A Pack of Wolves, The Wild Woody, and The Case of the Mysterious Melted Gum

It is summer. Which means road trip & vacation season, right? Well you know, I hate to be left out of these things. Especially when I have a job that is extremely flexible and the boss lets me work around my husband’s schedule.

We have good friends who live in St Louis and we do our best to visit them every summer. St Louis is a very fun city that has so much to do for everyone. Our friends actually own three, count’em THREE haunted houses in St Louis, so needless to say, it’s never a dull moment when we visit! To answer your next question, yes, we’ve been through the houses, but only with lights on and no actors present (I’m a great big ole weenie!).

Last year, they partnered with a friend who had a business in Branson, aka Entertainment Capitol of the Midwest. I haven’t been to Branson in over 20 years, and in that time, nearly every single country star you can think of has opened a theater of some sort. It’s gone from a sleepy little regional kind of vacation spot, to a really jam-packed and popular destination. There is all manner of entertainment you can possibly want for the whole family. Shows, mini-golf, shopping, restaurants, lakes, I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

So this new business venture, Branson’s Wild World, is a really fun & cool place. It’s part aquarium, part zoo, part family fun center. They have sharks, gators, snakes, spiders, fish, and even a pack of wolves! Seriously, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a wolf before, but theirs are all black and beautiful. My kids were able to touch & hold snakes (ew, not me) and pet a tarantula. Again, not me! They also have black light indoor mini golf! I know! It was very challenging, but fun!

I took the kids up on Friday and we went to the Wild World, and I took loads of pictures. Saturday, that was our day to go to Silver Dollar City. If you’ve never been, it’s in a very hilly part of the world, and I am always surprised when I see women walking around in heels. Anyway, it’s an old-time western kind of theme park. they have rides, some really huge roller coasters, artisans like black smiths, leather workers, and many other craftsmen. Although, I have to say, it was quite frustrating. The roller coasters are run by software, unlike the ‘olden days’ when they were operated by a switch. The newest ride, Outlaw Run, is a wooden roller coaster and supposed to be a big deal. We went straight there when we got in, and were immediately greeted with a message that the ride was down and repairs were being made, but they didn’t know when, or if, it would be back up. At that point, many people decided to try their luck in other parts of the park. We decided to wait and just see what happened. You never know, it could be 5 min, or 55 minutes for them to get it going again. We waited an hour, they got it going and sent two cars with people through and just when we were in sight of the cars, the people who’d just gotten their seats, were told to get out, and resume their spots in line. Sheesh. We decided to go and do something else and come back later in the day. Of their big rides, they had malfunctions that day on 4 of them that we know of.

Because of my friends’ business, we were able to get discounted tickets. This didn’t make it any less frustrating, but if we’d paid full price to get into the park, and the rides were constantly out of services, I’d be really mad.

So, the gum. My son, whom I love more than air, is turning 13 next month. I’ve been told by parents of teenagers that boys tend to get a little ditzy when the hormones kick in. So far, we really haven’t had to deal with that much, but I know it’s only a matter of time. We rode a roller coaster called Wild Fire. It’s a HUGE coaster on the side of a mountain that does at least two corkscrews. Being an almost teenage boy, he thought it would be funny to spit his gum out on one of the corkscrews. Yeah, I know. So when we get off the ride, he tells me he’s done this, and that it bounced off his foot & disappeared. Great. That’s just charming. Later in the day, we decided to give Outlaw Run another try. After another 45 minutes of waiting, finally, they get to ride (I passed on it, having dealt w/vertigo and not wanting to take a chance of setting it off). When everyone makes their way to me, our friends daughter announced that my son had sat in someone’s gum. Hmmm, really? I think I know whose gum it is! And yes, it was melted to the shorts between his legs. He removed as much as he could and we carried on.

That night, the kids played tag & hide & seek outside our friends apartment. Did you know that high grass hides things like chiggers, burrs and spiders? Yep, everyone had bug & chigger bites on them the next day. My son still has burrs on his socks that I’m going to let him remove.

Sunday morning we hit one of the family fun centers and the Wild Woody! Go carts are so much fun! The Wild Woody is built of wood and has a spiral tower, kind of like a parking structure. Super fun, I was hoping my daughter would be able to drive, but not on the Woody, she rode with me. She was able to drive on one of the other courses. it was her first time, she’s nearly 10, and the look of concentration on her face was priceless! She wasn’t going to let the cart get the best of her! She kept having to shake her hands because she was white-knuckling the steering wheel!

We made our way home after a quick visit and were so glad we were able to go, even for a quick trip. It is really our only vacation this summer, so I’m glad it was fun!

What about your summer? Seen any wolves or found any mysterious gum on your shorts?

http://www.silverdollarcity.com
http://www.bransonswildworld.com
http://www.bransontracks.com

Happiness?

Forgive me for taking a tiny little break from my usual DG kind of posts, I promise I’ll post a new recipe tomorrow! I suppose I’m feeling sort of introspective these days. With lots of drama and trauma in the lives of many around me (some real, some fabricated), it really makes me take a moment and look closer at my own life.

There are so many adages I’ve heard before and as I’m growing up (not older!), I realize the reason they’re around is because they really are true. Life is what you make it. It really is, and I learned this in my mid 20’s when I moved to LA. On a whim, I followed my roommate out there. I had no job, no apartment, no real reason to say no, so I went. It became a life altering experience. I was completely overwhelmed. If you haven’t been to LA, I can’t begin to describe just the vastness of everything there. Everything you can possibly imagine and even more. My roommate’s relationship progressed to the point of them getting engaged, which left me to find a new place to live. I had some really wonderful coworkers (newly weds, no less) who let me rent a room from them. I was miserable. 1500 miles from home, working full time and sharing a little 2br/1bath house with people I barely knew. Finally, someone smacked me and said “Hey! You are in the most exciting city, everything you’d ever want to do is here, and you’re sitting there feeling sorry for yourself? What’s up with that?’ And after that point, everything was different. I went to Dodgers games, museums, the beach, all sorts of things and really started enjoying everything that incredible city had to offer. I learned that so much of it is within my control. Of course, there are some things I can’t control: traffic, weather, cost of living. The one thing I can control (as I continually tell my children) is myself and my attitude and outlook.

Happiness, that’s a choice. The family we’re born into, our eye color, the weather, these are things that we really don’t have a choice in. We all have our wishes, but in reality, we have no say over these things and cannot change them, no matter how badly we’d like to. I have a friend, we’ve known each other since high school. She is beautiful, was always drop dead gorgeous, but was the type who really didn’t know she was as beautiful as she was. Down to earth is how I”d describe her. She has had some not so nice things happen to her. Her ex-husband & father of her children committed suicide. A different ex was abusive and a total jack-hole. She was brutally attacked and injured. And yet, she continues to look on the bright side of life. We all have our crap days. We all have things go wrong, or happen that we wish were different or better. The difference is how you respond to it. Do you let it defeat you or do you dust yourself off and say, ‘ok, that sucked. What’s next?’

Happiness is a choice. Yes, I’ve experienced adversity, difficulty and even tragedy. But I choose to be happy, because my life is not over yet and I refuse to let anything negative define me or who I am.

So, my question for you is, what’s your choice?

It’s Never Too Late…..

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Life gets crazy sometimes. And even though you might like to deny it, I know I’m not the only one who feels like my life is running me, rather than the other way around. And sometimes in that craziness, we let other people’s thoughts substitute for our own good judgement. What I’ve learned is sometimes you just can’t take someone’s word for it, because even though they may think they know what’s what, they really may not.

Other times, they have ulterior motives and for whatever devious reason, plant seeds of discord and suspicion. We allow those seeds to fester and germinate and grow and suddenly we find that the other thoughts have magically become part of our own. This I know, as I’m sad to admit, it has happened to me a few times. These festering seeds pollute and cloud our thinking.

At different times in my life, people who I cared about were distanced from me because of these cancerous seeds, planted in my mind and in others. What is to be gained from this action, I truly do not know, as I am certainly not the type to sow those seeds. However, what I can tell you, is until one of you is dead, it is never too late. I reached out to the first person this happened with, simply congratulating her on her latest accomplishment, something she labored long and hard over, and wishing her my best. I was not expecting much from this action, but she was very receptive and we patched up our friendship and moved on. Once again, I reached out to another, not knowing what reaction my contact would evoke, but feeling the need to do it anyway, if for nothing else, to have no regrets about not trying to reconnect. My efforts were reciprocated and I’m happy to say that stepping out on the limb has had happy results in both cases, and I’m very glad I took the chance.

So I say to you now, if there is someone whom you were close with and you had a falling out or disagreement and broke things off, but continue to think of them, why not give it a try? If nothing else, you can have no regrets if the person you are reaching out to doesn’t return your efforts. Like I say, it’s never too late. Don’t wait until you see an obituary, then it really is too late. As for me, I’m extremely glad I took the chances, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them until we were back in touch.

Go for it. Take the chance. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll know that you tried.

If you’re reading this and you know who you are, I am so happy to have you in my life and I will never allow those seeds to take hold again.

What ‘They’ Say Really Is True

I’ll tell you all right now, this has nothing do to with cooking, well, at least not in my kitchen anyway. I try to never believe what ‘they’ say, because, well, who is ‘they’ anyway? is it the same ‘they’ who broke into my friend’s car? Or the same ‘they’ who say you can lose weight by taking a magic pill? Agh, it’s just too much for my tired little brain! I’m not naive and I’m a bit of a skeptic. Yes, I said it. I am, I tend to not believe every bit of info that’s passed my way until I research it to determine the truth or lie behind. Does that make me jaded?

I’ve heard what ‘they’ say about men and women not able to simply be friends. I never believed it. I mean, I’ve had many friendships with guys whom I didn’t try to put the moves on. But for some reason, I thought in my maturity (40something) things might have changed. Yep, I must be deluded.

What I’m about to share with you is a story about fishing, and I suppose the one that got away. I have a friend on Facebook that I’d been friends with in high school. To protect his identity from his wife (who’s an attorney and would kick his ass from here to next year) and my husband (who would then retrieve him from next year and kick his ass into the next galaxy), I’ll call him J. “J” and I occasionally chat on Facebook. Basically the boring junk: how are you, what are the kids up to, what’s going on, that kind of boring junk.

Until yesterday. He went fishing. And it went a little something like this
J: hey
me: hey what?
J: I never see you on here
me: because I”m not. I have a life.
J: do you have my cell?
me: no.
J: do you want it?
me: only if I need it
J: what’s that supposed to mean?
me: what do you mean what’s that supposed to mean?
J: I just thought maybe we could go to lunch.
me: oh, um, well, I don’t know how I feel about that. I think I”d feel kind of awkward going to lunch w/a guy who’s not my hubby.
J: ok, I”m cool w/that. It’s just that every time we run into each other, one’s coming and the other’s going. That’s why I thought it’d be nice to have lunch, we could have an actual conversation.
me: maybe we could all get together, I haven’t really gotten to talk to your wife, I’m sure she’s a really interesting person.
SILENCE……..

So, the ‘fishing’ expedition, yeah, landed a big fat nothing. I never really liked fishing, and I definitely don’t like it when I’m the catch of the day, and it’s not my hubby on the other end of that line! And I suppose it really is true what they say, men and women can’t just be friends. It’s not about women not being friends w/the guys. It’s the guys who can’t just be friends. And guys, I think you understand what I’m saying. Ladies, don’t believe he can just be your friend, b/c secretly I think he’s plotting and planning his attack.

Frailty of Life

You know, I never really thought much about it, even though I lost my dad 12 years ago. Life truly is fragile and can be exceedingly short. In the time span of the world, even a person well over 100 is still young. In a million years, 95 or 100 is only really a blink, a wink.

I have been blessed to be able to say that I have not experienced alot of tragedy, trauma or death of people close to me, either family or friends. In my younger days, there were people whom I knew in passing that, in one way or another, were claimed by death at all too early an age. And while it saddened me and reminded me of my own mortality, I didn’t feel the acute pain felt when losing someone who is close to your heart and part of your life.

Becoming a mother really has changed my perspective on the world and on life. When I see an obit of a parent, I feel terribly for the child left behind. The devastation of losing a parent is enormous. And I was an adult when I lost my father. To be a young child and tragically, and/or suddenly, lose a parent must be the worst kind of pain imaginable. To have to learn your way in the world without the guidance of your biggest supporter, your biggest fan and advocate has to be daunting. I know not all parent/child relationships are like that, but in my world they are.

I nearly lost my father when I was 13. He was in a horrific car crash that almost killed him, and when they got to the hospital, it was discovered he had a brain tumor. Being 13 is hard enough as it is, without things like that happening. My world had suddenly shifted on it’s axis and was completely upside down. One minute, everything is fine, he’s driving a babysitter home. The next, we get the dread phone call at midnight. We were very fortunate to have had him with us for nearly 20 more years. I have no idea how my life would’ve turned out without him.

Today, I’m once again slapped in the face with my own mortality. It’s a beautiful January day, the sun is shining, it’s going to be nearly 70 today. Yesterday was a bit rough, but nothing we can’t handle. And then I get the news that a good childhood friend of mine had passed away last night. She’d had surgery in December. She felt like she was progressing in her recovery process. She was upbeat earlier this week about everything. And today she’s gone. How does that happen? We are here, and then we’re not. I am incredibly sad to lose her, but I feel even worse for her daughter, who is my son’s age. That precious girl has to go through pain that no child should ever have to experience at the age of 11. Her husband will now have to raise their daughter alone. Her mother will have to do what every mother fears.

We were good friends in elementary and middle school and drifted apart as we aged, like people do. We had different interests and friends, but we reconnected online. She was a deeply religious person and had overcome her own struggles with drugs and alcohol to become an addiction counselor to help others overcome their inner demons. She was a beacon of hope and love to everyone around her and she will be missed. I hope she knew how many people she helped and how many lives she touched.

We are all angels, clothed in flesh and bone. Life, no matter whose it is, is precious and fragile. Live today like it’s your last day. Share your love and compassion with those around you, strangers included because you never know when it could be their last day.

My other challenge to myself, and to you, don’t just live for now. Live your life in such a  way that when you are gone, you will be remembered for years to come, and not just by family. Make your mark on the world. Become that beacon of hope and love for others, and do it with joy in your heart.

Not your average lemonade stand!

Yes, it is summer and time for the neighborhood lemonade stands to start popping up. I love seeing the kids entrepreneurial spirits in action. And since my precious daughter is 7 going on 8, she’s beginning to realize that those toys she begs for and the candy she’s craving don’t come free. Can you imagine??

One day on the playground, she and some friends decided a lemonade stand would be a great idea to make some money. Sure, why not? when she proposed this to me, I gave one tiny little suggestion: How about we use it for good, rather than just fattening our piggy banks?

One of my daughter’s friends who is in the lemonade crew has a younger brother who at the very tender age of 4 was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, just a year ago. He currently has to wear an insulin pump. His mother does an incredible job of making sure he lives as normal a life as possible, but it would be wonderful if there was a world without diabetes in it. So the girls decided to give the proceeds of their lemonade stand to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help find a cure. How awesome is that? It went from two girls and a driveway lemonade stand, to 3 girls, matching shirts, signs, a ‘kick off’party, and posting on a website! .It’s taken on a life of its own!

It will be today and we’ll be selling leaded and unleaded lemonade and cookies to benefit JDRF. we’ve invited all of our friends and family, so here’s hoping that our efforts are successful!

My next question is, what are you doing for others this summer? How are you making a positive impact in your community?

New Year, new choices

I’ve said it in the past, life is all about the choices. Once again, I’m reminded of the truth of that statement. A friend of mine says one thing, but chooses something quite different. Hey, that’s her gig. It is difficult for me because some of her choices cause her pain and it’s hard for me to see her unhappy. I had to choose to not get involved in her drama, it’s way too easy to get wrapped up in our friend’s choices, good or bad.

There are consequences to our actions, and our choices, both good and bad.

If you choose to eat junk food, then you are choosing to be unhealthy and maybe even overweight, which leads to a plethora of negative feelings because you don’t like the way you look or feel.

If you choose not to respect yourself, or love yourself, no one else will either. People will treat you like a doormat because they can. Because if you don’t respect yourself, why should they?

However, if you choose to be happy, if you choose to not allow one negative thing to define who you are, if you choose to take care of yourself physically and mentally, there’s really no limit to what you can accomplish, to the possibilities of what your life can be.

Me? I choose to be happy and healthy and do what I can to keep it that way. I am a very fortunate person and blessed in many ways, but I”m no different than anyone else. We are all blessed in many ways, the difference, I think, is in how we choose to receive these blessings and what we choose to do with them.

So…what do you choose for the new year?

Happy eat-til-you-can’t-see-day!

Hello my friends! I just wanted to post a note and tell you all to have a happy Thanksgiving. Even if you’re one of my UK/European friends, I hope you have a fabulous day. I am thankful for all of you who keep me going. You make me think about things that I hadn’t thought of for a while, give me a laugh, or a helpful tip and I thank you for it. 

I hope your day is blessed with good health, friends, family, and no accidents in the kitchen! Oh, ok, since I said that, I guess I”ll just have to share a story of a Thanksgiving we had about 13 years ago.

We were living in Dallas at the time and I was in college. I had classmates from all over the country and you know poor college students don’t have the funds to fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so they normally save their cash for the big one.

Two of my best friends were from New York and going home was out of the question. My husband is a retail manager, so going back home to Oklahoma for me was out of the question as well, that whole black Friday thing and all. So we decided we would have our own little Thanksgiving celebration, just the four of us. Great!

So, I got a ham and our friend Joey, was going to smoke a turkey. MMMM! Joey set up the smoker at the foot of the stairs to our apartment, got it all ready and was going to let it smoke over night. Joey, and his girlfriend Charlanne (one of my BFF’s) stayed in our guest room so Joey could tend the turkey early in the morning, and they wouldn’t have to worry about transporting it an hour away.

It was a great idea. The problem: at some time during the night, the sprinklers came on and put out the coals in the smoker, so when we woke up all excited about this delicious bird that was waiting for us, well, it was only cooked about halfway through. Blech, can you say food poisoning? My husband and Joey tasted some of the meat on the outside and said they thought it was fine, but me? Well, I said thanks but no thanks, I prefer to keep my insides right where they are and don’t care to spend the rest of the weekend praying to that porcelain god for forgiveness for being so daft as to think I could eat something like that!

The bird went straight to the dumpster outside, it was too big for my garbage can.

Guess what! It doesn’t end there. Nope, not quite. So Joey, oh I love Joey, he was just the greatest guy, insisted that we have sweet potatoes. I never liked them, the taste, texture, smell, everything about them repulsed me, but they are tradition for many people and who am I to buck a tradition like that  for such a good friend? Joey bought I think 4 of the biggest sweet potatoes he could find and prepared them in a foil loaf pan. Have you ever seen big sweet potatoes live and in person? those suckers can be heavy, a pound each at least! Joey made his gooey sweet potato creation with maple syrup and marshmallows on top and put it in the oven to bake. When the timer went off, I opened the oven and attempted to remove it from the oven. Did you notice I said attempted? Those foil loaf pans are not designed to accommodate that much weight and as I was taking it out of the oven, the sides buckled and created a spout for this hot, sticky, nasty mess to spill all over my legs (thank God I was wearing jeans) and the floor! Amazingly, I managed to get the pan to the counter before I spilled the whole damn thing and made a mad dash for the shower and jumped in clothes and all! All I could think of was burns from that sticky stuff! When i returned, in clean clothes, I found everyone standing there looking at the mess wide-eyed and in complete disbelief at what had happened. I’m sure I was quite a sight running from the kitchen to the bathroom as if I had something up my, well, you know what I mean. We cleaned up the mess and had a lovely dinner. But I must say, if I never liked sweet potatoes before, I absolutely detested them after!

We moved out of the apartment about a year later and I was still finding sticky spots on the under sides of drawers and cabinet doors! Sheesh, what a mess! I can honestly say, I have not had any other Thanksgiving fiascos quite like that since. Unless you count the time that my grandmother and great aunt were going to come to our house for the very first time and I turned up with strep two days before. But that wasn’t my fault, and they just went to my brother’s house.

Anyway, all that to say, I hope you don’t wear hot, sticky sweet potatoes, or have your bird only half done and get food poisoning!

I am thankful for all the blessings of my life, even the ones I don’t necessarily want!

I’m going to get HATE mail for this one….

Yes, I think I may get flamed for this one, but I just don’t get the whole ‘Twilight’ thing. It’s everywhere and it just makes me want to puke! And yes, I’ve read the books. I know I am not exactly the demo she was writing for, but there are so many women my age, my friends even, who loved it, so I can’t say that’s why I think it’s a bunch of crap. I think it may have something to do with, oh, let’s see, the beginnings of an abusive/unhealthy relationship, and the inability to be true to her storyline. 

don’t get me wrong, I am not so far removed from my first love, that unreasonable, all-consuming, heady experience that I don’t remember what it’s about. What I don’t like about the whole Edward/Bella thing is him. He makes her feel like she can’t survive without him. Like she’s incapable of taking care of herself. He’s way too possessive and controlling. It makes me want to smack her and say, ‘Wake up! You don’t need this loser!’  I have friends who have been in abusive relationships and I’ve read enough about that situation and the abusers to understand that is how they maintain control over their partner. The abuser controls the finances so the other is unable to leave. He will make her feel like she is unable live without him, that no one else will love her the way that he does, or that no one else will love her period. And then there is the idea that if I can’t have you no one else will, which is frightening and happens way too often.

This ideal is the wrong message to send to young women. We need to empower them to know that they can take care of themselves, they don’t need to depend on a man, or woman, to get through life. I want young women, especially my daughter, to understand they do not need a significant other to validate themselves. A life partner/spouse/significant other is a want, not a need.

Not to mention, Ms. Meyer spent so much time laying the groundwork for the last book, defining the rules of transformation, but in the end, she abandoned her own rules, her own storyline, because she didn’t like the way it was going to end. The huge fight between the volturi and the werewolves turned out to be basically a game of dodge ball. Seriously? In any major battle, people get killed, it’s a fact of war. but she was unwilling to let anyone die and be true to her own story. She turned the Volturi into a bunch of pansies.

And don’t get me started on the whole ‘marriage’/baby/transformation of Bella. I quit reading the 4th book, ‘Breaking Dawn’ in protest. When Bella, who couldnt’ stand the smell of blood, suddenly had to drink  blood because of the eerie thing growing inside her, I had to quit. Oh that, and the whole pregnancy thing at all. I’m sorry, but if the undead doesnt’ have to breathe, doesn’t have a heartbeat, doesnt’ have blood, how is it he has the ability to ‘father’ offspring? Am I being too critical? I don’t think so. And yes, i did read on her website that whole thing about how it happened, but she probably should have included that in the book. I’m sure I”m not the only one who’s skeptical about the whole thing. Seriously. After three books of the characters talking about how terrible the transformation is and it’s a year or three of not being yourself, why is it that she doesn’t go through all that? it’s too convenient to save your main character from that. Why don’t the rules of vampireness apply to Bella the same way they did for Alice or Rosalie?

If you look at another series, Harry Potter, that deals with extraordinary characters, the author was able to let the  story unfold in the manner you expect it to, even though it meant killing off several of the main characters, no matter how painful it was. In any story, the characters have to be who they are, who they’ve been built up to be. Here’s a reference to an ‘old’ movie. ‘The Bodyguard’ anyone remember that one? In the end, you wanted them to be together, but that just wasn’t her. She was a pop star and her life was to travel around and perform, not settle down and bake cookies with Kevin Costner.

My message to Stephanie Meyer: rewrite the 4th book and keep the ending in line with the rest of the story, don’t alter it simply because you don’t want to kill off your characters. I totally understand becoming attached to these people, they have become very real to her, but people die, tragedy happens every day. Don’t sacrifice the story to your inability to stick with the plotline you’ve spent so much time creating. Suck it up, put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

http://alphainventions.com/rank?=https://1domesticgoddess.wordpress.com

http://alphainventions.com/blog?=https://1domesticgoddess.wordpress.com

You’re invited to my ‘Whine’ and cheese party!

I’m just going to whine and have a pity party for  a moment, so just humor me, if you will. I don’t do this often, I have way more important things to spend my time and energy on than things like this, so I’m just going to get it off my chest and out of my system and be done with it. Then, we’ll have a ‘whine’ and cheese party!

So I have this friend, well, I like to call her my friend, but that’s up for debate about now. She’s beautiful and glamorous and all the things I’d like to be, but just can’t seem to pull off as effortlessly as she does.  I’ve known her for about 5 years, long enough to know what kind of person the other is, right? Well, maybe not. I recently kind of started a debate with her on her Facebook page and she didn’t appreciate it. I offended her unintentionally and felt really terrible about it. So to apologize, I took her a 6 pack of her favorite soda and asked forgiveness. She said,’ that’s fine, I just don’t do that on my FB page’.  I’m ok with that. Some people use their FB page as a soapbox for debate and dialogue, others choose not to. 

A few years ago, we were walking together regularly and I felt we got to know each other pretty well and thought we were friends. Schedules changed, kids were out of school for summer and our walks came to an end. I get it. Life changes. We had lunch occasionally, but always at my invitation. We hosted parties (we are the party people) to which she and her husband would come, but my most recent soirees they have missed due to schedule conflicts.

Fast forward to now. I found out we were going to be vacationing at the same place, Disneyworld in Orlando, and made a comment that it would be fun if we could get together and have dinner together there, or meet at one of the parks one day and chat over a Mickey bar. She told me she wasn’t planning the trip, that they were just going to let things happen. Fine, I gave her our planned schedule and hoped we might get together. And yet, at the same time I was feeling like it was her trying to gently blow me off. Did you know that usually when you have a ‘gut’ feeling it’s mostly right? Mine was. We were in the same location for 5 days and didn’t run into each other. I never heard from her.

I guess I’m trying to say it really hurt my feelings and I’m done. I’m done trying to be friends with someone who doesn’t want to be friends with me. I really don’t know what happened to make things change so much and wish she would  tell me so I could make amends if it’s something I did. Agh. I hate the feeling of inadequacy. But, it’s over.

Thanks for letting me vent, I feel much better. Now it’s time for wine and cheese, when can you be here?