A Picture is Worth a Thousand Memories

So if a picture is worth a thousand words memories,

 what does this picture say to you?

If I tell you this is my mom, would that make a difference?

If I tell you that the lady to left is my other mother, 

does that make a difference?

You may be wondering where this was taken?

Why did I take this picture? 

And,

What are they looking at? 

Well, to answer that question -

you will have to look at the next picture.

I am not sure why my mom is wearing that shirt 

with the scary smiley face but it really

 didn't reflect her mood that day. 

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and 

the one thing she really loves is to listen to live music.

I remember every time a music event went on downtown, 

we were there.

We never spend lots of money paying for concerts. 

Maybe when Riverfest started 

in downtown Little Rock, 

we would pay the small fee but not no more. 

I believe Music should be Free.

On the left, is my husbands legs.

The local Fire Chief is on the drums.

My brother is sitting in a chair 

hiding behind the big speaker.

My brothers elementary school friend 

is standing up playing the guitar, and

our oldest biggest sister, 

that's not related to us, 

is singing backup.

My brother has been singing for years now. 

I always knew he could sing. 

I remember that growing up, when you wanted to hear music, you got out those big 33 1/3 records to play on the turn table. 

The best thing about those turn tables is that if you wanted to replay a song or skip a song

 - it was as simple as lifting the arm that had a needle. 

And I also had to clean the needle with my fingers 

because it picked up dust from the room 

which made the song sound funny.

 I don't know if there was a proper way 

to clean those pesky needles 

but I knew if blowing on it did not work then 

using my fingers to clean it always worked. 

I believe the song was a song by Neil Sedaka

Love Will Keep Us Together

I would replay this song over and over and we sang and sang.

 I do believe we wore the record out. 

At least that is what I think since I can't find it.

One of the places we used to live was in 

a little chocolate house that sat right 

where this Donut Shop now sits. 

It is also my understanding that this 

Donut shop is now moving to downtown Sheridan 

where the Road Runner used to be

and before that - It was the Posey Motel, 

so it will be abandoned. 

I wonder if it will be for sale?

So now on to a much happier subject. 

We recently went to Home Depot and 

as I was looking at the plants. I found this. 

I'm not a mona but I am a lisa - 

so therefore I love it.

This is a beautiful flower but I still love Marigold's.

Change Happens

So I started this on Thursday June 23, 2011 and then I updated again on Friday June 24th at 11:40 PM and updated again on Saturday afternoon June 25th about 3Pm. But now This is my final update on July 10th, 2011 at 2:50 PM.  It all started from me browsing around on the web, looking at other peoples blogs, Looking at Facebook, reading my mail and I dawned on my that I haven't posted anything here on blogger in a good long while.
While I really like updating information on Facebook, I find it harder to post more stuff here. It seems like I have to have a story to tell and post pictures and more stuff but basically I could have more shorter blogs if I wanted to do that here. The reason I am adding to this blog is  #1 my internet card modem thingy got hot and I couldn’t regain my signal and #2 was because it was getting late and. now #3, because I needed to wait and add more to this post than what I was thinking about.
Now you may think you know me. You may have just been clicking on the words at the top that says “Next Blog” and found me. But anyway, you found me and I hope you will read this post and some of my previous blogs to find out why you should follow me. 
As my title says "Married in Arkansas" "A Look at Life from a Southern Woman's Point of View"
That is exactly what you are getting. I can call myself a Southerner even though I wasn't born in the South. I've been here long enough to know that the Northern way of life is not for me anymore. I don't know why I am in Arkansas though. When we moved from Michigan, some 31 years ago, my dad's intention was to move to Louisiana. He came down to scope out a place to live. Well, he stopped in central Arkansas to visit and stay with some friends, close friends who moved down here from Michigan as well.
So I almost became a Cajun. Now, I have nothing against Louisiana because, apparently, we lived down there before. Things had happened I remember nothing about because I was so young. And now, I don't think my stomach could have handled all that spicy food.
This was taken of me as a little girl when we lived in Louisiana.And the girl on the left is my older sister, Theresa.   
My intention is to blog about married life. My intentions are always good but the making them happen part is not. I wanted to share some of my thoughts and feelings with my readers and now after 24 hours I added more information than I previously thought I would blog about.
1) Life is too short. Old cliché but so true. Looking back I wonder what would have happened if . . .
      . . . if I had stuck to my guns and graduated college before giving it up for married life and child
      . . . if I had said "No" a lot more times than I actually did
      . . . if I had spoke up more often in Twelfth Grade English Class
      . . . if I had gone to prom stag or just not gone at all
      . . . if I had attempted to become a friend other than expect others to be friends with me
      . . . if I had just smiled more.
2) My idea about what life is and what isn't is a lot different than what others think. And I think there will be a lot of people out there who can relate to what I am saying. My idea of what life is about is learning. We are learning to deal. We are learning facts, figures and ideas. We spend all of our childhood in school learning things to get us through adult life. If we fail to learn everything we need to know growing up, it has a direct effect on us as adults. We learn to add, we learn to write, and we learn history as children. As adults we use those numbers and letters to learn to not repeat history. History repeats itself. We all know that fact. As adults we must learn to not let history repeat itself.
Case in point:

Tammy grew up with a mother who was an alcoholic and her father was not present. Her mother went from man to man. Tammy didn’t learn what a stable home life was all about. As a teenager she started drinking. By 17, she was pregnant. She married the father of her baby but after 6 months he left her. With no idea as to what a home life is, she did the same thing to her child that her mother did to her. By the time Tammy turned 30, she had overdosed and almost died. It was a wake up call. She came through with the love and support of her teenage daughter. She became closer to her daughter. She learned her daughter was smart because of her demanding the daughter to go to school so she learned facts, figures and learned history repeats itself. Her daughter wanted to break the cycle and went on to become a psychologist and sociologist helping women who were alcoholics; and, Tammy, well, she learned things happen for a reason. But the reason may not always be what we expected. She learned from rearing her daughter everything she should have learned from her mother when she was growing up.

3) Don’t plan anything. I mean DON’T plan anything. Plans don’t work. Plans can change. Plans can be broken. Plan is a rotten word. It gets you motivated. It gets you looking at possibility that may not be able to come true. It is possible that plans can work but most of the time plans are broken. Murphy’s Law is in full effect.
4) If you think you can’t get it, you probably won’t. If you have even a inkling in the back of your mind that it can’t work, it won’t. You may want something so much that you plan for it, you struggle with what your going to do with it after you get it that you set yourself up for failure.
Case in Point for 3 and 4:

Jimmy and Joanie plan to go buy a new house. They find their dream home. They apply for the loan and everything seems to be going good but Joanie remembered that the creditors scrutinize all your debt and she forgot to mention an outstanding debt she occurred and didn’t pay so it put a blemish on her credit report. They are told that everything is good until the bankers find she lied about this little outstanding debt so therefore, they can’t get the house of their dreams. So Jimmy and Joanie planned on this particular house. They dreamed and talked about what they are going to do with the bedroom, the colors they will paint each room. They even went so far as to prepare to move and couldn’t back out of their current agreement with their landlord who wouldn’t let them stay since they aren’t moving.
Joanie knew in the back of her mind that this little outstanding debt would eventually catch up with her but she did nothing about it. She lied on the application to get it. In her mind, she feared that the deal would fall through. She kept that feeling of dread in her stomach and the whole time while they waited and planned, her stomach caused her pain, her blood pressure rose and migraines became an everyday problem. Their plans backfired.

5) Negativity gives birth to negativity. Negativity is a common emotion. We all think negativity. I’m to short to play basketball. I’m not smart enough to take that AP course. I’m not good enough to sit at the popular students table. They won’t like me. I can’t talk to him/her because I’m not good enough for them to like me. All these things give rise to how we act, think and feel about ourselves. If only we could find the courage to think positive and not worry about not being good enough. I’m sure that everyone who is reading this can say to me

“This is common sense stuff and I’m not going to read anything else she writes because it’s boring”

So this is me, thinking negatively. I’m scared that, I as the writer, and you, as the reader, will stop reading my blogs and think I am boring and therefore anything I write from this point on will be of no value to anyone except my own person self worthiness and ego I need to feed. This kind of negative thoughts invade my life everyday even though I didn’t intend for it to happen. I just wanted to tell you, the reader, that negativity breeds negativity. I have these negative thoughts in my head as I write this and I can’t help it. I don’t want to be so negative but it’s such a natural emotion and reaction that makes me human. It is when that negativity overrides the positive that causes a problem. We shouldn’t dwell so much on the bad because it makes us sick.
Negativity can make you physically sick. Worry can make you physically sick. Dread can make you physically sick. Doctors say you should watch what you eat because it can make you sick. Sugar makes you sick, Processed foods make you sick. Carbonated drinks make you sick. So those things feed your body physically but what caused you  to eat those 16 square sugar cubes, eat that half gallon of chocolate ice cream or bag of Cool range Doritos? I’ll tell you – negativity. Feeling bad for ourselves. We had to fill that void. Have you ever seen a fat positive person who loves life and has the world by the horns? No? Have you ever seen a person who totally loves life and is positive about everything? No?… didn’t think so…
If you are a young person reading this, STOP! Realized, wake-up and smell the coffee. You may not understand now but one day you will and like mom and dad said, you will get paid back when you have children.
If you are 40 or older, then you will probably stop reading this. You are thinking negatively. You think that I, as the writer, am crazy. You think I am not telling anything you don’t already know. Well, I am here to say that you are still reading this because you needed this pointed out to you but you just now realized it.

Case in Point:
Danny was bummed about not getting hired on at the local factory. He really wanted to work there but when he was at the interview he didn’t give it his all. He didn’t put his best face forward and gave the interviewer a bad impression about his skills. He started beating himself up and let the negativity cause him to start staying in bed. He became depressed and with only an aging grandfather around he didn’t have a hard time hiding from life. Depression isn’t something men have as often as women but who is to say it can’t happen. Danny starting eating. Before he knew it, he was 300lbs, 400lbs, 600lbs. Then one day he was too big to take care of himself. He practically ate himself to death all because he didn’t get the job.
Can this happen to you? Sure, if you let it. We have to roll with the punches. We have to learn to find the good in all things. What Danny didn’t know was that if he had gotten that job, he wouldn’t have found a woman who was willing to give him all the love and support to think positively to lose that weight he had been carrying. The weight was his burden to carry. The negativity grew and grew. Until he found the love and support to lose the weight from a companion, he couldn’t let that negative seed go. It feed his emotions which in turn feed his body all because he didn’t let it go and find the good about not getting that job.

6) Love is more important than money. Friendship with someone special is the most important relationship you’ll ever have. Finding Mr. or Mrs. Right is good for your health. It is a proven fact by doctors that married couples who stay together their whole adult life live longer than those who aren’t married or in a loving relationship. So go be in love. If you are afraid to ask for what you want, then you won’t get it. How will you know if that boy or girl likes you unless you ask.
Case in Point:

Jerry Jack needed a date for his prom. He wasn’t a popular guy or even a good looking guy so he picked a girl on a dare from his Buddies' The girl wasn’t one on the best looking girls. On the chubby side but smart. A girl that had her own ideas about who she wanted to go to prom with but because Jerry Jack was the only guy who asker her, she said yes. Jerry Jack thought he was in love with this girl. He dated her before prom. He continue dating her afterword's too which eventually lead to marriage. Like most high school couples they thought they could concur the world with their love. And to make a short story short, they lived a long wonderful live in love but not with each other.
Jerry Jack discovered he was really gay and she, well, she went on to find love with a man who reminded her of her daddy. Did they regret their love? No. Good things happened such as their children.

7) You can’t control other people. You can’t control their thoughts. You can’t control their feelings. You can’t make them like you. You can’t make them love you. You can’t tell another grown adult how to act or behave. You can’t expect something for nothing. People lie. People play dumb. People think you don’t know what you are talking about. People play innocent until proven guilty. People are individuals who don’t want to be controlled. How would you like it if I tried to control you by telling you, as my reader, that I, the writer, can make you regret not asking that girl/guy to the prom or dance all those years ago? I can make you regret. I don’t have to do anything but write a little scenario that may or may not be real. I can write a scenario to control your thoughts and feelings. That’s what books do, don’t they? and movies too? But it should be obvious that I’m not trying to write a book or movie. I am trying to tell you that I can’t control you. I don’t know how you will react or what you will think after my next Case in Point? You can lie and say you loved it. You can get mad and stop reading at anytime. I have no way of controlling you to make you read every little word I write but I can make you feel something, like jealously, envy, regret or hate.
I think all of these things are so true to life. But the last idea I have about life could be one that you will definitely disagree with me about.
8) Life is boring. I say it is boring because it just is. When you have nothing to do and just sit around and think about it – living is boring. We need other people around to talk to. We need other people to joke with. Without other people, life is boring. I was used to having a house full of people everyday. It was always something. James got mad at Jerry. Sally slammed the door to her room because she couldn’t get what she wanted. Somebody was always around saying something about somebody else. When you have a family in one house and they all go there separate ways, the mundane becomes even more mundane. Without loved ones in our life the everyday stuff is just that, everyday stuff. Getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, going to work, coming home, cooking dinner, going to bed. Routine, routine, routine.

Our morning trip to Morrilton

So we decided that we needed to go get some yardsale stuff early this morning from Morrilton. Eugene bought this stuff already and we just hadn't had time to go to pick the stuff up. I am on a 2 week vacation and Eugene is on a 1 week vacation so this is our week to do all the stuff we can't normally get done.

But after getting out of the driveway we had to make a pit stop across the street to get gas and air up a tire or 2.

This is downhill on I430 North to the Arkansas River.

This is the morning sun over the river. Isn't it pretty.

Uhmm.. this was actually before we got to the Arkansas River.

They had to cut out the side of the mountain to put in the Interstate.

Brandon and Eugene arguing about how to stack the boxes to keep them from flying out.

This is the building where we got the stuff from in Morrilton. It is right next to the train tracks along Hwy 65.

Here they are finishing up.

We got a lot of stuff.

Most of it will go in the yard sale I am going to have Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I rummaged through the stuff to get things I wanted. That is one of the perks of being the wife, I get to pick through and keep things. I found a nice comforter and electric blanket and a couple of pillows I wanted. I also found a few kitchen items we can use. We also have this humungus picture. So if you are on Chico Road and go far enough out to Sawmill Road that goes back to East End, you will find me set up at Garys BBQ on the corner. Getting back into buying and selling is a great way to meet people. I'll post more pictures later.