"..every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

Change. God, I hate that word. In my mind it's like nails scraping against a chalkboard. Down right terrible!  For whatever reason the one thing that scares me the most, is change. I'm terrified of it. Horrified to be exact. I am completely okay with finding my niche and sticking to it. If I was told today that I was going to be a student until I was 22 then find a job and stick with it for the rest of my life, I would be okay with that. If I was told that I was going to be in school until I was 22, move half way across the world, come back to Texas, work for 20 years, move 4 times, and then settle down, you would not be able to pull me out of bed tomorrow morning. I guess I have some weird mental disorder that causes me to want to know exactly what is going to happen and when. Without an enormous amount of change, I can determine my day-to-day activities pretty accurately, and I like that. I like it a lot. I realize that without change you cannot get anywhere in life. (and my dreams of owning the Dallas Mavericks would never come true)  Also, I realize that things are going to have to change with time, and I am okay with that. I just have to deal with being extremely nervous until the change is over. As I prepare to move (aka change locations) over the next few weeks, I am going to be a nervous, scatter brained mess. Dear Lord, help the ones around me. Also, I prepare to leave work. That is hard for me knowing that this time I probably won't return. Nor will I probably ever be living in the house that I have spent the past 18 years calling home. That's a hard pill to swallow. 

On the bright side, I am focusing on interpreting change as growth. All of my dreams are coming true, and how could I be afraid of that? All of my goals are becoming a reality, and before I know it I will be right where I have spent my whole life convincing my parents that I would someday be. It's time for me to grow up and face my fear of change. Change, it's on!  

Photoshop Vixen

So I have found my monthly addiction, PHOTOSHOP!!!! I recently had one of my friends hook me up with this amazing program. Now I am trying to figure out this puzzle all by myself. So far, I have taught myself the basics of photo editing. Today I ventured out a little. I set out on an adventure to create a new blog header, and I did it. Pretty good for my first one, I thought! I love photoshopping and am excited about continuing to learn all of the program's awesome capabilities.

Forever Young

So there I was, 2 years old, waking early to watch my early morning cartoons which consisted of Barney and the Rugrats. My Daddy would take us to our Nana's house where she would whip us up a batch of cinnamon toast and we would watch cartoons and eat breakfast until something more exciting would come along. Basically our day consisted of choosing what we wanted for lunch, watching Care Bears or Rugrats, figuring out what trouble I could stir up, and determining where we were going to hide from Dad when he came to get us after he got off of work.

Come August of 96 it was time to start Pre-K. At this age, 4, the amount of decisions slightly increased. We now had to decide what color of carpet squares we were going to sit on for story time, what colors we were going to use on our coloring sheet, what doll or horse we were going to take to show-and-tell that week,  and whether we were going to slide or swing during recess. 

Next thing you know we were 9! On September 11th that pool behind us was half way finished, talk about nervous parents. Even though we knew what September 11th was, I don't think that we fully understood what was going on and how everything was about to change. We were 2 years into showing pigs, and my riding career was well under way. All that I had to do was do good in school, figure out what friend I was going to have over that weekend, and work my animals. At this point in my life I hardly had a care in the world! Life was good. 

Finally Senior year rolled on by and it was time to start applying for colleges. I never will forget when I got the phone call from Tech saying that I had been accepted. I was on the way home from work and I was just about to reject it because I didn't recognize the number, and then the nicest lady asked, "what would make today a great day?" Without a reply she said, "Congratulations, you have been accepted to Tech!" For me that was quite an accomplishment. It was not until junior year that I decided that maybe it wasn't as cool as I thought to just not turn in homework. I aced all of my tests but who needed to go to class on non test days? Definitely not me! At this point my worries consisted of managing to park on the front row and not get caught by Mr. Quy the asst. principle, remaining non shallot when the counselor pulls up beside me at Sonic during 2nd period, and making sure that I didn't spend all of my pay check in the first 2 days upon receiving it.

Then BAMM!! Before we could blink we were graduating, or should I say graduated! It was time to say goodbye to some great people, knowing that I might never see some of them again. We walked across the stage, received our diploma, said the goodbyes, and realized that we were about to be thrown out into the real world, like it or not. Some of us decided on the college path, while others choose the career path. Some are already married, and some already have babies. For me, I finished my first year of college and I think that is plenty for me to grasp at this point. 

So, what brings all of this to mind was a little girl, probably 6ish, that was in the store I work with was telling her Mom what all she was going to do when she grew up. Her Mom then called me over to help. As I was helping the little girl, Lily, find a pair of boots that fit her girly style needs, her Mom asked if any of my "Grown Up Plans" ever came true. I said that yes, I am going to college like I had always dreamed of, and I had met a lot of the goals that I set for myself, but I also included that I was not ready to grow up and I was still making "Grown Up Plans". After talking to Lily for a little while I learned that she wanted to go to Texas Tech, just like her Daddy (yay!!), she wanted a pink Caddilac like the Mary Kay ladies drive when she turns 16 (super cool first car), she wants to live in Colorado so that she can play in the snow everyday (because it snows everyday?), and she wants 4 children. The craziest of all, she can't wait to be grown up. I remember always wanting to hurry up and move out away from my parents and get a job, but not now. Now I sound like an old lady preaching to her grandkids about not wishing their life away. At the supper table tonight, Daddy joked that his secret to looking young was acting immature, and I'm going to take that as the truth. I would love to go back to my childhood where I could fill up a car for $20, I would get in trouble for taking the "Please Rewind" stickers off of the VHS tapes that we rented from the store, I would beg and beg my parents to let me have my birthday party at the skating rink, I would be gone for hours at a time riding my bike into town to see all of my friends, thinking that I was the coolest person in Krum because we had AOL and the new walkman, when I thought that Jumanji was a scary movie, and when Shelby and I had plans of sharing a Nokia brick phone at the age of 16 and our ringtone would either be the Mexican hat dance or William Tell. So, until further notice you can find me back in the 90's singing Spice Girls, Biggie, and Shania Twain on the top of my lungs, wearing Jeans, Polo shirts, and the clunky Doc Martins that I rocked when I was 7, and riding my bike praying that I don't tilt my CD player to the side too much where my music would stop playing. All of this so that I can change my watch, that no uses to tell time anymore, 5 minutes back so that I don't get in too much trouble for not being home by 8:30.

To all of the mature people out there, have fun growing up. For me, I plan on staying forever young. 

It's the Simple Things In Life

Today, something triggered me to remember the simple things that I did that I loved the most as I was growing up. If I think of all the memories of my childhood it seems to be the simple things that stand out the most to me.

One of my oldest memory is so simple that it happened every night. Every day, hopefully, everyone takes a bath. My parents of course tried to make everything fun for us when we were two, including bath time. Shelby and I would use our shampoo to make what I thought was the world's biggest bubble bath. We even had a little saxophone toy that you could blow bubbles out of! I don't know why but it seemed like Shelby and I would have so much fun at bath time. What was the best part was the rare occasion of getting to use the blow dryer afterwards. Since neither of us has hair until we were practically four, I don't really understand why we ever used it.

The next thing that reminds me of my childhood is sun tea. In case you don't know what "sun tea" is, it's when you make tea with the heat of the sun instead of using water heated by the stove. Now making sun tea is quite a long process. I'm talking a couple of hours at the very least. When we were little it seemed like Mom was always making sun tea. We would set the pitcher on the West side of the house, right by the driveway, so that it could catch the evening sun. I remember playing outside in the summer and having to go check to see just how far along the tea was every 15 minutes. I could not wait until it was ready! 

One of the many things that I took for granted was riding horses with my Dad. When I was little I guess that you could have easily said that I had my dad "wrapped around my little finger". When the day finally arrived when I told my Dad that I wanted a horse of my own, at a moments notice he had a horse ready to be mine. My horse, Divi, was a old mare that one of Dad's friends had. She was in her 20's and just old and calm enough to stick a three year old on. She was an amazing horse. While Dad worked out in the yard he would open up the horse lot and throw me on Divi and tell me to hold on to her mane. I never really needed a saddle with this horse. The second that she felt me leaning to one side she would stop and wait for me to adjust myself, or adjust me herself, and then continue to follow Dad around the yard. Once Divi got a little older and passed away, Dad got me another horse, JR. Now JR was equally as great of a horse. I decided that I was going to run barrels and he was the horse that I was going to do it on. Dad and I spent countless hours in the horse lot chasing cans until the sun had set so much that we no longer could see the horses head in front of us. I wish that I still had the time to spend the hours with Dad, as he taught me such great things.

Now if anyone in my family could tell you the one thing that I am not very partial to, it's cats. Well I dislike all cats except for one. This one cat is a little different than most cats. In fact, we often refer to him as a 'coon because he is so big. When I was four my mom brought home a litter of cats from the pound. There were four of them. Shelby got to have two, and I got to have the other two. Being four, I named my two cats Kermit and Barney. Real original. At first we didn't know how long Barney would make it. One cold morning Dad went out to start his truck and get the heater running and when the motor started it cut off half of Barney's tail. Well over the years we have lost three of the four cats, but not Barney. There were months that would go by that Barney would flat out disappear, then one day you would be in the barn, hear a meow, look up, and there is Barney. Late January a few years ago I remember hearing this meow in our garage. For a few days we just ignored it. Later when we opened up the attic we found Barney. The attic had not been opened since the first week of January when we put Christmas decorations up. Of all of the terrible things that Barney has gone through, he has still managed to stick it out. This huge, ripped cat has survived 20 of a cat's 7 lives and fifteen years later he still is beasting it up. 

Out of all of my childhood memories, the weirdest one is this light pole. It is weird that I would remember a light on top of a 50ft pole out of all the things that I was blessed to play with as a child. This light used to shine down on the entrance to the barn. I partially blame the reason that I still do not sleep to this day on this particular light. When I would sleep in the living room, I would stay up and make the shadows that this light created from shinning in the windows into funny shapes. It was the reason that I never wanted to sleep in my bed and I never slept. It also provided a sense of security to me when I went to feed my pigs in the dark by myself. This light reminds me of many occasions. It was the first thing that Dad told me not to hit when I was learning to drive a tractor and mow as well as being the best defense I had against a few crazy steers of mine. A few years ago this light got struck by lightning and no longer works. It is kind of sad to think that it no longer illuminates our yard, but I would like to think that it served as a lightning rod that kept our barn or house from being struck. 

If you asked me to this day what my favorite toy was when I was growing up, I would definitely not say that it was the most expensive one. Other than my doll, it was the simple things that I remember and loved the most. I remember riding in the back of my Dad's jeep after tee ball games and getting sno-cones that covered our face with stickiness better than I remember the fancy electronics that I was given. I always have loved driving and there were times that I would rather mow the yard than be inside watching the TV. However the simplest thing that sticks out the most to me was my sister and I have olympic style games one day just to see who could sleep on what side of the couch at my Mimi and Poppie's house that night. The simplest thing that I will never forget was just being at my Gommie's house. We would make her house into a hair salon, a parade route for floats that we made, and we would use the horse apples that covered her yard as balls for kicking and throwing. We would use her neighbor's storm cellar as a fort, and we would use her kitchen as a classroom. To this day, I would still rather drink tea out of an old jar vs a cup and use mismatched silverware because of the memories that I had at her house. 

Of all the material things that everyone, including myself, dream and pray for, why is it that the things that are the cheapest are some the things that we love and remember the most. It was washing my parents vehicles for $5 so that after saving for a year I would have enough for a something materialistic, when the car wash turned into a family wide contests who could get each other soaked. I don't remember the object that I bought, but I remember working hard for earn every penny to buy it. If everyone would be a little less materialistic, me included, and a little more open to spontaneous ideas, would the world not be an even more enjoyable place? 

Forgive and Forget

If anyone truly knows me, they know that "feelings" are not something that I acknowledge. Okay, wait! I'm not saying that I have no feelings, because I do! But, you know when people say that, "I just had a feeling that it was...",or something of that nature? Yeah, 99.9% of the time I'm gonna have to call bull shit! That 0.01% that I don't call bull shit was experienced today. So by now your mind is probably running a million different directions as to what I am about to say. Don't get your hopes up. It's no mushy love story or anything fairytale like that. In fact, it was one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me. I was at work in the back of the store when the bell saying that someone was coming in the door went off. Like always, I paced up the center isle to see if the customer needed any help. It was weird though. Before I could even see the faces of this couple, I had this feeling. It was the weirdest thing ever. I felt like I had to know who they were. I asked if they needed help and they replied that they just were going to look around.  So, I went back about half way to the back of the store and I had to turn around. They were talking to one of the guys that I work with, Clint. They were talking to him as if they knew him. So when they created enough distance between themselves and Clint, I asked Clint if he knew them and he said no, but that they knew his wife. In most situations when we are nosy we can just look at the credit card receipt to find out someone's name. However, of course in this situation these people used cash. Now how am I supposed to be nosy with that? Anyways, after they had paid for all of their merchandise they hung around, almost as if they had some unfinished business. It was the most awkward 45 seconds of my life. I felt like I was staring at them because I was trying to figure out who they were, but it was almost as if they were doing the same to me. Finally, Clint (the guy that I work with) cut the tension and asked them if there was anything else that he could help them with. At first they said "No", then about a minute later they walked up to him and said that they had heard that one of their relatives worked at Weldon's while they were at home from school. My heart sunk. For whatever reason I knew that they were talking about me but I had not a clue in the world who these people were. After discussing it with Clint and they said that it was a McCollum girl. Oh no! When I hear "a McCollum girl", most the time people are referring to me and it's usually about some crazy dumb stunt that I have pulled. After Clint pointed me out to them it all clicked. It was my great-aunt and her husband. Okay, so by now you are probably wondering why I don't have a clue as to what my aunt looks like. Well I often wonder that too. After hugging her and asking her how her and her family were doing, we put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out that I had not seen here since I was VERY young. For my family to be so close, I have always thought that it was weird that she was never present. I have never figured it out. She is close to my grandmother's other sister, but for whatever reason her and my grandmother do not speak. I have heard many different stories as to why, but you never know when every single one of the stories is different. I do know that there are many differences between the two of them and the last time that they have seen each other is when my great-grandma died when I was only eight. If you do the math, they haven't seen each other in over ten years! Whatever went on between them must have been pretty bad if 10 years has separated them. I know that hardly let 10 hours, much less 10 days or even 10 years come between Shelby and I. I just don't understand!

Basically the moral of the story is to follow your gut feelings, in which I will make fun of everyone for, because until today I thought they were just a load of crap. Also, forgive and forget when it comes to family. Not only are you hurting yourselves, you are keeping younger generations away from their family. My grandmother has not had her sister there, my dad has not had his aunt there, and I haven't even met some of my cousins. If we really are the close family that I thought that we were, isn't something wrong with this situation. Regardless what drove this wedge between them, nothing is so terrible to tear apart two siblings. Today was a day that I will try to always hold onto. I got to see family that I obviously could not even pick out of a crowd of people. I got to see how beautiful of a great-aunt that I have (like 70 going on 55 beautiful). I learned that I had quite a few cousins that I never knew existed, and might not ever meet. Additionally, I learned that the beautiful woman that I saw today had to have stints put in her heart last week and is about to go through a very risky surgery. All of this without the support of part of her family that hardly even knows her anymore. With today, I think God of providing me with the job that I have where I get to interact with great people and I can put everything on hold in a mind boggling situation like this, I also think him for letting our paths cross ways to where I could see my aunt. Who knows if  I will ever see her again, though I would like to. Also, I think God for the amazing family that I do have. Regardless if they are close or far, most of them are very close to me. In the situation that they are not, they seem like amazing people.