oo! I'm feeling very impressed with myself for posting this moving gingerbread man!
I love this time of year, being extremely cozy and snuggly in luscious scarves, watching neighbors perched up on ladders hanging Christmas lights, curls of smoke poking out of mugs of hot cocoa, and today, the hail and snow reigning down as I drove to school! I continue to be on a dynamo quest to locate more and more leg warmers as I am deeply in love with them right now. They keep my legs in a near perfect state of toastiness! I love the cheesy holiday songs on the radio, wrapping presents, and as soon as I move this weekend the first thing I am going to do is get a tree and decorate. Last year Anthropologie sold the most beautiful garland- opalescent round pearls with clear glass birds and I can't wait to unwrap it and hang it up again. For me, its not a religious thing. Afterall, I am Jewish! But it is a wonderful, wonderful excuse to decorate and splash one's home with plenty of sparkles and glitter and mad dashes of color! (Its also a very handy excuse to nibble frosted gingerbread cookies and sip egg nog!) I'm even going to be glittery myself this holidays thanks to this!

I think most of all its the idea of just having rituals and traditions. Lately I have been longing to have more of them in my life. Maybe it was reading Patry Francis's Thanksgiving post about their annual ritual of writing down their gratitude ideas on little slips of paper, placing them in a cup, and having one person at a time reach in and read one, followed by everyone trying to guess who wrote which one. Gene and I used to have a ritual on Shabbat. After we lit the candles and sat down to eat, we'd each share three things we were grateful for from the past week and three intentions for the upcoming week. In my morning meetings I'm working on a mission statement. I'm really trying to take my time with it as I want to have it clearly articulated to myself by the time the new year arrives. I'm inspired to do it after recently picking up Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, again. For years I found the title of this book on the corny side and wrongly assumed I wouldn't get much from it. I was definitely wrong! I see now there is a reason it has sold more than ten million copies! As someone whom structure and habits and discipline don't come especially natural to, it is a part of me I really want to continue to grow and develop as they are central in all goals I have personally and professionally. The author's son, Sean Covey, has written two wonderful books for teens on the same subject and I use one of them in a group I just started with teens at the high school where I work.

If you have any rituals you love, would you please share them with me as I would love to know of others? Thank you!

Weird Request On This Thanksgiving Morn!

I turned on the television this morning to catch the news and caught what I think was an ad for a movie. The woman, dressed fancily in winter white, was saying, "They killed their children and turned them into cookies! Now I want to see that!" It took me a second to register that kooky, kooky comment that I missed what it was for or from. If you know, can you please tell me because now my silly curiosity is peeked?

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones!!!!

Poem Ghosts

Someone in LA anonymously sent me this poem yesterday. I found it in my mailbox wrapped in ivory tissue. Thank you mystery poem sender whoever you are! I'd like to return the favor but I don't know who you are. Nonetheless, its exactly what I needed to read and found it so beautiful that I am posting it here too.

"I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible;

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit."

-Dawna Markova

OoPs! ( & A brief thought as you go to vote today....)

Now I know that "one hand typing" can refer to many things! In my last post, I was trying to link to Monica's site, which is called One Hand Typing. Now she only has one hand because a little baby is in the other, BUT apparently I had forgotten to put in the "blogspot" part of her address and so instead linked to here! I think you will agree that Monica's site is MUCH, much, MuCh better! (Thank you Kelly for pointing that out!!!

On another note, here's something to think about as you go to vote today. (I've copied and pasted this excerpt reported by Tim Grieve.)

"Fallujah resident Majeed al-Rawi tells the reporters that gunmen hid a bomb in front of his house a few days ago. His only option: Abandon his home. "If I report it to the Americans, I will be killed by the men who put it there, and if I don't, my family will be killed either by the explosion or the Americans," al-Rawi says. "This is not a way to live; this is a way to hate life."


The man says George W. Bush didn't give Iraqis democracy. "He gave us more new ways to be killed."

WiLLiaM StYroN

I was really sad to hear that author, William Styron, passed away this week. Most people know him as the author of Sophie's Choice but he also wrote the most moving and accurate memoir on depression that I have ever read. I wish more people who suffer with depression would read it, but I especially wish even more that those whom have never really suffered from debilitating depression would read it. I say this because maybe it would help to decrease the ignorant and erroneous belief on the part of far too many that depression is something one should simply be able to just snap oneself out of. Depression invades the bodies of millions of people every year as involuntarily as melanomas. Someone with a melanoma or a tumor wouldn't be blamed for this invasion into their very cells, and yet, that is something that directly or more subtlely is assumed far too often by those who really don't get that it is every bit as real as a bruise on one's skin or a break in one's leg. I know when I have suffered from depression the cruelest thing about it is that the very things that might actually bring some relief, such as connecting with others or exercising, are the very things that feel nearly impossible to do because of the paralyzing toll it takes on one's body and psyche in so many insidious ways. And the reality is that sometimes, many times, people can be doing everything they are "supposed" to do healthwise and depression still hits full force. If you've ever suffered from depression, or even more so if you never have and are honest enough to admit to yourself that you get judgy or impatient with those who have suffered from it, do consider reading it. Its a real gift of a book and I'm sad we've lost such a gifted, caring writer.

It makes me think of something too that Laini once talked about, how a love of books opens one up to so many worlds one would otherwise never experience and remain in ignorance about, and how it is because of books she has read that she is better able to empathize and understand lives she otherwise might not be able to. I couldn't agree more! I love how books like Darkness Visible accomplish this, and in turn, inspire compassion for the plight of others. A really well written book illuminates the tears, and the joys and triumphs, of the characters in the book and helps to make a bridge with the people actually in our very real and tangible lives. Every once in awhile I come across someone who doesn't like to read and this always saddens me. Maybe it shouldn't, maybe they get their illumination, inspiration, and joy elsewhere in other ways I can't grasp, I don't know. My nightmare is the scene in Twlight Zone when the main character just wants to be left alone with his books and resents all the intrusions that keep him from this pursuit. One day, he happens to be in a bunker in his bank when a nuclear bomb goes off and destroys all signs of life. When he leaves the bunker and witnesses all the destruction, he is neatly overcome with joy because now he will truly have all the time in the world to read. He stumbles through the rubble, dusting off books and holding them to his chest in ecstacy. Then, he trips and his glasses come off, falling to the ground and shattering into irretrievable pieces.