ellenoutloud's Blog: love

I’m on my 4th day away from home following my hasty departure ahead of Hurricane Alex. And I’ve learned how well I can get along with just a few garments and a lot of friendship.

See, we know moderation is not my long suit. And since I tend to over-everything, when I travel, I over-pack. I don’t know what eventuality I’m preparing for, but I always want to be ready for anything.

I think it all goes back to that fateful trip to Oklahoma City when my suitcase was lost and I spent a week wearing the same black dress I traveled in, but I digress.

What I’ve learned this week is that it’s okay to pack light. Life is so full of twists and turns we’ll never be able to prepare for them all. Sometimes you just have to get up and show up, be as presentable as possible, and see what happens!

It’s not what you wear but where you are that really matters!

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I'd love to hear what you are willing to leave out of your soul suitcase as you journey on...

One of the features of the community I inhabit is “minimal maintenance”. That means most green, growing things, like grass, have been replaced by gravel. It’s everywhere. Our backyard is gravel on concrete.

Fortunately, gray goes with everything so we’ve brought in huge planters and stuffed them full of fuchsia oleanders and hot pink Roses of the Desert and Purple something-or-others that will thrive in their pots. Okay, maybe not thrive, how about stay alive.

In two years we've learned which plants have the temperament to withstand the incessant upwards-of-ninety degrees this climate provides. They do better than their gardener!

In these stifling climes “gardening” becomes an aerobic activity – you’ll break a sweat watering. You can’t let a day go by without tending to the flowers or the sun will burn them up in a day.

So last night, as I was moving the hose around the steamy cement, I marveled again at the revelation that the prettiest, lushest, most abundant flowers we have we never even planted.

You should see the periwinkles. Beautiful, purple, lavender, lilac vinca and they are everywhere – they grow in the gravel.

I should say, they FLOURISH in the gravel. Carried on the winds, nurtured by the rains, tenacious in the droughts - they were planted not by intention but by fate. No matter where they’d hoped to be, they landed where they were blown – adjusting to their circumstances and flowering like mad!
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I pray wherever you’ve been blown today you adjust, flourish, and flower like crazy!!

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It’s been said that no one knows us like family. Okay, I’ll go with that. They may not know us better, but they do have some insights gleaned from many years of proximity.

My sister and I grew up in the same house and shared the same bedroom for sixteen years. I think we still hold the copyright for the term “Sibling Rivalry”. We’ve had some tough go’s.

But we also shared a lot of good times, cultivated some happy memories, kept more than a few secrets. For a time, we were close the way two sisters two years apart can be.

But life intervenes and folks grow apart, especially two hardwired so completely different as she and I. The ongoing debate at our house was always which of us was left on the doorstep.

And yet, the same life that can separate can reunite – it’s a mystery I’ve seen play out many times. The Grand Reconciler really wants us to be close to one another.

And though we are geographically distant, New England to South Texas, our hearts are never more in tune than at Christmas. My sister is a rare soul that carries the Christmas spirit around all year long, but in December? She absolutely explodes in childlike glee and delight.

As close as we were and as we are, she knows in this respect we are dissimilar. I have to work especially hard to ward off the gloomies this time of year. I know full well I am not alone –

So this week, Stacey gave my battle with the seasonal blues a direct strategic assault – she sent a reminder of her love for me -- the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The one from the 1965 holiday classic we watched at least a dozen times together, and most years since, apart.

It’s funny about love. When you get a big old dose of it, all you want to do is run out and share it.

And as a wise guy once said: “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

It has been a pleasure answering my phone this week! It seems all my friends are on a roll – enjoying a fabulous week of joy, prosperity and good fortune. Everyone I’m talking to is doing great! Better than great!

I think if you’ve had the opportunity to occupy this planet very long you recognize this as a rare, awesome, and remarkable happenstance.

And they are happy in celebrating for all sorts of reasons. One is enjoying a passionate romance with a new flame; another is having a stellar week at work – all the effort and industry of the past year seems to be paying off all at once. Another received good news on the health front, another is achieving all kinds of personal breakthroughs.

Frankly, I’m running low on superlatives!

“Great News! That’s wonderful! Terrific! High Time! Fabulous! Super! Outstanding!”

And hey, they haven’t cornered the market on good. Rex, the puppy with ADD, sailed through the Final Exam in his Beginner’s Obedience Class. Okay, virtually sailed. To be honest, he choked on “Leave it”. The lad’s not one to leave morsels for the taking. Aside from that, he passed with flying colors.

All is good with the ones I love. Yippee doesn’t seem to express it, so I’ll stick with mental cartwheels, profound gratitude, and keep my Thesaurus handy!

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

I was reminded again yesterday why gift-wrapping is my favorite part of the Christmas holiday preparations. There’s a finality to the process that soothes my frazzled nerves and buoys my flagging spirits. I sequester myself in a bedroom, turn on the station playing 24/7 Christmas Carols, clear a wide expanse of floor, and just get after it!

A thousand years ago I worked a Christmas season for a department store. Normally I was assigned to the credit department, but I was wisely removed to the Gift Wrapping section the twentieth time I asked my Supervisor to make a credit exception. “C’mon,” I’d whine. “It’s Chri-s-s-s-s-stmas!” Reason enough to throw credit policy out the window, if you ask me!

Once in gift wrap, I drew all the irregular and oversized gifts. I guess it was because I was the low woman on the totem pole; that, or I was in such effervescently great spirits no one thought I’d mind. They were right, I loved the challenge of any gift too cumbersome or unwieldy to wrap.

I didn’t however like the pressure. What?! You don’t think gift wrapping is a high pressure job? Try the last days before Christmas when everyone wants everything wrapped altogether, all at once, and right this second! Everyone saying: “I’m in a hurry!” Didn't they know? You can't rush greatness?

These days there’s no rush to the wrapping, just the pleasure. I listen to the carols, the new ones and the classics, and some of the treasures sung by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee. I hear “Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer”-- it never fails to make me smile.

I enjoy the wrapping part the best because it gives me a chance to sip some Peppermint Mocha coffee and catch my breath – pause and reflect – anticipate the joys of the days to come. It’s the unbusiest thing I do all season. I hum the songs, tie the ribbons, place the bows, and breathe. See? The wrapping is the gift.

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Somewhere in my collection of precious keepsakes is a photograph of my Sister, Grandmother and I, snuggled up on a red paisley sofa in identical Lanz of Salzberg nightgowns. They were oversized, exceptionally soft, and cozy as all get out.

That’s one of those memories so indelibly printed in my mind that any trigger – like a loveseat, a paisley pattern, or a flannel nightgown, can conjure up that moment. I guess some moments are just snuzzier than others!

Those nightgowns were Christmas presents, opened early. Funny how the best memories aren’t so much about the presents as the memories we make with them.

That year it was snuggling on the couch with Grama. Another year it was a ping-pong table. The table was cool, to be sure, but it was the memories made playing with my Dad when he got home from work that I treasure the most.

One of the least expensive gifts I remember getting were these plastic water rockets. My Dad worked in aerospace, so he spun some story about them being top-secret prototypes for the Apollo missions. Hey, I was seven. I believed him.

Anyway, you filled these toys with water, pumped several times, pushed in a lever and whoosh! They soared really, really high. Naturally, the first couple of missiles went right on the roof and ours was not an easy one to get on to or off of. Surprisingly, my Dad didn’t grouse or fuss. Guess he was having too much fun. We spent hours playing with them.

Which is all to say, this Christmas? Maybe we need to focus less on what’s hot and what’s not, and more on what’s going to be remembered twenty years from now.

Let’s consider getting the kind of gifts that make memories, especially the snuzzy kind!

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My father had the kind of childhood that belonged in a Dickens book - - his makes me feel guilty for ever whining about my own. But he still had this exceptional ability to close off all the awfullness and absolutely relish any given moment of Christmas magic.

One moment he shared with me was what I call the "mystery of the glasses". Blessed with inherited myopia, I was in glasses from first grade on. I was about that age when one night I was allowed to stay up late and my Dad and I were just sitting on the sofa in the dark in front of the Christmas tree looking at the lights.

He said, "Are you ready?"

"For what?" I asked.

"Magic. I was about your age when I discovered it. Just wait. Stare at the tree and take off your glasses". He waited until I had and added, "Can you see the magic? Only a few of us, the special ones, get to see it." He was referring to the halo -- that colored aura or glow softly diffused from around each blurry bulb.

I experimented with taking my glasses on and off several times. It was magic! I put them back on and looked over at him and could see the expression on his face, he had the sweetest smile and we sat there in silence a long, long time.

I make a point of taking off my glasses at least once each season to take in the blurry lights and I remember how one yuletide of my childhood my Dad taught me to how to take just a moment and find the magic in it.

May you find a lot of magic in your moments this year!

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About twenty years ago I got to play Santa. For real!

The company I worked for had adopted a very large family off an angel tree, and we wanted to have a party for them, and needed a Santa to pass out their gifts. Shy, retiring chick that I am, I was elected!

I invested in a regulation red Santa suit complete with toy sack, itchy beard and hair – the works! Trust me, that get up gave hot and heavy a whole new meaning.

I’m sure the older kids weren’t particularly impressed by the Dweeb in the costume with runny mascara, but the kids under five were spellbound.

“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh” the littlest one kept saying as she alternately hid from and ran after me. She was probably three and thus had low expectations of Santa – or low enough for me to get by with it.

A few years later my husband got to wear the same get up I had worn – proof positive the costumers meant business when they said “One Size Fits All”. At 6’ 5”, with a natural mustache, beard, and booming bass voice, he was born for the role. He was asked to portray Saint Nick for a party at a shelter for abused women and their children. He heard lots of sad stories that year. Good thing Santa wasn’t wearing mascara.

I haven’t seen the suit in years now. I think it got lost in one of our moves or maybe it’s up in the attic over the garage in one of those vaguely described storage boxes marked “Christmas” that gets pushed further and further back each year and never finds its way down again.

I need to find it, and an occasion to wear it again. Maybe we all should. Everyone should play Kris Kringle at least once in their lives. I know once you’ve been touched by the magic suit, well, you stay touched.

Something magical happens when you don that ensemble. Somehow you become a little bit more like the big guy himself and that makes you want to stay that way long after you take the costume off.

I suspect there's a little Santa in all of us -- Maybe we just need to let our Inner Santas out!

Merry Christmas!!!

The day after Christmas starts one of the happiest weeks of the year for me. It’s that week before the start of the next year when I pause and reflect on the year that’s passed and look forward to the promise of a brand new one.

Back in the Fall I wrote about how “Back to School” season reminded me of fresh, clean notebook pages and composition books just waiting to be filled.

New years are like that for me -- big, open, cavernous expanses of opportunity just waiting to be filled. I get breathless just thinking about it!

This week each year I spend a lot of time looking back on what I’ve accomplished, what I wish I’d done more of, what I wish I’d done less of , and I make plans to do better in the year ahead.

See, I don’t “wish”, I don’t “hope.” I make plans. I resolve. Resolve doesn’t translate to: “I’ll give it a good try” or “Maybe I’ll take a run at…” Resolve means to set one’s mind. To determine. To make clear. There’s nothing hesitant nor indefinite to it.

This year, as you contemplate all the possibilities and challenges 2011 may offer, I encourage you to set your mind to those things you most want to accomplish. What is it in your life you want to clear up? What will you decide to do?

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Ever notice how some people just have the gift? They can take something perfectly average and turn it in to something extraordinary!


I have been sensing that 2011 was going to be a spectacular year. Of course I hope every new year will be, and greet each and every one with hope and expectation. But this year… ummm…. I can’t explain it, but I just know it’s going to be extra-special.

I was reminded today that while we are waiting for the special and momentous, we can make our moments special.

I’m staying with friends over the New Year and this morning’s treat was home made Pancakes! Okay, maybe not a huge event to some, but for me? Well I can count on – well no fingers how many times I’ve had pancakes made for me.

So not only did I get to enjoy an outstanding breakfast treat – these folks had the spirit and imagination to form the batter into Star Wars figures. Now tell me THAT happens every day. If that isn’t evidence of great things to come then I don’t know what is!

So here’s my wish that we can all be a lot like my friends this year – inventive, imaginative, and ready in an instant to turn the mundane into magic!

May the Force be with you!!!

Where will you be January 27, 2011? Twenty-one days from now you could be free of that annoying habit that is holding you back. In three weeks you could be exercising every day. Armies of scientists, psychologists, and sociologists have proven that a behavior consistently repeated (or NOT repeated) for three consecutive weeks can be adopted or dispensed with, depending on your desired outcome.

The catch? Day number one. Deciding to.

Towards the latter part of the Fall last year I invited Bravehearts to join me in a new community on this site: “From Can’t to Can”. The purpose of the community was to formulate a list of a dozen audacious goals and then work together to accomplish them (a lofty ambition in itself!)

Interestingly enough, just one of the nearly fifty Bravehearts that signed up for the community went as far as Step 4: the last step in formulating the list.

My point?! For many of us, just setting a goal is tough stuff.

Let me encourage you that if you can muster the resources to set the goal, specifically, to make or break a habit – you can have the result you want twenty one days from now. That means on January 27th you could be living life measurably better than you are right now!

I challenge all readers of this post to pick one thing they want to change in their lives. Maybe it’s taking ten minutes a day to read and reflect on meaningful material. Maybe it’s finally picking up those five-pound hand weights in the corner and doing some exercises. Maybe it’s deciding once and for all that chewing your fingernails should be part of your past.

For some it means getting on a treadmill, for others it might mean getting off one and eliminating something that’s only adding to the furious pace we keep.

Pick one change – any one practice to start or to stop and decide to.

I double dog dare you!

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If you decided yesterday you were going to take me up on my double-dog dare (I’ve had three takers I know of) then you are already on your way to Automati City. That’s our destination. That’s the place where our decision to form a new habit or break an old one is now routine, a matter of course, taken for granted, customary, what we do, (or don’t) – automatic!

automaticity /au·to·ma·ti·ci·ty/ (-mah-tis´ĭ-te)
1. the state or quality of being spontaneous, involuntary, or self-regulating.
2. the capacity of a cell to initiate an impulse without an external stimulus.

But before we get there we need to do (or not do) what we did (or didn’t do) yesterday again today.

One of my “Dare-taker-uppers” decided she was going to walk thirty minutes every day. Here’s my advice to her and the rest of us. If it is within the realm of possibility, do that right now. First thing. First chance you get. Get ‘er done.

As we all know so well, there’s nothing like life to foil a plan. Life is what happens when we intended to do something else. Our best hope of beating the interruption odds? Do what we are determined to do very first thing.

So DO it. Write in the journal, read your inspirational material, walk, exercise, meditate.

If you are trying to NOT to something, again I encourage you to NOT do it right away. Then find lots and lots of other things to do.

As a record holder in vice foregoing, I can tell you one secret to successfully breaking a habit is to adopt a new one.

Forge on, changers!

Here’s a promise! No sooner will you set your mind to adopting a new habit or breaking an old one then you will be overwhelmed with opportunites to dissuade you from your commitment.

Last year, when I committed to walking every morning, the weather turned humid. I’m talking air-hanging, wet-washcloth, hard-to-breath, climes. I’d perspire just dressing to go walk! There was never a breeze, it was all part of the charm of late spring in the Valley. Yuck.

I walked anyway.

My braveheart friend Chickee is on day three today of her newly adopted walking habit. Yesterday she had to wait until temperatures soared to 20 before she could get started, but start she did. And start today, she will.

There’s something about setting your mind, and keeping it set, that leaves a perpetual “So? What?” on your lips.

Whatever you are giving up or taking on today, I assure you there will be obstacles. Count on it! If you want to exercise, indoors or out, it will be too hot, too cold, or inconvenient. Sorry, Goldilocks, there’s seldom a “just right” when you’re forming a habit. If you are dieting, the universe will send you freshly baked cookies. If you are trying to read, study, or mediate there will be all sorts of interruptions. These are just tests from the great Conspirer, testing our resolve.

Tell yourself, “So? What?” And do it. Or don’t do it. Some more.

Soldier on!!

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con·sist·ent/kənˈsistənt/Adjective
1. (of a person, behavior, or process) Unchanging in achievement or effect over a period of time.

And here we are. Day Four of a twenty-one day
opportunity to make, break, forge a habit.

Puts us on the downhill easy side of our first week, and after three days effort, if we’ve been consistent, we’ve done yeoman’s work in programming our subconscious minds that this time, we’ll be successful.

One of the parts of life I like best is the occurrence of a brand new day. With it comes the chance to try again. Do it all better. Get it right

Soldier on, bravehearts, soldier on.

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Vacillating people seldom succeed. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching their decisions, and very persistent and determined in action thereafter. – L. G. Elliott

Hello, Bravehearts! Isn’t that a great quote? “Vacillating people seldom succeed.”

For those of you that took my up on my Double Dog Dare to make or break a habit by January 27th, today marks or fifth day of our journey.

And it is around Day Five of a commitment to change that the commitment of doubters and nay-sayers may convene it your head. Don’t let them!

The moment a doubt or even the introduction of the possibility of a doubt enters your mind, respond immediately, “Oh, but I will do this.”

Even today I wrestle with the “not today” monster. I walk every morning. It is important to my physical and mental health to discipline myself and get up and do it. After I write, I walk. Period. And most days, as soon as I wake up, (after I’ve fed Rex) there to greet me is the “not today” monster, ready with a dozen reasons why I needn’t bother to walk, “today”.

The difference between my five hundredth day with the monster and my fifth? I expect him now. And I wish him a good morning and send him on his way. And, I walk.

What ever it is bravehearts that you are doing or not doing? Do it (or don’t) today.