Merry Ho Ho

From Mark Tonra's James

Holidayz at CarolinaMom's this year find Cheek in the happy chaos of toddlers. I wish you all glad tidings of comfort and joy and stuff.

Sarah Maclachlan performing Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night"

Welcome, Winter

From Mark Tonra's James

A strange fall. Chock full o' transitions. The fickle weather thwarted my usual April to October sandals / October to April boots pattern. The Merry Ho Ho toes saw sandals this past week.

Happily, a few days of brr Nellie cold will lend themselves to fires and hot cocoa ho-ness. Send some of your winter wonderland stuff down here, Sheena and MontanaMan.

"Feeling tired
By the fire
The long day is over

The wind is gone
Asleep at dawn
The embers burn on

With no reprise
The sun will rise
The long day is over"

Norah Jones, "The Long Day is Over"

e.e.'s words of the day

To be nobody but myself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
-E.E. Cummings, poet (1894-1962)

From A Word A Day's "A Thought for the Day"

Flowchart Explaining Flowcharts

Way, way too relevant to my work life.

From Randall Munroe's xkcd.com

Boundaries. Latecomers are a b*tch.

"It is our choices that define us, far more than our abilities."
- J.K. Rowling

You're born to a family that puts the fun in dysfuntional. Let's face it: we all are.

You learn not to need. You learn to please. You succeed to please.

Fast forward decades and you learn at a professional workshop that your key conflict resolution methods are avoidance and accommodation. You are not surprised.

You spend years in a relationship with the kindest person you've ever met. You have needs, but are schooled to subvert them. He has needs, but is schooled to not voice them. You part.

You date. You meet compelling people. You learn. What you want. What you don't. What is compatible. What isn't. That it's a triple-punch of intellectual, physical, and emotional attraction (for you, in that order) that resonates with Clive Staples Lewis' idea: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one."

You get distracted. The intellectual attraction is the bite. The physical attraction is the hook. But the emotional attraction? Continues to elude.

You get lost in the first two at the expense of the last. But the cost of the loss of that kindest person is the reminder you need. That if the collapse of that emotional attraction boundary was worth it, for anyone, it would have been for that kindest person.

You have intellectual and emotional chemistry with your peeps. You just don't want to jump their bones. You hope. That finding the attraction trif*ckta is possible. Until then, solace. With the peeps. Whose bones may not be jumpable, but whose hearts are unyieldingly authentic.

"There is good. And there is evil. Right, and wrong. Heroes, and villains. And if we're blessed with wisdom, then there are glimpses between the cracks of each, where light streams through. We wait in silence for these times, when sense can be made; when meaningless existence comes into focus, and our purpose presents itself.

And if we have the strength to be honest, then what we find there, staring back at us, is our own reflection bearing witness to the duality of life. That each one of us is capable of both the dark and the light - good, and evil - of either; of all.

And destiny, while marching ever in our direction, can be re-routed by the choices we make; by the love we hold on to; and the promises we keep." - Heroes, 15-Dec-2008

Thanks, Sheena

You cannot know how much your post, read today, touched me. Incredibly timely, and very relevant.

So much so that I have to share the same song. And hope its message is heard.



I know your fear, Sheena. I share it. But I also have faith, that we will have that happiness and peacefulness again. In fact, we already have it. If not in the arms of another, then in the hearts of friends.