Author: admin

Every day, I wake up and get ready for work, half awake.  My knees hurt.  My muscles ache.  Another day at the office.  Really, there isn’t always a lot of that to put a smile on your face, right?  But every day, I walk out of the house with a big grin on my face.  I started to wonder how I managed to graduate from crabby woman to happy woman after I climb the stairs and before I get in the car.  So I started paying attention to what put that smile on my face.  And I found it.

Peanut Butter.

See, we have two rescue dogs. One (Lucy) is mine, and one is my mom’s.  Mom’s dog was bred in a puppy mill for years.  When we adopted her, she was terrified of everything, she had a curved spine from not standing and stretching, she’s nearly deaf, and she’s nearly blind.  She bonded instantly with my mom, and settled into her role in the family.  And mom loves this little pug.  Everyone does.  This dog came with the name Gladys.  She wasn’t a Gladys, so mom named her Baby.

Baby was, quite frankly, a little bit of a mess.  She was scared of everything.  She doesn’t see well, so steps are particularly scary, especially since she’s never used them.   But, Baby started to trust us, and soon, she walked down her first step, leaving the house and going outside.  Then she went down the second step.  And we had ourselves a happy dog, who turned around and grinned with pride.  And we realized her name really wasn’t Baby.  She was just a little Peanut.  So, we renamed her Peanut Butter.

So what about Peanut makes me smile every morning?  It’s her attitude.  Every morning, I go into my mom’s room to lift Peanut down off the bed, since she still won’t use stairs, and she has to get down somehow.  I go into the bedroom and she is usually sound asleep.  I pet her to wake her up, and her tail starts moving, and her face erupts in a huge grin.  And then she stands up and gives a huge stretch, and looks up at me and waits…

She waits for what makes me grin every day.  She waits for her leap of faith.

This little dog, who was abused for 8 years until she found our home, has decided to put her faith in her human servant.  The minute my hands go under her belly, Peanut – the dog terrified to go down two steps – leaps.  Knowing I am there, she trust me to carry her safely to the floor, where she does her “nut dance of happiness”, and runs to the door of the bedroom – because she’s excited to see if she’s lucky enough to get ANOTHER bowl of kibble (which of course she is…) and she greets her day with happiness, gratitude and love.  And she does it so well, that she forces me to as well.

So my inspiration for gratitude comes from a little dog who reminds me that I don’t really know what suffering is, and reminds me that I might not know everything about gratitude either.

What makes you grateful?  Share with me below!

Welcome to my blog!  Nice to meet you, sure hope you stay long enough to read!

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog for a long time.  No better time than the present, right?  Why did I not start one before?  One simple reason.

I.  Am.  Normal.

Isn’t normal kind of boring?

Yeah, it is.  Isn’t it?

Who wants to be normal?  Not me.

So what has changed?  Why start a blog now, when I’m so normal?  There are so many reasons to start, but here it is in a nutshell.  I’m going to be 42 this year.  I’ve written a novel that I’m working on getting published.  I am a passionate volunteer.  I have two (adorable) rescue dogs.  I’m full on into menopause, which is making me pretty sarcastic, I work a full time job in the Medical Device industry by day, and my (soon to be) 80 year old mother lives with me.

So yeah, my life is totally normal.  And I don’t want it to be anymore.  I’m on a search – for change.  For inspiration.  For validation.  For fun.

And that’s what makes it so interesting right now.  My generation is hitting middle age.  I’ve heard us referred to as the “Sandwich Generation”.  That is, the generation simultaneously taking care of parents and children.  If I had any children, I guess I’d be included in that.  Alas, no kids.  Since I’m pretty sure reduced dogs don’t count as one side, I’m kind of like an open faced turkey sandwich – you know, the ones with mashed potatoes (yum!) and a ton of gravy.  While the turkey can be dry, and the mashed potatoes sticky, and the gravy messy, let’s face it:  After thanksgiving, you want one.  You really, really want one.

So what’s so interesting about this?  We’re not the “talker” generation.  We left that to the millennials.  Every next generation is supposed to be better than the last, right?  So we had the Greatest Generation, who bore the tremendous burden of literally saving the world by themselves.  They returned from war and they kept their stories to themselves.

They gave birth to the next generation.  The generation that saw the success of their parents, and wanted to emulate it.  But that generation figured out that  carrying a burden silently can not only be painful, but damaging.  They started to blow the lid off of topics, one at a time.  Domestic Abuse, Homelessness, Veterans returning from war.  They continued what their parents started.  And they had the next generation.  That’s where I came into the world.

So how do I see us “Gen Xers” (Aka, the sandwich generation)?  We’re a generation of people who want to communicate and don’t know how.  We’re a generation who was ok with the system until the system wasn’t ok.  We are a generation who may not see the benefits of social security, but really don’t know how to plan for our future, because our parents had a fall back.  We watch our parents retire, and see that as a goal for ourselves, and we want it, but we’re not sure how to get there.  And so we flounder.

But man, we’ve got values!  We care for others.  We want equality.  We want to make sure we leave the world a better place.  We just really have no idea how to get there.

What do we want?  All the things!  When do we want them?  NOW!

But deep down, every Gen Xer asks themselves the same question Every. Damn. Day.  “Am I normal?  How do I measure up?”

And that, my friends, is why I’m writing.  I am normal.  I’m human.  And maybe by sharing that with everyone who reads this, they’ll feel normal too, and understand that we’re all normal, and we’re all in this thing together.

So what’s this blog for?  Not to tell you if your rash is normal…sorry. :). This is a place to go to touch a base.  You may not hit a home run, but you’ll get safely to first.  You’ll hear my life philosophy, my reasons for this normality, and maybe laugh a little.  But by seeing into my soul, it will lighten yours a little.

So, won’t you join me in my Evolution Allocution?