One tiny twinkling star

Imagine...

one tiny twinkling star

in the dark night

makes all the difference

to the person navigating a journey

with nothing else to guide them.

Let your light so shine

it may be someone's

one tiny twinkling star.

Maintaining some semblance of holiday cheer despite the flu (thanks to Netflix and cold medicine)

I spent all last week watching every Christmas movie I could find on Netflix while being sick with the flu (the real flu as in "influenza" and "don't-go-outside-your-home-and-spread-this-to-anyone" or you could be "patient zero" in your neck of the woods).

I gotta say that sitting around watching endless Christmas movies sounds really great until you overlay a 102F/38C fever on top of it. You get a pretty funky experience when you do that. One of my favorite movies "Elf" was a bit odd to watch to say the least. "Scrooged" was really strange. And other Hallmark/made-for-tv Christmas movies all blurred into one big massive plot line that I don't think I could possibly mentally unravel now unless I watched them all over again (I won't be doing that).

I'm not sure if I'm infused with more of the Christmas spirit than I usually am simply for watching all those flicks back to back. Between dosing myself with fever reducers and decongestants every 4 hours, I've definitely heard about every rendition of every Christmas carol I could imagine. I've watched just about every romantic scenario involving a girl falling in love with a guy around Christmas (how many more movies can you make about a girl needing a boyfriend/fiance to take home to her parents for the holidays?). And I can attest to the fact that Santa does come in every shape and size imaginable thanks to Hollywood.

And I think it should count for something that I was wearing flannel jammies with Santas all over them almost the entire time. That should warrant an extra candy cane in my Christmas stocking... or something.

It truly is a wonderful life if you always remember, "play" is the action required to start every great film... including your own

This evening, on his way home from work Hubby stopped at the store (he often does since he does the grocery shopping). I came into the living room to find the television screen full of the start menu of one of our favorite classic films "It's a Wonderful Life". He had cued it up to surprise me. He had found the dvd at the store and bought it.  I wandered into the kitchen to find that he had bought a little advent calendar full of chocolates. I opened the little "window" for December 1st and handed him a chocolate. Then I opened the little "window" for December 2nd and popped that chocolate in my mouth.

A thought... an idea... a concept that's been percolating in the back of my mind this past holiday weekend started bubbling to the surface and taking form in words instead of just feelings and impressions.

I went back to the television with the start menu still up for "It's a Wonderful Life"... the thought continued to take shape.

I went and got my camera and photographed the television (Hubby thought I was a bit odd at this point... but that's normal).

Then I sat down and started playing with the photograph on my computer–letting the words that had bubbled to the surface in my mind come out onto my screen on top of the beautiful graphic from the dvd.

I thought to myself... It truly is a wonderful life. But I have to engage in the process for that wonderfulness to happen. I have to take action. Just like I have to hit the "play" button to enjoy a great dvd, the smallest actions can bring about wonderful and beautiful experiences. Those small actions are like hitting the "play" button of my life, taking me out of "pause" mode or "waiting" mode and making my life story or "film" roll forward one scene or even one frame at a time.

It's the little things that make life rich. Those things rarely cost money and usually don't require a huge amount of planning and preparation. Like when Hubby decided to try his hand at making a homemade cherry pie last Friday. He knows I love cherry pie. And he asked me earlier in the week, "How hard is it to make a cherry pie?" I told him I didn't think it was that involved. He hunted around on the internet and realized it wasn't hard at all. So while I was sleeping in on that lazy post-Thanksgiving morning, he went down to the kitchen and baked a cherry pie... for me. It wasn't elaborate but it was one of the sweetest and most kind gifts of love from him to me.

A homemade cherry pie... a little advent calendar... a classic Christmas movie on dvd... by themselves they aren't much. But when combined with love, they are the things that make up a truly wonderful life.