Um, No! Not Five! No, No, No!

A-Girl Note: Yes, it will be FIVE. Just saw the notice.

We are in the middle of our FOURTH snow day. Four. The kids have now had their Pjs on so long that I may have to peel them off their little sticky bodies.  Even if they go back to preschool tomorrow, next is the weekend and then, Monday is a school holiday. <sigh>

Yesterday, my husband managed, somehow, to drive to the ATL airport and fly to Dallas for a business trip…it took me 2 ½ hours to dig my truck out and make it to the grocery store where I scavenged among the grocery shelves. (Did I mention that this leaves me cranky and snow-bound, alone, with a 3yo and a 5yo on the FOURTH snow day????)

We have not gotten mail since Saturday (- just looked out the window, he came! Who knew I'd ever be this excited to get junk mail and bills?)  The frozen trash stands at the curb, getting higher and higher.  “2011 Snowpocalypse” now has 18,095 “attending.”

Anybody misses me, I’ll be outside talking to the snowman.

(People who live in this on a yearly basis are nuts braver than I am.)

So, all this snow talk has gotten me thinking. I don’t really like the snow. Well,  I haven’t in the past. It was novel and nifty but not so much giggling like a small child - which is what I’ve been doing most of this week.  Then, I realize that my joy of the snow was caught from my husband. He LOVES the snow. He stands and watches the sky and hopes, all winter. He talks about Colorado and snow skiing and wants desperately for us to have a reason to go sledding in “Hotlanta,” Georgia.  His joy infected me this year.

This led me to thinking about what makes up personality. Yes, for sure it’s genetics - I have an English degree because it was something that came naturally easy for me. That’s thanks, in large part, to my dad - his first degree was English, he dissected a lot of the movies that we watched, he wrote poetry and other stuff. We’re all “highly verbal.”  I’m sure it’s some sort of “gene thing.”

“Persistence of Memory" 
Salvador Dali-Museum of Modern Art, New York City

As powerful as genetics are, I’m sure that experience counts for just as much. The snow will always be a special thing to me because my hubby loves it. Same as the artist Dali - not my favorite at all, but I’ll never be able to look at “Persistence of Memory,"  again without thinking about my K-Man who loves Dali. In fact, we recently went to the High Museum in Atlanta and braved the CROWDS to see a Dali exhibit. The fact that K-Man even knows that he likes Dali is thanks to his experiences with ME, the woman who loves art and drug him around the Art Institute of Chicago looking at the Impressionists.

"A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"
Georges-Pierre Seurat - Art Institute of Chicago

 (I almost touched, Seurat’s, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" - it was AWESOME and huge! I swear that experience was the closest I’ve ever come to doing hard drugs. It totally mesmerized me. We came around the corner and there it was -  a  6 foot x 10 foot canvas of small dots. I was just drawn right up to it and very nearly touched the red and green “frame.”  In fact, I would have if the proctor lady hadn’t screamed at me, “DO NOT TOUCH THE PAINTING!” hahahahahaha)


You know that old adage, “Hindsight is  20-20?” It’s not. Hindsight is a bitch a fantasy. I look back at my life and, in so many ways, I wish I had it to do over again.

I’ve seen interviews with people who said,
“I wouldn’t change anything about my past, it’s made me who I am today,”
and I’ve had to fight the urge to throw a shoe at the Tv screen.
Really?  Hmmmm, maybe your life has been easier than mine?

There are so many things I’d change. So. Many.

And, what if I could?
What if I was able to go back and switch everything around?
What if I was able to do it just exactly the way I think I want?
I wouldn’t be the same person.
Oh, the genes would be the same.
I would still sound like me and talk like me and walk like me.

(But, I’m betting you that there’d be a shallowness, a selfishness that, I hope, isn't there, now - sometimes, the best way to learn compassion is to need it.  It’s possible that I could have gotten the world that I thought I wanted and lost my soul.)

I still deal with regret but it’s lessening. To change my past would change my present. It’s been a job getting here but I like this outcome. Honestly, I don’t think, if I could go back, knowing everything that I know now, that I could choose it. It’s just been too hard, but I am grateful for the lessons that I’ve learned and for where I am today.

My experiences would have been different.
I’d have lost some of “me.”
I like me now, I don’t want to lose a single atom.


Some more things that experience has given me:

My grandmother always had a white Christmas tree with mauve balls.
I LOVED that tree.
When she died I got the mauve balls.
This year, I bought a white Christmas tree to put them on.
Truth be known, having a white tree with mauve balls
will be just a bit over the top for my tastes but I don't care.
Having it in my house will fill me with a sense of
 love and tradition at Christmas time because of her.

Speaking of Christmas, my hubby and, now, my kids LOVE the Polar Express.
I've never been into trains at all - what's the point?
But this year, we ordered a Lionel Polar Express train set for them.
Well, I thought it was for them.
The more we talked the more I realized that it was FOR ME.
I am so excited about that train and about sharing it with my family every year.

This fuzzy picture is a picture of  my Ray-Bans. hahaha
I walked into the mall and said, "I want a pair of prescription sunglasses."
She picked up a pair of Ray-Bans and I couldn't believe it.
They're back?? hahahaha
I ordered them, didn't care what they looked like or even if they fit my face.
I wanted them because they were a link back to my teen years.
I would have been so cool in 1986!

Same with these Converse high tops.
They were all the rage when I was in middle school and I LOVED them.
I wanted a white pair badly so, in my late 30s, I bought a pair. :)

Even my love of horses can be traced back to my experiences.
For an abused little girl, this was freedom and power that I’d never known before. It was the only place that I escaped the stress that was my life. I LIVED for that one hour a week horseback lesson 
when I could get on a horse and FORGET. Obviously, it stuck with me.

My mother loved antiques and
I always head back to the antique store whenever I need furniture.

Ahhhh, we may have finally found one that is all mine.
Ranunculus. My very most favorite flower.
Sorta like the Rose's wild-child rebellious cousin.
Never heard of them until I became an adult.

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, 

but anyone can start today and make a new ending." 

-Maria Robinson