across the universe, roses, and weeds...

wednesday

oj came over with the beatles movie, across the universe, a bottle of zin, and whatever he was drinking. the movie and/or the wine was really good. sometimes musicals totally overstimulate me, and my add kicks in. apparently, though, there was enough wine (my first since Christmas eve), spoken dialogue, and artistic scenery in this one  i was able to enjoy it:D  it was actually quite groovy...

i dig the beatles.
i love a lot of their music.
i love Jesus' first miracle of wine as well;b
i love spending time with oj.

thursday (valentines day)

i got out of the house for the first time since the ice storm yesterday. i had to go to evansville to get john his valentine. so, i went to bud's and got him a harley davidson jacket, gloves, and a neck cover to keep him warm when he rides his bike in the winter (gotta keep my boy warm:).
speaking of my boy,  he came home with a dozen roses  and a new video game for me...  now, how sweet is that?
i love my boy!
i love keeping him warm.
i love valentines day.
i love roses.
and i really dig video games!

friday

recently, i heard a quote, which stuck with me, "everybody's got weeds in their gardens".
it's true.  i've had them,  and, thankfully,  i've learned to rid myself of them!
it's hard sometimes...
i guess that's why i keep my "garden" small.
i love meaningful quotes. i love learning hard lessons. i love my garden, small.
love and God's blessings, dani xxx

ice laden tree branches, snow, and roads...

it was even more beautiful today  than it was yesterday.
but, looks can be deceiving.
it is treacherous as hell out there! 
before  i happened to think  about the ice covered hill  in our front yard, i leashed maggie and let her out  to go potty.  my babydogger
looked like bambi  from the scene  on the frozen pond- all four legs going  in different directions.
i was scared to death  i wouldn't get to her
before she slid down the hill on the ice and hanged herself.
thank God  i did and she didn't!
~@~
later this afternoon, katherine and i were  watching general hospital and heard a big boom! i looked out to see
a branch as big as a tree  had snapped and fallen. given there was nothing i could do about it,
i just closed the blinds
and rejoined our story (already in progress;).
~@~
school is already cancelled
for tomorrow
as the roads are completely iced-over... 
meaning  i get to spend another day snuggled up with katherine and my three m's.
i love snow days with katherine, i love my three m's, 
i love electric blankets, and
i am thankful we have electricity to keep us warm.   thank you, God!
love and God's blessings, dani xxx

snow...

content

the snow is falling.
i am under the covers...
all warm and cozy.

(a haiku by me:)

love and God's blessings,
dani xxx

for friday, saturday, and sunday...

for friday...

i have always loved fridays:
my aunts picking me up early from day care,
eating peanut butter on a spoon and watching marcia yockey's weather forecast with my grandmommie,
and
getting earrings painted on my ears with paintable eye shadow.


for saturday...

i have always loved saturdays:
watching the pink panther, big john/little john, looney tunes, isis, etc. on saturday mornings,
going to the beauty shop and the grocery with my mamaw,
and
getting burger chef kid meals.

for today...

i have always loved sundays;
today's blessings?
i'll mention just two.
it involves a precious baby boy and a best friend who was willing to share him with me...
why just 2 today?\ because it's sunday and since he was a wee baby he's been one of the brightest lights in my life... and, his mom my dear friend.


sam!!!





and  dana, the friend who shared him with me:D



love and God's blessings, dani xxx

ash thursday

well, it's ash thursday... i have watched my diet, drunk the right amount of water i was supposed to, and signed up for an online BIble study for which i'm awaiting a response.

the problem is i haven't exercised (i did watch the "step" dvd, though). i just don't feel like it. it's a real "catch 22" for me. i am still contemplating it, however;D... 
i love Bible study!
i love watching a dvd instead of exercising;o
i love knowing i have safe drinking water  (even though i'm not thrilled  about having to drink it;).
love and God's blessings, dani xxx

ash wednesday...

katherine asked me last night what i was going to "give up" this year for lent. without thought i told her i didn't know if i was going to "give up" anything, but i was contemplating "doing something" instead. later, i decided i would start a Bible study, exercise, and start keeping a diary of my more healthy food intake.
so, this morning i opened the wi step box and started the program. also, i pulled my "a heart like His" Bible study out of the closet and started the study, and finally i began eating more healthfully and taking note of it.
additionally, i want this lenten season to be a very positive experience. so, i have also decided to blog each day and keep a list of the above as well as a list of that which i love and am thankful for in my life... things that are very random and not in any particular order.
God is my number one... not because He is supposed to be nor because He is the right answer...   God is my number one because He saved me from a life of despair in the fall of 1999. i don't use the term "saved" lightly. i mean He came into my life on a saturday afternoon while i was talking on the phone; and the feeling of having Him invade my body made me literally weak in the knees<<< actually weak all over my body and mind!!!
speaking of being saved, before i go any further, i have to credit dr. larry crick for still being alive today. long story short>>> i was having tia's when katherine was a baby. i took her in for her 2-year check up and asked dr. crick to help me. (i had asked 2 local dr.'s to refer me to vanderbilt because i knew something wasn't right with my health. neither chose to do so.) before i got home from katherine's appointment i already had a message from dr. crick's office saying that i had an appointment with dr. howard kirshner in two days at vandy. dr. howard kirshner was just any gp; he was the dean of the department of neurology at vanderbilt hospital!!!    dr. crick was and is my savior here on earth!   i know there is a special place for him  and his precious wife, cathy, in heaven... i dearly love them both!
other things i love...
grandmothers
a devoted husband
a precious daughter
a floppy puppy
memories of my mosses...
to be continued...
love and God's blessings, dani xxx

chock full of nuts...

i saw a great movie, the bucket list, on sunday night. katherine and her friend, jason, had already seen it. "great" was the word they used to describe it. they were right. of course, it had to be... it had my favorite two actors of all time in it. nicholson and freeman!  i just couldn't believe katherine would think it was very good (she haaaaaaaaatttteeesss sad movies).  

from the previews and the title, i assumed i would see both jack nicholson's and morgan freeman's characters', "edward" and "carter", lives come to an end but not before seeing them do the things they'd always wanted to do but hadn't. the movie was an emotional roller-coaster... for me, anyway. i hadn't cried like that at the end of a movie since jenny died at the end of forest gump. however, i cried buckets (no pun intended) at the end of this one, 

which, by they way, did not end exactly the way i had expected!!!

love and God's blessings,

dani xxx

thanksgiving consciousness...

thanksgiving:

i can jubilate when i find a lone, diet coke in the back of the refrigerator and thank GOD it is there hidden behind the last two nights' left-overs. other times i can be so thankful when at just the right time i remember to go pay my utilities, and, again, i thank GOD for reminding me. i'm one that pays close attention to the small things HE does in my life. it's weird and complacent, but the big things often pass by basically unnoticed.
katherine, oj, and i decided we were boycotting thanksgiving...  well, kind of,  is that sac-religious?  never mind,  DON'T ANSWER THAT!
i had no desire to cook; kat doesn't like the traditional food, and oj, kat, and i didn't feel like being social!!!  john was going to his aunt's where all his family had gathered since his dad died. most of mine is gone or no longer live in henderson:( 
"what will we three do?" was the question i asked myself. 
so, katherine came up with a plan: my brother would come over, we would go get thanksgiving buffet to go, come home, put on our pajamas, and eat in the family room while watching Christmas movies all afternoon. i thought it would be okay. i was actually hoping for better than just "okay".
i'm one of those people who if i cannot have it the way i want it, the way it used to be... i say scrap it; and do it differently. oj and katherine are the same. we 3? are bad, i know... "the way i like it, the way it used to be..." you may want to know? so, here goes:
i used to awake to the smells of mom baking pecan and pumpkin pies, and cherry cobbler.
i watched the macy's thanksgiving day parade,
donned a sweatshirt, jeans, and my favorite sneakers,
and (when mom was finished baking) went to my mamaw's house.
there, i helped mamaw toast the bread, break up the cornbread, chop the celery and onions for the stuffing, and taste it along the way until it was perfect, which it ALWAYS was!
further,  as mamaw rolled the dough for the dumplings,  i cut cut it, and i helped her debone the chicken for the dumplings and giblet gravy.
all while i took in the aromas of the baking turkey and candied yams and the fresh corn and green beans simmering on her stove-top. then when all was taken care of in the kitchen, i curled up on the couch next to mamaw and watched old movies  until everyone began arriving. mary ann, steve, neel, aunt shirley, uncle harry, and dad...
when everyone was finally there, we ate. we ate, and ate, and ate, and ate... until we were the stuffed turkeys.
then i went outside and played nerf football with steve and neel.  thanksgiving was a time for food, contentment,  tradition, and, most importantly, love.
this year was definitely different from the tradition i enjoyed.  i just hoped katherine would remember it as a gift for her as she was the one really wanting to stay home this year. she wanted rolls with honey butter and pecan pie while not having to get out of her pj's, movies, and cuddle time... that's exactly what she got! 
oj, on the other hand, ended up with stomach flu. so, it was just katherine and me... our weighed-out buffet thanksgiving dinner, pajamas, and it's a wonderful life.  i was thankful for the day, the company and the food...  oh, yeah and the last diet coke left in the frige;)

love and God's blessings, dani xxx

teriyaki chicken, fall cleaning, and the diet-cherry limeade i never got...

this weekend went by very quickly... friday night i went to rookies and had the usual (minus the zin)... teriyaki chicken, veggies, and a plain, baked potato. yes, the teriyaki chicken made getting on and off my rings basically impossible!!! it was one of my best friends, joyce's, birthday. unbelievably, she was 70!!! you'd never know it, though; the secret is, she doesn't either. i thought she was going to literally puke when she opened her card, which had a large "70" on the front. she said it was the first time she'd seen it in print. LOL!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
saturday, i did it!!! i awoke and decided that it was time to start my fall cleaning. don't get me wrong; i'm not the type to do spring nor fall cleaning on a regular basis... i don't think i've done fall cleaning since my niemeier's "adios, amigos" party 4 years ago, which means i haven't gotten my new "yearly blinds" since then, either. that reminds me, i need to measure tomorrow. anyway, i did put a small dent in things around here. i've always heard getting started is the hardest part. for me, however, figuring out WHERE to start is my problem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
about that diet cherry-limeade... so, i was cleaning, dust was flying, and i was so thirsty. i asked john if he would go to sonic and get me my drink of choice. he laughed and said that his finger hurt, it was too late, and lamest of all that if he were me he'd just drink a glass of tap. what a turd!!! i HATE tap water!!!
love and God's blessings,
danixxx

one person's paradise... another's hell...

every year many fellow hendersonians head to destin for fall break; so it never comes as any surprise to run into someone i know there... at the beach, the super-market, a restaurant, etc... it would actually be more surprising to spend a week there and NOT run into someone i know!
this year was pretty much the same.
however, there was one exception, sherri (i'll not divulge the woman's true identity but will refer to her only as, "sherri"). upon returning from the beach on monday afternoon, i entered my brother-in-law's and sister-in-law's condo to find my brother-in-law, tom, and my husband, john, conversing with sherri about her/their high school days. sherri had graduated with tom a few years ahead of john. i found out that she had, at one time, been a beautiful, young woman with everything in the world going for her. 
looking at her now, though, i would have never guessed...
sherri sat there dazed looking at me with bleached, blond hair, which appeared to have the texture of straw, brown, leathery, wrinkled skin , protruding face, shoulder, and clavicle bones, filthy clothes, and holding a very used, styrofoam cup full of beer. 
when i came in, my guys excused themselves. she and i formed an instant friendship.  she told me and her husband had fallen on hard times and had moved to florida to find work. she said she lived in the house (which was really a junked up garage that had been converted into some kind of place to lay one's head) directly behind our condos.
she smiled and laughed; her teeth were transparent and rotting.
before leaving, she asked me if she could come back to visit with me again. i told her she could that she was more than welcomed...
she broke my heart. 
the next afternoon our doorbell rang unexpectedly. i went to the door, and there sherri stood. i had just come in from the store. after putting away our groceries, i invited her out onto our patio.  seeing her in the sunlight, i realized she had dressed up for the occasion. she had pulled her hair back into a ponytail with a colorful scarf, and she had put on some make-up... at least there were gray penciled circles drawn around each of her eyes. in a movie, sherri might have been funny character because she was funny. but, in real-life, i found no humor.  she was a shell of a person whose only personality came from the alcohol she was holding in the same filthy, styrofoam cup from the day prior.
we started talking, and i found out that sherri and her first husband had once owned much of henderson's downtown area, that she had designed their home (with which i was familiar) where her first husband still lives, and that i knew both of her sons (who had been taken away from her for some reason or another in the late 80's early 90's). she talked, smoked, and drank. 
this went on for nearly two hours. 
 only minutes in, i began to find it remarkable that this woman could function well enough to put her hair in a ponytail (much less tie a scarf around it), she could put on eye-liner (much less draw ovals with seemingly no breaks around her eyes), pour herself a cup of beer, or even light a cigarette; yet, she did.  at the same time, sherri couldn't even keep her thoughts in order. but, i listened to and smiled at her animated tales of her past.
then came the stories of her present, which were a stark contrast to those of her past.  she told me she was most proud of a picture of allan jackson she had hanging above her grandmother's hutch and her dog, an alaskan husky. her more positive thoughts quickly turned negative with stories of a husband who nagged at her every afternoon upon arriving home from work, a daughter-in-law who never answered her phone calls, and... "OH!!!" her ribs and kraut that were in her oven burning. upon that revelation, sherri left but not before asking if she could come to visit again before we would leave to come home. i smiled and answered, "sure."
i didn't see sherri again last week. but, i wondered what happened to trigger this woman's downward spiral. was it drugs, alcohol, womanizing men? all the above? i decided it was probably the latter.
our condo was full of hendersonians most of whom were sherri's age. sherri was evidently a notorious figure to most of them. apparently, every year when henderson flocks to destin, she, comes out and goes door-to-door looking for someone to talk to about home. the reason i had never met her was because this was the first year my family and i had stayed in this particular condo.
i asked someone who knew her what was the matter with her. "she's a crack-head..." was the response i received. from what very little i know about the drug of the day, it made sense... here this woman had lost her children, home, money, youth, intellect, beauty, and most importantly her dignity all for a "fix"!
isn't that how the story usually goes?
one word sums up the situation... "pathetic". 
sherri lives in a place that many would call paradise (amazing white sands, a brilliant, emerald coast, beautiful weather, happy people there with their families enjoying just being together... and all in her back yard). but, perhaps in sherri's situation, what is one person's paradise is another person's hell. 
sherri is living in her own personal hell;  it is written all over her face.

i was told she did come looking for me. she did, however, find another woman, tonya, who was a little younger and a head taller than i, who was vacationing at least 5 condos down from ours. she was sure tonya was me. upon realizing she was not, sherri asked tonya if she minded her joining tonya at the pool. tonya who was affraid of the woman told her it was against the resort's policy and understandably turned her away. 
that was the last i heard...
i cannot get her off my mind. so, please, just say a prayer for her... say a prayer for her and all others who allow a "fix" to stand between them and that which is really important... LIFE... the gift with which GOD has blessed each of us...

love and God's blessings,
dani xxx