A few days ago, my step father passed away. It was not really a surprise as he had been in and out of the hospital the past several years with heart problems brought on by years of alcoholism, smoking, and unhealthy eating. Yet, as prepared as were should have been and despite my distant relationship to him, I had an unexpected reaction. I was sad and I wanted to go home. I wanted to be close to my family.

Home is three thousand miles away. My work schedule is crazy. I have just started my third semester of college. And it is the beginning of my daughter’s week with her dad. Going home at the last minute really wasn’t an option.

So, what does a good southern girl do when she can’t be with her family during a crisis? Turns out the same thing we do when we are with our family. We eat.

First it was the large bag of Cheerios I had taken to work for a snack chased by the juice drink. The next few days it was pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down. On Saturday, the day of the funeral it was a gentleman’s size lunch, browsing the downtown candy shops, before wrapping it up with a Hawaiian dinner and monster size dessert.

Why do southerners eat when we are sad? The truth is, I don’t have a clue. Maybe the pain of being that bloated and full is way better than the pain of whatever we are sad about. Or maybe all the talking works up an appetite. All I know is that is what we do. Southerners eat. 

School wound down for the year and so we began our summer. This summer I have big plans to make it a memorable one for me and the kids. Actually, I always want to do that, but this year I am trying a different approach.  The kids are getting bigger now.

The oldest is starting high school next year and needs to begin volunteering. The past couple of years, living mostly with his dad, he has lacked a great deal of structure. We decided to enroll him back in the Boys and Girls Club for summer activities. And it was planned he would have summer school to help prepare for next year. Then his grandpa invited him to a weekend trip to Long Beach, CA, for a Buddhist event for teens. Pretty busy for a kids who generally just flies to his grandparents and goofs off all summer. The princess was also to go to the Boys and Girls Club so she, too, would have summer activities and social interaction. I was to start school myself and hopefully find a day job I enjoy. At some point I would even find time to master the grill. It was going to be a remarkable summer.

We have now wrapped up week one of summer. The oldest was promoted to high school. He is enrolled in and attending the Boys and Girls Club Teen Center along w/ some of his friends. Just a few days ago we received a notice saying he would not be attending summer school. Apparently, it is not in the budget to accept kids who just need a little help. Only those who need it to gain credits to be promoted will be attending. Frustrating as it is, it isn’t the end of the world. We are still working on volunteer routes for him.

The princess was not enrolled into the Boys and Girls Club Club House. Upon viewing it and speaking with the person overseeing the venue, I could not bear to leave a 6 year old there. It looked like a crack house. They admitted the funding was too low for field trips (which the teen center has) and there are lots of kids attending despite the small space and limited resources. So now she will have to be enrolled in a day camp which will cost significantly more. Her school seems to have low academic standards so I am enrolling her into a charter school in the next town. Or so I thought. After they told me she was in, they called back and told me the information they were going on was incorrect and that she is number six on the waiting list. Wait, what? She isn’t going back to the old school and now she may not have a slot in the new one. Here is to hoping A LOT of kids move over the summer. So she gets to stay at home with me.

Normally, I love having my kids with me. They are my life. However, when you are trying to start school for the first time in over a decade having a moody teenager and a six year old at home doesn’t always work out as well as it seems like it would. It is hard to focus on f-stops, shutter speed, and lenses when in the background are, “Mom, brother did...” “No I didn’t”.  

My attempt to master the grill has yet to even really begin, unless you count me watching my ex husband grill after my son’s promotion. What I learned during this was if you yell and curse at the grill enough it will eventually light. He prefers charcoal to gas.

In my attempt to continue being bold, I decided to get another piercing.  (I can already see the head shakes of my loving family and friends.) For a while now I had thought of getting my woo ha pierced. Yep, I decided to go for it. For those who say it doesn’t hurt that bad…They LIE! I have given birth and it didn’t hurt that bad. It hurt so bad that I jumped causing the piercer to lose contact w/ the needle (this means the jewelry and needle weren’t touching while he was trying to put the jewelry in). So he then tried to finish putting the jewelry through without the needle. Here is the thing about the jewelry. It has threads on the end so the ball can be screwed on. And the threads were catching. Sounds bad, huh? It was worse. So he just pulled it out and we gave up. So I have a sore woo ha with a whole through it and nothing to show for it.

So my summer is getting off to an interesting start. It certainly isn’t the magnificent summer I had planned. Then again, nothing ever goes that smoothly around here. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer hold for us.

That is all I can really say about the length of time it has been between my entries lately. I mean talk about slacking! This is a blog; I am supposed to write paragraphs each day about the events which have filled my day. Well, that would be a couple of very short and boring sentences. Anyone who reads my Facebook posts are very well aware of that.

            These days it is hard to find time to write a blog entry. I have a lot of things going on in my life. This is pretty typical of me though. Why I manage to never quite make time to write the things I should I don’t really know. It is however, very frustrating.  

            Currently I am a little busier than normal. I am packing and preparing to move at the end of the month. That is great. Except then we will hopefully be moving again shortly after that. There is a lot to do over the next couple of weeks.  Packing, cleaning, and changing of addresses. It really seems endless.

            In between boxes of clothes, kitchenware, and toys I have to find time to write a book. There is a contest to enter no later than June eighth. In order to submit my writing I must have three chapters finished. Not rough draft finished, but hand-in-to –publisher finished. As of now, I am still working on Chapter One.

            When the weather allows, there is my photography career to think of. That takes a considerable amount of time. There is at least an hour or two of photo taking then uploading, editing, watermarking, copying, posting, and even sometimes ordering. If there is a showing then I have framing, displaying, and then the actual showing. It is wonderful but very exhausting.

            Don’t forget I am a mom. There is homework, bathes, parent/teacher conferences, meals, doctor appointments, and just plain questions to answer. Out of respect for my children’s privacy, I try not to write about most events in their lives. And I certainly do not post private details about their lives.

            At the end of my day, I am generally exhausted both physically and mentally. Trying to come up with witty words phrases to keep readers interested can often seem like too much. Yet, I refuse to give up on blogging. There must be a compromise in here somewhere. I have to be able to find it. I am certain that I will. When that will be I am not certain of.

When I was young, I dreamed of a fairytale happy ending. The kind with a great husband, four beautiful kids, a high powered career, and time to fit everything in.

What I learned as life went on was that happiness had nothing to do with the man I had in my life, the amount written on my paycheck, or the amount of time I had at the end of the day. In fact, the more of those things I had the less happy I seemed to be. It was quite confusing.

Then two years ago when I ended my long term relationship, I began to find that little bit of happiness. Later, when my job ended and I focused on the dreams I had neglected for so long I found more of it. I didn’t think I could get any happier.

This past year I met an amazing woman who has become a close friend. We have a lot of the same beliefs and been through some of the same difficulties in life. In the past few months, I have begun spending more time at her house. My amazing friend has twin teenagers who always have friends over, a four-year-old, a guy who cooks, and another friend who takes up sofa residency quite often. Her house is often full, loud, and chaotic. Yet, I have never been surrounded by so much love.  When I have a deadline or just need to breathe I head up the hill. Sometimes I don’t come back down for days.

When I look around from the dining room table and see a house full of hormonal teens, princesses, perimenopausal women, and men who cook I can’t help but smile. THIS is what I have waited my whole life to find. Pure happiness!

When I was a teenager, my mom stopped smoking. After smoking for more than 40 years she said her biggest problem was keeping her hands busy. She began knitting, sewing, and playing a lot of solitaire.

Luckily, I never picked up the smoking habit. However, I did recently have an overload of sorts requiring my doctor to tell me to slow down. That is like telling the sun not to shine or the rain not to fall. Idle, is NOT my mode. It would seem, two careers, a day job, and being a parent was stressing me to the point that I was now having issues with high blood pressure as well as frequent panic attacks. So, I followed doctor’s orders and slowed down.

In doing so, I found my biggest problem was finding something to do with my hands.  Unlike my mother, I do not have the talent to knit or sew. My hobbies are my careers, writing and photography. So, now what do I do with my hands?

My senior year in high school, I had the privilege of getting to know a young Haitian college student. Over a period of several months, we would spend time together doing the things teenagers did. And during this time, I would learn a great deal about his family, his dreams, and the importance of cultural differences.

Fast forward fifteen years and three thousand miles northwest:

I began working at a casino and met Dustin. After about a year and a half, neither of us was employed there anymore. Dustin and his family were leaving the area. I attended his going away party held at a local bar. At this party I was introduced to, Kristina. Kristina and I immediately hit it off. Over the next several months we became good friends.

Being like minded and such, Kristina and I have a mutual love for Facebook. This is how I met Robin, a friend of Kristina’s. Robin and I would engage in long comical conversations on Kristina’s Facebook page until we finally decided to befriend one another. With this friendship came the beginning of my humanitarian efforts.Robin does amazing things for others and it is rather inspiring. Thus she suggested I befriend two other people, Eric Klein and Shannon DeWitt; two important people who do a lot of wonderful things with two very wonderful organizations.

When the devastating earthquake rocked Haiti it was only days before the organizations Eric and Shannon are associated with and even Eric and Shannon themselves were in Haiti assisting with relief efforts. Robin was signed up to assist the following month.

Before long,I had found my old friend on Facebook. He and his family are safe. I plan to volunteer my assistance in Haiti at the earliest possible time.

Fifteen years, thousands of miles, a very popular social website, and everything came full circle.

One of my last entries contained a list of resolutions in which I plan to keep for this calendar year. Ones which will venture into the rest of the years of my life changing the person I am into an even better person than I have already become. There is one I did not place on that list. It is quite personal, and may seem a bit general.Be bold.

I can already hear the confused questions of my friends. After all, I am one of the ballsiest people I know. There are not many situations I back down from. Quite often I have been known to let my mouth overload my backside. So, why am I making a resolution to be bolder?

Despite my cool exterior and go-getter attitude, there is a part of me that still fears failure. This would be the part of me that has prevented me from finishing that book all these years, or submitting articles the way I should. It is the same part that made me conveniently run out of time this weekend before framing my photo and calling the one place I am almost positive I can get it displayed for the art show. If I don’t do it, I never fail at it…

So, this year it is time for me to be bold. I must just dive in and go for it. And that is what I will be doing. There will be no more fear of failure. If I fail, I fail. At least I can say I tried.  

I am not thinking about my decisions as much I am just doing them. School, art show,book, and anything else I can think of. I might even make a play for the cute guy.

Here I lay awake at four a.m. on a Saturday morning. In just a couple of hours the familiar sound of the alarm on my Blackberry will chime signaling the start of my day. Only I will already be awake as I have been since around two thirty a.m.

Why has Mr.Sandman neglected me tonight? Experts say one of the leading causes of insomnia is stress. Do I have stress in my life currently? You bet your sweet bottom I do.

Any day now one of the residents at the assisted living facility I work for could pass away. She is a lovely wonderful woman and though it took me a while to get to know her, I am very glad I did. This is a woman of amazing strength and determination.

Normally, I handle death fairly well. I was there when my dad died and never even shed a tear. But this comes at a particularly difficult time of year for me. The anniversary of Truett’s death is in just three days. That is something I have never handled well. He was taken from us too soon and there are so many unanswered questions.Then there is the whole bit about knowing I could’ve prevented it had I been patient and not selfish. This is also the year his murderer is to be released from prison after serving a mere eight years.

It leaves me to think of my own life. My life is very different from what I grew up in. The sticks of South Georgia can be a cruel and unforgiving place. I have come very far and still have many roads ahead to travel. And this month those roads merge my past and my present.

As the New Year approached, I began to think of my resolutions. Now, this is a special New Year. It is more than a new year, it is a new decade. I knew my resolutions had to be equally as special and important. However, it would be hard to top last year.

After much thinking about the simple easy things I had neglected the past few months like getting back to my work out routine, posting regular blog posts, focusing more on my finances, etc, I discovered that I needed to look much deeper. I thought about all the incredible turns my life had taken in the past year. It was a really wonderful year, but there is still room for improvement on my life. In reviewing the things I have done and not done, I ran across one very important thing I had not done which many experts say is a primary key to happiness. Forgive.

In the thirty-three years I have graced this world I have had some pretty terrible things happen to me. I have not always been the innocent victim. There have been plenty of times I have done horrible things to other people. The first person on my list of people to forgive would be me.

Forgiving one’s self is possibly the most difficult task of all. Why? Because I can’t lie or make excuses for the things I’ve done. I know the horrible things I have done. Even the things my closest and dearest friends may not be aware of. Self forgiveness though not easy is very necessary. And, as I am discovering, an ongoing process.  

On the other hand, there are those who have hurt me, wronged me, or just plain been a thorn in my side. To each of them I must show forgiveness. The most difficult on this list are the ones I cared the most for. After all, this list contains two ex husbands, my father, and my biological mother. Actually it probably contains a good portion of my family. This list must be tackled slowly, and with much caution.

When I forgave my second husband he argued that all should now be forgotten as well. I do forgive those who have damaged me the most, but I will never forget. Why?That is how we learn our life lessons. I now know what not to accept, fall for,and teach my children is just morally wrong. These people are no longer worth my anger and hurt. But I will never forget the truths that have brought me to where I am.

As I forgive those on my list, I will apologize to them as well. The ones with whom I have things to apologize for. That is the majority of the list.

We have now entered a new year and these are my resolutions:

5.)Restart a workout routine.

4.)Pay more attention to my finances.

3.)Learn to love and be loved in return.

2.)Apologize to those I have wronged.

1.)Forgive.

Often life presents us with an opportunity to use a situation to assist us in our journey to where we want to be. However, many of us get caught up where we land. We become comfortable or lazy even. What we have becomes good enough instead of good enough for now. Before we realize it, the chance to move forward has passed us by.

Stepping stones are there to move us forward not for us to build on. Frankly, they don’t make very good foundations.