Tribute to a Modern Day Gypsy

Ten years ago today my fabulous mom raised the white flag in her vicious battle with breast cancer. She fought the disease with the same passion and energy she lived her life. Today is a day of celebration for a beautiful women and a beautiful life.  

A Modern Day Gypsy

She took the road less traveled -

Passion floating into the night.

A nomad with her caravan,

A drifting gypsy’s flight.

Called by waves crashing

And the tangy wet breeze,

She curtsied to the “good” life

Then pirouetted for the seas.

A southern gypsy belle,

I emerged from her seed

Floating near the breakers

With a wanderer’s need.

Hovering in the clouds

Her legacy she loaned,

Being blessed with the Son’s light

And a gypsy spirit of my own.

a tribute to my momma

I'm pretty sure that Betty Anne has a blender in heaven for all the fabulous celebrations.

Love, 

Miss Fanny

They Say It's Your Birthday

Gee, I missed you!

Me to Blog:   

Long time no see.  I've missed you blog and have ignored you way to long.I've thought about you a lot but just wasn't ready to make a commitment.  

Blog to Me:  

You don't call, you don't write. I feel used and neglected.  Not even a comment to let me how the family's doing?  Really!

Me to Blog:

I wanted to have something grand or profound to share with you, really I did, but when nothing came to me I just decided it's time to come back and beg your forgiveness.

Today's my birthday and I thought 'what better day to revisit my guilty pleasure?' - so here I am.  I'm not going to tell you how old I am, but let's just say that I'm old enough to buy a margarita without the waitress even thinking of asking for my ID...although I don't recall anyone asking for it when I was 16 either!

This birthday is a birthday of reflection and gratitude.  A time to remember that, even when there have been significant challenges, the good so outweighs the bad.  Forgive me if this post is a bit self-indulgent...but wait that's what my blog is all about anyway. Gratitude. I could write for miles and still not list all my blessings, so I have decided to kick off my top five then toss in a few throughout the week, month and year.  Hopefully, mine will remind you of a few of yours that maybe you haven't acknowledged. 

5

My Job:  This one could be divided up even further to subcategories but the fact is I really like my job, my bosses (there are many), my co-workers, the doctors and pretty much everything about the work I do. I took a huge pay cut four years ago to take the job and it wasn't anything like I had hoped it would be when I started, but I have grown to love it and all the people who make it what it is.

4

My Ex-Husband:  A few months ago I sent an email to my ex that unfortunately had a link to my blog in the signature.  He took that opportunity to link up and read my posts. I took it as an invasion of my privacy and closed out my blog. Okay, so now you know the real reason I stopped posting. What a silly thing for me to worry about! Duh, this is a public forum, so why would I think it was my little world.  There are probably lots of things out there that rub people the wrong way. So let's get back to why my ex-husband is a blessing. He is the father to the most precious, beautiful earthly gift two people can share...a child. So to he who will remain unnamed in my blog - thank you for our little SweetPea!

3

My Friends:   There's lots of crossover on this one because my friends also overflow into several of my blessings categories. Who would have thought that at my age I would have been blessed with a best friend - someone who was like the sister I never had.  That's a really big blessing for me. I had two surgeries this year and significantly underestimated my ability to be a helpless, pathetic slug..thank goodness my friend did not. Hey, wait a minute, I'm not sure that was a compliment?!

2

My Family: Can't even begin to express the blessings that SweetPea has brought to me but there have been lots - mixed in with just a pinch of heartache every once in a while, but that makes for a healthy recipe for families in my opinion. Was/is my family the perfect Leave it to Beaver kind of family? Heck no, but man did our group make for entertaining holidays.  I had awesome parents who gave unconditional love, a big brother who still keeps me in line, and cool grandparents who had interesting lives to share. Great extended family too with a rich mix of geniuses, religious right, liberal left, gays, physically disabled, traveling salesmen, oil company executives, and wing walkers just to name a few.

1

My Faith - The most important blessing in my life. It has changed everything for me. The fear and insecurities I carried with me most of life have been lifted and all from a little thing called grace.  My only regret is that I let other people try to tell me what faith was for way too long instead of living it and learning it myself. Faith in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the key to everything. For me discovering this was much like many things in this life...I believed it but I did not really understand it or live it.  I am so grateful it finally clicked.

So that's it for me.  It's nice to back and I look forward to visiting with you again.

Love,
Miss Fanny

Note to Self...Need to Get Out More

To all my good friends who were concerned that I might get a little eccentric when I became an empty nester...

I believe there were a couple of you who warned that I might become a cat lady

or dress the dogs up in matching outfits...

Might be about time for an intervention or at the least a girls' night out!

I'm just saying!

 

Much love, 

Miss Fanny

Running the Single Mom Survival Marathon

Somedays  it's everything you can do to survive as a single mom. No mother's day out or weekend with the girls. Just you and your family and the daunting challenge of trying to inch out a life. 

Sweetpea and I have been a tiny family of two since she was three years old. I've thought about remarrying and been serious about it a couple of times, but life just kept and keeps getting in the way. But lately the marathon of motherhood seems more like a sprint with hurdles way too close together.

I've worked since Sweetpea was three and done a pretty decent job of supporting the two of us. Unfortunately the nasty bites of the economic times have nipped at our heels of late. A major step down in my career - my choice -  partnered with my daughter's dad's decision to stop supporting her at age 18 have made things tight...especially with all the cost of college.

Training Tips on Single Mom Survival

1. Keep your focus on the end prize...raising a happy, well-adjusted kid.
2. Keep your faith and teach your family to have faith - you will need this in the good times and the bad.
3. Teach your children to know that there is something better for them out there.
4. Love your children unconditionally.
5. Take care of yourself so you will be there for your family.
6. Stress the importance of family however it might be packaged.
7. Let go of anger and regrets in your life - neither help you move on and grow.
8. Don't beat yourself up for your mistakes - do learn from them.
9. Live everyday - sounds easy but as you get older you will realize that it is a consious decision and not an involuntary action. 
10. Don't wait for a better life...this is the better life.
11. Extend your family with a circle of good friends.
12. Ask for help when you need it.

Tip 12 was always a tough one for me. I never wanted to impose or pester, but have learned that it is okay to ask for help - whether it comes in the form of prayers or plumbing. There are special angels out there to intervene for us single moms in times of need.  Just remember my dear friends to hold tight to your faith in the race and accept grace in the finish...enjoy the run!

Much love,
Miss Fanny

Border Wars - Tales from the Suburbs

I am blessed to own a home that I love with great neighbors, good schools and few headaches.  All that being said, I tend to be an urban girl who was redirected to a suburban life and occassionally look for the reason I should pull up stakes and move back to the city.

Do good fences really make for good neighbors? I never really thought about it until a couple of weekends ago - but can now attest to the fact that, although good fences do not necessarily make for good neighbors, bad ones (fences that is) can out the bad ones (neighbors). If you are a regular reader, you are already familiar with my pet beast,  Picasso.  Recently, she discovered a new bordering neighbor's dog and the rotting fence that separated them from a playdate.

The dogs worked in tandem to burrow a hole for their gateway of tailwagging fun, but somehow Picasso got the rap for the fence damage. For the past week I have been barraged with panicked calls at work that there is a hole in the fence and Picasso keeps coming into their back yard. Somehow, it was my job to fix it.

So on Valentine's Day,  I spent six hours and several hundred dollars repairing a fence that I share with a neighbor while he and his wife relaxed in their TV room watching me do it. I'm not a do-it-yourself kind of girl when it comes to outdoor building projects, so I wasted a lot of the time missing nails and hitting various parts of my body. I was furious - more with myself than Picasso or my not-so-helpful neighbor - but was reminded that this was the exception and not the rule. In fact,  most of my neighbors are great neighbors who will do anything for you at the drop of a hat...good fence or not.

Ghosts of Valentine's Days Past

There has always been something magical about Valentine's Day for me. Not sure why...guess I'm just a hopeless romantic. Even as a child, I loved Valentine's Day...

 
I was the kid who would volunteer to decorate the classroom spending days meticulously cutting out construction paper hearts and stringing them together.  My valentine-adorned shoe box was always the one a little over the top - decorated with hope of puppy-love to come. It was so exciting to open your box of cards and candy in nervous anticipation of that special "one". I can still feel that special little tingle in my heart when I think of those special memories. Many a sweet childhood romances stemmed from those little classroom valentine's boxes!

As an adult, Valentine's Day was a little more complicated.  I remember my first VD with my ex-husband.  We had not known each other long, but, being the hopeless romantic, I had envisioned an evening of celebration with hearts, flowers and romance.

I took the day off from work so that I could put together a guy goodie basket, primp and prepare a fabulous dinner. He had also gone to a lot of trouble to make me a special gift for the day. I can still remember how my heart raced as I ripped open the pink tissue paper...and there it was, a pink t-shirt with "Valentine's Day Is For Wimps" and his name embroidered in two inch letters across the chest. He was so pleased and I was crushed. 

What an a-hole (sorry but I can't think of a nice way to put that). Strangely , I married the guy anyway...go figure? I never wore the shirt and charged something special for myself on his card every Valentine's Day after that.

I never lost hope in the magic of Valentine's Day. But now the little tingle in my heart comes from other sources. It's the homemade paper heart with a picture of mommy that is proudly displayed on my fridge and the clay heart with Sweetpea's name carved on the bottom where I keep my paperclips. It's the memory of my mom and dad and the love they discovered for each other late in their lives that kept a sparkle in their eyes until they left us.

There is the faith I have for Sweetpea to find a good man (learn from mommy's mistakes ) and her family to come when she grows up and is ready. And somewhere deep inside there is a tiny glimmer of hope that my valentine is still tucked away in someone else's heart...Happy Valentine's Day my dear friends.  May this day be filled with the magic of hope, love and peace.

Never stop dreaming!

Love,
Miss Fanny

A Passion for Posting

I'm still trying to decide what my little blog is going to be when it grows up and must admit that the journey is somewhat addicting. I can honestly say that I have been bitten by the blog bug. I come home from work in the evening and can't wait to check my blog for comments, new followers and plan a post. Blogging is keeping me up at night, but in a good way.

I originally created my blog this summer, but neglected it until a dear friend of mine (Sharon @ View from the Lily Pad) challenged me to start it up again at Christmas which I did. But this time I did my research and tried to figure out what I wanted to write, what inspired me and what fed my passion for writing. At first, I decided I wanted to be a "cottage blog", I experimented with it but changed direction. I find myself gravitating toward the irreverent humor blogs but can only aspire to be as clever as the successful writers in this category. No, my blog falls somewhere in between. I have some funny stories to share and some sad ones too. Hopefully, I will broaden my reach to offer encouragement to readers at some point.

We all write for different reasons and if you explore the blogging community for long enough you start to gain insight. Some of the people in the blogoshpere are givers and some are takers, some have deep roots while others are extremely shallow. In my short life of blogging I have learned that no matter what you write, you have at least put some thought into and gathered up the courage to hit PUBLISH. You have put yourself out there for all the world to see. Maybe that gets easier as you do it more often, but for me, I go into a cold sweat every time I put something on Fanning Flashes. It's even more intimidating to share a link to my site on my personal facebook - my heart palpitates, my palms get clammy and I hold my breath...and then I get that first affirming comment from a friend or two and take a breath.


For now, I am still transforming and I am so very grateful for the followers and visitors to Fanning Flashes and for all of the fabulous writers out there who are willing to share a little piece of themselves through the computer screen. I have learned a lot from some really good ones. A big thank you to Aunt Becky at Mommy Wants Vodka - one of the blogs I really admire...she left me one of my first comments and it gave me the confidence to move on. By the way, if you are new to blogging (or even if you aren't) she has a great post on blogging for dummies. Another inspiration came through comments from Lee @ Headaches, Hormones and Hotflashes, a delightful blog with great "roots". When you  are new to blogging, every comment is gold and hearing from one of your blogging heroes - well that is platinum! There are many more really great writers out there - check out my profile for blogs I follow, I think they are all amazing.


I am still a "baby blogger" and have so much to learn. It's important to pause along the journey to acknowledge where you came from, where you are, where you hope to go and say THANK YOU.

With Much Love and Appreciation,

Miss Fanny