I Love 12/26

Today is one of my most favorite days of the year.

After weeks of watching and hearing about people lose their minds because of Christmas, 12/26 means it's thankfully over. All that frenetic and crazed Christmas energy- which I am highly sensitive to and respond very negatively to - is now a thing of the past, at least for the next 10 months or so.

I wake up on the morning of 12/26 like little kids do on the morning of 12/25:  joy-filled, exhilarated, ready to seize the day 😁

The only things left now to deal with are castoff Christmas trees - which break my heart - and New Year's Eve.

I am not of the real Christmas tree camp because, as an ardent tree lover, all I see are the happy trees that get murdered, then propped up in people's living rooms to slowly die while decorated in lights and baubles and then thrown to the curb where they will complete their death throes no longer wanted and waiting to be transported to the landfill. 
I will never be convinced that any tree is happier getting chopped down instead of living out its days with its roots in the ground surrounded by its tree friends and family. 
Think I'm crazy?  I'm not. Read this and watch this.

As for New Year's Eve revelry - no, thank you.  I like mine quiet with no pomp or circumstance.
Although after this nightmare year I may stay awake to watch 2020 end.

JP and I decided to follow guidelines and not have people over or go visiting this year for Christmas.

Our thoughts are that it's better to err on the side of caution + sacrificing one year is nothing in the grand scheme of things. We still got to see the people we care about only we did it via drive-by present dropoffs and video phone calls. My 80 year old mother threw open her second floor window and we stood under it waving and throwing kisses. Not the ideal way we would have liked to spend the day but we implemented the 2020 mantra:  it is what it is.

However, we were sadly made aware from other people we know whose families were not being cautious - the "you have to live your life" types - that they were being manipulated/guilted/bullied by them for deciding, like us, to not throw caution to the wind.

Please please tell me you are not Covid guilting anyone. No one gets to tell another person how or what they should be doing in the middle of an unprecedented plague (unless their behavior is endangering others). Don't be a Covid jerk.

I'm going to spend this week before the new year tidying up my website and developing ideas and making plans for my life and business as 2021 gets ushered in. This week is always a weird one, right? Like, you can't figure out what day it is or why you can't stop eating :-)
Best to just decide to relax this week and have as much fun as you can.

And, really, don't worry too much about all the eating. 
You don't always have rich leftovers and bins filled with homemade cookies laying around.

Relax. Enjoy. Have fun. 
It's been a rough year.  ♥

The Gift Of Holiday Spirit From The Ornament-Finders

After the past year we've all had, I knew coming into the season that I would be lacking a good deal of holiday spirit. Since I lost my sense of smell in 2009, holiday spirit has basically been a thing of the past anyway.

If you can smell properly, you would be shocked by the magnitude of the toll not being able to smell takes. Most people think "oh, you just can't smell stuff" but it goes much, much deeper than that. For example (and this is how not being to smell ties into lack of holiday enthusiasm), since losing my sense of smell I can no longer attach scent to memories. This is a profound loss. So at Christmastime, no Christmas tree smell, no fresh baked cookie smell, no turkey or ham or lasagna cooking smell, no pretty candle smells, etc. All of the scents that would take me back to past memories...gone.

From the Portsmouth Daily Times: The sense of smell is uniquely connected to memories, especially during the holiday season. The connection between smell and memory is strong because it is so immediate. In fact, did you know that the sense of smell is the only one of the five senses that bypasses the rational part of the brain and goes directly to the limbic area, where memory and emotion are? Which is why when you smell something, it immediately takes you on a walk down memory lane, allowing you to recall the emotion associated with that scent from the first time you smelled it. This direct connection between smell and the brain is how aromas become strong memory triggers, often without our awareness until we smell the same scent again.

”I genuinely believe that the sense of smell is the most important sense because it is so closely tied to memory. One’s life is made up of nothing but a collection of memories and experiences. To have a sense that can literally take you back 40 years to your childhood on Christmas morning in an instant – well, it’s incredible,” says Emrie Oliver, in-house fragrance expert for ScentSicles.

So that, in a nutshell, is why it's been harder to get into the spirit of things at holidays.

Throw in a pandemic and it's a wonder that I'm not crying in a closet everyday. It would be easy to choose to do that, right? But I'm not really someone who gives in and gives up easily. I have been diagnosed with depression since losing my sense of smell but thankfully it's mostly mild-ish (anxiety on the other hand? well that's a topic for another day!). I struggle, but I function, and I'm pretty good at finding ways to lift myself up enough to at least have my head above water when a funk strikes.

First Drop Of My Free Ornaments

Today was the first drop of my hand painted ornaments that I'm giving away for free.

I set out with my helper Luna (the Elf Dog)

and off we went to find a couple of places to leave the ornaments.

Luna (the Elf Dog) suggested that we leave the ornaments at parks and even though it kind of felt like she had an ulterior motive - she really like taking walks at parks - I thought it was a good suggestion so that's what we did.

First drop: Huddy Park in Toms River:

gingerbread man ornament left conspicuously at the edge of the bench

Second drop: Whispering Pines Park in Berkeley Twp:

snowman ornament nestled snugly between the fence post

We decided that setting out two ornaments each time we go out on a Ornament Drop is enough each time.

I have to tell you it was really fun doing this today.

I hope that whoever finds them loves them.

I'm also so hoping that I will hear from the finders!