Three On Thursday

March 26, 2020 By Carole

I have no intention of making light of our very dire worldwide pandemic. At the same time, though, I could use a laugh and I’m betting you could, too. So, with all due respect to the seriousness of this, I present, 3 memes that help to . . . lighten the mood.

For my readers with cats. Because you know this is true.

For my readers who are Bon Jovi fans. You’re welcome for the ear worm.

For my readers who love children’s literature. Because Waldo is right and this is exactly what we all need to be doing right now.

And that’s it for this Thursday. I hope I made you smile for a moment.

If you wrote a post for today please include your link below. Thanks, as always, for playing along.

Three On Thursday

March 12, 2020 By Carole

How you doing today? Are you panicking about the coronavirus? Or are you taking it all in stride? I sort of go back and forth between the two reactions. Mostly I’m just trying to stay grounded and present because that is a great antidote to anxiety.

Gratitude is also an excellent way to be calm and stay focused so today I’m sharing three things I’m grateful for right now.

I’m grateful for signs of spring. I saw a red-winged blackbird last week, the many daffodil bulbs we planted last spring are coming up, I have crocus in bloom, and the smell of spring is in the air. I’m still waiting on spring peepers but I know I’ll hear them any night now.
I’m also grateful for the little bit of snow we got on Friday night. It was pretty as it came down and made the house feel so cozy. Plus – and this is a funny story – Dale and I went out in the snow around 11:30pm! I had just gone to bed and he came in and said something about how nice the snow looked and then suggested we go outside. I looked at him and said he was nuts and he said, “if I said this to you twenty years ago you would have jumped right up and said let’s go. Let’s not act old, let’s be silly.” So, challenge accepted and out we went. In our pajamas, I might add, but we walked across the deck and stood under our pergola with the twinkle lights on. It was romantic and lovely and a great reminder to be spontaneous now and again.
Finally, I’m grateful for my gratitude journal. I started it last August and have written 5 things I’m grateful for every morning without fail. It’s a good reminder to think about gratitude throughout the day and it’s also great to go back and read the things I have written. Some are simple, like taking a drive with Dale, some are huge, like having all 4 kids together for the first time in 8 years, and they are all important and when look at together they reflect a lot of good things in my life.

I wish I could say I was grateful to have blog comments showing up in my inbox again but it’s not fixed yet. I have spent more than a few hours trying to fix it, first by myself, and then on the phone with GoDaddy. Yesterday I broke down and paid $50 to have GoDaddy figure it out. There’s a 72 hour window on that so let’s hope they can get things working again in the next day or so. In the meantime, I’m reading and loving your comments even if I can’t respond via email.

If you wrote a post for today please include your link below and thanks for playing along!

Three On Thursday

February 27, 2020 By Carole

I don’t think I told you all but we’re having a memorial service for Randy this Saturday. It’s Leap Day and our family found something very appealing about holding this service on this year’s extra day. A day that’s special and doesn’t come around every year feels right. Plus we have the bonus of not having to face the anniversary of this memorial service until 2024. Planning this thing has been a mixed bag. Sometimes it’s been stressful, sometimes it’s been a good distraction, and sometimes it’s been a bit of work because we’re coordinating a lot of moving parts, including people and technology. I explained to a friend the other day that it’s like planning a wedding but without the associated happiness. All of this is to illustrate why I’m sharing a list of things I’m grateful for right now because they all pretty much relate to this.

I’m grateful for the help of friends. I alluded to this yesterday but to expand on it, I’m grateful for people who instantly said yes when I asked them to speak at the service, whether it was to sing a song or read a poem or offer a remembrance of Randy. I find it miraculous that literally every single person we approached said yes to whatever it was we asked them to do. I’m also grateful for people who have worked with us to create the program, slideshows, playlists and more. Some of this has been way above my pay grade and I know how fortunate I am to have people who know how to do this sort of thing when I don’t have a clue. Finally, I’m grateful to friends who have offered to bake, to host, to serve, and to comfort. I get all verklempt when I think about how much love has come our way at a time when it has truly been needed.
I’m grateful for my family. My oldest stepson Brant has traveled from Florida for the first time in many years to be with us. Everyone is taking some time off from work to be together and just hang out. To reminisce and extend comfort, to cook food and share it, to tell funny stories and say remember when. Even though I’m someone who gets a lot of my strength from alone time I’m still very excited about spending time with the people who make our family the crazy thing that it is.
I’m grateful for Randy’s legacy. In putting together the service, we have looked at so many photos and documents that Randy saved . . . he even had a letter I wrote to him from before Dale and I were married asking him to read at an event we were having at the library. There are videos of the band and videos of family gatherings and hunting trips. There are awards and cards and so many mementos. They point to a life well lived and a person who was so well loved. They illustrate the many roles Randy played in the lives of others, as a friend, a teacher, a mentor, and a colleague. They show that the way his story ended isn’t the end, that the things he shared with others through his writing, his music, his artwork and more will guarantee that he will be remembered forever.

Thanks for listening to this and thanks for all of the grace you have sent our way. If you’d like to read Randy’s obituary, written so lovingly by his wife, Mary, you can find it here. And if you could send us good and healing thoughts for Saturday that would be wonderful. Finally, if you’re so inclined, please know that you can watch the service live on our town’s Community Access Channel. Just go to EB-CAM and select Channel 9. I’ll be the Master of Ceremonies so for those of you wondering what a real Boston accent sounds like . . . this is your chance to hear mine!

If you wrote a post for today please share your link below and thanks for playing along.

Three On Thursday

February 13, 2020 By Carole

Because it’s good to laugh, today I’m sharing 3 memes I’ve seen recently that, well, make me laugh.

This one is for those good old days, the dark ages of technology:

This one is for all of us starting to dream about our gardens:

And this one is just the truth:

I hope I made you laugh this week! If you wrote a post for today please include your link below and thanks, as always, for participating.

Three On Thursday

December 5, 2019 By Carole

On the Happier podcast a few weeks back Gretchen and Elizabeth had a discussion about aphorisms. It’s not a term I’m especially familiar with but it’s defined as a concise statement of a principle. Examples include statements such as actions speak louder than words, he who hesitates is lost, and don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. This discussion got me thinking about phrases and expressions that I say a lot. Mine own personal aphorisms, if you will. Guess what? It’s Thursday so I came up with 3!

Done is better than perfect. I started saying this when I learned how to sew. Seriously. You can rip out that seam over and over and try it get it perfect or you can accept that it’s done and just move on. It can be applied to so much more than sewing, too! Blog posts? Done is better than perfect. Dinner? Done is better than perfect. I’m looking at my to-do list right now and thinking that I could use this phrase for pretty much everything on there except payroll. Payroll needs to be done and perfect.
It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. This is one that a good friend said to me over 30 years ago and I took it to heart at that very moment. My attitude about it changed slightly when I became a mother and I always told Hannah this was a rule for grown ups only! But still. It’s a good philosophy for those times when you just need to . . . bend/ignore/push the rules a smidge. Becomes sometimes it’s easier to just make a decision and potentially have to apologize later than to do nothing in the moment.
I’ll alert the media. This one comes from the movie Arthur starring Dudley Moore. Arthur turns to his butler Hobson and says, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take a bath. And Hobson says, I’ll alert the media. It’s the most perfect, most sarcastic, most wonderful way of saying: I don’t care without actually saying I don’t care because that might be mean. I say it a lot when Dale announces something: I’m going to the garage, I’m going to take a shower, I’m going to bring in firewood, etc. I look at him deadpan and I say: I’ll alert the media. Usually he laughs. Emphasis on usually.

Do you have aphorisms that you use? It’s kind of fun to think about them so please tell me what yours are in the comments.

Don’t forget to include a link to your post today if you wrote one.