GRANDPARENTHOOD IS DA BOMB

I learned that being a grandparent is one of the greatest gifts our children can give us. My family is fractured, broken, lost, dispersed, disjointed, and generally wackadoo. We don't know how to get along, everyone is yacking about everyone else and someone is constantly doing something that makes the rest of us wonder how we could be related.

That being said, I can't honestly say bringing more babies into this family is always the most wise thing to do but I'm happy as a lark nonetheless. This picture is of Liam when he was a couple of months old. He's two years old now. Every time I look at this, I feel that warmth come over me and want to kiss his little chubby cheeks.

No matter what kind of family you have, there's a future generation coming along and there's always hope in them.

DON'T FEED THE TROLLS

I've been having problems with internet trolls. The advice that everyone gives is always the same, they tell me, "don't feed the trolls." I say that each troll is a person and each person has feelings for the most part. While I'd like to simply ignore them, I can't help but try to understand them.

What drives a person to be mean, rude, and nasty to people they've never even met? That's a question with an in depth answer so I won't try to break that down. All I'm saying is that trolls are people too and a lot of the time they have pain and sorrow and they don't know how to channel it.

I will say this, if you're an internet troll, you could try just telling someone that you have pain in your heart. The answer isn't always to project your pain and suffering onto someone else! Try finding that total stranger you wish to prey upon and tell them that you're a broken man or woman and see if you can elicit sympathy and understanding instead of going from post to post and person to person getting yourself blocked and leaving the first impression as the very worst one possible. It's easy to do and most people would rather you tell them you hurt rather than expressing it in the form of rage and anger that is improperly directed at strangers. It's not our fault you hurt but give some of us a chance to help you. You'd be surprised how many people will actually relate to you for it. The only alternative is being the troll. You don't have to be a troll when you're really a human being.

MY TOE HURTS

It's the strangest anomaly. My doctor has started me on Abilify and I've developed a Tourette's type of tick in my pinkey toes (or 'pinkle' toes as my grandson says). I can't stop stretching my toes out and apart and my feet are actually starting to hurt from it. Ugh.

I'M SLOW AT CHANGE

Although I can handle change, it takes me awhile to acclimate to trying. For example, my avatar needed changing over a year ago. I lost visual on it in blogger some months back and it was time to change it. It was showing up on some pages and not on others but the fact is that the pic was old and it was time to update. I hate the thought of being the same person for years and years and then when the time comes to meet someone in person you've met online (friends that is), they see this person in front of them that doesn't remotely resemble the person in their avatar. I like to keep it updated even though it's only a testament to my aging process.

Change is good but it takes me some time to realize that change is needed. That being said, I seem to welcome changes frequently in life. For example, I've reinvented myself probably 9x. By "reinvented" I mean that I have lived an entirely different lifestyle throughout life. I've been a simple mother and house wife, a carpet installer for 13 years, a builder of houses, a painter, an electrician, a student, and I foresee a career in psychology or counseling in my future. I just seem to cycle through these changes and lifestyles albeit each one evolves at a slow pace. I find it interesting, and it's also very cool to have looked back over my 45 years and see that I've covered such a wide range of lifestyles. I was even a biker chick for a time, a tattoo fanatic, and a couple of things better left unmentioned. All of these required I shift gears and live a certain lifestyle in order to be a master of my trade or to be the best fan I could be. Whatever the case was at the time, it had to be a lifestyle and not just a hobby running in the background. When I go in, I go in all the way.

Life has been a roller coaster and it's not even over yet.

HOW TO...

Love bread and love ice cream? Would you believe that if you mix any kind of ice cream you choose into a bowl of self-rising flour, that you can make bread? Yep, it's that easy, mix about 3 cups of self-rising flour in with the amount of ice cream it takes to make it doughy and bake at 350°F for about 45 minutes or until your bread looks done and voila, bread made from ice cream. Sherbert is not recommended.