Okay, mostly fruit, but veggies too. Fruits are all natural, delicious, and healthy sweet treats. Sadly, apples, although plentiful on this apple orchard, are one of my least favorite fruits. Yet they are beautiful to photograph.
May your holiday include healthy treats.
Kindness feels underrated in recent years. Yet the world would stop spinning without it. I wouldn’t be able to go on. It comes from family, friends, and strangers every day of my life as a driving force for good in the world.
It is also just as vital to my survival to give kindness as well as to receive it. It makes my life brighter when I do something for someone else out of kindness; no expectation that it is returned, but perhaps hoping it is passed on. Acts of kindness give life value and purpose.
I believe that old addage: Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. For me, the kindness leads to beauty. There’s nothing like seeing a tired cashier’s face light up because you gave them a kind word, or a man laugh because a woman held the door open for him.
May kindness be part of your every day life, both the giving and the receiving with an open heart.
I am a titch OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Yet I know that life is not perfect. We are no longer in the Garden of Eden, so things go awry. Sometimes the best times are in the imperfections.
This was in a dressing room at Caroline’s Consignment in Portage. It was a wonderful reminder that I don’t have to be perfect, nor is it expected.
To do our best and be ourselves: that is the expectation. And doing our best? Not every day or all the time. We need down time in order to be able to do our best. Sabbath, we need sabbath: rest, calm, peace.
May you find sabbath, an hour a day, a day a week, or a full weekend a month. Do what you need to rest and refresh so that you can enjoy this wonderfully imperfect life.
Life Does Not Have to be Perfect to be Wonderful
I believe hope is a powerful and necessary tool to survive in this world. I recently needed to make a decision, and until the moment I made it, I was jittery, anxious, and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Making the decision in the vein of hope freed me. I was instantly at peace. If I fall, at least I tried.
As much as I wish peace and joy for others, I don’t experience as much as I’d like for myself. But perhaps that makes it all the more genuine and treasured.
Wishing you peace and joy in every day. May you never be without hope.
Marshall is one of hundreds of small cities in the USA. I thoroughly enjoy this little town with antique and craft shops. More recently even a pet supply store and a scrapbooking shop. There’s something beautiful and enchanting to me about towns like this: Where everybody knows your name, and most shops put out a bowl of water for dogs in the summer.
The first half of my life I had a conflict getting my hair cut. I enjoyed getting it cut, but I’d never know what it would look like after. I’ve always had thin hairs and a lot of them with numerous cowlicks. Everyone wanted to cut my hair where ever we went, but I couldn’t make it look nice at home. I just don’t style it well. And no one believed me when I explained this. They always gave me a style detailed cut, and I’m a wash and go kind of girl.
Then I struck gold half of a lifetime ago: I met Sean. My hair guy. He’s the bomb. He knows where my cowlicks are. He knows how to make my bangs straight. So did my dad, but my dad and I could only do my bangs well; not the rest. So I quit getting it cut. I didn’t have my hairs grow down to my waist because I liked it long. I let it grow because I couldn’t find anyone to cut it without making me look like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals.
I met Sean because I worked with his wife. She is also a treasured friend. I am so blessed by their family. We’ve been friends for more than two decades, and I know my life is richer for having them and their value system in it. Never mind that my hair looks good most of the time (when I remember to get it cut before I lose my gourd and wack my bangs inappropriately).
For me, a hair cut it vital time with a good friend. May we all have friends so good for so long.
Office Supplies give me the illusion that I am organized and in control. Perhaps this is why I enjoy traditional scrapbooking. There are so many supplies similar to an office: cutting systems, pens and markers galore, adhesive in so many forms, stickers in every shape and size, and papers everywhere! Yep, I’m hooked. Which reminds me, I’m a hooked on crochet too. That has fun tools too.
These are also from January in Shipshewana. So glad the lights were still up to enjoy. My preference is to keep the lights up until St. Patty’s Day. It keeps the winter’s chill away.
(Wait, is that Santa’s fanny?)
These are photos from Shipshewana around the Blue Gate. Kerrie and I had dinner there in January, and we found laughter in addition to lights.
This month was a whirlwind of activity in so many aspects of my life. It is a month filled with joyous birthdays of family and friends, while it is also the month in which my niece Erin died in 2005. There were ups and down with my personal and work life, as well as with health, faith, family, and friends. Yet the thing this month that has me bursting with love: people reaching out to check on me.
My pastor, colleagues, my friend of the most years, other treasured friends, family, and church family have reached out to ask if I am okay. At times, the answer is “no”, while it is usually and mostly a “yes”. The answer isn’t what matters. The reaching out is what filled this month with overwhelming love and gratitude.
Most of the time I am living in gratitude for being single. My siblings and I haven’t had much luck in the romance department, and I am often grateful not to be in a poor relationship. But this month, I have no idea why, I actually think of the possibility of being in love with someone. A good man, kind and generous, and to be in partnership with for life. I don’t regret that I haven’t had this thus far, and I certainly don’t expect it. However, I feel like it might be possible. I have no data or knowledge or experience to tell me this would be true, just a new and unusual feeling. Maybe it’s from watching too many Hallmark movies.
As for Hallmark movies and crime dramas, I am teaching our semi-feral kitties to enjoy them. I pray one day we are all one happy kitty family with four loving kitties that get along more than not. Until then, I treasure my time alone with Poppy and Willow, and I treasure my Joy kitty’s company when I’m not with the semi-feral sweeties. Of course, there’s Merry, my mom’s kitty. At the same time, I’m keeping my brother in prayer as he weighs getting a new dog while still missing terribly his dog Rufus. Rufus was nearly 16 years old and he’d been with us for over 15 of those years. That big shepherd/chow/who-knows-what mutt was loved by many, especially the apple customers. My heart goes out to all missing a furry friend who has gone to heaven to await our arrival.
I am so grateful for the activities of this month. It began with minor surgery to prevent migraines. The procedure will prevent them for the majority of a year, but the healing can take up to a full month, and it is quite painful for the first several weeks. The freedom of migraines from all but weather related (or failing to read labels properly) is well worth this one month a year. Because of this, I spent my birthday quietly in my cat cave with one friend. We both needed that time to escape the world and watch some lovely kitties become comfortable around us feline friendly humans. It was a good day.
The following weekend, my mom and I took the circle tour around Lake Michigan (this is over 1,000 miles). We went through Indiana, Illinois, and spent our first night in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We didn’t see much of it, but mom enjoyed reminiscing about where her family had lived in Chicago as our journey began.
The next day we headed straight up to see my great niece Nicole, her dad, and his girlfriend Heather. Nicole looked very tired, but she was clearly delighted to give us a tour of her campus. Dinner with everyone was a historic bar at Bill’s recommendation, and burgers that were spectacularly tasty. The French fries were also remarkably delicious. I rarely eat so many! In my fry coma, they went back south, while my mom and I drove north to Copper Harbor – the top of the Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior. We again didn’t see much of the town, but we enjoyed an adorable cabin and the best hotel room bed I’ve experienced to date (and I stay in hotels for approximately six work trips per year (happy 10th anniversary in this job to me)).
The following morning, we drove back to Houghton to spend time with Nicole again. Nicole, mom, and I enjoyed a boat ride on The Portage which did a circle turn in Lake Superior. It was a pleasant day and Nicole was refreshed and enjoyed the ride. After a good hug good-bye, we headed south for dinner in St. Ignace at Jose’s Cantina (excellent meal again at Bill’s suggestion) and over the bridge to our hotel in Gaylord for the night. The next morning brought us on home to Kalamazoo. No one was harmed on this journey (at least two small herds of deer, and about 20 geese were not hit even though they were in the road and gaping at me a little too long).
Work has had a few more downs than ups lately, but with the best of colleagues, they are ensuring that I am well. I am blessed with many colleagues who make this world a better place. And our clients are pretty awesome too. Their kindness can be overwhelming. At the same time, a treasured colleague moved into another position at work. She was an absolute delight to work with, and our office is not only empty without her presence, but hollow without our daily chats about our work, our clients, and life in general. There’s a hole in my work heart. I pray her new colleagues see her as the blessing she is, and I pray that the one to follow her here is as kind of heart and wise of mind.
All of my chinny chin chin hairs are gray. Granted, there are like 6 of them, which of course appeared in high school, as if I wasn’t already awkward and gawky enough. They were mostly blond, and then they turned brown. In recent years, they have slowly each in turn become gray. I find it funny because my brother is 18 years my senior and barely has any gray, but if I were a guy, I’d probably have a gray beard. And I already have that lovely gray highlighting in my bangs from the Good Lord … which also started appearing in high school. It’s funny the gray is so slow on me, when I think I’d like a gray doo.
A friend’s father passed away. One week we’re having a nice lunch commiserating about the silly things our parents do to keep us on our toes and noticing that her dad is slowing down a bit. The next week he was hospitalized and passed on within 24 hours. He was 90, but when you love someone, no amount of time is ever enough. Keeping her and all who have lost loved ones recently in heartfelt prayers.
What a full month! But let’s not forget my loves: Joy, Merry, Willow, and Poppy. Our Pastor has been speaking on rest and renewal. The time I spend each evening hoping to tame Willow and Poppy is my haven. Just being with them, a few Hallmark movies, and slowing down to pet them often is precious time I wouldn’t ordinarily take out of my day is a comfort. Although I cannot yet pick them up, I can pet them, and petting kitties is healing to my soul.
May your soul find rest and renewal.
May peace be yours.
May you know you are loved.
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