The Keeper of a Tradition

The cookie exchange is my own personal kick off to the real deal holiday season, it's what sends the red and green flare signals to my brain.  The predecessor to the internal glitter throwing.  Danae hosts and therefore, she is the keeper of my every beginning of every Christmas.  (No pressure girl)

I have no doubt in my mind this tradition is in safe hands.  And let me tell you this, it's so good oh so good to sit around a table with hot coffee steaming and girlfriends.  

Eleven dozen cookie making is worth it to have those moments and memories.  If you are my sister-in-law, you make twenty-two dozen because in a homemade Oreo there are really two cookies.  That woman is absolutely a wonder.  

Lemon spritz was my cookie of making this year.  They are the squares with a diagonal line of dark chocolate, which was supposed to be more of a half dipped affair but that was too much fuss for me.  It is not too much fuss to align the edges of rugs over and over again but dipping cookies?  Not for me.  

So the cookie exchange happened.  The holiday season is in swing.  Full swing.  Crafts!  Crocheting!  Cooking!  List making!  Also I need to state here for the record, I won the door prize this year.  Thank you very much.  After a lovely little prank pulled by Danae and Sil, but still.  I won.
   

Yet Again I do THIS

Does anyone else do this to themselves?  

Oh it's a week and half before Christmas so now is when you should decide to start a ginormous project with pictures.  As in going through the last eight years and doing some sorting and book making.  

Anyone else? 

Which leads me to...
 

Why?  Why do I do this to myself?  

Because now here I am.  Saturday night and I'm sitting in this blue paisley chair with my glasses on and red eyes and an anxious get this done GET THIS DONE feeling.  

Bottom of the ninth.  

Of course.

I've really come a long way in most areas of the bottom of the ninthing it but certain things like pictures and party planning will always remain a wait kind of thing.  

And I've decided it's because it is blastingly (making that word up) overwhelming situation.  It's like the hardest for me.  To decide this picture goes and this picture gets shown and this picture stays.  I have so many pictures.  

My own fault really.  Over documenting probably.  But then as I sit here and scroll through the last eight years plicking (making that word up) out memories, I am flooded with emotion.  It's all here.  

It's all here.  In these pictures of mine.  Every big event.  Most small events.  And more so than the actual memory of what happened, it's the memory of the feeling in where I was at in my life that is grabbing me.  

Feeling behind the picture.  The unseen.  It's there.  It's all there.  

So I'm thankful.  Thankful I over document and bottom of the ninth myself into these blastingly (I like it and I want to use it much) overwhelming Saturday nights.  Just me, myself, and my pictures.
 

And a glass of wine.  I have a glass of wine and tears in my eyes because how can you not when you look back...when I look back and think that one day these pictures of my little sister and I at my thirtieth birthday will be a treasure.  We'll be old and gray and these will bring a twinkle to our eye. 

Sometimes I panic at the thought that if something should ever happen to me all these memories would be stuck without being in the hands of the people who lived them with me.  The very idea which stemmed this bottom of the ninth project to begin with...

Tiny to Perspective

There are so many, for lack of a better word, horrible things which have happened in the past two days.  Like really really horrible.  A couple who I consider one set of my extra parents being seriously injured in a car accident on our Wild West roads, doors and windows being shot out of a local school in the middle of the night...it goes on.  

And with the news of each of those heart breaking events, comes the thought of what's next followed by my problems are small.  Tiny.  Not even problems.  Miniscule.   

Let me back up.  

Last week was spent in Arizona with my entire family and it was beautiful.  In the sun, relaxing and playing and running and being free and living under one roof again.  Then I had to come home.  And I cried when I got off the airplane on Saturday.  I cried as I walked through our airport and saw the winter outside and the interesting folks we now have running rogue around here.  Interesting is the nicest way I could think to put that sentiment.  I cried.  

Now that crying seems fairly pathetic and utterly unwarranted.  Crying for winter and the small town where everyone knows everyone of days gone past.  Let's get a grip here buttercup and buck up.  

I find perspective is handed to me often, the key is to accept.  

On Sunday morning before all the horrible, I woke up and put Christmas tree leggings on.  Then I poured coffee in my Arizona mug and sat with the lights.  In that moment, I was still pissed at winter and this place.  The place that is no longer good ol' western North Dakota.  As I sipped and visited and really loved my ugly attire and noticed the snow falling lightly out of the windows all picturesque, I let go of the pissed.  

Replaced it with a better spirit.  One who wanted to grab her camera and jump in the car to go chase the frosty trees.  

One who wanted to make good out of the blasted winter by wearing her favorite hat and a scarf wrapped three times around.  One who wanted to find some beauty in the cold.  

When I looked through the patch of trees I happened to walk through, I noticed a red barn off in the distance.  My heart did a leap right there and then.  It was hitting the holy grail of holidays, a red barn on a frosty winter Sunday morning.  

A bright spot and a meant to be right here at this exact time moment.  

Now that it's Tuesday, all my fa-looting around with Christmas trees on my pants and capturing frosty trees seems ridiculous.  There are real seriously horrible things happening all around.  All the time it seems.  To stand up people.  To people who deserve only the best.  Makes my heart hurt.   

I thought about not sharing these pictures because as I said before, they are rather ridiculous.  But then I was reminded of the heart leaping I felt when I noticed the red barn, the bright spot.  Maybe someone who needs a leap will be here, so here they are.  And please, let's all say extra prayers for our wild world and let's all be kind to one another and remember to keep perspective.  Let's have lots of bucking up buttercups, who let go of their tiny problems.  Who support and embrace those with real ones.