let’s talk about metaphors, coffee, and the meaning of life. Sort of. [video]

November 19, 2013November 19, 2013 - jodimichelle Leave a comment

Some times you just need to break the ice, here I fumble through live storytelling and make it to the end without picturing my audience naked. This is progress! A silly story turned around that comes out with a moral – how we get there is anybodies guess.

Welcome to the way I think, the way I talk, and how I live write my life for most anyone to see. This is what I do: i tell stories.

hello again. from jodimichelle on Vimeo.

My favorite part is when I finally bail and admit the awkward. There’s no rhyme or reason for this video. No real point, other than – hey! I think it’s fun to talk to people. Maybe I’ll start talking (literally) to you more.

Also, sometimes I forget to lighten things up around here and I really don’t have pure angst in my life, there’s a lot of silly, fun-loving memories to talk about too. I am completely capable of making a fool out of myself, I do so willingly. I think it’s fun (woo!!!) not to take this all so seriously. And I forgot that for a time, that while I was living my dreams and building my dreams – I could also … wait for it … still dream.

I’ve been thinking about my Life List and how completely motivated I was by that – how so much happened in such a small amount of time. I wondered where that fire went? Where did the big idea, huge impossible dreams turned reality girl go?

She started journaling about coffee.

And then she started talking.

cork stamping

February 12, 2013February 11, 2013 - jodimichelle 1 Comment

Bleeding Hearts by Oliver from jodimichelle on Vimeo.

leaning into what might be next

November 19, 2012 - jodimichelle Leave a comment

I’m terrified of an empty house, the echo through the halls and the dust underneath the beds. Where once there were toddlers afoot and babies galore – soon all of that will be no more.

I used to grow a garden, before that I grew babies.

And so much has changed that when I look around it’s hard to recognize myself most days. Where am I, really? Even the chairs we sit on are different, the house we live in is new, the babies I grew are growing and yet we still make the same mess. Each one of us trying a new color, a new canvas, for the same masterpiece.

I often wonder what’s next. All I’ve known my entire life is how to be with babies. I played house, made baby-books for my teddy bears; I was practicing how to be a mom before I was even out of diapers.

But we’ve long since passed the baby stage, we don’t even own a stroller anymore. And the tiny infant humans who I couldn’t wait to have are a distant memory. A lovely, sky gazing, best-thing-I-did-with-my-life, memory.

And it changed me. In ways I’m just now discovering … and I’m leaning into what’s next because of the happy soil we came from – we’re finally going to start to bloom.

The one about laughing

August 24, 2012August 23, 2012 - jodimichelle 1 Comment

We’re away this weekend, just the hubs and I, along with a few other friends to get away and relax but also because the end of this month is our ninth wedding anniversary and you guys? We’re still here. Doing this marriage thing. We made it, we’re making it.

Yesterday was the anniversary of our first NOT date 12 years ago and although I knew what day it was and what it meant, it was just another day. A day to count down towards the beginning of school, to remind the kids to stop bickering already, to make more food and clean more floors.

I wasn’t having it and not because of the significance itself, but because – where was all the laughing?

Then my daughter had a great idea.

[There’s an imbedded video in this post, if you can’t watch it here, try YouTube.]

We found laughter and fun and a reason to dance around and be silly. Then after dinner we all sat around the living room watching old home videos together … we got to the one where my husband teaches our oldest how to ride without training wheels and that was it for me. I couldn’t stop crying. Ugly crying, snorting, laughing and weeping.

Videos of our old house, of our babies, of little chubby cheeked/blissed out kids … we were so happy. They were SO happy.

And then I remembered … I still am.

It is not easy, by the way. If I’ve learned anything the last 2 years it would this. But easy isn’t worth it, and this so is.

This STICKS!

May 25, 2012 - jodimichelle 4 Comments

Do you have sticky old drawers? Perhaps you just painted and now you’re experiencing the aftermath of semi gloss bonding to itself?

People: I have a solution.

You simply take some wax paper and fold it (no slivers!) …

Then you rub down each and every angle/side and piece of the drawer that will touch the the box or mechanics of the drawer …

Don’t forget the inside of the drawer “box”.

It’s good to see transference of guck from the drawer to the wax paper, this means you’re actually leaving the wax on the drawer (hence allowing it to slide easier).

See also my amazing video tutorial that says all of this via moving picture. If you get motion sick, I’m warning you.

Unite drawer wranglers! No more screaming obscenities under our breath or breaking vases that fall from the shaking and mismanaging of our sticky drawers. I’m looking at you.