Perceptions

When I look at this photo I do not see a dead tree. Instead I see a serene beauty. I love how the starkness of the dead tree mixes with reflective blue of the water. I am curious to know what you see when you look at this photo.

Winding down.

These past few months have been stressful times, but happy times for sure. I took a huge leap of faith and made drastic changes, and I feel these changes have turned out for the best. I now have a wonderful new job that I enjoy going to every day. I have met some really wonderful people there and I feel that my life has been enriched already in just the few short months that I've been there. I really feel that I've found my place.

We just purchased a new, beautiful home that we can feel very proud of. And the school district it resides in is a wonderful small district where the kids won't get lost in the system. The school has a great curriculum and is listed as one of the top 5 schools in the state, so we are very excited that we got our children into this school.

And lastly, my home life has really improved. My husband and I have managed to fall in love with one another all over again. It's a wonderful feeling, and I am blessed to have him in my life.

The Search Continues

As I continue to scower Realtor.com for my dream home I am slowly coming to the realization that it may not exist. We were hoping to find a beautiful, newly built home on about 2-5 acres, not in town, but not too far out of town and live happily ever after. What I am finding are homes built way before I was born, a bazillion miles out of town, and they are still asking an arm and a leg for them. I mean I'm sure you are proud of the house your Grandpa built, but people, give me a freakin' break. It's 50 years old and has ugly paneling in the living room and a sagging porch roof out back. It's almost as if these people do not realize that the housing slump has hit and the market crashed several years ago and we still haven't recovered.

We've placed an offer on two houses. The first one was a disaster. We all loved the house, even though it was built in 1962 and they still wanted $180,000 for it. It was just cool. And even though it only had .8 acres to go with it, the house was just cool. Did I mention it was cool? And damp and a great reservoir for MOLD!!!! Yes, it was a moldy old house. So when the mold was found everywhere and we discovered that in order to get rid of the mold you would have to basically tear it down and build a new one we decided, a big fat NO THANK YOU!!!

On to house number two. It's a newer home. Built in 2001 and it sits on 1 acre. I liked it. It had great color schemes and I wouldn't have to paint a single wall. I was willing to accept it as it was. It had 3 bedrooms which we were thinking was plenty big enough, room for a pool and a hot tub and the dogs. So we made an offer on it. That same night my husband called me from work. "Look at MLS # xxxxxx," he says. So I do. It looks like a freakin' castle. It has 4 bedrooms, 200 sq. ft. bigger, and they are asking $10,000 less for it than the one we placed an offer on. The kids think the pictures are awesome. So naturally, I have to call my real estate lady and tell her we want to look at it. We go. It's in a nice country setting, but still in a subdivision. It's on the outskirts of a small town with a great school system and only about 15 minutes from my work. The house is beautiful. Granite counter tops, nice paint, nice fixtures. Then I look at the back yard. It's small. Big enough for a pool and hot tub, but not much else, and no trees. But it's too late. The kids have fallen in love with it. Forrest yells out, "It's two stories, Mom!" Then Nathan hollers, "Oh cool, Forrest come look at this!" In one of the bedrooms there is a small door that leads to an aclove in the attic. It could be fixed up as a little indoor club house if we are ever so inclined, which I"m sure we will be. Yep the boys fell in love with it. My husband fell in love with it because like I said before, It looked like a freakin' castle. So I guess we are gonna have to buy it. I suppose I can always plant my own trees and watch them grow. After all I have always wanted a flowering tulip tree.

Gas Station Bathroom Dining?

I was coming home from my weekly trip to work when the urge to pee came upon me. Now I must admit, I hate using public bathrooms, but alas, I had no choice, so I found the cleanest looking gas station I could find on that seemingly strip in the middle of nowhere and I stopped. I was horrified as soon as I opened the door. Not because the bathrooms were disgusting, but because of what I saw the people occupying the bathroom partaking in. No it's not what you think. They were eating lunch. Two were perched upon the sink slurping down their Big Gulps and munching on greasy cheesy hamburgers. The other two were standing (in the doorway I might add). Their lunches were precariously balanced on the towel dispensers. I"m sure the look on my face was of complete shock once my brain processed what my eyes were seeing. I mean, I don't even like to urinate in a gas station bathroom, let along dine there. One of the girls had her shoes off and was walking barefoot!! IN A PUBLIC BATHROOM!!!!! The whole scene was just wrong on so many levels. The occupants sensed my reluctance to enter, and proceeded to display their great southern hospitality by saying, "Come on in ! We won't bit. Unless you're a hamburger." Yep that made me want to run, not walk from the building. But since I had to pee so badly that my eyeballs were floating and my bladder was about to bust, I didn't have much of a choice. After I finished "doing my business" I had to ask one of the ladies to scoot over so that I could use the sink to wash my hands. Another lady had to remove her lunch from the towel dispenser so that i could dry them. That is when I heard the conversation about toe cramps, and corns. The lady asked me if I knew of anything that would stop toe cramps. I told her no and got out of the bathroom as quickly as my little feet would carry me. I do believe that the next time the urge to pee hits me on one of my drives home I will be avoiding that gas station like the plague.

A blog revisited

It's funny sometimes how we seem to let life get in the way of the things that bring us joy. I realize it has been a long time since I've visited bloggerland, and I have really missed it. I'm not sure why we let life get so complicated. It's the only one we get, we should make sure that everyday is packed with something fun and exciting, not drab and boring. But alas, we always have to make sure the mundane things are completed before the fun can start, at least those of us who are responsible do.

Sometimes I get tired of washing the dishes and the clothes every day. I get tired of sweeping the floors, and cleaning the toilets. I get tired of completing the same ole stuff day in and day out.
I think that is why I am taking such drastic measures in changing my life. As most of you already know I've taken a new job in a new city that is located 3 hours from my current home. I am packing up all my stuff and my family and we are relocating to a town we literally know very little about. I think that it will be a wonderful change in my life. But I'm not just stopping with a new job, a new home, and new surroundings. Oh no, not me, I am also working on transforming my entire being. I've completely changed my entire style of eating. For a month now I have been incorporating fruits and vegetables into my diet. I've cut out red meat and only consume poultry and fish. I've cut out many refined sugars and most processed foods. I'm an attempting to eat more whole grains and healthy stuff. I've trimmed off 20lbs and I've managed to cut my blood pressure medication in half. A few weeks ago I added an hour of cardio exercise at least 5 times per week to my routine and I am starting to feel unbelievable. I have tons more energy, fewer headaches, fewer body aches, and a better frame of mind.

I've decided to take control of my life and I decided baby steps just wasn't cutting it. Giant steps are what I need to be taking. And I'll be damned if I'm going to fall. I am woman hear me roar. Because if I can't believe in me, then how in the hell can anyone else?

Was life better in the past?

Life is so different now than it was 20-30 years ago. I know this because I spend at least an hour each night going over homework with my 2nd graders. I do not remember my parents ever sitting down with me to help me with home work in the 2nd grade. I don't ever remember my parents sitting down and helping me with homework EVER, for that matter, but certainly I didn't need help in the 2nd grade.

I also remember getting up early in the morning and telling my parents that I was going out to play. I would roam the neighbor hood and not come back until lunch time. I remember doing this as early as age 5. If my kids walk around the block without me knowing it, I freak out. It is way too dangerous to even let them play in the front yard without supervision. You never know when some sicko will drive by and snatch them out of the yard when you aren't looking. Now I'm not saying that couldn't have and didn't happen 20-30 years ago, but I suppose that we lived in a day and age where information wasn't spread around the world as quickly, so you just didn't hear about it as much.

And what about the cost of things. I got a birthday card a few weeks ago from my insurance company and inside it compared the cost of certain things in 1975 with the cost of those things today. It was quite alarming to see how cheap things were back then compared to what they cost today.
I got a 2% raise at the first of this year. Unfortunately, our health insurance premium went up more per month that the raise amounted to. Therefore, my take home pay is less this year than it was last year. It's funny how you can get paid more per hour, but bring home less.

So are things really that different now? Or is it just that 20-30 years ago I was a kid and didn't think or worry about these things, and now that I'm an adult, I can't help but think about them on a daily basis?

Gasp! Not Porn!

The other day my husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told him I wanted to get the new KY his and hers and I wanted to have sex with him in every position we could manage. His eyes bulged a bit and his mouth flopped open, but then his smiled a great big smile and said, "OK!" So on my Birthday, after working all day, I stopped at Walgreen's before I came home and bought the KY. That was the only item I bought. The lady standing in line in front of me glanced in my direction and saw my item. She then proceeded to frown at me. FROWN. What? Haven't you ever wanted to have fun sex before? The cashier kind of smiled and told me to have a good evening. I informed her that I planned to. And yes we did have a good evening, but I must say that I was a bit disappointed with the KY. I don't think we experienced the great whistle blowing sex advertised in the commercials when we used it. But perhaps we didn't have enough foreplay, so maybe we will try it again. But this brings me to my point. Why are adult people so embarrassed to talk about sex. Why does the word SEX have to be so taboo? I just don't get it. Porn is a multimillion dollar business, yet nobody I know admits to watching it. I love porn. I watch it on a weekly basis, and sometimes it really makes me hot. Sometimes it makes me laugh my ass off. Some of the faces they make are hilarious. And the noises, well you just have to chuckle. When I watch porn, weather it is with my hubby or by myself, I find myself criticizing the women. Mainly their breasts. For some reason, it is more enjoyable to watch women with big breasts than it is to watch women with little breasts. I find myself feeling a bit envious, because they look like they are having so much fun. Some of the porn shows on Cinemax have great story lines. I like Co-Ed Confidential and others. The only kind of porn that turns me off is same sex porn. I really don't get off watching girl on girl action, and I refuse to watch guy on guy action.

So for the discussion part of this post..... What kind of porn turns you on? Or are you too embarrassed to tell?

Dashboard confession?

I was sitting in my SUV at a red light taking a break from the rat race I call my daily commute and I took a moment to look around. To my left there was an acne faced teenager using his rear view mirror to inspect a freshly popped pimple on his face. A man turning in front of me had his finger stuck so far up his nose that I wondered if he was tickling his brain yet. There was a woman behind me making hand gestures while talking to air, or perhaps she was conversing with the voices inside her head, or maybe just the person on the other end of the blue tooth stuck in her ear. All of these sightings struck a funny chord with me and I began to laugh hysterically. What is it about our cars that makes us feel so comfortable that we will let our transgressions go as quickly as the flicked cigarette butt out the window? Is there anything we won't do in our cars? We pick our noses, pick our pimples and pick at the buttons on our radio with the same sticky fingers. We serenade the dome light at the top our lungs, and in the next breath, we curse at the idiots holding up traffic. We loose our virginity in the back seat, and smoke our first joint in the front. We love our cars with passion, and glee, and ride them a hard as we do life itself. What is it about the interior of that reinforced steel and safety glass that makes us feel so safe, so protected from the harsh realities of the world? If we really knew the answer, would we feel the same way? I'm not sure we would. I'm not sure I want to know. But what my inquiring mind does want to know is what transgressions do you let go of when you climb behind the wheel and feel the rumble of the motor through your feet? Yes, my inquiring mind wants to know. At least I think it does.....