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ex-pect, verb. to regard (something) as likely to happen

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I woke up late this morning, which is rare, VERY for me, to a beautiful coating on everything of a light snow. I was not expecting this. I also woke up to discover that I had forgotten to set my coffee maker last night. This was unexpected. Caroline Kennedy is in anguish this morning over the Tuesday death of her amazing daughter who had a rare form of blood cancer. Everyone knew she would die from this, and if you have not read Tatiana’s essay from November about her terminal diagnosis, you should. The sadness for this family was expected. And so it is the morning of the new year and I already know what my word for the year ahead shall be…expect.

You relaxed your rules about how you eat or exercise and now none of your pants fit, what did you expect? You swore you would get sober but continue to stop after work every day for two fireball shooters and now your stomach has ulcers and you can’t ever sleep through the night, what did you expect? You shopped way over your budget for Christmas and now you literally can’t pay your bills for January, what did you expect? You treated some customers rudely with hateful and racist comments and now your social media has blown up over it and you are going to go out of business, what did you expect? SO much of life is cause and effect, and so much of life is expectations or unexpected outcomes…it feels as if everything can be reduced to this simple thought…did you see THAT coming, or not?

You do your homework in a timely fashion and always hand it in on time and test extraordinarily well, and now all of your teachers are writing letters of recommendation to accompany your college applications, and you have been accepted into every university you have thus far applied to…what else would you have expected?? You are kind to everyone you meet and greet strangers and friends alike with a smile, you are gloriously well regarded in your community and at your job, and after a devastating house fire are the recipient of an enormous go-fund-me to help you through this tragic time…what else would you have expected?? The give and take of living…the push and the pull of existing in a world, a society, a town, or a family where many do not understand the basic premise that we are all connected. Some people are takers and users and abusers, and some people are givers and soothers and the most benevolent of humans…AND we have to coexist. AND sometimes we are on the good side and sometimes we are on the dark side, I guess we could call it that & we can’t all be good all of the time, and one would hope bad people have some goodness left in them…like dearest Yogi Kevin says, “you can’t be 100% 100% of the time” …but should we not at least try??? If we expect the best shouldn’t we try to be our best?

I have made some very bad decisions and questionable choices over many years and all of what has culminated in my life, that I literally do not like about my current situation, is absolutely to be, and was, expected…I knew better, but I did not DO better, and therefore, the university kind of said to me, “well fuck all the way off and get what you deserve for being stupid.” I accept that. Mea Culpa universe, I bow humbly before you. I acknowledge the error of my thoughts and of my ways. Everything that is wrong right now in my life is the result of my questionable decisions and very bad choices. How I move forward in the new year with the circumstances surrounding my existence is a question I can’t really answer, but I know I have to make some really sweeping changes in my behavior and my boundaries. I expect the best from myself but seldom if ever expect the best from others, and so it seems they give me the worst version of themselves all too often. This shall not do in the new year.

‘The way someone does anything is the way they do everything,’ is an expression I have heard and read, and the older I get the more I “get” it. If I see a carpenter who has his tools all in disorder in his truck and his extension cords are a mess and there is trash all over his back seat, I sum up the situation pretty quickly and I feel like it tells me all I need to know about him. Not judging, just observing. I went to the dollar store before Christmas for battery tea lights for my table and the manager walked over to the register and asked me to wait just a moment while he set up a different cashier and when he put down the cash drawer I exclaimed, “that cash drawer is horrendous, a mess, how can anyone work like that?!” as it was all in chaos with money facing different directions and some bills upside down, and I immediately called my mother to discuss, how a person keeps a cash drawer tells me all I need to know about a person, and she totally understood what I was saying, and I wasn’t judging him, I was just making an observation. When a client comes back to their beach house for Memorial Day weekend after having not been there since October and they open the pantry to see all the shelves cleaned and all the canned goods reorganized and all the groceries that had been delivered put neatly away, and all of the pool towels have been washed and rerolled in the cabana, and their linen closets are dusted and all of their luxury sheets are neatly folded, and all of the exterior trim has been touched up with fresh paint and all of the planters are filled with flowers, they appreciate my attention to detail and how I care for their homes…they expect to come to their beach houses to relax and unwind from their busy city lives…I think they like very much what they see or they would not keep me on as their caretaker. I tell people that I take care of their homes with the same love I take care of mine, and I mean it. The way I kept my cash drawer when I worked in retail is exactly the way I wind up my extension cords and hoses…I want people to have great expectations of me and of my work. If they judge or observe me, I want it to be positive, and I EXPECT it to be positive.

I do not in any way whatsoever expect people to take the time to organize like I do, or clean like I do, but I guess what I do expect is for people to do their best and give their best or at least try to do their best. I am sure there are people who never fold their sheets but always keep their cars washed, or who never reorganize their pantry cupboard and rotate their stock but they always keep their piano tuned and their lawnmower blades sharp. I am sure there are people who seldom wipe down the tops of their baseboards but they keep their golf clubs polished. I am sure there are people whose homes are messy but their children’s clothes are always clean and their little hands and faces are always washed. We can pick and choose what to care about, we can categorize the importance of all the things, or the meaningless of all the things however we want, we have free will. We can not give two figs about weeds in our stones, but care a great deal that our dog’s nails are clipped and their coat is groomed, we can not give two figs about whether our linens are wrinkled, but care very much that our gray roots are regularly dyed. We can not give two figs about _____ whatever, fill in any blank you like because on the flip side we do give five figs about _____

If a couple gets divorced the two parties involved might know EXACTLY what went wrong and completely EXPECTED the disintegration of their marriage, while we on the outside think “wow they seemed so happy and well matched, this breakup is so unexpected” but what do we know? Nothing. Expectations are quite personal. I expect a lot from myself and it is my opinion that too many people expect too little from themselves and that’s why they go through life in a half-assed way. This is not a self-righteous judgment just a personal observation & I used to think people were lazy or uninspired, or just didn’t care about how they are perceived, but I guess as I grow into an older woman I really just have to recognize that some people simply do not care about what I care about, and that has to be okay with me. I have to let people do what they want and expect they let me do what I want. If they want a mediocre life with half-assed results, so be it, it’s not my life and why should I care? AND maybe mediocrity is absolutely all they want, why is it my business?? I can expect myself to behave in a specific way, and I can’t expect that specific way to be the way for somebody else. I suppose this is the message my brain wants me to receive this morning. Like that book “Let Them,” I guess I should…

To regard something as likely to happen is more subjective than perhaps I understand. BUT I’m willing to do the work TO understand all of it. If I make more positive changes this year than I made last year, I expect that my life will be better in 2026 than it was in 2025. If I keep lying to myself about what I find tolerable or acceptable from others, it’s likely that my year ahead will be just as annoying and dreadful as the one we said goodbye to yesterday evening! I feel like a superhero this morning, like I have the power to make my life what I want it to be!! What a revelation!!! It seems that I have the abilities and resources to expect the best…AND if I start to screw up, or do not follow my path, and the unexpected arrives, I will take that as a sign that I must change direction quickly. If I am expecting this new year ahead of me to be far better than last year I must remember, daily, that it is in my power to make it so. I started to make some behavioral changes in November, which I expect myself to stick with. I’m expecting 2026 to be better in every measurable way than 2025. It is within myself to make it so. I have great expectations, and I don’t want any unexpected challenges, but I know I can face them head on if need be. If I expect myself to make these changes, and commit to them, then consequently I’m expecting my blog in 365 days to report a very positive upswing in the life and times and adventures of R* …so mote it be.


” *Who Lives? Who dies? Who Tells Your Story?* “

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I have joked, for decades with my daughter, and these last years with her daughters, that if I die in some sort of dramatic or fiery way, there are decades of my journals under my bed in a purple Rubbermaid tote labeled “HerStory.” AND to be clear, it’s doubtful I will die in some exciting story-worthy way, but it’s important to plan…My dad questions me, teasingly, but I think in all seriousness, several times a year, “when are you going to write your damn book?” and recently I looked in the drawer of the filing cabinet at my desk at the printouts of my blogs & only the ones since 2012, not even all the ones of the years before…and when I hold the hard-copies in my hand it is in fact a pile of paper thicker than most books I get from the library!

…but here’s the problem, I am not a writer. I am a person who likes to write. It’s not at all the same thing. I read, a lot. I do not believe that I have the momentum, and I do not believe that I have the confidence, and I do not believe I have the descriptive vocabulary it takes to write a book…my blogs are more like little essays I guess, and if I’m being honest, which when blogging ought to be the ONLY way TO be, I mostly started blogging because my penmanship got worse as my fingers grew more crooked with arthritis as I got older, and typing is faster and easier. My journal writing and “dear diary” notes really simply started with my ‘The Secret Garden’ diary, with a lock and key, that I got for my eighth birthday…and so it was, throughout my teen years and twenties, and well into my thirties, a form of therapy or emotional cleaning. Journal writing, and now for the last 15 years or so blog writing, remains a way for me to get things off my mind, it’s as simple as that… the no-cost form of therapy that I find most useful in keeping me sane and centered and as mentally balanced as I can be…other than yoga, it feels like it is what keeps me from losing my mind.

You will recognize the song lyrics as this blog title if like me you have watched HAMILTON a ridiculous number of times. Some people leave the Weather Channel on their television, or sports or news if they just want some background noise at home, but for me, at least the last few years, if it’s not music throughout all my speakers, it’s HAMILTON on the television. AND EVERY time I hear these lyrics I think of my journals, my blog, and my future book…Who tells your story is kind of a big deal…there are things that happen in families and to families and behind closed doors that are never spoken, or written, or even recognized. Some people spend their whole lives wishing that someone had acknowledged their pain, or struggle, or hurt. I guess for me that, the silence, just feels like a disservice to my soul. I am pretty much an open book…I tell people how I feel and I share with people things that are going on, or going wrong, and I know that suits me fine, and for others it does not sit well with them to air their laundry, dirty or otherwise… I get it. Both of my granddaughters share my love of writing. They both have kept journals since they were little and as far as I know they both write in them often. They frequently share their school work with me; research papers, essays, debate scripts, book reports, whatever, they often send me a copy, and every time I am impressed. I just wrote out the birthday card for the baby of our family, I call her The Little Blonde Wonder, and she turns 18 this week. I suspect if I don’t get around to ever writing my book, THEY will live and tell my story, and until then, I guess I will just keep up with my jibber-jabber therapy sessions between my fingers and this keyboard…

She could be me…I could be her

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There is a woman in Asheville North Carolina just like me, except now, well, as of Friday morning, she is no longer just like me. She is no longer even herself…

Just like me she probably got her first job at 14 and just like me she has worked ever since. Just like me she might have made some really awful choices as a teenager and by the time she was twenty, had been married, a mother, and divorced. Just like me her constant narrative in life, when life got hard, was that she was doing the best with the cards she was dealt, and just like me, she probably hated when she thought that way, self-defeating as it was, because just like me she knew it was her frequently wrong “well, I picked the wrong door” kinds of decisions that got her the life she was living.

Just like me through determination and strength of will, she put herself through college while working full time and raising her little girl, and just like me her little girl grew up and made her own choices and moved away. Just like me she floundered a bit those first couple of years, with no more role as mother to play and wondered what she might do with her life now, now that her “baby” was making a family of her own miles and miles away. Just like me she was elated when after her second grandbaby was born her daughter decided, just four years after leaving the area, she really wanted to be closer to family while she made her own family and wanted to “come home” and just like me she wondered where her daughter would live, as the rentals in the area were so expensive…here in a destination vacation area of the Jersey shore and hers a destination/vacation area in the lush mountains and rivers of Asheville.

Just like me this woman’s mom and aunt had a brilliant idea; some family land would be sold and two new houses would be built, and her daughter would have a place to live, right next door to the dream house she would build for herself. Just like me she started drawing her house on scrap pieces of paper, post-its, on graph paper and in notebooks and eventually even started learning how to use a CAD program. Just like me her mom & dad started building a house on the other piece of acreage for her daughter & just like me she planned every single inch and foot and detail of the house and maybe her dad told her too, “we’ll start her house next door so you can practice for yours.” Just like me she was positively giddy, every single day, as she watched her dream house become a reality. Just like me she worked at the house every day before work and every night after work and could not believe she was going to get to not only live in a house she created herself, it was going to be right next to her daughter and granddaughters.

Just like me, alongside her dad & mom & the subcontractors, one year and one day from the date she got her building permit, she got her certificate of occupancy. Just like me she didn’t splurge on granite countertops and chose instead formica to cover the plywood kitchen counters that she and her dad built together. Just like me she used a huge chunk of her budget to splurge on her silver metal roof and solid black walnut floor boards. Just like me, other than the first three rows her father started for her, she picked and placed and hammered in every single floor board in the whole house, EVERY SINGLE BOARD and she knows exactly where her errors are and where she missed and had to use her bee-keeping bar to pull out a bad hit and start over and she knew exactly where she was going to put a sofa in what would be the living room so she made sure the ugliest boards were in the middle of that place that nobody would really ever see. Just like me she wrote notes to herself with big fat sharpie markers on the sheathing the morning before the sheetrock installers came and laughed while she did it, thinking some day, when she was dead, that someone would want to remodel her perfect one-off-custom-creation-little house and would tear down the sheetrock and find these notes of hard work and determination and love for a home.

Just like me she found it the truest joy to help her daughter next door to raise her family and just like me she walked down the shared driveway every day for more than a decade getting her granddaughters onto the school bus every morning so her daughter did not have to rush getting ready for work. Just like me, as recently as last month, she realized that her time to be needed was coming to an end really, one of the granddaughters is in her second year of college and the other to get her driver’s license in just weeks, and so whenever they asked her to do anything, she jumped to do it, because she was well aware her Nana-ing time is coming to an ending chapter.

BUT…but…B U T… as of Friday she is nothing like me. As of Friday everything she worked so hard to created and build and maintain and love is gone. I hope and, non believer that I am, dare I write “pray,” that she is physically unharmed and that her daughter and granddaughters survived, but I believe her heart is broken into a thousand shards of pain and might never heal from this loss…Just like me she loved her house almost like it was a person and she cleaned it and cared for it with the loving care she once used to tend to her child and her granddaughters, and now it is gone, splinters of 2x4s and shards of standing seam metal roofing material, and chunks of soaking wet insulation…maybe her walnut floor boards are still nailed together in parts, she probably picked one up out of the mud over the weekend, and wondered which room it was from as there are no more rooms and no more house.

I guess what I am writing this morning is that my heart is broken these last days for a woman I don’t even know and a woman who I simply think must exist and I am feeling a depth of gratitude for my life and my home that I don’t have words to describe. When hurricane Sandy came here to the Jersey shore we had no power for nine days. I had filled all my gas cans and my generator worked well all nine days and while I am only one mile from the bay and only 200 feet from a flowing stream, my house is 17.3 feet above sea level and the surge came, but it did not come to me. I am so sad every time I watch one of these short videos on the internet of the devastation and destruction in an area that did not ever expect to have hurricane rain and wind destroy their lives. I have made some financial donations and today after work am going to buy supplies that are being collected locally to donate and while I don’t have an “extra” hundred or $200 in my budget this month, I do have my house, and she does not, and for that anguish that she surely feels, I can modify my spending a bit to see that a stranger in need gets something she needs. It could have been me. It could have been you.