Category Archives: Holidays

Ash Wednesday Thoughts

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brother and sister at piano
My kids at a piano recital. I’m posting this photo from years ago because my daughter would say she was giving up piano lessons for Lent.

I’m going to try and go to Ash Wednesday services today. I say “try” because the church by our house is so busy! On special days, I can’t make a right hand turn to go 1/2 mile to get to the parish because the cars are lined up at least a mile down the street. I sit at the stop sign, hoping for someone to let me in. I’ve had to turn around and go home because nobody let me in. How Christian of them!

I do believe that Lent is a good time to reflect on our lives. One Ash Wednesday service in past years stands out to me. Rather than giving something up — like chocolate or alcohol — the priest suggested doing something. He talked about investing more time in prayer or volunteering to help someone else. He felt it should be a time of giving of ourselves. He suggested reading the book of Mark from the Bible during the 40 days of Lent.

I’m a convert to Catholicism so I had to learn about Lent. I didn’t grow up with it. My kids did and my daughter always said she was giving up piano lessons for Lent. Yes, she hated piano. I thought piano had so many benefits and forced her to take lessons, years beyond what I should have done, she often reminds me.

If you don’t observe Lent and wonder what it’s all about, here’s a definition from Britannica:

Lent, in the Christian church, a period of penitential preparation for Easter. In Western churches it begins on Ash Wednesday, six and a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40-day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. In Eastern churches Lent begins on the Monday of the seventh week before Easter and ends on the Friday that is nine days before Easter. This 40-day “Great Lent” includes Saturdays and Sundays as relaxed fast days.

Here’s a link to Good Housekeeping’s article called 25 Creative Things to Give Up for Lent in 2021: From gossip and complaining to junk food and coffee, ditching these habits could change your life by Juliana Labianca. There are a lot of good ideas to do in that article that could improve your life — whether or not you observe Lent.

Another thing I’m doing is taking a 40-day Lenten Challenge on the Hallow App. It’s with Mark Wahlberg, Chris Pratt, Jonathan Roumie and Fr. Mike Schmitz. If you haven’t tried Hallow, I really enjoy it and recommend it to add to your prayer life.

Do you have plans for Lent? If so, what are they?

What are your thoughts about doing something as opposed to giving up something?

It’s that time of year again!

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The Frango Mints have arrived! This is my work station in the casita. If you haven’t had a Frango Mint, you’re missing out.

I wrote about Frango Mints last year about this time HERE.

Every year for Christmas and Hanukkah, I mail out Frangos to my husband’s clients. They are a traditional holiday gift in Washington, my home state, where they were first made for Frederick & Nelson’s, a wonderful department store that no long exists.

I keep my postal workers in mind and follow their suggestions of when the best days and hours are to stop at the Carefree post office with my stacks of Frangos. It’s a tiny place and only one or two postal workers are on duty at any time. The people in Carefree who wait patiently in line behind me are so kind and nobody gets upset. I had a very different experience living in Palm Springs which I describe in last year’s story (link above). I also give Frangos to the postal workers. I notice they get showered with gifts each Christmas season.

The history of Frangos is printed on the back of the box.

I hope to get everything done and mailed in one week. After that I’ll be traveling to see my dad who was in the hospital totally out of it and incoherent for a few days. Now he’s in skilled nursing care and thriving. He’s alert, doing PT and eating well. It’s time to make some choices for his future. He may be choosing to enter assisted living at the same place where he’s in skilled nursing. He’s been living on his own, but he’s turning 94 in January. Yes, he does need more care than he needed the past few years.

What traditions do you have for the holidays? Any special foods, treats or movies?

Beach Birds and Other Creatures

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A seagull found the perfect perch on a rooftop at the beach.

I have taken many photos and videos I want to share from sea lions to beach birds, beach and harbor views, the farmer’s market and fish tacos. I think I’ll be posting photos and videos from this vacation after we return home. In the meantime, here are a few photos and videos of wildlife.

We went to dinner by boat the other night and saw sea lions lounging on docks. There’s a little glare from the boat’s window in this pic.

I’ve never seen Mallards in the ocean before. Below is a flock of terns taking off.

Lone pelican floating in the waves.
Ducks waddling on the shore.
Sea Lions upset because we woke them up.
Pelicans in flight.

My favorite of the photos and videos on this post is the last one of pelicans flying low over the ocean.

What’s your favorite?

This reminds me of Ogden Nash and his famous Pelican limerick my dad used to read to us when we were young:

A wonderful bird is the pelican. 
His bill can hold more than his belican. 
He can hold in his beak 
Enough food for a week, 
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

Remember when?

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One of my all time favorite movies growing up. It was broadcast on TV annually around Halloween.

Remember when we used to watch broadcast TV as a family? We didn’t have cable and there were three main stations, ABC, NBC and CBS. We had a local channel and PBS. That was it.

During holidays, we’d gather as a family in front of the TV and watch the holiday-themed movies. Mom would make popcorn in a big pot on the stove. If we were really lucky, we’d get to help shake the foil covered Jiffy Pop over a burner. For Halloween we’d watch Wizard of Oz and The Great Pumpkin.

Christmas included movies that my parents liked including It’s a Wonderful Life and White Christmas. I liked Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas and Frosty the Snowman. My parents had us watch A Christmas Carol, but it was way to scary for me with the ghosts of Christmas past. When I had kids, I introduced my kids to my childhood favorites plus Meet Me in St. Louis.

Now that it’s Lent and Easter Season there are more movies to watch together as a family. I admit as soon as cable and streaming came into our lives, we don’t watch movies together very often. We watch TV together more for football games than any movies. My husband and I end up in separate rooms watching TV, reading or listening to podcasts on our laptops.

I wrote about five Easter movies HERE.

This is a movie I remember watching as a family on Easter weekend.

Do you watch movies together as a family?

What were your favorite holiday movies growing up?

Clearing the way for a New Year

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I hang onto old tennis shoes, even when I get a new pair. My reasoning is this: I’ll wear them at the beach. I’ll wear them doing yard work. I’ll wear them sometime.”

Guess what? It never happens. With daily walking I need new shoes every year. Sometimes twice a year, if they don’t hold up. A collection of worn out shoes with holes on the inside line my closet shoe shelf.

To ring in the New Year, I threw these old puppies out. I looked around my closet and found lots of shoes, dresses, and random clothing that I haven’t worn in years. Or ever. I will clear it out and deliver clothing to the Phoenix Dream Center that helps victims of sex trafficking. They have a clothing closet — which is a room with donated clothing that they can browse through and take whatever they want. The residents of the Dream Center, former sex trafficking victims, rotate working and organizing the inventory. I’ve written about the Phoenix Dream Center “Where Hope Lives” HERE.

The other clearing out I’ve done the last two days has to do with paperwork. Stacks of papers that I didn’t want to file in the moment, but squirreled away in a casita kitchen cabinet. “Out of sight, out of mind.” I don’t think my kids were impressed when they opened the cabinet. Most of it can be thrown out since everything is online these days.

Now that the paperwork is taken care of, I found another category of excess to toss. Cleaning products that I don’t need in Arizona. I moved a ton from Palm Springs, December 2020.

I think because we spend a fortune on these items, like cleaning products, tennis shoes and clothing, it’s hard to get rid of them.

It feels good to start the New Year fresh with the cobwebs of my life cleared out!

What do you you hold onto that you don’t need or use?

What are you doing to start the New Year fresh?

Christmas Party Time

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Look at this charcuterie and appetizers!

Last week, after my encounter with a pack of coyotes, I had to get dressed up for a Christmas party. If you missed the coyote post, it’s HERE.

I was kind of worn out, stressed, and not feeling up to it. But we were driving another couple from our neighborhood, so there was no backing out.

It was a Christmas/Holiday party for my charitable group that raises funds for a residential facility that helps rescued sex-trafficked women return to a “normal” life. I’ve written about The Dream Center HERE.

One of our members opened her home for the party. It was catered and I have to share the beautiful display of hors d’oeuvres and her Christmas decorations.

Dessert.

This is the other side of the island with more delicious food and gorgeous decorations.

I wish I would have taken photos of her backyard. You can see the photo above, how the glass doors disappear into the wall. The hostess and her husband are Italian and their backyard looks like a Roman style garden. It was a beautiful evening with friends.

The hostess had a surprise for us:

Dickens Christmas Carolers!

The party put me in the holiday spirit. I’m so looking forward to Christmas this year with my children and daughter-in-law.

When have you not wanted to go somewhere and it turned out to be better than expected?

What puts you in a Christmas/Holiday spirit?

A Merry Little Christmas

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Beautiful Christmas present we received from my husband’s assistant. It’s of my son and DIL on their wedding day this Fall.

Our Christmas didn’t go as expected. I got sick. I’m still sick. I have a headache, low-grade fever, congestion and cough. I am miserable.

I called our friends we were supposed to join for prime rib dinner along with their four kids, spouses and sister and husband. I could barely squeak out my words and ended in a coughing fit.

No, they didn’t want me around.

So far, my husband is fine. Knock on wood.

My daughter was exposed to COVID her last day at work before her break. She was supposed to spend Christmas with her brother and sister-in-law (photo above.) She instead had to isolate.

My son and his wife stayed home alone for Christmas, because she is halfway through chemo and did not want to catch any bugs. It would delay her treatment if she did. I’m not sure that went over well with other family members, but their priority is her health.

All in all it was a sad little Christmas.

Here are few highlights from staying in bed:

Christmas Eve I watched “Meet Me in St. Louis” after my son said he introduced it to his wife for the first time. I love that movie. There’s one point in the movie where the husband comes home with a lavender tin of chocolates and the wife says “Oh! Louis and Sherry!” That was a chocolate and ice cream company that one of my husband’s clients owned. I had the lavender tin on a shelf in my kitchen in Palm Springs, because it’s so pretty.

Once when my aunt was visiting us in Palm Springs, my son asked if she wanted to watch TV with him. He was five or six years old. He turned on “Meet Me in St. Louis.” She was pleasantly surprised because she thought she’d be watching Barney.

I finished reading a book “Bees Don’t Get Arthritis” by Fred Malone, copyright 1974. A friend loaned it to me in August and called to ask when she could get it back. It’s interesting about how many doctors from the 1930s on treated arthritis with bee venom or honey with pretty good results. Many doctors tried to get it approved as a legitimate treatment after having held trials, but somehow it never made it mainstream. Maybe big pharma doesn’t want something so simple?

I watched the mini-series “Black Cake.” I have one episode left. It’s very good but doesn’t follow the book exactly. I wrote a review of the book HERE. It hasn’t added things, but the TV version put more emphasis on things than I felt was necessary from the book.

I finished Lisa See’s “Peony in Love” which I’ve struggled with. The ending picked up. Then I started reading this one:

Because I’m not feeling that well, I put down the book above and used Audible to start Ann Patchet’s “Tom Lake.” I’m really enjoying it and I can lay in bed and listen.

What were some highlights of your Christmas?

How do you decide if you have a cold, flu or COVID — besides testing for COVID?

Have you been sick this winter?