Hello Boomers,
Ok, the truth is, I need a place to escape! I thought I'd drop in to see if this is still the same "happy place" I used to love to visit.
I kinda dropped outa sight a while back and when I explain myself, I think you'll see why.
Well, here around the house, it used to be me, my husband and my daughter, Lani. We moved to Florida 4 1/2 yrs. ago.
Almost 2 yrs. ago, my son Simon (now 25) moved down here from Ohio to join us because he decided to go back to college. Our son Corey (now 21) had no choice but to follow as he was living with Simon. Corey brought Katey, his girlfriend (now 20) and they all registered at Indian River State College.
In the meantime, Lani graduated from high school and got a scholarship in the music program for Opera YEA!!!--at Indian River State Collage.
Simon, Corey and Katey will be getting their associates degree in May. Lani has another year to go. Simon is going to quit his job and travel for the summer and Corey and Katey will probably bolt for Ohio to stay with Katey's parents for the summer. They will be returning to Florida in the Fall, but will be attending college several hours drive away from here.
Now, over a month ago, my son Stephen, his wife Karen and his son Ayden decided to move back to Florida. They, too, are staying here for a couple of months until they save enough to get their own place. It was important for them to move now because Karen needs to take part 2 & 3 (of 4) of her national board tests for her Chiropractic liscense. Review classes were here in Florida and she needed someone to help with Ayden because she has been away for these review classes on weekends and now for a two week stint for more review classes and then "the tests."
So, all of the people in my slide show, and the animals, are living here right now. Except for My Tay Tay (still in Ohio) and Mr. Frogly. He stayed here on my back porch for 4 months until a tropical storm blew thru when he finally decided that this place is CRAZY!!! and he took off.
What have I been doing? CLEANING, COOKING, WASHING CLOTHES and BABYSITTING (even before the baby got here, tehe).
I've also been learning a lot about online business. In the last year I followed my passion...the study of energy (human). I got an EFT-Adv. certification, a sound therapy practitioner and teacher certification and a certification in a technique called The One Command as a seminar leader, practitioner and practitioner teacher. I've also been a Reiki practitioner for several years. So, I'm ready to start my Energy Therapies practice...if I only had the time (sigh).
Well, that's the update of my life for the last 1 1/2 yrs. I presume you can see that being the matriarch (or should I say slave) of the household with 8 adults, 1 baby (2 yrs), 3 dogs and a cat gives me the need to escape.
So make me laugh people, buy me a drink in the Happy Hour group, and for Heaven's Sake, don't let "them" know I'm here
OPA!
Bella
Tags: escape, Opera, The One Command
This story was forwarded to me today. Might be an old one...first time I heard it, though.
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one"
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life, she showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother, Dustin's baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"
Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain."
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.
During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
