The love list
Here's what I loved in December
It’s the last day of December, and this is the LOVE LIST, where I share the things I loved this month and give you a bit of a life & studio update.
For the first time in I don’t know how long, all of Tracy’s family and all of my family were in town for the holidays. It was so good to be together. Tracy and I made an Italian meal on Christmas Eve and got to see our nieces and watch movies and just be with them. (That was the best gift we could have received.)
So December was good, but the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, I am often visited by the regrets of my life. They line up on the back fence and watch me. This year, I decided to invite them in to have a look around and make themselves comfortable. We have to come to some sort of peace between us because as much as I don’t enjoy their company, they do feed my creativity like nothing else.
One night, getting ready to head out to Christmas celebrations, I noticed that the skin beneath my chin had become a little pouch. It looked very much like Michael Jackson’s chin in the Wiz - when he’s a scarecrow whose head is basically a bag filled with straw. It wasn’t what I wanted to see in the mirror, but I only had two choices - continue getting ready and go celebrate the holiday or…yeah. That was the only choice.
Life hands us what it hands us and we respond how we respond and sometimes pouchy wrinkled skin and extra body fat and regret about missed opportunities are simply signs of life, just like the layers of emotion that Christmas carries with it now. The bottom line is, I’m grateful to be alive in this body on this earth.
Another night, we were leaving a gathering. It was clear and crisp. The moon was waning, but still appearing large and full and the stars were bright, including Orion’s belt, which always thrills me. In the quiet, we heard an owl in a tree, so we crossed the street and just stood there beneath the sky, breathing, and listening. It was deep magic.
Megan made a drawing of me with the holiday hair I wish I had. I love it so much!
I started waking up at 5 a.m., earlier than I want to get up, so I’ve been putting on binaural beats and a cornea care hot eye pack and administering a little self Reiki before I get out of bed. It’s not a bad way to start the day.
Violence is hard on our empathy. Meditation can help us reclaim our ability to feel.
“I praise my lucky blessings for the background music of my life.”
I Love My Body, But I Hate My Reflection is a beautiful piece of writing.
This episode of Science Vs gave me a new respect for olive oil.
I wish Somebody Somewhere had lasted longer, but I’m grateful we had it while we did. Here’s Bridget Everett on ‘Somebody Somewhere’ series finale and not giving up on yourself.
I don’t know who did the art direction for Glitter & Greed, but every interviewee having their own color story was a brilliant move. It’s a truly sad story, though.
Tracy and I enjoy the Sip & Feast Youtube channel and this month, we started watching their podcast episodes in the evening, which prompted the algorithm to bring us Buon-A-Petitti. Gina, an Italian grandmother, has this wonderful thing she says when she’s cooking, “You like, you put. You no like, you no put.” You could apply that wisdom to a lot of things.
All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in New York City
There’s no reason for me to tell you all of the holiday movies I watched this month, because you already know, but we also watched some non-holiday movies that we’d never seen before, like My Dinner With Andre, which felt like holiday movies because we watched them next to the Christmas tree. And I did watch this for the first time.
We also watched Nowhere Boy, which was pretty good. I was particularly touched by the fact that Paul and Yoko were consulted.
On this New Year’s Eve, I raise my cup to you and wish you gentleness, love, and peace. Let’s make 2025 a year of radical care: self-care, care for one another, care for the planet. Thank you for reading and sharing this creative life with me. Thank you for being such an important part of my 2024.
I’m Lori-Lyn - a writer and artist who believes in living creatively, dreaming intuitively, and rooting into the cosmic dance of energy, nature, and story. I write Creative Living Diaries and my in-progress memoir, Cosmic Heart. I live in Kentucky with my partner and our pug. We travel to New York and California every chance we get.
In case you missed them - this month’s posts:
Happy New Year!