The First Day of the Rest of My Life…

…I believe the term for this is Money Shot! Absolutely MY favorite wedding photo! After the wedding, we had an ‘illegal’ parade along Fillmore Street till we reached Snug Harbor (complete with bagpipes!)…For The Love of a Princess …The gangs all here….(actually, not…the ring bearers are missing…) Simple Gifts….

…(All wedding photos taken by Michael Falco –Thanks AGAIN!!!!)

…Mr. Tall Man…

…Gotta play with the new baby camera he bought me for Christmas

………Timmy is the most awesome of fathers….

…And Stepfathers…….

…And his laughter is pure joy. I love to lie in bed at night, and hear him laughing at something on TV, the laughter reaching my ears from the other end of the house…it just makes me melt….Best self-portrait EVER!He is a loving and dutiful son (who obviously came by his crazy honestly) and is now making sure he passes this trait on to the next generation.

…Sunshine and shadows……We are different…

Our first Christmas together, at Sharon Ave… I love this photo, although it is blurry…

…his heart is big, and full and overflowing with kindness and love……and he takes me to the beach!(…And he takes his cars on photo opps…. Top of the world….)

I am not the one who is the romantic… I am not a serious player at the game of romance, of grand gestures. That would be Timmy. For every score of poems he writes me, I can crank out a little ditty.

But this year we will not be together for our anniversary–He is on a long jag of OT and I will be meeting up with an aunt and some cousins for a birthday party out of state.

However, we celebrate our love every day. The day that our lives changed forever, and for the better, is today, 11 years ago. It was a Saturday morning like this, and the weather on Staten Island was wonderful. We were surrounded by all the people who were important to us that day, and while a good number of them are no longer with us, I am so glad to have had that day…
Our ‘formal’ celebration this year will be in New Orleans in a few weeks. It is our annual honeymoon—(Our inaugural honeymoon was to Niagara Falls, Canton, Ohio for the Football Hall of Fame and then on to Lancaster, PA.) Our gift to each other is this vacation; the opportunity to explore someplace, usually new to both of us.. Sometimes it falls near our anniversary. Sometimes it doesn’t.

For our first anniversary, we traveled to Paducah, KY to go to the quilt show there…. and wait ladies, before you all get excited about how awesome this man is, he drove to NYC first to pick up my best quilting buddy first!!!!!(We hit up the Chicago quilt show a few years later, but only as a duo….)

We have also gone to Key West, to Montana, to Quebec, back home to New York City, to Asheville, NC, to San Diego… and of course, in a pinch, any beach along the Eastern Shore from Cape Cod to Myrtle Beach…These are our gifts to each other…. a road trip, a fine meal in a strange town, the opportunity to create an entirely new set of memories, together.

So today, hunny, remember this…. I LOVE YOU…. and am so very proud to claim you as MINE….

Deep Freeze

Happy January 1, 2013 ….

Who is up for a challenge?

I don’t know if it could be considered FUN, but it will be a challenge.

A “Deep Freeze” on spending. I am thinking no extraneous spending for the month of January.

I don’t think a cash only system is necessary, Money (you know yourself) but a list of questions that should be asked before any spending:

DO I NEED IT? (why??)
CAN I USE SOMETHING ELSE?
CAN I BORROW IT?
CAN I WAIT TILL FEBRAURY 1? (It’s a “It doesn’t make sense to put off buying seats at the theatre if they are cheaper if you buy them earlier or they sell out” kind of question)
DO I NEED IT???(yes, again.)

I am not advocating paying on the minimum on your credit card kind of freeze, but a freeze on acquiring new things/saving money challenge.

Food— Minimal amounts of money to be spent.

I do not have access to either a cow or a deep freezer/extra fridge, so I can’t run out this weekend and load up on whole milk for when Layla visits.
But I CAN look in the freezer and cabinets and identify the minimal amount of meats and vegetables required to utilize a clean out of the pantry kind of menu, and go to the grocery store for those items.
Lunch for work packed from home.

Gas— Well, if I am not driving over hill and dale to hit up sales at stores I don’t need to be in, I should be able to spend a smaller amount? Go to Gas Buddy and check out the daily gas rates, but it doesn’t make sense to DRIVE for a penny less, either, unless it works out that I am heading that way.

What else is there, anyway? Obviously, all bills will be paid —utilities, etc. And I never pay minimums on credit cards, so that would stay the same.

Gifts, entertainment, toys—

Buying a gift for a birthday IN January makes sense, talking myself into stockpiling for all the gifts needed and Christmas 2013 is out.
Thread to finish a project I am in the middle of, yes….Acquisition for the stash, out.
Movies and the rest—sensible expenditures. I have already made a date with my daughter to see Les Mis this afternoon, so….
A drink or snack at the cash register …how far away from where I am going AM I anyway?

But I WANT (NEED) IT—

Adding these items to the list of things I DID buy/spend money on….have a wish list column of “I can’t live without it today but TOTALLY don’t need it”…along with the cost and location of purchase, and revisit the list on February 1.

It’s not a “how much you SAVED using coupons to grocery shop” kind of challenge—Because I can SAVE a lot of money if I hit up all those awesome sales, but was it money I needed to SPEND?? Couponing seems to make one more likely to spend, so they can SAVE so much…and the items—well, how much toothpaste and hair color can one USE??

I will do this with a list on my iPhone. All monies spent and where they went. (Can not buy an app to do so!! Not a NEED!) There isn’t a dollar amount I can assign to myself to spend per day or week or month— or to you. I don’t know your needs.

I will succeed in this challenge if I am made more aware of my spending habits, and so will you.!

Let me know if you are joining in, and keep us posted on how you feel you are doing!

Announcing ‘CHOOSE”… my word for 2013

“Another year over, a new one just begun….” (Happy Christmas, by John Lennon)

2012 was difficult for a lot of souls….. I hope for peace Peace for all the hurting hearts… Broken heart and that in 2013, they will be able to move forward. (2013. What WILL Triskaidekaphobiac’s do?)

For the past few years, starting with an online quilting group, I’ve chosen a word to identify/shape/define the year. Past words: Insight, Inclusive, Deliberate, Balance, Motion, Weather….. (wander through the archives to possibly read a bit about the words.)

I have never chosen the word, it CHOOSES me. (It’s something like writing fiction— when your characters are determined to do what THEY want, and the heck with your plans for them….) I actually am envious of some of the words that others come up with, but they don’t feel right, right now. So, I wait. I hear words as I go about my day, and one of them usually just latches on. Can’t shake it off, even as I wonder, ‘why this word?’

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Freewill, by Rush.

(I actually didn’t get to Choose this word, because IT won’t leave my head. Or let others in. But, I digress Smile with tongue out ) So, my word is Choose. (not Jimmy Choo’s shoes, lol)

How can this word impact my day to day existence? The word was meant first as an exercise for honing in on artistic endeavors.

I can choose to finish a project, or call it good—move on, and acknowledge I am gaining nothing from completing it except the act of crossing it off a list.

If it isn’t doing anything more positive than that, then is completion more important than choosing how I expend my mental, emotional and artistic energy? (Although done IS better than perfect, is DONE necessary?) I can choose to tackle a project over my head, and reach deeper into myself to find a way to complete, and enter into a show, risking rejection, or I can choose to believe I wouldn’t be juried in in any event and not risk failure.

I can choose to go to bed with the dirty dishes hanging over my head, or I can wake to a shiny sink. (they don’t by the way. I rarely feel guilt over the lack of a clean kitchen! Winking smile )

I can choose to buy the next new shiny thing, or I can watch my balances go down. I can choose to do something about the pain in my foot, thumb, shoulder, back, or continue to ignore it. I can choose to accept that I like my stuff, and the way it surrounds me, or I can keep attempting to cater to others expectations and put it away, out of view, in matching plastic totes or pretty hat boxes: more spending! ( I am sorely susceptible to the attraction of pretty hatboxes, alas…Michael’s just got in some REALLY pretty ones…and I just came up with another PERFECT use for one of my plastic totes…) I can choose to work in chaos, or orchestrate my mind to find a quieter existence. I can choose to say no, or I can be overwhelmed by all the hands reaching in for a part of me.

I can choose to sleep in, or I can fill every available hour with tasks and projects. I can choose to wake up happy,

I can choose to see the positive in daily interactions, I can choose to be kind,

I can choose to have empathy, I can choose to move on, I can choose to let it go.

I can choose. Note that CHOOSE is a Verb. An action word. I can choose a lot of things, but not how many hours there are in a day, or how many days I get to live.

Party smile Have the happiest of New Years. Martini glass Be safe and be wonderful!

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