NOW

I considered writing about living in the “now” and then realized that I have done that so many times under other topics, it would be overkill, sorta.

Looking back, looking ahead and living in the moment. All things in moderation, right? That’s how I live, I guess. Remembering, looking toward our future and appreciating exactly where I am in any given second of my life. ‘Nuff said about that.

Instead of rehashing all of that, I’m going here ~

The world in which we live is not the world I ever envisioned. When I thought of my future, back in the day, I imagined a laid back kind of golden age period. I imagined being content with very little and owning everything free and clear. I wanted an early retirement so that we could leave for the winters and enjoy the summers. I saw that in my dreams for many years. I would only see snow winter when we came home for the holidays and it would be a short visit.

That isn’t my now. We are happy with our life, but my roomy is still working 40 + hours every week because he isn’t ready to retire. He isn’t ready to enjoy the benefits of having worked for 55 years. I retired, for the second time, a year and a half ago and I have not looked back. I love having my own time to do what I please as well as my own time to do what needs to be done. When he’s ready, he’ll wonder why he worked so many years, I think. He could retire anytime now and I’d be good with that. For now, he’s content to work and I’m content to enjoy.

I also never imagined how children would change in a generation.

The children that are being raised now aren’t going to have the sense of responsibility that our generation’s children have. They have no place to learn that being a participant isn’t enough. They won’t know that sometimes, you need to win. They don’t even know that they haven’t won, because they got the same reward as those who excelled just for showing up. They are not accountable for their actions or their words. As adults they will be looking for recognition for mediocre work because that’s what they have known. It’s so sad to me that tomorrow’s leaders will not have the background to make their own way and won’t know how to make decisions. How would they know? They weren’t allowed to learn.

Parents are so involved in their kid’s school activities or sports or dance or music and both parent and child are running somewhere three or five nights a week after school and all summer. Everything is structured and planned and if today’s children aren’t attending some ‘program’ they are playing with electronics. This is certainly not true of all kids, of course, but it’s true of way too many. Just going outside and finding something to do with no guidance, using one’s own imagination to create a game of some sort, isn’t done much these days.

That’s the world we live in now. In many ways it’s so much better than when I was raising kids and in some ways it’s so much worse. I think some big giant steps backward wouldn’t really hurt, but that’s just an old lady talking.

Jo

CHOCOLATE

BFF #183

With Easter just passed most people have plenty of chocolate in their homes to satisfy even the most voracious chocoholic appetite. Not so in this house. I didn't buy any and no one brought any in. There is only the delightful European Dark Heaven that I bought a couple weeks ago to stave off my cravings. Or satiate my cravings, is more accurate.


I don't have or even want dark chocolate every day. I do, however, have it a few times a week and I am very fond of having it with my morning coffee, second cup.


Hot rich coffee and a little chunk of Dark Heavenly goodness; what a wonderful way to start off your day.


Since I started dancing for a few minutes every morning to keep myself moving and doing something close to physical activity while I wait for the pool to be open, I feel zero guilt enjoying my little guilty pleasure now.  The dancing isn't pretty and I imagine it is rather side-splitting to watch, but no one is watching and I am feeling good about moving my big ole butt 4 or 5 days a week. And I am enjoying my chocolate just a little bit more now.


There are some health benefits to dark chocolate; that's good news, but I am far from a health nut. I also enjoy wine, but it's red wine that is suppose to be healthy and I prefer the fruity wines and white wines. Then there is that smoking thing, no brand claims any health benefits only that I will give birth to smaller babies. I'm okay with that particular risk, the others, I just ignore. I'm very narrow minded about that particular subject. I'm also an addict.


I am addicted to caffeine, nicotine and being a happy girl.  So save the lectures and know that intellectually I already know that I should not be indulging and if I were a stronger person, I would have tossed those things years ago, but alas, I have failed and even failed hundreds of times. I'm okay with that, one day I will smoke my last cigarette. One way or the other and that will possibly be the last day I eat dark chocolate, too.


Jo

HOME

Home. A place, an emotion, a dream or is it just a word?

I've lived in 2 mobile homes. An apartment. Five houses. All of these since I moved out of my parents' house into the grown up world. Were each of these a home or were they just where I lived?  I think I have been extremely lucky because wherever I have hung my hat since I was a "grown up" has been my home. Each of them was filled with love and even the very temporary apartment also housed my children and what few possessions we had, so it was certainly our home. We did have to leave our dog with my girlfriend for a few months, no dogs in the apartment, but she came with us the very day we moved into our house. For me, it's a home when love lives there with you.


My house never feels as much like a  home as when the kids are here. My favorite time is when they can all be here together.  This almost never happens, but it used to happen a lot. I really, really miss those times. I feel so complete and so happy when they are all together at my house for a day, an evening, whatever they can make happen. It is my happiest time. 


Years ago we had a neighbor who used to say of her children, "They don't have much time for me. They're all so busy with their kids and their jobs, but you can be sure they'll all take the day off to come to my funeral! They'll send flowers, too."


Think about that.


I used to laugh at her saying that. Now that I am older and my children have grown up and don't live very close, I understand. If I need them, they'll come. If I invite them, they might or they might have a counter offer. I am always welcome in their homes, but I feel if they are so busy, I would be interrupting. I always think, if they are too busy to come here, where I do all the work like make a meal, clean the pool, whatever else needs to be done, how can they have time to entertain me? I'm taking time from their busy lives which apparently they don't really have. That seems not to be a good thing to do, so I seldom do it.  When I really need a grand kid fix though, I just have to do what I have to do.  


I am ready to sell this house soon. It's lovely and we have really enjoyed living here the past 13 years, but it's a lot of work with the pool and 3 acres. I would like now to be in an apartment with a pool and let someone else do all the work while I enjoy the property. Maybe a couple more years, maybe sooner. All the updates and outside landscaping we are doing is in hopes of keeping the value up in a poor housing market. We want to update the main bathroom this next winter and possibly add a bathroom to the basement level and that will be it for our updating. The end of that list.
Thinking we'll be ready to vacate in 2014, probably.


Since we moved in here we have:
*replaced the bedroom carpets
*replaced the kitchen, baths, living room, dining room and hall floors with laminate
*re-sided the outside
*replaced all windows except living room and kitchen, they were newer
*carpeted the basement
*added a 4th bedroom in the basement
*transformed wood burning fireplace to gas and added 2nd gas fireplace downstairs
*resurfaced deck
*replaced pool liner and purchased 2 new covers (this one is automatic)
*replaced the roof...twice
*rebuilt the front porch
*added Sunsetter awnings to the back decks


Those are the big things. Of course, we have painted and maintained everything inside and out and replaced garage door openers when they croaked and the furnace and a/c has had some work done, but that's all home ownership stuff.  Just maintenance.


In an apartment, we'd just call someone to get those things done.  ☺


Wherever Roomy and I live with our furbabies is home. No question about that.


Sounds kinda good to me.  ☺


Jo

BFF COMBO POST

Have I lost my mind?  #180
Little question there, it's on its way out, I fear. My memory of long ago is so haphazard so as not to be very helpful.  I can sometimes be prompted into remembering and sometimes, no clue. I seem to remember strange things. Maybe things that hurt me or confused me or made me giggle. I seem to not remember a lot of things that made me happy. I seem not to remember a lot of things my sister and brother remember, though I might once they begin to tell the story. Or perhaps, I remember them reminding me another time, not sure. It's annoying though and I try not to dwell on this short coming because it makes me think ...
Never mind, I don't want to even write it out.

The short answer: I haven't lost it exactly, but it does wander off quite often.

No Particular Place To Go  #181

I love a good road trip with no particular place to go. I can pack up and drive for hours and find a place to sleep when I get tired and then start the next day. Something along the way may or may not catch my eye. If it does, I'm stopping and maybe staying. If I see a sign heading in another direction, I'll go there now. It's fun and I always see new things.

I like to travel a new and different route even when I have a destination in mind, if time is not an issue. You never know what you might see and what might beckon you to pull over and have a look. I enjoy that a lot.
I do that when I am coming home from Nashville; on the way, I am too anxious to see my family to mess around with unnecessary gawking stops, but coming home, I have time!  Love doing that.

In my life, I have a path, always. I know where I am going and how I'm getting there. I like my life to be that way, but when traveling, I have no rules. Well, just the ones that keep me relatively safe.

Patience #182

I have this now. I have NOT always had this. I was once quite short tempered. I believe that came from stress. My period of no patience was when I was raising my kids alone. When my life had disintegrated right before my eyes. When the man I imagined being with til death do us, part was gone. When I made the decision that to be on my own was better. When I then doubted, for a short time, if I would ever be sure of that decision. I had taken on such responsibility and had no good plan as to how to support all of us and had no time to prepare because I just packed us up and left. I had a minimum wage job and secured a 40 hour schedule which paid my rent with three full checks. One check for everything else. Oh boy. I had no patience then because I made another decision. I started working a second shift on top of my first shift. At the end of the week I was logging 75 to 80 hours on two separate time cards, no overtime allowed on this job, and then could barely make the bills because now I had to pay a sitter for all those hours. It was very difficult and I was very stressed and very thin and was not eating. I mean not eating. I drank coffee, it was free at my job. I smoked a lot, they were cheaper then. I nibbled at the kids leftovers now and then, but the food I bought had to feed them. I was fine.

Until I wasn't. One day I bit into a cheeseburger my co-worker had made "by mistake" (she knew I wasn't eating and I was seriously stick thin) and I found I could NOT swallow it. I was literally choking on it. I drank some coffee and got one bite down with great effort. I wrapped it up to take home. She thought I had eaten it.

I went to the doctor thinking I had something wrong with my throat or my esophagus. The problem was that I had trained my body not to eat. It was a long road back to normal from there. I had to start with broth. Add some crackers. Add some noodles.  Add shredded veggies. Move to oatmeal. On to peanut butter. Then beans. Finally able to eat a burger, no bun. It took almost a year before I could eat anything like meat or even bologna. I now call it my financial anorexia.

I never decided not to eat.  I just fed my kids first.

I had no patience until I had a semi-normal life again. One job and a decent paycheck and my patience returned.I managed to buy a house and even save a small bit. My kids finally learned that tuna sandwiches and chips was NOT meat and potatoes. I gained patience with security and self-confidence.

I think I am quite patient now. I don't think very many things in life are worth getting all freaky over. I am pretty good at holding my temper~if not my tongue.

There we go...all caught up and back to reading.

Jo

FORTUNE

Financially speaking we will likely never have a fortune. Family wise we have a fortune and have lost a fortune. It's a mixed bag with people, isn't it usually? 


We do love to imagine what if, you know that game I'm sure. If we ever find ourselves with a million or more buckeroonies, what would we do?


We'd pay off anything that we might owe. We'd buy a new truck and a new car and a motor home. We'd put most of it away safely because we lost a ton of money after 9-11 and now have a healthy and strong fear of losing our security again. No stock market or mutual funds for us. 


We'd pay off our kids homes. No reason for them to have mortgages. Otherwise, their bills are their bills. We would invite all of them on another family vacation. We took one a few years back and I would love to do that again except this time the grand kids would be going also.  Disneyland or Disney World, their choice, I suppose. We wouldn't want to completely remove all of their financial obligations because we feel our children should handle their own lives. Handing out that kind of help would not really be the best thing for any of them. They would expect it again even if they didn't think they would. When we are both gone, they would get it anyway and could then do whatever they chose. Waiting would be a good thing. Being given too much too soon can be devastating to ones life. I watched those reports about the lottery winners lives being ruined by the money and their choices so I don't wanna set my kiddos up for such horrid happenings.


Ya know, being a parent can be a really tough job even long after your babies have flown the coop and have babies of their, one of whom has also flown the coop!


But money of the fortune variety is the root of all pain and suffering according to that TV show, so we have planned ahead to avoid most if not all of the possible disasters to which others have fallen victim. 


So no huge charitable donations. Just modest ones, often anonymously. No handouts to friends. No lavish life style changes. We wouldn't be happy with that anyway.
Just a debt free retirement with a motor home, 2 new vehicles and the security of knowing our kids have a home for as long as they want them. That would be a good thing.


An old couple has to have something to dream about when all their other dreams have already come true.  ♥


Jo

"Elizabeth Grace is a slave-driving pain in the ass." :OD

Eleven months ago I was introduced to a group called GBE2 by my friend Gary Smith. (Thank you Gary) He was a member and his friend Elizabeth Grace (yep, one and the same) was the administrator of the site for bloggers. I was expecting to write my little mind numbing blogs and maybe a couple of people would read them and maybe I'd learn a thing or two about proper writing techniques or at the very least, I'd learn not to write sentences that could easily be broken into 5 or 6 sentences if they were being written by anyone other than long winded and wordy me with no thought as to how normal people breathe.  Obviously, I learned that!

Okay, so now here we are 11 months later and I have made so many friends in this group that I sometimes forget that I don't know them at all. Except maybe I do because they are writers. Writers open up their laptops, sit at their desk tops or grab a notepad or tape recorder and tell their stories. Then the bloggers share them. With each other. We really do know each other very well. We know the essence of each other very well.

That is what qualifies me to take on this subject even though I am NOT participating in the a-z challenge thingy because I don't like that kind of commitment. It feels like work to me. I'm not into work anymore.

I have known Ms. Grace for 11 months and though we are virtual friends, she has shown me her heart a hundred times or more. She has shown me her strength an equal number of times. I know who she is.
She is a slave-driving pain in the ass. Oh, sure, she's cute. She inspires me often with her writing. She moves me with her words or makes me giggle like a 5 year old whose favorite uncle is tickling her, but she is a pain in the ass.

Every week she posts topics or prompts or pictures and we are supposed to get inspiration from that prompt and go out to our own pages and write awe inspiring posts. That's all, just go out there and make her proud!

How's that working for most of you?

I'll tell you as a regular reader, it's working really well for a whole big gigantic bunch of you! These posts are so well done, so well thought through and sometimes so damned funny that I can hardly get through them.
You are without question, as entertaining a mix of humans I could imagine in one place.

She is a slave-driver. She is a pain in the ass. "Put your stuff here, not there."  "I'll post that for you cuz you keep putting it in the wrong spot." "I'll be dropping by and commenting, so be careful what you say about me." 'That was an interesting post." (That isn't good, btw.) "What an unusual take on the prompt." (Also not good,)

Then as if that wasn't bad enough, each week she posts her own blog offering. Of course, it's always (nearly) fantabulous. If it isn't, she'll tell you it is crap in the first paragraph. If it doesn't have a warning label, it's going to be good. Week after week after week. She sets a high standard and I have to admit here, don't share this with her, she doesn't read my blogs, I totally love and admire this woman I have never met. She holds my utmost respect and admiration. Not for doing it all, as she sometimes feels she has to do, but for doing what she does better than anyone expects. I admire her good heart and kind soul and I (tribute here) lovity love love her to pieces!

Have I personally learned anything from hanging out with her virtually?  Hell no, I already know it all. There is nothing I could possibly learn from a young 'un like her. I've got mascara older than she is! Good grief! I am still writing my mind numbing blogs and reading my comments, but I do have a lot more than a handful of readers. That makes me so happy. I don't think she made people come read my blog, but maybe she did!

But you less aged ones might learn something from her. You might learn how to construct a sentence or spell check your work or maybe even write a blog that makes sense!  Oh, not that anyone in this group would ever do any of those things, that would be an example of hyperbole. There is, however, a point in there, if you look hard enough.

Bethie should take a big ole bow and then pat herself on the back because truth be told, she just rocks the writing world all the way around. I am proud to be a part of this group and very proud to call the pain in the ass my friend.

*Raising my glass of raspberry-chocolate wine* Here's to you Miss Beth with my respect and gratitude for a job well done day after day after day.
♥♥♥

Jo

DANCING

I imagine everyone who knows me expects this one to be about Dancing With the People You May Have Heard of Once or as more commonly known, Dancing With the Stars. They would be wrong. I do enough talking about that every Monday and Tuesday night.  This will be about dancing.


Is there a better full body workout than dancing?


I mean all out, full blown, gettin' down with yer jiggy self, legs up and down, arms up and moving, hips gyrating dancing.  The kind where your heart pounds, your legs ache, your arms nearly throb and your feet are begging you to sit your butt down for 10 minutes.  That kind of dancing.  Every major muscle is used and abused. The best part?  It's fun and will make you laugh while you work away your caloric intake and build muscle tone. 


Core strength is vital to aging bodies maintaining the ability to stand tall, lift moderately heavy objects and stay healthy as well as mobile. As the human body ages, it loses strength quickly and without some kind of workout regime, it soon loses it's ability to do the simplest things in day to day life. The easiest and most beneficial exercise is walking. Once walking is relatively effortless, a little light dancing is the next step. When the dancing is easier and can be done longer, adding a few more moves until that all out dance is just 10 minutes a day and as routine as your morning coffee, coke, milk, tea or whatever you might like to start your morning.  It will become addictive.


That is the key. Movement every day and routine. In thirty days whatever you are making yourself do will become routine. So why not give a month to dance?  Give a dance for good body tone and good core strength. 


I think I have talked myself into this one. Dang, I'm good at this!


Jo