It’s only mid-January and this is SO real, I felt compelled to share this meme! Can you relate?
Plus it’s raining really hard, which on one hand I LOVE, but at the same time, it wasn’t supposed to start until later and now I can’t go for a walk.
Meme found on Pinterest. Credit to meme creator.
If this is a crystal ball vision of 2024, I’m cheerfully apprehensive (or apprehensively cheerful) about what the next twelve months may bring…
Do you remember the Grimm fairytale, The Frog Prince? It’s about a princess who befriends a frog who was really a prince that had been turned into a frog by an evil witch. The princess’s transformative love was the remedy to break the spell.
I’m in the middle of living a real-life version of this story, but I have some basic issues that seem to be obstacles in the way of fulfilling this enchanted experience.
For the last few days, I’ve been hearing a frog croaking in the garden and every time I do, I run outside and try to find him. So far, I’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful.
The croaking seems to emanate from the lower hill that’s covered in a mass of California native plants and I simply can’t locate my frogprince, no matter how hard I try.
Maybe it’s some kind of weird, bizarre twin flame scenario; the more I chase, the more he runs away. Maybe I need to take a deep breath and allow him to come to me. What do you think?
He’s out there right now, beckoning me with his hypnotic, sexy croaking, and I can’t, not for the life of me, track him down.
It’s important to note that this is a highly unusual occurrence; we don’t normally have frogs around this mostly drought-y part of the world and I have heard them so infrequently that I can’t even remember when the last time there WAS a frog around here.
If you could see me running around the garden from one spot to another, you’d have serious doubts about my mental state, and I’d have to nod my head and agree with you.
Why is my prince hiding from me? I am a princess, after all…
While I’m waiting for my frog/prince transformation, here’s what I learned about the spiritual meaning of frogs…
🐸 Frogs symbolize water and land. They help to connect us with the natural world and our intuitive side. They have the power to transform, mature, and renew the soul.
🐸 A frog’s ability to transition from one element to another — depending on its environment — represents change and transformation, rebirth, and evolution.
🐸 Frogs are symbols of new beginnings and creativity because they hatch from eggs and emerge into the world as tiny tadpoles.
🐸 A frog’s spiritual meaning is associated with fertility, good luck, prosperity, money, transformation, new beginnings, love, and the Moon (due to its close connection with water).www.thepeculiarbrunette.com/frog-symbolism-spiritual-meaning/
🐸 Croaking is usually associated with mating and is used by males to attract females, although some frog species croak to mark their territory or indicate their presence. Frogs may also croak because they feel worried or stressed, warning other frogs around them.
I hope to discover what sort of magic is needed to find and befriend my froggy visitor for our very own happily-ever-after.
If you see me kissing a frog, don’t say a word, OK?
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
“Grandma, what’s THIS?”
Angel Girl asks the question as she squeezes the back of my upper arm.
“Is that FAT?”
“Why is your arm so FAT right there?”
“Hey, T, come see Grandma’s FAT!”
That’s a call to action no big brother could resist. Angel Boy runs in, takes a hunk of the back of my upper arm and confirms his sister’s diagnosis.
“That’s a lot of fat, Grandma!”
I hear the unmistakeable sound of the original Angel Boy snickering in the other room. I bet it’s all deja vu for him as he must recall torturing me the same way.
Out of the mouths of babes, right?
I’m shaking my head; the apple definitely doesn’t fall far from the tree, not with these guys.
“Oh jeez, it’s SKIN, girl. Everyone has SKIN.”
She lifts her own perfectly formed and toned upper arm to show me. “I don’t. My arm doesn’t look like that.”
Mom chimes in, “Wait until you’re older. Come here and help me with breakfast. Let Grandma finish dressing!”
Her brother lifts his wiry arm (built just like his dad)… “Not me either, Grandma. See MY arm?”
I query the other grownups, “Where did she learn all this fat shaming? Sheesh, I thought nowadays children learned to be inclusive and accepting of all of our differences. What’s up with this?”
While I’m speaking, Angel Girl is following me around, squeezing my arms and laughing hysterically. I can’t help it, now I’m laughing, too–because, at the end of the day, it’s just funny. She’s always been hyperfocused and hypercritical of my each and every detail –from my hair to my shoes, and this is no different.
“Jeez Louise, girl, goodness gracious sakes alive, you’re killing me.”
She’s not being rude, if that’s your conclusion–she would never intend to hurt my feelings – it’s simply a case of speaking her truth. I’m one thousand percent sure that she would naturally censor herself with her pre-K classmates, but I’m different, and it’s OK to practice life skills on me.
I’m her pet project, the Little Grandma, with apparently endless patience.
Both of the Angel Kids are fascinated by my diminutive size…
“My hands are almost as big as yours, Grandma!” (This is a continual hand-to-hand ritual measurement every time we see each other to gauge how much they’ve grown.)
“Look, I can wear your shoes now!”
“Can I have your Hello Kitty shirt, Grandma! It fits ME!”
“Why are you so small?”
“Stand still! I am LITERALLY almost as tall as you are!”
And that’s true. I’m five feet and that 7.5 year-old truly is nearly my size.
That’s the time I tell them that the best presents come in small packages, but since that’s not their life experience, they shake their heads and laugh.
Thanks to Angel Girl’s eagle eyes, I have to silently agree that I need to focus more work on my triceps.
Brutal honesty. BRUTAL. Brutally honest.
Rizz = charISma.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “rizz” is the word of the year for 2023.
I can’t imagine how I managed to get through almost this entire year and only learn about it NOW, but I’m not a teen and not on TikTok, which I believe is where it originally came from.
“Rizz is a colloquial word, defined as style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic partner” according to the Oxford University Press, to flirt with a degree of charm, to “rizz up”.
As for the word’s etymology, OUP says it’s believed to have been taken from the middle of “charisma,” much like “fridge” derives from refrigerator.
I reckon it’s akin to having “game” in the old days; chatty repartee with a certain amount of flirtatious banter, at least that’s how I’d describe it.
You either have it–or you don’t, it’s that simple.
Think of Joey in Friends, when “How you doin” is ALL he needed to say…total rizz!
My Monday involves waiting for the plumber to arrive. The new hot water heater has been delivered in a great big box I’ll save for the Angel Kids.
A neighbor came by yesterday and turned off the hot water heater so it’d stop leaking and I realized how much we take for granted things like readily available hot water at our fingertips. It’s something to be grateful for but we don’t normally think about it until we no longer have that luxury.
I had to move everything away from that area in the garage to make it accessible so I took the opportunity to clean and purge which hadn’t been done in a long time, and that felt like an important accomplishment.
Waiting, I started to research other meanings for specific life events. It’s interesting to look deeper to see what it could symbolize in the fourth dimension, out of time and space, on a spiritual level.
Since water represents the flow of emotions, plumbing issues in a home (or a leaky radiator in a car) might signal emotional matters.
Water leaks in our homes can often be perceived as nothing more than an inconvenience or a financial burden, but in some cultures water leaks are seen to have spiritual meaning. They may represent the release of pent up emotions within your home, or even a greater life transition occurring.
On a brighter side, water has long been seen as a sign of luck and wealth. In Feng Shui, water can also symbolize prosperity and career success, and water leaking into your house could be interpreted as an abundance of good fortune coming your way.
That makes me feel slightly better!
Many spiritual practitioners believe it’s a sign to clear out negative or stagnant energy in their homes or lives. Spiritually cleanse through meditation, cleaning, and smudging.
Once you’ve repaired the issue and taken steps to prevent future leaks, you can begin to restore balance and harmony in your home.
When the plumber leaves, I think I’ll sage the new water heater as I restore everything I had to move out of the way so they could work in the garage–and be thankful for a nice, long, hot shower.
There is truly no greater joy than to have my sweet yet scarily precocious Angels in their car seats as we drive down to the beach, windows down, all of us belting out Karma by Taylor Swift.
They pay no attention to the fact that I can’t carry a tune; we’re nodding our heads and singing along with Apple music. “Play it again, Grandma!”
“Karma is my boyfriend.”
“I keep my side of the street clean. You wouldn’t know what I mean…”
(Picture us mimic sweeping with our hands.)
“Karma is a cat…Purring in my lap ’cause it loves me.”
“Me and karma are like THAT.”
“Karma takes all my friends to the summit.”
“Karma’s gonna track you down Step by step from town to town.”
Like Taylor changed the lyrics to her bf’s name, I also change the words in this line…
“Karma is the guy on the screen coming straight home to me.”
to
“Karma is my two favorite kids coming straight home to me.”
Time spent with these Angel Kids is a neverending tapestry of shared joyful memories, including singing with tone deaf Grandma.
“Play it again, Grandma!” And I did.
What’s your family’s favorite holiday movie?
I liked It’s a Wonderful Life until I got old enough to figure out that James Stewart’s character stood on the bridge contemplating suicide. Somehow that didn’t seem very happy to me and I didn’t think it was the type of conversation we wanted to have with the Angel Kids.
If you watch Miracle on 34th Street, I recommend the original 1940s black and white version with Natalie Wood.
When everyone was here for Thanksgiving, our goal was to find non-animated films with real people. We chose National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase and my absolute all-time favorite, Elf.
My son, DIL, and I couldn’t stop laughing during National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Neither one of us had seen it since it was originally released. A lot of the jokes were lost on the kids (Angel Girl fell asleep right away), and except for one slightly inappropriate part with a semi-nude female, it was slapstick humor at its finest, perfect for a precocious 7.5 year old.
The next evening we watched Elf. I always resonate with Buddy’s everlasting childlike joy and joie de vivre. He’s innocent and trusting, and the overarching message is that love wins every single time. Again, Angel Girl fell asleep immediately, so we’ll have to make it a family tradition and watch it again when she can stay awake.
My two most favorite lines in Elf are “Santa! I know him!” and “So…good news. I saw a dog today.” I say both of those lines year-round, and laugh to myself every single time.
New to me, but released in 2016, is A Nutcracker Christmas. It combines a love story and ballet, what could be better? Well acted and danced, it is a JOY to watch.
Since we also celebrate Hanukkah (begins sundown on December 7), I found a website that lists some family-friendly movies and we’ll watch a couple of them, too. https://www.verywellfamily.com/10-hanukah-movies-to-watch-with-kids-5208915
What are your favorite holiday movie traditions?
There’s always, always something to be grateful for, right?
This morning, I’m thankful for the sky’s breathtaking sunrise. What amazing colors!
The fiery intensity is surreal. No filters, no editing; this is exactly how the sky looked at 6 a.m.
Happy Thanksgiving… or as Jon Stewart said, “I celebrated Thanksgiving the old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.“
Did everyone survive 11/11? Are we all freshly intentioned, manifested, and affirmed? I hope so.
I don’t know if I can blame planetary energies or if I must simply and honestly accept full responsibility for the calamity that unfolded for ME yesterday. After watching a few DIY haircutting videos, I THOUGHT it looked easy enough to try a “wolf cut” hairstyle. It’s a cut that works great on curly hair. However easy the videos made it seem, it was for me completely deceptive.
I’m NOT posting any pics, but you can believe me when I say that it was a disaster. I was lucky enough to schedule an emergency appointment with my hair stylist next week, and have total faith in her ability to repair the damage, even as she’s shaking her head while examining my failed attempt.
Today I’m keeping myself far, far away from the temptation to chop off more hair. Since we might actually get rained on in the next few days, I fertilized the lawn and raked up some of the leaves from the mulberry tree. They’re continuing to change color, dry up, and fall to the ground.
As above…
So below…
I love the sound and feel of crunchy leaves, don’t you?
I’m not talking about the dark night of the soul burdensome self-condemnation kind of regret, but I was randomly thinking about how sad it is that when we grow up, people stop asking us who we’re going to be for Halloween.
There was always a great deal of excitement around this conversation, “Who are you going to be for Halloween?” or “What are you going to wear?”— whether we dressed as a witch or a ghost or a princess or a superhero or a pirate. It’s a way to step outside of ourselves for a couple of hours, to escape into an innocent fantasy.
Some might claim I’ve never grown up and that’s simply not true. There’s a difference between being childISHly puerile and one-dimensional as opposed to the open-hearted ability to discover and appreciate simple, joyful, childLIKE pleasures in life. That’s a good thing, in my opinion.
For Halloween, I’m never scary. I usually dress like a princess (of course) but next week I’m going to be a ballerina. I hauled out my sewing machine and made a longish sparkly pink tutu with a tulle overlay, reminiscent of Les Sylphides.
I’ll adorn myself with pink ballerina earrings (an unexpected treasure from Goodwill), my toe shoes and a tiara, so I’m really going to be a princess ballerina.
Je ne regrette rien. No regrets. Forever young.
Who are YOU going to be for Halloween?
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 