Say, what's that up ahead?

I finished my gift shopping two days before Christmas and on the evening of December 23^rd, I wrapped presents like the dickens. 

At 9 a.m. Christmas Eve morning I started my holiday baking and despite my best efforts, only my world famous butter tarts and homemade chocolate truffles rolled off the assembly line.

I’m a super woman but I just didn’t have my super power battery pack on that day. The “best ever” fudge, coconut macaroons, sugar cookies, rocky road and magic cookie bars did not make it from recipe to table.

I slid into Christmas holding onto the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. I didn’t make it without nicking the skin off the shin of that grandiose timeline that presses against us like concrete—and I suppose I didn’t get my gold stars for pulling off the perfect smoothie of a holiday season.

But who really cared? No one, that’s who. All that really mattered already was perfect—family together in love, with thankful hearts and gratitude.

Oh, the pressures that rain down on us to “get things done” before the holidays hit and oh, how so much of it is fleeting nonsense.

“We could never have guessed, we were already blessed where we are  . . ,” crooned the great James Taylor in the song “Up Er Mei.”

Sing it again, James.

And here I am, standing just inside 2016 with a butter tart and a dozen of my famous truffles left over, and all of it calling my name.

I don’t generally make New Year’s resolutions because I tend not to follow through. I have vowed to lose 30 pounds before the end of July but maybe I’ll move my “start that weight loss” date from today until next week.

I’d like to sail my boat more often to the places on Rainy Lake that eluded me last summer—mostly because I was afraid of the wind. Go figure.

I would like to spend more time with the love in my life, plant more strawberries and a bigger garden, save money, paint the inside of my house, exercise more, pick up my guitar and play it for once in 10 years, read more books, and raise my own puppy and make it my goal in life to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.   

And sometimes I want to be more wild and crazy than I already am, to break out and throw away the list and live out loud because of what I know to be true—that there are no guarantees. Life can change in an instant.

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming, “WOO HOO, what a ride!”

Here I go. Say, what’s that up ahead? Looks like a great big adventure to me.