There is no place like....

SL! I swear, without a doubt, I am one of the luckiest people in the world... yes on the whole planet.

How I could have been so lucky to have accidently joined in with the best group of people from the very start... it just.. well, I have no words for how much you all have changed my life.

(okay to a non-SL person, I am sure that sounds ultimately geekified!) but it is so true and I soon learned we are so much more than just avatars in sim settings.

The birthday party thrown in my honor last night, will be etched in my mind all year.

I am kicking myself, over and over, that I was so overwhelmed with all of the attention and emotion that I forgot to click and get a picture. The decorations were amazing, the cake was the cutest of all I have seen thus far! and I received gift after gift all night long.

And now I can officially take that off of my "I have never done this". Yes, it took 50 years and a very special group of friends to finally get my own, very first birthday party. I know that may sound odd to those with normal childhoods and lives.. but yes.. it was my first.

I spent it in tears. You all mean so much to me, and you truly have changed my world in so many ways. Okay, flashback.. I am a sappy lady.. now I am crying again.

A woman's place is in the home!

I challenge you first to think back to the 50's. Back when mom was home night and day, cooking, cleaning, ironing a nice crease in dad's shirt's and making sure each brown bag lunch had the proper balance of nutrition plus that one little sweet treat that you knew was her special recipe (and highly trade worthy).

Children were well behaved, well dressed, knew they were loved and treasured and marriages lasted forever. Everyone knew their place, everyone knew their jobs. Dad's were the bread winners, the disciplinarians and they handled all major decisions. Things were so perfect then!

Then women demanded the right to be part of the work force, started leaving their kids with strangers, started elbowing men out of their rightful positions as the decision makers, the leaders.. even as far up as the government.

Now, 50 years later our world is in an uproar. There is rampant violence, our children are out of control, we have more wars than we have ever had, and it all stems from the emotional impact women have infiltrated into every part of our society.

Our government has the lowest approval rating in history.. can we blame our (just ex'd) president? No way! It is only because he was forced to let women like Condoleesa Rice (backed by a hormone packed bunch of women supporters) make political decisions.

Our justice system is falling apart.. why? Women on the bench as Supreme Court Justices! Our state governments are also falling apart with the emotionalism of the over abundance of female congressional and district chair holders. It is just a matter of time before they vote to change our flag to pink, oystershell and aqua!

Go home ladies, put on your aprons, start that bread to rising and take care of your man... then our world can go back to being the great place it used to be!

okay, okay I am soooo joking! lol (I actually wrote this about a year ago for a writing challenge issued on yahoo.. to write a convincing argument on something you feel the opposite about. I ran across it this morning and it cracked me up so thought I would share it)

Hmmm.. what would YOU have picked to write about?

Happy Birthday!

Fifty

I don't know what I expected I would feel like, look like today. But whatever it was.. I don't.

How can I possibly be 50? I can so clearly remember 15, 20, 30, 40..

Why do I still see that young me in the mirror? Will I always see her? Will I ever see what others see?

Do I want to see that me? Maybe not.

Have I accomplished all I thought I would? No. But I also have not let myself down ..

Without trying to sound egotistical... I am so proud of where I am, what I am, who I am, where I am headed.

Thank you to everyone that has befriended me along the way. I hope I can be, for all of you, what you have been for me.

I can't begin to imagine what the future holds, but I look forward to it!

(Dancing, even by myself, a wonderful way to start a new decade of life.)

Who turned off the heat???

Good grief I am ready to pack up and move to Florida .. it is freezing here!

Yikes! I live in Florida!

What the heck is going on???

It was in the low 30's this morning... so cold I had to wear a turtleneck.. good thing I saved a few from my many years of cold living in Washington state. What a shame that we got rid of all of our coats! Tonight is going to drop even colder..

How am I supposed to get a tan out in the backyard tomorrow?? Oh this is so unfair!

All my poor houseplants live outside in the Florida room... where can I get some plant blankies???

Mother Nature.. what have we done to tick you off? Are you feeling the affects of the economy too? Can't afford to tilt the sun in our direction right now????

It's here! It's here!

omg.. I am so excited for today...

for our future...

I am just red, white and blue from head to toe..

(you will have to trust me on this) lol

let the fun, the future... begin!

Can we really tell?

I have been watching people a lot lately. There are a lot of good people in this world. Although, I do live in the land of vacations and snowbird retirees.. there still seems to be different categories.

There are those who have decided that life does NOT have to be lived in fast motion. That have decided NOT to let each and every action and reaction get to them. That have decided to see the world and their little areas of it with an open mind and heart.

Does this mean they never have a bad day? Never get frustrated, depressed, shocked at what they see being done around them? Absolutely not! But they have made a conscious choice to try to enjoy the days given them.

Then there are the folks that no matter how much is given to them, no matter how fast, how inexpensive, how kind.. they will never truly feel they have gotten what they feel they so justly deserve.

But...

I have also seen something that can make a difference .. sometimes.

Expectations.

I have dealt with so many customers that I thought were darn nice.. maybe a little slower to smile.. but left my department with a courteous thank you and a see ya next time. (Okay some a bit of a quizzical expression and a hmmmm lol) but..

then have another employee come up and say.. "How did you make it through that with them? They are always so rude! I have actually left my area just so I didn't have to deal with them anymore."

So is it that the customer was REALLY always so rude? Or was it that they expected them to be, so they instantly treated them in a demeanor that encouraged exactly what they expected? .. (and got)

I hope as we all go through life and into 2009, that we can try to stop putting people into set categories. If you catch yourself looking at someone saying.. "Look at that expression! What's their problem?" or "Geez how could they walk out of their house dressed like that?"

Try to remember.. someone else could be thinking the same of you on certain days too. And ya know how nice you really are.

Boo Hoo!!!

Child molesters

This is kind of a heavy subject, but I get so angry every time I read in the paper that the only defense a child molester can come up with is "Boo hoo I was molested as a child!" So I....

What? ... Got angry? No...

Hated all controlling people that reminded me of my molester?? No...

Fought back, spoke up and helped others to not end up in the same circumstance that led to my molestation??? No...

Nope, they choose to go out and torture others, to ruin others lives like their's were....

It makes absolutely NO sense to me. If you were supposedly so damaged over it... it should not lead you to perform that act, or worse, on others.

I know the argument about control issues and I know the one about only doing what seems normal due to how you were raised. It's crap.. C..R..A..P...!!

I think a normal reaction is to be afraid. Afraid to be alone in a room with someone, afraid to trust someone, afraid of any person that looks slightly like that person, afraid to let go of those you are in a position to protect, even afraid to deal with your anger at what was done to you.

Or angry, thats a normal reaction! Angry that your childhood innocence was taken away. Angry that those in charge weren't able to notice or to be able to protect you. Angry that you feel like no one else will understand so you just have to hold it all inside...

And sad, because you didn't deserve it. Sad because you just wanted to be loved and were taken advantage of. Sad because... because you have the right to be.

A real and loving person takes these emotions, fear, anger, sadness and keeps them close to their heart, in the forefront of that great big file cabinet we call a brain... and spends the rest of their life making sure that, if there is any question of it happening around them.... should they see anything suspect... should they ever have doubts about the actions of someone around them, around their friends, their kids, their neighbors.... that they act quickly and without questioning to report, to protect, to stand guard over.. to do whatever necessary to keep it from happening to another innocent one in the world.

To those who choose to molest.. I have zero sympathy and think you should be locked away for life on some desert island surrounded by others just as your self. Then you can all sit around the campfire at night and tell boo hoo stories to someone else who cares.

Wednesdays thoughts

I love my job...

I hate my job...

Let it rain!!

Ahhhhh.. days off. Such a needed recharge day. With the job I have, there seems to never be the possibility of having two days off in a row.

I really miss having two days off in a row. So much easier to get things done and recover from the week's work.

But with four deliveries a week and four days before that to order those four deliveries... it is an eight day week smashed into seven days, condensed into 40 hours.

The good news is that I am going into my 50's in better physical shape than I was in my 40's .. or 30's. Suhweet!

I have thought about wearing a pedometer to log the miles I walk in each work day, maybe it is better not to know some things.. hmmmm and lifting boxes and crates of milk and eggs all day long, deep knee bends to stock the lower shelves, stretching to reach the back of the upper shelves (I SWEAR my arms have grown longer since I started this job because I couldn't reach them when I first started and I KNOW I am still only 5'5" tall)...

Who the heck needs a gym membership? Just go to work in a grocery store.

But I ran off target there (if I truly had a direction I was headed) okay.. truth be told.. I never know what I am going to type until my fingers start moving.

But I do know... after only having to work 90 minutes this morning to place tomorrow's delivery...

I cleaned the house, swept the floors, cleaned out the drain in my daughters bathtub (yuck) washed the sheets on both of our beds and ... then took a two hour nap....

Ahhhhhh days off.. a much needed recharge. Now it's time to head to SL to play.

Oh wait... rumor has it it may rain this afternoon... (my well water is horrible and has to be treated with salt so I can't use it for anything but showering) and my baby bird needs a much needed bath.... oh well, I shall play until it rains!

Yes, that is baby bird in the pic above. We love to fly down the road! (Of course by fly I mean ahem,, drive the speed limit) Honest officer.. I was looking at my speedometer when I went past you.. your radar gun must be wayyyy off!

On the Outside

On the outside .. looking in.

I feel this describes most of my life. Sadly, it seems to carry over to SL.

I have met some really great people.... but I feel like such an observer.

Just not feeling like I fit in.

So I find myself dancing alone more and more....