Month: April 2020

I have a confession to make, yesterday I started thinking. That is not always a good thing with me. I was thinking about my mom and how she would pray for me.

Then I started thinking how I haven’t had anyone in my life that has prayed for me since she left this earth. I became resigned to the idea that no one would ever pray for me again. It made me sad, then I went to sleep.

The next morning, today, I received from two different women in my life this:

God showed me not one but two of my friends were praying for me. God’s timing is always perfect and always on time. Gail and Michelle I want you both to know you two are in my daily prayers!

That’s the way it works, God knows what we need when we need it. Now I know what you are going to say, there are more people than these two ladies that pray for me.

But it was these two that God placed on their hearts the job of reaching out to me and telling me that I was in their prayers.

I take prayer very seriously, if I tell someone I am praying for them then they can take that to the bank.

I’ll confess something else, I very rarely tell God what I need or want in my life. And that is a mistake, we are supposed to take the desires of our heart to Him. I have problems with that, a lesson I’m still learning. Even at my advanced age I still have lessons to learn.

Never take for granted the people in your life that intercede in prayer on your behalf. I know I don’t.

Ok, so I had a CTJ, for those of you that are not familiar, that is a Come to Jesus meeting. I had that meeting with myself, it wasn’t pretty but it was much needed.

I was perusing Facebook when someone’s post caught my eye. It said how stressed they were with being in isolation with their family.

At first I was judgmental, because they get to be with someone, they have someone to talk to, they are not left alone, they don’t live in a shack. They have entertainments readily available.

Then I stopped, just stopped, what do I know about that persons life. Nothing that they don’t want others to know about on Facebook. I don’t know what their stresses are, so I stopped.

I’m sure others look at me and judge as well, I live in a nice house, plenty of food, my bills are paid and I am still able to work and provide for myself. I am not totally alone, I do have my pets and I am able to see Alex and Elicia.

Every human deals with different things differently, i am not that stressed. I miss Friday night dinners and pedicures. But I’m not stressed out about them being ripped away from me.

I have been thinking about quarantine hair, I really want purple back in my hair. I am thinking purple on the underside. I have red right now, all over, why not have both of my favorite color on my head.

I’ve been watching a lot of Brad Mondo’s videos on Facebook. He’s an amazing hair stylist and he loves color. If I ever go to New York I am going to do my best to get an appointment with him. I’m completely obsessed with watching his videos.

Last night I started watching Mrs America on Hulu. It’s about both sides of the ERA battle in the 1970’s. It’s fascinating, the extremes on both sides.

I’ll leave you with that. I’m tired now and going to sleep. Peace out peeps.

So a few days ago I had an anniversary. Not a romantic one, that has never been in the cards for me. But a professional one, I marked 23 years with the same company.

I think that is somewhat of a milestone. Not a huge one, but one nonetheless.

I started out as an operations clerk, what is that you ask, good question. It is basically a secretary, it was literally one of my favorite jobs in the phone company. It’s where I learned that I cannot be entrusted with any amount of power. I had the best boss and met a lot of great people. As a matter of fact I am still friends with quite a few of them.

From there I went to be a service rep, upgrade in pay, downgrade in power. But I loved it, once again, great coworkers and I learned a lot. I loved that job so much, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot as well.

But alas all good things must end and that job went up north, way up north. So then I worked in pay phones, writing the orders for them. As you can imagine it was incredibly boring as that was a dying department. Cell phones were becoming more ubiquitous so there wasn’t a huge need for pay phones. Except in prisons and hospitals, so that didn’t last too long.

Next up was a stint in orders, not residential, thank goodness, but writing to orders for T1’s, voice grade and data circuits. Which was ok and I learned a lot.

Then I made a huge decision and moved to a different subsidiary within the company. I made the jump to DSL. Talk about a huge difference in jobs and responsibilities. The first two weeks of training I came home and passed out, I was so mentally exhausted. But I loved it and once again met great people and made lifelong friends. A couple I’m convinced I’m actually related to.

After a while that job ended, the whole department went away. I didn’t know what I was going to do, then the decision was made for me. I was moving to a different department in the company. I could still use my internet training but television and phone was added to my repertoire.

There I made more friends and discovered more family. I really love what I do, I love helping people stay connected. Now more than ever, even when people yell at me. I still have a feeling of satisfaction when I fix someone’s problem.

I’ve often said the job at the phone company saved my family. It enabled me to raise three children to adulthood. It has given us so much, I’ll be forever grateful they took a chance and hired a single mother of three. Here’s to 24 more years.

I choose to live in Texas, a great state in and of itself. I am from Oklahoma, a state that is filled with people who are strong, resilient, intelligent, warm, kind and when the chips are down, there.

On this day twenty-five years ago those traits were on full display for not only the country to see but the whole world as well.

To say I am proud of my fellow Oklahomans and the way they responded to the Alfred P. Murrah building being bombed would be an understatement. I don’t know if I have the proper words to express my deep love and admiration I have for my people. I’ll try.

We lost so much that day, many of us lost relatives, mother, fathers, daughters, grandchildren, spouses and cousins. It is inconceivable to think of the evil that existed that caused this to happen.

My heart still breaks for my home state’s loss, the loss of life, the loss of innocence, the loss of peace. No one could have ever even foreseen anything of this nature happening in middle America.

We were not an international hub, not a must see state for other countries. We have a hard history behind us. We are a people of perseverance, the dust bowl and the depression taught our people to be tough.

Under the toughness we have kindness, through our tough times we learned to lean on each other and get through it together.

This time we saw the rest of the country come to our aide, we saw that we were loved and the nation mourned with us.

We overcame, we came out stronger, the way we usually do, but we also came out a little battered.

When you think of my home state today, say a prayer for our heart. And know that we appreciate the rest of our countrymen coming to our aide that day.

The story I am going to tell you today comes from my memories, it is about my mom and dad. I must give you some backstory first. I grew up in the country, outside of Owasso. We had what is called bottom land, it is land that is low-lying land that has water running through it and is very fertile.

Our garden was huge, it was the size of my whole lot that my house sits on. My dad was quite the jokester, that is important as well. He was funny and love joking and playing jokes, good natured ones, not mean spirited ones.

Well one day my mom and dad were taking a walk down to the garden. The path was narrow so my dad was walking in front of my mom.

They were walking in front of the fruit trees getting ready to cross the bridge to the garden.

My mom looks down and spots what she thinks is a rubber snake. She thinks to herself daddio thinks he’s funny, I’ll show him. She picks it up and flings it at him, as it is flying through the air she realizes it is not rubber, it is real!

It hits my dad and falls to the ground stunned, my dad is stunned as well.

The snake actually slithered off, I think it was so stunned it didn’t know what to do, it just wanted to escape the crazy humans!

My poor mother was completely horrified, my dad said why did you do that??

She explains she thought it was a fake snake and he had thrown it first. He laughed so hard, he thought it was hysterical, she thought it was horrifying.

After that, for years, any time they disagreed my dad would say do you remember when you threw the snake at me? He won many arguments for many years on that one.

So my dog is doing something weird, she typically will lay in bed with me until I turn the light off and then go to the floor. Huskies love to sleep on the floor, especially tile or wood.

For the past three nights she has slept on the bed all night. Very strange, I hope she is not conspiring with Fat Catstard, I like my face.

Someone on Facebook, I want to say my friend Steve but I may be wrong, posted their unpopular opinion on things he doesn’t watch and a lot of other people do. I was inspired to do my own list. Here goes, things on tv I abhor and the majority of the population loves:

1. The bachelor and bachelorette, these are very literally the worst shows on television today. Please tell me what self respecting woman vies for the attention of a man dating multiple women at the same time, claiming he has to make out with all of them to figure out if he wants to give a ring to one?? And vice versa, just stop, it’s insane and gross. I’m hugely surprised no one has caught a disease yet.

2. Dancing with the stars, I’ve often said I’m so glad Dean Cain has never done this show. It would force me to watch it. Although I never saw the dating one he did. I’m still mad about that one, not that he did it, that I wasn’t a contestant.

4. The masked singer, American idol and the voice.

5. All sports on tv. Especially soccer. So boring. I do enjoy football, basketball, baseball and hockey in person. Never on television. Not even soccer in person. Paint drying is way more compelling than soccer.

6. WWE, I do love Dwayne Johnson, but not wrestling.

That’s it, my unpopular opinions on television shows that everyone seems to love.