Online Forums/Group Friends

Do you belong to one? Specifically military ones? Some have come and gone, others have gone through changes and reconstruction, while others have just stayed the same. All in all I have belonged to a lot over the years, I started out with Yahoo groups but even those have gone by the wayside, now it seems that forums are the place to be and get information. You can gain a lot of information and make friends through these places, but you can also lose friends and make enemies. Yes some are gossip sessions and a fight might start between a few posters, but others while have their ups and downs are the best place to be. You can gain so much information from them from PCSing itself, to pay matters, to an actual base/post/city, to the latest news, branch specific questions and everything in between. There is several online forums that are major and have large groups of people on them, mainly spouses in a few and Active, Reservist or Retirees in others. They have grown and fallen and then rebuilt again. But the information you can get has never stopped it is still there.

You can make friends through this groups and forums as well. Some you already have met and it grows from there; others you will meet at one place or another; while others you will be nothing more than online friends and never get the chance to really know each other. I have friends in all 3 categories. I have become reacquainted with girls & guys I knew before and had the chance to meet again. Other ones I have gotten the opportunity to meet and become even better friends with, friends we will be for life. The final ones I have known for years but never have and probably never will meet them. But that doesn’t change the way we feel about each other and what we mean to each other. We are part of a group, a special group that is there for each other no matter what, through thick and thin, good times and bad, a shoulder to cry on when something happens and a person to applaud when an accomplishment is made. These friends have helped me a lot over the years and I have helped them I hope. Sometimes it can just take that little bit of encouragement to help you or them feel better, the right thing to say, the necessary information, just an online expression like a happy face or a joke to make you laugh.

These friends can be in your life for a short time and other times they can be in there for long time even for life. They can be younger or older than you. They can be closer to you than your own family even tough they have no blood or marriage relation to you at all.

They are part of a sisterhood, your sisters

Coupons

Yes I said that dreaded word. The one that some people think is weird, that it create nightmares, it is too much of a problem, too much work. but others swear by. I am one of the others, I do believe in coupons. But that belief is not something that is new, it is something that I have been doing for years and years. But before you rush to assumptions read the following first:

1) I am NOT an Extreme Couponer
2) I do NOT have this huge binder that takes up half the cart I have a little holder that fits into my purse
3) I do NOT jump into garbage containers/bins in order to find coupons
4) I do NOT spend 40 hours a week looking through coupons
5) I do NOT buy things that I have no need for (ie diapers when my youngest is 10)
6) I do NOT have a closet, garage or anything else where I store 20 million products for the next year
7) I am NOT one who get tons of things for free or money back. 

I have no idea how some of the people who are out there are able to get away with it. They should not be able to double up on coupons (place I live does not do that at all); they should not be able to buy out all the product when they have no need for it; and then the big question is why.  As in why do they do it? Why do they need so much stuff? Why do they spend so much time.  Now I am not saying it is wrong, because there are people who do it for the good in which they give the things away, but there are others out there who I swear will be on the show Hoarders within the next 2 years because of what they are buying when they have no need for it all.  

When I use my coupons I at least try to cover the sales tax (surcharge when shopping at the commissary).  The most I have been able to save is around $40 on a bill that was originally $200 so there I saved some. But never more than that because most of the coupons I see in the paper each week are for products that I don't need at all.  Okay I have to admit a few times I have gotten a few extra of products that I know I am going to need but not enough to fill up a closet or my cupboards/pantry. It is more along the lines of 3 or 4 extra packages of scalloped potatoes, or maybe 6 boxes of jell-o, or maybe a few bottles of hot dog relish, etc.... but that's it I swear. 

So how are you all when it comes to coupons? Do you even use them? Are you an extreme couponer?

Time

where does it go? I have no idea, it seems to go by so quickly. You get all these ideas and dreams of what you want to do, what you want to see, where you want to go, but it never works out that way at all. I had this great idea not once but twice about blogging and I seem to start doing it so well and then I fail, I don't do it as often as I should. Topic ideas seem to come but then quickly fade. I wish in some ways that I still could write the way I could when I was a teenager. Then I wrote so much whether it poetry or stories but now it seems to be blocked at times but alright in others.

Time also passes in other ways because you watch those around you change, my daughter turned 10 this week and I can't believe it. Just like I can't believe my son is 13, that 2 of my nieces are graduating high school next month. And I hate saying this but in the summer it will be my 25th High School Reunion. WAHHHHH I can't believe I graduated from high school 25 years ago. Funnily enough the teachers were work to rule meaning no sports, no dances, almost no grad. One of my nieces is going through the same thing. This then marks no change really because they are still taking things away from the children who have done nothing wrong in order to make a statement. Why did we have to take it? Why do the kids today have to take it? That isn't right at all, it isn't the students fault it is the adults who are acting like children throwing a hissy fit's fault. They need to grow up and remember what it would have been like if it had happened to them or if it did happen to them. It was suggested years ago when the teachers went work to rule about playing a rugby game, then a soccer game on the front lawn of Parliament. In order for those politicians to get off their high horses and do something. Well maybe it is sad to say it be considered again.

Okay I need to get away from that and remind myself of what this is truly about and that is making sure that you do take the time that you have and spend it wisely.

Teenage Romance books

Do you remember them? I do and in fact still have a few of them that I decided to keep in case one day I had a young girl to read them. There was the Sweet Hearts Romance, First Love from Silhouette, Wildfire, Crosswinds and Keepsake to name a few. Then there was the Dawn of Love that were historical fiction.

They were nice because they dealt with every day life that is still existent in today's world just a little more technology added in. The girls came in all shapes and sizes, cultures, family size, they were not always in the top social group in school, they had brains and used them, they had hard times and heart break. The girls often finding their first crush and something that we dreamed would work out in the end and they would go on to have a happy life. Just like what we wanted for ourselves. I realized when reading these books that they were normal, coming from all walks of life and often dealing with the same things that I was dealing with at the time. In our school we were different, we didn't always have the proper classroom set up, we didn't have bells to let us know when classes were starting or over, and we had our lockers in one area. We also had the jocks, the headbangers, the geeks, the brains, the outcasts and everything else but we got along. Sometimes a jock was a headbanger or an outcast was a brain or maybe a geek was a jock.

So what is available now for kids to read? Are the books offered similar? There just seems to be so many books out there that it can be confusing at times. Are they really good for the girls to read? Are there books about real life? Not just fantasy? I realize they are but it also means that I am going to have to really read them first before I allow my daughter to read them. I do hope that she will read the ones I have from before and that she will enjoy them the same way I did.

If you are interested I did find a link to a website that has some of these old romance books. http://sweetheartsromancebooks.com/

Places to see

I have had a privilege in my life that I was a traveler growing up. By the time I was 8 we had been to Australia twice, Fiji, Mexico, Washington State, California and I think Arizona, plus who knows where in BC and Alberta we had gone. Of course it did help that my mother is from Australia so that is why we went there to see her family. Then she had a friend in Fiji we stayed with them so that meant low cost on accommodations too. When I was a little older we went to Australia again, plus stayed in Hawaii for a week, did a drive through BC to the Calgary Stampede, and to Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick, all before I was 13. This doesn't count all the other side trips we did up and down Vancouver Island and the rest of BC. When I got married it meant moving to Hawaii, from there we went to Washington, back to Hawaii, to California, to Florida, to Singapore, back to Florida and then finally settling in Washington. While in Singapore I was able to go to Japan and Thailand with girlfriends and we also went to Malaysia, Thailand and to Australia. When I go to places I appreciate what they have there, I am all for trying some local food but definitely respecting local beliefs and the culture. I use the chopsticks when eating Asian food, always have toilet paper or wipes in my bag, and I ask locals for information because that can get you into doors that you might not know about. You need to adjust to what you are in not making them adjust to what you want. If it means eating at dumps to get the best tasting meals, being polite, learning some of their language then you do it.

With all this traveling I realized where I want to go and what I want to see. I would love to go to Europe like everyone else but more because I want to see where my family history comes from. But there is so many other places too. Turkey, Tanzania, South Africa, Egypt, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, India, Ceylon, Vietnam, definitely back to Thailand, more of Indonesia, Hong Kong, then South America oh the possibilities, the list doesn't end there. Hmmm you know maybe it would have been easier to do a list of places I don't want to go because that list is a lot shorter.

I really hope that one day I can put my foot down in these places but I know I might not. I can view pictures and use my imagination as to what it would be like there. It makes me smile just like it would if I was there because while asking the locals helps to open doors sometimes so does a smile.

Blogging

I had a blog before but after awhile it just petered out. So I decided that I needed to start another one this time though from a different angle. But you know what it is almost just as hard because while I started out writing all the time, lately I have been stuck for ideas. Then one day I sat down and wrote some out but did that really help? Nope because that was 2 weeks ago and I didn't write a single one. I am jealous of people who are able to write continuously and it doesn't seem that difficult at all for them. (That is my view though because we often know what we see is often very different to what is really going on as it might be just as hard for them) The funny thing is though I used to not have a problem writing, I did it all the time growing up. Creating these poems, writing these stories of what I thought I would be doing or where I thought I would be and so forth when I was a teenager. The pen seemed to go so easily and just flow. I had papers and notebooks and everything else filled with thoughts, with dreams, with ideas. I can laugh at them looking back when I re-read them which makes it just as rewarding in a sense. Now though it doesn't seem to be, I think in all my growing up I stopped from allowing myself to relax, to dream, to use my imagination on what could be. There is nothing wrong with that because we need that in order to really survive.

I mean where we would be in this world if Walt Disney didn't have his imagination? Can you imagine the world without Disney? I can't, I shutter honestly when I consider that could have happened. No Mickey Mouse, no Bambi, no Snow White, no Cinderella, no dreaming that one day our prince would come, no going to a place that allows you to be a kid. This world I think in many ways would be so sad if we didn't have Disney. Who else really changed our world not necessarily in a way that we think about? What would have happened if the ship never landed at Plymouth Rock? Where we would be if Queen Victoria had never reigned? Without Gandhi? Without hockey (okay I'm watching Canucks vs Kings right now please win tonight boys you can't lose 3 games in a row)? And heaven forbid without true football - soccer! All these things have become a part of our lives that often we take for granted. So we do need to sit down and honestly take a look at them sometimes. The true question of where would we be.

In our world, on this day

We are forgetting the true meaning behind it. We are instead focusing on the fact that is it Friday; in many areas the sun is breaking through the clouds after weeks/months of rain; we are quick to drive to work or school stopping at the drive thru coffee place on the way; we are forming weekend plans to do with our family or by ourselves; we are cleaning the house, doing homework, or other things; we are... all these words are WE, ME, I, or OUR. The world of hardknocks it is becoming a ME world, what is in it for ME; What do I get out of it; I can't help you with that; I'm sorry it won't work for ME; WE won't benefit from that; YOU are wrong; etc... When did we start concentrating on ourselves and not others? When did we forget the true meaning of life? When did we become who we are? When did we throw what we had been given by the wayside?

This is a day that occurred around 2,000 years ago when THE Man who brought us another important day in our lives, was betrayed, accused, sentenced and killed for US. He didn't know us, he didn't do anything wrong, but yet he gave his life for us. For us to be forgiven by God for the sins that we do each and every day of our lives. HE forgives us without question when we ask for it. HE allows us to move ahead in our lives. HE gave up HIS only son for us, people he had not yet created. How can we forget that? How can we forget this gift of life and forgiveness? How can we stop ourselves for a moment, for a minute, for an hour, for a day, for a month, for our lives and remember? How can we instead of rushing off somewhere to do something stop and appreciate what is around us? The mountains, the trees, the flowers, the beauty that is created all before us FOR US. A beauty that can never be matched, never replicated, never seen again beyond that one moment in time.

So every today and every tomorrow do that, stop, and say just a few simple words - Thank You God for what you have placed before me. Thank You God for forgiving me for my sins. Thank You God for allowing me to forgive the sins of others against me. Thank You God for giving up your only Son. Thank You God for being by my side as I walk down this path. Thank You God for carrying me when I needed it. Thank You God for my life. Thank You God!