Let Me Tell You This About That

Fresh Beginnings and Holiday Traditions: A Festive Chat with Hess and Delbert

• Delbert and Hess • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this heartwarming episode, Hess and Delbert dive into the spirit of the holiday season, sharing personal anecdotes about Christmas traditions, new beginnings, and the importance of joyful routines. Delbert expresses her love for a fresh start with a new planner and recounts the festive joy of Christmas tree lights and neighborhood cats. Hess reflects on the power of planning, from using pocket calendars in the 80s to creating moments of connection with family. Together, they explore the significance of change, whether it's through new routines, positive attitudes, or adapting to new political landscapes. With laughter and heartfelt stories, they remind listeners to spread kindness, look forward to new adventures, and cherish the season. The episode concludes with a reminder to think about what good things to bring into the new year and to share love and peace with those around them. Join Hess and Delbert for a cozy, reflective, and inspiring holiday conversation.

In addition to being a podcast host, Hess is also an LCSW--if you'd like to learn more about her work as a therapist, check it out at www.jessicabollinger.com

One of her mission's is for all of our lights to shine--when we see each other and allow ourself to be seen--and we can say to the person in front of us, There You Are! the world will be an amazing place!

Delbert is a realtor in Louisville, KY, and you can find her at Kentucky Select Properties

Her philanthropic work to continue her sister Carole and niece Meghan is Carole's Kitchen. Blessings in a Backpack helps feed the many hungry students in our schools.





Hess:

Hey, you all. Thank you so much for clicking in on us. This is Hess, and this is, let me tell you this about that.

Delbert:

Hey, everybody, this is Delbert, and we're full on the holiday season. I'm sitting here on my green couch looking at my Christmas tree, I'm a big Christmas person, but I also really love. The new year. I was just telling Hess, I really love getting a new planner. I get the big one, the big book and, like to plan all my days out. And I love a fresh start. I love a new beginning. I love Mondays. So I'm a weird person in that aspect. another thing about fresh beginnings is, did you notice we had two really beautiful sunrises.

Hess:

Yesterday

Delbert:

Oh, phenomenal. all the colors. All the colors. I get one of those planners from Target that's big and it's got stickers on it. I'm like a little kid. I am going to just really fill this year up with all sorts of good things. I love routine, but also new adventures and fresh things and beginnings. It's like a Monday and the morning and the new year are a great way to hit the reset button. Fresh start. you get a do over every day, every year, every week, every minute. It's a chance to refresh everything and get a clear, good outlook on things. go for it. Go forward.

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

Like the bright lights on your Christmas tree.

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

Rise and shine.

Hess:

do you leave your Christmas tree lights on all the time

Delbert:

they're still on. I'll leave them on at night until, I go to bed. And then, I turn them on first thing in the morning, like when the sun's coming up. I feel like my neighbors, when they're coming home from work cause I have it in a big, huge window in the front. I turn fluffies on every night for him. That's my neighbor cat that I put a little Christmas tree up for, cause he loves lights. And, and he, gave himself a new job, guarding, my Amazon packages. He likes to sit next to them until I get home and he will not sit on my front porch unless I have a package. Is that hilarious?

Hess:

That is,

Delbert:

so cute,

Hess:

This time of the year. Delbert, I hear that. People get on the alert, okay. Amazon just dropped something off. They'll rush home because some of these packages are being stolen.

Delbert:

Fluffy's kind of a big cat. He's a real big orange cat and he's got big teeth and a lot of people are afraid of him. So no one is gonna steal my, I'm not gonna rush home for more Fluffies on the case. he's not gonna let anybody take any of my little darling society's Christmas presents. I love Christmas and you and I also talked about, I want to hear about, thanks.

Hess:

Let me talk to you about my calendar experience.

Delbert:

All right.

Hess:

yeah, this is before the iPhone and putting stuff in your calendar and having an alert one hour before or one day before or one week before and all that. Back in the 80s when I started my market. There was a fellow that I met, he's an architect, and he designed a special kind of pocket calendar, and it was called a Joey. every year I'd get a new Joey, and it was really cool the way he had things laid out, addresses and phone numbers and contacts you could put in the back. at this time of the year I'd have my new Joey, and I'd take all my contacts and rewrite them into the back of the Joey. And. I loved is that in the fruit market, would open mid April and there was a lot of planning I had to do beforehand. I would write in my little Joey February, I'd start going around to greenhouses and looking at their products that I'd be ordering for our opening in April. then I would start talking to people to hire and schedule things out, anyway, I'd save these Joey's, year to year. I think I still have those old Joey's, but it also was a diary of what happened when, and

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

It would feel good Delbert to know, Oh, this happened then.

Delbert:

Yes.

Hess:

it all turned out. Okay.

Delbert:

It

Hess:

or yeah,

Delbert:

You're right. And I love that you love to do that. It's like planning your season, right? and that feels so good to plan too.

Hess:

yeah. So this year for one of the first times is I bought a calendar for Cathy and I. A monthly calendar that's going to hang up and we're going to put in there it's visible. It's hanging in the kitchen when we're going to go somewhere together when we have something in the future plan that I can look forward to. And then also, like, when I'm going to be out on my boat, when those dates are, because I'm going to take it down to the St John river with a group. The 1st, part of March,

Delbert:

Cool.

Hess:

she's going to Costa Rica to do course planning. She's doing more of that where she's going out, doing her gig the course designs that she does for people. it gives me a way to see what I have to look forward to together with that calendar.

Delbert:

Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. Yeah, just looking forward to things and having adventures. Life is an adventure.

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

It's really good to get up every day and look forward to the day, no matter what it is. I get excited if I get to work from home and catch up on my laundry. as you could probably tell it doesn't take a lot to excite me. Very excitable. But Christmas, oh my goodness. I'm buddy the elf. I got most of my Christmas presents wrapped and, I'm so excited to be with my family. I love to not just plan my work stuff. I love to plan parties. I loved a plan, for my family and my parents and grandparents were like that. They loved to get people together and my dad, really liked rinsing off the patio and icing up the cooler for people to come over. it was something my parents did really well together with very little fighting. We're laughing about, did you ever think you could get a boat out of a dock without yelling? our parents both, we're yellers and they express themselves. But that was 1 thing they didn't really fight that much when they were getting ready for a party.

Hess:

Doing entertaining.

Delbert:

good tag team. They loved entertain, have an open house or have the family over poker night or something like that. And they really worked well together. So that's something that rubbed off on me. I love to, have all these little traditions, especially for Christmas where I get all these certain things out.

Hess:

Right.

Delbert:

Did your mom have a knife for everything? a cheese knife for every holiday, a tray, that generation, really entertained to the nines,

Hess:

our tree was in the living room and we never used our living room. So what I love about my house there's the open kitchen dining room and the great room right next to it where the fireplace and the tree is. So I'm always there with the tree. when I was young growing up, if you want to be with the tree, you had to go sit in this room on a stiff couch that you never really sat in before just to be in there.

Delbert:

Oh,

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

yeah. That's that generation too. That's, the company towel. That's the company chair. Don't live in the living room for God's sakes. Yes.

Hess:

calendar, it's going skiing and we just had a fresh snow and there's going to be fresh powder If Cathy's drug the arena, I laugh and say, okay, I got some fresh powder to ride speedy on to make new hoof prints, right? This foot by 240 foot covered arena. When you're down there freshly after it's been drugged by the tractor and the Harrow, can see where you've been, you can see the circles you've made say, oh, okay. done that. Or that circle looked good, or maybe I haven't had enough. Maybe I need to ride some more. Cause it doesn't look like I have very many footprints down here. sometimes it's about getting out of a routine. breaking the old ways that we've done things. Sometimes we don't realize we're in a rut. Until we change something.

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

can sometimes have us stuck, but we don't realize that we're in it. So if we want to change something, we have to, change how we're doing it. This method of body work, Delbert. It's called Feldenkrauss. Have you ever heard of

Delbert:

I have not.

Hess:

Okay. Feldenkrauss is about changing the way that you might cross your legs. if your right hip gets tight,

Delbert:

Gotta

Hess:

over your right leg and not your right leg over your left. Just little things, just changing up how we do and move our body. The way that we sleep. I play pickleball with a gal and her right shoulder's always bothering her. she's right handed and when she's, Going to do a smash. It really hurts. I'm like, how do you sleep? She goes, I always sleep on my right side, on my right shoulder,

Delbert:

squish Up.

Hess:

Switch it up. We're, we have to reevaluate. Sometimes our habits are routines.

Delbert:

is that serving me? Is that serving me well?

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

Sleeping on your right shoulder and hitting with your right shoulder. That's not serving you.

Hess:

Yeah. Yeah.

Delbert:

Literally.

Hess:

right now we're going through a time where someone's going into the office of president that many of us might think isn't qualified. And that person selecting people to, be on the team and we're going through that transition. and we also, 7 or 8 years ago went through the transition when this person was elected before, and changing the way that I'm reacting to it to make sure I take care of myself.

Delbert:

Good one, Hess.

Hess:

we can do different so that we stay more connected To make a positive change. Terry Carter is a beautiful writer. She lives in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. when she moved here, She thought it'd be all rural, and farms. she got into looking at the politics and writing about it is good. And we got to lean into it. one of the things that she talked about was I, she got this opportunity to adopt this dog and she had, she already had two Labradors and they, that she's never had three dogs. And was a nine year old elderly dog. She adopted this dog. So it might be small things. And what are you doing? changing something. What are you leaning into? And I wrote her back and I said my friend of 60 years, we started a podcast.

Delbert:

And

Hess:

small difference in your life right now, just to listen to us chat.

Delbert:

yes, we do. And as we, go in to these new times and uncharted territories, and some of them are charted because, we have had this person as president before, let's remember, to be kind to each other, to try to engage in very friendly debate. Because if we can't talk to each other as neighbors and friends, I fear for the country if we can't, if we can't get along and talk to each other peacefully, I really as a Democrat am pledging to go into this peacefully and with open heart and open ears, because I really believe that we've got to work together. And another part of our podcast is to have a good conversation and give people hope.

Hess:

So what's one thing you can do? Delbert, I'm at my brother's yesterday. It was so wonderful. When I went to see my mom, I dropped in on her, plugged her phone in. Cause my sister said her phone's not charged up. Connected with her and I said, okay, I'm going to be back again right after lunch. I wanted to go see my brother and his wife, Jamie and BZ Owen before Andy left to go to the UK UofL basketball game. He's going to leave about 1215. I got over to their house about noon and, the little one Bode. I can't forget him. That was a big reason I wanted to go see. He's almost four months old,

Delbert:

Oh,

Hess:

He was gonna be waking up from his nap. They don't let him sleep longer than two hours. They have a sleep consultant, which is really helpful.

Delbert:

wow.

Hess:

my sister, I was looking at these different things they have hanging up. There's this big, snowman and he's got 25 pockets you move this little thing to each pocket. And that's a countdown for Christmas It's not an admin calendar. there was another little admin calendar, lean them against the cabinet, and a piece of chocolate every day, then they said, Oh, sister, That's Jamie, my sister. my brother's wife is Jamie, but we also have a sister named Jamie. My sister Jamie gave them an ornament, an advent calendar ornament, Delbert, and it's got a QR code on it.

Delbert:

Stop it.

Hess:

And you take a picture of this QR code every day, and a video pops up, and it's Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, They tell the kids something to do that day. And there's also a book that accompanies it. So sister Jamie also gave both Owen and BZ a little book, this little diary book. So like on this one particular day, Mr. Mrs. Santa Claus is saying, how can you be kind today?

Delbert:

I know.

Hess:

please write down kind things that people did for you. they were laughing and saying BZ wrote four or five things down. I looked at BZ's diary. and it just melted your heart. It's Mrs. So and one of her teachers told me that she liked my dress or so and so told me that I did a good job at this Or Owen, brought me my shoes, and it was just so sweet. they asked Owen and Owen says, nobody's done anything kind for me today.

Delbert:

And that's the truth. Yeah. I know.

Hess:

B's Eight.

Delbert:

Nobody did.

Hess:

But what about this ornament and this new age thing?

Delbert:

that's amazing. I love that. That is so cool. I couldn't get over sleep consultant. my kids would not sleep. My kids were the worst sleepers.

Hess:

Delbert, little Owen, apparently when little Owen was a baby, he did not know how to put himself to sleep.

Delbert:

Oh,

Hess:

baby,

Delbert:

you couldn't fall asleep.

Hess:

they were at some fundraiser and on the silent auction thing, there was a sleep consultant and they got that. And

Delbert:

Wow.

Hess:

game changer because they were harried parents, 6 months in a little Owen in this world, and they weren't getting much

Delbert:

Oh, that's rough.

Hess:

all the difference. So they had a little PTSD for the new little Bode coming in. But Bode's, they've used it also with Bode and a good formula to have.

Delbert:

Yes.

Hess:

night trip to New York city, three or four night trip to New York city during their winter break. And, having the little bodey, they were able to, get back to the hotel a certain time. Cause they knew he was finished, at three o'clock and Jamie, my sister in law said I was finished at three o'clock too,

Delbert:

For these

Hess:

she,

Delbert:

we got to recharge, right? We got to get charged up. We have to have a charge.

Hess:

this is the time of year, old traditions and making new traditions, getting that new calendar, right?

Delbert:

Yes, exactly. we grew up Catholic and celebrate Christmas, but for all of our listeners out there, whatever you're celebrating this season, we hope it brings you peace joy gratitude to God. To push it into the new year with a lot of joy.

Hess:

Delbert, it always seems like you're about to close out and I want to pop in with something else

Delbert:

do it, sister. I am. I just, think, the time of year that it is. I have a lot of big thoughts, about, what we're heading into and what we're heading out of. please go ahead.

Hess:

I think with this shakeup, with the death. A father, a husband, a son, a murder, might be a shake up for the healthcare system. We've got 74 countries in the world that have universal healthcare, this man was the CEO of a big healthcare system, there's a lot of people and I think probably every citizen in the United States could say how the healthcare system's not working for them, how it's expensive and people can go in debt. maybe this would be a shake up to, What can we do different here so that we have a healthcare system that works. another jolt to an old rut if it's been this way for a long time, how can we get it changed? How can we move it does healthcare need to be for profit? that's a big thing. I believe it shouldn't be. People's health. We're a healthy country if we have healthy people. So that's where we're at right now with that.

Delbert:

Exactly.

Hess:

Huh.

Delbert:

That's another show.

Hess:

It's another show.

Delbert:

Yeah,

Hess:

we talked about patriarchy and being stuck in old ways getting Title IX started, getting the Equal Credit Act and so forth let's move forward in positive ways. Move towards the joy.

Delbert:

we pivot towards joy.

Hess:

Pivot towards joy. Something that works for people. Being kind. Yeah. Love you, Delbert. I love these talks. It's always a reset for me for the coming week and hopefully Podsters, it can be a food for thought for you hearing us laugh, hearing us talk about things, hard things and good things too.

Delbert:

We wish you a week filled with peace and joy.

Hess:

And think about your new calendars and what good stuff you can put into there. Connect and be kind. So everybody be sure to like, share, send this to somebody you think that could help. I'm really excited Delbert because we had somebody say, they were from Missouri and they said they could really relate to something in our podcast. I love that. Be sure to give us feedback.

Delbert:

Peace and love everybody.

Hess:

Yes. Peace and love. Now we get to hear Carla sing the song. Love it.

Delbert:

She's good.

Hess:

She's so good.