Tag Archives: snowdays

Blogging, Blogging Community, Gratitude, Intentionality, Joy, Positivity, Self-Reflection, SNL fans, Valentine's Day

Blogaversary Number 8

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Saturday, February 8th, 2025 was a snow day for us here in Minnesconsin. We adjusted our plans and hunkered down inside.

As I was sitting at my dining room table, peering out at the snow falling down outside my window, I saw a WordPress notification congratulating me on 8 years of blogging.

With 8 being my guiding number, I can’t pass up the opportunity to share my thoughts about this blog-aversary.

First off, I’m in a different place than I was 8 years ago, physically and mentally. At that time, I was living a more free-wheeling life in Colorado with Mr. NOA. My responsibilities at the time were minimal and I had oodles of free time. Just for fun I decided to start this blog. My aim was to put myself out there and see if I could find like-minded souls who appreciated my ramblings.

Fortunately, I did. And I appreciate every one of you. And I miss the ones who wrote some of the funniest, righteous, and heartfelt writing I’ve ever read. The ones who, in some cases, for no known reason, stopped blogging (on WordPress anyway).

I wrote a lot of sub-par posts. I didn’t have any grand plan when I first started out. I still don’t.

I wrote about wins and losses. I wrote about what I think about the state of the world and the state of my life. I wrote about vacations I took and books I read. I wrote about interactions I had and my dreams for the future.

I shared in this space stories of my personal failures and misadventures and my passion for music and comedy. I wrote about work and I wrote about my friends and family.

I feel good about the fact that I’ve stuck with it.

But I don’t want to keep waxing nostalgic about this milestone today. That’s because I’m grounded in the present and, frankly, I’m boring myself. It only stands to reason that I’m probably boring you right now as well.

So here I go, switching gears.

*Cue the sound of a record being scratched*

8 Good Things To Share

Disclaimer before I proceed: I am in no way forgetting the fact that America is essentially on fire and the American people are suffering and by God I will do whatever it is I can to minimize the damage. But, on this day, I’m leaning into my Pollyanna-ish inclinations.

  1. My work hours have increased. Meaning instead of working M-W-F at my lovely local non-profit, I’m working M-W-Th-F. Tuesdays are all mine! She says greedily. The reality of working more hours, however, is that I’ve inadvertently challenged myself to ramp up the focus on that one little word I declared allegiance to when I was feeling slightly shinier about 2025. That would be “intentionality”. As in, how am I choosing to spend my downtime? Which gets to the heart of the word itself. Note to self: say a prayer of gratitude for the luxury of having downtime to begin with. You’re a lucky broad.

2. SNL 50 Homecoming Concert: the music, the laughs. What a surprising and terrific Valentine’s gift to me and all the other lifelong fans of the show. Kate McKinnon introducing Brandi Carlisle and THEN watching Brandi and her phenomenal band (even the sisters playing their strings!) perform perhaps her best song ever: “The Joke”, made my heart soar.

3. Speaking of Valentine’s gifts, Mr. NOA (for those new to this blog, it’s my nickname for my husband, Mr. None of the Above) surprised me with a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Yes, they smell as good as they look. I think this guy is a keeper.

4. Circling back to music: The Fire Aid concert, which was to benefit those who lost their homes in the recent California wildfires. Wow. Blew me away. Do yourself a favor, unless you hate music: find this online and watch it. Highlights? Let me test my memory here. Alanis Morissette traipsing her cool self all over the stage like a boss while reminding us all what a gift her voice is. Sheila E banging her drums. And, well, so much more. I’ll share a video of the best performance at the end of this post.

5. Our grandson turned 11 recently. He celebrated on Saturday with family and three of his friends snow-tubing and eating pizza. His Grandpa and I gave him an itinerary of the overnight we’re taking him on this Spring for his birthday. That is something for us all to look forward to.

I hope you all have something to look forward to these days. Or the motivation and ability to find something to look forward to, however small. It’s important.

6. The sight of Uncle Sam (as in L. Jackson) at Kendrick Lamar’s SuperBowl halftime show last Sunday. I loved the subversiveness of it. Good trouble.

7. The movie “A Real Pain”, on Hulu. It was the right combo, in my view, of sweet and sour. It did not have a convoluted or complicated storyline. It was very well-acted (Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg…and Jennifer Grey, my fellow Gen Xr’s). It was sweet and sad and funny at the right times. If you like sweet but not saccharine, relatable relationship stories with humor in your movies, you’ll agree this one is a winner.

8. The queen on her throne singing a most meaningful and bittersweet song at the FireAid concert. I’m not a big crier, but this performance brought tears to my eyes.

Birthdays, Blogging, Humor, Work

Snow Days, Guilt, and my Birthday

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For context, I penned this post on Monday morning.

To my surprise, today is a snow day. Meaning that instead of organizing my little food bank, answering phone calls and emails, and serving my senior clients, I am at home.

I don’t know what to make of this. I’m uncomfortable. I feel guilty, like someone who called in sick to work who wasn’t actually sick but really just wanted a day off to, I don’t know, binge-watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or bake a cheesecake, or shop online for things they don’t need.

True confession: I have never called in sick when I wasn’t actually, truly, sick. Because guilt has been instilled in my soul since childhood. Because I know that if I did call in sick to work when I was in perfect health, that yucky, uneasy, unpleasant feeling of guilt would creep in and render me physically ill for real.

And I am a bonafide terrible liar. Here’s a recent example: I was at a work orientation with 4 new employees and 4 others (management/human resources/training folk). It was time for an ice breaker: “Two Truths and a Lie”. Of course, my neurotic brain is doing somersaults whilst the others are sharing their responses, so fortheloveofgod don’t ask me what any of them said. When it came to be my turn, I spouted out three things: I am a grandmother. I worked as a social worker for several years in Wisconsin. I was born and raised in Minnesota. Ha! The relief I felt after the words were spewn out of my mouth was glorious!

Then came the responses from my new colleagues: Well, you can’t possibly be a grandmother! I can tell from your accent that you are probably from Minnesota. Or maybe Wisconsin? You probably were a social worker.

Then it dawned on me: Every single thing I said was the actual freaking truth. Not one single lie. Uh-oh! Guess I didn’t understand the instructions? Nope, that wasn’t the case. I then had to admit two things to these people: 1) That I was so nervous trying to quickly come up with my responses that I forgot one was supposed to be a lie and 2) I apparently cannot tell a lie.

Hubs has been known to tell me that my work ethic is, essentially, unreasonable. He figured this out years ago, when I was pregnant with our first bundle of joy and the only spouse working full time (he was still a college student), and I insisted that despite the blizzard outside I. Was. Going. To. Work. Hubs reluctantly obliged and drove me in, but nearly got in an accident on the way due to the nasty road conditions.

It’s not like I didn’t try going to work today. The tires on our Honda CRV are not in good shape. They didn’t perform well on the snow packed roadways when Hubs was just trying to get me a few blocks away to meet my Uber driver (let’s just say there’s a very good chance that I will opt for Uber X going forward as opposed to Uber Pool), who didn’t show up (though understandable, given the road conditions).

I may go into work later, depending on if/when the snow stops and if/when the roads improve.

So in the meantime, what to do? Obviously, I’ve chosen to write. Perhaps if I get lost in this, my favorite all time activity, the guilt will subside and then I’ll have a fresh new post to publish come Wednesday morning.

At least then I can feel like I accomplished something today. That I used my time wisely.

In other news, things are really quite swell in my life at this moment. I’m doing my best to savor it. Hubs is no longer furloughed (he’s upstairs working in our home office as I type this on the new Chromebook he got me for my birthday-more on that later), thanks to Speaker Pelosi.

Spawn #1’s life is going better for her these days. She’s joined a church, is making new friends, and her first husband is currently MIA. Little guy is doing well in Pre-K and soon I will have the pleasure of reading “Wonky Donky” to him via video-chat (bought it online, shipped it to him and then copied the story down for myself in a notebook).

Spawn #2 is busying themselves in Indianapolis creating wearable art to sell online. And enjoying the single life amongst other creatives in the big city.

Later this week I will turn 52. I plan on celebrating with Hubs by going out to dinner, eating birthday cake guilt free (guilt is not invited to my party), drinking tasty adult beverages, and playing trivia (which I have been wanting to do since like forever) at a favorite local brew pub.

Over the weekend, Hubs and I will be flying out to Kansas City to visit our friends (AKA, Couple #1) and their kiddos. We got a sweet deal on airfare and figured we would massively enjoy the Super Bowl festivities with them. And word is, we’ll be attending a Roller Derby event (game, match, duel? not sure which noun to go with here), so I’m likely to acquire some blogging fodder while there.

Let me leave you with this, which for years now I believed was the #1 song on the day I was born (turns out the #1 song on that cold day in 1967 was the Monkee’s “I’m a Believer”) because well…I’m happy (with a little guilt mixed in for good measure of course)! This version is done by one of my favorite current bands, Weezer- who, I just so happened to recently learn, came out with a new album of covers-and ohmygoshimsoexcited-I just checked YouTube and found out this was one of them!

Happy Birthday to me!