Learn to Let Go!

I have never been good at holding on to stuff. I recall fights as a child with my cousin that typically ended with us saying sorry, moving on, and returning to play. I'm not sure who initiated the quick apologies, but perhaps being the only one to play with limited us on our ability to remain angry for longer than 5 minutes. This habit has continued into adulthood. George will do something entirely moronic, and yet the longest I'm able to stay mad is a few hours (sometimes I think he takes complete advantage of my inability to hold onto a grudge). As a woman, I'm totally capable of "brining up old stuff" if it will help me make a point, but if I'm honest, the sting of the initial upset the "old stuff" has caused was long assauged with the passing of time.
I often have conversations with a coworker who is retiring next month, about the hurt she sustained from her parents as a child. She will be 61 years old this summer, and yet she still struggles with getting over her childhood. I try not to be judgemental, but I lack understanding on why she can not move on. I've seen the damage unforgiveness does to people, and I refuse to reside in such a disasterous place. Unforgiveness eventually becomes bitterness, and most people who age with bitterness in them, don't do so gracefully. Call me vain, but I don't want to turn gray and wrinkle early because I refused to let things go. My coworker has explained that her parents were not supportive of her, and didn't interact with her much. On one occasion her father choked her and her mother slapped her. She expresses they were not physically abusive, but their emotional neglect caused her extreme trauma. While I realize everyone's pain is real to them, I must admit that most times we speak I'm asking God for the immediate patience to get me through the conversation. What makes me able to forgive and move on with a worst childhood by anyone's standards, and her unable to move on with what other's may seem as petty issues?
Forgiveness all boils down to this...a mental choice. Every negative thought, feeling or situation we choose to hold on to or let go of, is a conscience decision that moves us closer or further away from forgiveness. In order to move on, you must first understand your station in life. What are you entitled to? Who should ensure those entitlements? Whoever is in charge of ensuring entitlements, are they capable of being in charge? Answering these questions will help you move on. If you believe you are entitled to the world (first off you are delusioned, but I'll walk with you just for arguments sake), and you think your parents should have been the one's to give you the world but they failed, and now you are upset at them, let me help you quickly.
1) You were never entitled to the world. Honestly, you were not even entitled to some of the extras they provided you as a kid. If you got no extras (never got one thing for your birthday or Christmas, etc.) then we'll move on to the next question.
2) While you are waiting on those you think should bring you everything you believe you are entitled to, you should be working on obtaining those things yourself. It doesn't matter how old you are, even babies learn to self-soothe at some point. They will stop crying for their mother's to put a pacifier in their mouth, they'll just use their fingers and hum themselves to sleep. If you haven't learned to suck on your own fingers yet to self-soothe, then what are you waiting for. Make things happen, not sit and wait for things to happen. Your happiness is dependent on you, not anyone else.
3) Those that you put in charge of your happiness and the things you feel you are entitled to, may not have even been capable of taking care of their own needs let alone yours. They faced challenges of inadequacy, failure, and spiritual impotence, how could they have figured out how to help you? Some of the people you put in charge may have even been mentally unstable (looking back you can see it now) and yet you are holding them to a position they were never equipped to fill. Perhaps the person you put in charge was yourself, but you didn't have enough skills, education, experience, know-how to figure things out (in this case, you should have depended on someone smarter than yourself).
For those who profess to be Christians, how do you not put any person in such an important role knowing humans are capable of failure and fatigue. Perhaps my friends parents didn't understand the support she needed, her siblings don't have the same complaints she does. Perhaps she was extremely needy, and her parents were just too tired to deal with her specific needs. The bottom line is, at 61 (or any age) you seem a little silly blaming others for your level of happiness. I encourage anyone who suffers from unforgiveness to let it go. You will breathe a whole lot better when you do.

Corn - What? Texas

George sent me to an online trading academy several years ago to learn all of the ins and outs of online stock market investing. While I've got a personal account with a few successful stocks, he's taken our joint account much further than I could have done. Clearly his $40 books prove to be more useful than the $5k tuition we paid for my week long class. Since he's got a handle on the stocks, and my interest lie in real estate and business, I've turned my attention to those avenues.
I've searched every website, book, real estate listing and county tax assessors office for distressed and affordable property. Something we could purchase with a reasonable cash reserve and either flip for a profit, or retain for rental purposes. We're sort of gun shy on rentals that are not in our immediate area, as the house rental property in GA still sits empty after 7 years (and in need of major repairs now). We are also in no rush to get any mortgages (and the GA property has rendered this a non item anyway) as it makes moving a property a bit of a bear.
We decided whatever property we'd get, would have to be a maximum of a 12 hour drive from where we currently live. A recent trip to Mississippi changed our minds and we began looking for vacant land to hold a small-medium farm (20 - 180 acres to start). George's mother has the hook up on goats (only in the country does one even stumble upon such a hook up) so we would start with a few goats and grow from there. I'm not a huge fan of farm animals, but I would like to be more involved in my food selection, thus we have chickens for eggs now, and eventually hope to get 100% of our food from our own land.
I found 40 acres in a remote part of Utah that included mineral rights, but they wanted all of the cash up front, and although it was a great deal, it would have left us with little to no cash reserve to develop the land. I turned to TX instead. It's still considered the wild wild west, and it's on our way to MS, so we could stop in during our annual family road trip. I found a great deal on some property in Cornudas, TX.

If you were to Google the town, the only thing you'd be able to find is May's Cafe. It's a great little eatery where the owner, May (who is also the town's Mayor, as she should be considering she owns the one owner township) can be found whipping up their famous Cornudas Burger in the kitchen. The three of us have increased the towns population of Black folks by 3, but we're up for the adventure. Everyone there is extremely nice, including our "neighbor" Todd (he lives approximately 60 acres east of our property), and the locals have seemed to stumble across the fountain of youth. Our tour guide revealed there was more than a decade that separated her and her husbands age, and she looked like she was barely out of her 30's. It's rumored that Mayor May is around 85 years old, and she looks and moves like she's in her 50's. I'm ready to run there just for the aging benefits alone, but I suppose the slow pace of country living wears on you less than the daily grind of the city.

After walking our property, I realized I underestimated the vastness of 20 acres. We're standing there enjoying the view of the great open fields and mountainous terrain in the distance, when I hear my husband ask (in his thick southern drawl), "any more land available?" So our guide takes some notes, and promise to return with an answer. Two days later we get a call from our agent, and I pump the brakes where George is ready to throw caution to the wind. Needless to say, we settled for the 20, with an option to buy 40 more. As we're leaving our property, George stops to admire the cattle grazing on the land, he moos at one cow to get its attention and it flips around so quickly I thought we'd end up like one of those State Farm commercials with a cow ramming our vehicle. Only problem is we're not insured with State Farm, and I'm not sure if the gecko makes house calls. We find our way back to the main highway and head west into the sunset, back to our California homestead...at least for now.

Somebody Help This Fool!

I've been missing in action, and then when I finally get onto social media it's to check in to see how my friends are doing. I'm ashamed to say that I'm so far out of the loop, one of my dearest friends little girl just turned 1, and I only found out she even existed several months ago.

So what in the world has me running around in circles trying to go straight? LIFE!
Okay, I'll attempt to be a bit more specific, especially since I haven't updated my blog in a moment. Once I started working full time, I put on hold my business, but only marketing it, as it is very much alive and well. Last summer I ran a full camp and used my two weeks vacation from my day job to do it, returning to work immediately after the camp was over (and I am still one tired sister). We implemented new curriculum, and the camp was great. Because I used my vacay time for work I had no additional time to actually take off for an actual vacay. When Christmas rolled around we (okay George) decided he wanted to drive to Mississippi to visit his family, so my second week of what would have been down time, was spent on the road with my relatives (my best friend keeps telling me to stop calling them that, but after 3600 miles, they're lucky that's all I was calling them). No vacay once again. It's now March, and after not having any real down time since December 2013, I'm taking the end of this month off.

I'm trying not to use my upcoming vacation for work, but considering my Christmas decorations are still sitting on my dining room table it's sort of hard not to think of all the tasks I can shove in one week off. I'm looking for a flexible job schedule that will give me some of my time back, because once it's gone it's gone. I feel like the world is passing me by, and I'm spending most of that time on the road either to work or from work. In five days I spend 14 hours on the road, and if I were a better linguist, I'd be fluent in French by now. I have nieces I don't ever have a chance to see (one of which was born last year and I have yet to meet her) and they live in the same county as I do. I have a son who is starting to lose his mind that I need to help him find it before I have to report my own self to CPS (because he forgets at times his parents are crazy), and a husband who needs some reeling in, as his ADD has gotten the better of him and he requires my organization skills to maintain his focus on his businesses.

And if that wasn't enough, we continue to look for more ways to increase our retirement portfolio so that we are not working our entire lives. Our goal is to retire early, and at the rate I'm going, I will need to. Last weekend (as if we needed another road trip) we did a 24 hour turn around trip to Cornudas, TX. 12 hours there and 12 hours back. We left on Friday night after I got off work and we got home Sunday morning (and yup, I was back in the saddle at work on Monday morning). We found that land is really cheap there, and our next project is starting a cattle farm. It was an extraordinary adventure, for which I'm grateful we survived (being stuck once again in a car with my relatives so soon after our MS trip). I plan on starting a whole new blog series on our cattle farm developments, so I'll keep you posted.

Watch for posts about Cornudas, TX coming soon, you have no clue what I've roped my family into. Partly because I'm tired and perhaps approaching an early midlife crisis, and partly because I've always liked getting my hands dirty (I played in the mud as a child and tried to convince my grandmother to eat my mud pies).

In the mean time, I'm still trying to find the time to enjoy life, rather than being tossed around by it. Quelqu'un aider ce fou!