"What If's" for 2011

I keep looking at my Christmas tree.

I'm thinking about taking it down.

Three days post Christmas wouldn't constitute Grinchy in my book. I know some folks who've already packed the season up. Traditionally, I leave the needle dropping thing up till after the new year has begun. We get a real tree so I figure a six week display is a nice obituary for the pine whom gave his life for our yuletide pleasure.

Now, before I start getting the hairy eyeball and hate mail from the tree huggers let me assure them of this: Pine trees grow at an alarmingly fast rate. We have been cutting at the same Christmas tree farm for a decade now. I am always amazed by how quickly the trees come back. What was a "Charlie Brown tree" two years ago is a nice sized and well shaped tree-ette this year. Plus, the family which owns the centennial farm has been growing there for generations.  I feel good about supporting them and their contagious love for all things evergreen. That's my disclaimer.

I think my haste in dismantling the tree this year has to do with ushering in the new year with clean floors and a house back in order. I can be a wee bit neurotic about the tidiness of my environment and we put the tree in the dining room this year. That means the dining room table had to be swung around the other way. This in turn created a path from one side of the room to the other. Negotiating the narrow passageway with a basket of laundry amongst a couple of rambunctious boys, a cat that weaves her way around my ankles and an eighty-five pound chocolate lab has had me breathing deep and seeking peace. I was willing in the name of St.Nick but he's been and gone and so has my patience with the unusual chaos in my undersized home.

That's it. The tree must go.

Tomorrow.

Plenty of time to reorganize the house and ring in 2011 with a calming sense of all being right in my world.

Okay, the house will be right.

2011. Wow! Time flies when you're making babies and love and memories. Time flies when you're raising those babies and raising a little hell along the way too. The undisciplined daydreamer in me cannot help but ponder what the new year will bring...

Unexpected (but deeply appreciated) blessings, unwanted (but soul-strengthening) hardships and heartbreaks are undoubtedly on my destiny's agenda for me. I am willing, and welcome both. Not because I necessarily want them both but because I know that though I steer this ship I am but the navigator. Not the creator of the journey. I beseech the powers that be that tenderness and grace be mine as well. I know I will need both.

At some point in the past year a friend posted as her facebook status: "What if? What if the very best day of my life is yet to happen? What if I haven't met the person who will become my very best friend? What if?"

Yeah, what if?

On the days I contemplate that it could be the most bat shit awesome day of my life then realize it's just grocery shopping day it's really just me being an ass. A smart ass. The truth is I hope it truly is a bat shit awesome day. (Whatever that is. I just like the way it sounds.) I am a romantic idealist at heart and though I have plenty of days that the twins called "gloom" and "doom" come riding their creepy tricycles down the halls of my mind, for the most part my glass is always half full. So...what if?

What if? I...cut my hair? Grow it longer? color it purple? Learn to play the guitar my daddy gave me? Vacation by the ocean and let the waves lap at my feet? Finish my book and land an agent to rep it? Launch my new project and it's a smashing success? Learn to knit, with my toes? Grow Lavender and get a miniature goat? Say no to things that make me unhappy or compromise my integrity? Say yes to something completely frivolous? Wear white after Labor Day? What if? What if I make a new friend? What if I become a better friend? What if I finish the "unfinished business" I have hanging out there? What if  I partner up the skeletons in my closet and teach them to Tango? What if someone, somewhere is writing a song that will change my perspective on life? What if while I have my head in the clouds I run smack dab into one with a sliver lining?

The "what if's" are infinite. "Whatever." is a good response to those who just don't get it.

I love a good surprise and nothing is more surprising than what the future could possibly hold. Can't say, don't know, won't even venture a guess about what it will be. I am certain however that I'm ready. Eyes wide open, dreaming the whole way though it.

Happy new year folks. May your days and nights be blessed with abundance in all the ways you need it and may the spirit of "What if" fill your soul.