While it is not Wednesday, this is my last chance to post for Wicked Wednesday. I want to thank Marie for bringing together a community of wonderful people I respect and love.

Unlike most of the world, we tend to love snow when we get it in Tucson. Cold weather tends to bring out the grumpiness in most people here because they moved here to avoid that.

As I write this, we are in the process of getting ready to head out of town on Saturday. We are going to spend Christmas with our family in WDW.

It seems like so many posts on FLRs focus on reasons and mechanics instead of the relationship piece.

In the 80s, the quote going around was “He who dies with the most toys wins.” It was a time of new gadgets and toys along with the idea that these things were “necessary”.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. While there will be turkey and all of the fixings here at the Snake Den, we also have the tradition of going around the table and telling what we are thankful for.

The best-laid plans…

When I went looking for November quotes, I found not one, but two that seemed to sum up my feelings about this month in this time of life.

“I’m not going in there,” she stated firmly. “When I was small, my brother went ahead of me and then jumped out and scared the shit out of me. I don’t do them and I don’t do haunted houses.”

I have been really working on establishing boundaries the last couple of years regarding people who want all of the things from us but are MIA when we need something. Some people are family, some are friends and others are just online acquaintances who think they are owed time because they want it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a Scorpio while Snake is a Taurus. We are exact opposites and our elements are water and earth.

I truly believe that the most important lesson that we learned during the last two years is to pay attention to what is truly important instead of what is noise. Spending more time at home made us realize that we really wanted a more peaceful environment.

Autumn in the Sonoran desert is more than a little different from most other places. When it starts this year, we’ll still have temperatures in the 90s and there will still probably be several days in the 100s before they start to drop.

We’ve been asked how we ended up being so lucky to have found each other early and stay married for so long. We are lucky–we both have similar goals and values–but luck is what we’ve made of it.

The word intimacy is always thrown around like it is one easily definable thing. Either you are intimate with someone or you are not. Relationships succeed or fail based on some metric that no one seems to agree on.

Healthy habits are hard. Excluding college when I ate whatever was edible at the dining hall (cue: no vegetables or fruits usually), I tend to eat pretty well.

Today’s bingo topic is “Career Success” – I can tell you right off the bat, that I’ve come to learn that this means all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and, to make it even more interesting, I believe it changes throughout your life. What a weird opening.

It sure seems to be the case. We’ve had our share of ups and downs, some extreme peaks and valleys thrown in throughout. I’m not sure at the “highs” that I’d call it success, but at the same time, it’s hard to call all the lows failures.

She walked in and saw him looking at an image on the computer. He was a photographer and it wasn’t unusual to see beautiful women on his screen.

Magic. The word just evokes childhood fantasy to me.

I hate to self-censor. I’m not talking about being polite. I’m talking about feeling like I can’t say what I feel or think in a setting.

I love flowers. From the big splashy ones to the tiny cactus blooms that you can miss if you don’t catch them on the few days they are around.