I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about the challenges and benefits of long-distance friendships.  He has been struggling with the fact that his best friend recently moved far away and it has affected the connection between the two of them.  I can easily sympathize with this because some of my oldest and closest friends are long distance.  Not only that, but I was in a long distance friendship/relationship with my husband for almost seven years right up until the day I married him.

One of my very favorite episodes of Frasier is in season six, episode sixteen, called Dinner Party.  In it, Frasier and Niles prepare to plan a dinner party in order to better get to know some friends.  While planning, they encounter a hilarious series of events that cause them to question the normalcy of their closeness as brothers, and in one scene prompting Frasier to say, \”why don\’t we get on a bicycle built for two, ride over there and ask them what is so strange about us!?\”

This scene has always reminded me and my sister of each other.

However, I was thinking of this scene for a different reason recently.  This spring, I will celebrate my 35th birthday.  And for several years now, I have proposed that for my 35th birthday I will have a \”Snakes Alive I\’m 35\” birthday party – another nod to Frasier, as Niles references that Maris once had this for her 35th birthday.

I have often daydreamed that perhaps my childhood friends would be able to come together for this celebration, to join me here in this place that I now think of as home, and both celebrate and reflect with me.  It seemed like such a long shot, between busy schedules and costly travel plans.  However, just this week, three of my dearest childhood friends have sent me confirmations of their bookings to be here for my birthday!

I am telling you, I lost a whole night of sleep due to the excitement.  I was like a child at Christmas!

It is still several months away, but I have already thought up day trips across the state, a fancy dinner out the night of my actual birthday, and a big party that weekend with my old friends and those that are newer, playing games, dancing and eating delicious food.

I can scarcely believe I am going to be 35 years old, truly a grown up now and unable to really pass myself off as \”still just a kid.\”  However, I fully suspect with the friends of my youth and the songs we used to sing blasting, I will be 15 again.

My sister and I had a little quartette as children, and one of the girls we were friends with is one who has booked her trip, her first trip, to visit us here.  On a trip to my hometown in my twenties, I was able to see and spend time with her, but during her visit here, it will be the first time in sixteen years that she, my sister and I have been in the same room together.  What an exciting reunion!

There is a quote: \”Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.\”  Despite this week\’s dreary weather and day to day challenges, I have found that having this to look forward to has quite brightened my attitude!

Maybe Frasier and Niles are right, life is a little bit sweeter when you\’re planning a party!

\”When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us? – Pam Brown

Originally, I\’d been thinking about funny ideas to write about regarding Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.  He is one of my all time favorite characters.  But as I thought about him, I started to think about the best friend I had throughout my childhood, a woman I am friends with to this day, and someone I am certain knows all of the words to Mr. Burns\’ song, \”See My Vest.\”

I met KJ, as I will call her, when she was not yet eight years old, and I was three years older than her.  Most of us probably have that certain friendship we can mark as the first one that truly began to shape us.  I had friends throughout elementary school, but until I met KJ, I had never had a friend that truly began to make that significant impact on my life.  She was the first true best friend that I ever had.  I am fortunate that I can look back on that with not just nostalgia but a thankfulness that I still have her in my life.

Being a teenager is pretty much the worst, so it was a blessing I was matched somehow with KJ.  Despite our age difference and the fact that we went to separate schools, she was always there to make the bad things right again.  I was basically a social outcast, but KJ was well liked, pretty, an athlete; I felt like if she could be my friend then perhaps I wasn\’t a loser after all.  That was a relief!

When I think back on her during those years, I am struck by her composure.  Even then, I always admired how stoic she could be.  Some people mistake the composure of others as a lack of sensitivity or feeling, but that is simply not true.  KJ was very sensitive to the feelings of others and her own feelings, she just never made a scene.  Some people say they hate drama and a spectacle, but she really did, and she behaved accordingly – a rare trait for teenager!  Rarely did I ever see her cry.  Our blue eyes have often met each other\’s in unspoken emotion ranging anywhere from mirth to humiliation, but rarely has it resulted in a scene.  Her composure made a huge impact on me, even to this day.  I was way more prone to outbursts than she was; next to me, she was downright regal!

She was a welcome guest in my home, loved by my parents and friends with my sisters.  She lived just eight blocks away and when she came over, she would come in the backdoor and straight to my bedroom.  I remember when I had knee surgery, I was stressed out because my room was such a mess and I couldn\’t clean it.  She made her way through the winter night to come over and clean my bedroom for me.  She wasn\’t just a friend as a noun, she was a friend.  A verb.  She took the action of a friend.

She was also incredibly funny (and still is!).  She has the best sense of humor, and has great timing for a joke.  She also did impressions, could easily remember the funniest lines from a TV show or movie, and I always felt there was no limit with her.  Prior to writing this, I watched an old home video I took on the night before I moved away from my hometown.  She was with me in our hotel room, and we were rambling on about how deep our voices were and then I turned the camera directly on her and she didn\’t even crack a smile, and said, \”How do you like me now?\”  And then repositioning her leg, \”Or now?\” I cannot help but laugh out loud!

During the most difficult moments of my life, she was there; thoughtful, sympathetic, composed.  She discouraged me from making regretable decisions, but was a great comforter in my time of need.  When my boyfriend (now my husband) broke up with me, she was there and she got me through it.  And when I called her to tell her I would be moving to another country, her voice was calm and she expressed how awesome it was for me, a dream come true.

The night that I said goodbye to her, before an early flight the next morning, she hugged me without a single tear and I loved her for that.  Neither of us cried, not because we didn\’t care, but because we both knew that was not going to make things easier.  She gave me peace and reassurance, which even at her age she seemed to know mattered so much.

She is in her thirties now, a beautiful wife and mother, a skilled healthcare professional, and yet still the same hilarious girl I met almost 25 years ago.  Friendships change over time, and years and miles have developed our friendship in ways we could not have foreseen, but she is still there for me, still my friend.  I believe that she set a precedent for friendship in my life. She set a standard and because of that, I met a few other girls with whom I have developed lifelong friendships, all of which have made a significant impact on me.

I hope if she reads this, her response will be to tent her fingers together very Mr. Burns like and murmur, \”Excellent.\”

I have recently watched both the first and second seasons of The Crown, a Netflix original series that chronicles the life of Queen Elizabeth II.  I am late to the party with this series, as usual.  I tend not to watch a series until it\’s done airing.  It saves me the dreaded end of season cliffhangers and waiting months to find out what happens next.

I also hesitated with this because I love history and I prefer my history to be a little more aged than this.  The fact that many of the prominent characters in this series are still alive was off-putting to me.  However, my apprehension faded before the first episode was over.

Clarie Foy is a wonderful Elizabeth.  She captures the queen\’s modesty and dignity very well, acting with her eyes more than anything else.  Queen Elizabeth is not the most captivating of female English monarchs, but she stands alongside them as successful figureheads that presided over long reigns of peace and prosperity.  Two English queens that I have studied at length, Elizabeth I and Victoria, preceded the current Queen Elizabeth in this manner.  Despite being a young woman, Foy captures the poise and essence of the royal \”we\” very well.

Other cast members are also strikingly well selected to both resemble and behave like the people they represent.  Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, and John Lithgo do excellent jobs recreating the characters they portray.  I love the tension they create with the queen, and I am fascinated by the calm way that Elizabeth scolds them when they are out of line.

My husband and I watched the series together, as we like to do with things of political or historical nature so we can debate them, and often, we disagree.  Throughout the series, we often disagreed about the motives of behaviors of different characters.  My husband loves the political intrigue; politics, past or presents, remains one of his greatest hobbies and passions.  And this series didn\’t disappoint him in that.

Throughout, he and I were also both fact-checking different scenes, searching for the original video footage of events, photographs and, evidence to support the claims against the queen\’s uncle.  While neither of us felt ignorant of the historical events that were covered in the first two seasons, we have since become quite seasoned about the historical facts.

But like all history, especially as it is portrayed for entertainment, it is only one side of the story.  I often wondered as I watched how Elizabeth must feel watching this series now (and surely, she must watch, don\’t you think?).  As she and Phillip recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary, I wondered how she felt seeing this version of their life together portrayed, and I wondered how much of it is true.  Regardless of their personal turmoil, and the certain difficulties in being an obedient Christian wife and also being your husband\’s queen, they are proof that even though marriage is hard, you can persevere.

The Crown tackles the rivalry of sisters, the complexities of a royal marriage, political intrigue, post-war innovation and cultural changes, religion within government, adventure, and even fashion (say what you will about Princess Margaret, but her outfits are fabulous!).

I am anxious for the third season to release!

I\’ve sort of taken up DNA home test kits as a hobby.  It sounds weird, but I was fascinated.  I first became interested in this in March of 2016 when I began building my family tree on Ancestry.com.  At that time, I had DNA test kits done with my sisters and my mom to identify our different genetic heritage, and I wrote about it here.

In March of 2017 when I began building my Day Zero Project list, I included completing a 23andMe DNA test kit.  Aside from doing the ancestry piece, they also test for genetic health risks, which I find interesting.  A friend of mine got hers done a few months ago and it was so interesting to see her results.  When the kits went on sale after Thanksgiving, I decided to give it a whirl.

At the same time, just to see the differences in the kits, I ordered my husband a Vitagene DNA kit.  The Vitagene kit is geared more toward how we are genetically predisposed to metabolize food components, food sensitivities and so on, and given my husband\’s new battled with autoimmune type food allergies, I thought this would be great for him!  I also encouraged my mom to do a 23andMe kit, because then we can link together as DNA relatives and I am curious to see how that looks.

The kits are all simple to use.  The Ancestry and 23andMe kits use a small volume of saliva.  You spit into the provided tube and then as you screw the cap on it mixes in a liquid, then you seal it up and send it back in the prepaid packaging.  For the Vitagene kit, there are two cheek swabs, which after being used are placed into tubes and also sent back very easily.  Note: the Vitagene kit is currently only available to U.S. residents.

All of the kits were easy to activate on their respective websites.  The 23andMe and the Vitagene kit will ask you a list of questions pertaining to your health, diagnosed conditions, prescriptions and so on, but the 23andMe website has an almost infinite-seeming number of optional questions to answer for research purposes if you are so inclined.  I have participated in surveys asking about my sleep patterns, fertility, family history, food allergies. and even how my skin looks.

Also, the 23andMe kit asks additional questions about your suspected heritage because certain ethnic backgrounds are more likely to carry certain genetic risks.  Because I fall into two of these ethnic categories, I am at increased likelihood of carrying these genetic traits.  My husband falls into neither ethnic category, so I was interested to see if I carry it and if that could then impact potential offspring.

I did discover, through the 23andMe test, that I am a carrier of the PMM2-CDG variant, which is a congenital disorder of glycosylation type 1a.  The test informed me that I could potentially pass this variant on to my children. This made me especially interested in discovering if my husband also carries this variant, and what that could mean (we thankfully discovered that he is not a carrier).

When I completed the Ancestry DNA kit back in 2016, it took about 6 weeks from the time I sent my specimen in until I received my results.  On this test, I did not clearly adhere to the instructions about waiting long enough after eating or drinking and my first sample was rejected.  This was disappointing because I had to start over, but they sent me a free replacement kit.  With the 23andMe kit, I put it in the mail on Tuesday, November 28 and had my results back before Christmas.  For the Vitagene test for my husband, his kit went into the mail the day before mine and his results were also released just before Christmas.  We figured this was smart because once all the Christmas DNA kits got opened, there was probably going to be a tremendous backlog.

There are privacy concerns regarding these tests.  These at-home kits are not regulated and you are putting your genetic information and health risk factors into the hands of third parties who have the possibility of using this information.  Some worry that this could at some point create problems for people being discriminated against by employers or insurance companies.  There is no doubt there is a risk involved in allowing your genetic material to be tested in this manner.  My father refused to have his Ancestry DNA kit done specifically for this reason.  However, when it came to weighing the odds on this risk, my curiosity beat out my normally highly sensitive conspiracy senses.  However, I do advise that anyone interested in taking any of these tests thoroughly read the privacy statements and think carefully before submitting a specimen.

I am pleased with the ease, speed, and thoroughness of these tests.  These tests are not meant to replace a diagnosis from a doctor, but can only tell you the likelihood that you carry certain traits.  For example, my blue-eyed mother took the 23andMe kit and it correctly told her she is likely to have light colored eyes.  However, it incorrectly told her she was likely to have her big toe be longer than her second toe.  These are not \”make or break\” findings, but it does illustrate how these tests indicate the likelihood of a person exhibiting a specific trait or condition, it is not a guarantee, and the websites themselves make that clear.

From the time you receive your results, you also have the capability of downloading your raw DNA file, and then using other third party groups (such as Promethease) to take your raw DNA and generate a lengthy list of your genetic information.  It is not as beautifully laid out as the reports from Vitagene or 23andMe, but there is good information there.  Again, please note the risk of downloading and sharing your raw DNA files.

Another great resource to learn more about this kits can be seen here!

However, if you are interested in understanding your genetic health and ancestry, I highly recommend these kits.  They are easy to use, fun and comparatively affordable.

My New Year\’s Eve is going to be jam-packed with lots of very \”me\” things – church activities, a half marathon, and then an evening with my family playing games and eating delicious snacks.

I have never been someone who lays the groundwork for personal change to coincide with the New Year.  People are always waiting until the new year, or until the next Monday, or until their next birthday to make positive resolutions.  Every best choice I have ever made was made and enacted at a random moment.  I made the decision to start losing weight on a Friday afternoon in the middle of August.  I didn\’t wait until the New Year to take action.

However, I do like the idea of looking into a new year and imagining what it will hold.  And I have always been someone who likes to verbalize my ideas and plans to others because I am more likely to make them a reality when they are more than just a thought in my head.  I like to state what my intentions are, as I believe it encourages me to follow through.

2017 was an incredibly challenging year for me, but without challenges, we cannot rise to become better.  I look into 2018 and fully expect more challenge, but I embrace that challenge and look forward to achievement as a result.

2018 holds my projected graduation date for completing my Master\’s of Science in Management.  It\’s hard to believe that only a couple years ago I was nervously signing up to go back for my master\’s and now I am nearly done.  I am also very glad I took all of my most difficult classes early!

I hope to spend 2018 focused on learning to play my guitar, writing some non-fiction, doing some Bible study, and finishing my 12 consecutive months of doing a half marathon every month.  I look forward to 2018 being a year where I complete many items from my Day Zero Project list, reading books, learning new things and eating new, delicious food!

I hope 2018 brings new friendships, strengthens old ones, builds greater bonds within my family, brings new and happy changes and a fondness for old routines.  And I hope for all of my readers that 2018 proves to be a year of blessing and great joy!

I recently saw Jerry Seinfeld live on stage.  It was my second time going to see him, and I had to go out of state to do it, but it was well worth it.  Both times that I have seen him live, I have laughed until my face hurts.

I have always loved Jerry\’s Seinfeld\’s style of comedy.  He isn\’t overly vulgar and doesn\’t come up with a bunch of really bizarre things to make you laugh.  His observations are about real life and are hilarious. You laugh, but you are also laughing at yourself a little bit as you realize, \”I do that!\”

People are funny in and of themselves and Seinfeld is brilliant at illustrating it.  My favorite bit that he did this time was on marriage.  He talked at some length about how men struggle to understand exactly how to make their wives happy, and then he moved onto the women.  Our minds, he said, are capable of understanding amazing natural curiosities…and when we have exhausted that, we move onto the hypothetical.  He imagined the wife asking, \”If you faked your own death and I found out about it, how would you respond?\” 

I burst out laughing at this, and my husband nudged me – evidently, I do this often. 

Despite having recently watched his Netflix special, \”Jerry Before Seinfeld,\” and also having seen him live last year, there was a lot of new material throughout his show.  The first half of the show seemed to mostly be about the frustrations of everyday living, and how he despises when people say, \”it is what it is.\”  The second half focused on the quirks of life, marriage, and so on, and all throughout, he kept us laughing.  The man next to me was especially enjoying it and had a hearty laugh!

Because he has been doing this for so long, he is an expert in every aspect of putting on a live show, from the sound to moving from bit to bit and keeping the audience laughing.  There were no lulls or dull moments, and I was only sorry when it ended that there was no more. 

The experience was worth the cost and the drive and the braving of the cold night air.  I don\’t think I could ever tire of seeing him, and will absolutely try to go again the next time he is around.

This week at work we have been participating in a Secret Santa exchange.  This is my favorite, as I love to find a way to surprise someone every day all week long.  It\’s an excuse to sneak around and dress festively and tell all kinds of acceptable lies, like, \”I have no idea who put that there!\”

I was happy to be part of organizing the festivities this year even though I am new to this team.  I found it to be a great experience to bond with my new team as well.  Even though I was only buying for one person, I got to be the delivery elf for many people and had so much fun surprising people and watching them be delighted over the thoughtful things they are receiving.

Giving is so fun.  Surprising people is one of the great joys we have.  It has been a long time since I made a Frasier reference, but there is a great episode about this!  Back in season 4, there is an episode where Daphne gives Martin a sweater she made for him.  Martin responds by trying to pay her for it, and Daphne is outraged.  Then Frasier comes in and comments on his sweater, and Martin responds that Daphne made it for him.  Frasier says, \”You don\’t seem very happy about it.\”  And Martin says, \”No, well, I\’m not.  You don\’t just give somebody something for no reason, that\’s my rule.\”

Frasier responds, \”Spontaneous gift-giving is one of life\’s great pleasures.\”

Even though with secret Santa it\’s not \”spontaneous\” exactly, the principle holds true.  Giving truly is better than receiving.  Giving is fun.  Giving allows us to focus all of our creativity on being thoughtful toward someone.  Giving allows us to show someone how we are thinking about them.

My husband is a fabulous gift giver, and not just with me.  He is the most thoughtful person, meticulously planning and gathering gifts for whoever he is buying for, using the opportunity to demonstrate that he has been paying attention even when he hasn\’t responded with words.  I am amazed at how he demonstrates his love through giving.  I especially love watching him do it for others.  He understands gift giving as a love language, and he uses it to speak to people\’s hearts.

I have enjoyed using gift giving as a way to get to know these new people, and I have even put aside my aversion to workplace hugging to share and show appreciation!