I don’t know about you, but my Sunday into Monday sleep can be a little rough.
Then after waking up, my mind is on every little thing I have to do from now until Christmas.
I drink my coffee and head out the door to workout and as I walk I say, Dear God, help me to slow down and appreciate the moments and I turned the corner and he says,
Be present.
What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?
In the past year, we’ve begun the process for our son to purchase our remodeling company. He’s been with us since 2012 and for the last 2 years, has worked in the office estimating and running projects. We’ll start the buyout as the calendar turns to January 2026.
My husband and I have owned the company since 1999. It’s been 25 years of hard work building it from the ground up starting out in our basement to now in an office with nine employees.
When you work for yourselves, you wonder as time passes, “will I be at work until the day I die?” Terrible thing to think of but, it’s your business, not some corporation that you hit retirement age and leave. What option is there other than to find a buyer or close the doors. My husband has retired from the office and I’m starting to work four days a week and come and go a little more freely because I know our son and our client manager have everything under control.
It’s a remarkable feeling to know that our son is incredibly capable of owning the business and he’s already running it. I picture my 3 year old with a plastic hammer in his hand pounding on a piece of sheetrock with dust on his nose and marvel at how accomplished he is today.
Sitting at my desk, I’m listening to “The Bridge”, a station on Sirius XM. Jackson Browne singing “The Pretender” comes on and I’m immediately transported back to the fall/winter of my junior year of high school in 1976.
It was a very tumultuous time for me. I had a boyfriend through my sophomore year, but we broke up in the waning days of the school year. Aww, poor me! It would have ended here, and I might have gotten over him, but I couldn’t because we continued to see each other. During the day, I would go to his house to swim. His mother was home so it wasn’t anything sneaky. But I’ll bet his friends didn’t know about it!
Silly, naive me thought we had a chance to get back together! But, in public, he had moved on from me with his group of friends, painfully one of them, who it was rumored he liked, had just made the incoming cheerleading squad!
Back to Jackson Browne!
I had moved on by fall. Ha! You obviously don’t know me very well, do you! I hoped he would ask me to Junior Prom, but no luck. Was there a possibility? I’m sure he kept my hopes alive. He went as “a friend” with someone in his group. I lived in the periphery of that group and I went with a boy that someone in that group set me up with! It was complicated with that group. I was friends with almost everyone in it, but not really included.
By prom time, I was dating someone else, that fact is important only to this story.
Christmas came around, and I hinted at and received Jackson Browne’s The Pretender album from the new boyfriend for Christmas. I wanted the album because the song “Here Come Those Tears Again”, reminded me of my old boyfriend!
In hindsight, the relationship with the original sophomore boyfriend was a match made in Hell for so many reasons! Stay tuned….
Here come those tears again
Just when I was getting over you
Just when I was going to make it through
Another night without missing you
Thinking I might just be strong enough after all
When I hear your footsteps echoing in the hall
Baby here we stand again
Where we’ve been so many times before
Even though you looked so sure
As I was watching you walking out my door
But you always walk back in like you did today
Acting like you never even went away
Well I don’t know if I can
Open up and let you in baby
Here come those tears
Here come those tears again
I can hear you telling me
How you needed to be free
And you had some things to work out alone
Now you’re standing here telling me
How you have grown
Here come those tears again
Now you’ll tell me how to hold them in
Here come those tears
Here come those tears again
Some other time baby
When I’m strong and feeling fine maybe
When I can look at you without crying
You might look like a friend of mine
But I don’t know if I can
Open up enough to let you in
Here come those tears
Here come those tears again
Walk away
I’m going back inside and turning out those lights
And I’ll be in the dark but you’ll be out of sight
Does your sleep pattern change often? Mine drives me crazy sometimes!
I know it’s the weekend because I will sleep through the night and wake up at 6am. But as soon as Sunday night rolls around I wake up at 1am, 3am, and 5am! My alarm goes off at 5:45 and I’m always tempted to get up when I wake up from a doze around 5:30. But I stick it out and wait for the alarm.
I try to figure out if it’s related to something I eat, or don’t eat, at dinner or afterwards. Is the room warm or cool? But there’s no clear answer.
I must get enough sleep because I’m not tired during the day or nodding off in front of the television!
The holidays stress me out.
I try to be chill but once we turn the corner from Thanksgiving, I feel like a train is rushing down the track. Am I on it? Or is it heading towards me? I haven’t quite decided.
I have hosted our family Christmas Party for 10 or 15 years always the second or third Saturday in December. Throw in a work party we host on the first Saturday and a trip to New York to shop in whatever week doesn’t contain a party at the end and there’s December, done and dusted.
Gift-giving has slowed down, which is a good thing. My husband and I shop for ourselves in New York, and our son and daughter-in-law usually receive something large during the year. Now it’s gifts for our great niece and nephew and something for the grab bag at the party.
This year’s election has f*cked it up a bit as some people don’t want to be around other people and it’s enough that I try to make everyone feel welcome regularly to now have to worry about who’s ignoring whom and what will they mutter under their breath.
I will be sure I do my daily meditation, get enough sleep and exercise, select my menu, and buy a big bottle of wine for myself and hide it away!
I like to be warm and cozy as we head into the COLD time of year. Right now I find myself wearing my Lands End down vest in the house and under a jacket when I’m outside. It’s handy at work too!
At home, I have my favorite pair of pajamas and they are so comfortable the only time I don’t wear them is in the dead of summer! They were from Victoria’s Secret many years ago and look like long underwear! On weekday mornings I’m in my workout clothes but, on the weekends, I like to wear these pajamas.
I had a story thought in my head and came to my computer to spend a(n) half hour writing. Instead, I went to the computer, saw my email account was up, thought I’d check those emails, and then remembered I wanted to order a couple of new bras, so I went to the email I received the other day, browsed through the site, and ordered a couple. Remembered the printer was out of paper so I had to ‘rassle the ream of paper from its illogical location and fill the tray. While waiting for the pages to print, I remembered my original intention was to write about my thoughts from my walk this afternoon.
Thursday afternoon, I watched an author talk with Javier Zamora, author of Solito. He is El Salvadoran and it is a memoir of his excursion from El Salvador to the United States when he was nine years old. Via a “coyote”. I haven’t read the book yet, but as I was listening to his story, I ordered the book through Barnes and Noble and picked it up the next day.
This was an enjoyable way to spend time on the computer. Something productive, something I didn’t have to talk in or answer any questions, and something that was NOT doomscrolling.
For months, my brain and emotions have been overloaded with this election season. Now that it’s over and the real fun begins, I’m not sure how much more I can take. I feel like the social media sites no longer serve their purpose of feeding me flowers, dogs, and friends and are now filled with the political sites I subscribed to over this time.
I’m trying to share fun things to stories along with items that might make you go “hmmmm”, and maybe if I do a little less hearting Instagram posts, my feed might get a little more fun.
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
To work on myself….to understand myself….to learn self-love and practice it….to break my co-dependent nature.
I haven’t succeeded because it’s too difficult to start. To start means to move away from the person I know into the unknown.
Today is Hump Day and today I’m posting a picture of something I see on my Monday through Friday travels from my house to my garage workout room.
Some days it’s easy to get there and some days it’s tough. Today I wasn’t excited about it! I went to bed early (fell asleep reading my book!), and I woke up at 1:30 and what felt like every hour after that. Of course I woke up groggy when the alarm went off at 5:30 and I thought about staying in bed. But my brain told me I had Day 2 of Rebecca Kennedy’s 3-Day Split waiting for me and I couldn’t give up on my leg workout. So off I went!
When I round the corner and see this sight, I feel energized. This time of year, it’s chilly in the morning but not chilly enough that I don’t want to linger to take in the view. My phone probably has 100+ photos of this same view throughout the year because every one is different. It’s what keeps me going.
Today’s Hump Day photo comes from the first week long motorcycle trip we took in 2013. We traveled with another couple and 2 single guys from Connecticut, down the Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Park, and along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee North Carolina and back.
This picture was taken in the parking lot of the Harley Davidson factory in York Pennsylvania. It was on the last day of our trip. Because of a rain delay the day before we were running behind. We stayed overnight in York, but I think there either was no Saturday tour or we couldn’t swing the time because we were still a good 6 hours away from home.
About the trip –
We took off in early June and it was cold and rainy. The views were amazing on the Skyline Drive but for much of the ride on the parkway it was cold and foggy! Lesson learned #1 – we need to travel in the summer!
There was one other rider, who is still a good friend. He led the way and the focus was getting in a lot of hours on the bike. Amy, the other female, and I wanted to see sights! Lesson Learned #2 – plan the trip!
We rode on the Tail of the Dragon in Deals Gap, NC and went nice and slow! We went to the top of Chimney Rock and could see Lake Lure where they filmed Dirty Dancing. We stayed in Floyd Virginia and absolutely fell in love with it! We got caught in a monstrous rain storm on the highway and stopped for the day and overnight in Natural Bridge Virginia at this little motel where we pulled the bikes under the overhang and walked to the nearby diner for our meals.
After this trip, we continued to go on day trips, weekend trips, and week long trips with Brendan and Amy and Chris. We all got along so well and enjoyed some really great trips.
This picture reflects the start of those wonderful friendships.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 