Three Words, just three words!

I challenge you!

The year I was turning 50 I decided I wanted to do something to commemorate the year.  So on January 1st of that year I started tracking every day by describing it in only three words.  I love that segment on Good Morning America.  That in itself wasn't that hard, but to come up with something that I could read later and it would trigger that day again for me was where I got creative.

From time to time I would have a three word day that was just to good not to share.  For example:  MY BOOBS TWEET was a good one.  I was standing in the hall at work filling my water bottle at the drinking fountain and to no risk my phone getting wet or being dropped I dropped it down in my bra.  I turned to head back to my desk and two guys I knew came up to me to chat and a couple of minutes into the conversation my niece was texting me.  My text messages came in as a bird tweet.  Trying to ignore that my boobs have just tweeted seemed to be ignored by all, whew!  Until the reminder tweet happened and by then it was just one person standing with me.  He quietly responded to the sound by saying, "gosh I wish I had body parts that talented" and he walked off laughing like crazy, as did I.  On my home that night I came up with my three words for the day. 

One of my other favorites was BUTT SOAP BUBBLE, but I'm not going to explain that one, you can use your imagination there!

My challenge to you!

For one week, at the end of each day, sum up your day in three words.  Come here and share it or keep it private, just do it!  I'll be adding a Page (Click Here) to this blog to track mine.  

Cheers~

Do you have FHPTS?

Why is it I'm very willing to offer help to others, be willing to do whatever I can to help someone in need and do it happily.  Then why is it when I'm in need, having a tough time I get what I call the 500 pound telephone syndrome (FHPTS).  Convinced I am terminally unique I spoke to two friends last week about this and their heads began to nod that they knew exactly what I was talking about.  Really!!  I knew I had stumbled on something only I did.  Guess not!

I've had difficult times in my life and the thought of picking up the phone, calling a friend and saying "I need help" is just almost unthinkable to me and always has been.  Why?  Why do I not trust my friends to be there when I need them? What in my wiring tells me I'm not worth it, I don't want to be a bother, I'll just deal with it myself.  Why am I like this?  I honestly don't know.  As a result of this suffering from FHPTS I have to decide,  leave the phone hung up or figure out how to put on my big girl panties, pick it up, dial it and ask for help.

I swear the person who created and answering machine, voice-mail and caller ID had FHPTS.  The best way to hide from those who are there to help you are these inventions.  I'm thinking that the person who invented peep holes were the early sufferer of FHPTS but I'm not completely sure about that since I don't know when it was invented.

When I'm having a flare up of FHPTS it's normally when I'm having a very difficult time in my life, emotional, physical, financial or combinations of all of these things.  Rather than call for help I will sit and try to do things alone.  Avoid phone calls from friends, which I have found leave them thinking they have done something wrong and I'm upset with them, which is the furthest thing from the truth.  The truth is I need them badly, but can't tell them that.    NOTE: I can have FHPTS when things are good too, I'm not picky about when I can't pick up that phone.

When battling a FHPTS episode recently a friend of mine had been calling me almost weekly and getting nothing but my voice mail.  She would leave sweet voice mails to have me call every time and I would listen, delete and ignore.  Finally, one evening I answered and after making sure she knew it was nothing she had done I broke down and told her of my difficult time.  Without hesitation she booked a time to meet me to talk the next day.  Smacking my head almost immediately after getting off the phone I was almost instantly overcome with the urge to call and cancel and a text message vibrated in my hand and I looked down.  The text simply said, "No cancelling tomorrow, see you then."  Huh...maybe I had been found out.  I went to my lunch and came home after talking things over feeling renewed, loved and not the slightest bit embarrassed for talking about my problems.  Maybe I was winning the battle of FHPTS.

I got an email two or three days later from another friend I had been avoiding and knew I could take the steps of picking up that 500 pound telephone and say, hi...want to meet and talk?  And a very discouraging thing happened.  I couldn't do it.  I was in a full fledged FHPTS attack and couldn't do it.  Wow, guess I'm not any better, now what?  Knowing I didn't get this realization over night, I guess I'm not going to get over it that easy either.  I had to successfully avoid a couple more calls and emails before I big girl pantied up and responded.  Immediately was invited to attend a dinner with several friends who wanted to check on me as part of a group and I accepted.  Next email within 5 minutes is, see you tomorrow you can't cancel.  Hmmm I think my friends have figured me out.  I did attend, laughed, shared and enjoyed my night.

These same instances can be relayed over and over without changing much of the details, so I think you get the point.

The bottom line is I am the walking definition of insanity, doing the same thing over an over again expecting the different result.  Ok, so do I keep this up or figure out how to break my own bad cycle.  Well I'm not expecting things to change instantly, but I did make a decision the other day to reach out to someone first and see if they wanted to go to lunch and catch up.  You know what?  They said yes and no one cancelled and we have a great visit!

Have a kicked the FHPTS issue?  No, I don't think so, I'm just aware and hopefully can remember more quickly each time it kicks in that I'm aware and try and pick up that damn phone!

If you suffer from Five Hundred Pound Telephone Syndrome, know you aren't alone and also know your friends and family need you to need them and are there to help you!

Cheers!

F Bombs Everywhere!

Everything changes the second you lose on of your parents.  That moment in time is forever cemented to your brain. The key is to find how to move on and remember that more than anything they lived and remembering that is critical to their memory.

My father passed away in 1992 and facing the first of everything when you lose someone close is met with fear, apprehension and just overall dread.  Well we had to face the first Christmas, just how we weren't sure.  We just knew that together we would get through it the best way we could.

In anticipation of the holiday approaching my oldest sister arrived from Florida to help get things started.  By this time we had moved our Mom from the house to a very nice apartment and were ready to let loose the decorating elves inside these four walls.  Susan was working as an amazing cake decorator and had some strange hours and being near the holidays was pulled in every direction at work with needs for cute, decorative creations she held in her talented hands.  

I got off work and headed to my Mom's to make dinner for all of us and wait until Susan got off work to come home and join in.  Snowing like a big dog, the roads getting snow-packed, it was decided I would stay the night too so we now have the makings of a good ole fashioned slumber party with the family version of the Golden Girls (that's another story, I'll tell later).  

While I'm in the kitchen making dinner I overhear a conversation by my oldest sister and my mom about the "F word" and how they don't ever use it, say it or even like to hear it.  I smile to myself and wonder what they would think if they knew I not only knew how to use that word, but did so with gusto on many occasions.  At the time I thought I knew what the origin of that word was (it was since been shown to be incorrect information).  So I walk around the kitchen to join them and give them a language lesson on the big bad F word.  I can see a glint in both of their eyes and dinner calls for my attention and I wander away.  Within five minutes I hear them both trying the word out like a new pair of shoes.  Biting my lip from laughing I hear more and more sentences with a F-Bomb being dropped left and right, but still in a hushed whisper.  When I clear the wall back to where they are sitting I'm met with the look of two guilty girls with their hand in the F-Bomb cookie jar.  My moms hands flew to her mouth in her attempt to look not only innocent but that she was pushed the blame over to by my older sister.  I think my mom was the one who invented throwing under the bus.  So now I have my mom looking innocent, my oldest sister in need of body armor from being run over by the mom bus.   And we are quickly moving to the next phase of this F-Bomb experiment, lord help us all!

For the next forty minutes I sat on the couch and listened to these two women toss F-Bombs everywhere wanting desperately to dive for cover.  Instead I went the opposite way and jumped in with both feet and mouth and came up with what I termed as a scathingly brilliant idea (again that's another story, I'll tell later).  So the plan I hatched was when Susan walks into the door from work that she's met with these two bombardiers saying to her "Where the F*** have you been?"  Originally they wanted me to be in on this and the trio would toss out the question.  After I said, "no, it won't surprise her if I said it" and saw that mock shock look at my moms face, they began to practice.  There was about an hour before Susan was to get there and the variations of their bomb was narrowed down to the best one.  Once that was decided they practiced over and over and over and over.  All the while thinking to myself, what would Daddy say to all this and laughing at the two bombers in full swing now.  There was a moment of comfort in knowing that this when this is done we will move on and the F Bomb experiment will be called done.  Man was I sooo wrong!

I hear Susan approaching the door walking carefully not to fall on the now several inches of snow covering the walkway and the key is in the door.  Mom and my sister are prepped, I'm standing up leaning against the wall and the stillness of the moment is palatable.   The door opens, Susan kicks off her shoes to keep from tracking in snow and steps in.  Mom and my other sister announce loud and proud "Where the F*** have you been?"  Susan without skipping a beat says "What the F***'s it to ya!!"  Susan falls down on the floor laughing hysterically, Mom covers her mouth in mock shame of her behavior, my other sister laughs at herself and her behavior and I laugh, shake my head and go get dinner on the table. Keep in mind I've been listening to this phrase for over an hour now, the thrill, so they say, is gone.

While sitting around the table still soft giggles all around at the greeting Susan came home to, I begin to offer to serve dinner.  Mom looks to Susan and tells her "Pass the F***ing salt please!" Proud what not only did she use it correctly, but she also added the polite ending of 'please'.  Daddy would be so proud!  But I also realize a monster is being born in front of our eyes.  Susan replies "I'm F***ing trying!" and now the wheels are officially off our little red wagon.  For the rest of the evening every sentence from every person in the house dropped an F-bomb. From "Dinner was F***ing great!" to "It's time for F***ing bed" and finally including after we all were safely in bed tucked in and Mom announce to the house full of giggles to "Shut the F*** up and go the F*** to sleep"  The last eruption of laughter was followed by exhausted sleep.  

While I was falling asleep I realized that this level of laughter had been missing since we lost daddy and it was something that we all needed.  We had made it a point to laugh and remember the fun times, we hadn't just laughed ourselves silly.  And did it ever feel good.

The next morning I got up and wandered into the living room to head for coffee and Mom was sitting in her chair reading.  Almost forgetting the previous evenings language adventure I lean over and kiss Mom good morning and she says with her twinkle only she could produce and said "It's about F***ing time you got up!" And we were off again!

Momma never did get use to "that word" but we often discussed that night and each time Mom would throw her hands to her mouth in mock shock and would proclaim she was coursed into that behavior.  We all know better!

Remember, it's not always about making lemonade, it's about remembering those who taught us, loved us, raised us and made us who we are today.  Remember to laugh and love together to remember and honor them too!  Now after saying that, go get a f***ing glass of lemonade!

~Cheers

Good Deed Fridays

Sitting here on a snowy, school closed day and enjoying the quiet in the house got me to thinking about "things".

Years ago when Bug was little I was trying to teach her that doing something nice for someone doesn't always mean they know it and you get a thank you.  Sometimes doing something for someone without them knowing means more.

Trying to come up with how to show her this and remembered something I did while living in Phoenix.  From time to time when I would stop for my frou-frou coffee I would pay for the coffee of the person behind me in the drive through and tell them to just say I told them to have a nice day.  So now with that memory in mind on Friday mornings Bug and I loaded in the car to head to daycare and work we stopped at the closest coffee place.  Ordering Bug a hot chocolate and me my coffee and we drove around to the window.  When they leaned out the window to get our money and I said, "And we want to buy the coffee for the person behind us."  The most confused face appeared in my window as they responded with almost a whisper of "Wha?" So we explained what we wanted to do and it was finally greeted with a little smile that grew bigger as they realized it would be fun to share in the moment.  Our instructions were to just tell them we said have a great day.  My car at the time was very ordinary so it was easy to pull away and just get on with our day.

This became our weekly Friday routine for months, we referred to it as "Good Deed Friday" and we would get to the window order our "usual" and pulled around.  There were days we actually had to wait for another car to come so we could get our deed accomplished.  And there was a couple of times where the car behind us order five or six coffees and pastries and we would pay for the car behind that so our good deed didn't get to out of hand.

After a couple of months on one of our Friday morning visits I asked if they would share with us some of the reactions and we were regaled with some of the neatest list of reactions.  Some just stunned, some expressed how bad their week had been and this made their day and even one who had stopped to get coffee on her way to the hospital to say her final goodbyes to a loved one and just needed to take a moment for herself before she faced her sad reality.  Both Bug and I left that day renewed in our commitment to "Good Deed Friday"

After about two years of our Good Deeds I had order myself a new car and which was not only going to be very noticeable but the license plate was going to make it impossible to be incognito anymore and we would have to stop.  With hopes that the lesson was learned and that we had done something small for a few people we prepared to close this chapter of our lives.

What turned out to be our final Friday nothing unusual about our timing, or order we got to the window and both usual coffee friends faces popped out to great us all wide eyed and excited.  Turns out the previous week when we bought the coffee behind us we started a trend of it continued until 98 cars continued our legacy of buying for the car behind them.  Everyone seemed to get into the spirit and enjoyed the pay it forward attitude we inspired.  The last person they told that their coffee had been bought for them by the person in front of them just said thanks drove away.  There had been previous trains of 10-12 people following us but this was by far the largest one that had been seen.

The following week I had taken delivery of my new car and although we stopped we did not do our good deed but stopped to say our goodbyes to our friends in the promise we would be by from time to time but that our Goop Deed Friday was ending.  For a couple of months after it was over and I would stop to get a coffee while out running around getting things done I would be told about another person who had asked to by me a coffee for what I had done or notes of thank you had been left for me to pick up when I came by again.

I've often wondered if the lesson was as meaningful for Bug as it was for me.  The bonus I didn't expect is to find out that others had taken to doing this on their own and even though we stopped this particular pay it forward project, that it lives on without us.

For a time our lemonade was coffee, but the thought behind it remains unchanged!

Cheers!

Sleeping With the Fishes

Since we were little kids my sister and I have wanted our own pool.  We always lived on Post and could always go to the officers club pool, but it isn't like being able to open your back door and flop into your very own pool.  So when I moved here and began sharing a house with my sister and niece we invested into our first pool.

OK, picture this...an "aero" blow up pool, it looked like a pea green/yellow giant lasagna pan.  We would fill it up on Saturday and we could hang out and if we were lucky by Sunday afternoon before we dumped it out pre-slimey water time hits, Bug might put her little face in the water.

Following years we got a small round pool with a little pump and could spend more than Saturday and Sunday in water in our backyard, we are big girls now!! The next year a little larger round and deeper, we are cooking now!

Finally my sister took the giant step and bought an above ground pool.  A real live pool that could hold more than the three of us. And is the scene of this particular story.

Shortly after the new pool was installed and the solar panels warmed the water enough to get in comfortably the adventure begins.  My sister was out for a meeting so it was just Bug and I on the maiden voyage into the big girl pool.  I step up onto the ladder, step one, step two, step three and the platform before going in.  Left foot on the platform, right foot catches on the platform and I pitch forward and face plant into the pool.  Chlorinated water rushes past my face and deep into my sinus cavities without permission I might add.  I come out of the water to see Bug.  Her face is tilted like a dog hearing a odd sound and she says "What was that?" Trying to be cool (which I'm so not) I just shrugged as if I meant to do it and swam away.  She wasn't fooled by this, but out of respect just let it be.  She got in and we played and goofed off for well over an hour before my sister got home.  Sitting at the table on the patio closest to the pool I was hanging on the side of the pool just chatting and realized the water was cooling off and it was time to get out.  So I let Bug go first.  Up, over and out and wrapped in her towel.  My turn.  Up...up...ok, up...ummmm.  Let's try this again.  Up! My body responded with a resounding NOPE!  I look at my sister who hasn't quite figured out what I already know and that is I'm stuck and can't get out the pool.  With a deer in the headlight look I inform her in a smallish whisper. "I'm stuck, I can't pull myself out of here"  I don't know if it was really funny, hysteria or just my warped sense of humor but I crack up.   The family joins in and my sister keeps saying, "I'm sorry I'm laughing, but you're laughing"  Bug is laughing, but I don't really thinks she was 100% clear as to what was funny.

In a moment of complete brilliance, I decide if I back up about four feet from the side I can take a run and throw my leg over and haul my ass out.  OK, have you ever tried to run and pick up speed in five feet of water?  Give you a tip, can't be done.  Now the laughter is beginning to erupt louder as the gravity of the situation is hitting us.  I can't get out of this pool, I don't have the upper body strength to do it.  What the hell do we do?  Exhausted from trying to get out and laughing I've now flopped over the side of the pool that overlooks our Koi pond and announce "I'm going to be sleeping with the fishes, aren't I?"  Laughter continues with a slight change of funny to oh hell and we spot the step stool.  I said, "OK, get me two Frisbees to put under the stools legs so we don't poke a hole in the bottom plastic of the pool and I'll climb it and get over to the ladder and out I'll come."  Congratulating myself on my brilliant idea we scour the yard for the Frisbees while the step stool is hoisted over into the pool.  I park the plastic disks of freedom under the legs and now eye my escape route to warm, dry sanctuary.

So with renewed hope I climb up the step stool and eye the ladder that has thwarted my exit for the last hour and step over to the top rung with my right foot.  I swing my left foot over the top and to the other top rung outside the pool and am now straddling this ladder from hell and realize I'm a little tired.  So in a brief moment of insanity I think sitting down in this position was the most viable option.  With a horrified look on her face my sister yells "For God sakes Shiela, don't sit down!!"  Too late!  Exhausted laughter begins again and I realize that if I'm to get out of this mess I need to keep mosing.  I take the last of my strength and stand up and swing over the right leg and maneuver myself down to my escape.

While still drying off I began writing this whole thing in my head. But once again I made my lemonade from my soggy waterlogged lemons!

What the Hell...

I think one of the things that women don't talk about very well is, getting older.  I don't mean going from 19 to 20, I’m talking things sprouting and noises that I never heard before outside of a scary Halloween movie.  That being said, I think it’s important for us women to stick together and be honest with each other.  And for you men, we know you have things going on too!  But anyway, I’ll go first.  I have had things appear that I thought to myself "wow, no one ever said to look out for that" and some things I think as women we owe each other to warn each other about.  I mean after all, we are all in this growing older thing together aren't we?

So after making a decision that I would write out my thoughts, experiences and other embarrassing things I sat down at my computer and froze!  What will people think?  What do I think?  Can I do this? And I heard a quote on the radio that said if you write for whoever is reading it you won’t write an honest book/story.  That gave me the guts to continue.  I wrote this over a year ago, but the life lesson still applies.  Grab your lemonade and let’s go!

“What the hell... was that smell?”

Rolling over in the morning and hearing an escape from my backside that woke the dog and made the cat leave the room in a hurry prompted me to say, “What the hell was that?”   Once I woke up completely, calm the dog and located the cat three rooms away I backtracked my routine, which hadn’t changed since I was four years old.  Except today that build up of gas no longer escaped like a dainty lady like poof of air.  Today it sounded like an air horn of a passing eighteen wheeler we use to pray for as kids in the back seat of our parents Buick and it came out of my own butt.   Horrified, I try to retrace all dietary intakes resulted in nothing unusual to have caused such a ruckus.  Chalking this up to just a random act of gas I went on with my day knowing in my heart of heart this was a fluke. 

Next morning knowing I’m going to concentrate hard on all bodily activity I’m awakened by thunder outside.  The dog is now off the bed, cat is gone, and my parrot is voicing his displeasure.  I say out loud, “Sorry gang, not my fault! Everyone settle down.”  I look out the window to see the storm that is rolling in.  Hmm no clouds, no wind, no rain.  What the hell was that sound?  I sit back and am horrified to think that clap of thunder might have been me and my betraying butt again.   Looking at my dog I say, “That wasn't me” as if somehow Jiggs is going to nod reassuringly and back me up on this.  Ok, that didn't help, so I call the cat, which by the way is named Stinky, unfortunate, but I didn't name him and tried to get another vote in my corner that the thunder wasn't from my own down under.  Stinky, sitting at the back door now, upset that for the second morning in a row his slumber has been disturbed by my body betraying me and he wants nothing more to do with me, it's abundantly clear. I give up trying to obtain his vote and I open the door and announce he’s a trader. His tail swishes and he pads out the door to find some much needed peace and quiet and what I can only imagine with his sensitive nose, fresh air.

I wander in disbelief back to my room, sit on the side of the bed in a dead stare and try and figure out how to go on.  Wondering is this just the start of things to come?  The answer to that is a resounding YES!  But for now we will start here.  And I'll share more later!

Remembering the funny times!

A year ago today I woke up to find my eleven year old English Bulldog had passed away in his sleep on his side of the bed.  I might note here that he slept on a sleep number bed and his sleep number was 65, anything above or below he would whine.  Anyway, in thinking about this loss today I had my lemonade moment of do I post only about the loss of my puppy or do I share what living with an English Bulldog is really like.

I've had English Bulldogs a good portion of my life, I teethed with one in my playpen and had one or two around all through my teenage years.   I got this one and things would never be the same again. From the time Jiggs was a puppy his favorite playtime was for my sister to spank his butt with an empty water bottle and he would run all over the house and come back for more.  Such a simple game I thought if this is all he's got he's going to be a breeze.  Oh was I wrong, so so wrong!

Jiggs first summer was nearing and my sister thought it would be fun for him to have a pool to  play in to keep cool while we were at work.  So she finagled a kiddie pool into her car and came home proudly showing what a good puppy Auntie she was.  We set the little blue pool up, filled it with water and then introduced him to his new refreshment oasis.  I picked him up and set him down into the water, where he promptly began to drink the cool water.  So far so good right?  So in honor of the cute moment we were experiencing we went into the house to go get the camera to capture this Kodak moment.  Coming out the back door and clearing the patio we looked over to see the last piece of the pool being shredded in a mud puddle and Jiggs looked up with the pool piece in his mouth with a look of "what?" on his face.  I looked at my sister and we just shook our heads, cleaned up the 400 pieces of muddy pool fragments, she called him a name and that was that.

I wish I could tell you that was his only Bulldog infraction, but it was just the beginning of his illustrious career.

Another highlight was numerous escapes that resulted in his being jailed twice at the Humane Society and costing me many hundreds of dollars.  Then we would try again to foil his attempts to go be social alone (aka escape again).  At one point he got bored and began chewing up our wood fence.  I wasn't really all that concerned since it backed another wood wall of our neighbors shed I figured he would get bored or tired before I needed to worry about anything.  Yes I know, what was I thinking.  So one afternoon I got home from work and within 10-15 minutes a knock on the front door and the sound of familiar bulldog sounds on the other side.  I opened the door with our next door neighbor standing there grinning with Jiggs on a leash.  I opened the door and let him through as he promptly went to my room and crashed and found out that when the neighbor got home she walked in and heard snoring.  She went to her living room and laying on his back on her leather sofa sound asleep was Jiggs.  We had to back track his movement to discover he had eaten through our fence, the wall of her shed, partial contents of her shed and through the door.  Sauntered past her dog run of dogs and through the doggy door into her house for a nap.  How do you even begin to apologize for that?  Thank goodness she had a good sense of humor about it all.

After that we chain link fenced the yard, that will keep him!  Again, we couldn't have been more wrong.  But his next major accomplishment wasn't peeling the chain link, that came later but it was when we bought a 50 gallon sheep tank to keep filled with fresh water for the dogs to make sure they always had water.  We parked it against the fence with the spigot facing so we could attach a hose and leave it on a trickle to keep a good flow of water in the tank.  At least we thought it was a good idea.  After getting it all set up, my sister and I were sitting on the patio enjoying the fruits of our labor and discussing that this tank would weigh in the neighborhood of 415 pounds of water that even Jiggs couldn't do anything about that.  Yes again we are slow and have to be shown the error of our ways.   While we sat drinking our lemonade, I watched as Jiggs using only his head and strength pushed that sheep tank away from the fence far enough to get to the hose and chew it off before we could get across the yard to stop him.  It took both of us to move it back into place while he watched.  This dog was created by Satan, he has to have been!

Along with many other incidents that may come in later posts was the final one that we laugh about even now.  One night we heard a fuss out in the back yard.  The other dog was just a mess and his crying and fussing was over Jiggs had gone missing again.  Me and Bug got in my car going one direction, my sister got in her SUV and went another direction to begin the fugitive hunt against time and incarceration.  We hadn't been away from the driveway 5 minutes and my phone rang.  "I've got him" was the only words spoken as I dropped the phone, turned around in a driveway and headed back home.  I pulled into the drive way and see my sister nearing the driveway shaking her head.  As I stood at her door she opened it and said something about 'the little asshole' and pointed to him asleep on her passenger seat.  He had made it all the way down six houses and was sitting in the driveway waiting for his ride home.  When she got there, opened her door and called him he just looked at her.   She had to get out, pick him up, carry him to the car and put him in where he flopped over and snored before she got the car into drive.  I had to go around to the passenger side, open the door and carry his highness into the house. Poor dude was exhausted from the 2 block walk.

Not knowing it was his final two years at the time, Jiggs discovered our pool and a yellow ball (get the irony that it was the color and size of a lemon) made for some very happy times for us.  He waited all day to get to his time to play with his ball in the pool.  I took this video a couple of years ago and it reminds me of better days with the puppy known as Jiggs, Little Man of Eaton's Clan.

For those of you who knew Jiggs, please feel free to leave a comment on your favorite Jiggs moment to share with the rest!  I only touched one a few I know.

Cheers my puppy!!  

Guess I have to begin somewhere!

When I made the comment I was thinking of starting a blog I got a lot of encouragement, but no one encouraged me more than my niece Bug.  She thought it was a great idea of me to write out my thoughts, ideas, fears, hopes and dreams.  So it's with her particular encouragement that I'm sitting here now.  

I have to say the year 2013 was not one of my most favorite I've ever lived through, for many reasons I'm not going to get into at this time, but I will at some point.  I've tried to find my humor and my lessons in what's been going on.  Some days are better than others, I just have to remember a few things:

• I'm not alone
• Why me?  Why not me?
• I have an amazing family
• My humor will get me through anything
• This too shall pass
• When life hands you lemons...well you know

All of those are easy to remember in the light of day.  It's the 2:00AM terrors when my negative mind takes over, fear creeps and every insecurity takes over.  For that time I'm paralyzed in fear and can't see out past the fear, can sleep, can't think, can't even breathe. Then morning comes, the house comes alive with family getting ready for their day, animals being fed and the world making ready for the day.  Having survived another night of terror, I begin again.  

My niece, Bug as you will learn is a very wise young person.  Way more wise than I was at 14 and I'm thankful for her every day.  Not to long ago I texted her someone I thought was profound about not giving up and she responded with this and it knocked my socks off.  Something she saw on Pinterest that stuck with her was "Fall down 15 times, get up 16".  That has become my mantra of late.  I may not do everything right, but the fact that I try means I'm successful.

The bottom line in my life right now is keep trying, never give up, love my family and be thankful for everyday that my feet hit the floor I have a chance to making my day better than yesterday.