Whoo hoo it is a new start

As I listen to all the fireworks popping in our neighborhood, I know the count down has begun. Just over four hours left until we ring in the New Year. I sure am excited to have a fresh start with a fresh outlook. It's time to evaluate what you need to learn from everything that has happened in 2018, the good and the bad. When you realize what was holding you back and having a negative effect on you JUST FLUSH IT out so you don't bring anything into the New Year,  if you want a fresh start. Happy New Year stay safe. Keep your resolutions realistic.

There are remnants everywhere

On Christmas you watch the bows being torn off the presents and tossed aside. You hear the sounds of paper being ripped so quickly that it gets shredded. Little pieces of paper fly through the air. You see the adults trying to pick up the trash as soon as it lands somewhere. As an adult they know that if they aren't paying attention a part of a new present can get accidentally thrown away. How many of you have had to dig through the Christmas trash to find something? Sometimes they don't get to the gift right away to play because they are busy playing with other toys. And that can be after you have taken out all the trash and the garbage man has already hauled it to the dump. Heck it's not just on Christmas that I have had to dig in the trash to retrieve something after I had thrown it away. I thought I had cleaned up all the paper that had been thrown about but I keep finding little dime size pieces of paper that had apparently caught a draft of wind and soared to far away places. Some pieces I found had to have fallen off someone's clothing as they went through the house. Because unless a tornado swirled them about they couldn't possibly have gotten where they are. Everytime a see a piece, a smile comes on my face as I relive the memory of their smiling faces as they opened their gifts. Curious if you leave your Christmas tree up until after New Years? I definitely am because I heard it was bad luck if you take it down before then. I am not necessarily super sticious but I see no reason to take that chance. 

Being realistic and honest with yourself can be painful

Let me start by saying that if you can't be honest with yourself, you are in trouble. It is normal and necessary at times to put on a brave front to others and assure them everything is going to be okay. But you can't always ignore what you have to do if you are going to have a positive outcome. You may think it is crazy to talk to yourself but the truth is you and you alone know the "whole truth" about the true reality of what you are facing. If you can't be honest with yourself then you have no chance of figuring out what you need to do to have a positive outcome. To determine if a person has lost their sanity or if the are legally insane is if "on their own they can make sound decisions". Key words here are "on their own". Not what someone else tells them. So if you think talking to yourself is crazy remember if you don't or can't than you have lost your sanity. With the New Year just days away it is important that you find a quiet place when you have some time to talk to yourself about where you are now, where you want to be in the future, and what you need to change to make 2019 a better year for yourself. Be honest about where you are now and be realistic on the goals you set. If you count on reaching an unrealistic goal you are just setting yourself up for failure.

Merry Christmas Eve

We are just hours away from Christmas. Soon everyone will be here and the house will be full of cheer. By the time the grandkids arrive they have opened their gifts from Santa and are ready to eat a big breakfast. The smell of the bacon greets them when they walk in the door. They sit around telling us excitedly what Santa brought them, as they are eating. Oh the joy on their faces as they describe everything in great detail, is what Christmas is all about. It is just a wonderful thing to experience. Before you know it they have eaten their whole plate of food just as their stories end. Then they realize that it is time to gather together in the living room to open the gifts we had gotten them. With a grin from ear to ear they excitedly begin opening them to see what is inside. Our gift is to be able to watch their happy faces as they tear through the paper and get a peek at what it is. We know that it is for only a short time that they are little and squeal with joy, and we don't want to miss a minute of it. We know it is family gatherings and moments like this that is the reason for the season. Merry Christmas Everyone and to all a good night

You don't have to wait

You know a year in advance that Christmas is coming. So why does everyone seem to wait until the last few days to do the shopping? The after Christmas sales are the best times to do your shopping. Everything goes drastically on sale from fifty percent off and more. You just tuck them in a closet and when you put your tree up you will also have gifts to put under it. That way you aren't out running around trying to find something to buy. And you won't have to come up with a fortune out of your budget in December to buy things that aren't in your budget. At least think about picking up a couple of nice gifts for yourself that will be  so cheap you won't feel guilty. If you are traveling for the holidays drive safely. Leave early enough that you can stop if you get too tired. Stay warm.

The jolly of Christmas

Most holidays only bring one twenty four hour period of celebration. But Christmas is enjoyed starting the day after Thanksgiving. They even give it a name, black Friday. That's around thirty days to enjoy the joy that Christmas brings. Now we are counting down the last few days. Every where you go during the Christmas season you can see and feel the jolly. If only every one could keep this feeling every day of the year, we would have World Peace. Now that all the gifts are wrapped you can sit down and relax and enjoy the festive colors that makes you feel all holly and jolly inside. Every time I walk in my front door I am greeted with all the colorful joy of Christmas. Although I am looking forward to the start of the New Year, I know it means that the Christmas season has to end. But for the next few days there is plenty of jolly to enjoy. Hope everyone has a holly jolly Christmas.

In the hustle and bustle you can forget what you even got

With Christmas just days away it's time to write a list of all the gifts you had planned to get yet hadn't gotten around to getting. Today I took my list and started on the long journey that I had ahead of me. I had so many stores to go to. They were located in three different towns. I had to plan a map of all the different places I had to go so I could do everything in order of where they were located. As the shopping began I would put each bag I had bought in the back of my van. Tucking it so hopefully no one would see it and break my window to steal it. It took me nearly five hours to check off everything on my list and finally make it home to start wrapping presents. I started with my teenage son's  video games from Game Stop. It was one of the first few places I went when I first started my journey. As I went through the bag of items I couldn't find the new eighty dollar controllers I had bought. I searched the bag three times and all around the table I was sitting at. Then I went out to my car and searched to see if it had fallen out of the bag. The employee must have forgotten to put it in the bag. So I called the store and the manager answered. She left me on hold while the employees searched all around the register but they said it wasn't at the store. I knew I paid for it and I told her I wasn't doing without what I paid for because her employee forgot to put it in the bag. She could hear the frustration in my voice. Without hesitation she told me to come back to the store and she would give me another one to replace it. I wasn't happy about having to drive back up there after just getting home but eighty dollars is a big chunk of money. After hanging up with the manager I started looking through the pile of other bags to see if I needed to hide anything before I left. And there tucked in between two fluffy plush toys for my granddaughters was the controllers I was looking for. I don't normally buy by my young grandaughters, who are still into dolls, a gift at Game Stop. But today I did and I hadn't even looked in that bag before calling the manager. I felt totally embarrassed. Now I had to call her back and apologize for being grouchy and admit that I just hadn't looked hard enough. I was so touched when it dawned on me that she was willing to replace them. I decided I would drive back up there and thank her in person for going above and beyond with a smile to make sure her customers were happy. It sure is rare to see these days. I decided to take her a box of chocolates to hopefully bring a little joy to her during this busy holiday season like the joy that she brought this grouchy old customer.

You know you are over it when you can laugh about it

When something negative is happening you sure aren't happy about it. While you are dealing with it you are so focused on it that you have tunnel vision. Which makes it nearly impossible to see anything else. After you figure out how you can tackle the problem, you begin to see everything else around you. You get back on track catching up on things that you ignored while you were focusing on what had happened. Once things get back to normal, you can JUST FLUSH IT and sit back and relax again. Although not right away, one day you will be able to look back at what had happened and smile. You will beam with pride on how well you handled what had happened. You will be able to laugh about it. And when you can laugh about it you know you are over it.

It can be pouring even on a sunny day

Although I know it happens from time to time, I am always shocked when it does. Have you ever heard of the saying "When it rains it pours"? If you have then you know it isn't talking about the weather. It means in your personal life, one negative thing after another happens. Each one is hard to deal with on it's own. But when you are dealing with several issues at the same time, it is overwhelming. Luckily I am old enough to have experienced it many times throughout my life, so I know that eventually it will stop "raining". Why everything happened at the same time or how it even could have happened will always be a mystery. And life is just as unpredictable as the weather is. It just is what it is and whatever it is you just have to deal with.

It depends

What you will do depends on what you can do. You can still probably do what you want, you just might have to find a different way to do it. Keep in mind that if you can't do exactly what you had wanted to do, you can still do what you can do. Sometimes in life things happen for a reason. And sometimes it is because you weren't supposed to do it. You may think it was what was best for you. But it wasn't meant to be. Being able to accept the change is the only way to be able to do your best with what you got to deal with. You don't always get what you want but you can get what you need. One day you will look back at the moment and understand that if it had not happened then you wouldn't be where you are or who you are today. Just go with the flow and enjoy the ride. You may not like the change but a change may be exactly what you need.

Don't forget

 When I have several important things to get accomplished that day, I make a list of what I need so I don't forget anything. But ninety percent of the time I forget to bring my written list. I try to reassure myself that I will remember everything, after all I just wrote it so it was still fresh on my mind. I go over all the errands that I had to get done in my mind. I stop by the first errand closest to my house. Then as I was again on my way I suddenly couldn't remember what it was that was so important to get done. I kept feeling like there was something really important. Something that I had forgotten before to do that I then put at the top of my list. But no matter how hard I tried I could only think of my normal weekly errands. Over and over again as I did other errands, I would have this nagging feeling that there was something unusual that I had needed to do for a while  but had kept forgetting to do. I had to do what I could remember and hope that the nagging feeling I was having was not about something important. After I was done I would go home and see what I had wrote on the list. Unfortunately when I saw what I had forgotten, again. I was shocked that I couldn't remember it because it was very important and time sensitive. So I grabbed my keys and went to go do it. I was going straight to do it and nothing else so I wouldn't forget again. Later I was thinking about how on Earth I couldn't think of something so important. And annoyed with myself that I constantly forgot to take the list I made so I wouldn't forget anything. Then it dawned on me that I never forget my phone so if I just sent myself a text of my list I would always have my list and I would not forget to do what was on my list.

What you see is what you get

You may not see everything at a quick glance. Which is why you should look at things from all the angles. If you only read the first chapter of a book, you will have no idea what the book is about. If you read the first chapter and the last chapter, you will have no idea what led to the outcome. You will have to read all of the book to really understand the whole story. I recently watched a friend destoy her relationship with a friend over absolutely nothing. She thought she had to after learning about an incident that happened. But when she later heard all the facts surrounding the incident, she realized that her friend did nothing wrong. Unfortunately she reacted so harshly that her friend decided that she just didn't want a friend who would throw away their friendship over something she should have known she would never do. Although her friend knew she wouldn't do something like that, she didn't get the whole story before she reacted. Once you react you can't take it back. You can say your sorry but once you reacted, the damage is done. It is a reminder to make sure you get all the facts before you react. That's like running out of gas in your car and you buy a new engine just because it won't start. If you would take the time, you would notice the gas gauge was on empty.  Before you make a decision get all the facts or you may make an uneducated guess that you have to live with. Once you react the decision is made.