Here we go again. The Five Minute Friday post is sneaking in under the wire to be included in the link-up.

What with the holidays and working 63 hours last week (possibly a new record for me), I just didn’t have it in me to sit down and attempt to write the post until now. I must confess I would have put it off indefinitely were it not for the deadline to post and be included in the link-up.

We had some of my family with us for a Christmas morning brunch and we decided not to worry about gifts this year. That part was good. Because it was a pitch-in, there was, of course, too much food. That was fine, good even because we will eat the leftovers for dinner this week.

The part that wasn’t good was feeling like we were racing through the day with too many things to do, too much structure to the day. We were having our brunch at 10am, but it was late getting started because one sister and our daughter were late. We had to make a big pan of potatoes and those had to back for 30 or 40 minutes. The last of the brunch guests didn’t leave until about 1:30 and we were supposed to be to the 2nd family pitch-in meals at 2pm, but the potatoes took a little too long to cook and then had to cool some before zipping the pan into the casserole carrier, this left barely enough time for the daughter to open her gifts from us and ours from her so we wouldn’t have to worry about her coming all the way back here when the night would end half-way home for her if she didn’t come back to our house. I really missed having the quiet relaxed opening of gifts and calm morning together. Maybe it was inevitable that this year would be different with the kids both living in their own homes now, and I’m not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to host the Christmas brunch, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. The 2nd gathering was an hour or two earlier than we have had it in years past too which didn’t help at all.

We then did a nighttime downtown scavenger hunt that was gifted to us last year and about to expire. Because ti was for all four of us and we work 4 different jobs with different schedules in two different cities we just never found the right time to use the voucher. They shouldn’t expire. There just wasn’t any other time we could do it and it was a walking tour kind of thing. With me in a walking boot and it was about 40 degrees outside, and dark. It was fun, but could have been better if circumstances were different.

While I don’t mind spending time with our families and friends around the holidays, I doubt I will ever again allow myself to have all the things happen in the same single day. It was crazy, it was harried and hurried, too much going on to truly enjoy any of it.

What did you do with your holiday? Did you spend the time wisely? Would you do it differently next time?

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: With
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Still is a word that brings forth so many thoughts. It is almost Thursday again and I still haven’t written my Five Minute Friday prompt for last week. Okay, then, let’s do this.

“Be still and know that I am God.” “Be patient with me, I’m still a work in progress.” “Hold still!” “I’m still not touching you!” There are the stills of the foothills that make moonshine possible. I lay in bed some nights and think about how I need to get some sleep or I will be worthless at work in the morning, yet I am still awake and my brain just will not be still so I can rest. “Still waters run deep.”

Cancer is still a thing. It still tries to claim family members. If you detect it early, there is still hope. There is always hope.

When will I hear that still small voice that I long for?

Life is crazy busy and I still take time, make time, find time somehow to write. I write because I still feel like I am meant to write and publish a book. I still don’t know what that book is supposed to be, but I still feel compelled to write one. I still don’t feel like I have a clue how to plot a fiction novel, so maybe I still need to try other things when it comes to my writing. I have written hundreds of thousands of words over the past five years and I still have no idea what sort of book I am meant to write. It might be one that I have already started writing and I still don’t know how to finish. It might be one I have written and still can’t bring myself to even read it.

I read constantly, and there are still more books to be read. There is still work to be done no matter how much I get done. Each morning I wake up and think, yep, still alive, let’s face the day and see what it has to offer. Nope, still not tired. My brain is still not willing to be still.

If you are still here and reading this, I will relieve you of your misery and say enough is still enough. Thanks for hanging in there! There will be a couple of weeks that there will not be a Five Minute Friday post on here because there won’t be prompts due to the holidays (Dec 28th & Jan 4th).

The video below is a message to my hubby who doesn’t believe in blogs and never reads mine. Maybe someday he will change his mind and stumble across this one…

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Still
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

This time of year many shoppers are looking for value. They want a rock bottom price on all the things they purchase. They go to great lengths to find the lowest price on whatever the next big ticket item is for the year. Some stores try to add the extra incentive to get you to buy certain standardized priced items at their store by increasing the value you get for the same money you would pay for that item in any other store.

If the hot item is a $300 game system, the incentive might be a free controller, a free game, or a gift card good toward a future purchase in their store. Shoppers go along with it because they understand they are getting more value for their money. The stores do it because they can and it works. They know that if they get you in their store you will likely buy something else besides the items you came in for and they have literally millions of chances to tempt you into spending more money than you planned to when you walked into the store.

The problem with all of this perceived value is that it convinces us to spend money we don’t have, that we can’t afford and that we haven’t even earned yet to get these great deals that only come around once a year. I’ve been there too. When money was super tight it was the only way we could afford to give gifts to our relatives. Even if the gift was supposed to be a set price limit, like say, ten dollars, we want to give as much as we can for the set amount we could spend.

I used to get up super early on Black Friday and venture out to a few stores. There were even years I dragged my kids along because Hubby had to work. I spent hours pouring over the stack of ads in the Thanksgiving Day paper, making lists of the places I’d like to go, what time they opened, and what I’d like to get there. Sometimes you knew you couldn’t be in two places at the same time so you had to decide which place was going to give you the most value for showing up early and what the chances were that the item you wanted to buy would still be there if you weren’t one of the first few to enter the store after it opened.

These days, buying gifts for everyone in our family for Christmas each year has become a chore. Many of the people we feel we MUST buy for we barely see the rest of the year. We aren’t quite sure how old their kids are or what their interests are. Is it any wonder we often opt for gift cards so they can just pick what they want? Anything else feels like a consolation prize type of gift and we know the recipient won’t be any happier getting it than we were buying it. It seems every year there are more people we don’t really know added to the list, live-in significant others, new babies, etc. It all kind of makes you wish you could just travel for the holidays to some quiet location and just hide out from the world.

I wish we could all value the Christmas holiday for the birthday celebration it is meant to be and just make a donation to the charity of choice and go back to enjoying spending time together without all the stress and cost of gift shopping and the disappointment of knowing your gift was not well thought out or well received and that it will end up being clutter in the recipient’s home or donated to charity eventually. Nobody seems to take the time to return gifts anymore, because it is such a hassle. Where is the value in that?

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Value
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.