4th annual St. marks trip

Written by jamie on January 2nd, 2012

It’s that time of year again… time for Drew and I’s “other” anniversary. Every New Year’s Eve, Drew and I take our annual pilgrimage to St. Mark’s lighthouse, where he proposed (I even ran across the little Altoid tin that had my ring in it this week while cleaning. It’s tucked in my jewelry box.)

The 31st was a beautiful day; sunny, clear, and warm. And unfortunately, Saturday. It was a bit crowded. People in OUR spot, on OUR day. The nerve.

Luckily, it wasn’t crowded enough to be unpleasant, and we had a wonderful day walking, photographing the lighthouse, and holding hands. 🙂

Here are the highlights.

While driving the long, scenic road to the lighthouse, I gazed out the open window at the water only feet away. And saw this.

Apparently they weren’t kidding when they posted this.

Luckily, he was nowhere near where we needed to park.

We got out, took a long, leisurely walk, and enjoyed the scenery and sunshine.

While we took our walk, we ran across this little guy. (Look close. I wasn’t about to wade in the water to get a better shot.)

And of course, we returned to the lookout tower, the exact location where Drew proposed. Our carving, barely visible, is still there. Drew said he’d bring a Dremel next year.

One of my favorite views from the park… right where he proposed.

While there, we took some shots of the lighthouse for a photo collage idea I had. We’ll see if it comes out.

It was a fun trip, as always. Thanks for three and a half fun years, babe. I’m hoping for many more.

See ya next year, St. Mark’s.

 

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Post Christmas blues

Written by jamie on December 27th, 2011

I’ve been reading a writing blog by Jeff Goins lately. I highly recommend it. He’s got some great writing tips. Yesterday, he approached the topic of the post Christmas blues, something I deal with annually. He encouraged people to write about it, in order to process through the emotions. This is my effort to do that.

 

I am a Christmas junkie. I love the music, the lights, the feeling of utter peace on earth (except at the mall). Almost everything about the season makes me smile.

I remember as a child making the connection that it was not the gifts that was so cool about the season; it was everything leading up to that. It was the anticipation, the enjoyment of all the things surrounding the season that made me so happy. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was a week of conflicted emotions. January 1st was the saddest day of the year for me, because it was the day we had to take the Christmas decorations down. I hated that day and usually spent the whole time fighting back tears.

As an adult, I still struggle with those post Christmas blues. The days between Christmas and New Year’s are such a let down. The 24/7 holiday music station is back to regularly scheduled programming, stores tear down the holiday displays to make room for Valentine’s candy, and live Christmas trees lie discarded at the end of driveways. Whoa… what happened? Christmas is over, so let’s get rid of all signs of it?

Sometimes I feel guilt after Christmas because I didn’t adequately “enjoy” the season. I didn’t spend enough quiet time soaking in Christmas lights, I didn’t pull out all of my Christmas CDs to listen to, I didn’t bake a single batch of cookies. I want a do over. I’m so busy the whole month of December that I didn’t have enough time to soak in all the glories of my favorite holiday.

I’ve found I have to “wean myself off” Christmas. Though many people enjoy taking the time between Christmas and New Year’s to get all the Christmas stuff down and packed away, I enjoy having the tree up for a little bit longer. Basking in the glow of the tree is a way for me to relax, so I’m in no rush to take it down. While the rest of the world moves on and leaves Christmas in a pile of wrapping paper memories, I take some time to say goodbye.

As Christmas fades away and I try to get back to “normal” life, I remember all the other good things that life has. New Year’s brings a chance to work on and better myself and anticipate what the next year will bring. As I get myself out of my 24/7 Christmas music mode, I’m pleased to rediscover all those songs that I haven’t listened to for a month. I love how my body feels when it’s not gorging itself on whatever sweet crap is lying around. And I remind myself that the baby Jesus is growing up, and He needs to be worshipped too.

Post Christmas is sad and often a big let down, but life goes on, and it needs to be lived.

 

 

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Here I am…

Written by jamie on December 26th, 2011

 

It’s been a crazy month. I feel like I’ve barely been able to breathe. Since there’s so much to catch up on, here’s a bullet list:

  • Work about killed me this month. I love Christmas, but the Christmas season working in an activities department at a retirement facility is incredibly busy and stressful. And I felt like I took on a lot more work than I have in previous years. Plus, our bus driver took vacation, which left me driving the bus all week, with my death grip on the steering wheel. My stomach is just now untying it’s knots. I am tired and absolutely beat. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Hopefully January will be less stressful.
  • My laptop crashed. Incredibly frustrating. My tech husband will be working on it, and hopefully will be able to get it up and running. In the meantime, I’m using his “second” laptop (one of the benefits of marrying a computer nerd… there’s always a spare computer somewhere) which also tried to crash on me this morning. I feel a bit like King Midas. Every laptop I touch crashes. Grrr…. Here’s hoping all my random word documents and Quicken data are not lost forever.
  • Drew was in a car accident. Really not cool. He’s okay, which I thank God for, but the aftermath of it has been a bit stressful. He was hit in the head by something after being rear ended by some doctor that wasn’t paying attention. He had a pretty bad cut and we ended up in the ER to get eight staples in his head. He’s since had them taken out and his scar looks okay, but he still has a scar. And a totaled car that had been paid off and had $5000 worth of repairs put into it. So now we’re spending our vacation car shopping. I’m trying not to be resentful of the whole situation, but it’s been hard. There might be a separate post about that coming.

So that list is pretty depressing. I have to admit… it’s been a bit of a rough month. But here’s a list of some of the good things to balance it out.

  • We had a very nice Christmas. Fun gift giving, fun time spent with family, and an awesome dinner with family of choice. And I’m now sitting by my beautiful LIVE Christmas tree that we got this year. It’s very pretty. It makes me happy.
  • We are on vacation for the next week with no travel plans. I have lofty goals of getting my house in order and organized so I can enter the new year feeling a little less out of sorts.
  • I reconnected with some high school friends at the beginning of this month, and had a really good time. Sometimes meeting with old school friends can be a little awkward, with nothing to talk about but past memories. Although we did relive high school memories, we had a great time catching up and laughing. I had a blast. I’m thankful to keep some old connections with people.
  • I’m participating in something called FinishYear... a New Year’s Resolution list of sorts, but with an online community of accountability to keep me going. I’ll probably be blogging more about that soon.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I’m looking forward to a week of rest and hopefully a couple more blog posts.

 

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Nothing much to say

Written by jamie on November 16th, 2011

I’m home sick today. That darn ear clogagge thing is acting up again. I took a Zyrtec to see if it might dry up whatever is going on in there, but it is making me a bit groggy, as I feared. So I’m crashing on the couch, trying to rest as much as possible. I’m hoping to just treat it myself so as not to spend another $100 at the ENT to be told there’s nothing wrong with me.

Since I have no energy to write anything profound, here’s a couple highlights from my week.

  • I discovered these videos this week. Drew and I got a HUGE laugh out of them and it almost makes me want a cat again. If you want to see more, check out this page.

  • I recently took a trip to visit a dear friend. She and I did some photography experiments on the beach, which I blogged about here. Someone from a website called savetheartist.com visited the blog and wanted to showcase one of the photos on his website. I said sure! Check it out here.
 

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