And it's like wearing a plastic bag on your head, kind of. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light.

Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast. Well, hello. Today I'm going to wish you a Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, happy Holidays, happy New Year. I know for a lot of people, the holidays are not necessarily the happiest of times, but I hope, however, you're spending this end of the year, you're finding some peace, some joy and some time to relax, and I hope you're finding some fun in all of it. Now, over the last couple of weeks I've been talking about well, maybe longer than a couple of weeks. I've been talking about decorating my front yard for well, first for Halloween and then for Christmas, and I told you about the city where we live in that they finally had a holiday decorating contest and the judges came out and I was a little frustrated because they didn't stick to their timeline. So every day I'd wake up and I'd check my email and I'd check social media and they didn't announce the winner. They didn't announce the winner and I finally got an email saying that they were going to announce the winner on this past Friday. And I did get an email about the contest and drum roll, please. We won one of the slots. We were best theme. I think there was best theme detail, community favorite, best business decoration, and I forget what the other one was.

Anyway, when the judges came out, one of them asked me what's your theme? And I admit I didn't really think about a theme, I just thought about decorating. Admit, I didn't really think about a theme, I just thought about decorating. But I did see that that was one of the categories before they showed up and I thought about it. I realized that a lot of the elements that I used were animals. You know, reindeer, a cat, a horse, a dog, a rabbit, a penguin, snoopy he's an animal and the only people that are involved are depictions of Santa. So I said, well, my theme is animals. And they said, oh yeah, I think I would have said humor, because most of the inflatables do have humor as a theme, but anyway, we won't mince words, right? We won, yay, we won. So I'm really happy. I mean, if I hadn't won, I still would have felt like a winner in my heart. It's just good to be nominated. Anyway, I wasn't nominated, I entered, but irregardless. So that's the good news the details, if we were winners. So still waiting for that, hoping it's going to come before Christmas, but anyway, that was nice to be recognized.

Now, they didn't want to publish the addresses of the entries. This is different from some of our neighboring cities and I don't blame them. I really don't blame them, but irregardless, there are still people that find us that drive by and stop or slow down and look. There's people that are walking by with their dogs when I'm out there, or just walking, or running, or however you see it, and they stop and they say, wow, I really love your decorations. Or gosh, great job. Or wow, it makes me so happy. So I think that's the real prize, if you will, for me is just knowing that I've spread joy and happiness to my community, to members of my community, I mean. There's not a lot of people that say that, it's not hundreds, you know, but there's enough people, lot of people, that say that it's not hundreds, you know, but there's enough people that have said that, um, the faces of the kids people do bring. There have been some people that have brought their kids and obviously the kids like it. There's nothing scary about any of the decorations. So, anyway, very festive. I love looking at Christmas lights. I love driving around looking at other people's Christmas lights.

I did stop at a neighboring town tonight and there's this house that I found that is absolutely over the top, crazy decorated to the point where you'd say do people actually live there with all this stuff going on? But tonight I actually got out. I had the dog with me and I got out because there are a lot of other people that were walking around the house. It's a big house, it's a Tudor house and it was built in 1927. And one of the men who lived there who's the owner? He was talking to some people. He had a tray of candy canes and he was talking about the house. He said that he was one of the third owners of the house and it's beautiful. It has its own Instagram page, instagram account. I looked it up Absolutely, overwhelmingly detailed. I don't know if it's something to strive for, but amazing, amazing, and they also do Halloween. So it's a hobby, I do. I see it as a hobby now.

Anyway, I was thinking about the irony of living here in Southern California and living through Christmas. Because it's been through Christmas, because it's been fairly warm this past week, it's still cold at night. I mean cold, cold, cold being a relative term to people that are in the Midwest, maybe, or back East, but cold for me is if it's in the 40s at night, that's cold. I mean really cold, as if it's in the low forties and it is. It has been in the low forties at night, but during the day a couple of times this week it actually got to 80.

Yes, and so I've been driving around looking at people's Christmas decorations and thinking that this is pretty funny, because a lot of people's houses, yards, whatever decorations do, revolve around snowmen and the idea of snow. And it's pretty funny because there's no way that we would ever have snow here. It just never snows, and not only does it not snow, but it also just doesn't get chilly. So it's cute that we're trying to have snowmen chilly. So it's cute that we're trying to have snowmen and some people wear those Santa hats, which are unbelievably hot, especially if it's on the warm side, and it's like wearing a plastic bag on your head kind of. But anyway, we try. We try to carry on the illusion of winter here, but it just doesn't work. You can light up your cactus with red and green lights, but it just doesn't work.

Anyway, that's really all that I've got for you today. Again, I hope that you're having a good, restful time. I know there's a lot of people at work. I will be actually working some myself, but I'm going to try to enjoy the little bit of time that I have off, eat too much chocolate and maybe sleep in a few times. So I want to wish everybody again a Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, happy Holidays, whatever it is that you celebrate, and we're gearing up for New Year's, so stay tuned, everybody. Next week we're going to tackle another topic together. I hope you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries.