I (heart) Disney World.

The Disney vacation we took was just fabulous!  I've been going pretty much non-stop since we arrived back home though so it's taken awhile to assimilate all my thoughts about the trip.  I couldn't have been more blessed though I must say.  My father's friend, who retired from Disney, passed us into the parks each day for free.  That's right...a park hopper pass each day for free for each of us.  And my cousin Aaron's friend who works at Disney, who I hope is now my friend too, made one phone call and got the balance due for my stay at The Caribbean Beach Resort reduced by half!  So we went to Disney World for 3 days for $337 excluding food and souvenirs.

I booked the resort on my own.  Then told Dad I was going.  Then found out he'd ride along and see his friend, who wanted to get us in for free.  Then on the drive down my cousin's friend and I are texting and she asks for my resort confirmation number and gets me half off my resort stay.  I was so stunned.  A blessing from the universe just fell right into my lap.  I've been working non-stop for the last 6 months or so.  My work schedule doesn't allow for even 2 days off in a row - but I planned the time off and booked the trip and everything fell right into place.

Disney World has always been one of my favorite places to go.  Washington, DC is another one of my favorite spots.  In DC I love to learn and take photos of nearly everything I see.  But at Disney I just love to BE.  I literally didn't think about the Emergency Room where I work at all when I was in the parks at Disney.  How can you when you're surrounded by so much beauty and happiness?  Their attention to detail on such a large scale is perhaps the best in the world.  I've read that every single night at Disney the park grounds are steam cleaned.  You won't find cast members from Tomorrowland wandering around Adventureland.  Everything is consistent and well planned to the tiniest detail.  The customer service is simply outstanding.  However, you could easily drop five grand when you go.  One of the things I've learned is that the key to having a great Disney vacation lies in the planning.  I admit, I'm not a very good planner, but Disney is a different story.  I booked a Brunch with the Storybook Princesses at Epcot during our trip.  In 2008 when we went, I booked a character breakfast in the Magic Kingdom.  These are pricey but the food is generally excellent and you will most definitely not regret a penny.  The look on Sarah's face when she met the characters and the princesses was priceless! 

I plan to become a regular at Disney World...and not because I think I'll get a crazy good stroke of financial luck each time I book a resort stay.  I want to start going regularly because I have many happy memories from there when I was a child and there's still so much to do that I've not begun to even crack the surface yet!  Plus I always have a great time.  I definitely want to go on a Disney Cruise, which turns out to be way more affordable than I thought, and I want to visit the Disney resort Aulani in Hawaii.  I haven't even seen Hollywood Studios yet.  I think my Disney bucket list will grow rapidly!  I'm also about to become an authorized Disney Vacation Planner too, because I think it's awesome to live vicariously through others, and get ideas from others' when they stay and go there.  Plus I have always been very good at finding deals and spending vacation money wisely.  So, if you'd like to plan a trip, hit me up.  I'll be taking the Disney College of Knowledge course soon and I'll know even more!  If you want to hit me up and let me plan your trip I'll be most excited!  Who wants to be first?  Also, it's totally FREE for you.  That's the best part.  It's win-win for both of us!  :)  And it's such a contrast from my work in the ER that I'm really excited about it!

Could someone make a Disney Tarot?

I can't sleep so I might as well write.  We have 10 days until we are on our way down to Walt Disney World in Florida.  I cannot wait.  I might actually be more excited than the 7 year old.  We took her down there 4 years ago with her Nene and that was amazingly fun...even though Hal literally lost his job the day we got back.  Thankfully we recovered from that, although it was a crazy ride to do so.  You never know what fate has in store for you just around the corner. What seems so comfortable and smooth today could blow up tomorrow.  Count your blessings I guess.

Because I have had so many unhappy surprises in my life this go around, as most of us have I'm sure, I tend to like to know what's coming.  This is why I trust a psychic as one of my go-to girls in this lifetime, even though I didn't find her until 3 years ago.  And it's also why I'm spending a lot of time learning the Tarot.  Most call it a tool for divination.  I call it a spiritual quest.  I'm searching for the meaning of life...especially my own.  Whether or not the Tarot can accurately predict my future or not, it gives me plenty to think about.  These cards contain just about every human emotion, experience, predicament, and life situation you can think of.  If you haven't considered all of the elements of the human existence yet, pick up a Tarot deck and book and go to it.  I even joined a class called the Summer Tarot Immersion taught right here in Athens.  It's my way of saying to the Universe, I'm going to figure out my life dang it.  I'm going to "make something out of myself."  I might not be rich, or 100% happy, or have 2.5 children and a fenced in backyard suitable for a $500 dog...but I will find out what makes me tick and I will find out what my purpose is and how it's evolving.  I will discover where to put my talents to good use and I'll find my holes and plug them.  Intention is half the battle and I intend to make the most of this life.

Disney is a good start!  :)

Sarah now has one play under her belt, so to speak, but nonetheless I made a dining reservation with the Princesses at Epcot for a breakfast.  When I told her about it and asked her if she was excited to be eating with the Princesses she calmly smirked, "mommy they are just tall girls in a costume!"  My baby is growing up way too fast. Glad we went 4 years ago when everything was overwhelming yet believable.  I still remember her shrieking when Tinker Bell "flew" out of the castle on a zip line.  So sweet, but there will be more sweet memories made this time around too.  I love that child, and I love that God has blessed us with jobs so we can take her places once in a while and make some of her dreams comes true.

I was waiting.

I realize it's been a while.  After the first month of not writing I started thinking I'd need something quite profound to kick start my writing again, but of course I didn't find that.  I was in a superior funk and I'm just now feeling my creative juices rummaging around in there.  I have been writing though, just to clear that up.  In the middle of the funk, about 2 or 3 months in, I realized that writing - with a pen and a piece of paper - has always served me well when I can't think of anything else to bring me up for air.  So I grabbed my red Italian leather embossed journal that I began writing in - wait for it - in 2003 for goodness sakes...and I began to write.  Let it all out.  Writing with honesty, writing in detail about how much my life sucked at those particular moments seemed to each take tiny metric proverbial tons off my chest.  This is not to say life is perfect now, because it isn't.  Will it ever be though?  And is that what keeps some of us down?  Am I missing the goodness that's already in my life by being depressed and feeling forsaken because of what I don't feel and see here?  Call it the American Dream, call it the Soap Opera wish, call it vying for perfection.  What it is seems to be more of a crisis depressive funk trigger.

I'm coming out of it, and one of the things that is helping me is the Spiritual Journey I'm on.  In all of my life I've never felt such a desire to connect with my Higher Power.  Most of you call that God - and again it doesn't matter to me.  The more I look the more I find meaning in everything around me: every life, every death, every wrong turn, every lost love, every raindrop and starry sky.  Misery can sometimes be a good thing.  If it weren't for days, weeks, or months of misery, then we couldn't know happiness to be what it ultimately is.  Relief.  Protection.  Belief.  Faith.  Meaning.  Intention.  Truth.

Stick with me if you want.  I'm trying new things.  I'm gonna be putting myself out there a lot in the next few weeks and months.

I realize this wasn't profound.  But it might be one day.

Homeless and sick? C'mon over. I need someone to talk to.

It's not that I don't want to sleep or that I'm deliberately doing things to stay awake - it's that I simply have a brain that's set on nighttime. That's when I'm most awake and functional. I obviously work at night, every other night at a minimum actually, so I guess on the nights I don't work my brain runs wild with all the things I don't have time to think about when I'm working or spending time with my child. Sometimes I do chores, sometimes I pay bills, sometimes I watch television, sometimes I read, and lately I've become ever so slightly addicted to an iPad game! What I need to be doing is shopping. I've got the tree up, with Hal & Sarah's help. Already had lights up outside. Probably need more. I even put a little decoration on my door. When you have a 7 year old little girl, you just have to be in the Christmas spirit. There's really no getting out of it. Not that I've had a ton of trouble with it this year but I've struggled in the past. (We watched the Disney version of A Christmas Carol this afternoon just as a safeguard!).
It's hard to get excited about spending a lot of money when somebody's out of a job, or there are huge bills looming and needing to be paid. A lot of people are suffering right now. I meet people in the ER who desperately need basic healthcare, food, clothing, and shelter. But not every homeless or desolate soul is there from simple bad luck. Many people actually choose to be homeless, to live a free and unencumbered life, and to take advantage of the resources that are available for the poor. That was hard for me to understand when I first met someone like that. But think about that. You trade a potential big house with big debt and live in the woods with others in a commune of sorts - and you don't have to work. You get free meals from the local churches, and "free" health care from local clinics and ERs. Heck we even give out donated clothing at our ER. I wonder how bad being homeless actually is: until the weather gets wet and cold or you break a foot or really get sick. How much sympathy do people deserve when they've put themselves in that position? But this is a question that can't be answered tonight. Here's what lies in my mind in the wee hours. Got a show about a serial killer on television in the background. All I need now is a stiff drink and some pretzels.

I like these Apples.

I have a new toy! It's an iPad and right this very second I'm trying to use the on screen keyboard - feels like keyboarding class all over again. I am not one to spend a lot of money on myself but I couldn't resist the black Friday deal offered by Apple. I wanted one of these last year, of course, but I couldn't justify the expense versus our financial obligations and bring home pay. Thankfully this year is much different for us - and let me say again how very grateful I am that Hal's three year stretch of unemployment and underemployment ended early this year. We don't have an incredible excess but we have enough to pay all of our bills on time, eat well, and get the things we need - and that's enough for me. I am reminded of my father actually. We lived a very humble and frugal life when I was a child, and he in fact still does...but he believed very strongly in the power of a proper education so we had a Apple II C desktop computer with a dot matrix printer attached! Our house was very small but that computer had a front-and-center place right in the living room where my brother and I were encouraged to sit and play with the educational games, type papers and projects, and bask in the discovery and the cool things it could do. Now this iPad has a coolness factor that has exponentially blown me away but here I am in my house, sitting on my 14 year old scratched up leather couch, typing away. In this case the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I worked my way through school enough to be able to have a few things but more importantly, I have a true appreciation for the things I'm able to have. Thanks Dad.

Lindsey Buckingham rocked the house!

 

Hal and I went to the Lindsey Buckingham concert at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta - and wow it was totally worth it!  The traffic, the ticket price, the broken parking meter that resulted in all of us getting parking tickets...he was amazing!  That man can SING and can do all sorts of things to a guitar.  He's a true musical genius and it was left brain mania to hear him for 2 hours!

Start Something That Matters - read this book by Blake Mycoskie

Currently half way through this book - it's the really neat story of how Tom's shoes got started.  If you've ever thought about your own start up, this is a great guide with lots of awe-inspiring stories built in.  Blake Mycoskie is one smart dude.  I now own 3 pairs of Tom's shoes and Sarah has one.  We love 'em.  That means my dollars put shoes on our feet and the feet of 4 kids without shoes.  That's awesome!  Conscious buying.

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Something-Matters-Blake-Mycoskie/dp/1400069181