Happy 2009!

That is such a generic statment. I want to say something else. Like I hope this coming year is filled with risks and rewards and tons of prosperity and more laughter than you know what to do with and I hope you get a phone call from a long lost friend that misses you and someone does something really unneccessarily nice for you for no reason and you pay it forward and I hope you dance at least twice to music that you've never heard before and you create something with your hands that resembles some sort of masterpiece in your mind and you visit with at least one person who changes your life for the better and watch at least a hundred sunsets and you say yes to your kids a little more and no to your job a little more and that bad habit you have seems to be really easy to give up all of a sudden and you find yourself really happy with the way you look and you do something that scares you and you succeed at something you didn't think you could do and you talk to a stranger and find yourself in their story and you write about all of it on your blog.

Removed

Jack Johnson Makes Me Want To...

(yes, I know most of these have nothing to do with Jack but I can’t help what goes through my mind when I’m basking in his music)

…ride through Monterey or Carmel in a convertible
…make banana pancakes and crawl back into bed with you
…learn to play the ukulele so I can play our favorite songs
…open my windows and let the sun in
…quit my jobs, give away my possessions, travel and live life
…wear flip flops to my next job interview and not care
…sit on a beach writing post cards inviting random people to join me
…do anything as long as it’s together
…throw my watch into the ocean
…build a bonfire and listen to the stories of strangers
…give someone a second chance
…read a book in a hammock
…lather my body in the smell of the 70’s Coppertone tropical lotion
…feel something besides the cement hitting the bottom of my feet
…give Einstein a pair of footed pajamas for his birthday
…staple a party invite to a telephone pole inviting everyone who sees it
…paint your toenails different colors while you watch
…burry some treasure and make a map
...make up words and use them while shopping at a farmers market
…unlock the cages at a pet store, run out and see which animals follow me
…find myself in someone really different from me
…focus on nothing but fireflies for an evening
…make new and improved ant farms for all the ones I stepped on as a kid

We Laughed, We Cried, We Sang

I am full of so much emotion right now...okay, and some margarita too.

Tonight I joined a fabulous group of women for a virgin's night of watching Mama Mia. It seems, as we were all Facebooking this week, that we realized that there were 5 of us who had not seen it...yes, yes, I know, how could that be? I have no excuse. What can I say? Abba being one of my all time love them like I can't believe it groups and yes, I had still not seen Mama Mia.

So I packed up my little plate of brie and grapes (my contribution) and headed over to the party. My gals showed up with boas and margs!

I'm a longtime ABBA fan...HUGE fan in fact...so of course right off the bat the sound track had me going. Where on earth did Meryl Streep get that voice? AMAZING! She is adorable and so is little Amanda Seyfried who plays Sophie.

I completely enjoyed this movie...beginning to end. The singing, the dancing, the wonderful cast of characters...did I mention the margaritas?

Oh, did I also forget to mention that Colin Firth is in it? Oh my.

IT was a brilliantly cast, brilliantly silly little romp in Greece! I highly recommend seeing it with your best girlfriends.

Oh crud, speaking of best girl friends...I saw this with my mom friends (who I totally adore) but did not see this with my BFF's (ha ha). The relationships between the girls and the women in this movie reminded me of my other BFF's...you know who you are and you know what I mean and we have to see this together!

Oh I have to go to bed now. I am soooo sleepy.

Me & My Nephew in Montana

The Angels of Christmas Past

I spent my first 10 years of life in southern California. We were Catholic and our Parish was at a pink adobe/stucco looking church. I used to wish I could play the tambourine in the church band. My neighbor across the street was a pastor at the Baptist church. His daughter Diane was my babysitter and her two brothers were my best friends growing up. She used to take me to her church sometimes which was always so much fun. We would sit and listen to her dad's sermon while she took a cotton ball and tickled my arm for an hour. I never forgot that feeling and sometimes now I will tickle my girls' arms while we watch a movie. At Christmas, we would dress up like angels for the nativity/play. Our wings made from Reynolds wrap and cardboard. This is a pic of my sis and I as angels in Diane's church and also us with her brothers Gary and Greg. These boys are the reason I can skateboard, whittle a stick into a sharp knife, make a rubberband gun from scratch and kill bees with it, and are also probably responsible for half the scars on my knees! Between playing cops and robbers, army men, and matchbox cars, nobody would have ever accused me of being a girl.

Diane posted these pics on Facebook last night so I snatched them from her. I don't have copies of these so it was a nice surprise.

I Won't Stay Down

Today I received unexpected and unfortunate news. While I am not really in a place to discuss it publicly, I wanted to share some initial reactions and part of my thought process about it.

There are no guarantees in life. This we know. You can work hard and still finish last. That seems to be a recurring theme for me personally. I get it. Really, I get it already.

I keep reminding myself to stop thinking that just because I try hard that I “deserve” something. But how do you really know when you deserve something? How do we really know that we don’t deserve worse than we have it? So I still try to maintain the thought that I am probably getting better than I deserve despite not getting what I want.

To move forward and out of the self-pity (I can only handle that feeling for about 3 seconds), I keep telling myself that my job is not to move mountains…I’ll save that for Someone else. My job, as mundane as it sounds is just to push. Push. Push. Push. I don’t get to control when, where or how far the mountain moves, I only get to control how hard I push. That’s it. That's my job.

I can choose every day to push or not to push. Succeed or fail. And if at the end of the day I have failed, I go to bed and wake up to another chance to do it all over again and hopefully get it right.

Reality, for me anyway, is that all my pushing will amount only to what life decides to hand me. Nothing more, nothing less. But if I don’t push, life hands me nothing at all. If I don’t push, I fail.

Today a mountain moved and it feels like it moved backward. I pushed and life pushed back, set me in my place and said “now whatcha gonna do?”

I probably should be crying right now. Angry at life. Upset that my hard work didn’t deserve failure.

But I’ve been here all too often. All too often to know that self-pity get’s me nowhere. And for some reason, the moment I got the bad news, I felt a sense of peace about it. Not because I want to accept it or pretend that I am stronger than I am, but because I know from experience that everything involved in this process is good. Strangely, for me, good comes from the processing of bad news. Yeah, I know that doesn’t sound fun. But it’s okay and I’m okay. In fact, I’m probably doing better than I deserve.

Today life knocked me down but I am reminded of the abundance of blessings in my life. Blessings too numerous to let this stop me.

I sincerely hope that you are all having a great holiday. I am thinking of each and every one of you and how much you have blessed my life this year.

Well, I better get back to pushing...

The i Was Following Me

So I'm walking through Costco yesterday and out of the corner of my eye...or "I" rather...I see a Jane Austen DVD and it catches my attention immediately because in very very tiny print, I see that they have spelled Austen incorrectly on this DVD (can you see it in the pic?). Unbelievable! They messed up the name of one of the most read and most beloved writers! How does this happen? Who is the copy editor? Did they even have one? Dear Heavens, the single most important word on the entire DVD is Austen! It haunted me throughout Costco. I wanted to go back with a red Sharpie and circle the typo on all the DVDs.

Band Concert

Rock on.

Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

What is the epitome of a once in a lifetime opportunity? Is there something that you picture in your mind, some illustration of the perfect example of a once in a lifetime opportunity? I can think of many, but none more befitting than the example of flying to the moon. I would say flying to the moon is an exemplary archetype of a once in a lifetime opportunity.

So when I dreamed the other night that I had been given that chance, that once in a lifetime chance to fly to the moon, can you imagine my disappointment when I completely screwed up the mission?

The trip to the moon cost the USA a mere billion dollars in my dream (probably somewhat accurate in real life I imagine) and took 3 years to plan. In one single moment of stupidity, I ruined the entire mission. Failure of epic proportion! Any guesses how?

I dropped my shoe. Yes, while soaring through the earth's stratosphere, my shoe fell off and fell back to earth. Apparently, all passengers flying to the moon must be wearing two shoes.

So we turned the damn rocket around and went home.

Now while this dream is probably one of the dumbest I've ever had, I can't help fear that it is meant to represent some horrible mistake I've made in my real life.

By the way, the shoe I dropped was a black Chuck Taylor.

What Scares Me Most

What's to stop them from coming out with Wii Sex?

One Hour and Twenty-one Minutes

That's how much time it took me to write this poem. No revisions. No time.

Today I stumbled across a poetry contest. The Best American Poetry Poem Challenge.

Do I dare? The deadline is Dec. 5th. Today is Dec. 4th. What are the rules?

Rules: In a nutshell, write an inaugural ode! 4 quatrains, 16 lines total. And here's the hard part....you must include one line from another poem in the 2008 book of Best American Poetry AND you must include three of the following words - honor, integrity, faith, hope, change, power.

So, without further ado, here's what I came up with. What do you think? Honest opinions welcome.

Ode to a Campaign of Hope

Germinating from neither ruffles nor flourishes
Rather, green lush grass roots from milk and honey
Sprouting from soil of our Fathers who led heretofore
Cultivating in the hearts, souls, and flesh of their posterity

Bringing not forth their axes to grind against broken fences
Nor mud to sling across rows of yielding fruit
Rather, spading bountiful ground with honor and courage
For the soil was a fertile foundation of our faith

Listen to small rocks grind the big one down
Tilling the earth one yes we can at a time
One phone call, one neighbor, one rally, one vote
At a time in history when we hunger for change

Lavish crops multiply across rows of labor
Seeds of audacity budding rain or shine
Blooming through the power of hope
Restoring integrity to the land on which we feed

©2008 – Michelle Hix

Can I Just Say...

That everyone I know is sooo much funnier tonight thanks to the 2 glasses of wine I've had! Facebook + wine = funny. IM + wine = funny. Text messages + wine = funny. Husband + wine = sexy funny.

Although, I have to say that working out at the gym and then eating homemade chocolate chip cookies and wine for dinner = not so funny to my BIG FAT BUTT!

Seriously...I ate a chocolate chip cookie, some peanut m&m's, and two glasses of wine for dinner.

Climbing

Younger Daughter

Older Daughter

Both Monkeys!

Uh...me on the begginner wall as usual!

Rock n Roll

My Scrumptious Nephew!