Life in the Middle Age Lane

Houston has been unusually cold lately.   The more I exercise the more I want to go clothes shopping. My kids think my life revolves around wine, my life revolves around them which leads me to drinking wine. I read on a tweet that grief is equal to the love we give and I found it profound. I love watching Game of Thrones but find that SNL got it right when they did the skit about it. (one of the writers has to be a prepubescent 13 year old with a fetish for boobies.) I do not dance enough with my husband and that would be one of my regrets. Thinking back when I was about 14, I wanted to be a clown....I often wonder if I would be in clown rehab by now if I had followed my dream. It's easy to lose who you are when you try to please everyone and not hurt anyone's feelings The love of my family speaks volumes of their beauty and perhaps my own.

For the start of spring break we decided to fly to Gainesville, yes I said fly.  However, God had other plans for us and due to the thick cloud coverage around Houston we could not get out in our little plane.  Can you say 14 hours on the road? This is not the first time this has happen to us.  One year we booked a beach house in Hilton Head, NC and again due to weather (it was very cold and the plane would not turn over!) we had to drive 17 hours to meet our friends.  The price of not booking refundable airfares. Which is the way I think I will go from now on. So here we are in March, hotel is booked, college tour is scheduled, we were even looking at property in Gainesville for possible summer home (not happening by the way) with this wonderful realtor, who I would highly recommend if anyone is interested. John did ALL of the driving to Florida.  Sweet man. Shelby making a peanut butter and banana sandwich.  One thing I learned when being conf...

Last week for spring break we drove to Gainesville to see Shelby's top choice in colleges, University of Florida.  We had three great tour guides who where themselves freshman and Shelby loved every minute of it.    Soon after the tour we hit the bookstore aka gift shop and purchased our Gator paraphernalia.....$200+ later we headed out to explore Gainesville.  I thought the young man pictured here was a little smitten with Shelby, he made sure to tell her three times he was going to become a dentist and focused a lot of his attention on her.  Not in a creepy way but in a very nice and attentive way.  In the hotel elevator "bonding" or should I say being silly! For dinner we did a yelp search and found the best pizza in Gainesville. Sachtels Pizza .  It had a great funky feel to it and the best pizza south of the mason - dixon line.  We ate inside the VW van along with another couple who seemed to be on their first date...

January started with a beautiful fairytale dance and ended with heartache and sorrow.  It has been a month full of ups and downs.  People that we care for have gone through the loss of a young life and the same week we experienced the loss of one of our family members. Two funerals, days apart and then the phone call from a friend about our old neighbor and my old walking partner, who was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Needless to say, my heart has been full of sorrow and heartache for most of January.   With all this emotional dejection all I needed was health issues:  I caught the flu, my mom was in the hospital and I stopped exercising. I need to learn to stop asking "What know?" Because God does have a sense a humor. With all this going on I forgot to tell you about our weekend at the deer lease. In times of sorrow you need to think of the good things in our lives because in reality they do outnumber the tragic. We did get to do a li...

Happy Anniversary to me!  Today marks my two years as a blogger.  I started this journey trying to find the answer to many questions.  However, I think now after two years of blogging I may have been asking the wrong questions. Writing feels good to me and I enjoy getting my thoughts out there. But also with that comes the awareness that I actually have someone knowing my thoughts and feelings, most relate but there is always that fear of rejection.  At times, I share probably way too much and many times I don't share enough thus making me feel like a fake. I have always had a hard time of going full throttle on anything, the minute I start getting good at something I stop.  I'm scared of failure so it's easier to sometimes just not try.  The fact that my blog has not attracted hundreds of readers is a comfort to me.  But I know that for the few readers I do have, I owe them honesty, frailty, humility and most of all sincerity. I promise that I...

While I was looking through our albums I came across my first wedding album.  Looking at the picture I hardly recognized myself.  And I certainly forgot who my bridesmaid were.  It has been over 28 years! All such beautiful ladies.  Rachel my maid of honor and I have unfortunately grown apart. She will always have a special part in my heart. A year older than me, I always wished I could have her life.  Top of her class, the love and closeness of her siblings, and amazing parents.  I spent a lot of time at her home during her senior year.  She went of to college and became an attorney and I became a wife. “Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me.”  ―  Bob Marley

1987 It is said that cats have nine lives.  I think we may have just as many.  I married a year after graduating high school at the tender age of 19.  During this time my younger brother who is  three years younger than me was dating Tabitha.  She spent a lot of time at our home during this time as I was planning my wedding and getting ready to move out.  It really does feel like another lifetime ago. Tabitha and Raul ended up having two beautiful children together.  My very first niece and nephew, Andrea and Raul, Jr. I write this because sweet young Tabitha passed away last Sunday, January 12th. 1989 I have a few regrets in my life as I imagine many people do. One of them was that I did not continue my friendship with Tabby.  That I could not be there for her on her hour of need when it came to my niece and nephew, as babies.  Our children are 1 year apart, starting with Andrea, Junior, and then Emilio.  I always thought o...