A Southern Rehabilitation

Four letter words....  Four letter words can be some of the best words ever in the history of language... then there are some that are just plain yuck. You will later see why I chose this as my title for this post.       LOVE: perhaps one of my top three favorite words. LOVE means so many things. It could mean being madly in love , desperately in love , love knows no bounds. It could be simply, "I love strawberries" or "I love thunderstorms" or "I love to read." Love is giving someone a compliment, "I love your haircut," "I love your outfit today," "I love the way you speak," "I love your paintings," "I love that you share your food with me." Love is an expression, whether it's a feeling, a mood, a statement, etc... Love is a really BIG word. The phrase, "I love you" is incredibly meaningful and whether we say them to our friends, our spouse or significant other, our children, whomever......

There has been so much talk of how horrible the year 2016 was... and you know what? It totally was awful. I'm sure there are many people who think 2016 was their best year ever. Well, congratulations! I'm happy for you. 2016 needs to be great for someone. Although 2016, was the pits for me personally, I wanted to at least look back and find the good in an otherwise bad year. Here are my top ten 2016 "good feels": 10. Finally applied and got my conceal carry permit. Now I just need to purchase a firearm. This is what I qualified with... a Browning 22 automatic pistol. It was awesome! I scored 100% btw. 9. I made the decision to teach First grade instead of Kindergarten. I am liking it way better--at least so far. #iteachfirst   8. Concerts: Ok, here we hit the jackpot in 2016... started with Garth in March, Jimmy Buffett in April, Pentatonix in May (they are awesome by the way), Rascal Flatts in May, Keith Urban, Brett Eldredge, Maren Morris in June. And ...

There has been so. much. just in the last 10 days. I could never have dreamed that divorce would take two and a half years and then some to complete. And you know what, even when it's over, it's not over. I know I have talked about "worst days of my life", "worst year of my life", "worst whatever," but these last 10 days have trumped them all. Our house on Bridgewood finally closed on January 4th. We were all at the closing. The Sellers and The Buyers, The Realtor and The Lawyer, and even the New Wife. I don't get that one, but whatever. Once the closing was complete, then the disbursement of funds could happen. Now here is where it gets real ugly. Money. Money is always always the "root of all evil." I started months ago asking my ex to meet with me to discuss our prior agreement. I would never get a response. I sent emails, texts, called, and all resulted in a big fat NOTHING. Then one day, just before Christmas, I received an ema...

We got to wear our pajamas to school today and I love Pajama Days! I slept in an hour longer and put on my Christmas pjs, blinking light ornament earrings, and barely combed my hair, and I was out the door! (gotta love days like today) This was the last day of school for 2016. Hallelujah, and praise the Lord! December 21st is the latest we have gotten out of school in like EVER. I arrived at school at 7:45 this morning already counting down the hours until 3:00 when I planned to bust out the door without even a glance backward. I had plans tonight. I needed to get home and get ready. Finally, I was going to do something Christmasy. I met my friend at 5:15 and we drove to Greensboro. I never do anything in Greensboro and now I've decided I need to go there more often. There are a ton of great restaurants there and fun things to do. We chose to eat dinner at  Liberty Oak Restaurant and Bar . It is right around the corner from Triad Stage where we had tickets to see "A Beauti...

Tomorrow will be the funeral service for my aunt. She passed away unexpectedly last Sunday night, November 20, 2016. The doctor called me at 11pm. I was stunned. We had planned to go see her this weekend because all the kids are in town. She had been in the hospital for a week. She was having tests to determine the cause of the seizures she had been having the previous few days. While in the hospital, she developed some sort of delirium...talking constantly, no sleep for close to 48 hours, and a general concern that things were going from bad to worse. However, the doctors/nurses never anticipated death as an outcome. Suddenly her heart just stopped. Stopped. There were no warning signs, no weird arrhythmia, no drop in oxygen levels, nothing. She simply came to the end. A complete flatline. The last couple of hours I have been planning what I want to say during the service. Today is Thanksgiving. How odd to be thinking of death on Thanksgiving, but yet it couldn't be more perfect...

My blogging has taken a back seat of late. It looks like I've only been writing once a month for a long time now. I'm not really sure if it is because I can't come up with something to write about that is interesting enough to read or it's because I've had an "I'm not really feeling it" kind of mood for a few months or because I've been really busy and just no time to write the way I want to write. It does take me hours to crank one of these things out. I constantly re-read every sentence to make sure it says just what I want it to say in the way I want to say it. I think it is a combination of all the above. Let me lay this out for you... In the last 2 months, I have had to put my aunt's condo on the market (and btw, she knows nothing about it). If you have ever sold a house or any kind of property, you know there is a ton of work involved in this process and many pieces must come together to get it all where it needs to be in order for it t...