Month: April 2019

I’ll be honest with you. This blog/website is a big treat for me. Sure, I hope others read it and gain something from doing so, but I created it so I could sort things out. Throughout my entire life, the best way I’ve found for me to figure out what I think about something is to write about it. Writing about my thoughts in front of an audience is terrifying, but I felt like I needed to do it, and so here I am — logo and all.

I spend way too much time thinking about things I can do nothing about. My husband constantly tells me what a waste of time this is, but still I persist and let the world weigh on my shoulders as if I’m the only person that can do anything about global warming, the Middle East or female teens’ obsession with BTS. The pressure is just too much, folks.

Last week I found out that my close friend Jessica’s cancer had returned. Not only did it return, but it relocated to a dangerous place in her body. I was stunned when I read the news on Facebook. The kind of stunned that you try to file away as a dream, only to realize a few hours or days later that it is indeed reality and not something that you watched on Netflix.

I have thought and thought about why Jessica has to go through this, especially since she’s been through so much already, and I’ve come up with zilch. There are a lot of clichés I could insert here, but the whole idea is to come up with new ways of looking at things and hopefully find something good.

I’m still processing her diagnosis — a young mother of four with stage 4 ocular melanoma in the liver — and am now in a working state of shock. But Jessica, the person this yucky hand was dealt, is so brave. It’s like she’s shooting this diagnosis between the eyes with a shotgun while wearing a blindfold. She’s a total badass, and I am in awe of her.

Every day the world sends us reminders of how good it is to be alive. Today a monarch flew across my path on the way to the library. It circled around my son and I before it went on to flirt with someone else.

When we got to the library, a vase filled with pink azaleas greeted us, a nod to spring and a beautiful Wink of Goodness. I learned that one of the librarians, who is also a yoga teacher, was given these flowers by a yogi in her class. You can’t enjoy these things if you’re not alive, which is why it’s so wonderful to receive these beautiful messages and then realize just how lucky you are to be in the audience.

I’m lucky that I’m friends with my friend who has cancer because she is an awesome person who has always made me laugh and isn’t scared to share her crazy mommy moments — we all have them. As soon as my friends and I found out about her returning cancer, we began planning and organizing ways to help her and her family. Whether we were discussing meals, gift cards, travel points or money, each text was an expression of love and hope for her, a building block for her future.

Though I am heartbroken and angry that she has to go through a second of this, I’m grateful that I’m part of an incredible army of people supporting her, and I’m so very grateful for her. Friendship has so many parts, and each one has its time to shine. Right now, we need to shine our strength for Jessica because she’s certainly shining hers. She refuses to allow life’s gravel unravel her, and if she’s not going to let that happen, neither am I.

I love writing things down. Following our old school way of life in this house, I keep a paper planner. Last August I decided to downsize my planner and leave my beloved Lilly Pulitzer Large Agenda behind. Then in January, I tried to downsize even more and have been forcing our hectic schedule to fit in an inadequate (and not my colors at all) planner.

It worked for a while, but then I went to Target and saw all of the new academic planners available in their beautiful colors and designs. The wheels began turning. I’ve always been a fan of the academic calendar because in my head, summer wraps up the year. Plus, when you have kids in school, everything revolves around when they’re in class and when they’re not. The wheels kept turning.

I went back to Target and bought the same size planner that I had but in a beautiful hot pink, my favorite color. The interior layout wasn’t all I had hoped for, but I thought I could make it work and it matched my daily to-do Lilly Pulitzer notebook. (Only deranged people consider such things.) After a few days, I decided I needed to go big again, as our family tries harder each year to do more in a day that I did in all of third grade.

Back to Target I went to do the planner exchange. The new, bigger planner also was hot pink, which meant that it too matched my Lilly Pulitzer to-do notebook. The problem was that it didn’t start until July, and I wanted to revamp my organization system now. Seriously, the eagerness that I had to do this could be compared to how some people can’t wait to go on vacation — or retire. Maybe if I went on a vacation, the idea of a new planner wouldn’t seem so exciting, but then it’s kind of cool that I’m excited about planners because they’re much cheaper than flying to Paris or New York even. (I need a vacation.)

I kept thinking about my July conundrum more and suddenly had a genius thought. The Lilly Pulitzer agendas have been out since August, so they must be on sale now. I went to one of my favorite boutiques (The Perfect Home & Gift), which happens to be in the same shopping center as Target. I found a Lilly Pulitzer Jumbo Agenda in a pleasing Lilly pattern and discovered that it was now 50 percent off. Goodness all around!

I paid for it and started counting the minutes until I could truly make it mine by writing every single thing down that I need to do, from going to the grocery store to filing invoices to taking The Tots to the dentist.

My first planner transfer strategy was to rip all the months out and start with April, but that just didn’t feel right. I needed proof that January through March had indeed happened, so I ripped out August through December 2018 and began transferring the first quarter of 2019 over. To many, in fact all of humankind most likely, this might seem like a colossal waste of time, but I was having more fun than people have in Disneyworld (those who really want to be there).

I loved writing down all of the times I’ve worked out so far this year, as well as how many times I’ve taken my children to tennis and served my parents dinner. As I flipped through the pages of my old planner, I could see the days that were amazing (hanging out with one of my best friends at the local yacht club, riding the Swamp Rabbit Trail with my family and reading on my hammock on a sunny February day) and the days that were gut-wrenching (sitting with my parents in a hospital room, learning my mother-in-law had cancer and watching my son struggle with severe anxiety). In three months, we had done so much, and I didn’t remember hardly any of it until I started reading my planner.

As I finished the transition to my new, larger command central notebook, I felt grateful and energized. Grateful for all of the experiences that so far have made up 2019, even the rotten ones (like Carolina losing to Auburn in the NCAA tournament) and energized for what will fill the remaining pages.

Transferring planners (or even having a planner) isn’t for everyone, but if you want to examine your day-to-day life up close, this is the way to do it, and fun fact, I’ll never stray from my Lilly Agenda again. I love my new planner, but I love the insight that filling it out gave me even more. Here’s to 2019 — again.