Avoiding Tragedy. Embracing Serendipity, Making Moments Matter.

for the first time, welcome. If you're a regular follower and fan, thanks, I really appreciate it. I try to talk about life as we know it and face challenges head on, handle whatever comes along like this year, and live life on your terms. I'm going to tell you two stories. First of all, invite you to follow my new substack dot com near Melanie Young Melanie Fabulous. I am going to really this year try to achieve at

least one of my resolutions. I've already done two. The first resolution is to do something new every month, something new and different. I already did that. I marched in a Martigaros parade on January sixth. The Joan of Arc Crew to Joan of Arc Parade kicked off the official festival see the New Orleans, and my husband David and I were volunteer foot soldiers to protect the Maiden Joe Novarc on her horse as we walk through the French

quarter for a mile and a half. So not only did I protect the Maid of Orleans who helped protect New Orleans in the city of Orleons, but I also got a good walk in probably over ten thousand steps. Another resolution off there, do something new and different, walk ten thousand steps every day or try to. Yeah. The next one is to start a Subsack newsletter, which I

have done, Melanie fabulous. I invite you to sign up for free before I start charging, and encourage you to comment and share, and then I'm going to write my book. I have a couple of titles and story lingules on along the way. I may just try to write all of them simultaneously in different segments. I don't know, but I'm gonna do it because I have the time. But before launching for into this about traditions and resolutions, I want to share a story with you because I had

in New Year's very different. I try to do New Year's Day and New Year's Eve different every year because New Year's Day is my birthday, and after many years of bad dates, I decided to take matters into my own hands. The story goes like this. I don't believe in cheating unless it's death. You see. I was born on New Year's Day, fifteen minutes after the first baby

of the year. My parents had to leave their fancy New Year's Eve party early due to my mother's water breaking, but I decided to make a late entrance at ten forty five am later that morning. Maybe that's why I'm always fifteen minutes late. My father said I was quote pearly engineered and badly accounted for that met no first Baby of the Year prizes and publicity and no text deductions. And he was a CPA, so life was all about

tax deductions. So, after years of spending New Year's Eve with bad dates, attending anonymous parties with insipid sparkling wines, and hanging out with hungover friends the next day who really didn't care that it was my birthday, I decided at the age of thirty, so I had a lot of bad birthdays before that. I decided to take matters into my own hands and reclaim my special day on my terms, my way. Remember this show is all about

living life on your terms. I vowed to spend New Year's with more adventure, somewhere new each year, a new experience, a new location, new people, just something new to set the tone and the year old year, set the tone for the new year and have a positive outlook. So since the age of thirty, over three decades now, I

have celebrated New Year's even a different place in the world. Really, each experience is carefully documented in handwritten diary with my annual list of resolutions and a recap of the year. It's literally the story of my life in multiple diaries. You know, I've only repeated three locations for New Years, all for special reasons. The first was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I had to cancel a trip to Asia for my New Year's birthday because I

had started chemotherapy. And even though I argued with my oncologist and said I'm available after January fifteenth, mind you, it was November when we had this conversation, she looked me straight in the eye and she said, Melanie, that's not how cancer treatment works. You are in my hands now and not on your terms, and you will start chemotherapy in December, and you will not go to Asia

for your New Year's birthday. Tail between my legs, I canceled the trip and ended up at a friend's house in the Hampton's, where I had already spent in New Year's But she said, here are the keys to my house, go out there, because I was feeling rather low. Can you can imagine? So I spent a New Year's twice in the Hamptons. I gave my New Year's Birthday to my husband David, spending a repeat trip in Switzerland for his fiftieth birthday. That was my gift to him, giving

him my special birthday. So we spent New Year's in Davos, Switzerland with friends, which I had already done and it was fine. We had a good time. We were in Zurich. That was a little different and I was happy to do it. This past New Year's I actually spent spent it celebrate in New Orleans. Now I had done this a couple of years ago. I think two thousand, I don't know, sixteen seventeen eighteen, of lost track, it's all in my diaries. But we did it differently. We went

to a really nice dinner party with friends. No fireworks, see we just could hear them off the back patio of their uptown home in the Garden District. But it was, you know, a quiet dinner party. And then my birthday was at Commander's Palace. I took a walking out of the park. Was New New Orleans the way I love it. But we decided this year to spend New Year's again in New Orleans. But do it like you were like a tourist, like a real like I've never experienced New Orleans.

New Orleans is our new home. We're trying really hard to embrace every season and feel planted here after living two years on the room, as you know if you follow us. And so we were in Jacksonville, Florida, visiting David's mother and older brother. We drove over to the Panhandle, across the Panhandle and landed back in New Orleans, and I got to tell you, it actually felt right. I wanted to come back home. It's been a long time

since I called anything home. So we did that, and we decided to immerse ourselves in the zany decadence celebratory spirit of the French Quarter. At the stroke of midnight, I dressed in sequence head to toe. My husband David were his Texedo. We headed out with the good friends Who's on or a celebratory multi course dinner at Memmou,

which is one of my favorite New Orleans restaurants. It's located at the edge of the French Quarter off Ramparts Street and serves really fabulous food with a French accent and has a terrific wineless and boy do we im vibe. We felt great. We brought a special bottle of lonju Champagne Grand One, the owner porter some burgundy we loved

that restaurant. Sometime after eleven, probably around eleven twenty a pm, and we walked over to Jackson Square, the historical heart of the French Quarter, for the New Year's Eve countdown and fireworks extravaganza over the Mississippi River. It's really quite beautiful and they lower a Florida Lee much like you lower the ball in Times Square, and it was just wonderful. The crowd was festive, not unruly, I mean it can be in the French Quarter. The air was filled with

energy and elation. We did the countdown police officers on foot and on horseback line in the streets. I felt so safe, and I walked and thanked many of them and wished them Happy New Year for their service. After the fireworks, we navigated the crowds on Bourbon Street and walked over to a place called the Bayou Club, where our friends Husan already had left, and we listened to a really terrific small Cajun ban and danced. In fact, at some point of the night, Shusan put a Cajun

washboard on me and I was strumming a washboard. Wow, something else I've never done. Check it off the never done less play a washboard with a Cajun band. My husband David, as he always does, stood guard to watch my belongings so nothing disappeared. He is my protector whenever I decided to let my hair down, and I do like to let my hair down on New Year's Eve.

Oh the things you do, you know. So around one forty five pm, I mean am so one forty five in the morning, we walked over to Bourbon and Canal. We debated whether to have a final nightcap at the hotel monoleone carousel bar, wonderful bar in a historic hotel, and it literally is it's a boar that goes around and around very slowly, but it goes around and around. We decided not to. Susan walked home. David and I decided to call an uber or check a cab, but boy,

it was so expensive. What is it with search rates? It was like ninety dollars to go home and it's a thirty dollars cab, right, So being frugal, another resolution to be fabulous and frugal. I said, yeah, let's just wait it out. So it wasn't too cold of a night. But we walked over to the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Canal Street, not far from Bourbon Street, and waited in their lower lobby until the taxi rates went down, and we just sat and did social media.

There were other people doing the same thing. We scrolled our phones. We wish people Happy New Year. People were starting to wish me Happy Birthday. Around two twenty in the morning, we finally got an uber. Back to our hotel, I mean our home. Excuse me, back to our home, which is in Lakeview. It's a very quiet neighborhood off City Park, not too far from Lake Ponte Train. Many locals called sweet and suburban. You know what, that's okay? I kind of like sweet and suburban these days. We

went to bed, went to sleep. Unbeknownst to us, at three point fifteen in the morning, a crazed man wearing military gear turned his white truck off Canal Street and inner Bourbon Street, accelerating full force with the intent to kill as many people as possible. Now we had just left this corner of Bourbon and Canal, mind you, forty five minutes earlier. In the end, thirty five people were injured and fourteen innocent people were dead, plus the perpetrator.

Most were young revelers with their lives still ahead of them. The driver's name was shamsu Din Jabbar. He was an American born resident of Houston, Texas who had been radicalized and had posted some fairly radical videos. We don't know why. We don't know anything, and he's dead, so you know, the FBI is then the FBI's hands. But we don't know why he decided to come to New Orleans to mow down revelers on Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve.

But obviously he wanted to make a big statement. It's all senseless and it's all tragic, and I had no idea that this had happened. Just forty five minutes after leaving the corner of Bourbon Canal, David and I were safely asleep in our bed and we were woken like really early, like crazy early seven thirty in the morning. Our phones started beeping and jumping and beeping and jumping, and we're like, who is calling us so early? And I kind of thought, in my you know, mumbly sleep, Wow,

people really love me. They're calling to wish me happy birthday. I ignored everything and kind of reached over and put everything on silent. But then David's phone started going and I'm like, why are people calling David? It's not his birthday. And then we checked our texts and there were many saying are you okay? Because the last photo we posted from Bourbon Street was that just after two five in

the morning, and everybody was like they could have been there. Well, fortunately we were safe in bed and we missed the situation, the terrible incident, by forty five minutes, maybe an hour. Reflecting on that tim being, I realized it was a pretty close call. We were deeply sickened by the act and sat by the killings, and thankfully it wasn't my time, and I hopefully have more trips around the sun to

celebrate in different places of the world. But I thought long and hard about those fifty people young and old, celebrating the new year on Bourbon Street. I could have been one of them. It wasn't the first time I felt like I had cheated death. I could have been attending a meeting at the World Trade Center on September eleventh, two thousand and one. My client was the restaurant wind

Is on the World. We were planning a huge anniversary and another client finds from Spain was planning an event at winds On the World to occur on October eighth, two thousand and one. Sadly, Windows On the World was destroyed and the terrorist attacks and many wonderful people died, and I went into action to do whatever I could to help with rest, you know, help support in any way I could. That was the first time I felt like I cheated death. I also felt like I cheated

it during chemo therapy for breast cancer. I had a severe allergic reaction to a chemotherapy drug called pack of taxil. Literally I passed out. I went unconscious, although in the dark depths of my mind I kept saying inside, don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep, it's not your time. I was revived. I think people. I think they shot me up with a lot of betterer doll I really don't know. I was kind of When I finally came

to I was like, WHOA, what happened. But the feeling that you've cheated death makes you value life even more. And that's the lesson. I have had too many friends, way too many friends in the past few months in their fifties and sixties drop dead and just suddenly and I'm like, wow, well they're like my age and younger. Wow,

that could be me. You know. That's why I'm going to live twenty twenty five doing new things and living with more intention and not sweating the small stuff because the silly things you complain about and worry over no longer really seem important. You sip and save your foods and beverages without worrying about your long term health or weight.

You take risks and try new things because if not now, when you don't hold back on your life or your emotions, you speak your mind because do you really care what other think about you? Other people think about you, not really, And at my age sixty six, I got to listen to me and what I think is right for me. Oh, I'll listen to my medical doctors because I do believe in doing that. But hopefully knock wood, they haven't told

me anything that I already didn't know. So I woke up on January first, twenty twenty five, to a morning filled with brilliant sunshine and blue skies, and a day filled with friends and good food. I was grateful to be alive and for the ultimate birthday gift an abundant life to enjoy in good health and lucky timing. So take that to heart as you plan twenty twenty five. You don't know what lies ahead, and you don't know

how long your life will be. But really it's not about the length of your life, but the quality of your life and how you live it every day. I know people who live there. My mother in law's ninety two, and she's very happy in her long life and doing fine for ninety two. My mother was eighty eight when she died. She was a bit bitter and depressed. I don't want to be that person. I have had friends who are living wonderful lives. They were cut down too soon.

I don't know when my day will come, when my life will end, and I'm not going to think about it too much because I'm going to think about what I'm going to do after I finished recording show That's fun, right, because it's about having fun. Now, speaking of that, I'm going to switch gears a little bit and share with you a tradition that I love, just to kind of give you an essence of how I live my life and why I do funky, fun things I do believe

in traditions. Like I said, I keep it New Year's Diary. I love my New Year's Diary. I'm very careful about protecting it. When we packed up our house, the New Year's Diaries were like Melanie's life in a box, don't touch super super special. So I'm going to tell you about another fun tradition I have that is also why I am here in New Orleans. And it really is a story about a food awakening and what really became

the essence of me. I call this reconsider the Oyster because when I was eleven years old, my parents took me to New Orleans for a grand tour diny experience. It was my father's fortieth birthday celebration and my initiation into Creole cooking and the beauty of the Crescent City on the Mississippi River. And I just want to stop here and say, if you've never visited New Orleans, please come. Screw terrorist tacks, screw this and that, screw hurricanes, come

to New Orleans, the beautiful city. Don't let bad things prevent you from doing good things and experiencing the world. Okay, lesson. So during this trip, we stayed at the Royal Sinesta and Bourbon Street. We had dinner at all the beautiful famous restaurants, Dinner at Galatoise one of my favorites, breakfast at Brannan's, Brunch at Commander's Palace by the way where David and I were married in the garden. We had Begnet's and Cafe Ole at Cafe Dumont, many other treats

and meals. Throughout the entire time we were in New Orleans, I just loved every minute. My eyes were wide open like saucerers when I saw all the bars with the dancing girls, all the beautiful oak trees, the beautiful architecture. This trip honestly changed my life, and it changed my relationship with food and where I lived. Actually, after that trip to New Orleans, I went back to my hometown Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it felt rather mainstream and dull, kind of like

a relationship you grow out of and long to leave. Right. I hope you don't have that, but we all have at some point, you say. Back in the nineteen sixties, when I was a young girl, fine dining, as I recalling, Chattanooga presented like two options which my parents patronized regularly. One was a family one restaurant called Fens, known for crispy, shaking baked style chickens served with a baked potato, a green vegetable, and a side salad with your choice of dressing.

I liked the blue cheese, but my mom, who was always worried about weight hers and mine, wanted me to have vinagrette or dressing on the side. Now to this day, I'm trying to find the Fens fried chicken recipe. It's not really fried, it's more baked fried chicken, because I actually don't like fried food. I have fear of frying, probably because my mother and grandmother are always worried about their weight and therefore worried about my weight, which you're

going to find. As I continued this little theme here, the other restaurant that we went to on Sunday nights the whole family was called Town and Country. It was a steak place steak of potato, and we had our own waitress named Chris. She had a whip of red hair piled high on her head and we were always like, hey, Chris, and I'm sure my grandfather tipped her generously. She really

liked us at this restaurant. My mother always wanted me to order the filet mignon because the smaller portion in the less fetticat was better suited for young ladies to maintain our girlish figure. Now, mind you, I'm like not even a teenager yet, so I don't have a figure at all. But I was already being taught to eat like a lady and not eat fattening food because my mother hated bad people. I'm sorry to say that, but older in life, she really resented her weight problems and

really resented people who couldn't manage their weight. It's kind of same anyway. I kind of liked the Hamburger steak personally, or the Salisbury steak, but I was told to order the flat mignon, and so I did. Elsewhere in Chattanooga, there were a lot of casual restaurants that served fried fish, usually catfish, shrimp, or fish sticks. Fish was rarely fresh caught, always overcooked. I hated the smell of the fried fish

and the taste as well. And lo and behold, all that emphasis on eating skinny, eating to stay skinny really kind of enforced me into turning into someone with an eating disorder. For a while. As I started to develop and my body started to plump down and fill out, I stopped eating. Fortunately I outgrew that, fortunately, but it did happen. So that trip to New Orleans when I was around eleven, opened my palate immensely. It introduced me to fresh gulf fish, simmering and savory sauces with flavors

i'd never taste. We always ordered it with fresh crab meat on top, and I still do that when I go out. You always can order, you know, your golf fish with fresh crab meat on top, and boy do I ever because fresh crab meat is kind of expensive at the supermarket. I learned to crab crabs, slip wile oysters and suck on crawfish. And when you eat a oil crawfish, it's crawfish season just started. They say, suck

the hells and squeeze the tips. I know that sounds a little carnal, but that's what you do, and it's a lot of fun and they really are good spicy. I tasted oysters rockefella, a dish where oysters are coached on top with wonderful cream spinach. It's like one hundred and twenty five year old dish that was created at Antoine's restaurant, and boy is it good. Palm sou flee, These incredible puffed up potatoes, thin as like like they're

like potato balloons, crunchy potato balloons. Gallatoise get the mcgallatowise is where they're the best Eggs sardau or breakfast at Brennan's and tenardslice steak with Marshan devine sauce at Commander's Palace. Oh it douns so good and I don't even eat meat anymore. Desserts and chattango were usually jello mulled. My mother and grandmother loved jello and felt that it was the right dessert for young ladies who wanted to maintain

their girlish figures. Are you getting it? The men got cake and pie a la mode at one side of the table, and the women got the fruit cocktail or the jello or the jello with the fruit cocktail in it. I swear to God that's the truth. We had the men's desserts and the women's desserts. But in New Orleans I indulged in bread pudding with bourbon sauce, bananas, Foster Chocolate debersh Cake. It's like an amazing cake of umpteen layers of chocolate cake oozing with chocolate clam Oh so good.

And then there's the mile high pie at the Pantcha Train Hotel. It's still there and I'm dying to take my husband David. It is so good. And even now they have a mile high pie. King Cake Kincake season storted January sixth, and the entire city is going nuts for kincake known as Gela Doi. It is. You go in a grocery store and there's just box boxes of kingcake and I'm having my first one tonight for dinner. But you know what, the one thing I ate that

seduced me most of all oysters. That's right, oysters on the half shell. See, my father, who never really ate seafood, decided he liked oysters and he wanted to go to New Orleans and eat his age and oysters for his fortieth birthday. I don't know why, but he did. So we went to one of those amazing fish shack restaurants that were standing back then overlooking Lake Ponta Trains. Sadly, most of them were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. But they

were wonderful back then. And I watched him gulp each bivalve with unbridled pleasure, the juice running down his chin. And I tried a dozen myself, and it was messy and yummy and fun, and I love the cyllinic taste. My mother didn't have the oyster she cheered us on, but she tinted her hand and food off to everyone else because again she had to keep her wait in check. But you know what, when the desserts came around, she happily ate dessert. So oysters. You know, I have some

friends who won't touch them. You know, everyoney's worried about coronavirus, not coronavirus, neurovirus, excuse me, neurovirus. There's people are afraid that oysters are not good for you. They may come from dirty waters. They're squeamish at the thought of an oyster slithering down their throat. But not me. I find the experience eating oysters sensuous. I like to say I prefer my oysters nude, you know, fried, steam, stewed, and nude.

I choose nude that means adorn with nothing other than a squirt of lovin, or maybe a small dip of mignonette sauce. You know, you sometimes eating them the news fun too. I like oysters that way because I want to taste the salinity and the minerality, that kind of stony shellish taste, the essence of each oyster. The writer Ernest Hemingway, who I love, referred to the metallic taste of oysters as coppery in his book A Movable Feast, one of my favorite books of all time, A Movable Feast,

Please read it. But I always like to compare that cool mouthfeel to when I was a baby and probably sucking on my Tiffany sterling baby rattle when I was teething. Yeah, I found that baby rattle packing up my box. In her seminal book, the author M. F. K. Fisher Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher as her full name was, wrote in her book Consider the Oyster, which documents what she calls the lowly, humble life of the oyster. She says her initiation into eating oysters was quote a strange, cold succulence.

I totally get that. In fact, I love this book, and I totally recommend any book written by Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher aka m FK. Fisher. They are classics. They will make you change your whole outlook on food and ex sensuous appeal. Let me tell you it was MFK. Fisher that made me go eat sardines in the South of France by myself. That's right. After reading her she wrote two Talents of Provence. Off I went, so, I'm

with MFK. Fisher eating when oysters can deliver a carnal pleasure, especially when Champagne and Cavey are involved on the side. So I had a tradition. I don't know him anymore because I mean I still have the oyster reading tradition. But when I was dating man, meeting men, and I was considering them to enter my life, I had something called the four questions. Now, my father also had four questions, but his four questions and my four questions were very different.

My four questions were one, how do you feel about eating raw oysters? Obviously, if he said they are gross, not my thing, he was not going to be in my life. You had to like raw oysters because that meant you were an adventurous eater. You had a resentsuous eater. You didn't get squeam as you tried things. Okay, if you must know the other three questions, and I bet you're wondering here they are. Well, I would say where do you like to travel? And do you have a

passport bonus if you remember a frequent flyer clubs. The next was do you like small white dogs? Because I had a little white Maltese My mother had white Maltese. You had to like small white dogs my orb and last, and no surprising, what's your favorite color? And if you said purple, you were the one. Fortunately, my husband David answered all the four questions correctly. He didn't quite answer. He kind of answered my dad's four questions as well, which were, I'd go, Dad, I have a friend coming

to dinner. That's kind of how I introduced David. I have a friend coming to dinner. My parents were in New York for the James Beared Words, and I never brought friends to dinner. But I said I have a friend. Dad would go a special friend. I said, yeah, and Dad would go man or woman. I was like, man Jewish or non Jewish. My dad was Jewish and David was I said, not Jewish. Sorry, he's from the South. Let's talk about race, black or white or brown or Asian.

I said, he's Caucasian. Yeah, you're straight, He's straight, And Dad's like okay, And then forget to tell my mother. Now, mother, there's four questions were completely different. Mothers Who's and she would ask him whenever I bring a guy home. Where where did you get your degree? What college should you attend? And what was your degree in? And do you have an advanced degree? What is your line of work and how long have you been in it? And what are your

plans with your career? What arts do you support? Talk to me about the theater, music and dance. And lastly, do you like to travel because we all like to travel? And where do you go to spend your vacations? Very different, very different, four questions. Anyway, David passed My husband, David passed the four questions on my side. My dad's said did okay with mom? Not great? Anyway, After that trip to New Orleans, my dad never ate his agent oysters again and said he turned to hot Futch Sundays and

banana splits until the day he died. He would eat them on his birthday. He would eat them in hospice. In fact, at the end of his life, that's all he wanted to eat was hot veudch side days, and he did until he died at the age of seventy nine on November two, two thousand and nine. But I continue the tradition eating my age and oysters and my January first birthday because I remember that great experience with my dad, and David likes to eat raw oysters too.

We share that along with our passion for wine, we also enjoy our oysters raws, but also roasted, chargrilled and plumply floating in soups. Don't call it oyster su MFK fisher. My muse said, this is not that, and that is certainly not this. And at the same time, an oyster stew was not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, and oyster soup should never be called stew, not nor

stew soup. So I this year started my January first birthday with the full intent of going the full three but we went to one of my favorite oyster happy hours, Superior Seafood. Oyster happy hours are awesome. It's like half priced oysters in this case, it was a dozen for fifteen dollars. They are so expensive. In other places. The oysters are so big there they're golf oysters. They were like super sized oysters. I could barely get through it.

I got through a dozen, and then I said, you know what, I don't think I could do another dozen. I actually did a half a dozen. So I realized, as I grow older, eating madge and oysters is a little harder. Because it's now five and a half dozen. There's a lot of oysters and when sitting, so I'm doing an oyster interval eating. I'm eating my oysters and intervals a dozen here and a dozen there. I'll take the month of January. Fortunately, oysters are great in the

winter months. I went to Custimentos, another place I love, and had the oyster soup. I had six up ones there. I'll keep eating my raw oysters, and I will do it with utter pleasure and abandonment because it's my special tradition. I never fear getting sick from an oyster, and notqwould never have thus far. I realize that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention cautions Americans over sixty five. My peers to refrain from eating raw oysters because some may

contain a bacterium called Vibrio vulnifugus. They can cause severe illness even death for anyone with certain underlying medical conditions. Okay, that's the Debbie do Dinner message about raw oysters. But then you can also have Debbie Donner messages about eating other raw things like sushi, sashimi, crudo, and a lot of raw vegetables and other things that may be planted with fecal matter, because what is going on with our food system anyway? But I can't worry about that. I

can't worry about that. I can't worry about really policing when I eat and drink too much, because you know what, I don't want my last meal to be salad, That's right. I don't want my last meal to just be a big fat salad. I want to go out with a bang, eating wonderful things like oysters and kevy or and mashed potatoes, and maybe mashed potatoes and French fries. I just want to like enjoy my food and not be fearful of it. And that's the way I feel about life. I don't

want to be fearful about anything. Yeah, there could be another terrorist attack. Yeah I could drop dead in the street. Yeah my cancer can come back. Yeah the world could come to an end. But you know what, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just gonna worry about what am I doing today and how am I enjoying my day and give myself maybe three things I used

to be five to accomplish. So oysters are kind of like a symbolism, but learning to eat without fear and with raw pleasure, to be adventures and experimental and just to say I want to have fun. And while I may reconsider the number of oysters I consume for my next several birthdays as we get into six dozen, I

won't give up my tradition. I'll just do it with more a more time, and more pleasure and allow myself the time and the pleasure to savor the moment without feeling pushed or pressure to do it all at once. And we should do that with life. We should not try to get it all done. You may have a lot of resolutions you want to knock off your list, your to do list may be too big. Hey, sit out, enjoy the pace. Life is not a race. It's about your pace. I got out of the rat race when

I left New York. I was in the rat race for a long time. Eventually I got sick because I forgot to take care of myself. So I am all about taking care of myself, but not to the point where I'm fearful about what I eat and do this and that and that. You know, not me. I maybe will eat less. I'll eat until I'm hungry and not more. I will drink in moderation because these days I'm feeling that alcohol and me love my wine and love one cocktail, but I can't do a lot. Now. I know my

metabolism is different. I know my husband's metabolism is different. So we're learning to repace, reconsider, rewire, and rethink, but not give up. Never give up, just reconsider, repace, and rethink. So as you start twenty twenty five, give that some food for thought, and don't overthink things. Just let things come as they will. Embrace serendipity. Embrace serendipity, Embrace the sensuous side of life, and savor every moment. I'm Melanie Young.

This is another edition of Fearless Fabulous Shoe. I invite you to follow me on Melanie Fabulous on Instagram, follow my substack Melanie Fabulous or Melanie Young and sign up. Please recommend others join me for another episode of Fearless Fabulous Shoe and always remember you have the choice to live life on your terms, not other people's. Choose fearless and fabulous. Thank you,