Hope and Dreams

Hope....the phoenix rising in me

I love this song so much, it is my new song for 2012, a song by Chad Brownlee.  I feel it in my soul, the change on the way so I thought I would share his song with you.

Chad Brownlee was a 6th round draft with the Vancouver Canuks, he had a love of hockey and a love of singing.  His birth town is Kelowna, BC a town I've visited a number of times since I have family there, a beautiful city set around a lake and the mountains.

Hope (Chad Brownlee)

We march as one in a scattered line,
A world of doubt and some shattered minds.
I know there'll be that moment we find our way.

Right now I'm facing a changing time.
The air is thick, but illusions find their way
Inside, holding us back from the truth.

And I wanna believe
There's a change on the way and a voice in the wind.
And I, I wanna see,
When I look to the sky, the phoenix rise.

Then there's hope.

If I could I would fix it all.
I'm just a man with a simple song, a band of one,
But words can be so strong.

A revolution is taking place.
A peaceful army could wash away and drown
The hurt that causes so much pain.

And I wanna believe
There's a change on the way and a voice in the wind.
And I, I wanna see,
When I look to the sky, the phoenix rise.

Then there's hope.
Then there's hope.

I wanna believe
There's a change on the way and a voice in the wind.
And I, I wanna see,
When I look to the sky, the phoenix rising.

Oh then there's hope.
Then there's hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3FECvlzTu8 

Skating at the Forks

Little Dutch girl skating....

This year I joined a great bunch of women organized by a little slip of an English woman.  She’s been in Canada for five years now and wanted to experience Manitoba and all it has to offer.  This year we have had many adventures, from weekend camping, to tubing down a river, to riding horses, to the Pembina Valley Amazing Race, to the corn maze, to driving spyder motorcycles and quads, to flying with women pilots.

Our last adventure for 2011 was skating under the canopy at “The Forks” in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada.  The Forks is a place where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet and a meeting place of Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years.  Every winter when the river freezes a trail is made to skate on; today because of the warm weather we’ve had lately there is only a small portion available.  They also flood the area under what’s called the Canopy where in the summer they have dancing.

We meet at 10 am for a hardy breakfast in the Forks Market, where there are about 15 of us, some skating today, some not.  The talk around the breakfast table is about my best friend hurting her tailbone stair surfing with a 5 year old.  She is getting a real good ribbing from one of the women; the mood is light, happy and festive.  Now being one that has done stair surfing at said best friends place, one needs to ensure they are fortified with a good bottle of wine and not a five year old sitting on your lap.

They say Ice Skating can be traced back 5000 years ago to Scandinavia and the Netherlands.  Skating enthusiasts laced animal bones to their footwear and glided across the frozen lakes, rivers and canals.   In the 13^th or 14^th century the Dutch invented skates with the use of wooden platforms with flat iron bottom runners and used poles to allow skaters to move around or be propelled. Eventually the blades were replaced with double edged iron blades that could cut through the ice and allow for a swifter and smoother movement.  Since I have a Dutch background, I wear my little Dutch looking hat to fit into the spirit of the skate.

They rent skates for $4.50 at the forks for those who don’t own a pair of skates.  That would be me, even when I was young I would only go skating when I could borrow some.  So yes I am a very novice skater, but excited to see if I would spend my time on my ass or standing up.  The women who own skates have already tied theirs up and are out under the canopy.  I decide on boys skates instead of figure skates, figuring they would keep me from being an ankle burner. 

Ankle burner you wonder?  I have two sons who played hockey from a young age, and the way to fix that is to tie them up real tight.  Since I’ve had the experience of tying up my boys’ skates, and every other player in the locker room for that matter, for some reason they all waited and asked me to tie theirs, I tie my skates nice and strong.

After the preliminary picture taking of one tying on one’s skates, I make my way out to the canopy.  On solid ground I walk fast, strong and confident.  Once I get to the edge where the ice begins is another story. 

Now as I timidly put my first skate on the ice, then my other, I look down and say out loud, come on skates move?  Nothing happens, and then I remember that I have to use my own leg power to make myself move.  If you’ve never skated before, moving on ice can be a challenge, as I try to move one foot in front of the other moving inch by inch.  My best friend feeling sorry for me comes to my rescue and takes my hand and slowly I start to move a little faster.  Now that I’m farther out she leaves me to my own wiles, lucky for me one of the women I’m with who is a good skater, grabs my hand.  I in turn grab the hand of another fellow novice, and her hand is grabbed by another good skater.

Now we are moving in a wide line around and around the ice, I’m thinking this is easy and we are all laughing.  Enter into the conga line, our fearless novice leader and another novice skater.  Now we are four novice skaters in the middle of two good skaters.  It is one of my best friend’s birthdays today, so as we skate around we sing happy birthday to her.  She is not skating today, but snapping pictures, with my other best friend who you'll remember from the conversation at breakfast hurt her tailbone.  One of the novice skaters falls with our fearless leader and thinking she has had enough and wants to try slower on her own she eliminates herself from the line.

Still Standing

The rest of us skate around and around and then finally come to a halt to pose for more pictures, With a twinkle in my eye I look at my fearless leader and say one, two, and three we all fall down, and down I go taking her with me.  I can be such a mischievous gal sometimes.  On the ice we start chatting with a man and his daughter, the daughter is falling all over the place, the man who by the way is Dutch is trying to help her.  We tell him he should go inside and see if there is a chair she could use, an old training aid for learning how to skate.  I silently think to myself, I should get myself a chair.  Inside there is an appliance you can rent, but apparently only one and it’s already been spoken for.  If I was him I would have grabbed one of the chairs anyways lol.

It’s a beautiful day for skating, but alias, this novice skater’s arches are starting to hurt, and I will have to make sure if I go skating again I get myself some good arch insoles to put inside the skates and oh yeah a good strong, tall, handsome man who can skate to hold me up.

The good skaters head down to the river to skate a little longer, while us novice ones go inside to rid ourselves of the skates and have hot chocolate.  While inside the birthday gal and I are getting our picture taken by her sister, when in pops a guy, he puts his arm around me and comes into the picture the sister snaps away.  I don’t know how or why we always have that affect on some men; it must be our fun loving side that draws them near.  All in all it was another adventure with a great group of women.

The guy on the right of me will keep his identity a secret as I don't know him

Soon it’s off to the belly dance emporium to look for a belly dance scarf.....but that will be another adventure.

Understanding Cougar.....a journey to enlightenment

"I am strong because I am weak. I'm beautiful because I know my flaws. I'm a lover because I am a fighter. I'm fearless because I have been afraid. I'm wise because I have been foolish. & I can laugh because I have known sadness."

Johari House with four rooms. Room 1 is the part of ourselves that we see and others see. Room 2 is the aspects that others see but we are not aware of. Room 3 is the most mysterious room in that the unconscious or subconscious part of us is seen by neither ourselves nor others. Room 4 is our private space, which we know but keep from others. 

My journey is to really see and understand my blind spots, make myself known to others in a different way, make others aware of my unconscious self and delve into that mysterious room.

So 2012 is around the corner, most have resolutions they made up, some will succeed and some will fail.

As I reflex back on my life as a whole, I see a pattern that has repeated itself through the span of years.  It started at an early age.  I had many friends back then, we all hung around in a group, not the type of gangs of today, just crazy young teens drinking, smoking, experimenting with drugs and living life footloose and carefree.  At the age of 12 I had my first boyfriend, we were at a girlfriends house for her birthday, the guys back then liked to get together and play in a band, still the same today, nothing really changes.

At the party there was one guy who was trying to get my attention, after a few beers, there we were kissing like teenagers do.  I remember friends asking us if we were going out together, he looked at me and said are we, at that point I felt peer pressure and said yes.  What did I know about boys at that time, I was not looking for a boyfriend at such a tender age.  During the two years we dated, my thoughts of him changed from timid to first love, unfortunately for me, he set into motion the terms of my relationships to come.  The baggage of the past, the things we seem to always go back to, even subconsciously.  The baggage that destroys relationships.  When the end came, he didn’t have the balls to tell me himself, he had some other guy tell me, and that guy spared no mercy telling me that this guy was cheating on me with my brothers ex girlfriend, a girl who I came to think of as a best friend. No closure at an early age, why do some men prefer to leave things unsaid, do they not realize that damage it can bring?

From the age of 14 to 16 I held feelings for this first love, quite possibly rejecting others more worthy who I was blind to see, this first love cut deep into my soft and gentle heart.  I started going out more, drinking more, experimenting with less invasive drugs, the cougar is a flirt by nature something she can’t help, it’s something that comes naturally.  I think it was by a higher design that one fateful night I met the man who was to be my future children’s father.  By the time I was sweet 16 I was looking for someone to fill the void in my soul, and I guess I let in the first one who was able to get through my blind spot and pretend that he really cared about me.

After years of reflecting on the choices I made in life, I have no regrets, it has shaped and molded me, the good that came out of that near 20 year relationship were my children and stopped me from a downward spiral of drinking, drugs and free love lifestyle.  For most of those 20 years, I settled into a homemaker, a mother, a non-drinker, a non-smoker,  a committed government worker, but it did have its cost.   This man turned out to be a controlling man, sometimes violent and abusive, another cheater, and more knives to stick into an already non-trusting heart.

When I finally found the courage to break away, I found myself spinning in a downward spiral, drinking, taking up smoking, letting a man into my life, all wrong for me.  I call myself a caretaker of lost souls, my heart goes out to them, but it cost me 10 years and more money than I care to remember.  This one was not a cheater, but a drinker, a druggie and lived off a woman with a gentle soul.  The turning point in this was a bout with cancer and the death of my father; still it took me almost 4 years to get him out of my life with my pension and house intact and debts cleared up,

Enter another man attracted to the caretaker, this one was smooth and made me believe that I could attract a man for any other reason than to take care of them.  A legacy left by the first love and abusive one, low self esteem.  How wrong can a lonely woman be, I continued to drink, he liked to gamble, and he had no qualms about me paying for him or living rent free.  And of course in comes the trust issue that has been following me all my life, yes true to form another cheater, but a good liar or maybe I just didn’t want to believe that it was true.  I think back on this troubled 4 years of my life and am glad that I finally realized him for who he was, not that he was a bad person, he couldn’t help himself.  How can anyone love someone else if they can’t love themselves?   

The only thing I wish for from this past relationship was that I didn’t get myself almost bankrupt with him and that I didn’t let him tear up my house to not put it back together again.  I think that fact that my house needs tender loving care is stopping me from really getting to know someone, it does embarrass me sometimes.  I have no idea why, but I know it in my heart that the fear exists, perhaps it’s because I don’t want to let anyone ever help me again.  That same trust issue always rearing its ugly head.

So for three more years I reject potential suitor after suitor on the online dating circuit, the ones that I choose are all the ones I know are set up to fail, even my best friend tells me so, she knows me so completely.  I still continue to drink, sometimes too much, having fun, being loud, expressive, and the life of the party.  A facade to my real feelings, feeling lonely and dead inside wondering when the roller coaster ride they call life is going to end and I’ll be free.

In 2009 my best friend gave me a writing journal; I start writing down my thoughts, the blank pages before me, and the song “Unwritten” resounding in my mind.  It felt liberating to write down the things I usually kept deep inside my mind, never releasing to anyone, very therapeutic.  When 2010 rings in, I decide my life needs to change, and that year it did, I retire and start working again, more so to get myself free of the debt the last guy and myself put me into.  At least this is one job and not the two jobs I had to been accustomed to doing those three years.  I feel I want to bring good things into my life, I’m still drinking, still going out having fun, but something is sadly missing.  My weight has been a problem like a yo-yo since my cancer; it’s always up and down due to a thyroid problem and to be perfectly honest the drinking. I start to think that perhaps it’s my weight that is stopping me from finding someone, a wrong choice in men made a reference to it once after dating me for a month, he must have been blind the whole time to tell me a month later he didn't realize I had a thick waist, good thing I respected myself and didn't sleep with him.

End of 2010 and I meet a man off of a dating site, he is different from the ones I’ve chosen, not an alcoholic, gambler at least to any extent, or a drug addict.  I feel he is gentle and also feel the chemistry, he seems to like me very much, but that is usually when I turn tail and run.  Only after one month he is on his way for a three month vacation and although I stay faithful to him through his journey when he returns I do something to set him out of my life, even though I could see that I did really like him, I’m rejecting him as I usually do the ones that could work for me.

 My life in the next three months take flight, I join a women’s group and start experiencing life from a new prospective, the bar and dancing stop for the most part in the spring/ summer.  Then as fate would have it, he catches me at my favorite dancing spot on a rare night and I, not him, ask to start over. He agrees but seems to have his reservations.  I can honestly say that during the next 3 ½ months I fell deeply in love with him, so much that I open up myself completely, a first for me after a life of being distrusting of men and their motives.  I try to let him know how I feel about him with the things I say, the things I do, but he seems to always be holding back expressing the same things to me, a thought I push to the back of my mind to my subconscious state, perhaps I don't want to believe that he is not feeling the same love towards me as I do him.  I’m experiencing some health issues, and find a new diet in September of 2011 that means no drinking, no coffee and only 500 calories, I start losing weight, and I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in a long time.  I look forward to the time when he returns from his travels, he is a long distance trucker, each time we are together I get butterflies in my stomach, and I realized that I have found the one I want to spend the rest of my life with, even though we don’t have a lot of interest in common, life is what one makes it, you don't need the same interest just a few common ones. I know and accept that he is out on the road, I also know that in the spring/summer and fall I can come out with him to.   He made me believe that I could trust him, to let my walls down, let him into my heart that he loved me but........

They say people come into your life for a reason, season or lifetime, I so wanted him for a lifetime, but god or this guy thought not.  One night over for dinner at his place and only the second time I’ve had alcohol since I started my diet in September, I shared a bottle of red wine with him only because he was making me dinner, something I thought was special.  We are going out to the bar in his town, one of my girlfriends is suppose to meet me.  I know I had one glass of red wine at the bar, but don’t remember anything else of the evening; it’s a blackout to me.  I’ve anguished over it many times, trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to why I had this blackout.  I thought of  everything from Reactive Hypoglycemia (I’m borderline and the reason for the needed weight loss), to someone putting a Rufi in my drink at the bar, which can’t be ruled out and seems to make sense when it was told to me, one does and says things they normally would not do, being beyond one's control.  All I can speculate is I must have behaved in a manner that was unbecoming to him and probably me if I had known what I was doing at the time, but he never explained to me why he wouldn’t talk to me again after that night.  He refused to answer my calls, refused to tell me why he didn’t want to see me again.  Just told me "I knew what I did", well I’m glad he has my memories and kept it all to himself.  If you love someone as much as I loved him, you would communicate with them as you want them in your life.  They will have good qualities and negative ones, but love will endure even with the negative if the love is pure and true.   I tried writing him many times to get through to him, but perhaps I set him further away from me in doing so.   If you’re reading this blog, I wish someday you would find it in your gentle heart to enlighten me why you ended us, finally give me my memories that I do not have of that night and whether you really loved me as I came to believe you did.  A kind man would give a lady closure but most people I find would rather run and leave things unfinished.

So I guess that brings me into my enlightenment and to the biggest changes I have to make in my life this coming year and it took the loss of someone I loved deeply to realize that.  Trusting in men and their motives has always been my biggest baggage, stop drinking to hide the hurt my second (drowning ones sorrows so to speak); losing the weight to keep me healthy and active in the summer of my years and opening up my heart to allow someone worthy into it.

My good friends call me angel, a sweetie and I know deep down that I’m a good person; this tarnished halo will be getting a new polish, and knowing that by expressing my thoughts in written form I will open myself up to still be that spirited, confident woman with a new outlook on life, liberated from the chains of my past. 

"A window to my soul, keeping a journal is my way of giving my feelings an outlet like no other, a place where my deepest thoughts can reside without fear of judgment, blame, or need of justification. Journals allow me to be just who I am, and are a place where I can travel through life's emotions with gentleness, compassion, and deeper understanding."

Now that I understand myself let the adventures begin...tomorrow it's my last adventure of 2011 skating at The Forks.....

Online Dating...hard yes...take it or leave it....

Now online dating sites especially the free ones are sometimes very amusing.  For some though they are a way to meet single people, let’s face it as you grow older and you’re single, you don’t have that many options, the bars are filled with the young and our lives have changed so much that for some bars are not an option. 

I’ve been on and off of a number of sites since 2004 and found no one worth keeping until my last relationship; this last site certainly has its quantities of men.  What I’ve learned from these sites is there are all kinds of people that lurk there, from your perverts who send you nude pictures of their neither regions, to the computer closets who are only on the site to chat because they are lonely, to the jocks/bunnies who are just looking for sex, to the married ones who are looking for a little outside change from their normal dreary lives.  Don’t get me wrong; there have been a few success stories, but only a few.  I could have been a success story, but for a mere three glasses of wine, or perhaps a drug in my drink, which at this point I'll never know, all I feel is sadness for what could have been;  given that person had the capacity for love and forgiveness.  Maybe he was one of those non-committals and truth be told, it was his opportunity for a way out to run like the Zac Brown Band song Colder Weather.  I'm the lover he's the runner, a rambling man with a gypsy soul.

I'm straying from my thoughts so back to my story, there are the ones that will only answer someone if a picture is up and they like it, to the rejected ones I say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder don’t let their shallowness or the fact they were not attracted to your type be the judge, each person has a beauty all their own and one’s persons garbage is another person’s treasure.  Of course there are the ones who rant and rave on their profiles because they met someone who weighs more than the picture posted or the picture was more than 10 years ago.  I will never understand the ones that do because hello...if you go out and meet them do you think they are not going to notice?

Another type are the ones who want to be your friend, I've gathered lots of friends along the way, some I still chat with, some I never hear from again, or they pop in and out after every break up.  One male friend is like a brother to me, and I'm happy to see he finally found someone on a dating site and they are both happy.  One of the best things that ever came out of a dating site, was meeting my three angels, who would have thought that best girlfriends could be found on a dating site!  We've had many adventures together and will have many more.

The latest trend is the scammers; you can tell them from a mile away, always a good looking picture, always spewing romantic nonsense about falling in love at first site with a lovely angel blah, blah, blah and then giving you their email to further the conversation.  I can honestly say to all the lonely men and women out there, be careful who you chat with, yes your lonely, it may be the first time in a long time that someone of the opposite sex seems interested, but they are more interested in your pocketbook.

I recently put myself back up on the site after a breakup a normal everyday occurrence in this world of dating. I like to think on what I want my profile to portray, the real me, so I wrote it and put myself back in the pond.  That profile didn’t last long because what do my eyes behold, but one viewer I wasn’t ready to see back on there, but I guess if I was so would he be.  That breakup being so fresh, I deleted myself.  It was just as well, because all the men messaging me at the time were the ones that were just looking for sex; wish I could look a little less sultry in my pictures.

But that did bring me back to the beginning, where do you go to meet someone when your older, forget the bars all the men ever do is stand on the edge of what  I refer to as gawkers row and watch the women dance.  Since I don’t fall in the percentage of women called “cougars on the prowl”, you know the kind the ones picking up the young men or any man for that matter at the end of the evening for sex, I have to look elsewhere for a life partner.  And forget the married friends there are no singles in those groups.  So after much anguish I create my profile, it’s a little long which I have since shorten, but then when I start to write the thoughts come flowing out of me.

I receive lots of responses from new men I haven’t had the opportunity to chat with before and a few who I have chatted with.  It never ceases to amaze me how some men can contact you, chat with you and then forget that they’ve chatted with you before and try to start up a conversation again, my pictures don’t look that different and all current but each of them seem to like what I wrote in my profile calling it different and refreshing, I just call it being honest.   I actually call one out on the fact we've chatted another profile ago and he tells me he remembers but there must be something intriguing about me to want to message me again.  I tell him I"m not ready for farm life, and I'm sure he will meet someone who is.  He thanks me and tells me he has the utmost respect for my explanation but would like to remain friends, he would always have a pair of rubber boots for me at Green Acres, I tell him I would rather have something between Green Acres and New York, but we could remain friends. 

At one point I hide my profile because I can’t keep up with the men who start to message me.  To me I only want to chat with one person at a time.  My motto is life is moving on, I’m in the summer of my years, I don’t want to spend endless hours messaging back and forth with someone who is to afraid to come out and meet me.

Then there are the ones who start talking about sex right off the hop, while the cougar is a very passionate woman, she doesn’t jump into bed with any Tom, Dick or Harry.  The cougar has class, she will not be classified as one of those serial daters who have to date and bed everyone on the dating site, talk about share and share alike, no thank you.

One thing this cougar needs is chemistry on first meet, and alas for this feline it is too far and in between where I meet someone who ignites my flame. You may ask me to define chemistry; a strong attraction that includes love, lust, infatuation, and a desire to be involved intimately with someone. Chemistry is emotional desire for relationship. It is outside of the realm of reason it “chooses” us.  Regardless your definition, chemistry is unconscious; we don’t “choose” who we’re attracted to. 

Sometimes when you chat with someone on the phone the conversation flows so easy, but when you do meet, there is not one twinge to make one want to see that person again.   Lately I’ve had a few first meets, but nothing that I want to continue with, perhaps the loss is still too fresh, I seem to be measuring these guys and they are falling short.

I had a guy contact me, and older gent, older than I thought I would accept but I don’t discard someone because of age, unless I could have birthed them or them me.  We chatted, I told him I wasn’t into endless messaging and he sent me his phone number, which at the time I was busy but did phone later.  He told me he read my profile, stated he liked it, we chatted on the phone for awhile, he was actually starting to sound like what you would call a pompous ass.  True to my thoughts about him he states, we really don’t have a lot in common, he doesn’t like to fish, camp or not much of anything except pump his aging body up at the gym, I'm thinking sounds boring but I don't say it out loud.  He says he doesn’t like to dance, he can’t understand how come so many women on the site like to dance.  Well now he has my back up and defending my love of dance, I tell him, I go out dancing with my girlfriends for exercise, it’s my time with my girls just like I would expect any man of mine to have time with his guy friends.  I tell him that I agreed that we don’t have any interests in common.  Then I tell him why did you even contact me if you read my profile?  All my interests are in my profile, which leads me to believe he must have just been looking at my picture and fantasizing .

Recently I was almost tempted, the cougar has been wearing down sexual lately from lack of, I was told I needed to be made love to every night and that special man was right.  This guy I was chatting with was someone who worked where I use to work but our paths had never crossed, we had something’s in common.  The problem here was he wanted me to come over to his place for first meet,  that made me wonder if I have a big D for Dumb written on my forehead?  I may be half blonde but never dumb.  He wanted me to come over today Boxing Day to share a glass of wine (never making that mistake again, booze is off my list), and he would give me a birthday and Christmas present all in one, him.  I promptly hid my profile, and sent him a polite message back, that I had hidden my profile; I wasn’t ready to move on, I would not be coming over to his place on Boxing Day and wished him good luck in finding someone right for him.  In his case probably true because there are many women who are only on these sites for sex, no wonder it's filled with non committal men.

So now I’m a little ticked off at the dating scene and think I need to work on fixing things that are wrong with me to hopefully bring that special one that someone new and on developing my adventures for 2012, thus this blog.  It won’t be a daily blog, but only when I feel the urge to let loose with a little writing, I hope it keeps you entertained.  

 Upcoming blogs New Years Eve at Jaguars, Club Regent stay tuned......

Christmas Day

All I wanted for Christmas never materialized but such is life.....sometimes we have to accept the things we cannot change and make the best of life......but then again perhaps it will be granted, what is hope but a belief in a positive outcome to event's in one's life after they make the necessary changes for the better.....

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”

This is the best day of the year, family, good cheer, good friends and good food.  The holidays is always when I cook everything under the sun.  Christmas dinner always consists of Turkey, stuffing, cranberries, meatballs, cabbage rolls, perogy's, kielbasa, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and of course the crescent rolls.

This Christmas isn't anything different, now I'm not Ukrainian  but it was a tradition of my children's paternal grandfather and is something I adopted into my Christmas.  I'm half English, my mother (warbride) and half  Dutch (dating back to the 1600's). Yes my father's family has been in Canada since the 1600's.

Today my two sons, my daughter and one of my sons girlfriends will partake of the delicious spread set out before us.  To everyone everywhere I wish you a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year......

Blank Pages

As 2012 nears, I have the urge to continue something that I did last August.  I want to talk about my life, and new adventures that will be coming in the new year.

"I love feeling upbeat and joyful. I’m feisty and eternally hopeful. But I have no need to feel wonderful every moment of my life. I want to allow, and even welcome, the ebb and flow of emotions along with the ebb and flow of events. I keep the basic attitude that life has great meaning, and that the broad and deep range of human emotion feeds my creative life in a way that nourishes my writing and my soul."

Carol Coven Grannick wrote the above on her link here and I feel the same:


http://www.scbwi-illinois.org/pub/PrairieWind/?p=1175

My life is an open book, with blank pages before me, as 2012 progresses, I will try to entertain you with the summer of my years.....stay tuned