it's never too late

I often speak in superlatives, in exclamation mode. I'll say " I love that" , or " I love Hershey Bars". I " love " this and that. I have to be more careful. These things don't always love me back. People and pets love.

Cricket loves me, unconditionally. Bob loves me, unconditionally, and I love back.

How can I say that I love a place or a thing when what it is that I do , is enjoy them, a lot. I will add this to my upcoming list of resolutions that I plan to keep for next year. I will resolve to only love pople and pets and just really enjoy the rest of what I love.

Love requires a commitment. That is something you get from a person or pet.I love New Orleans, but what I love are the family  and the memories  I have there, not the city or the food.( It is hard  for me to say that, because I think that I really do love the food.)

I want to get an early start on resolutions. Some how, I think that I will have a long list this year and I don't want to leave any out. so I am resolve ing to not use the word love, so loosely. I will save it for special people and pets . I will respect what love represents. I will reciprocate it. I will treat it as special.

It's never to late to get my priorities in the right order, putting people and pets that I love at the top of my love list. All of the rest will go on my " strongly like " list.

After much turkey, trimmings and thoughts, I have come to this conclusion. I am most, most thankful for family and friends. Health wanes, there is just so much money, but if you are as fortunate as we are ,family and friends remain. Our friends are now our family. The lines have become blurred. The relationship has overlapped .That is what has happened to us.  We  have added to our biological family by having this wonderful family  of choice. 

Just as my hope is for peace in the world, so it is that I would wish for everyone to have my good fortune of a wonderful family and  an accepting, loving, and generous circle of family of choice.

It's never too late to let this thought fill my heart.

This is Thanksgiving day and I am determined to single out  just one thing that I am thankful for. Maybe I have an attention deficit problem , but I am having trouble deciding on just one thing. Should I be mercenary and be thankful that I have some decretionary income and I  can buy books, go out to lunch, take a trip,contibute to causes . Or should I be more thankful that I am healthy and independent. Then agin, should I be thankful for the wonderful friends that I have made here, my family of choice. Or ,should I concentrate on our children and grandchildren.

This is harder than it seems. Am I thankful that I still have a partner.There is just too much for me to be thankful for. I am overwhelmed with what I have.

It's never too late to just be happy to be here.

I had trouble falling asleep last night, so I decided to do something that really mattered. I cleaned out the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. My cabinet is pretty boring . Lots of dental floss, 3 different toothpastes, and a collection of Aleve, enteric aspirins , Tylenol and generic aspirins. I found a bottle with an expiration date of 2005. And another with a date of 2009.

I made an executive decision to throw them away. I felt so carefree after that, that I took an Aleve and went to bed. I don't often have a problem with sleep, and now I know what to do when I can't . I only have two medicine cabinets, and now that one is tidied up,  I can only have one more sleepless night until I have to think of another project. 

I used to put things off until a snow day. That's not going to happen here in Florida, so I have to look for that push to get me to straighten out cabinets and closets . I like being able to say ," I'll do that the next snow day". I still say that, but it's more of a joke.

It's never too late to be so proud of my newly straightened cabinet, and just remember that I have a project waiting for me the next time I can't sleep.

There has been some excitement about the fact that Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah are happening on the same day.  Thanksgiving was assigned this date by proclamation, the first day of Chanukah is a given by the actual date of a battle .

I can see Thanksgiving being changed to another day to accommadate shopping or days off, but Chanukah will always be commemorated on the same days, always.

Our family has been known to celebrate Thanksgiving on a day other than the Thursday that the rest of the US is celebrating. We could do that after the kids grew up and we had to make   allowances for their traveling to come home or they were on call that day. The turkey was good, even if it was on another day.

We would always light candles, even if no one was home to share the lights with us.

I have to confess that we sometimes missed a lighting. I hate it when we have left over candles at the last night of Chanukah. I feel so guilty that I save the box for next year. In a few years, I have enough of missed candle lightings that I don't have to buy candles that year. 

I bet that Chanukah is a big event in Israel. I can tell by reading my Nefesh B Nefesh emails. Kids are off school, there are camps for the kids, there are fairs, there seem to be whole communities celebrating. I bet I wouldn't forget to light the nightly candles there.

It's never too late to put daydreaming about celebrating Chanukah in Isreal on my to do list. Do they spell it with a H or a Ch?

As I was walking Cricket yesterday, I happened to be thinking about the Torah and how ,if you change the meaning of a word, that has more than one meaning, the tale changes. That's what I find so interesting about the Torah. It's all in the interpretation of the commentary. That's a little  heady for a walk with Cricket,but that is how my mind works.

That is why I like sermons that take one or two sentences and just work on how you can change the meaning  in this way

I also like sermons that take the Torah portion and relate it to today issues. I always have something to think about when I walk Cricket. When I hear a sermon that includes the Parshah, I tell myself that I will remember this portion next year when it is read again. I haven't figured out ,why I seem to forget from one year to the next. Maybe that is why , we Jews read the same passages at the same time, over and over again. The interpretation changes every year, depending on what the circumstances are, who is giving the Torah reading and what I hear. We have a religion that offers us this freedom. Cool.

We belonged to Beth Emet , The Free Synagogue, in Evanston. It was definitely not free in dues , but it was free as far as thoughts and expression was concerned. It was a good place to grow.

It is never too late to continue learning, to listen to different interpretations , to know that this is what we are meant to do. 

There is such a pitch for Christmas that I think that Thanksgiving is being  pushed aside. I went to the grocery yesterday, a week before thanksgiving, and I had to look for turkeys. They were not the focal point of the ads. That makes me sad. I really like Thanksgiving. 

Even though we are invited out for Thanksgiving, I plan on buying a turkey and having all of the trimmings. Who can resist stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce. I think that I like the next meal of turkey sandwiches with everything on them, best. That's the one time of   the year when it is OK to put bread stuffing between two slices of white bread.

Marshall Field's Department store in Chicago, had a signature dish of an open faced turkey sandwhich. Every " winter break" I would take the four kids to see their beautiful Christmas display windows, followed by lunch in their grand dining room. We always got the turkey sandwhich. 

Really, the sandwhich when I think back wasn't that great. A slab of white bread, cold sliced turkey ( it was  fresh and real turkey, I'll give them that) lathered with Russian Dressing. How we loved it. With potato chips, yet. We aren't a snacking family, so chips was as good for our kids as a trip to see Santa was for the rest of the world. That was good eating.

I may try to recreate that sandwich when I have left over turkey this time. It's never too late to try and remember how to make Russian Dressing. I think it is mayo, catsup and pickle relish. Maybe I'll pass on that part.

When I first needed a password for my email, I choose   one that I could remember. That worked for years. Then, I had some difficulty with the carrier  or I started adding accounts and I had to take on more passwords. And another, and now, I have different words for different accounts. 

I had to write them down because I couldn't remember   which app had which password. 

What really annoys me is when I put in my password and the computer tells me I am wrong, or it says, that word is been used. Yes, by me, Mr. computer. 

A friend helped me set up a security app where I can list my passwords. That would work, but then I have to remember the word that opens that app. Life can get complicated at this point. 

It's enough for me to remember my Social Security number, Bob's Social Security number and for some reason, I still know Bob's military number.That last one is useless information to hold on to. The passwords that I have, all have special meaning to me. They are memory triggers. But I'm running out of them.

It's never too late to make some new memories, so I can have some passwords waiting to be used.

I'm confused. I've had some conversations with a friend about spirituality. I don't think of myself as being a spiritual person, but more of a religious person. She gave me some reasons to think about what traits a spiritual person might have. Maybe I am more spiritual than I give myself credit for. At least by her definition.

It was so good to have this type of conversation. It was thoughtful . Most if my conversations revolve around dogs , food and family. All of interest to me, but not very thought provoking.

I am going to try and have more conversations where I challenge myself.I've been playing it safe. It's time to put away cookbooks and read a real book.

I don't know . I just downloaded a beautiful cookbook by the author of " Under the Tuscan Sky". Her descriptions of where she first had the dish and how she now serves it, made me want to scrap Israel for Italy. She writes so beautifully that reading the cookbook is almost like reading one of her novels. Is this counting as reading or as cooking.

I'm conflicted. Maybe I want to be what I'm not. Do I have to pick and chose? 

I think I will define myself as a person still in search of a label. It's never too late to keep an open mind  about which mold I want to put myself in. Boxes are meant to be broken down. I think that I don't want to be put in one. I'm so out there.