Childhood Melody

Have you ever heard it?  Those few notes playing a song that you had forgotten?  That haunting melody weaving through your mind, bringing you back to your childhood?  It doesn’t happen very often for me.  For the most part any music I hear that reminds of me childhood is some nursery rhyme or silly song or something fairly basic and quite honestly, moderately annoying.  Generally when I hear those songs all I can think is, I used to adore these songs and sing them over and over again?  These days once is generally enough for me, thank you very much.  If I had siblings I’m sure I’d be more tolerant, but as an only child, no, just no.  So the songs that remind me the most of my childhood are songs from movies, generally Disney songs though there were others as well.  And most of the movies I watched as a child, I still watch today, you know except for the ones that were obviously super juvenile.  (Disney does not count in that category.  If someone tells you that Disney movies are for just kids, smack them upside the head and then make them sit down and watch every single one of them, you have my permission.)

Just Dance

I love to dance, always have.  As a little kid I was always dancing around the house, making up dance routines and performing for my parents, making my dad dance with me to a song I liked on the radio or at the end of a movie, jamming with my mom in the kitchen, etc.  When I reached high school I started going swing dancing every Tuesday night with a group of friends.  We went for close to five years and I got pretty good at it.  At my senior prom they had a swing dance competition and my boyfriend and I, who had been my main dance partner since I'd started dancing, ended up getting second place.  Once we broke up though, I found myself without a dance partner or a group to go dancing with.  I finally started going with one of my guy friends which was a blast, but eventually he had to quit due to other commitments on Tuesday nights.  So I stopped going for a while until I managed to convince a few of my girl friends to go out several times.  However, it was much harder to find any guy friends and if you don't have at least one guy friend along who will for sure dance with you or if you're not drop dead gorgeous, chances are you're going to be sitting on the sidelines for most of the night.  That fizzled out pretty quick and when they stopped wanting to go, I stopped going as well.

A Valentine's Day To Remember

In the past I've always hated Valentine's Day or Single's Awareness Day as I tended to call it along with the myriad of other people who didn't have a significant other to spend the day with.  I would get depressed that I was still single after however many years it had been since my ex and I broke up.  So I would spend Valentine's Day depressed that I was single and annoyed every time I saw some giggling couple go by.  For the most part I've gotten better with it and just tried to focus on other things and convince myself it wasn't a big deal.  This year was slightly harder because within the last couple of months several people I know have either gotten married or announced that they're expecting kids.  Normally I wouldn't think much of it except for the fact that they're all three, even four years younger than me.  Much as I am happy for them it does make me very aware of the fact that I haven't had a real date in almost exactly four years now while many of my Facebook friends, most of whom are my age or younger, are raving about their fantastic boyfriends or girlfriends and the latest date they've gone on.  And I know, nobody wants to date the fat girl, but when most of the girls at my work who are my size or bigger are also raving about their fantastic boyfriends or girlfriends, I start to figure something must be seriously wrong with me.

The Tear Of Grief

The Tear of Grief also known as the Tear Drop Memorial.  Ever heard of it?  Probably not.  Despite my personal interest in sculptures, provided they are not abstract, I'd never heard of it until a friend of mine posted an article about it on Facebook.  Considering what it was created in memory of, you'd think most people would have heard of it, but I think the "issue" of what country it came from became the focus.  Officially called To The Struggle Against World Terrorism, this 10 story sculpture was created and given to the United States as a gift from Russia as a memorial to the victims of 9/11.  Located in Bayonne, New Jersey it consists of a 100-foot-tall, 175-ton bronze-clad tower with a huge open crack running down the center.  Suspended within the crack is a forty-foot stainless steel tear drop.  Engraved on the eleven sides of the marble base are the names of those people killed on September 11th in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania as well as six other who were killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  As you can see in the picture, the memorial is in a bit of a remote location, deliberately placed there so as to have Manhattan as the back drop and to be in sight of where the World Trade Center once stood.

A Whole New World

So lately I've had the song A Whole New World from Aladdin stuck in my head which is kind of funny because I haven't seen it anytime recently and its not one of the Disney movies I've seen a lot.  Don't get me a wrong, I love Aladdin, but I've always been more of a Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast kind of girl.  But I digress.  I couldn't figure out why that song was stuck in my head and then suddenly it just sort of clicked.  I've been thinking about my life a lot since the beginning of the year with trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.  Right now I feel very stuck, very caged in.  I'm stuck in a dead-end job that I hate with a passion, stuck with no real future it feels like, stuck in a place where there aren't very many opportunities in any of the various activities or hobbies that I enjoy.  Again, don't get me wrong, I love New Mexico, I was born and raised here, but its not exactly a bustling state where you have all kinds of different opportunities or jobs in the areas that I enjoy.

A Sneak Peak

Soooo, as I have mentioned before I am slowly, and I do mean slowly, working on writing a book.  While I enjoy working on it, it is something that takes a lot of time and energy.  And with my schedule becoming more hectic due to work and looking at going back to school sometime in the near future, I have sometimes considered whether it was worth continuing.  So, just for the heck of it, I decided to share the prologue for my book.  If you know me, you should not be at all surprised to find that its filled with magical creatures and heroes and such.  Feel free to read and give your opinions and thoughts about it.  So, without further ado, I now present to the prologue of my book.  Enjoy!

The Beauty Within

One of the things I have struggled with for many years now is my perception of beauty. My heart knows that beauty comes from within and I can see that beauty in others. But when I look at myself, I judge myself by outward appearance. I'm the girl who has to look perfect, who refuses to go anywhere without makeup because I think I'm so unattractive. I'm the girl who looks in the mirror and hates what she sees cause I'm not stick thin, my hair's not perfect, there's a small gap in my teeth, etc. I notice every single little flaw.

Act of Valor

Many of you probably know that there is a new movie out now called Act of Valor.  While the movie itself is not fact, the events that take place, the action, and basically the entire movie could be true and could happen.  Many people might find themselves disappointed with parts of it.  This isn't like some of the movies or tv shows where people are doing things that could obviously never happen in real life or they have impossible endings.  In many ways, this is real.  This is what happens.  This is what the men and women of our country do for us in our fight against terrorism.  And to make it even more realistic, the actors in it are actually active duty Navy SEALs, cast because as the filmmakers went about making the movie, they realized that no actor, regardless of training, could realistically portray these men.