COVERING THE ROSE or TATTOO REGRET

Over 6 years ago I did something totally foolish. Something that had I stopped to consider the past and the very real possibility of it repeting itself, I would have never done.

This foolish thing was not done in haste or spur of the moment. I had put many hours of thought and soul searching into it before going ahead. I was first of all doing it for me, as a symbol of my dedication,love and belief in another person and what we shared, and also for those same reasons, doing it for them also. It was my gift and promise.

This foolish thing of which I write was a tattoo. Not a random tattoo from out of a book or off the wall but one I designed of initials. The other persons contribution to the design was a single rose bud. (The insane reality of this would come back and slap me in the face)

Once I became accustomed to the tattoo over my heart, it became a part of me. I loved looking at it. Many times at night while watching TV or trying to sleep, I would place my hand over it and remember all the times it was another persons hand there,gently tracing the design.

Those warm, fuzzy feeling about it persisted for about 2 1/2 years, then little by little, day by day, the joy,pride and love I felt about it dissolved. This gift that had meant so much to me, that had been more than just ink on my body was shit on,crumbled up and throw back in my face.

My small little tattoo, a gift I was so proud to give had no double meaning and was not interchangable with anyone else, was never presented as being to and for anyone else.

I couldn't and still can't stand to look at it and try to avoid doing so. Earlier in the year while being prepped for surgery, the attending nurse commmented on how unique and beautiful it was, going on to ask:

"Does it have a special meaning?"

Without pausing, I replied:

"No."

I have debated with myself about just leaving it alone to stand as a reminder for the future or to cover it, and if so, with what...?

I finally decided it did indeed need to be covered and with something that had meaning to me. That thing will be my favorite flower, the pansy.

Despite the name, the pansy is a strong and hardy flower. It grows, blooms and thrives when all other flowers are dead. If the weather gets really,really cold and severe, they always come back to live, grow and bloom again.

Roses come and roses go, but the pansy takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

ALABAMA'S IMMIGRATION LAW

I am SICK and TIRED about the big hoop de doo about the state of Alabama's tough new immigration law.

Sicker still of The Anniston Stars bleeding heart liberal H Brandt Ayers and his STUPID diatribes about this "hateful and mean spirited" law. SHUT UP YOU DAMN FOOL!


As a child my parents taught me about CHOICES and that CHOICES have CONSEQUENCES. Very simply that means, unless someone was kidnapped and dragged at gunpoint into this country AGAINST their will, they CHOSE to enter this country ILLEGALLY. They knew they were BREAKING the law and decided to do it anyway.

You are here illegally then you are breaking the law so there is no sense in protesting,marching and crying on TV about the awful state of Alabama and how they want to punish you. How about accepting some responsibility for your own ACTIONS and CHOICES!!!!!!!!!!!!

They say they are afraid someone will ask to see their papers or ID....Well guess the hell what.....that happens to Americans all the time, so if you don't want to show ID you better go somewhere else.

During my most recent surgery, I had to show my ID and prove who I was about 12 different times to 12 different people.

Rent a car.....hotel room....buy a car....register a car....get married...get divorced....apply for insurance....All those things and more you have to show ID....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This isn't something that has been cooked up by the powers that be to hurt your feelings!

I tell you what hurts my feelings.....people that come here ILLEGALLY, breaking the law and then making demands.

I don't have a thing in this world against people from other countries wanting to come here to the United States to make and have a better life for themselves and their children. This is a great country. My ancestors came here from Ireland,England,Scotland and France. Came here LEGALLY. So why should there be an exception for you....?


I wish all the people who SUPPORT this law would have their own marches and show support. There are more people for this than there are against it!


What I find "hateful and mean spirited" are the illegals here not paying taxes, working under the table all the while sucking up benefits that should go to those that came here respecting the laws of this country and doing things the right way.


In closing:

PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH. PRESS 2 TO DISCONNECT THIS CALL UNTIL YOU LEARN ENGLISH.

WHAT IT IS and WHAT IT AIN'T

I don't see the world in black and white. I try to see all the colors of the rainbow but the truth is for most of my life I've looked at the world through rose colored,hopeless romantic,real love can conquer and overcome anything eyes that dream dreams and look beyond what is into what could be.

So, as Dr Phil would say, "How is that workin' for ya?"

Not so good.

Having dreams and working to make them become reality is good. Living inside those dreams as if they are or will one day be reality isn't good or healthy. I've walked a tightrope between dreams and reality for more years than I care to count and I have rope burn along with the bumps and scars from all those years of free falling from those dreams down into the abyss of my reality.

There are things I wish someone would have told me long ago. Not that I would have listened. I might have heard the words but they always missed their mark. Some things a person just has to see and learn on their own.

I've wasted years.....YEARS of my life that I will never get back loving someone who didn't love me. Trying to make a place and insert myself into a life and heart where there was no room for me.

I overlooked things I shouldn't have.
Forgave more than I should.
Believed so deeply in something that wasn't real.
Gave second,third,fourth,one hundred ten, second chances.
Told myself it was alright "for now" to be the spare tire in the trunk of someones life, because, "one day".....

Well, ya know what....? "One day", might never get here and this day, this minute and this second are the only ones that count.

Always on the edge of "one day" and on the verge of almost being loved.

I couldn't face, acknowledge or accept the truth, even when it was right in front of me.

Walking that tightrope between words and actions.

I can write about these things now without anger or beating myself up for being such a damn fool.

All those questions I asked myself for all those years when all the frickin' time it was so very simple. I could have spared myself so much pain, hurt and anguish. But, I couldn't allow myself to see those things because I didn't want to lose him or what I imagined we had.

The truth unfolded and revealed itself slowly.

I didn't have him, I only had the illusion of him. As soon as I was out of sight, I was out of his life and mind. And the moments and things I held so dear that we had shared vanished before I was in his rear view mirror.

Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, I held my breath, always wondering and waiting for the other shoe to drop. To be forgotten, tossed aside and thrown away. Again. Trying to live in the moment yet at the same time trying not to get too caught up in it, always mindful it could disappear without warning.

When you consider and accept that people take and make time for those things and people that are important and mean something to them, then the fact that weeks, months and years could pass without so much as a word or explaination, then you can finally see and accept your place of importance in the life of another.

Anyone who ignores or disrespects you is showing how they feel.

I threw away my rose colored glasses and burned all those dreams. I finally realized that I don't want to be loved, wanted or needed every now and then or when there is nothing else going on or nobody else available and that I can't give my heart,mind,body and soul to someone who treats me like a spare tire, so this chick is out of the trunk.

CHASING DREAMS

Some years back, I made a U-turn in my life that lead to exactly nowhere. There I remained stuck inside some kind of twisted day dream or fantasy left over from childhood fairy tales.

I've since learned that life isn't a fairy tale and, "...they lived happily ever after", isn't the rule but the exception.

I refused to see things as they really were and instead chose to see them through my rose colored glasses and painted everything with unicorns and rainbows. I couldn't admit the truth to myself, nor could I acknowledge it because to do so would require taking off my rose colored glasses and seeing reality. I wasn't ready for reality. Not then. I am now.

It took a long time. A very,very long time and the glasses didn't come off all at once but painfully slow over time allowing me to see tiny bits of truth until at last the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was revealed live and in color right before my eyes.

The first step was seeing the truth.
Second step acknowledging the truth.
Third step accepting the truth.

If I could only go back and recapture all the time I spent chasing something that wasn't real and only existed to me.

I wrote the story line I wanted and edited the actions of others to fit what I felt and wanted. A never ending battle was going on in my mind pushing the truth from my mind.


It took watching another person chasing their dream and trying to hold onto it reguardless of the cost to their life,happiness, peace of mind,pride and self esteem that was my wake up call. As if someone held up a mirror, watching it from the side lines, I could not ignore the truth of my own life.

I guess the greatest lesson I've learned since I left the safety of my Daddy's home is this: Don't believe the words, believe the actions. Ideally, words and actions will line up and agree with one another but when they don't, remember that mouths will lie but actions never do.

Don't waste your time chasing rainbows. Make your own!

THE FACEBOOK POLICE

Living where I live, my parents doing what they did for a living and being who they were, I've pretty much lived in a bubble and under a microscope all of my life. There was nothing I could do and no where I could go within a 6 county radius of my home where there wasn't someone who could report back to Daddy where I was, what I was doing....etc. Not that I was doing anything bad, just normal teenage stuff, still you begin to feel that nothing you do is private...even down to a Father's Day gift I bought one year!

I thought that once I was married and had children of my own, the need for people to tattle and inform would disappear. It didn't and only added more people to tattle to. Again, not that I was doing anythng bad. For instance, one year I bumped into an old friend in town. I was having a terrible day. Never able to pull anything over on him and before I knew it was spilling my guts about a miserable marriage that was sucking the life out of me. He put his arms around me to comfort me. Geez...even here I feel the need to defend myself and point out, we had grown up and attended the same church together, he was like a brother to me, had never been anything even close to romantic about our relationship.

Well low and behold the next day the news made it to my oldest child and when the news gets back to me.....I am having an affair.

Seems like in this small southern state a male and female can't be friends.

It only got worse when I began working. In no time I had gone from cashier to assistant manager to store manager. When your district manager comes to your store for an all day visit and wants to go to lunch.....YOU GO TO LUNCH. Oh...that went over like a turd in a punchbowl!

Beyond all of that with children grown now we have Facebook and along with Facebook comes the Facebook Police.

These are the people on your friends list that prowl and snoop though your Facebook page. They look at everything you post and comment. They look at your friends. They judge each and every thing you do.

I have a lot of friends on Facebook. People I am related to, people I went to school with, used to work with, went to church with and people I met on another blog site that have became friends.

I have been told by one of the Facebook Police that a few of my friends look like "perverts" and "stoners". I even received a message last week from an old school friend who wanted to question my judgement about having gay and lesbian friends!

I don't mind telling you, that burnt my cookies to a crisp! How the hell dare you!!!!

Why is it mine or any other persons business who another person loves or sleeps with.....????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I told her straight up that as far back as high school I had gay and lesbian friends. You know what....I've never had any problems with my gay and lesbian friends. They accept me just as I accept them.

I deleted her and blocked her ass!

Why can't people just LIVE AND LET LIVE!

HAIRY TOES or THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO....YUCK...!

It continues to amaze me the way people dress to go out in public.

A grown woman and I'm talking if not 50 then knocking on the door of it, in Hello Kitty pj's and houseshoes shopping away in Wal-Mart. Come on now. How in thunder do you stand in front of the mirror dressed like that and tell yourself, "Oh yeah, I'm ready to go!"

Believe it or not, that isn't the worst.

While enjoying a nice dinner at one of my favorite Mexican places, seated at the table to my left, even though it was quite chilly here on Sunday, a man with the ugliest feet this side of glory.

The toenails were big,thick and yellow. At least they matched the thick callouses on his heels.

The big toe was so flippin' big it looked like it was trying to escape from his foot. The thing looked like a corndog as it dangled off the end of his sandals. Not one single hair on his head, and please understand I don't have a problem with bald men (THE ROCK to name but one) but the hair on his toes more than made up for the lack of hair on his head.

Not just a few sprigs of hair here and there, I'm talking dark, black hair all over his toes.

I understand people want to be comfortable, but geezzzz!

If you have more hair on your toes than on your head, do us all a favor and cover up them piggies.

PERFECT STORM

Last year all the elements in my upside down life lined up to create the perfect mental and emotional storm. A storm that blew the blinders off my eyes and sucked my head out of the sand.

Painful, very painful at first to acknowledge that I had only been lying to myself and giving someone else one free pass after another to lie to me also.

Very hard and painful giving up a dream that you have held so close to your heart, have fought so hard to protect and nurture.

You know what else is painful....?

Giving love but never receiving it in return. Or if you do it is rationed out in small bits as if there is none to spare.

Giving time and energy. Working to keep the lines of communication up and open, even if it means doing all the communicating yourself....

Never too busy to talk or write....and never having that returned.


Busy....forgot....didn't have time....etc...Once in a while....okay. I can roll with that. But ALL the time.....? Houston we have a problem.

So, I worked, wrote and cried myself, alone through the perfect mental and emotional storm.

And then.....

When I stopped communicating.....There was little to no communication.

LIGHT BULB MOMENT....!!!!

And then....I discovered......

How wonderful it is to love yourself and say, "Hell no. I'm not taking any more shit"

How wonderful it is to allow yourself to be and receive love.

How wonderful it is to throw down those defenses and allow someone to be strong for and there for me.

How wonderful....truly wonderful it is to matter to someone.....to have that freedom to pick up the phone at any time, without restrictions and know you will hear a voice that is glad you called.

How wonderful to NEVER hear how busy someone has been which translates into, "You weren't important enough to make the time or effort".

Sorry guys, but, "busy" doesn't cut the mustard. Perhaps it did before cell phones, email,text messages and Instant messages, but these days....nope....that dog won't hunt.

My new motto is, If I don't see it for myself....it don't mean diddly squat. You can tell someone all day long how much you love and miss them, but unless you show it....it doesn't mean one gosh darn thing. Just more empty words that have no meaning.

In closing....

When people show you who they REALLY are.....BELIEVE THEM.

and.....

When they show you how little you mean to them.....You better believe that too and run like hell and like the song by Carrie Underwood....."UNDO IT"