GREEN WITH ENVY

I usually talk about most things green and while this particular post will be about green, it will take a different direction.
ENVY or green with envy is what's on my mind tonight. I celebrated my birthday recently and years before I got to this age I thought about all of the things I would've liked to have accomplish before now; a bucket list so to speak. I've always wanted to be on Broadway. I loved to sing growing up and was called on quite regularly to lead a church song or to sing a solo. It wasn't that I   was the greatest singer, I think the church used me because I wasn't scared to stand up in front of the congregation. I was cast by a few local civic and community theaters but never as a lead, always in the background. I wanted to stand center stage on Broadway and sing to the heavens. I wanted a casting agent to sit front and center and ask someone after the performance "who was that and why haven't I heard of her before?" I wanted that agent to hand me his card and tell me to call his secretary to set up an appointment to meet with him so he could discuss a leading movie role he had for me.

Which brings me to the second thing on that "wish I had done" list; become an actress. I wanted to take Hollywood by storm. I got married young and had my children early and by the time I could clearly think about making my way to either Broadway or Hollywood, I had too many ties to the small city I had grown up in. There was always something else in the way of my seeking my dream. How dare I think about taking 4 small children away from their grandparents, their school, their friends and their lives? And by the time I was ready to spread my wings, Hollywood had their Debbie Morgans, Loretta Devines, Lynn Whitfields, Lonette McKees and so on and so forth. So those dreams died and the only stage I sing on now is riding in the car and singing to the old songs I grew up listening to...thank God for Sirrius radio!

The third thing I should've wanted to do was to maintain a decent weight and reasonable health. But once I quit smoking in 1988, I immediately gained more weight than I care to announce publicly and sadly never looked back. Just when I tried to do something about losing weight, poor health got in the way. Then when the health was under control, my husband got ill and whatever progress had been made took a back seat to getting him back to healthy.

There were things I wanted him and I to do together, take a dancing class, a cooking class, drive from Mississippi to California, of course taking some of the ride on Route 66 in a Corvette! There were other things along the way that I've wanted to do and now that my husband and I have all the time in the world to do them, I'm almost too tired to even try.

So I live my life vicariously through my children. One of my daughters and her boyfriend recently rode in a helicopter (also on my list). They went to a gun range (on my list too). Both of my daughters know people from Hollywood well enough to call them by their first names (yep, that was on the list as well).

Perhaps my life will take a dramatic shift and suddenly I will be skinny, healthy, have enough money, plenty of time and energy to do at least some of the things I want to do. But until then I will remain emerald obsessed.