Holiday Expectations

Yup, we all have those Holiday Expectations!  Notice that it is capitalized. Holiday Expectations are premeditated disappointments.  Yup.....premeditated!

Sit for a moment with your dream that you have right this very moment about how the Holiday is going to be.  Ruminate....NOW....throw it out the window.   Go with the flow of  what really happens this holiday season.  If you haven't made that favorite dish or if that tradition you always do is just not working....then LET IT GO!  Make something new but don't stress.  Remember it is all premeditated anyway.

I have had some great dreams about how I want my 2018 Christmas celebration to be. I must say before any of my readers jump all over me, I do concentrate on Jesus birth and Advent is a big deal for me.  I am human and like the rest of you, I have Holiday Expectations that revolve around presents with kids, cookies, candy, games, laughing and fun.  My Expectations are beautiful, in the dream everyone is frolicking at the cabin, no one is crying, love is oozing everywhere.  What if that doesn't happen?  What if it doesn't go as I plan?  Should it go as I planned?  Holiday Expectations, can swing two ways, far to gleefulness or far to the doom and gloom. GEEZE...give me a break! Premeditated disappointment go away.

How do we get rid of these Holiday Expectations?  We need to plan events, right?  If we have events, we need to plan food and fun, right?  That part is a given.  What we can't do is premeditate how EVERYONE is going to feel, react, not react, say or not say.  We can only control our own reactions to a situation.  Guess what, you can't have a reaction until the event is actually in motion.  So stop that premeditated disappointment now!

I want to challenge you to get rid of your Holiday Expectations by going with the flow! And let me know how it worked for you!

Happy Holiday....or not.   You are in charge of your own feelings.

What's with Initials?

When did our written and verbal communication break down?  When did we start using initials and numbers to communicate?  What happened to using the full word?

The first time I recall hearing initials for words was when I was in grade school.   My brother was the king of our 3 channel Television, therefore we only watched "boy" shows.  Man from U.N.C.L.E, PT109, M*A*S*H*,and F Troop.  I don't know if they were on CBS, NBC or ABC.  We didn't have PBS,CNN or FOX.  That came closer to the 21st century.  I just wanted to watch my "girl" shows, BeWitched, Green Acres and My Three Sons.  Ya, I know, My Three Sons sound like a "boy" show but those three sons were incredibly cute.  That was all that mattered to someone going through pre-puberty! The point is, my shows had real words in them!

I remember hearing the numbers of  war casualties  on TV news.  Our soldiers became a number every night. The announcers would say, " One hundred killed today."  The screen would light up of the number dead so far that year in comparison to the "enemy".  We always had less and I guess that was suppose to make us feel good.  It didn't.  It affects me now more than then.  Now I see those numbers as brothers of friends.  Brothers who were too young to die.

Initials and numbers continue to creep into my life.  Now I have yearly IEP's to discuss Hope's progress. She can get PMADE, NI,MET-R, LMTPM, MNBA, NOPM and OTHER. With the SSA  we discuss DB,FILL OUT SSA-827, use her SSN for somethings and my SSN for others.

Are you still with me?  Numbers and initials.  I can hardly keep them straight.

When I was in college, I went to the health clinic for a sore throat. MONO was running rampant on campus. I sat in the waiting room and eavesdropped on a conversation.
"What did you get?"
" I got an IUD."
"Do you like it?"
"I love it."
When I saw the Doctor, I asked to be treated with an IUD.

Initials can really get you in trouble.  Take for example that poor little old Santa Claus in Alabama, that had to get rid of his vanity license plate because it said HO HO.

Or when I surprised Tom with his vanity plates after he got his PHD.  It said DVMPHD.  People called him Dump Head. He refused to drive that car, so our daughters became the ridiculed girls at LHS.

Initials and numbers, they are going to be the death of me.
CSS
RIP  8/30/1954------xx/xx/20xx
 BS VIP MRS MOM

Hope Loves Santa

"A Snow globe." She whispered in his ear.
"A Snow globe." He said out loud.

Hope loves Santa Claus, Christmas, presents, bags, wrapping paper, candy canes, lights and snow globes. She celebrates Christmas 365 days a year. There isn't a Hallmark Christmas show that she hasn't seen.  She has the plot down...There is a non believer, there is a divorcee or single person, there is a lot of  fake snow, a Santa disguised as a "real" person and a snow globe.

The first year she asked for a snow globe, I thought, " How cute is that?" After that year, she has added, a baby doll and a candy cane to her list from Santa.  Every year, she wants the same thing.  She makes Christmas shopping easy. Once she has opened her gifts, she always says, " Is that it?"  Typical teenager!!!! Then she gathers them all together, takes them to her room and is gone for the rest of the night!

Santa always brought a beautiful glass musical snow globe. Santa got wise after the third year of Hope breaking them.  I would go to her room and find shards of broken glass, glitter and water soaking her books and magazines.  The glass is extremely thin, amazingly, she never cut herself.  Now I buy plastic snow globes.  It's fun looking for them!  This year it was a huge plastic musical rotating scene with air blown foam balls. 

When Hope was 2, we gave her rolls of Christmas paper to unroll and krinkle up.  She got the same thing on her birthday. Now, she will buy it at the dollar store, along with gift bags just to keep the season of giving going.

Hope has her own way of organizing holidays and they are all based around Christmas and Santa.  Her birthday is in January and that is when all holidays begin.
"First my birthday, then Valentines, then St Patrick's Day, then.( we take 5 minutes to list them all)...........and then Christmas and Santa, YAY!"

At the cabin, we have a new friend who looks like Santa.  He stopped in to say Hi on a weekend that Harper and Hope were hanging out on the porch.  I introduced him to the girls as "Santa".  Their eyes popped out of their heads. I told them,  "Yes, Santa lives right here in our neighborhood and he is gathering wood to make toy trucks and wooden soldiers!  You better be good!"

Our cabin is also located 30 miles from Santa Claus, In.  There are MANY MANY Santa's here and MANY MANY Santa helpers who will dress up like Santa.  Having a Santa in our neighborhood is very believable.   We continued to chat with "Santa" about the work he was doing at the cabin below us when the girls started to fight over some "lame" thing.  I excused myself from "Santa", grabbed both girls by the arm, pointed them toward Santa and said, " You just fought in front of Santa, YOU are on the naughty list now!" The scrambled to apologize to him.....this was in August!

Santa is thought to be magical, mystical, and mythical.  He brings hope and love to everyone. Santa is the best thing to happen to this world..  Hope will always love and believe in him and you should too.
Because.....

When you have Santa, you also have hope.
When you meet Hope, you will also meet Santa.
Hope,Santa and hope are real.
Believe
Love
And never give up hope.
Hope Loves Santa.

This.Is.My.Christmas.Newletter.

Dear Friends and Family,

I love Christmas newsletters.   I won't judge your life.  I won't compare your life to mine.  I enjoy hearing from family and friends and I don't care if it is a mass mailing.  I have a mailbox on my property and I want mail...the good kind...a letter from you!  You heard me!

A few years back, we had a discussion about replacing our plastic Home Depot mailbox with one of those really fancy brick and masonry kind that adorn beautiful flowers and have the chiseled house numbers on both sides.  All the neighbors have them, they are attractive and make all the homes look stately!  Then I priced them.  Call me cheap or call me practical.  We still have our Home Depot Mailbox that I installed, in the ground with no help from anyone.

When we weighed the pro's and con's of the style of mailbox, I pointed out the fact that mail is mail.  What exactly does that mean???  I pay all our bills online and receive no  paper bills.  Tom loves to receive seed catalogs, Lands End catalogs, and  Fruit Cake catalogs.  I get credit card applications from when I purchased a computer 20 years ago with my business name. Over the years, my name has been slaughtered to the point that Chinese Credit card companies send me applications at  Sue Cinda. I can't read Chinese!  This is the extent of our mail!  I think that a plastic Home Depot mailbox is the only thing worthy to sit on our property to collect such mail!

However, at Christmas time, I feel that any card coming from friends or family deserves a proper home to sit in for 5 minutes.  After all, that mail has been in bags, boxes, planes, semi's and/or lost and torn waiting for the waxy envelop with the USPS apology letter attached.  A stately brick mailbox with fake poinsettia's on each side would be appropriate.

If I received wonderful mail, I would prance or even dance to the mailbox.  There are nights when Tom asks, "What did we get for mail?"  And I have to admit, that I didn't even look at the mailbox!  That is sad.

I want to send you a Christmas card.  All I need is your address.  When you get the card, you will have my address.  THEN....you send me a Christmas newsletter or card!  Maybe if I get enough, I will call a Brick layer and beg him to build a Brick Mail Box. PRONTO! After all, your letter will be that important! And I think the neighbors would be amused to see me prance and dance! Or maybe they would call 911.  

How to send your address to me
1.   Via message on my facebook page Cinda Sue Originals
2.    Email Cindasanderson@gmail.com

Happy Holidays!

Holiday Vacation

Growing up, my family always took our holiday vacations to visit family in other states.  I thought everyone did that.  When I became a parent, we continued that tradition until we moved to Indiana.  Everyone in this town went to Florida.  What a concept.  Going on vacation with your family but not to see your family.

My memories of visiting my dad's dad in Hot Springs, SD were not real fond memories. Grandpa Nelson lived in what we called "The Old Soldiers Home"  Now days, it would be considered a Veterans Hospital.  I wish that my dad were alive to tell me why Grandpa Louie lived there in the winter months and would move back to Wakonda, SD in the summer.  In my child's mind, it was like what Snow Birds and Winter Texan's would be in this day and age.  But, there was something about that "Old Soldiers Home" that haunted me.

We would pick him up at "the home" and drive into town where he and my dad would sit  in a bar while my mom, brother and I sat in the car or perhaps shopped a bit. Western South Dakota was cold and snowy in December. I don't know how many years we did this, only that it was always the same.  Bar, car, cold.  We would read comic books over and over again.  I hated it. 

After we left Hot Springs we would vacation onward to a friends home that had kids.  I recall their Dad hooking a rope to several toboggans and attaching them to the station wagon's back bumper. He pulled us up the snowy Black Hills roads.  MY GOD....what was HE thinking!???  We could have died.!!! IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!  We would beg him to drive down the road with us behind.  He wouldn't!  MY GOD...what were WE thinking????? Can you imagine the kind of prison this man would be sentence to in this day and age? I'm glad it was the '60's.  That was a very fond memory! I loved it!

As I reflect on these memories, I am moved by how they were sad and happy at the same time. I was fortunate to have a wonderful childhood full of GREAT memories.  And if the weren't great, I can pretend they were.  Funny thing about memories, they either get blown to epic proportion to the good or to the bad.

We took many  winter vacations out West.  Today, I can recall the enhanced smell of pine trees swirled in the fresh fallen snow and the bite of frost on my cheeks and the drops of snot on my freezing nose. Memories.  I also wonder if there is a bar in heaven where a son and his father are swapping stories.  I would love to know now what I didn't know then.  Memories, the good and the bad....they belong to YOU!