Some new lyrics to a Christmas classic.

I haven't done one of these since 2010, so I figured I might as well do it again. Also, I wish I could copy this post every year, because it is truly how I feel. I always forget how indifferent I am about hot chocolate.

Dear hand-me-down garland,

Since you are are doubling for our tree this year, I am pretty happy about you. You look cute with ornaments hanging on you. However, you will not always have that particular honor, so enjoy it. I am hoping 2014 can bring us our first actual Christmas tree....Also, I apologize for the bunching of lights on one end, and sparsity of them on your other. 

Dear 'Bing Crosby' Pandora station,

Marvelous. I have no complaints other than that you have way too many versions of "Baby, Its Cold Outside" and "Santa Baby". Stop it. Other than that, don't stop it. Play on.

Dear C,

Thank you for loving me enough to give in on your hard and fast 'no Holiday music before Thanksgiving' rule. I am not sure I really knew what real love was before this. Also, you did a pretty good job of meticulously painting my popsicle sticks red. Lets make out later.

Dear Pinterest,

Thank you for allowing me to feel festive with  the aforementioned popsicle sticks and metallic poster board. You truly understand poor people on a budget.  

Dear Christmas,

Come come come come. (read to the beat  of the little drummer boy's rum tum tum tum. Obviously.)

How love and belly button lint connect

Lets talk about love for a minute.

I keep seeing things in books, television, and movies, that try to suggest that love and attraction should start as an intense, irresistible chemistry, and that the intensity should never fade. 

Your skin should burn every time his skin touches your skin. Even when his elbow accidentally touches your arm because he is taking way too wide of an eating berth at the table. Smoldery burniness along side ,"please pass the salt". 

Stephanie Meyer tells lies. Hollywood tells lies. Karen Carpenter tells lies.

I love Karen Carpenter as much as anyone, but she sometimes sings untruths with that buttery voice. Lies stolen from Barry Manilow. 

I was singing this song while doing dishes the other day, and realized how awful the lyrics are:

At any moment he'll be walking through that doorBut he won't find me behind it'Cause the feeling is gone and just won't come back any moreI worked so hard to find it
I've been up, down, tryin' to get the feeling againAll around tryin' to get the feeling againThat one that made me shiverMake my knees start to quiver every time he walks in
I've read every book, looked for every meditation and poemJust to bring home that old sweet sensationBut it ain't no use to me to try to get the feelingI wanna get that feeling again

KJ Translates: (ahem) I am going to disappear mysteriously from your life because you aren't exciting anymore. I don't get all melty around you. I miss feeling melty. I haven't really liked you for a while now, so I read a couple meditation books about how to find you exciting again, but they were garbage. Ciao.

 What rubbish!


C and I never had this burning, irresistible chemistry. You may not believe it
when you see this picture from his junior year in high school....who could not feel warm fuzziness in their hearts while looking at that?!

Adorable even underneath that permed mop. I digress, as usual. 

Anyway, we were just two people who got along really well,(after a few months of me grudgingly holding on to an unfounded dislike) gave dating a try, and here we are! Love is vital to my life, and can be so exciting, but it isn't all fireworks and passion (maybe I'm missing out? But it actually sounds exhausing).

Love is eating your own pride for breakfast, and trying to keep it down for the rest of day.  

Love is NOT running when the newness and excitement wears off, and it will. I am not saying that relationships can't start with sparks and that knee quivery feeling, but realize that it wears off! Besides, you would end up with really bad knees, and probably get annoyed if it didn't wear off.  

Love is making yourself hold his hand in the car when you are super mad because you know you can't stay mad too long that way. 

Love is learning to not freak out when he throws is belly button lint into your hair because he knows it freaks you out. He kills the big bugs, so...

*disclaimer for C's benefit. He has done this only one and a half times. It was so traumatic that he will never live it down.

Point: Don't read Stephanie Meyer or watch any movie ever again. Pfff. Yeah right. Watch those delightful romantic comedies. Read those silly, books if you must. Enjoy them while recognizing that they pretty much don't portray any part of reality.

Use them to escape, and don't get too upset when belly button lint floating in front of your face pulls you back into a real and loving reality. 

you should love yourself because I said so, and some other reasons

I had a very lovely and much needed girls night out this weekend. Isn't it amazing to talk, laugh, and just interact with other women ?! Don't get me wrong, I am a F-A-N (I reeeeally like them) of men, but women need women too.

There were ten of us sitting at the chef's table at Olives, and I can assure you that the conversation was delightful, and the laughter free. We talked about hair while I tried to convert everyone to dry shampoo, watching your children grow, and how weird it was that bread is so addicting when it is so simple. 

At one point they had me talking about my family, and how we each seem to have a different niche, and how it is so easy to be jealous when a talent or ability (or in my brother Shane's case just being beautiful) comes so effortlessly. I began to think about how desperately women have fought at times to feel like their lives were as exciting or beautiful as the lives of people whose blogs they follow, or whose posts they see on facebook and instagram.  

To counter this, I made this list:

1. It sounds cliche, but I am the only person exactly like me! I may not be an interesting person because I have been to amazing places, or done a lot of cool things. But, I am an interesting person because of my thoughts, quirks, and the way I express myself.

                

2. As women we simply deserve to feel pretty and loveable. I am aware that may sound too simple minded, but I believe it with all of my heart. Each of us has something about us that is beautiful. What I have to offer the world may not be as big or public as what some other women offer, but I have people to whom I am more important than any of those other women. So do you. That isn't to say that they or what they do aren't valuable, but you can not base your worth or beauty off of that of other people. Also, when your husband, boyfriend, best friend, or someone that truly knows and loves you tells you that you are beautiful, BELIEVE THEM.

3. I have some stellar abilities. I can't draw like my sister, make music like my brother, or compare to another brother's quick wit, but I have my own stuff. I am good at making people feel comfortable. I have a stellar British accent. I am good at resolving disputes peacefully. I have an artistic eye. Abilities. I have them. You have them.

4. My body does everything for me that I need. My relationship with my body is long and very much resembles what you would see on a heart monitor. I have  felt too big since middle school (haven't we all), my nose is big and has a weird shape, I have poop brown eyes, can you say man hands?...on and on I hashed at my body. Only in the last few months decided that I actually like my body. I like my body despite that fact that I am as big as I ever was, not counting pregnant me, and have serious scarring from that pregnancy. I look just fine in a size 12. If you struggle with your body, at least be aware and thankful of what it does for you. That will help you to appreciate it a little more. 

I can get off of my soap box now, but I would love to hear how you have reminded yourself that you are important and brilliant even when the pictures you post on facebook never seem to be as perfect as that one girl with which you went to high school....? 

Lets help each other out! Spread the love! Leave me a comment and post a pretty picture of you today!

On Loving Long Distance. Also, in General

So, Hubster and I have been living apart for a ridiculous amount of time now.  Four months will seem like hogswallop to military wives, but is really practically the entire life of our 5 month old little man. Forgive the melodrama, but he has been gone a LIFETIME! ...literally.

Sidenote: I wish people would look up the definition of the word literally before they would use it in an expression such as, "I literally just put my heart out there. There is nothing else I could have done."  I mean, ouch. Not to mention you must be dead, so I don't blame you for being able to do no more.

There is the possibility of Ches being gone for even longer blocks of time in the future, so I wanted to remember how we handled being apart for so long while still trying to build on our relationship, and have our feelings for each other continue to grow. Stagnant love is stinky love I always say...well not always, but I have said it now! But seriously, love takes effort.


Ches and I express love very differently. We took that cheesy, but valid, love language quiz, and came out in completely different categories.

I am a letter writer, and a vocalizer. I don't use the L-bomb lightly, even in my relationship with my spouse.  I love to receive love letters, and things of that nature.  Flowery expressions of love, and a list of things that one loves about me will make me smile, and get that warm, burny feeling in my heart.

Let me show you what a love letter from my husband looks like...

This beaut is from when we were dating.  I spent a week as a counselor for a youth retreat our church does every summer.  He has done this for me since we have been married as well.  As you can see, our levels of expression are quite different, however I have no doubt that had he had the option, King Tut would have been scrambling to solicit these skills to ornament his sarcophagus.

Ches is a server and a gift giver. I never have to mix up my own fry sauce or go to the fridge to grab my own water bottle.  (There was even one night I didn't have to brush my own teeth.) Each occasion that calls for gifts, I get showered upon (not literally).  needless to say, I am spoiled. I am the loser of the world when it comes to giving thoughtful gifts, and I sometimes get so busy letting Ches do things for me, that it doesn't even cross my mind to think of something he needs.

How do we fit together? How do we know that the other loves us?  Especially from so far away??

Number One: Biggest and most useful advice I could give to any couple anywhere under any circumstance is to try and understand the other person's point of view.  Ches knows that I thrive off of romantic expression in word or script, so he tries. His expressions may not be long, or full of beautiful language, but he DOES it! 

I really do try to be thoughtful in the gifts I give, but haven't been very successful yet. I try to blame it on the fact that our anniversary, his birthday, and Christmas are all within a month, one every two weeks, and who in their right mind can be THAT thoughtful in THAT concentrated of a time period ( I mean really, couldn't his parents have thought through their actions a bit more)...but it is just an excuse. To make up for this I have tried to do things like make the non-fun phone calls, and make sure he has a hot breakfast every morning. If you know a Lewis, you know breakfast is a BIG deal.

We both continue to try, and we are learning a lot about each other.

Number Two: Whether you live together, or are apart for reasons out of your control. Talk ALL THE TIME! Sometimes this isn't an option, but luckily it is for us. Sometimes most of a day will pass, and I will realize that I haven't talked to or heard from my husband really at all. Thinking about this made me realize that sometime we will sit in the same room for an entire evening, and barely talk because we are both so into our own things. SADNESS! When our kids are grown and gone, I don't want to discover that I don't know my husband because we didn't just talk often enough.

We have tried to be better.  Don't feel bad if you are not one of those couples that can talk endlessly always. We have those moments, but most of the time converstaion for us takes thought and effort.  So, at night our FaceTime conversations look like this:

In the end this very wordy post is mostly about those two final things. Whether you are trying to resolve something on which you think differently, or simply trying to learn to love each other more greatly and deeply, talk like you aren't going to be able to talk ever again, but every day, and always try to see through the heart of the other. 

I think Ches is on lunch break. I'm going to call him now.