Starting Over

One of my favorite blogs where I have been The Queen of Lurkers for quite some time is Rachel Anne's Home Sanctuary.

It's thoughtful and inspiring and leads me to actually believe that I can one day have a home of peace and comfort minus the clutter, Paper Monsters or Surface Stealers. She does a marvelous daily feature called Small Things and each day it comes into my inbox. This is usually a task to do around the home, or something to give some thought to, and it usually in a nice manageable bite-size piece, so i don't feel like I am tackling more than I can handle, which leads me to feeling overwhelmed and giving up altogether.

Have you been there, too? 

Rachel Anne also has a feature where she invites her blog friends to visit and chat a la cawfee tawk style (being from NY that is how I say coffee and talk! No big woop!). This is my first try at this, so with a deep breath, here goes!

Today's Small Thing is not so small! We are asked to think of how we might "start over" on something, anything, big or small. Two areas come to mind for me right off the bat: A regular exercise schedule and turning that back room upstairs into the home office it is intended to be. We have been in this house 5 YEARS now! I must stop being overwhelmed about tacklng that room again. I have started to venture on this project once. I got discouraged quickly and that was the end of that mission.

About the exercise, I was doing great in this area for the last few months and then some unexpected extended family issues in the last week completely derailed me. The good thing is that I KNOW I will be starting over tomorrow as I have already made a "date" to meet a friend for an hour-long walk.

It's a start! 

Be sure to swing by Home Sanctuary to see what other Company Girls are up to, and thanks for indulging me in my first blog post for this. I hope some of the girls will stop on by!

Putting St. Anthony through his paces

I am so grateful to Mama Kat (who by the way, has a whole new look to her site - stunning! - you must check it out) for her weekly series that keeps me typing at the keyboard with a smile on my face and provides me with the much needed blogging "practice," me being new to the blogosphere and all.

This week I am selecting the following prompt, and taking liberties by doing it in the form of a letter:

3.) A moment you truly felt relieved

Dear St. Anthony,

In my Catholic household, I grew up knowing you were the patron saint of lost things.

But it wasn't until meeting my college roommate that I ever heard the prayer with a down-home familiarity I have come to say too many times to count: "Tony, Tony, look around. Something's lost that must be found."

This was the prayer I prayed one summer when I lost my contact lens on a beach, while enjoying some rare one-on-one time with my oldest niece, 9 or 10 years old at the time. It does not bode an adult well to be crying over a lost lens, having her young charge on her hands and knees coated in her aunt's contagious panic thicker than sunblock.

Because of the severity of my bad eyesight, these lenses are special ordered and far from cheap. I dreaded having to tell my dad, who had paid for them, about how one blew off my fingertip in the wind when I was taking them out to go swimming.

Yes, at times I can be that foolish.

The prayer went into full action and after what seemed like a lifetime, the blue tint of the contact lens caught the sun. There it was, in the sand, right on the edge of the beach blanket. I don't remember if I saw it first or my niece. I just remember a whole lot of hugging and crying and hooting it up as if we had won the lottery.

I am sorry I turn to you only when panic sets in.

I firmly believe you helped to find that lens on the beach, and a lens that slipped out of my eye, the night before my rehearsal dinner, as I picked up my brother at Newark Airport. It wasn't until the car was pulled into my parents' driveway that my brother found it under the seat, eliminating the nightmare vision I had of walking down the aisle with one eye closed so as not to lose my balance.

You also came through for me when I lost the opal heart-shaped pendant. Surely you remember that fiasco. I was playing catcher for a rec softball team and in a scuffle at the plate, my necklace was ripped off. I had been wearing that heart since my Aunt Mollie gave it to me for my 16th birthday.

The umpire helped me look. My teammates helped me look. Even the opposing team helped me look. When dusk started to settle and everyone packed up, I was hell-bent on not leaving that softball diamond until I found my opal.

You heard me.

It was in the dirt, just on the edge of home plate.

Still, all those happy moments of discovering lost treasured items does not compare to that day last summer, when you really outdid yourself.

I lost my wedding band. For about an hour, I was in hysterics -- full-blown gasping and sobbing -- the kind where you can't get the words out.

Worse, it was lost in a neighborhood where I was housesitting and where I would not be able to keep my eyes peeled for it on a daily basis.

It fell out of my pocket. No need to go into why it was in my pocket and not on my finger (the warm temperatures swell my digits when I'm out taking power walks). My husband and I retraced our steps as our 45-minute walk doubled with two sets of eyes darting everywhere.

"Tony, Tony look around. Something's lost that must be found," I prayed with every single step.

Drained out of hope and energy, my eyes saw it on the side of the driveway.

You came through again.

I am your biggest fan, can't you tell?

Stop by to see what others are writing about this week.

New Year's Eve 2010 - Hokiness Maximus

Hello once again!
Still getting the hang of blogging and still relying on good ol Mama Kat to help nudge me along through her Writer's Workshop series.

I am choosing this week the following prompt:

2.) If the way you spent your New Year’s Eve is any indication of how the rest of the year will go, how would you say your future is looking right about now?

For the past few years for the New Years holiday, we have been spending a four day weekend with some of my husband’s family in Chincoteague Island, Va. If you’ve ever been there in the summertime, you know it is a beautiful place to be. In the winter time? Not a heckuva lot going on. Not a lot shops open, or restaurants, or people around. I almost feel like I am going on a quiet monk-like retreat when we go on this trip.

We have dinner New Year’s Eve at one of the few places open in town, Bill’s Seafood Restaurant, where they make up a lovely assortment of holiday cocktails. I did not try all of these!

Eggnog Martini (tastes much better than it looks!)

This year, something new was actually taking place on the island. Something the few locals and year-rounders were all abuzz about. What was it? I asked around and found out.

And so it was that just before midnight, we all walked over to the waterfront public park off of Main Street for the First Annual Horseshoe Drop. Yep, a horse shoe drop. Who needs a stinkin’ ball? High atop a flagpole waiting to be lowered, was an illuminated giant horseshoe, made from many many strings of lights and chickenwire, I suspect.

As we waited for the count down, a parade of people wearing costumes, crazy hats and blowing noisemakers began around the public square. These two characters led the charge.

All the hoopin’ and hollerin’ at midnight over a chickenwire covered illuminated horseshoe descending its way down the flagpole just made me laugh and smile. I soaked in the crowd. I am big on cheesy events and hokiness and this, to me, was a good way to start the year. Perhaps it will be a lucky one after all.

The next day, we were back walking at the beach on a quiet, foggy day.The Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge is stunning in the summer time. I learned that it is stunning even in the starkness of January.

If 2011 is a year of laughing with family, even over happenings that ooze hokiness, then it is going to be a good year indeed.

Stop by MamaKatsLosingIt to read what others are saying about how they showed 2010 out the door and welcomed in 2011.

Writer's Workshop - The fist fight that rocked the bus

Here I am again, trying my hand at blogging and getting a lovely nudge from MamaKat  in her weekly Writer's Workshop series over at  MamaKatsLosinIt Thanks, Kat!

When I saw that one of the prompts was to write about a fist fight, I smiled and laughed  to myself.
I've been in one fist fight in my entire life. And, truth be told, I was victorious.

I was in the sixth grade, all geeked out in classes thicker than any Coke bottle could ever be. 'Good girl' and 'model student' were labels that I wore proudly like a uniform. But there was one boy, Larry, who for reasons that escape me now, would cause my nerves to frazzle in a million directions. This boy, who lived around the block, was an expert at pushing my buttons long before I knew what that term meant.

And so it was one afternoon on the school bus on the ride home, Larry was taunting me about something and I decided I had enough. He was standing in the center aisle of the bus, too close to me for comfort sitting in the back row. I took a swing at him and to my utter surprise, and sheer delight, I hit him square in the nose, knocked HIS glasses off and caused him to lose his balance and stumble backward onto the school bus floor. As all of this happened in a matter of seconds, I remember noticing at the time how the entire bus was cheering for me and giving me high fives for what I had just done.

The next morning, I sat in in the principal's office as he placed the call to my mother. "There's been an incident that is unacceptable," he told her. My mother ran through the names of each of my three brothers thinking surely it must be one of THEM that Mr. Hoffman had sitting before him.

He went on to explain that it in fact was her daughter, and she had knocked a boy to the ground and broke his glasses. Then under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, he says to my mom "To be honest with you, he probably had it coming with him, but still...."

I don't recall the specific punishment at home, but I have no doubt there was one. And my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Kelly had me stay after school to smack the erasers clean (do they even do that anymore?) and to clean the blackboards and tidy the classroom. She saw that after-school cleaning session as the perfect time to talk to me about "what it means to be a lady," and how "fighting is not what little ladies do."

I wanted to tell her that the principal said Larry had it coming to him, but I kept that to myself as the erasers continued to smack against each other and chalk clouds puffed into the air.

To see what others had to say about this prompt or the others up for grabs this week, head on over to  Mama's Losin' It

O, Fitness Tree

This is my first post as part of the Works For Me Wednesday's (WFMW) Weekly blog party over at We Are That Family. I'm a new blogger but a long-time reader of We Are That Family and am happy to join in!

I'm on a health and fitness journey in the last six months or so and I have been noticing major changes, one in particular: I no longer head straight for the junk food when I am feeling all stressed out. No, I have not been perfect in my eating, I know I have not been doing the kind of damage that I USED to do when the stress was piling up. In fact, I am turning more toward exercise than anything else! It has been keeping me sane and motivated!

Want to know a secret? This time of year is also a hard one for me. Long story there, for another time. But I created something new for ME this year to help me feel those positive endorphins that come from exercise:

O, Fitness Tree

 I Googled "printable Christmas count down calendar," found one, printed it out and stuck it on a nail in my breakfast nook. Beginning with Dec. 1, my goal is to count down the days till Christmas through EXERCISE! For every day I exercise, I add an "ornament" to my tree. (Pssst.. they are really just images cut up from peel and stick gift tags from the dollar store.) My goal is to see my tree completely decorated. Here is how it looked as of yesterday (today there is already another stick on Day. No. 7 from my walk this morning).

Folks, this little tree has kept me moving. When things are hard and for those days I have to really struggle to just hold it together sometimes, getting a sticker on this tree has kept me on my feet, energized, feeling strong and feeling proud. I can't wait to see this thing all decorated!

What works for you to keep you moving during the holiday season? Maybe you'd like to create an O, Fitness Tree of your own! 

Writer's Workshop - What I would be doing

So, I'm taking a deep breath here and venturing into the blog world. Many of my friends have encouraged me to do this over the years. All the while, I was thinking about it, too. And so here I am.

I figured what better way to start than with this?

I had the pleasure of meeting Mama Kat at Bloggy Boot Camp earlier this year. She sat at my table at lunch time and made me feel welcome in a sea of bloggers when I was blogless. I remember her talking about these posts she does, to encourage people to write. My ears perked up. I'm a writer. I'm lucky enough to be a paid journalist. I thought Kat's Writer's Workshops would be a fun way to keep me writing outside of the work I do, which sometimes is a lot more on the editing side of things.

And then I saw the prompts today and thought well, this was meant to be. The question asked if you had to make a career out of whatever you were passionate about at the age of 10, what would it be?

I get to do it every day. I write. Features. News. Columns. When I was 10 I filled notebooks with stories I made up. I wrote about monsters and fairies and all sorts of things I could dream up. A few years later -- I don't remember the exact age -- I interviewed my neighbors as i pretended to be a journalist. A few years later, I did a mock up of my own newspaper in a journalism class. My paper was called The Inside Scoop.

It was in 7th grade that my English teacher told me she thought that some day, some day far away as an adult, I would get paid for my words. It has all come true. I'm not at a big city daily. I don't think you will see "Pulitzer Prize winner" precede my name in my obituary. I've worked in small towns writing about peach festivals and school board meetings. But what I did at 10, I am able to still do. And these days, in the business of journalism, it is a blessing to be able to say that. Thanks for the reminder, Writer's Workshop.