Travelling North America - by motorcycle - with teenagers...yep, we did it.

Our Family Odyssey

In 1992, my husband and I decided to sell the house, put stuff in storage, and travel by motorcycle around Canada, USA and Mexico with our 14 and 16 year old teenagers. We took 3 months to prepare, all the while putting everything we might need on our trip against the dining room wall. We sorted it out, packed it on 3 motorcycles, and rode 6 hours to my parents' house where we went through everything again, and sorted out what we thought we might really need. We left behind half of what we had originally loaded that morning. 

My husband rode a BMW K100, I rode a Honda CBX550F, our son Erik rode a Yamaha Vision, and daughter Nikolette rode behind my husband most days. We packed all the things we thought we would need into certain categories: Kitchen Bag, the Clothes bags, the Tent bags, the school book bags, the Tool bag, and the Misc Bag. Each item had to go back in exactly the same spot after using it so that we always knew where everything was when we needed it. 

Similar to Herb's bike

After discussing it with our kids' schools (Niki was going into 9th grade and Erik into 11th grade), both principals seem to think it would be a great idea, asking for correspondence along the way. We enrolled them in Alberta Distance Learning, and figured out a system to mail lessons from on the road. They got the highest grades ever while working on one subject at a time, studying in campsites on picnic tables while I cooked over a small propane stove and tutored when needed. Our daughter sent weekly postcards back to her school, which unknown to her were read over the intercom every week, making her a celebrity when she came home. Our son came home and told some motorcycle celebrity that he had just ridden 60,000 kms in the last year. He was told he was crazy until it was verified by the two reliable adults with him that it was indeed true; then he was lauded as Hero for the Day, earning the respect of many other riders. 

Our general modus operandi was to travel for 200-300 miles in a day, and then find a campsite. Then usually Herb or sometimes Erik would ride back into town for supplies after the tents were set up (3 tents: one for Herb and I, and one each for the kids) if we had not already picked up supplies passing through town. While I cooked supper, the kids would do their school work and Herb would check out the bikes, or the campsite or plan our route for the next day (hardcopy road atlas, no gps, before Google Maps). Our 14 year old daughter was so proud that she could set up her tent by herself, and the kids would often compete to see who could put up their tent faster. Both kids learned how to find firewood and start a good campfire; how to use a knife in a useful way; and how read a map to plan the next day's travel. 

We had been on the road about a week, and were in northern Michigan and we set up camp at a lovely spot on the river. Erik came back from town saying, "Batten down the hatches, a storm is coming through." We ate quickly while making sure everything was as waterproof as possible. That night the thunder shook the ground under the tents, the rain came down in bucketfuls, Niki nearly floated away in her tent and we got totally drenched. I remember laying there thinking, "I sold my house for THIS!" After packing up very soggy sleeping bags and tents the next morning, we rode into town for a hot breakfast. In the little diner, the electrical company employees at the next table could not believe we had camped through what they called "the worst storm in a decade". It took a early stop with sunshine to dry out all the gear before we fell asleep that night in another campsite. 

From Sept 6, 1992 to May 20, 1993 we travelled through all ten Canadian provinces, all lower forty-eight USA states and about eight Mexican states. We crossed the continent 6 times, and rode about 60,000 kms (about 40,000 miles). We met wonderful people, rarely went on an interstate, choosing instead the "blue highways" of John Steinbeck or William Least Heat Moon. 

Not us, but a typical KOA Camping Cabin

A Mennonite Family in Mexico

Mostly we stayed in campgrounds, but sometimes we did get a KOA camping cabin, or occasionally a motel room in really bad weather. We also used a Hosting Program called "Mennonite Your Way" or we stayed with friends in all four corners of the continent for a day or two. That way we got to be in homes like a lighthouse in Michigan, a dairy farm in upstate New York state, the home of the only doctor to lepers in Louisiana, and an eco-ranch in Arizona. We stayed in a monastery one night, the first married couple ever to share a room there with the silent monks. We rented a condo for the month of November in Cocoa Beach, Florida and shared American Thanksgiving with friends living in Orlando. We spent Christmas in Chino, California where we had once lived for 6.5 years when the kids were small. For that holiday we actually treated ourselves to a nice hotel with a pool. One of our Christmas presents to each other was an hour each to ourselves in the room - we had been having a little too much "together" time. Herb and I shared our hours....

In Mexico, we found not only my extended Mennonite family who only spoke my childhood dialect, but we also met my parents there and traveled with them for two weeks. Then together we looked up a family that had been so good to my husband when he had an accident in Mexico, and they treated us like royalty, inviting us into their home and life, sharing feasts of delicious Mexican foods in rural central Mexico. We visited the home of an exchange student we knew well who took us to tour the Mexican pyramids in El Tajin. Traveling with a young Scotsman named Charlie who had bought a motorcycle when he entered the USA and was crossing the continent, gave us interesting company and new stories. He did not want to travel Mexico by himself, so he became a part of our caravan for three weeks. 

Too many stories to share in one blog, but if anyone wants to hear more of any particular part of the North American continent, we have probably been there!! 

It was a crazy year, a wonderful year and it was hard to come home. Every curve in the road brought a new adventure. When we came back to Edmonton and had bought a house and started settling in, our daughter said, "Dad, it's boring being in one place all the time." Our son said, "We made memories for a lifetime." We did.....maybe Herb and I will have to do it again....soon.

This very minute, I am making a choice.....

CHOICES:
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
http://t.usnews.com/bC97A

 

 

Choices every single day, life choices, food choices, activity choices. Mostly benign choices, but often life-changing choices. 

 

There is a great book out, called Make Shift Happen by Dean Dyer. Dean Dwyer is a former teacher, who quit his job to accept a more ambitious mission: Could he actually make MAKE SHIFT HAPPEN in his own life? Well, it seems he did...his website is http://kickstartyourunlivedlife.com/ and I like many of his ideas. The book was so good that I took his 20 "shifts" and made my own notebook of those shifts and made them my own.

 

Today, I  make the choice to DO SOMETHING SEISMIC! I am in control of my life .....or am I?

 

My job is dependent on whether or not my grant is renewed. So I can choose whether or not to work for free ......Not! I can always choose to try to find another job. I have to live with the consequences that I am a renaissance woman and have many skills, interests and experience that don't always fit into a cookie-cutter job - which makes it harder to find satisfying work.

 

My husband has made a job choice so he is commuting 100 miles! What choices does that give me? Hmmmm......sometimes we have to live with the consequences of other people's choices too. I chose to deal with his choice without uprooting our residence.

 

I chose my own car for first time in my life last month - made the deal myself too. Hubby says "good choice". It makes me feel good to drive a slight-used Jeep that runs well, instead of settling for the old Jeep that needed new gaskets and was dripping oil, just to "make-do".

 

I do choose what to put in my mouth today...and I take full responsibility for the weight I have gained over the very stressful past year...today I am deciding to stop eating everything in sight. If I do that every day, my skinny clothes that fill half my closet will fit again by September!

 

I choose what to spend my hard-earned money on, whether to buy something for me to look at in my house, or simply pay bills, or send to a struggling school in Zambia.

 

I chose to say Yes to my husband's proposal of marriage, and I choose to love my big imperfect man, who is perfect for me. I would say the most fun we have together is when we are travelling, and share new experiences together. As my son-in-law says to our daughter, "your parents are just gypsies". Could be true.

 

I chose to say Yes to God, when he asked for my heart, and in return He gave me joy. I choose today to live in joy, not despair. I chose to delight in God, the prime directive according to John Piper. More on that later....

 

Every day, millions of choices, including how I spend every minute of every day. We have free will to make those choices, and then have to accept the consequences of each of those choices.

 

I hereby take full and total responsibility for my choices. What about you?

Bucket Lists...I just love checking off things done!

Spain 2013

The movie, The Bucket List, was interesting, a little silly, and rather funny. It seems to have given the whole world the idea that they need to have a bucket list - a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket (or die, for my non-English-idiom-user friends).

I love making lists. The iphone apps I have for lists are not nearly as satisfying as actually putting a nice pen on a new legal pad and writing out a list of things to do. And then checking them off as they are done - heaven! I have always been that way. Put me in a stationary store and I drool or spend money - it's hard to drag me out of there - ask my daughter, she knows. I was always the kid in school that loved starting a new notebook. I wrote with an ink nib and cartridge pen in high school just because I liked the way it looked when I wrote in those notebooks of mine. What a nerd I am!

Buckets lists can help us decide what is important to us. I started an on-going bucket list back in 1990. I already always have the following lists going: Things to fix in the house List, Things to do in the yard List, Groceries I need to buy List, Books I want to read List, Movies I want to watch List, People to call List, is this getting tedious or is it just me?.... So, I thought, why not add a Bucket List?

The Top 10 Items on Reno's Bucket List 1990:
Things to do Before I kick My Bucket 
1. Travel with my family for a year by motorcycle around Canada, USA, and Mexico.
Check - did that 1992-1993 - All 10 provinces, 48 states, and 8 Mexican provinces. 

2. Start a girls high school in Malawi.
Check - did that from 1994-2002. School is still thriving under local leadership. 

3. Travel with my husband by motorcycle around South Africa, Brazil and Morocco.
Check - did that 1999, 2012,  and 2013.

4. Become an International Relief Manager and feed 60,000 people in Zambia.
Check - did that 2002-2003. Challenging and wonderful year. 

5. Publish a book. Have written many many magazine articles, but have not published a book. Want to see my name as author on a book cover and someone reading it! (I actually have written the first draft of a novel, but have not read it for a year or two. I will go back and read it in a few months, and see if it is redeemable. I am thinking of starting a memoir instead.)

6. Start a blog and write regularly. 
Check  - started 2013. Now the goal is to keep writing.  

7.  Travel with my grandkids. I would love to take some of my African grandchildren back to where they were born, and see if there are any African relatives left to introduce to them. I would love to take my non-African grandchildren to someplace exotic and wonderful and meaningful. Right now I have to travel 3 days in the car to see any of my grandchildren - all 7 live in the great white north. 

8. Have my bathrooms and studio re-done. This might sound silly for a bucket list, but it is really up there. I would love to have someone come in, listen to my ideas, and design a new studio and bathrooms for my 50+ year old house. I want new windows, ceramic tiles, a rain shower, glue removed from hardwood floor in studio and of course, this would have to be done for free. Dream on.....but still something I want to see before I kick the old bucket. 

9. Have time to create more paintings...I love to paint with oil, and have procrastinated, due to studio not being completed - see #8.  I have 4 of my own paintings in my home.....have sold the rest, but often feel an overwhelming desire to create. There is really is no excuse for this except procrastination. 

10. Have a vacation with my husband on a warm sunny beach......where we walk out the front door of a cottage onto the beach, with comfortable lounge chairs, good books, cool drinks waiting for us, and we hold hands as we look at the horizon, smell the salty air and feel the sun caress us. 

#10 will probably be the hardest. Because: 1. My man would rather be on his motorcycle than almost anywhere. 2. His idea of a vacation is so much different than mine, and 3. Living so far from family we feel guilty going anywhere else if we do have the time for a vacation.  Don't get me wrong....we do want to spend time with family, and in my imaginary beach if the children and their spouses were on lounges beside us, or if they were playing beach volleyball or building sandcastles with the grandchildren, that would be perfect. Then we could all go back to the house for an evening BBQ where I have made my great potato salad, and my daughter her seven-layer salad, etc. etc. Dream on....

Still, continually revising my bucket list gets me thinking of the top ten things that I want to do. Notice how so many of mine involve travel? Tell me your top three. Maybe I will be inspired to put them on my list. My legal pad and pen are ready.

39 years is a long time....to be married.

Waiting for Spring?

Yes, I know it is June. In fact I was reminded of that Saturday as my husband and I celebrated 39 years of marriage on the first day of June. 

 

Our day together was not fireworks and big presents; in fact it was a calm day with lunch at the new Casino's buffet and time at the library, also at the bookstore where we bought each other a new journal with a gift certificate that had been given to us at Christmas. We watched Atlas Shrugged Part One again, and Part Two for the first time. We are both fans of Ayn Rand's books, and often read the same books and discuss them. The day had a zen-like quality and except for the DVD player breaking down, it was very peaceful. 

 

Thirty-nine years is a long time to be married to the same person, especially in this day and age as I understand statistics. Herb and I met in our senior year of high school, both 17, already set in our faith and in our political leanings. He had (and still has) a confident walk and sexy eyes, a straight forward way of talking and I knew immediately I could trust him. We met at a church youth group event and I kicked him for teasing me before the evening was over. Two years later we were married, he had just turned 20 two weeks before, and I was still 19. We have lasted through very humble beginnings to still humble present day, two children, seven grandchildren (four of them adopted - from Africa, but that is a whole 'nother story), 17 different homes, 3 countries, and 3 states and 3 provinces. 

 

I recognize that not everyone has the same experience that I have had. I understand that some people chose wrong in the past, and are now single for a variety of different reasons. However, I also recognize that I do not need to apologize for having a good relationship with a man who is slightly chauvinistic (I told him in 1992 that he was a man of the '90s but that it was the 1890's), who knows that I can cook better than his mother ever did, and who is organized with his date book but horrible with any other paperwork.  He is a whole lot better about being on the road alone than being home alone when I am gone. He thinks that hair on a woman can never be long enough (the one thing we often disagree on) and he rides motorcycle better than almost anyone else. He is a good man, who wants to do the right thing. 

 

It seems only yesterday that I came home from the hairdresser on a Saturday late morning  in June 1974. Two hours later I was walking up the aisle on my father's arm and joining my life to the man of my choice. My dress was sweet and simple. The food was good at the reception, mostly the work of my mother, aunts, and women of the church. The band was terrible and we asked them to stop before they were done their first set - the lead singer was an old boyfriend, and I knew there was a reason I dumped him. At the end of the event I was tired of pictures and ready to ride off into the sunset.

Now almost four decades later, we love each other more than we did two decades ago. We understand each other better, and we are willing to stick together through thick and thin, rich and poor, health and sickness, because we know that we are better together than we are apart.  If I am in a room of sixty people, and my husband catches my eye across the room and winks at me, my heart still skips a beat. This is the man who held my head over the porcelain throne last year when I had the flu so bad that I wanted to die, and was afraid I wouldn't. This is the man who hugs me like there is no tomorrow and my throat lumps up with his energy. We have produced two children who amaze me with their strength, their smarts and their sweetness. 

The older I get, the more I see that life is seasonal, but that the seasons can be in "shuffle mode". I am not heading into the "fall" of my life.....I think I already had that season. I think it is Spring, and I know there is still lots of hard work ahead, but that summer is around the corner in my life, and some lazy days on the deck with a glass of sweet tea sounds really good. 

Life is not fair...Surprise!

Fairness: marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice or favoritism 

My parents raised me to believe the world is a fair place. I only realized this when I was an adult. That was one of the worst things they could have done to me. Cruel and unusual punishment. They did this in many ways, but let me give you three of the more humorous examples:

1. After I was married, I and my sister and my brother would get Christmas gifts - let's say worth $100 each. However my gift only cost $92. 57, my sister's cost $100.10 and my brother's cost $108.83. My sister and I would each get an envelope to make up the difference - my envelope contained $16.26 and my sister's envelope contained $8.73. It all had to be fair. This probably happened when we were younger in a different way, as we usually got similar gifts or gifts made by my mother. 

2. When my sister and I (who both live far away from our parents) call our mother, she can talk for an hour or more, full of news and opinions and chatty, usually cheerful talk. However, when she calls us, we are certain that she has a little black book wherein she records the number of minutes she has talked to the other child. We both have noticed after a few minutes of catch up news, she gets very antsy, and is full of "well, I am sure you are busy, I should let you go." "No, Mom, I am fine, not busy at all." "Well, I am sure you are about to make supper." "No, Mom, we already ate, dishes are done. I am just relaxing." "Well, I better let you go..." and we finally let her go, and compare notes later to see how many minutes we each got that week, and it is usually always the same. 

3. I once got a birthday card that said, "you are the best child...blah, blah, blah." However, my mother crossed that out and put in a little arrow and the words, "one of the best children". She wanted the card to be fair to all of her children and not favor one over the other. 

My father's life was not fair - due to his parents' inaction against an abusive teacher, my father did not get past the fifth grade, even though he was considered the brightest boy in the class. He was the oldest boy in a family of 13 children during the depression. Food and shelter was limited, and my father still eats very fast out of habit. He worked 13 years for a horrible construction company before getting the courage to change to a company that appreciated his loyalty. He complains often that life was not fair to him. 

My mother's life was not fair. She was also a very bright student, but her parents would not let her go to high school, even though the principal of her school begged with her parents. As the youngest of 11 children, she was loved and protected from how cruel the world could be. They, loving grandparents though they were to me, did not see any need for my mother to have any higher learning - she was after all only going to get married and have children. Even though she could have obtained her GED later, she said it would not be fair to our dad if she had high school education and he did not. 

I was their oldest child, 5 years older than my sister and 12 years older than my brother. We were the foster family for numerous babies, toddlers and small boys as well, and with 81 first cousins on both sides, and many neighbor children, our yard was always busy. My mother was an excellent cook, and was able to make delicious meals out of almost nothing. I did not know that we were working poor until I was 12 years old. My father knew that I needed shoes for school as I had outgrown my last pair. He took me to Lipsetts Family Footware in August 1967. I saw a pair of black shoes for $12 - remember this was 1967 - which I knew would be stylish for eighth grade. My father asked me if those were really the shoes that I wanted. He asked me in such a way that I had a twelve year old epiphany: Those $12 would really be a stretch for my father's limited budget. I told him I would look around a little. In the backroom of the store was a sale table. On that table was a pair of white nurses' shoes for $4. They fit me perfectly, and I persuaded my dad that those were really the shoes I wanted. I wore them for the whole eighth grade with pride if with no style at all. Not fair? To whom?

I was born with a congenital heart defect. I had an aunt (my mother's sister) who died at age 19 with very similar symptoms. The doctor who did my open heart surgery when I was 18 told me that I would have been dead in 6 months, just about the time of my 19th birthday. Now I have a plastic piece in my aorta that allowed me at 21 to be more athletic than I was at age 16 - as a child I was always picked last for baseball, my favorite, as I could not run fast at all. I grew up not knowing why life was not fair and why I could not compete properly in track and field which I loved. As I grew up and began to have a larger world view, I often wondered why life was not as fair as my parents thought it should be.

This sense of instilled fairness is both a blessing and a curse. It means that I am constantly disappointed when other people treat me in a way that is good only for their own agenda and I often take it personally. It means that I work my butt off to try to make things fair for others, whether its the victims of crime I work with everyday, or my children who struggle with life at times, or my grandchildren, some of whom started life with a strike already against them. or the at-risk children in Malawi and Zambia. Sometimes I get too involved with trying to make things fair. It means that I fight for what is right, and say it out loud, often to the embarrassment of my family. It means that I often don't get "political" office nuances because I take everything at face value. I say what I mean, mean what I say and expect the same realness from others. 

So, at 58, my balloon has finally burst and I am trying to listen to a friend who has told me to write on my hand, my computer, on post-it notes all over "Life is not fair." I think it is supposed to help me to relax when things do not go the way I think they should. I think I will always have a sense of fairness stronger than most, but hopefully I am consciously aware of this fault of mine, and give myself and others a little more slack. 

What do you think?

Friends....who needs them? I do.

This week as I drive to and from work each day (18 miles one way) I am listening to Anne Quindlen's book, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake. This memoir talks about friends, and specifically girlfriends, and it got me thinking about writing this new blog.

I could blog about a specific topic like some of my favorite bloggers - Jamie: The Very Worst Missionary or Emily: Love Woke Me Up this Morning or Pastor Mark: Thoughts of a Traveler. I could write about one idea or theme that I know something about (which in my never-to-be-humble-opinion could be any number of ideas : ). I could blog about my personal struggles, and hopefully I how I overcame them or at the very least lived through them. How boring would that be? I could blog about art, and my desire to create. I could blog through a cookbook like Julie and Julia, but that has already been done, and besides I love food too much already. I could blog about my travels, and living in other countries, but not everyone can relate to that, although I am sure that I will talk about that occasionally. 

I could blog about the news, and there has been some exciting stuff happening in our neighborhood. Yesterday alone, there was news that Jackie Waller's body had finally been found on some island in Illinois, almost exactly 2 years from the date of her disappearance, and there was a multiple homicide on our street, albeit about 6 or 7 blocks north and across a major intersection. It's a little unsettling to see the news scream: Homicide on West Cape Rock Drive, without giving you a house number to see if you know who it was.

Today I am thinking about friends - how delicate and tenuous some friendships are and how surprisingly strong other friendships are. How sometimes you get to be the needy friend and sometimes you have to be the strong friend. How men and women view friends differently. How I feel the need to have girlfriends, for coffee (tea truthfully), shopping, talking and my husband needs riding buddies. How I choose my friends, and how hard you have to work at friendships sometimes. How even when people get together for a common purpose and you can know them, if they are not involved in your personal life, they are not really "friends".

I am not the easiest friend in the world to have. I know that. I am opinionated, I have too much advice to give, and I have some crazy ideas. On the other hand, I am loyal, I cannot hold a grudge to save my life, and I have some wonderful ideas. And if you are in crisis or need help, I will spring to action faster than Wonder Woman.

There are three women in my life whose friendship has been consistent over time. I treasure them all for different reasons. 1 - K is my oldest friend, and while she has just married for the first time in her 50's, we have had a unique "sisterly" connection for over 25 years. We have walked through many sorrows and many joys. We have cried on each other's shoulders, and laughed ourselves silly with a glasses of wine. I admire her continual sense of wonder. 2 - N became my friend because she was hiding her fabulous paintings in her underwear drawer and she did not realize she had any talent. She is now a true artist in her own right and I proudly hang two of her paintings on my living room wall. I love the creative side of her - she inspires me. 3 - J was my neighbor who moved away and stayed a friend. We got to know each other by walking 3-5 miles almost every day for a few years with our dogs, in any kind of weather, talking and talking and talking. J is the best listener in the world and she remembers everything. She is a challenging friend in the best way; she challenges me to think and to see the world in a way I never have seen it before. Then there is my sister, L, who has become a good friend because of texting. She is a busy professional woman who does not email or FB, but we can talk briefly through a text and stay connected through difficult times. I admire her strength in adversity.

Even with these great friends, none of whom live close to me, I often feel lonely. Men do not seem to need or cultivate these kinds of friendships, or at the very least seem to view friendship as something different that women do. Husbands and wives can be "best friends" but the relationship is different, and truthfully, I know that I talk differently with my girlfriends than I do with my husband. He is my rock, my safe place in this world, and my encourager. I am his lover, his organizer, and his companion. The girlfriends are my balancers, my audience, my supporters and hopefully I am that for them. Three women in my town have become good friends but because of busy schedules, it is hard work getting together. Thank God for texting!

The older I get the more I realize that friends are more important than I dreamed when I was in my 20's and 30's. If you are a woman reading this, and you are young enough to develop lifelong friendships, do so thoughtfully and consciously. If you are a man reading this, recognize that you need friends too. And if anyone needs a new friend, well, leave a comment, you just never know...... 

 

So sorry.. But it came to pass.....

 If I have offended anyone in the past year, I am sorry and I apologize.

My favorite Bible verse this year is Matthew 26:1 "And it came to pass..." By the way, that phrase, "and it came to pass..." is used 396 times in the King James translation of the Bible. Why is this my favorite? Because it did not come to stay.

This past year, since last June, has been an extremely difficult year for our family in so very many different ways that I cannot and will not describe here. Suffice it to say, this has been the year from you know where....okay, I will say it....the year from hell.

When I was nineteen, I almost died without knowing why. Only because I pushed a car out of a ditch were the doctors able to diagnose my life-threatening congenital heart defect and give me a new plastic aorta through open-heart surgery.

I would have that horrible surgery all over again just to take out all the bad parts of the last year...and throw them back to you know where. Don't make me say it again.

So I am apologizing to all the people who know me to say that if I was curt, short, snappy, argumentative, stressed, rude, forgetful, or anything else in that vicinity, I am so sorry if I offended you in any way. I have cried, yelled, screamed, wept bitter tears, panicked, paced, and some days put on a plastic public face. Most of that I have done behind closed doors, occasionally on a friend's shoulder, more often in my husband's arms, or on the road in my car. My dog Cleo has just quietly shadowed me without being overly affectionate, knowing somehow my boundaries for her needs this year.

Canadians (and Canada is where I was born), have a tendency to say "I'm sorry", instead of "Excuse me" like the Americans do. There is almost an inherent tendency in our frozen DNA to apologize for existing. I know this drives some of my American friends up the wall, but Canadians have it down to an art form. In fact, one relative (through marriage) was so upset, because I said "I apologize..." for whatever I had done, again! instead of saying "I am sorry..." that she did not talk to me for two years. Or was it the other way around? I forget now, but either way, I was wrong and I had not verbally atoned enough to satisfy her wronged soul.

In my work, I deal with hurt people, victims of crime, many with painful stories that tear me up inside. If nothing else, this past year has helped me look beyond their crude language, their acting out, their vulgar attitudes, to try to see the hurting person underneath. Sometimes I find one, and sometimes I don't. If I do, then I can use my knowledge and experience of how I felt with my terrible year to encourage them to do the next right thing, to make good decisions that will affect their lives and even the lives of their children. My psychologist friend will say that I am talking to myself and I most probably am.

So it came to pass. June 15 is hopefully the end of the worst year of my life....I am hoping for some really really good news on that day. Someone I love will have a great new job OR I will get a raise OR Someone will discover me as an artist or a writer and will offer me to travel all expenses paid while I get to do something wildly creative for them OR a huge amount of money will come in to fund the schools in Malawi and Zambia that I am working with OR my family will just have a wonderfully quiet peaceful year. No drama, no tragedies, no life-threatening illnesses, no crimes, no fortunes lost, no loss of jobs. Just quiet zen-like peace.

If that doesn't happen, I am truly sorry.