I am a woman’s woman. A gal’s gal. A lady who enjoys lunching and brunching and munching and all other forms of consuming food and beverages (sometimes even the alcoholic variety) with her girl friends.  I don’t believe in talking poorly about other woman based on the principle that we as a sex and gender have enough stacked against us and should lift each other up in any way and chance we get.

I compliment women I think have pretty eyes or shiny hair. If I like their dress or their shoes I will often ask where they got them. I believe in lifting up other woman and in elevating a woman’s confidence by any means I see fit. I appreciate when I am made to feel beautiful and smart by others so it’s quite literally my pleasure to give that back.

You will rarely hear me cut down another female; even if that someone is a person who I am not a big fan of. I will often choose to just not say anything at all opting for silence rather than hate speech.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a BIG fan of men too. They are some of the people who make up my closest circle of best friends. But men and women have different roles and attributes. Men don’t tend to gossip about each other in the same way women do. Men love differently and they go after things with a different passion and zest. But I love them all the same.

Now I’ll tell you, I am not perfect and as much as I like to think that I unequivocally only build up women and avoid cutting them down, if a woman were to hurt a man I love, she had better watch her back. All bets are off where she is concerned and as much as I would love to take the high road and just “do and say nothing”…I wasn’t raised to be a wallflower either. I wasn’t raised to idly sit by and not defend the people I love when they have been hurt. No, I was raised to “love and accept ALL people”, and to do what is RIGHT, and not what is easy. Sometimes that means defending honor, and sometimes it means gently putting someone back into the place they belong. This can be done without confrontation. You can still be classy as the day is long, but get your point across that you won’t tolerate bad behavior.

So I am a Girl’s Girl. But I’m also a strong woman. And that is a powerful combination. I can gently and lovingly, yet strongly and emphatically convey that I protect what is mine and that I care and defend with the ferocity of a lioness. You want me in your corner. It is a VERY, very GOOD THING.

    As I sit here watching Almost Famous, it reminds me of one of my ultimate heroes in life. The Beavis to my Butthead, the Luke to my Leia, the Samwise to my Frodo. Yes, I’m talking about my big brother, Matt. Anyone who knows anything about us knows that I have worshipped Matt (sometimes ad nauseam) since the day I entered this World. I have trailed after him with wide and often mischievous eyes always longing just to be near him. Matt is quite literally one of my favorite people on this Earth and I have never understood how people could say they “hated their brother or sister”. That was so the absolute opposite of what I felt for him and even though I know I often made his life more difficult than pleasant as a young child just by the nature of my oftentimes challenging and (shall we say) boisterous personality, it is still Matt that would go to the fiery pit of Mount Doom for me. 

    If this analogy doesn’t make sense to you, let me explain. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic story “The Lord of the Rings”, Frodo, the main character is given the task of carrying the ring to Mount Doom and throwing it inside the fiery pit to destroy it as it’s power is too great and ultimately is destructive. But only Frodo has the power to carry the ring. Frodo and his best friend (and practically his brother), Samwise, set out on a journey to go to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. On the course of their journey, Frodo is consistently weakened by the ring’s powers to the point where it almost kills him. In the end, it is Samwise who makes the decision to pick Frodo up and carry him the rest of the way, stating, “I can’t carry it FOR you, but I CAN carry YOU!!” 

   Matt would, and has gone, to Mount Doom with me. When I needed him most, he was there, and never left my side. He believed in me, loved me, didn’t judge me and had all the faith in the World that I would make it home to The Shire again in one piece. And I did. He is quite literally my Samwise and carried me the rest of the way. I will never be able to put into words how grateful I am to have him as my partner in crime on this road trip of life. 

     Matt has always been a big fan of the movie Almost Famous. It has a particular mantra he likes, “It’s All Happening”. My personal favorite is “Rockstars Have Kidnapped My Son”. But to each his own. So when that movie came on tonight, it just felt like the perfect chance for me to think and reflect on one of my all time favorite people in the World and give him a proper shout out. I love you Marty. ZUNE. You’re JUST THE GOOD STUFF. 

   

    It’s only natural to sometimes look back at your life and wonder “what if”? We all have questions we ask ourselves from time to time when evaluating where we are in our lives. Things like, “What if I had taken that job? What if I had taken that leap and moved to that city? Or what if things had worked out with so-and-so?” Where would we be now? Would we be as happy? Or happier? Less Happy? Would there be a sense of completeness to our lives that we might be lacking or is that just the insecurities of the past creeping up on us? 

   I’m a firm believer in things happening for a reason and everything working out how it is supposed to. I also believe people come in and out of your lives for a reason and it is up to you what you do with those relationships. One of my favorite examples of a friend from the past re-emerging in my present is my dear friend Jenna. Jenna and I were friends, (although not super close ones) in college, we had circles of friends who hung out. We knew LOTS of people in common. Fast forward about 10 years when Jenna got a job back here in Potsdam teaching dance at SUNY Potsdam in the new Performing Arts Center. I sent her an email asking her to dinner and she immediately accepted. That first night we spent 5 hours gabbing and catching up over margaritas at The Cantina in Potsdam and it felt like no time had passed and even better, like I finally had another a really great gal friend here in town. (Up until that point, I had an exact total of one.) Jenna quickly became one of my best and most trusted friends and I love her like a sister. She is family to me and while she has since moved to Buffalo for another exciting job opportunity, she is always close to my heart and constantly on my mind. 

    I’ve had the good fortune to reconnect with a few other friends lately too and it’s always a treat when you can do that. My friend Christie from high school and I have been talking on the phone about some exciting new opportunities and in the process have gotten to catch up on the goings on in our day to day lives. And my friends Andrew and Danielle from college have both been in touch as of late which has been a lovely surprise. I look forward to seeing more of them in the future. 

    I think especially with this past weekend being my college’s Alumni Weekend and my Mom receiving an award for excellence in teaching was a powerful moment for me. She commented on how she was prepared to follow the path she chose right from when she entered college directly out of high school. She’s always been a music teacher and a really wonderful one. But that path was always laid out for her. She had mentors and teachers along the way guiding her and helping her achieve her goals and when she started teaching, she really never stopped. 

   This isn’t necessarily the case with the people of my generation. We are more likely to move away from home, switch cities, and change careers more than once. We are also less likely to meet and marry our high school or college sweethearts as was once more the norm, and may even marry more than one person in our lifetime. Our families may be blended and start much later than when our parents had us. And this is all ok. It’s all very normal, because it’s part of the journey life has taken us on. No matter what your life’s path is, the most important thing is to not have regrets. Do your best, give everything you can a try and remember that cliché adage is so very true. You only live once. And it’s quite literally your duty to live it in a really GOOD WAY. 

     I have always been fascinated with hearts. Not just the things you send little emojis of or the shape you make when you curl half of your hand towards each other, but actual human hearts. 

   It may be because mine has always been different. It never had a “normal” beat to it as a child. I never knew this of course because you don’t know anything different than what you are as a kid and growing up I thought everyone’s heart raced like a puppy when they would run a short distance or walk up stairs. Over the years I became more and more fascinated with the sound of heartbeats and would find myself turning my ear inward whenever I would give someone a hug in hopes it would linger long enough that I could press against their chest and seek out their heartbeat for a beat or two. 

   When I had trouble sleeping as a teenager and found the rest of my family used White Noise machines to help soothe them into a peaceful slumber, I went searching for a noise machine with a heartbeat setting on it to lull me to sleep. 

    When I was 25 and finally got the rhythm of my heart surgically fixed, I had a short gap of time between when my body’s natural pacemaker was ablated and the artificial one I now depend on to make my heart beat was put in. This was because it took a few days for my body’s natural pacemaker (my SA nose) to die after the surgery I had to “turn it off” happened. My heart was essentially improperly sending signals all the time to the rest of my body in regards to how fast my heart should beat. 

   The plan was to permanently turn it off, and then make me artificially pacemaker dependent with a nice even, steady heartbeat. I remember being very nervous to leave the hospital in between the two surgeries, but the doctor said to me, “You’ll know when it’s time to come back. Everything will get very quiet.” And that is exactly what happened. I woke up one day and things felt very quiet. Like I couldn’t hear any heartbeats anymore. They had been with me for so long, and I suddenly felt like the Tin Man. No heartbeat. I almost felt hollow inside. But, like The Tin Man, I soon got my visit with The Wizard. And it turned out a couple titanium wires were almost as good as tin, & kept the beat like a Sousa March. 

    I put a piece of surgical tape over my heart that day that said, “please handle with care”. My nurse and good friend Marisa, kept it and a year later on the anniversary of my surgery, and as an early Christmas present, she gave me a rose quartz, heart shaped vase with that piece of tape inside. It was the first in my collection of heart shaped vases. 

    Actress Drew Barrymore has written a book which I am very fond of called “Find It In Everything”. It is a collection of photographs of heart shapes that appear in every day objects and life situations. I find myself constantly looking for heart shapes and getting a great sense of joy when I find one somewhere. Especially when it pops up where you least expect it. I like to think it’s the universe telling me it hears my yearning for that perfect “thump, thump, thump”. Because truly there is nothing like a good strong heartbeat to tell you everything is ALL GOOD. 
    

  

    It’s been a little while since I’ve posted here. I haven’t been consciously avoiding it, but when I started this blog, I made a few ground rules. 

1.) Only “Good Stuff”. Whatever that meant to me. It didn’t mean things couldn’t take a serious tone, but they eventually had to round back to a positive one. 

2.) Only write when you have something meaningful to say. Don’t write just out of obligation or because you felt a need to fill a silence. 

   So with those two ground rules out of the way, I’d like to comment on something I’ve been noticing quite a bit lately and I’m guessing some of you have been too. Because it’s human nature to do so. And most of the time it’s ok, until it becomes hurtful, ugly and not constructive. What I’m talking about is our appearance. Things like what we wear, how we style or if we choose to color our hair, how much or little we weigh and various other components that make us who we are on the outside but often are only very small indicators of who we are on the inside. 

    As someone who has been every size from a 16 to a 0 in the past 5 years, I can tell you that there is no such thing as the “perfect weight”. Only the one at which a person is healthiest at is what can be considered the “perfect weight”. It might sound cliché , but at my thinnest, I still had cellulite on my thighs and butt and people making negative comments about my appearance. It wasn’t a barrage of compliments about “how great I looked”, but instead, people almost felt entitled to comment on something they knew very little about. No one knew if I was dieting and intentionally trying to lose weight or if I was sick, or if maybe, like some girls, I might have had an eating disorder. If we’re being candid here, and I believe honesty is always a good policy, I have had a history with all three of these things at some point in my life. So when I say I understand the sensitivities that can surround the discussions associated with weight and weight loss, it is putting it mildly. This most recent time, I was not doing anything intentionally (in a healthy or unhealthy way) to lose weight and so it became even more of a sensitive subject that I perked up and paid attention to. As a woman with a now healthy, rational, mindset, but a body that was losing weight for rather unexplained reasons, you can find that people harbor feelings of jealousy, envy, resentment, and even disdain towards you for your situation even when it’s one you have no control over. I really had to take a minute and say, “hey now, what about when I was heavier and couldn’t lose the weight? Did we all feel this way too?” And maybe to a certain degree some people did have other negative feelings, but my hope was that if I was “body positive” others would soon follow. 

   We, especially as women, need to learn to build each other up and celebrate our bodies. Embrace them for all the wonderful shapes and sizes they come in and the incredible, powerful things they can do for us. Like climb mountains, birth babies, and run companies and in the cases of a few really amazing women, run countries too. 

    I honestly don’t know if I have Grey hair or not because I’ve been coloring my hair since I was 14 years old. My Mom never wanted me to do what my childhood neighbor did and go buy a bottle of peroxide to lighten my hair when I was a teen, so she just took my to the salon and let me get it done properly. I’ve always been very thankful to her for that, but I’ve also never really gone back to my “natural” color so honestly, I don’t know what I’m “working with” there. My lighter hair has always just “suited me” better than my darker color and with about 2 or 3 brief exceptions in the last 20+ years, I haven’t ever given it a chance to go dark enough to see what would happen if I really grew it out and let it go natural. 

    At almost 36, I am noticing a lot of my friends are starting to let the Grey in their hair come through. Men AND women and I’ll tell you I LOVE IT!! I think it looks great and that it’s something that is so chic and posh looking! Anyone who has the ability to let their Grey or silver lining shine through SHOULD!! The word “distinguished” comes to mind when I see someone with a smattering (or even a full head or beard) of Grey hair. 

    Now, if you’re like me and you’ve been coloring your hair forever, I get it. Just do what feels right. But know the option is there, & don’t feel you have to shy away from it. 

     Last but not least, the ever present matter of sun spots, age lines, wrinkles, scars and the like. Our skin is like a road map of our life. Mine has many twists and turns on it. I recently met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in about 10 years and my Mom asked me if I was going to cover my scars before I met him, (I have acid burns on about 15 percent of my face & other scars from various life experiences). I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head “no”. I rarely wear makeup anywhere these days and decided I didn’t want to start now and hide myself from this person just because it had been a while since we’d seen each other. My scars aren’t anything I’m ashamed of and they’re not particularly unpleasant to look at. Honestly, they look like I have really dramatic freckles on a portion of my forehead and some of my cheeks and then I have some natural flushing in my face which kind of makes me just look like I’m blushing. So I put a tiny bit of concealer on a few really obvious blemishes, some eyeliner and a quick swipe of lip gloss & out the door I went. I felt like myself & that was the best mask of armor I could ever have. Confidence is key and it will be your best friend and greatest ally. 

   I don’t have all the answers, but when it comes to appearance, as a woman who had gone from someone who was practically the prom queen of her work environment one day to completely unrecognizable the next, trust me when I say there is no better lesson in life than learning to be happy in the skin you are in. Looks fade and beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, styles, shades and patterns. And I for one think that is incredibly GOOD STUFF!! 

     So sometimes you just have to dance. And I do. Any and everywhere. My car included. So when I got pulled over recently by a police car with two of Potsdam’s Finest, I didn’t expect the following encounter to happen. 

    Basically I had just turned right from a red light when it had turned green and I knew I had obeyed the traffic laws, but when I was pulled over, I calmly rolled down my window and waited for the officer to approach my window. When he did, he asked me if I knew why he was pulling me over. I stated that I did not as I had just made a turn at the red light and didn’t think I did anything wrong. He smiled and said, “actually my partner and I were just noticing your dance moves and were wondering whether that was actually “The Pony” you were doing there?” I laughed and replied “indeed it was. Is that against the law? I do a pretty mean pony!!” He said, “No Ma’am, we just had a bet going & you just made my day. Keep up those sweet dance moves and drive safely.” I ended the conversation with “you can count on it”. And smiled fiercely at him before driving away. 

    Now my point of this story is not that I got pulled over unnecessarily and left with no further action after that encounter, but if this is the way the local police are trying to improve the relations with the public, I’ll take it, because it truly made my day and I’ve shared this story with so many people and not one person has thought it was a negative thing in the end. 

   I know there are people who will always have a mistrust of law enforcement but after a day like yesterday when two D.C. police officers intentionally put themselves in harms way to stop an armed madman from shooting several congressmen on an open baseball field, I think there is a need to share as many good stories as possible. 

   And that’s why I started this blog in the first place. I was tired of reading about all the negative stuff out there and just wanted to put my little slice of “good” out in to the world. So that’s what it’s all about…”just the good stuff”. 

    Thanks officers. You made this gal’s day. I’ll keep up my sweet moves & you can bet I’ll be car dancing with all I have in me. I’m just that GOOD. 

    When your time is up, it’s up. And when it’s NOT UP, it’s REALLY NOT UP. Sometimes there’s really no rhyme or reason to these things. We all know I had a horrible car accident about 9 years ago where my car rolled twice, the windshield shattered, the driver was driving under the influence of a substance and my car went down an embankment off a freeway into a ditch.    

     Clearly, my time was not up. My two best friends from childhood were driving on their way to a “Dave Matthew’s Band” Concert in 2001 when their VW Jetta collided with a Dodge Ram going 23 miles an hour. Elizabeth was immediately killed on impact and Laura’s injuries were so life threatening she was pronounced brain dead the next day and never woke up again. When it’s your time, it’s your time. But when it’s not, boy it CERTAINLY IS NOT. 

    My Sister Candice had the misfortune of learning this first hand just a little over a week ago when a woman who was high on an illegal substance struck her car on the freeway heading northbound and Candice’s accident was eerily reminiscent of mine. She rolled twice down an embankment and in her case, ended up upside down in a ditch, she had a windshield blown out, and had to crawl out of her car to save her own life. The difference between Candice and My accident was I was nearly mortally wounded, and by the grace of the good lord above, she was not!!! She has but two scrapes on her knees where she had to place them on the glass to climb down after unhooking her seatbelt. To call it a miracle feels cliché but there really is no other adequate word for it all. When it is NOT your time, it is NOT YOUR TIME. And it was NOT Candice’s time!! 

    I can’t say that this experience hasn’t been stressful and brought up a whole bunch of emotions and feelings that I thought I had been able to put to rest, but at the end of the day, my sister needs me. She needs my wisdom, my experience and my input on how to deal with these things as they come and go. She also is brave and strong enough to seek professional help which is something I waited FAR too long to do and would be the one thing I would change if I could. But together, we’ll be better and stronger than before. Because the reason it wasn’t your time then was because of all the fabulous living you still have left to do. And boy…that’s a whole lot of good stuff!! 

   

     My Dad and I have been through it. I mean through the mud, into the the trenches and back up the mountain again. We have weathered some good times together and some real shit storms, but together we keep going. We started the “Adventures of Poppa & Pooch” (yep, that’s what my family calls me & always has…lol) when I was little but I started documenting them back in 2006 when I needed some heart surgery in San Diego & Dad came out to help take care of me. It sounds a lot darker than it actually was but we always manage to sprinkle some light on these situations. See, we find ways of making these times together enjoyable. 

    On that particular occasion, Dad ended up bartending and being the social butterfly at a Christmas party for one of my best friends and her then boyfriend at their beautiful ocean front condo which we ended up staying at for several weeks after. Don’t get me wrong, he still spent hours in recovery rooms, hospital rooms, doctors offices and friend’s apartments when we were waiting for my SA node to die so I could finally get my pacemaker…(FYI, that sounds a lot scarier than it actually is, but it’s still not super fun). 

    Then the next year was my car accident. Not a whole lot of joyful times came out of that, but a lot of bonding. Test driving cars with an IV in your arm and your Dad in the back seat ready to leap to take the wheel at a moment’s notice was a notable moment. As was our experience with my hyper aggressive reaction to steroids. I’m not a very large woman, but I was able to lift my Dad who is literally twice my size when I was given steroids in the hospital. Needless to say, that course of treatment was quickly discontinued. 

   My favorite moment from that experience was when my sweet Poppa was given the very serious task of flushing my IV and administering my medicine through my PIC line (which is basically a really fancy IV in your upper arm that goes directly into your chest). Dad had the home health nurse come out & show him how to do it & he took notes so he would get it just right. But on our first go at it alone, we both were a little nervous…first he had to flush the IV with heparin. And that has bubbles. I didn’t think you were supposed to have bubbles in your IV. I had read an urban legend that bubbles in your IV can give you an embolism and KILL YOU! So I said, “DAD!! Are you sure this is right??” And he said, “I don’t know!!! I think so!! But if not, know that I’ve loved you!! And he looked me dead in the eyes and pushed the Heparin into the IV. We both held our breath, and when I didn’t drop dead 20 seconds later, I smacked his arm & said, “that’s it?? Know that I’ve loved you??” And we both laughed really hard. Because sometimes laughter is even better medicine than antibiotics!! 

   And with the bad always comes the good and a year after my accident, Dad was able to return back to San Diego where we were able to see the US Open on Father’s Day at The Torrey Pines Golf Course. It was the last time Tiger Woods would win a US Open Championship to date and he did it in a sudden death against Rocco Mediate and Dad and I were there to see it. I worked at the hospital right next to the golf course so it was actually quite fateful that the treatment I was receiving was happening just next door to one of the most INCREDIBLE golf games in history!! 

     Fast Forward to 2015. Dad and I spent about a month together when my pacemaker decided it had had enough & was going to misbehave but through it all, Dad got AMAZINGLY good at picking out sweatshirts & other types of clothing for me that I could wear that I could tuck my external pacemaker wires into. He even became friends with three of my nurses (Luci, Julia & MaKayla) and my Doctor who would end up doing a small procedure on Dad the following summer as it turned out. And when I got sent down to NYC for some specialized care, we made the MOST of it and went to see the most AMAZING production of “An American In Paris” on Broadway and just took in the sites of New York City. 

   I’ve had a recent dental nightmare that has lasted WAY too long and has gotten WAY bigger than anyone had any idea. This time, Dad and I are going to do something really fun…we’re not sure what, but it’s coming and it’s going to be great. And when he finally said to me today “Honey, what I wouldn’t give for your pain. No one deserves this, and I would take it all if I could.” I realized that THAT right there is pure love. And it’s just good stuff. 

     So I know I tend to write about the same themes on here, but heck, they say you write what you know & I feel I know a bit about friendship, love and loss. The loss is a bit harder to put the “good stuff” spin on, but I’ve dedicated most of my adulthood to learning how to turn lemons into lemonade so I’ll never stop trying. 

      So when a dear friend of mine who I had gotten to know in the fall recently started talking to me about a woman he had feelings for in the past, it became clear to me that things were not over between them and that maybe it was time they give it another go. After many conversations about this and a lot of back and forth about why it would “never work” on his part, he finally gave in and admitted that “yes”, she was very much still in his heart and her three year old daughter had wiggled her way into his heart and had imprinted herself pretty permanently there. 

   So after lots of discussions on how to appropriately “woo” her, and make a good impression on this gal, it was all I could do to not feel that “joy rising” I so frequently speak of and help him in his plot to “win back Sophie”. My friend is really a good man. He’s a got a great soul and his heart is about as big as they come. He and “Sophie” had history but he just couldn’t quite put together the pieces in his heart or mind on how to appropriately convey that he was ready to give it a go again. So tonight is the night. They are on a “proper date”. And I couldn’t be more proud of him and the care he took to plan it. He got them tickets to a concert of a favorite artist of both of theirs in Montreal, Canada and surprised her with champagne and a single pink rose picked out just like we talked about. He looked extremely handsome in his freshly pressed suit coat and when I last heard from him he was about as excited as a kid at Christmas as she was getting ready for the evening upstairs. 

     I can only hope this is the beginning of beautiful things for the two of them and that they both take a chance at love. Because really in the end, its love that will endure all things, hope all things and believe all things. Love is just that GOOD. 

   

    For as long as I’ve known my best friend Kym, she’s been trying to get me to take a trip with her. And I haven’t exactly refused…well ok. I have. Because let’s face it, I never considered myself someone with “great luck”. And when you watch movies about two best friends traveling abroad together, generally only one of them gets to come back alive or with their freedom. For some reason I felt like I was destined to be cast as “the dead best friend” in our movie of life. But then I gave traveling a shot by myself a little and got a little more comfortable with the idea and I also just had a talk with Karma and said, “look, really, there is no reason my luck can’t change and start shaping up. So whaddaya say?” And you know what?? Today I booked my flight to go to England to meet Kym for our friends Becky & Joe’s wedding in August and then we’re doing a side trip around Germany and Austria. And we’re both coming back alive and well!! Because sometimes you have to take chances. You have to know that if you jump, there will be someone or something there to catch you. And oftentimes that person is your best friend. 

    Kym has literally caught me since the beginning- San Diego 2004 . She was there for me when things got a little “dicey” shall we say with my roommates and I was in need of a friend to vent to, (I’ll admit I wasn’t the best friend back, & I actually went MIA on her for about a year and some change) and then when I reconnected with her, in 2006 it turned out, I needed heart surgery & she selflessly let my family spend the holidays in her beach front apartment so we could all be under the same roof and I could recuperate with them and not in a hotel while she was visiting family in Australia. Fast forward a year and Kym showed up in my hospital room once again looking like a bleach blonde pixie fresh after my car accident in 2007 to comfort me and rarely left my side for months after. We spent the next few years living pretty much a mere mile and a half away from each other when all was said and done and grew close as sisters. Occasionally fighting like sisters too, but always out of love. 

    Still I enforced the travel ban between us stronger than Trump’s. Mainly out of my own fear…much like Tru…anyway. I digress. And soon, Kym would move from San Diego up to Los Angeles in 2010 and I couldn’t have been happier for her. 

     I stayed longer than I should have out on the West Coast but felt the need to wrap it up rapidly coming and finally in 2013 once all my surgeries were completed I called it a day and packed it in and moved home to Upstate New York. After a very serious illness almost didn’t end well for me. Kym and her then boyfriend Simon were integral in moving me forward during that particular phase of my life and I simply would not be here without them and the love they showed me. Along with a few other friends of ours as well. 

    After I left CA, Kym did unthinkable tasks like brought all my remaining belongings to a storage facility and put what she thought I might want or might want to donate or just give away there so the next time it would be very easy for me to sort. That was the true mark of a friendship right there. 

    Now to have this trip to FINALLY BE ABLE TO GO AND JUST BE PARTNERS ON!!! It’s going to be everything we’ve been wanting to do for decades !! Just fun, no stress, no work…just sightsee and exploring. I can’t wait. Truly, taking chances and not being afraid to jump. Because this time we are both there to catch each other. That Is Just The Good Stuff.