Whew...a lot on my mind!

     Well, as you can tell the longer drive into work since we moved gives me lots of time to think and I have a lot on my mind right now.  I wish I had a machine that would record my thoughts when I'm driving and spit them out in like a Word document or something when I'm done.

     There are days I think, "Lord just take me now! The human race is so exhausting! I don't like it down here anymore!". But maybe I need to remember that the earth is not my home, but I need to try to bring as many "home" with me as I can before I die.....

Friends and Neighbors...Foreign Words in the USA

    I've moved around a lot since graduating high school.  I've had what I considered a good friend or two. But why are people not willing to take the extra effort to keep in touch with their "friends" once one moves away? My grandma had friends back in Ohio she grew up with that she was in constant contact with up till the day she died. She moved to Iowa in her 20's. Why aren't people like that anymore?

    Now that I'm on facebook, I've found people I went to high school with, but I don't know them anymore. We'd gone separate ways and I'd like to think they've all changed. It would be pretty sad to be the same person you were in high school 15 years later.

   Even "friends" I'd thought I made at church...none of them even know where I am now. I tried to get in touch with several of them to no avail. You'd think at least church "families" and friends would keep in touch. Do I expect too much from the human race? I guess it is true that it's all be in it for yourself mentality these days. It's like nobody really cares. Nobody has the guts to get involved with another person's life or family. The fake "hi, how are you's" are thrown around everywhere...church, work, occasionally a store you walk into, but they are just words not meant to be taken seriously.

     I can remember when communities had "welcome wagons". It wasn't all that long ago. We had a group greet us when we moved to Audubon, Iowa. We received a basket of fruit and information on the town and some coupons to local businesses. Now, most don't even know the name of their neighbors. My husband and I are no different. In fact, we just started talking to one of our neighbors at our old place only a month before we moved! How sad is that!

     I guess instead of trying to strive to be different and unique, I'll work hard from now on to make people actually feel cared about and mean it. None of this fly by night I'll forget about you in the morning even though I pretend I care now.

Different than Most Girls

     I always tried so hard to be unlike "most girls/women". I grew up hearing about how women nag too much, shop too much, gossip too much, cry too much and try to run a guy's life. So, I didn't want to be like that because I didn't want to end up making a man I may fall in love with miserable. I was "one of the guys" most of my life. But now I can't be. I don't feel comfortable hanging out with the guys now that I'm married because there was always at least one or two of my guys buddies that wanted to make it into something else.

     I came across a photo and a quote a few weeks back that really made me think about what I'd worked all my life to "be", or not be like. It's a photo of a row of forks and one fork is all bent and twisted. ( I'll attach the photo if I can.) The saying is..."Just because you are unique does not mean you are useful."   Wow...ouch. So I'm not useful with this philosophy I've engraved into my head. But I have a dilemma.

    You see, I've found it to be true about what I mentioned above about several women. They can't be trusted or be true friends...at least not a lot of those I'd found in the past. I've come across a lot of flaky women in my lifetime. I've found that several don't wise up till  they are in their 50's or older.  I like hanging out with the older crowd most of the time. So how do I find a balance? And where are the Godly women that are true to their word and won't toss you aside for something else that they "feel" is better or whatever it is that they are thinking?

    What ever happened to true friendship and neighbors? Yet another topic...

Where's My Identity?

     I never realized that getting married meant leaving so much of my identity behind. Let's see....I moved to my husband's location, I'm farther from my family (which doesn't really matter because even when I was only a days drive away for almost 5 years they never bothered to visit me.), I left my church behind, I go to my husband's church now, I'm using his bank and I hang out with his friends...which are usually the guys from the band. The only thing I had left that was me and really identified me and represented my personality was my truck. And now I don't have my truck. I have a bloated Jeep whose engine sucks...it's get up and go got up and went before it even got off the assembly line.

     So where is me? And does it really matter? The only thing that I have right now that is mine is my job, and I hate it, so that doesn't help. It doesn't even depict who I am...or was. I sit at a computer all day and see the same people every day. I don't get to meet new people or mingle. I don't have any physical labor to do. I feel like that bag of salad that sits in your refrigerator for a month and gets all watery and brown and stagnant.

     I guess I want to be doing something that will make an impact. The only thing I have right now to really do that with is raising my son. And I don't feel I can do that properly because I am at work all week. Luckily I have an awesome husband that takes care of little Ryan, but I know he feels very overwhelmed at times. This role reversal thing just isn't working for us.

    I always tried so hard to be different from "most girls". But that is my next topic....