My American Dreams

I recently read a great blog post titled, "Is the American Dream Holding You Back?"  Well...is it?  So often we find ourselves working, working, working that we forget to actually live our lives.  I'm certainly not one who has this balance all figured out, but what I like about this post is that the author challenges that our society thinks "working like a dog is virtuous and personal enrichment is self-indulgent."  I couldn't agree more.  Do you ever feel a bit a guilt for taking a vacation from work?  Have you ever met someone who finds pride in never taking vacation?  For me?  Yes...and yes.  Don't get me wrong.  I of all people strongly believe in feeling passionately about your work and giving it your all.  I believe in hard work and that sometimes you will have to make sacrifices and figure out a system of balance. I have huge respect for driven hard workers.  This post, though, isn't suggesting we become lazy.  It's just suggesting that sometimes we chase so hard after The American Dream.....that we forget to pursue our own.  Perhaps we too easily forget that the American Dream doesn't, and shouldn't!!, look the same for everyone.  The American Dream is rooted in the freedom to pursue happiness.  What does happiness look like for you? 

Yes, I actually thought about all of this! 

This thinking led me to start considering some of my own dreams.  What are some experiences I would really like to have during my life?  What are some good-intentioned things that, when I flirt with the idea, cause a stirring in my heart and gut?  A clear clue that this would bring me a feeling of happiness.  No matter how large or how small.  How seemingly unattainable or simiplistically ordinary.  Like a bucket list.  Except I don't like to call it that because it just seems rather depressing to create a list of "to-dos" before I kick-the-bucket.  As I began this list I started to realize that this could be turned into a "favorite things" piece simply because I have a feeling that this list will start to be one of my favorite things ONCE I start crossing some of this stuff off!!!

So call it what you will, but here is my incomplete and ongoing list of what MY American Dream looks like...

1. Go white water rafting
2. Eat pizza and drink wine in Italy
3. Get my picture in front of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in NYC
4. Take a cooking class (ANY cooking class)
5. Go on a mission trip
6. Find an organization I'm passionate about and consistently offer hands-on volunteer work
7. Lead a bible study for high school or young college-aged girls
8. Learn to surf (ok...learn to STAND UP on a surf board)
9. Knit a scarf
10. Hike to a huge waterfall (preferably in Hawaii) :)
11. Learn to play golf...and like it (I should add as #12 PRACTICE PATIENCE!!!)
12. Learn to latin dance--come on, hips shakin', fringe, twists and spins.  Yes, please!
13. Learn how to use my cast iron skillet (it intimidates me)
14. Empower college students to believe in and value themselves
15. Be in a dance flash mob!!
16. Make time in every single day for God to have my undivided attention
17. Be a Dove Campaign for Real Beauty spokesperson (I may not be model material, but I am so passionate about women not buying society's definitions of "beauty" but rather loving themselves for exactly the way that they are.  And this campaign preaches just that).
18. Take my future niece or nephew to Disneyworld (I literally have a reoccuring about doing this)
19. Own a beach house on Seabrook Island, SC
20. Learn to shoot a gun REALLY well
21. Go fishing in Jackson Hole, WY
22. Plant my own vegetable garden
23. Never stop exercising, no matter how old I get
23. Read books to my future children at night
24. Get over my fear of people seeing me cry
25. Own a golden retriever
26. Floss everyday for a year (ok, for the rest of my life...baby steps, people!)
27. Bake a coconut and apple pie as good as my Grandma does
28. Learn how to make all of my Grandma's Thanksgiving recipes
29. Ride around somewhere beachy in a convertible, hair down, music blaring
30. Go rollerblading down a beach boardwalk
31. Own a soft-top Jeep and drive it around in the Spring/Summer
32. See a volcano (preferably not errupting)
33. Master real push-ups on my toes...chest to deck...everytime
34. Remember that people get more excited about receiving snail mail than e-mail...and actually put that into practice more.
35. Remain humble enough to accept my mistakes and learn from them
36. Teach a communication class (interpersonal, non-verbal, conflict resolution, anything!)
37. Learn how to grill!
38...........

So clearly the ".............."  indicates that I've decided to keep this list ongoing  Checking off any of my American dreams that I am blessed enough to complete--or have the fortitude to complete!  So here goes nothing.  Pursuing what makes me happy.

And this is why My American Dreams list is hopefully going to become one of my MOST favorite things!

Furry Friends

I love animals.  If it's furry you can probably bet that I will love it.  I sometimes wonder if you are born an animal-lover or if you become one the more you are actually around animals.  I guess that doesn't even really  matter, so let me just dive in...

Growing up we ALWAYS had some kind of animal roaming around.  We certainly always had dogs and cats...but there were definitely a few wild cards in there. 

My Grandpa was a mailman who ran the rural mail route, and you can only imagine what kind of critters he found along the dusty gravel backroads of Weiner!  My brother and I had so many pet turtles that I couldn't even begin to count!  As soon as we saw grandpa's dust-encrusted Ford pickup pull in the driveway, we would head outside to look in his truck bed...what would it be this time?!  Of course, it was always a turtle.  My brother and I would dash inside to prepare the turtle's new home. Mom would grab a bucket that our family endearingly (and literally) coined "the puke bucket", (this surely needs no further explanation). I would snatch a few lettuce leaves from the fridge, and in we would place our new turtle friend.  We'd poke his shell a few times and name him something really unique and creative...like Terry the Turtle.  After a couple of days, Dad would drive the little guy to the farm where he would release the turtle into a pond.  Freedom at last!!

Then there was my beloved pet fawn...
The summer before my 2nd grade year my Dad found a young fawn on his farm.  Worried that the fawn's mother had abandoned it, he kept checking on it for a couple of days.  After concluding that the fawn had indeed been abandoned, he scooped the little weak baby into his arms and carried him right smack into our house.  I can remember it so clearly...probably because I literally freaked out with joy!  A baby fawn?!  For me?!  The fawn walked right up to me and bleeted, and I petted his little wobbly, white-spotted body.  He took to me quickly.  I fed him from a bottle and named him Comet.  Hey, I've always been obsessed with Christmas, and this was the closest I was EVER gonna get to owning a reindeer!  We bought Comet a brand new yellow dog collar, and I made an adhesive nametag with Dad's old school label maker.  You know the kind. A local man had some wooded and fenced-in land that he raised deer on, and he agreed to let me keep Comet out there with the other deer.  (It's Northeast Arkansas, people. Raising deer isn't the least bit odd.). Every day that summer Dad would drive me out there to visit my new friend.  Comet always remembered me, too.  He would run right up to me, nuzzle me, and search for his bottle.  After a while the other deer got so used to me that they, too, would walk up to me.  So I started packing apples for them.  Dad said I looked like the Pigeon Lady from Home Alone what with all the deer circled around me!
 I'm not all that sure what ever happened to Comet.  One day I was ready and waiting, apples in-hand, for Dad to come home and take me to see Comet, and the next thing I knew he was telling me that Comet was gone...that the man said Comet ran away.  To this day we think something is off about that explanation, but regardless, my little almost-2nd-grade heart broke when I heard the news.  I ran upstairs; hid in my closet and just cried my eyes out.  I cried over a baby deer.  But that's what pets do to us.  They weasel their way into the hearts of the young and old and become family.  And like any relationship...it really hurts when it ends.

Comet and my totally trendy outfit

Perhaps the thing I love most about furry friends is their natural ability to love. Except for turtles...and hamsters...and fish.  For some reason I just never remember feeling any kind of reciprocated love from our pet turtles in the puke bucket, or our hamster, or our fish. Anyway...

I really believe there are 2 things about pets that make them so blasted desirable and cherished. 
1. They stay when change endures.
2. They always love us just as we are.

Think about it.  They give us the two things I would venture to assume that the entire human population innately desires--someone to stick it out when life throws in some CRAZY and unexpected changes, and someone to love the very best and the very worst of us without leaving.  Sure there are other things that make pets great, but at least for me these two are the best parts.  Don't you love when you come home, and your dog is so overjoyed to see you that you think they just might spontaneously combust?  It's good stuff.  It's a constant.  It might just be one of the few predictable things in life, and that sure does feel nice!  Pets can't judge.  They can be just as happy living on the streets with a homeless individual as they can be living on a compound with an affluent family.   They don't expect all the bells and whistles.  They just want you. 

So here's to our furry friends!!

Radar

 Basil Bunny

Scout (she was a good sport that Halloween)

Cleo Catra

And here's to my NEW furry friend...meet Jazzy!!!  I  rescued her 3 weeks ago from having to "walk the green mile" at the Jonesboro Humane Society.  She's one year old this June and is my sweet little rascal.

 Jazz

At the NEA Humane Society about to adopt her! Ignore my brother in the background; he always tries to ruin pictures!!

Jazz's adoption day

And this is why FURRY FRIENDS are one of my FAVORITE THINGS!!!