And Miles To Go Before I Sleep

 Wow - it has been a LONG time since I've posted here. Maybe that's a good thing, ha!   I'm posting now because I am setting a challenge for myself.  It's the 30 day Minimalism Challenge. If you have never heard of it, the rules are simple. Basically you get rid of stuff every single day for 30 days. The usual rules are 1 thing on the 1st, 2 things on the 2nd, 3 things on the 3rd and so on until you have gotten rid of 465 things.  I tried it once before and didn't make it very far, maybe day 5. I found that growing number to be kind of intimidating so I am going to change it up a little bit. I am going to write down numbers 1-30 on pieces of paper and randomly pick one every day. That will be the number of items I get rid of that day.  The idea is these items must be OUT of your house by midnight each day.  In my case, I'm sure that the husband's car trunk will hold quite a collection for a weekly donation run since I don't have time to make that run d...

    Happy Monday people – or is it?      I have found, on this lovely Monday morning, that I am DONE being the bad guy and I am DONE being the door mat.   For those of you confused, allow me to explain.    I have people around me who are so self-involved and entitled that they care about little else around them.   I also know people who would rather hold on to some decade(s) old grudge despite being offered MANY olive branches.   Here is what I have to say to those people: If I have extended olive branches and you continue to be nasty, consider that practice done.   I tried (and tried and tried and tried) and I don’t have time for that anymore. If you want to react to things like a child, then feel free to move another direction. I don’t have time for that either. If you want to get angry and hostile every time someone disagrees you, please figure out a way to grow up. If living in your own filth i...

  Tribes. The notion of this has been coming up a lot lately, from a lot of different people.   Sometimes I think that we (in general) spend more time reminiscing about our past tribes instead of creating our future ones.   We spend time remembering how much fun we had on our “old stomping grounds” or how included and close we felt when we were with the “old gang” or we believe, somewhere in the back of our head, that we are superior to those currently attending our old high schools because we were there first and only WE know the lay of the land.   Why?   Why do we do this?   I am certainly guilty of it myself.   I remember all of my best friends going back through the years.   I remember living across the street from E and spending every moment with her until we moved away. I was crushed and wanted to grab back on to that friendship when we moved back, but it was never the same. We had grown apart by then.   I saw her again, many, man...

      I grew up in a loving, though not perfect, household.   When I was very little, my dad spent a lot of time reading with me every night before bed. As a result, I would read non-stop and my reading level was quite a bit higher than that of my peers.   Every year he took me to a local kiddie theme park and every Christmas he would take me shopping so I could “buy” gifts for other people (with his money) and buy myself something as well of course.   He grilled out, played games (The Game of Life for years before Scattergories took over and sometimes Chess or Scrabble or Clue).   He constantly kept up with our yard and fixed everything in our house that ever needed fixing.   My mother came home every night from work and cooked dinner (though, she even admitted years later, she was not the best cook).   Every Saturday she would clean the house, change the sheets, make sure all laundry was done, folded and put away, vacuum, dust, etc. ...