Grace in Small Things

1) That I am the first call when my kids need something
2) Learning to make my point without raising my voice
3) The candy bowl in my office, it starts great conversations
4) How the bowl never runs out and I don't always buy the candy
5) The people in my life

50 Shades of shut the hell up!!

If you didn't read the books....shut up, shut up, shut up. I am so sick of so called Christians on the soap box telling people why they are bad books, why they should be banned. First your are entitled to your opinion....but like anything else it is MY throat and you wan't cram your opinion down it.

Yes the books have sex scenes in them.....gasp! Yes the books deal with S&M sex....gasp! Guess what both those things are real, they happen and you shaming the books makes people feel like they are weird or wrong. Now to be real honest I read the books and had to look up a lot of what was in the books cause I didn't know.....now here is the shocker, I go to church, I believe in God and I would like to think that my children are well adjusted members of society. I am NOT damaged because I read the books.....shocked? Me to after seeing how many people believe I should be.

Here is why you standing on your soap box pisses me off. Yes you can ban books like this but ban books like this and it leads to other books being banned. Books that we read in high school like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye.

I know how easy this can happen I worked in a school system that lost a great teacher because he had his kids read Flight by Sherman Alexie. The book is about a kid in foster care and how he uses his imagination to escape some of his foster homes. Some parents made the board pull the book do to a real life scene that they deemed inappropriate. He then chose the book When the Cage bird Sings by Maya Angelou the "parents" appeared again and the book was removed from the classroom....why because it had a rape scene in it. Did I mention this last book was a Pulitzer Prize winning book? Well it was.

Right now your asking why this matters and how I could even connect the 50 Shades of Grey with the other two books? Well after the two books from the school got banned I had a student ask me if they would ban her from school next because you see she was a foster child that had been raped and if we didn't want the books in that school why would we want her? How does one answer that?

People you may not agree with 50 Shades it might make your stomach churn or your Christian sensibilities make you want to "protect" poor helpless women (which if you read the books you would know she saves him and he doesn't feel the need to continue that lifestyle) but be careful what your REALLY saying.......be careful that your not saying.....your broken, your dirty, your not worthy cause ultimately it is NOT your place to judge. That will happen later and NOT by you.

What have I been learning?

I believe we keep learning or we die.....not literally die but mentally you start to slip away. This doesn't have to be taking a college class, that is learning yes, but what have you learned from the people around you on a daily basis?

Some things I learned lately that:

1. People in Kansas never seem to drive the speed limit even though cops seem to be everywhere. 
2. People in Iowa seem to never go above the speed limit even though I never saw a cop.
3. Broccoli can cure the jitters if you have had too much coffee (I don't know this would be for those of you who ONLY have jitters because of coffee...lol)
4. If you going shopping with a group of women hand each one a handful of strips of colored paper (each women gets a different color) and when you bring the bag back to the car you staple you color to your bag....NO looking through bags at the end of the shopping trip just grab the bags with your color strip on it. You can  now shop with 30 women and part ways in under 5 min.
5. You have something to share with everyone you meet and they also have a story...just listen. 
6. You never know when your past will be important to your future or who you will be able to help because of your past.
7. That I love my children and it is amazing to watch them grow and it also hurts to watch them struggle.
8. That the love you have for you children is amazing but the love you have for your grand-kids is different but just as deep. 
9. That getting carded for a beer (even if it is your job) makes me happy, does that make me old
10. Music changes my mood, relaxes me and sometimes says things I can't. 

I am sure there is more but can't think of them now so maybe my next post I will let you know what those are until then listen, look and learn from those around you.

Mesa .....Who's dog is this?

Meet Mesa, aka the devil dog....she is hyper, inquisitive and VERY smart. She loves people, solo cups and terrorizing the wiener dog.

This is the dog my husband has begged for for years. I gave in and I now have a red head that is attached to me, what the heck, I didn't ask for a dog....OK I have fallen in love with her.

Today I did something I swore I would never do and that is take a dog to doggy daycare, but I did. Why you ask? Well it is Kansas and the temperatures are dangerous outside. She has a outside pen but I didn't think it was warm enough so the last two days we have kenneled her and ran home at noon to let her run, and such. This seems like a good idea until we get home to a over hyper dog that is bouncing off the walls.

I will keep you posted on how this goes when I dropped her off she was greeted by 5 goldens, she was a little cautions but the tail was wagging so we will see.
We also start a obedience class next week. I decided if she is going to go places with us she needs to have some manners.

I see more blog material ahead I mean just look at that face you know trouble is around the corner.

Health insurance.......SUCKS!!!

   I need to rant so read on or switch to another blog....I HATE health insurance!!!! I don't understand who the first moron was that agreed to the terms of health insurance, I mean really read the following and sign your life away;

1.  you will pay us monthly  IN CASE you have a accident (sounds legit, kinda like a savings         program,putting my money away in case I get really sick or hurt)
2.  You will have cheaper doctor visits and emergency room visit (well i should i am pre-paying    for it)
3. Wait you have to pay more money and we will call it a deductible (deductible you need to         deduct my bill I just payed you several hundred for you to cover my ass) 
4.  OK I pay you more money (deductible) and then you can use MY money to cover me right?      (hell no we will cover a portion of your issues and we will call it co-insurance, are you               freaking kidding me!!!)
5. The best part if you manage to stay healthy and not use you fake savings program, we will         keep your money and you start over the next year (have you lost your f*%$ing mind? makes       me want to throw myself in front of a moving vehicle so that i get the use of my money before   the end of the year)

I mean really whoever sold that package above was a genius sweet talking SOB and the people that bought into this and made it mandatory for the rest of us to follow should be lined up and shot. Ok you think about that I mean really that person could have sold sand castles in the middle of a desert that got the first people on this program.

Oh I forgot the best part if you work really hard get a good paying job...we will charge you double to pay for those that choose not to work (this is not aimed at those that can't in all honesty i don't mind helping you out or even the struggling couples starting out or single parents trying to make it meet in the middle) however if your sitting on you butt because you are to lazy to work,to drunk or high or to stupid to fill out the application (phone a friend) get a job pay for your fall down those stairs yourself!!!

Where does your happy come from?

    So I spent years in education this meant I spent years taking a training called MANDT. It teaches you how to manage yourself so that you can help the people around you who are falling apart. It also teaches you that anger is a second emotion. Think about the times you have been angry 9 times out of 10 it followed something else embarrassment, loss of pride, failure, disappointment. Now there are those times that your just angry and your not even sure why or what caused it, I get that. 
     What I have been thinking about lately and I don't know that I have answer I just thought I would share. If anger is a second emotion is happiness also a second emotion? Does your happiness rely on something having to happen for you to be happy or are we always in a state of happy unless provoked to be unhappy?
   I have been making a conciseness effort to think about myself the last few days. What makes me happy? Do I do the things that make me happy? Do I surround myself with people that make me happy? 
   I know I haven't done the best at putting myself first, not since i was 17 and found out someone else would be depending on me. Now I am 41 and my children are all but on there own, still one at home for another year but she doesn't need me like she used to and I pray that my happy comes from me and not from things that happen to me. I pray that I am able to re-invest in myself with all the gusto that I invested in my children. 
  I will continue to search for my blissfully place happy but in the meantime I am just going to enjoy the day-to-day moments that make me smile, I will stop during the day and take into account what I have, what it means to me and how lucky I am. I will also realize that my happy comes from me and how I look at things. One of my favorite quotes is "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it".............How are you reacting?

New Year, New Goals......Same me?

   Well I am going to try this again, I seem to push this blog to the back burner as life gets the better of me. I looked back through this blog and what I realized is that this blog was therapeutic for me. I say that cause I feel like it allowed me to look at what I felt at the time was major things in my life with a little bit of humor, something that frankly I don't think I have done well lately.

  I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions cause I think they set you up for failure, we usually write down things that are unattainable or things that we really in our hearts have no intention of doing but Hey everyone else is making them why not? I do however believe in bucket list so maybe in my own way it is my resolutions. I got to see the LA Kings Hockey team play this year so scratch  that off my bucket list and I added one....confetti dropper on time square during New Years Eve. Did you know that is a thing? ME EITHER, how awesome is that?  I will also be parachuting this spring when it warms up.....taking a trip somewhere (even if it is close) to see or do something I have never seen or done before....start running again (for me).....so join me this year as I try to find the humor in my hectic life and as I work myself through my bucket list.