Living With Don Johnson

Yesterday while I was at work, I went to send Don Johnson a text message to see how his day was going. My phone wasn’t working. I turned it off, took out the battery, and adjusted the sim card. It still didn’t work. I went down to the AT&T store to see if they could tell me what what wrong with my phone.

The lady at the AT&T store was absolutely no help at all. I had a friend send Don Johnson a text letting him know that my phone wasn’t working.

I got home last night after work and had Don Johnson take a look at my phone. Earlier, he’d decided he was going to tell me in an interesting way. He pretended to look at my phone and then told me to go stand by the window to see if I was able to get reception closer to the window. He then called me phone, and I heard it ringing, but it wasn’t ringing on the phone I was holding in my hand. He had to call it a few times for me to find the ringing box. I was shocked and couldn’t believe it.

Don Johnson, in all of his techie-ness, refurbished a broken iphone 4 for me. He was able to put a custom back on the phone, so I finally have a purple phone.

I’m very excited about it. I have been playing with it all morning.

Just wanted to wish my mom a very happy birthday. She is the most amazing woman I know. Wish we could come celebrate with you.

Love,

Kate, Don, and the Darling children

So, I decided to use a prompt today. I glanced through a few prompts on line and found a few that I liked. These prompts may pop up every so often if I run into writer’s block. Today’s prompt asked “Who are the people who have had the greatest impact on your life?”

Let’s start this out with the most obvious one, Don Johnson. He’s the reason behind the name of my blog. He has had an impact on my life because he is my husband. I met him a couple of years after my divorce. I was at a point where I wasn’t looking for someone to date. We met through a mutual friend. And I had no plans to date him at all. Life took its course, and here we are. Don reminded me that friendship is an important part of a marriage. Yes, you need to love your spouse, but you also need to be friends with each other.

Let’s jump from one husband to the previous husband, the ex. It does seem surprising that I’d list my ex husband as someone who has had an impact on my life. But, he has had an impact. I won’t go into a lot of details here, but good or bad, he has had an impact on my life. It is because of him that Don Johnson and I have Wendy. Wendy wouldn’t be here without the ex.

Wendy has had an impact on my life. The day she was born, my heart no longer beat inside of my body. It was now ensconced in the little 7 pound 4 ounce person in my arms. 7 and a half years later, I still find that sentiment to be true.

Another set of people I have to include would be my grandparents. I was the only granddaughter for many years, and it was a role that was rather difficult to share when my cousin Chelsea came along. When I was growing up, my grandma always told me that the sun rose and set for me. Every single child on this planet needs to feel that at least once. When you hear that, you can’t help but feel like you can take on the world and win. Wendy is lucky enough to have her Nana make her feel that way.

And  last but certainly not least on this list is Nana, my mom, and my dad. I had the best childhood growing up. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. We were a military family, and military families are never rolling in the dough. My brother and I thought that ‘generic’ was a brand name. And we proudly rocked our generic jeans. We never went without. We always had amazing birthday parties. And we always got presents on Christmas and Easter. My brother and I grew up knowing that we could count on my mom to go to bat for us if needed. We were always told that while she might not always agree with our decisions, she would support them. And she would always be there to give us a safe place to land. My dad, while not being my biological dad, has always been supportive. And it is strange how alike we are. For many years, I was the only person in my family who liked apple butter. Now, I’m not the only one. I count myself pretty lucky to have Nana and Popsi as part of my life.

There you have it. The short list of people who have had an impact on my life. Who would be on your list?

Happy Birthday, Holly! Hope you have a fantastic day.

Love,

Kate, Wendy, and Don Johnson

The other day, I was thinking that this might be the last year that Wendy believed in Santa. She’d started asking some questions about how he got inside to deliver the presents and fill the stockings. I kind of beat around the bush and asked her “How do you think Santa gets inside?” She answered that she thinks that Santa does something along the lines of a ding-dong ditch. He knocks on the door, drops the presents and runs. She was satisfied with her belief, so I left it at that. (I believed until I was, like, 10 or 11. My brother knew at the age of 4. And I’m still generally the first person awake on Christmas morning. And no, Mom, I won’t call at 6 am to wake you up. Although, I’m two hours behind you, so 6am my time is really 8 am your time.) We’ve had the discussion that the Santa at the mall isn’t the “real” Santa. She knows that it is someone just dressed up in a costume. We had to have this discussion in order for her to get anywhere near him so that we could have a Santa picture. Disneyland really helped on that one. We’re able to reference back to that whenever she gets iffy “remember how Mickey Mouse is just a person wearing a costume. This Santa is just like that. He’s only wearing a costume.” I do think it is funny that there aren’t any pictures of me as a kid with Santa until I’m 7. And I have one picture of Wendy at about 6 months old with Santa, and then the next picture with Santa didn’t happen until she was 7. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

We took her to see Arthur Christmas the other day after I got off of work. First off, let me just say Arthur Christmas was an absolutely adorable movie. Don Johnson wasn’t sure he was going to like it based off of the previews. I’d heard positive reviews from my friends who had taken their kids to see it. So, I knew it would be pretty good. The grownups in the theater all seemed to laugh through most of the movie.

I don’t want to give away the good parts of the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet (Tim), but I do want to mention one small part. On Christmas Eve, the movie shows one of the ways that Santa gets in to the houses to deliver presents. It showed a tv with the a fireplace dvd playing. The front of the tv comes unscrewed and out pops Santa where the “fireplace” was just a moment before.

For Wendy, the answer that the movie provided her was pretty good. I’m not sure whether she’ll want us to leave the fireplace dvd on in our tv when she goes to bed. Let’s just hope I don’t find her near the tv trying to help Santa by unscrewing the screws.

Anyway, Arthur Christmas. Great movie. Go see it if you get a chance.

And I couldn’t be happier! I absolutely adore the winter holiday season from Thanksgiving all the way up to Valentine’s Day. Yes, I said Valentine’s Day.

The Christmas carols are on the radio now. And I get to listen to them every day at work for 8 hours at a time. The other people at work are slightly over the whole Christmas music thing, but I still happily sing along as I put books on the shelves. I would totally wear a Santa hat to work if I thought I could get away with it.

We’ve already got some presents wrapped and stuck next to the entertainment center. We have yet to find a tree. We had been using a $30 fake tree that I found at Walmart in 2007. It was perfect (for me anyway). It was just a little 6 foot tree, but it had the lights already on it. It died last year. Yes, I did say that my fake Christmas tree died last year. It was not packed very well in the moving van on the way out to California. We propped it up somehow last year, and then threw it away after Christmas. We thought that we’d get a real tree this year and then buy another fake tree at the after Christmas sales. We might have to rethink that plan. Christmas trees are expensive. I don’t know if it is just a California thing or an everywhere thing. I have some major issues spending $80-100 on a tree that we’re gonna throw away in 5 weeks. I can’t justify that in my head. And the fake trees are just as expensive! Don Johnson was hoping to go cut down the family tree this year, since it is something that he remembers doing as kid. Although, we should all remember that he grew up in Michigan where they actually had forests and tree farms where you could cut down trees. They don’t have those here in California. I think what we will wind up doing will be getting a small (2 ft-ish) real tree and put it on the sideboard, and then look for a fake tree after Christmas.

Like I said, I love anything to do with the holidays, so I was happy to see that my friend, Holly, had changed the background on her blog to her holiday background. I can’t help but smile when I see the festive background.

Just a random thought, when I signed in to my blog today, it asked me at the top if I wanted to be “master of my domain” and I just had to giggle because it reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where they discussed being the “master of their castles.”