Yoj to the World!

Anita and I have a quirky tradition that I guess constitutes a family holiday joke. My family is full of them, which explains the abundance of “Christmas owls” in the house that stem from a childhood experiece my brother and I had.

Anyway, our tradition in Anita’s and my household is to have a sign that says “Yoj” instead of “Joy.” You see, I had a sign with big red letters and lights that spelled out “Joy” at my office, back when I was big into office decorating. When we moved to the new “open office” minimalist desk spaces, there was no place for it to hang, so I took it home.

The year we lived in the Villa Park casita, there was a bedroom window that you could see from the street (amazing, since it was at the back of the property), so I decided it would be festive to stick my sign up there. I carefully arranged it and plugged it in. When we went down to view our handywork, we realized that I had managed to make the sign say “Yoj.” Being easily amused, we laughed our heads off and decided to leave it that way.

Fast forward to our current abode at the Bobcat Lair, and we had good old Yoj in the front window last year. Sadly, someone put it away poorly (me), and a bulb broke, rendering Yoj without its joyous lights. Sniff. 

Anita came to the rescue and bought new letters and put them in the living room. Yoj to the world! (I put the old letters on the porch, with lights around them, but used proper spelling.)

TRUE YOJ!

If you know me in person, you may have heard me whining for the past two years about the fact that we could not find the ornaments that were on our Christmas tree in Villa Park. Last year we just stuck some red things on the tree and were fine with it, since we were spending Christmas in New Mexico anyway.

But this year, by gosh, we wanted to decorate right, because we are hosting my coworkers for a little gathering next week. So we made a HUGE effort to find those decorations, which we KNOW we packed up nicely.

Even my scary garage stuff got moved around. We were sure we’d looked everywhere, but this morning, I thought, hey, I didn’t look in the coat closet. So I looked at a mysterious box in there. Nope. But then, I realized I also had not looked in the laundry room closet (though Anita had). There are a couple of boxes full of electrical stuff, but I stuck my hand into a plain white box, just to be sure it was full of wire. I drew out…a bird ornament! 

Now, that’s true Yoj.