year I was pregnant with you, we were broke, and there was a horrible winter storm that blocked our car in, so we couldn’t go get our tree and decorations out of storage. But your Daddy gave me a wonderful Christmas gift that year. While I was napping on Christmas Eve, he trekked through the snow to the nearest open store and used our last few dollars to buy a pack of Christmas lights, and a couple other little items. I woke up to an improvised Christmas tree, with the lights wrapped around our easel, and decorated with a tiny stocking, a little stuffed animal, and chocolate. It was absolutely beautiful to me.
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Sometimes it’s easy to forget the meaning of Christmas when you’re surrounded with decorations, presents, and superficial familial niceties. Sometimes it’s those lean years, when you have so little that the beauty of Christmas reveals itself. In fact, this might sound mean, but I hope you have lean times. It is the lean times that teach you to appreciate what you have. They also teach you management skills that few of us learn otherwise. But mostly, I want you to experience the lean times because they magnify joy and beauty if you let them. These are the moments where you learn to see through the superficial, and appreciate what’s real and meaningful.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas this year, although I’m quite certain you wont remember much of it. I hope you keep that wide eyed wonder over the years to come. Don’t let yourself become jaded. Choose joy. And as far as that Santa Clause guy is concerned, he’ll grow on you over time. In fact it wont be long till you will look forward to seeing him.
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Merry Christmas Baby Girl.

Love,

Mommy

Read more Letters to Gem.