Embarking on my Own Adult Holiday Excesses

I married in 1977 and I spent a lot of time in Hallmark stores that year. Invitations, thank you cards, little scrolls commemorating the occasion that one presented to the guests secured with a little faux golden wedding ring, Christmas cards to be sent out two months after the wedding, new invitations after my mother beefed up the guest list sufficiently to require a new venue. At some point the lovely Hallmark Christmas tree ornaments appeared, setting off a whole Christmas Nazi campaign of its own. I'll finish the post with the ornament story.

Ex and I came to Las Vegas to live on the Bicentennial Day. A lovely little house and a new adult life awaited us as Stepfather was a general contractor building houses as fast as he could, and Mother was the real estate broker selling them. There were big plans for Limes and Ex, too. Since we were now adults, as if that had suddenly happened as we rolled through the city limits, we soon got a marriage license, that fall of 1976. My mother barked about that sufficiently to back us off for another year. The marriage license took up life between the hardback covers of Gone With the Wind, and we established our new life sans marriage. We'd lived that way for many years. One more didn't make much difference.

My mother asked a business associate to put me to work. As she gave this man hundreds of escrows a year, from land purchases, through construction loans, through the sales of the homes built, he quickly found me a file clerk position. It was soon noticed that I had a brain and I progressed from escrow secretary to junior escrow officer to escrow officer, to branch manager in pretty quick succession. Ex went to work for a construction vendor Stepfather worked with. He was OK in construction, but showed a true genius for building and managing the intricacies of sprinkler systems. Stepfather and Mother helped him establish himself as a landscape contractor. We had a sweet little cottage industry as long as Stepfather could build them, Mother sell them, Limes escrow them and Ex landscape them. This lasted for years, until the Las Vegas boom-and-bust cycle hit bust. We were 22 and 23 years old.

It was in the planning of that wedding that an inborn talent and skill were revealed in me. I am adept at managing complex projects. I have a knack for handling multiple lists, budgets, deadlines and competing interests. I can hit a moving target with a dart, and deliver up an event seamlessly. Being of tender years, I'd never undertaken anything that would have shown I could handle this. The Great October Wedding Circus included 7 custom made dresses for me and the females of the wedding party, tuxes for the men, a cake the size of a small building, chapel and music arrangements, Stepfather flying a small plane full of flowers from his rose farm in California, finding a local florist to arrange them, negotiating a discount at a hotel for throwing them 200 paying guests for several days, recruiting friend and relative volunteers to help me execute all of this, and all that damned printing . . . . it is here where I learned the tricks I've since used to put together fundraising and political events, union rallies and community events. I am a ringmistress and I like a circus! There is much more to be said about that wedding and the marriage, but that will be for many more posts. This one is meant to be about holiday excesses.

As if the marriage ceremony also included some rite of passage to "young matron", I immediately began to become social. I gave parties non-stop, plying friends with food and drink, music and fun. To give the reader a sense of the times, my wedding gift microwave was the size of a Volkswagen and Ex's Sony BetaMax (yes, he was the first kid on the block to own one) was equally as large, with a remote that had about 100 miles of wire. Disco was big, and Angel's Flight trousers for young men. We bought our music on 8-track tapes. Crockpots intrigued us, if we could just integrate that notion of "slow" cooker. I typed my escrow documents on an IBM Selectric, using many different colors of correction tape, depending on which form I was completing. Hidden Valley Ranch was new and platters of crudites were what we carried to potlucks with this dressing. "Buttermilk? Are you sure?" Well, that's what the package said.

In this setting, I became aware somehow that one could purchase a permit in the sporting goods section of Woolco allowing one to cut down a Christmas tree in the forest for the princely cost of $1. Now, I liked putting on events and I liked Christmas and I liked the outdoors . . . . I talked it up to girlfriends and they were quickly "in". The list-making began for what was to be the First Annual Chainsaw Festival. It ran for years, becoming bigger, better and more excessive in every way. It should be noted no one was ever hurt, jailed, nor did we ever hurt any other person. That is proof that angels exist and watch out for young, dumb people. Dumb? We were mostly young professionals who functioned at a high level in society. And we were also city kids, to a person, who knew nothing about the forest or cutting down trees. This story also reminds me how much life experience matters. We had IQ points at the time, but little common sense. We'd only been adults a short while. "Practical" would come with age and miles.

The women volunteered to bring hot chocolate and chili, donuts and soft drinks. Some of the men knew someone who knew someone who owned a chainsaw. Ex owned trucks for his landscaping business, so we could transport the trees back to Las Vegas. Everyone had visited Mt. Charleston when it snowed, so we all knew to bundle up. The men knew we needed maps to find the remote location in eastern Nevada, about 1 mile from the Utah stateline. Eight-track tapes were gathered, Tupperware and thermoses full of food and drink. Someone was smart enough to think of firewood, matches, toilet paper and paper towels. We'd be encamped briefly while the trees were felled. Some 25 cars pulled up in front of our home, groups fell in together and selected which cars would go. The caravan ultimately consisted of 15 vehicles packed with excited young people, music blaring, women in sweaters harmonizing to Bohemian Rhapsody (I got the Freddie Mercury part), men laughing in their Pendleton shirts. We may have required a permit for caravaning that many cars and trucks, but who knew? We set out. Although "booze" had not been included on any list, it seems no one forgot to bring their own. Half way to our destination, most everyone was at least "happy" and probably no one should have been driving. Booze blending with callow youth, we were in for a few surprises.

First, was "getting there". We title and escrow types thought we were experts with maps. And we were! Give us a Thomas Brothers to get around Las Vegas, or give us the coordinates from the Mt. Diablo Base & Meridian and we could plot out any residential lot or stretch of vacant land in Nevada. But hand us a road map taking country roads to lesser roads to a spot within a mile of Utah, in the woods . . . I have always felt there was a 50-50 chance we may have been generally in the area of approved tree cutting. I think we were in Nevada, as required. All the drinking forced repeated rest stops, so the journey took approximately three times longer than we figured. But at last we were there.

The women poured out of the cars (literally), started a fire, warmed up food, poured more drinks. The men fired up the chainsaws after many abortive yanks of the chains. Group by group, we stepped out and began to select the trees we'd cut. Although the group needed about 20 trees, we had 50 permits and we were bound to take 50 trees. If we had to give them away to friends and relatives, we'd do so.

The Limes of the day was at least somewhat practical. We had vaulted ceilings in the house and I asked Ex how large a tree we could handle. "A big one" was his reply. I asked Stepfather, who built those homes, and he knew to tell me, "Twelve feet, Limes." I wasn't dumb. I knew our friend Rodger was six feet tall, so we could accommodate a tree twice as tall as Rodger. My mom had asked for a modest one about six feet tall - piece of cake! A tree as tall as Rodger. This stuff was easy! Everyone bustled around selecting trees, having the men cut them down, putting ID on each tree so everyone would get their own back home, working in teams to load the trees into the trucks. It was hard work and the day had spread out longer than we anticipated. It was darkening when we packed up and headed back to the city. We were all tired and a little worse for wear and tear and food and drink.

In Las Vegas, my street was bustling with friends moving around transporting trees, food containers, saws, jackets, gloves. We had a brief huddle in the middle of the driveway and agreed we were doing this every year and we were going to grow the program - more friends next year, maybe even a campout! Everyone scattered. We all had Christmas trees to put up and decorate!

Folks, I cannot tell everyone's story from that evening. Only my own. The weather was frigid. We still had much to do, pruning our tree, putting a sturdy base on it, getting it indoors. Man, a 12-foot tree was b-i-g. Stepfather stepped out into the dark from next door to collect Mother's 6-foot tree and to see if he could help us. We presented him with Mom's tree and he muttered, "Oh, I'll need to cut that down a bit." He took it to their garage and returned to help us. Stepfather eyeballed our tree and quietly said, "Limes, you've got 26-28 feet of Christmas tree there. It's not going to go inside the house. You have too many corners to turn. That tree's as big as the White House Christmas Tree." No. That couldn't be right. I'd checked it out myself. The tree was about twice as tall as Rodger. Then Stepfather noticed the trunk. "Limes, when the trunk is bigger around than my thigh, that's too much tree." Well, the trunk was pretty thick . . . . the Badger family has an insider family saying from a long-ago summer vacation: "Distances are deceiving in the west." I'd set out one of my own experience: "Size is deceiving in the forest."

Have I written that I am a hard case? Nothing in the world was going to prevent me from putting up this tree. Ex and Stepfather hacked and trimmed at it for two days. It was altered to about 12 feet high. It's circumference was such that they ultimately trimmed the back side of the tree so it would only protrude half-way into the living room instead of all the way out the front door. We didn't own anything like enough decorations for the monster. But I knew what to do! It was 1977, after all. We were newlyweds. I went to Hallmark and bought up more "Just Married" ornaments than the law allows. Some were engraved with our names, some generic. Each was different, and I'm not going to say how many of the ornaments I bought. Suffice it to say I had one of each of their "Just Married" ornaments for that year. Despite the vast number of decorations, that tree was pretty sparse looking. But I knew what to do in future years. In 1990, Amber would be born and Hallmark had way more "New Baby Girl" ornaments than they had "Just Married" ones in 1977.

A couple of weeks later, Ex and his brother David were watching football, drinking excessive amounts of Budweiser as I wrapped excessive numbers of Christmas gifts. The cats had been excessively attracted to the gigantic tree from the moment we brought it inside. I always figured it smelled of nature and that captured their attention. This time when three of them shot up the trunk at the same time, they toppled the beast, bringing it down on David's head. It knocked him out! Ornaments rolled, tinsel fluttered, cats scrambled, and then silence for a moment. "Limes," said Ex, "this tree cutting thing is one of your best schemes yet." But we continued to go on the expedition for the next 5 years. We just selected trees that seemed way too small. That worked out just right. Because size is deceiving in the forest.

In my ears right now: Bowie and Jagger. Dancing in the Streets. I need a perky noise. The birdies appear to prefer some types of music over others. They dance rather like David and Mick.

Something that charmed me: I got a lovely holiday bonus yesterday. We don't have money in the budget to do that, even though our little group has been pared so close to the bone. I'm sure David did that out of his pocket. Peace on Earth to all Persons.

Disclaimer: It's 2009 and I'm 57. No, I don't approve of drinking and driving. Nor do I approve of going out in nature, hacking, burning and destroying. But those sensibilities came with growth and maturity. I'm glad I've been given the time to grow and mature. I hope to experience more growth in 2010 and forward.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Things are not grand at work. We've had some issues with a couple of technicians that have cast a shadow of gloom on everyone who remains. Thursday, the skies clouded over and I sat alone, listening to the phones not ringing, and pondering what 2010 will bring. We're whittled down to "any fewer workers and we won't be able to run this rodeo". But that matches the number of jobs I'm booking, so maybe it's fortuitous the renegades keep firing themselves. At a staff meeting in November, David mused that he was concerned Mr. and Mrs. General Public would forego carpet cleaning this holiday season and tell their visiting in-laws to forgive the dirty carpets, it was a question of that or gifts. I hate it when David is right.

Monday night, Stephanie tore me up at my massage and we spent a long time trying to identify what I had done to myself to mess up neck, pectorals, trapezoids, shoulder and arm so badly. Tuesday, I was in misery from so much trigger point work. I went back Wednesday evening and she resorted to the big guns - structural massage and more trigger point work. There were probably 50 triggers to be dealt with, many of them in the pectoral muscles. Melting trigger points in the pecs feels much like being jabbed hard with a large needle. I don't care for it much. Concerned about how "crudded up" (insider massage therapist talk) I was, Stephanie pulled my chart to find out when was the last time I was so twisted up. "Limes, what was going on during these dates?" I told her and she closed the chart. "I think you have December holiday distress issues, Limes. That's why you're such a mess." Oh. She had me lie back down so she could do some craniosacral and energy work. She asked me if I'd like to tell her some of the traumas. I gave her the sanitized version of how it all happened. I delivered it without any tears or anger. Unusual for me. I was just able to tell the sad story. When I was dressed to leave, Stephanie asked me to do something. She wants me to do something nice for myself, give a holiday gift to myself, and tell her about it next week.

I had to disengage from an unhealthy situation this week. I didn't enjoy it. And I couldn't respect myself if I stayed in it one moment longer. So I took the first necessary step, at the holidays. I don't like it much. And I wasn't liking myself much, either.

It would be easy for me to slide into a puddle. I've had to work actively not to do that. When the office is too quiet, or when a potential customer has pulled me through the eye of a needle and I still didn't book the job, I get up and clean one office window, or dust a bookcase or use my weights and bands. I brought a hula hoop to work and plan to use it to get some of the good blood and energy flowing. I'm safe. I can see anyone approaching the door and can quickly discard my pink, plastic, noise-making, light-flashing CosmoHoop.

So, gathering my thoughts, planning a blog post or three, organizing my emotions on the shelf in alphabetical order . . . what am I going to do right now, today?

In a quiet moment when none of the "children" were present, David talked to me about my future if our business fails. He has yet another business venture on the horizon. He's attended the seminars, met the CEO, done his research. He will hit the ground running at the first of the year, and Limes will be building a new business from the ground up ~ budgets and systems, checks and balances, websites and marketing. He has sufficient business interests that I will not be on the streets. I am worried about home dudes. If the carpet cleaning division does not stay afloat, they will be competing in the same job market as thousands of other Las Vegans. I've stopped trying to control any of this. I don't do anything other than what David tells us to do. "Do what we do. Do it as well as we do it. Come back and do it the next day. We will get back as good as we put out." I plan to tell him today that I've never before surrendered my fears and just followed someone I believed in. I couldn't do that with/for my husband. I can do it now with/for me and with/for us.

During the past year, we've bought and swapped ever larger, more luxurious bird homes across two households and it happens that I have a very nice small-ish one cleaned and sitting empty in my living room. Yes, I know an empty bird home isn't decor. I've also had my eye on a little treat for more than a year, but when the economy scared me, I stopped lusting after it. I made that promise to Stephanie about giving myself a gift . . . . so today, that empty bird home sits in my car where Vicente will have to clean around it. And tonight I will stop at PetSmart. Bloomsbury and Benson need some feed and treats. And I need to finally buy the zebra finches. They're the most beautiful things I have seen in a long time. They are exuberant singers and tiny - not four inches long. They like to live in colonies, and as I look at the bank balance and credit cards, I'm hoping 3-4 birds might constitute a colony.

This morning I made the predawn Wal-Mart pilgrimage. I detest giving those people my money and I loathe going there at holiday time. However, I've sacrificed some of my finer sensibilities in favor of low prices and if I go at 4:30 a.m., I can avoid the crowds. This requires me to get up at a shocking hour to fit in my walk. But the payoff is getting to watch the collection of humanity that shops at Wal-Mart in the middle of the night a week before Christmas. I'm sure they think I'm a specimen, too. I bought a basket full of camping necessities that will make for a smooth desert solstice celebration. Mantles and fuel and tent stakes . . . funny, no one else shopped in the sporting goods section at 4:45 a.m. In one week, we'll be pushing off about now. I need to organize the menus and gather the colored pencils, the books.

Happy holidays, everyone.

In my ears right now: Oh, you knew this. It's still Cyndi Lauper and Peter Kingsbury doing Walk Away Renee. I shouldn't play it any more.

Something that charmed me: Vicente and Lucy own very good mobile car detailing equipment and supplies. They wear uniform shirts and present well. They both charm me for all manner of reasons, but I have enjoyed watching them shift the way they do business in a tight economy. I was always "honey" to them. For more than two years. Take the keys, return the keys, take the check: "Thank you, honey." Most recently as we have pantomimed about hard prospects for business, I have noticed something they now do invariably. They call me "Limes". They use my name. And they take my hand and grasp it for just a moment. I like it. I respect them. They've got savvy. They're doing it just the way we're doing it. The very best they can.

Something that doesn't charm me: I don't hula hoop very well. I did 45 years ago. But I know how to learn things.

Storm Trooper

I'm not unique for having had some bad holiday time life events that slightly color everything about the season for me. It happens. Children grow up, divorces happen, people move away . . . . the way we celebrate can become different for many reasons. The things we feel are worth celebrating can turn 180 degrees. I've written before about having a sharp, jagged boundary defining "before" and "after" in my life. This isn't meant to be a dark post, but I wish to show that my holiday twitchiness stems from serious issues, not just from failing to receive the holiday gift I'd asked for. The dark gorge contains my trip to a hospital with paramedics, large blood transfusions, a surgery and the flaming crash of "before" at precisely 8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve that year. It took five days for all of that to happen, after a 32-year build-up. Life before did not quietly fade away. It crashed through the astral plane and was destroyed. Nothing was ever the same again. I am not the same.

There! That's it. There's to be no more nattering about the terrible things humans can do to one another, nor am I carrying a crying hankie throughout December any longer. I am so holiday happy, I have been dubbed the Solstice Fairy of Past, Present and Future. But my overarching theme for a post or two is to be Extremely Exaggerated, Extravagant Excessive Excesses at the Holidays - My Own and Others'. I'll ask the reader's indulgence as I will bob and weave through the 1950s to the 2000s. I'll try to be clear about the "when" of things.

The other day in my office, I was reminded how large my extended family is when I said something about my 40 cousins and one of my co-workers nearly passed out. I guess that is a large number of people. And as I'm gathering steam for writing this post, the words that are colliding in every frame of the holiday film that plays in my head are the "e" words - extreme, excessive, exaggerated. Extreme personalities. Exaggerated merriment. Excessive amounts of food, drink and gifts. Exorbitant amounts of time spent by many people year-around preparing for this one Saturnalian snowglobe festival. Three aunts baking for two solid months. Granny-O and four aunts sewing doll clothes every Sunday afternoon of the year. Five turkeys in the ovens at the actual event. I'm thinking 30 pounds of potatoes would be about right.

Sidebar: I've just had a wave of peace wash over me. This holiday excesses theme is one that makes me hinky. I'm going to tell some things that embarrass me and some that hurt and some that are hugely funny. But I'm never neutral about the excesses - at least my own. And I've landed somewhere really nice for the first time ever. Some readers would have seen me reduce my mother to human size recently on the blog. My mother has always defied description, at least by me, and has been HUGE. I wrote with a little angst, and Kass said something in her comments that made me laugh out loud. "Anxious mother." Oh. OK. She was an anxious mother. No more. No less. That's pretty manageable, even by me. And now, after typing only three paragraphs, something has shown itself to me that makes this "excesses" thing manageable. I was set up for it. It's not some aberrant failing of character I invented. It's what was modeled for me, with modern inventions, money, time and my own fertile imagination thrown in across the years. I was a Christmas Nazi because I was born and bred to be one. And I'm reminded again to quiet down, go inside and pay attention when something overwhelms me. Funny how the answers always lie within. I need to practice that. Allow me to share some of the stories.

By the time my cousins and I were old enough to be the hostesses of the family holiday gatherings, there were some big high heels to fill. Granny-O and the aunts cast a long shadow. My aunt Irene really did make 43 different kinds of Christmas cookies, brought them to the family celebration to be enjoyed, and sent each family home with a clean shoebox full of them. Granny-O and the sewing aunts made Barbie and other doll clothes in sufficient numbers that our dolls got complete wardrobes from "Santa". I recognize that Barbie is rather magnificent in bodily proportion, but I submit that sewing bras, underwear and slips for her from nylon and lace would challenge even a person comfortable with a sewing machine - those were some tiny pieces of lingerie, and never a stitch out of place. By the way, there were 28 of us who owned Barbies to be outfitted at any given Christmas. I'm sure there were some wonderful gifts for the boys, too. I just wasn't very interested in what they got. Gary always got pajamas and clothes, and I imagine the other boys getting Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys. Something like that.

I think I'll close out this first holiday excesses post talking about my Aunt Ruth - the Queen Bee of the womenfolk. Ruth was Granny-O's first child and she was revered by every sibling and every niece and nephew. That's a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Amber's generation of children all revered her, too. Ruthie was a "classy" girl. She shopped at Woolworth's for the things Granny-O didn't make for her and she looked like a million bucks. She ran off at 18 to New York City where she worked first as an au pair girl and later formed an attachment to the actor, Robert Taylor. She returned at about age 30 and proceeded to have two marriages and a good life. I don't remember much about her first husband - I believe they divorced in the 1950s. Andy was her husband we all regarded as our uncle and they were popular at family gatherings. Although they never had children, each of them knew how to interact with children, from babies through teenagers. Aunt Ruth talked to 16-year-old girls about sex and Andy wanted to know what it was like to smoke pot. They talked to us as if we were real people. No wonder we loved them!

Dear Ruthie's excess is one that will make the reader grin, I believe. For Ruthie's obsession was to roll $1 bills all year long. Why? Ruth and Andy didn't give tangible gifts. They gave money. When I was a child, the amount was the princely sum of $10 per person. Every person in every family. When Amber was a child it was $50 per person. Ruthie gave cost-of-living increases! However, the gift of money was always given in some unusual way. Whether one received $10 or $50 or whatever the amounts in between the years, the money was presented in $1 bills, rolled tightly and individually and disguised in the presentation. Ruthie selected her "theme" every New Years Day and spent the year putting the gifts together. The secret of the theme was sacrosanct. I don't believe it was ever once discovered in advance. Various cousins would ply Ruthie with wine and try to niggle it out of her. Uh-uh. We never found out.

Just some of Ruthie's Greatest Hits:

4. Tootsie Roll dollars - she wrapped Tootsie Roll wrappers around each dollar and tucked the dollars in among the actual miniature Tootsie Rolls - not the shortest, stubby ones. The ones that would be just about the same size as a rolled up dollar. Andy liked eating the Tootsie Rolls to free up wrappers for the dollars. On Christmas, each kid and adult got a big basket filled with Tootsie Rolls and dollars. It made a kid damned careful not to swing her basket too hard, thereby ejecting some of the contents.

3. Golf pencil dollars - yep, wrapped those $1 bills in yellow paper and tossed them in with the pencils.

2. Pasta dollars - Ruthie rolled the dollars in their original state and presented them in a glass canister filled with green dried pasta.

1. Potpourri dollars - my personal favorite. I love to decorate with decorative hat boxes and I know where to find them. Ruthie began to hit me up about my hat box resources in February. She was 80. She needed more than 100 hat boxes, so the light came on pretty quickly for me. I was 49. I could keep a straight face. I don't need to know everything there is to know. That year, she wrapped the dollars in pastel, filled those hat boxes with loose potpourri, and tossed in the dollars. One was careful transferring the potpourri from the hat box to glass containers!

The tinsel orgy was roaring and the really good Santa my mother had hired was soon to arrive. Ruth asked if I'd go out on the porch with her while she had a cigarette. I don't care for smoking, but I can stand downwind to spend time with Ruthie. We bundled up and I carried her glass of wine. On the porch, she broke it down, "Limes, did you figure it out about the hat boxes?" I struggled, folks. Finally I told her I had and she asked why I didn't say anything. "Didn't want to take it from you, Ruthie. Some things are better not to know in advance." She told me I was the best one of "the bunch". She told me my kid was the best one of "the new bunch".

That was the holiday season before my "before" went away. One year. Ruthie died of lung cancer 18 months ago, after a long, good life. Smoking will do that to a person. This is not a sad ending. This is an ending with a huge measure of gratitude for fine things I have enjoyed in this life and fine, excessive people I've known and loved. They taught me well. "I'm Limes and I'm a recovering Christmas Nazi. It's been 8 holiday seasons since I did anything that would rate a headline."

In my ears right now: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun ~ Cyndi Lauper. I still love it. I watched the original video on Vevo and I danced, too. I wish I'd had on a skirt so I could snap it around like Cyndi does. I sported the pink bumper sticker for years until it rotted off of the car. If I found a new one today, I'd buy it and fly it.

Something that charmed me: When I was 18, my Aunt Ruth loaned me the first volume of Ralph G. Martin's biography of Lady Randolph Churchill. It ignited me. I read it over and over again. I learned about Jennie Churchill and her famous son. I absorbed everything I could about life in Victorian England. I took notes and read biographies of other people in the Churchills' circle. The one book set so many things in motion for me, including a deep hunger to explore England. That would come, and Winston Churchill's country home, Chartwell, is where I would see some of Jennie Churchill's belongings on display. I am sorry to report I touched a leather book cover and a wool jacket. After I'd read the book a number of times I tried to return it to Ruthie. "You keep it honey. I enjoyed it, but I can see it means much more to you."

This Isn't What I Intended to Write About

OK, I'm not brilliant. I'd read a number of blogger questions and comments for a long time. "How do you do this?" "What can I do to make that happen?" "Why do you moderate?" "I can't see your face very well." "What's your actual name?" "What do you think he means by that?" "Why do you suppose she publishes those fawning, prattling comments? It cheapens her blog." And while I did not possess the answers to all the questions, I'm a good organizer/gatherer/event planner, so I did a blog post that got some conversation going. I liked that. I learned some things, had some assumptions confirmed and just plainly heard some opinions of others. That's a good thing.

I went off on a self-indulgent, obssessive-compulsive, funny-to-me musical kick for a few days, all the comments coming in as flippant and amusing as I hoped for. Monday morning I even blamed my musical antics on another blogger (all in good fun, please understand). I asked myself what I was doing with all the melodic madness and I landed on the answer. I knew I would if I'd stop being manic and look inward. You see, I am avoiding writing about other things I've planned to post about, because I am a person who has some issues with the holidays. If I burn the days away by writing silliness, the holidays will have gone by again, me safe in my avoidance cave. So I determined to get back on track, be true to myself and do the damned writing.

Then came a late comment to the blog post about blogging. It took me a little minute to consider this comment. I didn't publish it for awhile because I had to ponder it. I'm revisiting the subject, because I like where this blogger, took the conversation. I asked the how. She asks the what and why. Here's what she had to say (the rest of the exchange can be read by clicking on the link just above):

Thanks for this. All your posts are thought-provoking. This one engendered a train of thought that pulled into this station: why do we blog, really? What do we want out of it? Where will it take us? And will we be there by next week?

The mechanics of blogging, setting, format, etc., are the means by which we create what we want to have happen. So what's our intention?

You knew right away that you wanted a blog. It took me weeks of hemming, hawing, gulping and trembling in my toe socks before I worked up the courage. Expose my attempts at photography and writing? Aaack! Well.

Not many things in life generate fear for me like this one did. So I used it to clear the fear. Blogging as a path to spiritual development! Who knew?

There's more, but this is long enough!

Thanks for putting it out there-you've got guts galore!

Readers, I like the questions that have been posed. And I am working on my responses. I had some immediate ones come to mind. But they weren't the full picture. I'm refining them. Spending some time inside myself. Please ring in on comments and I'll be doing the same - yes, commenting to my own post. Yike. I'll work on my OC tendencies in 2010. I really will.

And then: I spent a long time on the massage table last night. Stephanie kicked my sorry butt. I am a disaster this morning and had to cut my walk a few miles short. I don't like to do that, and I go to a hiding place - it's shameful to me. So, while I can say,"I had to cut my walk short", I won't tell how many miles. There's a nice piece of baggage to go to work on ~ if it involves hiding oneself or information, it probably needs attention. And yes, I'm smiling at myself, not cutting my wrists. Note to self: When it takes 10 minutes to dress after the massage, when Stephanie stands in the hallway looking concerned and says, "Limes, we did an awful lot of trigger point work tonight. Epsom salts. Lots of water." . . . the next day is going to be bad.

In my ears right now: I'm putting up the song that gave rise to my blog's name. I'm posting it as a reminder to myself to sit down in my seat on the bus. I've been standing up in the aisle, holding onto the strap for awhile. My balance isn't all that great. I will take the vacant seat over there, settle in among my bags, observe the other passengers, and move forward. Thanks to the blogger who probably was just asking questions, but aimed me toward some of my answers.



Something that charmed me: BFF and I were (mostly) missing one another on e-mail. She spends her day off alternately busy and leisurely. I spend mine going like hell. She was at the computer with coffee. I was trying to do the grocery shopping. I used the BlackBerry as much as I could. She asked, "Why will you be warm on your holiday camping trip? Did you get a new coat?" I burst out laughing in the cat food aisle. I haven't bought a new coat or much else of anything new since the economy terrified me more than a year ago. No, I haven't actually been hit in the wallet. I'm just afraid that I will be. No, I'll be warm for the holidays due to benevolent forces in nature that have deemed The Solstice Fairy of Past, Present and Future to be worthy of warmth at the holidays. In that magical place, we have been given warmth and unexpected gifts from the natural world that please us, make us gratfeul and make us look forward to the coming year. Or so it has happened each time before.

Photo credits for LimesRightNow and The Solstice Gift: J.D. Morehouse

Erin's Fault

It's Monday, I'm working hard on writing a real post, but in the meantime, dearest Erin got me going! This will be a work in progress, friends.

Happy Monday, happy holidays ~ as soon as a photo of a particular extravaganza can be obtained, I'm about to go on a holiday rant!

In my ears right now: My birdies chirping at the top of their lungs and:



12:30 p.m. latebreaking: David knows music you wouldn't expect him to know. He tells us his late mother was a "hippie chick". He's bopping through the office singing Solitary Man. He knows all the inflection Neil uses in the verses. ;~} "Limes, you playing that over and over again?" "Yes, sir. That's how I do it!"

Good Sunday Morning, Kass

With apologies to the reader, I believe I've resolved my issues with Walk Away Renee (or perhaps Rene, as The Old Bag described him).

And now, for friend Kass ~ ~ you said this was your favorite.


Was this also high on your hit list?


A last offering:


In my ears right now: The same thing that's in your ears right now.

Something that charmed me: Those 60s girls all swoony about Bobby Vee, swaying and clapping in time.

Who Knew?!?!

I'm like a dog with a bone! I can't stop. Somebody help me, please!

I'm not particularly a fan, but it's still Walk Away Renee. And blessedly short, unless you're a Bon Jovi fan. Oh, is he an 80s pretty boy!


I think this rendition is stupendous! I regret that it's one still photo to look at the entire time. I'd have enjoyed seeing her perform it.


I like this one, too! Saxophone and hot backup singers go with everything. I'm sorry the song kind of fizzles at the end. It's like a really great presentation that has the plug suddenly pulled.


I adore Cyndi Lauper and would listen to her warble anything. This is on French TV. I think these two sound fantastic together and I wish I had Cyndi's little modified dreads and red thrift store outfit.


Clearly I'm not the only person who likes #220 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (the gospel according to Rolling Stone, circa 2004). Sorry, reader. I'm a bit over-the-top for some things. I'll try to contain my Renee-ness and move on. Actually, I've researched some other music of the era, have found some good footage, and will attempt to focus my music vision elsewhere.

In my ears . . . . Never mind.

Something that charmed me: The fact that so many musicians seem to like the tune. And the YouTube post-ers got "Renee", not "Rene".