here i am!!

sorry guys i haven't been blogging since a week ago thursday!! wow we had business meetings all weekend last week and now i am starting the first hispanic NA group in wichita with a couple of other poeple and we are needing chairs!! of all things we need chairs to sit on!! oh my gosh i have been making a ton of artwork for NA and booked a place for the May regions here in town!!

this weekend we have a womens sleepover and i am so excited!! yeah no kids!! no men!! just girls having fun in recovery!!

i switched out our home and car insurance and did all the paperwork on that, wes is in contact with an attorney to get his record expunged so i can get my daycare license!!

anyway i am washing my car today and tilling my garden, oh my gosh there are radishes out there!! and my lemon balm has new growth already!! my rue is coming in and i did nothing to them they are just out there growing!! We are going to till up the soil and i am going to put my vine plants where my tomatoes were last year and switch it around. it is almost time to start planting and i need to order seeds, not going to Walmart for those this year!!!!

wow so busy, gotta get my grill warmed up i am so sorry i miss everyone so much but my real life has me real busy in recovery these days. we may be getting a MAC soon!!

My "A" is getting ready for ACT's and we are just flying through life today ,Wes finally got his promotion, he was passed up 3 years in a row!! I am so proud of him!!

OK Hopefully i can stop by on Monday and catch up our first meeting will be Sunday night so i will have news on that, I need to go find chairs now and hope my literature order comes in tomorrow!!
Take care of each other!!!
oh and i have been getting these strange comments from anonymous bloggers since i shut off my word verification so i am turning it back on, sorry about the inconvenience but i am not an advertisement, i even stopped my google ads so ok gotta go there is the phone

Flash Fiction Friday- tributes to new friends

every friday write a short story of 55 words
no more no less and then report it to the g-man!!


"A gratitude list for Fridays notes

to Syd who makes me stop and ponder

for fireman johns questions and quotes

to shadows poems that make me ponder

and for Dr. John's lovable groaners

thanks to g-man for bringing us all together.

and blogging here brings me new faith

for a world uniting in cyber space."

there's my shot at a sappy groaner for you, not as clever as Dr. John, but I wanted to try to tribute to a sweet person whom I only had the honor of knowing through this bit of cyber space we all share. it is amazing to me that this little piece of hardware on this makeshift desk can bring me to know some of the most endearing people on the planet. and 10 years ago this was absolutely unheard of. definitely shows there is a God and he probably reads e-prayers daily!! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and can appreciate those in your lives today.

Earth Hour 2010

On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people, organizations, corporations and governments around the world will come together to make a bold statement about their concern for climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. In the U.S. where we are already feeling the impacts of climate change, Earth Hour sends a clear message that Americans care about this issue and want to turn the lights out on dirty air, dangerous dependency on foreign oil and costly climate change impacts, and make the switch to cleaner air, a strong economic future and a more secure nation.

Participation is easy. By flipping off your lights on March 27th at 8:30 p.m. local time you will be making the switch to a cleaner, more secure nation and prosperous America. View the toolkits, to find out what else you can do to get involved including leading the Earth Hour movement in your community.

Set Your Clock

On Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:30 p.m. local time, Earth Hour will once again cascade around the globe, from New Zealand to Hawaii

Sparking a Movement

Since its inception three years ago, Earth Hour’s non-partisan approach has captured the world’s imagination and became a global phenomenon. Nearly one billion people turned out for Earth Hour 2009 – involving 4,100 cities in 87 countries on seven continents.

Last year, 80 million Americans and 318 U.S. cities officially voted for action with their light switch, joining iconic landmarks from around the world that went dark for Earth Hour, including:

• Empire State Building
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Broadway Theater Marquees
• Las Vegas Strip
• United Nations Headquarters
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Seattle’s Space Needle
• Church of Latter-Day Saints Temple
• Gateway Arch in St. Louis
• Great Pyramids of Giza
• Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens
• Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio de Janeiro
• St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City
• Big Ben and Houses of Parliament in London
• Elysee Palace and Eiffel Tower in Paris
• Beijing’s Birds Nest and Water Cube
• Symphony of Lights in Hong Kong
• Sydney’s Opera House

Video

Please click on the video link. Earth Hour is not about saying if we shut off our lights we are saving the planet. I have heard critics call us stupid for doing this. Earth hour is about uniting the masses and sending a message to the worlds governments that we want to save our planet, that we believe in global warming and that we need to stop destroying the earth. Watch the video and decide for yourself if you will join us in turning off your lights for one hour on March 27, 2010 at 8:30pm local time. it is an amazing thing to be involved in, and this year i will try to get my whole city involved.

I just heard about Dr. John, and my deepest sympathies to all of his friends and family. I will miss his sweet comments and his contributions to the Friday Flash Fiction. The blogging community lost a wonderful member yesterday.

Flash Fiction Friday this makes me laugh out loud

Every Friday write a short story poem or prose and report it to the g-man!! I used pictures to go with my words this week!!

photoshop rocks!! haley is back there sneaking into someones basket!!

inside voice please!! no problem showing you how happy she is!!

the grocery store had a Haley special and she fits in our reusable bags!!

beans first birthday, blurry but i love the look on her face

and my digital camera is
absolutely priceless!!

Here you go G-man!! hope you had a giggle these make me laugh!! I love taking pictures and capturing my family in such a natural piece of time. I look back and love having these memories. My bean is finally a big kid and in big girl panties full time now!! we returned a whole box of pull- ups yesterday!! Happy Valentines Every one!! todays thought; "Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a persons character lies in their own hands."- Anne Frank
to all my parents out there who worry about our children..

These make me smile

Lou invited me to post a picture that makes me smile. The problem is there are so many that I love. This one of my Haley that I photo shopped.

This one of the bean

Adrianna's smile

Haley's look on her face and the girls just laughing with their whole bodies..

Daddy with this picture perfect smile, they look so much alike I absolutely love this picture

Haley's 1st birthday party, she LOVES cake!! look she only had 4 teeth!!

Mom and Adrianna before Mom got sick, this is a wonderful picture

Thanks Lou this is more of a gratitude list in pictures, what life is really about; Smiles and Love and Family Today's thought:"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."- Albert Einstein

venting update

OK this might be a long post. it is about my baby brother. i know i have my boundaries and i do not tolerate a lot of his insanity, but sometimes when i talk to him i gotta get it off my chest and if i tell him what i think it would probably break his heart. i mean because there is only so much i can listen to before i say, OK that is a LIE.

my brother has had a really hard life and during the time he was a child some very bad things happened to him. and because of those bad things he was sent away because nobody could manage him. he would not tell his family what was wrong we would just come home and the living room furniture would be cut to shreds, one time when he was around 10 years old i came home and he was hanging himself from the staircase. obviously i cut him down and freaked out. so mom put him in a hospital, where more bad things happened. a big part of his problem is the depth he will go to just to lie about something. you never know when or if he is ever telling the truth. my therapist says that our brains store information in such a way that when something traumatic happens we use a self defense mechanism of storing that information so it can't hurt us. in cases like mine with PTSD when a situation happens that reminds me of the past my brain functions as if I am back there in the dangerous time of my life and it is fight or flee because i have not processed the things in my life that were bad so they continue to have a hold on me.

for my brother it is different. he comes up with such unbelievable lies that it is just astounding. and he wants attention and he always wants someone to take care of him. i don't know if he feels my parents didn't give him enough attention or take care of him as he thought they should, god knows they were far from ideal parents. but it is like he thinks he is entitled to some i don't know he just feels like the world owes him. he even told me today that if he dies he wants me to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the government!! seriously and i had no coffee yet.

let me back up a bit, my brother has been in and out of institutions since the incident on the stairs. as a juvenile he started a couple of fires in the house, one on the roof and one in the garage, he tried swallowing a bottle of aspirin and just chased out the sitters that lived in our homes. he was kicked out of every public school in town for his violent behaviors and of course has spent time in prison. today he is HIV positive and has a heart condition, they want to perform heart surgery but he has no insurance also he has an issue with blood clots so they give him coumodin(don't know if i spelled it right) for thinning his blood so he doesn't get a blood clot and die. this last part these facts that i know i only know because i grilled his doctor last October.

it was last October when i told him to either go off and die or start taking care of himself because i couldn't watch him do this crap to himself any more. he drinks on his medication and he blacks out. now he got arrested for one of these black outs last year and has still not taken care of that. so my brother once again is on the lamb from the law.

now when i say he lies, i mean he is absolutely delusional and he fakes symptoms just to get medications or because somewhere in his mind he believes he needs attention even if that is medical attention. the medication he gets now is through the Ryan White foundation. they only supply medicine for HIV.all the medicine my brother gets is donated. my concerns are that he does not need some of the medication he takes.

when we were young and i walked into the living room after he had slashed the couches up he sat there with the kitchen knife in his hand and i said "junior what did you do?" and he looked at me and looks back and forth and goes "HUH" and acted like he didn't know what happened and actually asked me what happened!! so he goes off to the nut house and tells them he hears voices in his head and doesn't remember what happened. so they give him magic pills to not hear voices in your head. then when he got angry they would pump him up with Thorazine to calm him down and he would nod off. now i am no expert hell i ain't even Dr. Phil but I KNOW if you give someone anti- psychotics who doesn't need the medicine, that kind of fucks with their brain. now this was back in the early 80's and doctors have since learned to look for signs of lying. but damage done. now how do i know he lied about the couches, well my friends let me tell you before my mother died we were all together one night having a laugh and talking about the past, i don't remember exactly how it came up but junior was talking about all the injustices of his life and i said "Oh hell JR you still never apologized to mom for cutting up her couches." and this was something he was supposed to have no memory of right? wrong!! he goes "Well i would have never cut them up if mom hadn't of accused me of doing something my sister did!" i said AH-HA!! i knew it you remembered all along.

today my brother is on medication for seizures, i don't know if he has seizures he is just on medication for them, he is on diabetes medication, insulin, now i ask you do doctors really diagnose diabetes if you come into a new doctor and just ask for a prescription refill because you lost your old one and need insulin? i ask this because i do not think my brother is diabetic. he was over for Christmas remember at dinner he ate a HUGE meal with turkey and trimmings and pies, pies galore and fudge and goodies cause sister goes all out like that!! anyway he checked his sugar a little while later and they were 114. and he goes oh god i am high!! bullshit that is normal i tell you normal sugars are between 100-120 an hour after eating!!!! and he is taking insulin!! so is he trying to kill himself? i don't know. i just don't know now i tell you he is on methadone for pain, supposedly he has fibromialgia. now this is a very real affliction and i have a friend with this disease i just know it is hard to diagnose it is something they are still doing research on and it is very painful if you have it. does my brother have it? i don't know i know that because he has no insurance he can get methadone for free from the Ryan White Foundation. one time i took him to pick up meds and it was a bottle of 60 lortabs!! 60, i didn't even know they prescribed that many at one time!!

so by now you should realize he is an addict even if he does not. his latest venture was about 2 months ago he was in the hospital they were worried about his enlarged prostate, remember boys i had you all go get checked out last September?!? well they did a cancer screening but had to actually biopsy his prostate because his white cells are always high because of his HIV, they cannot just do a normal blood screening like on you or I. well since then he left the hospital with a catheter and told me that he had to keep a cath bag, yuck yes it is what you think, hooked up because he couldn't pee on his own, yes i said pee. and supposedly if he takes out the catheter he will be in renal failure. something does not sound right with that. i mean help me understand this if you take out a catheter from down there you can't pee well what then is the difference with it, you can't pee either way? the thing is he is mad because he cannot afford the supplies and he has had the same catheter inside him for 2 months!! today he said he is going to a specialist to see if he has cancer on his kidney because there is a lump there!!

i said i thought they screened you and he said it was for the prostate and it is like so much insanity and i want to care but i don't know if there is really anything wrong with him!! so he says he won't do chemo if it is cancer, like what that is supposed to scare me? because he cannot pay for it, DUH!! he hasn't had a job in years afraid if he got one they would continue to deny his disability. which they continue to deny. maybe the lump is a sore because he kept the damn catheter in too friggin long, i told him to take it out and he said he couldn't because he would go into renal failure. and he couldn't afford the supplies to change them and i said then you need to go to the doctor and ask for a different solution because this one does not work.

you all know i don't talk much about this simply because i don't let his chaos rent space in my head. but when he goes on about how the doctors have done him wrong and social security needs to pay him it just makes me want to pull that big old denial blanket off and tell him to grow up and get a job like everybody else in the free world!! now he says he can't work in his condition. he lives at other peoples homes and does not pay rent ever. the worst part is he relies on the kindness of others to do for him what he is completely unwilling to do for himself and that is take care of himself. now what gets me is this, my brother is like a very powerful drug to me and i can only take him in very small doses. why, because when he starts telling blatant lies about life i just want to tell him he is wrong. now when he tried to tell me that my mother died because of renal failure i was very gentle and loving and honest and told him my mother died of stage four small cell lung cancer.

he then tried to make up this story about how my mother was a special case and the only reason she died was because they did not know who to give her chemo and dialysis at the same time. my mother was very special to me but not to the medical profession. to them she was just another case and that is not to say they did anything wrong that is just a fact. they did what they could and they gave us a little more time with her. back to my brother..

so my honey says if he needs a couch to sleep on for the night he would be welcomed here, i said no. he is on methadone and i don't want him here. i keep him at a distance because i cannot co-sign his lies. my honey asks me why can't i just let him be who he is, i can and he is over there way over there with who ever he is living with. no i know he is trying to get us to spend time together but my brother is the same insane person he has always been. my older sister at least knows her boundaries and is learning to take care of herself, still far from perfect but she is trying. and as long as she continues to try to put her life in a better situation i have no issue with her coming over and working on homework.

i don't know i must sound like a cold hearted bitch but i just have a real hard time believing there is something wrong with my brother. i don't even know if the doctors really told him not to take the catheter out. maybe they wanted him to have it in and then take it out to see what happens but i couldn't imagine telling him to keep this thing in or his kidneys would fail. my mother had renal failure and never did they ever send her home with a catheter in her you know what!! he asked my sister to pay for the supplies for them and well he didn't even ask he told her he couldn't afford them and she said she was sorry and didn't know what she could do and he said it didn't matter he would just keep it in, then went on facebook and proclaimed to never trust family again because his sister wouldn't help him. like my god, that is another drama story.

she sent me the text messages on his blackberry, yes he has a blackberry someone bought it for him and was paying that bill too!! i told him to have them pay for the medical supplies instead of the phone and he said he couldn't do that honestly i think he stole the phone but he has changed his story on how he got it twice now so what ever. sorry this post was so long, my brother just got to me today complaining about his life, which he is 100 percent responsible for but refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. todays thought;
"God grant me the Serenity, To Accept the Things I cannot Change, The Courage to Change the Things I can and The Wisdom to Know The Difference."

De- dedeeee/ snow day!!

Ya all know who Carlos Mancia is? he does this little skit called. De-dedeee where someone does something stupid he calls them this name. See my pretty glass dish here? well i decided to broil pork chops in it. they were wonderful, however i am used to cooking with stainless steal and when i cook with stainless steel i pull the food from the pan and take it to the sink to wash immediately. i turn the water on the pan and start to scrub, a couple minutes later clean dish. Well did you know you are not supposed to take a glass dish out of a 500 degree oven and pour water on it?!? I did not know that. Seriously here is what happened...
The damn thing went POP in my hand and glass blew up everywhere!!!!
I swear to God I don't know what I was thinking other then I was cleaning my stainless steel pans!! DE-DEDEEEE!!!!!

LOOK A SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!
This is what we woke up to today and the school closed!!

The girls had to go out and play!! Not enough for a snowman in fact it is already melting but it was such a beautiful snow!! it fell so big!!

Kids just love playing and so does mom!!

Here they are trying to pose for the camera!! and the bean wouldn't stop eating the snow!! we kept trying to get her to stop but she wouldn't all we could do was damage control and make sure it was all white snow!!

SnowBall Fight!!!!

Snowball breakfast!!!

Some great scenery shots!!

here is my day and a beautiful one to boot. i hope you all are enjoying your weather wherever you are!! todays thought; "Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be."--Marsha Petrie Sue (The CEO of You)

Flash Fiction Friday- recovery first

Every Friday write a short story, poem or limerick what ever you feel,
then report to the g-man and see who else played along!!

"needles and pipes, rolling papers and plastic bags
the itch is so strong and the urge causes pain

embracing the numb and tingling inside
your heart starts to race as you swallow your pride

years have gone by and those days are in the past
in recovery I have found a precious serenity at last"

Here you go g-man!! Tomorrow i head to Hutchinson to Celebrate my clean time anniversary with my girls, there are two of the most wonderful women in recovery whom i have the honor to share clean time with we are all celebrating 5 years in the same month, and we never knew each other before NA!!
i got to go to another meeting tonight and it was so wonderful, it was 45 miles away as well so probably not a good idea for a home group. there is a lot i need to think about in regards to my last post but i sure feel a lot better after going to a real meeting. gratitude list;

1. today i am grateful for the empathy my honey shows me when my head is filled with storms.
2. today i am grateful i know where my solutions are and i have the tools to feel better.
3. today i am grateful my children and i had no temper tantrums.
4. today i am grateful my bean wore real panties all day!!
5. today i am grateful i am not my little brother.
6. today i am grateful i am not my older sister.
7. today i am grateful i do not own their chaos.
8. today i am grateful for my sponsor.
9. today i am grateful i surrender my will.
10. today i am grateful i don't have to be right.
11. today i am grateful i tried to make bread!!
12. today i am grateful for the willingness to try again!

did you know that sugar activates yeast to make dough rise? i did not know that. i made a wonderful recipe today that did not require you to put the yeast in warm water first. and it called for sugar so i used splenda? did you know splenda does not help yeast activate? i did not know that. but these things taste sooo good i need to try this recipe again!! last time i made bread it was like a baguette and hard and thick and yucky. this was chewy and the flavor was good!! so i will try again, Wes said he will help me since i never really made bread before and there are some things i should know. my bean is looking at me right now, she is out of bed so i better tend to my sweetie.. see you soon!!!

ever think of jumping ship

the captain goes down with the ship. it is an honorable thing to do. but what if your not the captain, and what if it is your recovery? i belong to this home group, it is small and needs support. i am a HUGE fan of the underdog. so when the group i tried to start with a few members closed it's doors i came to this group and made it my home group.

now i made it clear the only reason i chose this group was because it was closer then the one i wanted to be my home group, 50 miles closer. and it is not practical to spend a gallon of gas for two meetings a week and if it is not practical it is not spiritual so i came to this group. now i have heard it said that if you do not have the best home group in the world, then make it the best. but how can you create change when no one else wants it. i have tried for 6 months to get the group to try new things only to be met by a rather large personality that shoots down every single idea period.

we need new members the primary purpose of a group is to carry the message to the still suffering addict. even home group members are addicts who need a message. however it is not a meeting when the same 2 people show up for a meeting, we just have a conversation, and while i love the conversations we have it doesn it make a meeting for me. the group has 2 meetings a week Monday and Tuesday. we have our business meeting on the first Monday of the month. i checked the agenda for the last 6 months and there were 16 items of new business on the agenda and every single one were made by me. and every single one has been shot down. there are only 5 members in this group. we discussed having a flier drive it didn't happen i have been pushing for the group to have an event a function something, but they are completely against raising funds. seriously i suggested a new design for a shirt to sell to raise funds and they said no. the group does not want to have an event where they ask people for auction and raffle items and they do not want events with raffle and auction items. i asked about the group selling birthday cards to raise funds for literature and they said the cards were mine and they wouldn't do it. i am telling you they will not raise funds and this is something i am not used to.

then they decided to put a literature rack in the local probation office they made contact and had permission all they needed to do was drop it off. six months later i show up and decide to drop it off, however when i get to the local police station i am informed that our contact person has retired and they no longer have a probation office. seriously this is a small town. so i decide to do some recon for the group since i had some time and i found the city of commerce building which is also home to the school district. they love the idea of NA they want the literature, yay, so i drop off literature and bonus they have a facility for rent and a very reasonable price and would love our business to host dances there!! woo-hoo right? wrong i am told if we put information pamphlets there then that would create a need for a youth meeting. excuse me, do you want a group or not I mean FUCK!!! it doesn't matter the age of the friggin addict for Christ's sake!! that is just an excuse not to put out literature you sicko!! what are we doing here really

and that is where i am at with it. we had birthday night on the last Tuesday of the month. when the two senior members celebrated their 14 years and they were the only ones celebrating we had a roast, and we roasted the members and it was fun we went around the room and shared about the two celebrating. for my clean date, i showed up and the 2 senior members read through the readings so fast i couldn't understand where they were, they didn't want to be there it was a bother to be there and they called out birthdays and i got my coin and hug and shared for about 10 minutes and they closed the meeting. i swear it was the worst birthday meeting i was ever at in my entire life. it felt like i was a bother and no one cared. then on Monday we had the business meeting and like a space cadet i thought it was on Tuesday and didn't go. i am group secretary and no one called me to find out where i was!! it was probably a relief that i wasn't there so they did nothing, they are so damn apathetic to recovery it is astounding.

mean while i feel like i haven't been to a meeting a real meeting in months. and it is showing in my behaviors. i am shouting and edgy and in panicky mode all the time and here is the thing there are other meetings in town, but they are very sick, seriously sick, and i am very, very apprehensive about going to those meetings. it is not worth it to go to a meeting to come home and find a hate mail threatening me not to go to that meeting hall. that has happened before. and with the recent drama of wanna be 10 years clean and her abrasiveness i do not feel my anonymity would be safe in those meeting halls, that is seriously how sick it is. and yes i am breaking anonymity just thinking that way before i get there but i also have to protect myself. but i really need a meeting and my time is very precious so when i go it has to count and it hasn't and i am powerless over everything and i don't know what to do.

seriously 50 miles doesn't sound so impractical after all. i get to go there this Friday to celebrate with my clean time buddies and for that i am so very, very grateful. no one else seems to care here in town. and my regional business meetings are this month so that will be very therapeutic. and the womens sleepover is at the end of the month so that will really help.

but what do i do, i need to go to meetings that count and right now i go to meetings where the members act like they are put off if they have to stay the whole time and like it is a chore to go and i don't want that, but i made this my home group so how long do i wait and at what cost to my recovery? i mean they had a group conscious and we had motions to vote on and things to talk about but they didn't do any business except to agree to pay the rent and ASC.

there is one group in town and i won't go there because this group had meeting leaders steal the 7th tradition envelopes and it came out to the tune of over $1,000.00 and this group just said the members will have to live with what they have done. EXCUSE ME!!! no they can sign a promissory note to pay a dollar a week even to pay back the money they stole!!! no no that would be too much in these economic times. so now the group had to ask the area to buy books and literature as they did not have the funds.
another group, their old GSR broke my anonymity at a business meeting, they choose to violate traditions and have extremely strong personalities who choose to stay focused on rumor and gossip instead of step work and it is a very dominating presence and i don't want that either.

i don't know what to do, except more service work. stay focused on the solution and this issue will work itself out. i am going to tell my home group my dilemma at the next group conscience only it will be another month before we have one so until then i need to figure something out. todays thought; "Many of the greatest achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working."- Author Unknown

Good Morning, French Press Anyone?

After setting the burr grinder to French, Place grounds into decanter and fill with boiling water..
See the froth begin to steam up can you smell the aroma? we used a Chiapas from Mexico for this pot. Absolutely clean and delicious flavor very palatable.
Pour over the spoon for a good head of froth.

Be careful not to over fill your decanter or you will get coffee grounds in your cup...a little too full and the froth flows over the top and the grounds get into the filter. Still a great cup of coffee mmmm.... Do you take cream or sugar? I am ready for another cup to start my day, hope you all enjoyed this lesson in French press. I did show you how to roast and brew the perfect cup i need to show you my grinder and now that it is back from the shop the wonderful ways it grinds to get the perfect pot. Oh and i have to get Wes to pull out the new hand held espresso maker he got for Christmas. It has a 20 second pull!! amazing. and it takes fresh coffee not those yucky pods!! ok gotta go my coffee is getting cold!! thanks for joining me for a fresh cup!! todays thought; "In the sweetness of Friendship let there be Laughter, and Sharing of Pleasures."- Kahlil Gilbran

sending out some smiles

you can see how she just brightens a room with her smile. what a blessing it is to wake up to this every day.
the bean is trying to fill some big shoes!! she thinks she is funny wearing my shoes, i think she is adorable. she was sick last week with a cold bug and it was just heartbreaking she kept saying ouch and reaching for her nose that wouldn't quit running.
they have such a strong bond that my sisters and i failed to have. i hated my older sister so much and my younger sister was "dumped" on me by my mom. so it was hard to be a sister and a mom and then a drug addict. i think my little sister got the raw deal. i just want them to be close and love each other it is so important that these two love each other more then they hate each other. i don't want them to miss out on spending time together. it was only after my father died that my older sister even talked to my mother then after my mother died she started talking to me. it was hard because i was so angry with her that i would lash out in anger and say very ugly things to her. today with the help of some healthy boundaries and some surrender and acceptance of who each of us are, we can have a relationship.
Keep your eye on the ball!! OK! ever seen that movie the Sandlot? the girls call it the beast movie!! they love it and role play it out and Santa brought the bean a t-ball set and they just love it!!
gillian loves playing ball!! they are both so active they just crack me up watching them learn!!
i love these moments with them together!! today i am taking it easy. now my sinuses are killing me and i can't quit blowing my nose and every time i do i get dizzy. last night i took some medicine so i could breathe but i couldn't sleep all night. my throat is sore and i have major drainage and gosh i hate feeling like this.
here she is giving daddy some pointers!! she told him 'keep your eye on the ball ok daddy?"
i need to call my surveyor for an inspection but i need my house ready like i am open for business. which means some serious rethinking about what pictures are in my living room, i need my daycare rules up and i want to put my digital photo frame up to when i get kids and i take their pictures i can load them up to that. my hallway has tons of wall space and i would only need to move a few pictures. making this a daycare home creates some difficult decisions. i am lucky my family supports this and i have free reign on decorating my home simply because no one else wants to. today i am sick and i will allow myself to take it easy and get done only what i can and not over do it. today's thought;"Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." --Thomas Carlyle

cooking 101

look at my big girl!! she helps me with breakfast and makes oatmeal!! when i was young i used to ask my mother if i could help her, this reminds me so much of that time. i love teaching Haley, she always wants to help and i think 4 is as good an age as any to learn to stir oatmeal and flip pancakes and french toast.
i love my stainless steel pans, you can use a lower heat and it makes it safer for little ones to teach with. see how she tries to be gentle and not spill, ever the perfectionist just like her mother.
she even wants to pour it into the bowls. did i mention i don't even like oatmeal? can't bring myself to eat it but my girls LOVE it so they should be the ones making it!!
i love these moments, it puts things in perspective for me to know what is truly happiness. my sisters friend passed away this weekend. he was 43, worked 2 jobs a new mortgage a new car payment and a wife with no insurance. my sisters husband works 2 jobs and has no insurance either. he wants to accumulate enough money to retire at age 50, if he makes it. what is the point of working yourself into an early grave? and yet there are so many out there doing just that. suze orman says money does not make you powerful, money itself is not equivalent to power but so many of us base our lives on having it. i myself wish to have a job so i may have some power in this house, so that i may have a say and have something to bring to the table. why do i feel i need money to have a say? i know for me, i am fortunate, i have a program and i can work on this and become more aware of what i need and what i want. i can check my motives daily and so a spot inventory to see if i am happy in my life today. more people could use a program, more people need to remember what we are doing here and how short our lives really are.

i read an article today about a couple celebrating 80 years together, married. she is 102 he is 97. together with kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and great-great grand kids they have 57 total. and he still holds her hand and they still kiss each other every day. they have never been rich in the sense of having money and power, but they have a real gift of life and love and family. to me that is the real power in life. i hope to teach my grandbabies to cook someday. todays thought;
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember
that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for."--Epicurus