The Jennifer Blogs

I love Christmas cards. I love shopping for them. I love writing inside them. I love addressing the envelopes and putting on the festive Christmas stamps. I also love getting them in the mail and putting them on display.

This fascination with Christmas cards came back in 1999. I was a single girl and working on a morning show in Huntsville, Alabama. Our listeners sent us Christmas cards. They were always addressed to Dan, Jennifer & Jerral. The guys really didn't care that anyone sent us cards, so I took them home and put them in my apartment. Dan & his wife got cards from their friends delivered to their house. So did Jerral and his wife. I didn't get any, so the cards I got were the ones I had to share with my morning show partners.

I kept every card that was sent to me in 1999. In January, I packed them all up and put them in my Christmas box. Then before Christmas, 2000, I pulled them back out and I already had a great start for the 2000 holiday. I again kept every card that was sent to the morning show team so that I had twice as many by the time Christmas, 2000 was over.

The nice thing about working for a radio station during the holidays is that artists and record labels also send you really cool Christmas cards. I got cards from Toby Keith, Sawyer Brown, Kenny Rogers, etc. And Warner Brothers Records, Curb Records, etc also sent me cards. Those companies don't get stingy by any means, and they always sent the best cards.

A couple of years ago I sent out Christmas cards to all my friends and family that were caricature drawings of our family, including the dogs. Many friends told us that was the best card they received that year. I never had the prettiest garden in the neighborhood or the nicest yard, but I did send out the best Christmas card one year and that's good enough for me.

Finding Christmas cards in Asia has been a challenge. They don't really celebrate Christmas here. For most Asians, the holidays are celebrated by giving a red envelope filled with money. I don't think I can afford to do that to everyone on my Christmas card list. So this year I just found some cards that looked somewhat Asian-inspired and grabbed those. They aren't cheap here either. I brought home 40 Christmas cards this afternoon and paid S$76.00 for them. This afternoon I will handwrite a message inside each one of them, address them & mail them off to the US.

Truthfully, I'll probably get about ten done before I get bored or stiff from sitting in the same position and I'll have to give it up until tomorrow. But it'll be nice to get started.

I know. It's not even Thanksgiving yet, but I mailed them out the day after Thanksgiving last year and there were some people who still didn't get them until after Christmas. Mail from Asia is slow.

With Thanksgiving a week away, I thought it would be a good time to talk about thankfulness. I could write way more than a blog on thankfulness. I have enough blessings in my life to fill volumes. But for now I will focus on one thing for which I am thankful.

Tonight a friend of mine on Facebook posted a status update that really got me thinking. She said, "Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." Granted, they're not her words (I've read this before somewhere else), it's still great to be reminded. And I'm really thankful for the fact that the statement is true.

I'm not proud of all the things I've done nor am I happy with every decision I've ever made. But I'm grateful that doesn't have to be the end for me. There's still time to rectify the situation. I do have the power to change my own life if that's what I choose to do. I'm kind of in the process of doing that now. I'm ready to make a brand new ending.

In just one month I'll be sitting in seat 43A on Singapore Flight 62. I can't tell you how incredibly excited I am about this trip home!

I'm looking forward to the reunion in Louisiana, cooler temperatures and some amazing Cajun food!

Florida will also offer cooler temperatures (when you've lived on the equator, even Florida can feel chilly), great friends and cherished time with the family.

Singapore is a fairly western nation, so mostly everything we want is available -- for a price. There are still a lot of things that are not available here, though, and I'm looking forward particularly to the summer salad from Crispers, the chicken noodle soup from Panera Bread, fajitas from Tapatias, Diet Cherry Coke, a traditional American breakfast, Florida French toast from First Watch, anything from Cracker Barrel and a Strawberry Lime Aid from Sonic.

We may make a trip to Disney. If there's a shuttle launch while we're home, we may try to catch that. But it's not going to be about "doing things" while we're home as much as it is going to be about seeing people and spending time with those we miss. Probably over a meal.

This trip may also include a trip to New York. That's still up in the air, but if I go, it'll be great to see friends I haven't seen in 20 years or longer. I'd also love to make it up to see a new friend, Brig, who celebrates her birthday right around the same time I celebrate mine. New York used to seem so far away from Florida. Now that I'm living something like 10,000 miles from home, New York and Florida seem like neighbors and it would be a shame not to make the trip while I'm in the country.

We'll try to see everyone while we're home, but it always seems to be that we can't squeeze everything in. It's amazing how a month seems like SO. MUCH. TIME. until you have to try to squeeze everything you want to do into those 30 days and all of a sudden you're wondering why you only planned for one month!

I'm hoping this next month flies by, but that the month after that drags on. That would be ideal. But in reality, I'm sure these next four weeks will seem like eight and the following four will feel more like two.

Time to start making lists! Things to do, places to go, people to see! I can't wait!

38 Days, 15 Hours, 28 Minutes til Christmas. But who's counting?

Christmas is, without a doubt, my most favorite time of year! I have such great childhood memories of Christmas. Growing up in upstate New York meant snow on Christmas most years. I didn't appreciate it then, but it's hard to celebrate Christmas now without the flaky, white cold stuff.

Leading up to Christmas, there were always Christmas cookies. My grandma Nettnin always made sugar cookies for the grandkids to decorate. I remember circling around the kitchen table with my brother and cousins, each of us with all the necessary tools. Gram made sure we were outfitted with plenty of bowls of colored icing, sprinkles, cinnamon dots and anything else you might put on a cookie. My brother was always about throwing as much crap on a cookie as he could fit (better to later eat). I wanted mine to be works of art. My star cookies had perfectly symmetrical designs. Santa always had a red hat with a white stripe and a white pom pom. After we were done, Grandma would put the cookies in a tin lined with wax paper. That night we'd get to eat one with some hot chocolate. The next morning for breakfast? Cookies! Seriously. Christmas cookies for breakfast. Yum.

I loved Christmas caroling too. We never did that where I grew up, but the years we would go visit Gram in Florida, we'd go with our cousins to a specific neighborhood and ring the doorbells, sing a song, and be invited in for cookies and cocoa. I remember one year ringing a doorbell and singing, "Here Comes Santa Claus" the minute the door opened. The lady proclaimed, "We don't celebrate Christmas," and shut the door in our faces. I was stunned. Not celebrate Christmas? Surely there was some kind of mistake. I wanted to call DCF and report them for child abuse. What family withholds the joy of Christmas from a child? Later that night my mom explained that Jews don't celebrate Christmas.

Trimming the tree was never a huge deal at our house when I was a kid. Or, if it was, I don't remember it. But I've made a big deal of it since moving out of my parents' house. My first Christmas on my own I took great care to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. I bought coordinating ornaments and bows and other decorations. It went up the day after Thanksgiving and stayed up until around the 5th of January. I photographed it from every angle. I watered it every day. I was the perfect Christmas tree owner.

When I was a kid, my favorite Christmas present was a doll house Santa Claus brought me when I was about nine years old. I played with Barbies, but the Barbies were too tall to fit in this house, but luckily Santa had the foresight to buy me some smaller dolls to live in this mansion. The dolls were made of cornhusk, so they weren't as realistic as Barbie, Ken & Skipper, nor did they have cool wardrobes. But they fit in the house and that's what mattered.

One year my little brother Charlie was opening a gift from Santa and was shocked to find pajamas inside that beautifully wrapped package. Boy, was he shocked! He even proclaimed, "I didn't order these! Santa must have made a mistake!"

Looking back now I realize how odd it was that Santa brought us all kinds of gifts when we were kids. My parents gave us nothing. I have friends who say Santa brought them just one gift and all the rest were from their parents. Other friends had one gift from their parents and all the rest from Santa. Nearly every friend I've talked to about Santa Claus has a different story to tell about who supplied the gifts at their house.

My kids will likely never get to experience one of the best joys of Christmas I had as a child -- the Sears Wish Book. I would go through that thing from front cover to back cover every day, jotting down things I couldn't live without. Every day I would go through that catalog. I kind of claimed ownership of it. Mom would be looking for it and would have to ask me where to find it. I'd make her go in the kitchen while I'd go dig it out of the hiding place I had found for it. There was no way I was going to let anyone else actually have that precious book. It was M I N E. And I checked it every day in case while I wasn't looking, Mr. Sears added something to it and put it back in our hiding spot. I guess the closest thing my kids will ever get to experience to that almost religious experience is filling out an Amazon Wish List. (So not the same thing!)

So just a little over a month til the big day and this year I haven't even made out a list. Well, on paper anyway. I've got one in my head. (Santa: in case you've made your list, checked it twice and found out I'm nice), I'd love a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II camera lens, the Blue Dragonfly microphone, Romeo is Bleeding on DVD, some cool bookends or some Harajuku Lovers Perfume (Love, Angel or Baby since I already have Music). There is one thing I want more than all the rest, dear Santa, and that's to spend unlimited time with my very best friend in NY. Give me that and you can forget the rest.

This blog is for my dear friend, Yumi. Some encouraging words:
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Fall seven times; stand up eight. ~ Japanese Proverb
When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~ Ivy Baker Priest
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

And possibly my favorite one for you, Yumi, is this:
Remember, when the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful. ~ Barbara Bloom

Feel better, Yumi.