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Julia Twenty Somethings Uncategorized

Moderate and Merry

The holidays are a crazy time. I can’t be the only one who has the excitement fizzle out as you feel pressure to find the right gift for everyone (thank god my four siblings and sister-in-law have implemented a drawing, so I’m only buying gifts for one of them) and the impending stress of heading home for the holidays. Not to mention living out of town and the price you pay just to get there.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and I love to give gifts and spend time together, but images of Norman Rockwell get stuck in my head and I am inevitably let down by the real-life drama that is relationships and life.

So this year, heading back to face my family alone after a break-up, I have decided to eschew the pressure and the expectations. I am not going to get into heated debates about whether my dad is going to live up to spending time with us on the morning of Christmas, or how out of place I may be feeling at an early Christmas morning that was never part of my ritual growing up.  Instead, I am going to enjoy the time I have with family and know that my attempts to find the perfect gift(s) for people will be appreciated even if they are exchanged or returned for a different color. I am going to take time to talk with the extended family that I love and rarely see at my Aunt’s Christmas Eve, Eve party. I am going to call up friends from high school and go out one night and enjoy how far I have come from who I was in high school and the fact that I still consider people from that era friends. Spending time with my niece is high on the priority list and I think I’ll ask about taking her through the Holiday lights show at a local park (babies love bright, shiny, moving lights!). I’ll remember how lucky/cool it is that  I celebrate both Hanukah and Christmas with different sides of the family and how meaningful those two traditions are to me. I’m definitely lighting my very own (and first) Menorah this year in my own apartment and am thinking of hanging a fir wreath on the door just so I can smell wintertime.

This will be my moderate and merry Christmas. Moderate in that I am not looking too deep at the undercurrents of family drama – simply so I can enjoy a season and a time that is meant to be enjoyed.
I urge you all to do the same, for your sanity, for your own sense of joy.

Norman Rockwell, making family look good since 1916.

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Julia Twenty Somethings Uncategorized

French Class

I am looking for a French class in the city. I miss the language and for someone who prided herself on becoming fluent in French- is showcasing abysmal skills these days. Maybe my big decision will just be to blow all the money (not paying rent, looking for a change in career) I save on a teeny tiny flat in Paris and the cost of a month long language immersion class. Do I dare?

…”peut-être, peut-être non.”

 

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Morning Yoga

I’m no longer the least flexible person in yoga class! I attribute this to taking yoga more regularly and to the fact that quite a few new people have joined…making me look like a pro.

No better way to start the day than finding your center and outshining the competition!

See: http://yoganonymous.com/5-reasons-sun-salutations-are-the-best-way-to-start-your-day/

This is how we start the class. I think I'll try starting each day with a few of these...
This is how we start the class. I think I’ll try starting each day with a few of these…

 

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Julia Shorts Uncategorized

Parisian Jacque

About five years ago I lived in Paris for a semester of school and lived with a French family.

The 3 kids, my french ‘siblings’ had a pet fish and loved to eat chocolatey cereal or chocolate biscuits (cookies). They loved learn English words from me while they helped me with my French/ laughed at my incorrect verb conjugation.

They also were obsessed with the show 24. “Jacque Bauer!!” they couldn’t comprehend how I didn’t watch the show and insisted I watch with them. The only TV in the apartment was in their parents room and one night I was babysitting them/ hanging out – after making French versions of frozen pizza (tuna on one, and some white sauce on the other)- we turned on season 2 or 4 of 24.

Nothing is as funny as trying to keep up with a bunch of gasping french kids, shrieking as things happen while you’re about three minutes behind in understanding due to slow translation skills and a heavy reliance on context clues.

I never watched the show in the states even after my return, it just wasn’t the same without the dubbed voices and the feeling of sitting on worn, creaky, french floorboards at the foot of a bed.

Now that its back on TV, I wonder if they’re all freaking out and watching together…

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Change

A hilarious friend posted recently on facebook, using over-plucked eyebrows as a metaphor for learning to accept the way things are, letting it go, and moving the hell on with your day/life.

For some reason that hilarious anecdote stuck with me and really made me take a look at what I was holding onto; things I knew I was holding on to and just not dealing with.

Sometimes what you are holding onto and back from the one person you need to share it with only makes you feel worse. Even when you are trying to not hurt someone’s feelings, holding onto it will bring you down and begin to hurt you.

I took my friend’s Facebook, and other trusted friend’s (and favorite author’s) advice, and finally dealt with what I needed to. And as cliche as it is- I felt like a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. I might have to go throw-up now because its still a huge change and scary and all that. But at least my eyebrows aren’t over-plucked.

 

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Know your source

If you graduated from high school or college anytime in the early 2000s like I did, I am sure you know the speech turned song “Wear Sunscreen”. Let me feel free to refresh your memory:

“Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”

“Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.”

“Understand that friends come and go, but with the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need people who knew you when you were young.”

Yes, that speech, remember it now? Anyway, it was used by Baz Luhrmann and put into a song of sorts. I loved that speech. So much so that I googled after I first heard it (2005) and it was attributed as a speech given at a graduation by some guy. Some sites said it was Kurt Vonnegut at MIT, others listed no author.

I haven’t thought about that speech in years, until when reading a fantastic collection of articles by a Chicago Tribune columnist, there it was! It was an article, from a Chicago newspaper, from a woman columnist. Mind blown.

I guess it was naive for me to trust the internet in correctly citing the author of a speech or quote; but it is something a lot of people do.

Note to self, either take the time to properly research where the information you love and were affected by came from or don’t accredit it to anyone- just say its a piece you love. This goes for my facebook “favorite quotes” and should go for yours too.