No makeup OR Filters

Not saying I'm beautiful and I'm not competing with Keri. But 20 years? Just proving JJ wrong...again. Come on, JJ...LOL.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

If everyone wants to know what the real me looks like without any layers at all, here ya go! :) However, what’s more important, is heart and soul, and mine is good.

Oh yeah, almost forgot—yesterday was a GOOD day. :)

On Jealousy

It’s sorta interesting how a hate site thinks they know me soooo well. Lol. They seem to believe I’m jealous of Keri for some reason. I agree with you guys, Keri wears makeup and appears very pretty. I think I met her at Fennboree once. She was very nice, if I’m recalling the right person. I’ve never been jealous of beautiful people. Or smart people. Or ANY people. Jealousy is not in my make-up.

I’m happy with plain ole me.

People seem to think I’m jealous when F has people over. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m the one who split ties with F, remember? I don’t want anything more to do with him. I will help myself to retrieving his treasure, though.

And Sean, you know very well I have never watched any of your videos or visited your YouTube channel before whenever it was that I commented. I can’t speak for James, though, as my account is set up on the TV and PlayStation. But hey, believe it was me if you want. Whatever floats your weird little boat. You seem to have some weird infatuation with me that I really don’t get.

Anyway, I’ve got too much going on to address you guys for a while. Mdavis, your clock is running out. Ten days from receipt.

Going to Santa Barbara in two days! So excited!

Update for Sean: Lol, you’re the sad one if you think I addressed you in my blog post about the same old YouTube videos. For the record, I did not mention anyone in that blog post by name. Second, if you think watching two seconds of one of your videos is “watching” your videos, then yep, I watched all two seconds of loud music before I clicked STOP, please, STOP. Lol.

Also, kpro is not Keri. But funny that you conspiracy theorists think so.

Ima bee busy...

Lots of business and busy-ness goin on round here. Getting ready for a trip to Santa Barbara, CA, to watch my beautiful daughter graduate high school. Then, it’s time to by Joe a boatload of things he will need for his summer in New Zealand. And have to get ready for Callie’s visit at our house for the whole summer too. I want to plan a special trip with her to wherever she wants to go.
Then there’s Aidan’s busy-ness. Getting her personal property, her car out of impound, paying the lawyer, putting money into Aidan’s account so she can have some comfort food, and planning and preparing for her hearing coming up in the next week or so.
Then there’s other really good business that I don’t want anyone to know about yet. You’ll see when it’s time. :)
James bought a couple carbon fiber additions to our car. They look pretty cool.

My Bucket List

So, I was in Joe's computer room yesterday helping him fix a computer issue, and while I was waiting for a reboot, I glanced over at his crowded bookshelf and noticed the Atlas Obscura. I'd bought it for Christmas a year or so ago, and I'd wanted to read it but never got around to it.

So, I plucked it from the shelf and started reading. It wasn't long before I realized my already way too long "bucket list" was about to get much longer.

I'm sure most of you already know that going to my ancestral homelands----Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Greenland, and Iceland-- are number one on my bucket list. They deserve their own blog post about all the sights I want to see and experience there, so I'll save those for another day.

Here are some cool things from the first few chapters of The Atlas Obscura I'm adding to my bucket list:

1. Tour Hereford Cathedral in England and see the Mappa Mundi. The Mappa Mundi is the oldest known medieval map in existence. It is probably one of the most wonderful maps ever. Wikipedia notes:

"It depicts 420 towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 animals and plants, 32 people, and five scenes from classical mythology.

Jerusalem is drawn at the centre of the circle, east is on top, showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world (1). Great Britain is drawn at the northwestern border (bottom left, 22 & 23). Curiously, the labels for Africa and Europe are reversed, with Europe scribed in red and gold as 'Africa', and vice versa."

2. The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, England. This place has an OMG Factor of 1000 out of 1000. It is supremely beautiful, sprinkled with mysterious elements of fantasy and boasting a secret but romantic past. At the beginning of WWI, many of the garden's workers were deployed to the battlefield. Many didn't survive, and the gardens fell into decay...and were forgotten...until a hurricane devastated the area in 1990. The website for Heligan Gardens gives this story of how the gardens were rediscovered:

"After decades of neglect, the devastating hurricane of 1990 should have consigned the now lost gardens to a footnote in history.

Instead, events conspired to bring us here and the romance of their decay took a hold on our imaginations. Our discovery of a tiny room, buried under fallen masonry in the corner of one of the walled gardens, was to unlock the secret of their demise. A motto etched into the limestone walls in barely legible pencil still reads “Don’t come here to sleep or slumber”, with the names of those who worked there signed under the date – August 1914. We were fired by a magnificent obsession to bring these once glorious gardens back to life in every sense and to tell, for the first time, not tales of lords and ladies but of those “ordinary” people who had made these gardens great, before departing for the Great War."

I don't know if I've ever beheld such a marvelous "secret" garden. It's so enchanting that even the stodgy ole Duke of Cornwall (Prince Charles of Wales) found himself delighted (trust me--that's his delighted face) to walk across the rope bridge:

But take in a deep breath before you look at these next pics...because they are breathtaking:

I just HAVE to go there one day!

3. Skellig Michael is the larger of the two Skellig islands located off the peninsula near County Derry, Ireland. The monastery flourished between the 6th and 8th centuries, and the monks there weren't feeble old men. Harsh weather and climbing endless flights of stairs made these men strong, and as a result, they held off a Viking attack in 823. What's cool about many places in England is that you can roam among ruins, touch anything you want, without gates or chains to keep you two hundred feet away. I remember wandering around the ruins of Scarborough Castle, alone, and the experience was one I'll never forget.

4. The Crypts at Christ Church-- Christ Church in Dublin was one of the first Viking Churches to be built in Ireland. The crypts below look amazing to wander through. 

6. The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland-- I HAVE to walk among these hexagonal basalt formations....because they're depicted in Dragon Age Inquisition.

The legend goes:

"According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant. The story goes that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two giants could meet. In one version of the story, Fionn defeats Benandonner.^[9] In another, Fionn hides from Benandonner when he realises that his foe is much bigger than he is. Fionn's wife, Oonagh, disguises Fionn as a baby and tucks him in a cradle. When Benandonner sees the size of the 'baby', he reckons that its father, Fionn, must be a giant among giants. He flees back to Scotland in fright, destroying the causeway behind him so that Fionn would be unable to chase him down.^[10] Across the sea, there are identical basalt columns (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at Fingal's Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa, and it is possible that the story was influenced by this."

Here's part of the actual causeway. 

Here's part in DA:

7. Eisbachwelle-- What surfer wouldn't want to surf on this stationary wave for their longest ride ever? This one is in Germany, and despite the cold, I'm up for it!

8. Capri's Blue Grotto---I'd like to rent a private boat to take us there during off hours...the place is my kind of blue...

And Capri doesn't look too shabby either!

Anyway, I just thought I'd share some obscure but interesting places I've found  in the first few pages of the book. I'll post more as I find more. And I'll list the cool bucket list things I want to do in my ancestral lands. 

Right now, I'm planning my trip to CA to see Callie graduate!

On Setbacks in Life

We all suffer setbacks at one time or another. My daughter's recent arrest was a setback, but not disastrous. I can tell by the way she speaks to me on the phone that she was not using at the time of her arrest, because believe me, the mother of an addict can tell when their child has relapsed. I thank God every day that she hasn't relapsed and I pray to God every day that she doesn't, because that WOULD be a much bigger setback than what she's dealing with now. Working through problems with a using addict is nearly impossible, but working through setbacks with someone who is determined to make right choices in the future is workable.

I firmly and whole-heartedly believe my daughter will come through this stronger, and more determined to stay on the right track. She has a good attitude, owns her mistakes and is ready to move forward. One thing I'm trying to teach her is that she doesn't need to feel shame for falling to addiction. It can happen to the strongest people. She can make it through and she can have a successful life. The people who SHOULD feel shame are the ones who are trying to constantly post her mugshot in an effort to shame me through shaming her. It won't work. We are unconquerable.

So, we pick ourselves up and keep marching on. What was it that Sean recently said about Edison and failure? I think I used that quote in a blog post in the past as well. Funny how the haters seemed to love that quote when Sean said it while incorrectly assuming my "failures" were a different animal. Bravo, Sean, you proved the hate site's hypocrisy!

And really, failures? I made decent money writing and editing. I didn't stop writing and editing because I failed at it--I stopped because I didn't like writing or editing that kind of thing--and I stopped when I was starting to make some good money. Being a multi-published author, no matter what genre, is EXTREMELY difficult to do, unless you self-publish. All of my novels and articles were paid gigs. I still receive royalty checks because the haters want to pay me, I suppose. But I didn't get to be a senior editor for three different top Internet publishing companies by failing at what I do. And why have none of the haters looked at the other places I've been published? Like Guideposts, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Outlook? Made extremely good money for the latter--$1200 for 800 words that took me about 25 minutes to write--not bad.

It's funny the pictures the imaginations of haters dream up. You know, that I'm some screechy, high maintenance, frantic b---- who's always desperate or screaming like a banshee. Lol. Not so, little bears...I'm the calmest girl around. I am passionate, yes, when I write something that means a lot to me. But on the surface, I'm calm, cheerful, and always ready to laugh or smile. People who actually know me personally see that.

But setbacks are just one step backward. When taking two steps forward, I'm sure to always keep moving that way. When I get knocked down, I ALWAYS get back up again. I NEVER give up, not on my daughter, not on my life, not on anything--I keep marching, I keep looking up, and I keep moving forward. no matter how hard the struggle, no matter how deep the mud, no matter how thick the smoke from fires burning all around. I keep on.

And that, my friends, is what makes me... UNCONQUERABLE.

Woohoo! Friday!

Predictions: Vanity Fair and Esquire coming soon...

Busy Busy But Sittin’ Pretty

I’m working some overtime this week learning the surgery and special procedures part of the job and going back and forth between two offices. It’s very busy, but very fun. And a little hard, at first—wearing a thirty pound lead apron for two and a half hours straight and muscling around a heavy C-arm is not exactly a walk in the park. But it just takes getting used to, and it’ll be a breeze in no time. I really enjoy it, and the spine doc is wonderful—easy going, very jokey, and a teacher—he was great at explaining everything and gauging what I already know, which is a decent amount due to my previous experience. :)

Not much else is going on. Everything is going pretty well. Wheels are rolling-- no stopping, no halting, no regrets, no fear.

Viking Strong. Always.