Soundtrack: I've Seen Better Days by Sublime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfqJJLBHmhA
Book on my nightstand: She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
2015 is supposed to be the year - the year my oldest son joins the military, the year my youngest son graduates from college and hopefully finds a job, the year we pay off the house, the year my husband and I start re-connecting in our marriage, the year I quit my job and re-career into something I enjoy doing. Whoa, Nelly. Back up there.
My husband and I are fortunate in that we are willing and able to pay for our children's college tuition and all other related expenses - books, rent, food, car expenses, weekly allowance. The list goes on and on. No loans, no scholarships here. Our parents did that for us and it was important to us that our children graduate from college without the burden of being enormously in debt. This gift to our children has come through our blood, sweat and tears and some pretty savvy financial planning.
When my oldest son first entered college, I decided to return to the workforce to help with the expenses. I have a wonderful but grueling job so the plan has always been for me to quit when our youngest son was graduated from college in May 2015. I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and was mulling over all the wonderful new adventures I could embark on with my free time when I quit.
Imagine my surprise when I got a call from my son, who, in a sheepish voice, managed to inform me that SURPRISE - he is short 12 hours of credits and won't be graduating in May after all. As if to take some of the sting out of this news, he added that his adviser said this happens all the time. Like, no big deal! Obviously, his parents paid for his college tuition too.
As the days rolled by, I managed to go from shock to a slow stew. I couldn't let it go and wanted someone to commiserate with me. Someone who knew what it was like to sacrifice for your kids, to work hard at a thankless job, to put your own dreams temporarily aside. Who better than another mother - my mother. I filled her in on the whole story. The whole, woe is me tale of how my youngest son was now going to graduate later than expected forcing me to possibly delay my plans. After pouring out my heart and soul, there was silence on the other end. I was convinced she was thinking of just the right words of comfort. "Didn't you fail Economics your senior year and have to go to summer school to graduate?" I felt like I'd been punched in the gut by my own sweet, 104 lb. mother. "But that was different," I insisted. "I didn't just forget to take 12 hours of classes." "Same result" was all she said. It was all she needed to say.
Moms are good at putting matters into perspective and putting their children in their place. I got over being angry and can now manage a chuckle over the situation. Have I confessed to my son that I, too, graduated a semester behind? Absolutely not. Some things are just better left unsaid.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Monday, January 12, 2015
Where shall we go this year?
The 50 Best Places to Travel in 2015
Presenting 50 incredible destinations for 2015. Where will you go this year?
http://time.com/3640728/best-
Sunday, January 11, 2015
A load of crap
2015 had a crappy beginning. My dog Zoey (my son's dog that I inherited to be exact) had become sick sometime during the night all over her room. I had awakened that morning in a foul mood and this discovery didn't help any. I was a middle-age woman stuck in a dead-end job with grown children who were struggling to find their own way in life and a husband who I felt often looked at me and wondered which alien life-form had devoured my soul and was now inhabiting my body. As I shoveled shit all morning, I couldn't help but think how this was a metaphor for my life. I was smack-dab in the middle of a mid-life crisis.
It didn't happen overnight but developed insidiously. My discontent (ok, whining) was verbalized to my husband and friends so often that it had become the butt of jokes at our gatherings. "I'm so unhappy." "What do I want to be when I grow up?" "I don't have any skills." "I'm too old to start a new career.". Wah, Wah, Wah. Don't get me going - especially after a couple of cocktails. I really felt I had a creative side that wasn't being tapped - you know -- the God given talent that your mom always told you was a sin not to utilize. Guilty as charged.
The initial idea of blogging can, in some ways, be credited to my youngest son. He is a senior at a major university studying film and is immersed in the social media world. He blogs, hosts podcasts, interns and edits for a mainstream YouTube channel and has a presence on every social media outlet known to man: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and many more I suspect he doesn't want me to know about or follow him on. I was ironically attempting to give him career advice on doing something he loves and being able to get paid for it so it wouldn't be "work". Somehow the conversation swung around to me and if I could do anything in the world, what would I love to do. My answer was writing in some form or fashion. My son's response was, "Well, why don't you?" Good question. The usual excuses immediately popped to mind. We have a mortgage. We're paying your way through college and all your expenses associated with college. We want to have enough money so we never have to depend on our children for help. I'm too busy saving the world and so on and so on. But this conversation planted a seed that was watered through subsequent conversations with family members, especially my sister-in-law Becky. She was adamant that I parlay my love of social media, my witty observations (her words not mine, but I'll take it) on people around me and my self-deprecating humour into something. But what?
You guessed it. I am joining the 42 million other people in the world and starting a blog. My plan is to incorporate my love of travel, music, adventure, food, friends and cocktails and hopefully weave these into a few paragraphs that you won't regret losing the ten minutes it took to read. Now, we Southerners have never let the truth get in the way of a good story as Mark Twin said and I have been known to embellish here and there when recounting my adventures (like the time I told my husband I saw an anaconda in our back yard and I swear, I saw an alien spaceship when I was a child), but I promise to give you mostly facts, some good tips on places to visit and hopefully a few chuckles.
Lastly, I always have a soundtrack playing in the back of my brain and a great book on my nightstand. My love of great music and literature can also be attributed to my Southern heritage. So included in my blog will be a song that hopefully will enhance the experience I am relaying and the name of a good book or article I can recommend. One of my goals is to stop the world from reading incredibly bad books that somehow end up on the bestsellers' list. (apparently anybody can write a book these days or a blog for that matter.)
If you have somehow managed to make it to the end of my initial blog, I thank you. Hopefully, together we can see the world with fresh eyes.
My soundtrack. See the World by Gomez
Suggested reading: my blog! (what else?)
Until next time. . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKJJRnuCwF4
It didn't happen overnight but developed insidiously. My discontent (ok, whining) was verbalized to my husband and friends so often that it had become the butt of jokes at our gatherings. "I'm so unhappy." "What do I want to be when I grow up?" "I don't have any skills." "I'm too old to start a new career.". Wah, Wah, Wah. Don't get me going - especially after a couple of cocktails. I really felt I had a creative side that wasn't being tapped - you know -- the God given talent that your mom always told you was a sin not to utilize. Guilty as charged.
The initial idea of blogging can, in some ways, be credited to my youngest son. He is a senior at a major university studying film and is immersed in the social media world. He blogs, hosts podcasts, interns and edits for a mainstream YouTube channel and has a presence on every social media outlet known to man: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and many more I suspect he doesn't want me to know about or follow him on. I was ironically attempting to give him career advice on doing something he loves and being able to get paid for it so it wouldn't be "work". Somehow the conversation swung around to me and if I could do anything in the world, what would I love to do. My answer was writing in some form or fashion. My son's response was, "Well, why don't you?" Good question. The usual excuses immediately popped to mind. We have a mortgage. We're paying your way through college and all your expenses associated with college. We want to have enough money so we never have to depend on our children for help. I'm too busy saving the world and so on and so on. But this conversation planted a seed that was watered through subsequent conversations with family members, especially my sister-in-law Becky. She was adamant that I parlay my love of social media, my witty observations (her words not mine, but I'll take it) on people around me and my self-deprecating humour into something. But what?
You guessed it. I am joining the 42 million other people in the world and starting a blog. My plan is to incorporate my love of travel, music, adventure, food, friends and cocktails and hopefully weave these into a few paragraphs that you won't regret losing the ten minutes it took to read. Now, we Southerners have never let the truth get in the way of a good story as Mark Twin said and I have been known to embellish here and there when recounting my adventures (like the time I told my husband I saw an anaconda in our back yard and I swear, I saw an alien spaceship when I was a child), but I promise to give you mostly facts, some good tips on places to visit and hopefully a few chuckles.
Lastly, I always have a soundtrack playing in the back of my brain and a great book on my nightstand. My love of great music and literature can also be attributed to my Southern heritage. So included in my blog will be a song that hopefully will enhance the experience I am relaying and the name of a good book or article I can recommend. One of my goals is to stop the world from reading incredibly bad books that somehow end up on the bestsellers' list. (apparently anybody can write a book these days or a blog for that matter.)
If you have somehow managed to make it to the end of my initial blog, I thank you. Hopefully, together we can see the world with fresh eyes.
My soundtrack. See the World by Gomez
Suggested reading: my blog! (what else?)
Until next time. . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKJJRnuCwF4
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