IT'S THE END OF THE YEAR!

Well we've come the end of another year (thank God the Mayans were wrong)!

My husband and I have been through the wringer this year. He became ill in April and it turned life as we knew it upside down. We had just weathered the storm from me being ill most of 2011. I'm reminded of a song we used to sing at church:

The Rough Side of the Mountain

"Oh Lord I'm strivin'

tryin' to make it through this barren land,

but as I go from day to day

I can hear my Savior say

'trust me child,

come on and hold my hand'

I'm comin' up on the rough side of the mountain

I must hold to God, His powerful hand

I'm comin' up on the rough side of the mountain

I'm doin' my best to make it in"

I've visited the rough side of the mountain more times then I'd care to count these last few years but 2013 will be, has to be a better year for my family. It's the year my daughter in California will land a major role in a movie. My daughter in Georgia will land her dream job. My oldest son in Indiana will stay safe from all hurt, harm and danger doing his job as a policeman. My youngest son will find everything he's looking for. Everyone in my life will be truly blessed.

I know I haven't blogged the way I had planned to when I started this journey and what I did write deviated from my original subject matter: green. But 2013 will be the year I will blog more, finish the two books I'm working on, lose weight, join a gym, buy a new wardrobe and all of those things we resolve to do at the end of the year. 

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read my blog, such as it is. And if you took time to leave a comment, I truly appreciate you. As we come to the end of 2012, I want to take the time to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2013 is going to be a great year!

Rosa

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

pic provided espn.com

Stunning! I don't know a whole lot about football but over the years I've learned to enjoy watching it because my sons played it in high school and its been a way to spend time with my husband on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. But I do know what I saw Monday night didn't look like the same thing the referees eventually claimed they saw. I saw an interception that would have allowed the Green Bay Packers to come away the winners. What the referees finally announced they saw allowed the Seattle Seahawks to walk away victorious.

Now this has absolutely nothing to do with the color green except that the two teams that played last night had green in their uniforms and I love Seattle's colors! If you went to sleep on the game you missed a doozy! In the first half of the game, Seattle sacked the Packers quarterback something like 8 times and they were leading the game. They weren't leading by a large margin but they were still ahead. Green Bay came back and was leading. I don't even remember what the score was but at the very end of the game Seattle's quarterback threw a pass which was simultaneously caught by a Seattle player and a Green Bay player. The replacement refs called it a touchdown by Seattle and even the people upstairs whomever they are, reviewed it and it was still called a touchdown. Seattle won the game.

This game reminded me of  the roller coaster of emotions one feels of almost winning and then almost losing and then almost winning then winning or losing. Eventually somebody has to win and someone has to lose. That's just the way it is when we compete. Why do we wait for the last minute "hail Mary" to try to win? If we have to depend on the referees to win the game for us then we weren't prepared for the game we were playing in the first place. We also have to remember under that theory the referees can lose the game for us as well. It goes go both ways.

How many of us have tried to publish a book only to be rejected time and time again? How many times has an actress auditioned and been called back but never getting that one big role? How many houses did you have to look at before your offer was accepted? How often have you had to pray your credit was good enough to get the car you wanted? Instead of having to ask those questions why aren't we asking questions like: did I write the very best book I could write, did I reread it, proof read, edit, having it professionally edited before sending to a publisher? Was I prepared for that audition, had I taken acting classes, singing classes, dancing classes or whatever classes were necessary to make me competitive? Have I paid my bills on time so my credit is where it needs to be and if I didn't make enough money to pay them, did I get a part time job or find a way to make extra money to straighten out my credit? You get the point. There are too many things we can and should do for ourselves so we don't have to depend on someone else to decide our fate.

So do we blame the replacement refs for the debacle that ended last night's game or do we blame the players for not playing better earlier in the game so the end of the game wouldn't be or couldn't be decided at the last minute by someone else?

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.