Origiddle

Solve this Riddle:  If I am turning 35 next year, 45 the next and 55 the year after that, what am I today? 

Did you figure it out?

This is my very first original riddle.  I am calling it my Origiddle.  Down spell check! Down!  You can only have one Origiddle in your life and this is mine.  Do you have one?

Riddles, or brain teasers are often a play on words and some people are really good at solving them.  A good riddle will cause us to think about our world differently than we have been programmed to think. For instance, most people I challenge with my origiddle will answer ‘25’.  Why?  Because we are programmed from a very early age to think about mathematics when presented with numbers and this sequence of numbers appears to be in increments of 10.  The correct answer however has nothing to do with numbers.  The correct answer is:  ‘Dyslexic’.  Get it?  Yes, I will be 53 next year -*sigh*.

I like to solve riddles and crossword puzzles, play games and the like.  They keep me from feeling like my brain is atrophying.  After working in the same profession for many years, work starts to become second nature and nothing ever really seems ‘hard’.  Don’t get me wrong, the deadlines can be aggressive, the goals challenging, the projects interesting, but nothing really gets those neurons fired up like a good brain teaser! 

They say that to keep your mind healthy you need to exercise it just like the rest of your body.  In my personal battle against stupidity, I decided that I needed something other than games to keep my mind from becoming silly putty and so I decided to try line dancing.  Besides loving music and loving to dance, this would also help to keep my mind and body healthy – perfect!

I never really tried line dancing before unless I get credit for an intoxicated electric slide.  I have always preferred being scooped into the arms of a man and twirled around the floor over dancing in a line with a bunch of other people.  However, knowing that this could be my perfect ‘kill two birds with one stone’ solution I drove to the local place where “it’s cool to be country” to give line dancing a shot. 

The experience was…..well….humbling.  I attended the “beginner” class only to find that most of the beginners had been beginning for several years. And then there was me.  To my advantage I was familiar with most of the terminology from other types of dancing, but found that the time it took to move the term from my brain to my feet was highly deficient.  Directions have always been a challenge for me as well.  Trying to follow directions while turning around in circles to face different walls, remembering left from right without the luxury of placing your hand over your heart and doing all this while kicking, tapping, clapping or stomping all in rhythm to a song you have never heard before - I feared that the putty had already begun to form and that it was merely a matter of time before I was in a hospital drooling.

No way!  I am going to learn this line dancing. I am going to save my brain and my body and I am going to do it with rhythm!  I am stubborn and I have always thought that I could do anything I set out to do, and I will do this.  The day will come when I no longer look like I am having a seizure will line dancing and I will be proud!  It has to happen.  Being a 25 year old dyslexic with a seizure disorder and a problem with saliva is just not an option.
Did I say That?
 
 
 
 
 

Tethered

I don’t recall my Father ever coming home late from work.  He did go on the occasional business trip for “Ma Bell”, but every night at 5:35 Daddy walked down the street from the bus stop towards our house and I would run to meet him.  He would have a treat or two in his coat pocket that my hand would feel for immediately.   Sometimes his pocket was empty and as I looked up at him with my bottom lip sticking out in disappointment, he would pull a piece of gum or a sweet out from behind my ear…..just like that!
 
Last night I worked until 11pm.  My wonderful husband knows the signs that this is going to happen and graciously brings me food to keep me alive.  He used to ask me when I would finish, but quickly gave up after continually hearing finish times that never materialized.  Now he understands the routine.
 
I am an architect.  Not the type that design houses, I am an information technology architect.  I design systems made up of technologies, people and the processes that keep them working efficiently.  Sounds like a party huh?  By the very nature of my work, I spend a lot of time studying, researching and ‘pondering’.  For each new initiative there is an indiscriminate amount of pondering time before the creative juices begin to glue all my research notes and information together into something that makes sense.  Apparently when this creative juice glue begins to flow there is something in my eyes or posture or attitude that alerts my family to leave me alone and let me type.  So goes the routine….
 
I am not sure if this is similar to an experience a writer has when developing a story.  How wonderful it would be to design that which others could enjoy, rather than that which others must follow as a requirement for their employment.  I guess that is why I blog!
 
Corporate America has come to expect that we will be online after hours answering emails, or at the very least, checking our Blackberry Devices at all times.  Technology advancement has created this 24x7x365 electronic tethering that is very difficult to untie and remain employed. 
 
Daddy had a tether - it was family. He was led to come home each night at the same time to a meal with his family, perhaps a few games or an episode of Gunsmoke.  He didn’t go into work on weekends or carry devices that kept him in contact with his office.  We never saw an expression on his face that led us to stay away so he could work; unless of course it was on the car or his telescope (and even then we were offered the opportunity to participate if we wanted to). 
 
What happened?  It makes you wonder if this “transfer of the tether” or new focus of attention has something to do with the prevalence of family destroyers like divorce, suicide and addiction.  Maybe you think that is farfetched, but think about it; when society is tethered to organizations 24x7x365 that must remain value neutral and cannot express beliefs about God or religion, what happens to the hearts and souls of the people?  How much time is left to nurture ourselves or our families?  What a tremendous loss we have experienced!  
 
Maybe the rise in unemployment isn’t as bad as we think it is. Perhaps society is experiencing an untying of the corporate tether and we are being given back an opportunity for a few episodes of Gunsmoke. 

Tactfully Honest

Honesty is the best policy - or is it? The movie "Liar Liar" portrays this conundrum well. The character Jim Carrey loses his ability to tell a lie and the results are of course hilariious.

Being a motor mouth myself, and one whose blog is titled "Did I Say That?", you can probably imagine that I can relate to sticking ones foot in ones mouth! Oh yea, mix that with a glass of wine or a bad hair day and I can easily choke on a knee!

I Like to pride myself on being an honest person, but I don't think that being honest should ever interfere with being human. I mean seriously, we aren't robots that rely entirely on logic - we are complex human beings with deep feelings and a lifetime of experiences that all contribute to who we are and how we "hear" each other. This balancing of truth and relationship is what I call being tactfully honest.

In Graduate school I took a class on Leadership and Communication (didn't we all?). The main focus of the class was learning to understand how you are perceived by others. In other words it matters less what you say than how you say it and to whom you say it. I for one have been known at times to get this very wrong.

Ok, hold onto your hats for this epiphany...We could learn a lot from politicians who practice being tactfully honest. Have you noticed this? They know their audience and when they answer a question they do it in such a way that will not upset or insult the "hearers". They don't necessarily lie, but use a lot of tact in their responses. Ok some lie, I know, but I think they try to avoid lying so as not to fuel the opposition flame.

Jim Carrie wasn't being honest, he was being transparent - moreso than any of us should be. We all have those wicked little thoughts that run through our minds that we only hope don't come out. For instance, I was asked to dance the other night and replied, "No thanks, not right now", when what was really inside my head was, "are you kidding me, don't you even know what deodorant is? You stink!" Does this make me a liar? I don't think so.

Hey, does my butt look big?

A Great Sunday

Today was a fabulous day! We went to Rhode Island this morning for dance team practice and the routine is finally coming together. On the way to practice we had some great conversation and enjoyed the sunshine beaming into the windows. After 3 hours of practice we came home to take my son Danny to the pet clinic to get his cat vaccinated and checked. We went to a new grill next to the clinic and they were having .25 wings in 8 different flavors. We had our fill of wings and beer and the bill was barely $20! Went to Trader Joes, came home, Steele went to DJ and Danny and I hung out, drank tea and visited. A perfect Sunday!

Some of you may be saying, "but what about church?" I haven't regularly attended church for years now. I used to go faithfully, not only on Sunday, but during the week too. But then something happened...I got a divorce. Suddenly there was gossip flowing from Christian to so-called Christian. I was apparently having multiple affairs and more than one "friend" told me that I was backslidden. Apparently, divorce is so bad that all the service, sacrifice, prayer and fellowship is instantly forgotten. My ex-husband even had the nerve to tell my then 7 year old son that "Mommy doesn't love Jesus anymore."

I love my Lord and I always will, i just don't like church people. Sure, there are the exceptions, but I find the majority of church people don't practice Christianity outside of church walls - they fail to understand that WE ARE the church. Maybe that is the issue, we are, but they aren't! Whatever it is, I refuse to allow myself to go through that sort of rejection and pain again, so I don't go. I tried attending weekly without getting to know anyone at the church or spending time with them but it just didn't work out, it wasn't the same.

Apparently divorce is a worse sin than all the others that caused Christ to go to the cross, although I can find no evidence of this anywhere in the Bible. I know this because my ex-husband was nominated as a deacon, and it was denied because he was divorced. He had married a young girl who got pregnant while still in high school. He was pressured by family to have her get an abortion, but he refused. He felt that marrying her was the right thing to do. Ironically if he had aborted his offspring, he would qualify as a deacon, so apparently divorce is much worse than abortion. One man in our church used to be a drug addict AND dealer. You guessed it...he was a deacon!

No, I am content to enjoy the people I love on Sunday. To dance, to eat, to visit, it's all good. Thank you Lord for a wonderful day!

Pass the Duct Tape Please

I remember as a teenager being embarrassed by things my Mother would say. "Mooooooom" I would exclaim as I shrank as small as I could and hoped no one noticed I was with my Mother, "Why do you have to embarrass me all the time?" "Don't be silly" she would say, "are you on your period?" I wanted to die.

I wondered why my Mom and others felt the need to discuss our pimples or the boys we liked in public. Did they want us to be mortified? This along with other overwhelming evidence convinced me that indeed my parents were clueless about life. How did they ever survive without me?

After turning 50 I started to realize why Mom said these things. She was experiencing what I call menopausal motor mouth - the hormonally induced inability to shut up. This extra aging bonus takes those things in your head that aren't meant to be said out loud and pushes them out of your mouth while your brain is saying to yourself, "I can't believe I'm saying this and why can't I stop?" Pass the duct tape!

Menopausal motor mouth (mmm) can be especially harmful to your career. For those of us who have worked to gain respect and position in the corporate world one uncontrollable bout of mmm can instantly destroy years of effort.  Simply put, Corporate politics and mmm do not play nicely together.

Since duct tape doesn't qualify as an accessory in the fashion world another strategy is necessary.  Here's mine:  every time I feel like my eyeballs begin to swell (a sure sign that mmm is about to begin) I feign a pee. Seriously, everyone expects women my age to pee all the time, but have a little bout of mmm and eyebrows begin to raise!  Don't they know it is all part of the same thing?

Next time you wonder why women get all those lines around their lips when they age, think about how difficult it is to keep the mmm from coming out.  Holding in the mmm at the top and the gas at the bottom can take an enormous amount of control that generally results in pursed lips and furrowed eyebrows.  No wonder the plastic surgeons are making so much money! 

Did I say that?

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

My parents live across the country and I miss them a lot. Over the years our visits have been mostly quiet and enjoyable. My Mom and I do a lot of reminiscing and my Dad and I play pool and run errands. I enjoy cooking for them while I am there, we play marbles and dominos. Nice!

I was especially close to my Mom while growing up. We did a lot of girl stuff together. We shopped, went out to lunch and went to visit friends. I loved sitting at the kitchen counter when Mom's friends came over to listen to their conversations. I still love seeing my Mom, that is unless she is looking back at me from my mirror! Yikes!

Don't get me wrong, Mom isn't ugly. In fact, she was really quite beautiful in her time. I just don't want to look like her. Seeing her face in the mirror means I am all grown up, and I can't go back. It means my youth is gone and my future won't include relay races, hopscotch, Barbies or bikinis. I don't want to be my Mother!!!

It is ironic that as we age the years between us seem to lessen. There is absolutely nothing alike between an infant and an 18 year old. Their lives seem to be light years apart. But once the 18 year old turns 40 and the infant is now 22, they have much more in common. They may sit
in the same college classroom or both be into scrap booking. Now add another 20 years and they are neighbors. They sing in the church choir together and invite each other to parties. They are friends.

Maybe we start to look like our parents as the gap between our ages becomes inconsequential. Maybe it's because we reach a certain age and we don't change much more so the woman inside my Mother is really about the same age as I am. I guess the truth is, we will never know, and even if we knew, it wouldn't change the outcome.

Mom, I can't wait to see again and to catch up. You are very precious to me and I love you very much, but could you PLEASE stop looking at me!?!?

Stressed out about Stress

Did you know that stress causes weight gain?  Does anything NOT cause weight gain?  Even starving yourself puts your body in starvation mode and causes weight gain.  Are you kidding me?  Oops, this post is about stress, sorry!

Lately I have been incredibly stressed out.  Family stress, condo stress, work stress, money stress.  Sometimes it all hits at once.  Some people drink when stressed, others eat.  Of course there are also  healthy activities that relieve stress like walking, going to the gym or meditation.  I started writing this blog to help relieve stress and it does help to some extent.  Leaving it all on 'paper' is my way of "let go and let God" I guess.  It is my electronic prayer journal.

For me, stress is paralyzing.  It makes everything I do more difficult, and if I am not doing it already, it takes an incredible effort to get started.  I had to prepare for an appointment with my tax accountant the other day and it was way more difficult than usual.  With all the stress I was carrying already, every task seemed insurmountable.  This of course added even more stress.

I have a dance friend who told me that everyone needs a personal haven.  A place they go that takes them away from the stresses of life, the issues with work, the spousal spats.  His is dancing.  He forgets everything outside of the music and dancing, and when he is finished and goes home everything seems a bit less stressful.  Of course this will only work if your significant other is OK with you going away to your haven. 

My husband and I are currently part of a dance team.  We are getting ready to compete with the team and practice was yesterday.  The music started and we began dancing and then.......nothing.  We just stood there!  My husband had a complete loss of memory and I couldn't help him because the stress of just standing there was so overwhelming that it launched me into stress paralysis and I just stood there looking at him like a deer staring at the headlights of a car just before it crashes into them.....  I'm thinking dance won't be my personal haven.

I have decided to go back to Yoga.  I stopped practicing after many years because I always seemed to miss it due to other family or work obligations.  This of course was yet another stressor in my life.  Now it is time to make time for me, I have to.  I need to find  and guard my personal haven.  The difficulty will be to overcome the stress paralysis, go register and then not stress out over having difficulty doing the moves with my hormonally induced full figure, thus negating the entire reason for going in the first place.... my head hurts.

Now Showing: The Condo

Have you seen the movie 'The Firm' with Tom Cruise?  It's an older movie about a newly married man who takes this high paying job working for a posh law firm.  Sounds good right?  The catch is - he can't leave.  He of course doesn't know this until he tries to leave.  What ensues is an edge of your seat thriller type psycho-drama.  I love those! 

What I don't love is living the movie without Tom Cruise's salary or someone to write a "happily ever after" ending!  No, I didn't get a law degree -  I bought a condo. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  I was a single mother, working full time at a job that required frequent travel and on top of all that, I was in Graduate School!  Who had time to take care of a yard?  In New England, where I live you have to scoop stuff in the yard all the time. We have tons of leaves and tons of snow and it all requires scooping.  If you don't have time to scoop, your house tells the world the scoop about you, "Hey world a single mother lives here!"  I moved. 

At first, everything seemed OK.  The people were friendly enough, albeit most of them were much older than I was.  It wasn't until I needed some matters addressed by the condo board that the psycho-drama began. 

To sum it up, in the past 7 years, I have been sued, fined, harassed and 'special assessed' to death!  My condo fees have nearly doubled and are now so high that I can't sell.  I am still paying for a roof assessment that was spread out over 5 years and the new roof is leaking to the point where part of my ceiling recently fell down which of course appeals to the most discerning buyers. The condo by-laws state that all units must be owner occupied, so I can't even rent out my unit and slip away to hide from this nightmare.  I am stuck! 

If I could take my condo and move it out of the clenches of the wicked board I would be very happy because I really do love it.  It is spacious and lovely and has all the amenities I could ever hope for.  It is a wonderful home for my family, my cat and my little dog.  The other day the winds were so incredibly strong that I thought, "wouldn't it be great if the condo could get swept away by the wind and land in a different place..........."
Sorry, different movie.

The Sheen Quake

How could I possibly write today about anything else but the Tsunami?  This catastrophic quake rating 8.9 on the rector scale should be captivating our thoughts, our prayers and our communication.  Thank God that Charlie Sheen has finally calmed down enough to place the media's attention back on something that actually matters.

Is it just me or do you feel like the frequency of natural disasters is increasing?  When I woke this morning to the news of the Tsunami I had to wonder why - why are there so many, why are so many lives being taken unexpectedly, why is Mother Nature so angry?  Have we been so irresponsible in taking care of our world that it is revolting?  There must be a lesson here somewhere.

Let's step back to the Charlie Sheen conversation for a moment.  Sadly he was exploited by the media.  Oh yes, I think he is a jerk just like you do, but the truth is, he is mentally ill and his illness was exploited and will continue to be exploited as long as people continue to watch. 

How does this relate to the frequency of natural disasters, and specifically earthquakes?  According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) "Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant throughout this century and, according to our records, have actually seemed to decrease in recent years."

Technology has given us the ability to set up stations that monitor seismic activity world wide.  This means that within minutes, unusual activity is reported that would have been widely unnoticed or unreported before.  The truth is, they are not more frequent nor severe, but appear that way because they receive more media coverage.   

Back to the Sheen machine:  if he had simply been mentally ill, would the media care and talk about it for weeks?  Of course not!  But, it was his behavior that went straight to the headlines and was transmitted over the radio over and over again.  Irresponsible behavior sells newspapers, mental illness does not.

An earthquake, hurricane or tornado won't remain on the evening news for days or weeks - not unless of course there are lives lost. The more lives, the more news.  Check this out again from the :  USGS: "The population at risk is increasing. While the number of large earthquakes is fairly constant, population density in earthquake-prone areas is constantly increasing. So we are now seeing increasing casualties from the same-sized earthquakes." 

Think about the lives lost in Katrina.  Most were in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, the poorest area of the city.  Contrast that with the news about Pass Christian Mississippi where the eye of the hurricane passed and the most wind and storm damage was encountered.  There was very little news focusing on the folks that had lost their homes and everything they owned - it wasn't news - they were still alive....

Large earthquakes occur in clusters. When clusters occur, especially when they are widely reported in the media, they are noticed. However, during the equally anomalous periods during which no destructive earthquakes occur, no one deems this as remarkable.

Start acting normal Charlie, sober up, get healthy.  No one will deem you as remarkable.

Aging is not for the Weak

My Daddy had a stroke last week.  Not a 'bad' one, although I don't know of any 'good' strokes. At least it wasn't one that paralyzed him or placed him on life support.  He is confused, disoriented, afraid and frail.  The whole thing has caused my Mother more stress than she should be able to handle being already dependent on oxygen to breathe and a wallker to ambulate.  I wonder if what we see on the outside of an aging soul is actually the opposite of what is going on inside.  Imagine the pressure in your life if you were trying to get somewhere important and couldn't make it ontime because you had to change your own diaper.  What about stressing over whether your money will last until you die or if you will outlive your money and end up on the streets.  Day after day you wake up and wonder....  You can't stop wondering because there is very little else to think about.  The only thing you have now is your money, your house and your family.  Your money is depleting, your house is too difficult to manage and your family is trying to make you move out of your house which is one of only 3 things you have left.  Could you handle it? 

We don't give the Elderly folks in our lives enough credit.  They devote their lives to things that they end up having no control over.  Over the years they planned holidays and vacations to build memories that aging steals away from them in the form of dementia.  Perhaps that is a gift.  Perhaps if they were cognizant of all they have lost, that alone would kill them. 

I am not trying to be a downer, but I truly believe that the elderly are far stronger than their younger offspring.  Our bodies are younger, our brains are sharper, our patience is longer and our wallets are fuller, yet we lack the ability to deal with the type of disappointment and loss our elderly folks deal with on a daily basis, and we can learn a lot from them. 

Who do you have in your life you can learn from?  Do you have a widow or widower in your neighborhood?  Is there someone sitting on the steps each day that you pass on your way to work?  Do you have a nursing home in your area?  Don't assume that 'their people' will visit and spend time with them.  And even if they do, so what!  Reach out.  Spend time. Learn.  There is something they have to teach us.  If you seek it, you may find and experience the inner strength they possess.  If you do, please share.  This is what humanity is meant to be.  God Bless!

Social Media Memory Jogger

My mind was blown (70's term for you youngsters) when I was contacted last night on Facebook by a man whose elderly mother lives on the same street as one of my best friends from Jr. High School.  In his message he dropped names of people I haven't thought of in ages.  It disturbs me that I recognize names but can't seem to attach them to faces.  Wasn't that in the Twilight Zone a lot?  Faceless people.....Yea, it spooked me then and it is spooking me now! 

Stories of acquintances and friends dying are becoming way to frequent.  We are seeing the results of many of the destructive behaviors we were involved in during our youth.  Thankfully our current youth don't seem to be involved in these destructive behaviors - they just go to school and shoot each other!  Seriously, did you ever have to worry you might get shot in the back or held hostage while you were at school?  My biggest fear was that I would get caught smoking in the bathroom or that I would get a bad mark on a test.  And what is up with Austin Texas?  They have decided to allow kids to bring guns to school just in case they need to defend themselves....... Now that's a creative solution!  It must have been made by aging hippy school administrators who forgot we stopped taking LSD in the 80's.  

My Must-Do activity this weekend is to pull out the old year books and take a pictoral journey down Memory Lane.  I need to fill in the faces of acquintances both alive and those who have passed.  Do I place a mark next to the pictures of those who have died?  Is that morbid?  Perhaps it is practical.  When we threw a 50th Anniversary party for my parents, many of the invitations came back because the people were dead.  Is that when you want to find out, when planning a party?  It was difficult to plan because no one had a list of dead people!  They should offer a course in school, "Aging 101" so we all know the protocal for handling this type of thing. 

There is another motive for pulling out the yearbooks this weekend.  I really need to jog my memory.  In the messages sent to me by my new Facebook Friend, he said, "Do you remember playing Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle with ........ "?  Since I am too afraid to ask, I am dying to know whether I behaved myself or not.

Computers!

There is no way we can go back to the days when we didn't sit at a keyboard staring at a screen all day.  For many of us, we make our living because of computers.  Sometimes I think God in his wisdom should have created us with a built-in power source.....  Speaking of power sources - does it irritate anyone else that there isn't a cell phone on the market with the same type of charger?  I have even had two Blackberry's from the same provider with different charger types!  Come on, this has to bug you!  Where is the public outrage?  Instead of protesting, we follow along like dumb sheep, showing up after our contract is up to pick out our new phone.  We select our new 'complimentary' phone and then have to buy all the 'stuff' that keeps it working because the old phone had different shaped and configured 'stuff'.  Maybe we should open a Cellular 'stuff' co-op where you bring in your old stuff and swap it for someone elses old stuff ........OK I digress ---- back to computers---

Here's what kills me.  The very thing that is supposed to be a time saver, an efficiency tool, and an organizational helper actually sucks away most of my time.  It irritates me more than mosquito bites, keeps me up having late night arguments (I will get this to work - and - now it's getting personal!), caused my addiction to card games, auctions and online shopping....shall I go on?  And now, I am not satisfied with sitting in front of one all day long, I carry an iPad in my pocket book (with yet another different type of 'stuff').  BTW, I had to go to a few online auctions and find some new pocket books to hold my new iPad and associated stuff. 

So now begs the question:  why am I awake writing this blog about computers when I should be sleeping so I am rested for my 7am meeting tomorrow? Computers! Yep, specifically my laptop.  My husband (Steele) and I were getting ready to go upstairs to bed when I realized that I hadn't packed up my laptop and the various charging, connecting and logon 'stuff' that go with it for work tomorrow.  In his loving and helpful fashion, Steele turned off my laptop and started packing it up.  What he didn't know was that behind the log in prompt I had left numerous documents open that I was preparing for the presentation tomorrow morning at 7am..................need I say more?

When did this happen?

One day I was walking past some glass windows at work and caught a glimpse of my reflection.  Do you know what I saw?  A BELLY!  A round, sticking out, yucky, never had it before belly. I was devastated.  How did this happen?  When did this happen?  I have always had a fairly flat stomach and never considered it to be a problem area on my body.  Now, I look for clothes that are poofy and don't cling to my midriff and I suck in my stomach most of the time. When I dance, I am uncomfortable when the move includes any contact around the waist and the worst part.... I have a muffin top!! OK, deep breathe.......is this the end of the world? Not really, but I am convinced that I could retire earlier if I wasn't spending so much money on my ever expanding wardrobe to fit around my ever expanding waistline!  

Aging isn't easy!  There are things I can't do as easily as I used to and I am envious of the young girls that can wear 'skinny' jeans.  I don't like feeling like my body is out of control or noticing that my skin is not as tight as it used to be.  But the truth is, I wouldn't trade this time in my life for anything.  I have a wonderful family, a great job that pays well, I don't have money worries, I get to travel when I want to, I work from home a few days a week, my husband loves to dance with me, eat what I cook and spend time just doing nothing together.  All in all, life is great and I am fat and happy! :)