Blooming Again

Massey wrote this on the message board in our kitchen the first week we moved to Orlando. It's actually still on there and has been a reminder for me every single day. I was apprehensive to say the very least when we first arrived, then heartbroken when Zach packed up after just three days and moved back to Georgia. Then I found out I was also unemployed and my life felt like it was falling apart. It took me three weeks to find a job but seemed like three months. It took me almost four months to shrug off the depression I sank into...but shrug I did!

And just as suddenly, I began to bloom.

Massey and I discovered the part of Orlando we had moved to was only thirty minutes from the beach and took full advantage of it.

I made a few friends at work...

                   


and Massey quickly became friends with our young next door neighbor.

Then I met a wonderful young girl at work who I knew Massey would also love to have as a friend...          and now they are besties too.

                   
                                                         

And just like that, we were blooming again!

I think I finally knew everything would be okay when I started to find life funny again. I was sitting at a red light today behind a minivan.

             On the back window was a sticker which read "Condoms prevent minivans."


Yes, I owned a minivan when our kids were little. Massey called them 'Loser Cruisers' when she was in high school.

         The best decision I ever made in life was deciding to one day drive a Loser Cruiser for a while.


I'm lucky enough to still have Massey here living with us for a bit longer. TJ is living in Charlotte now and we miss him dearly but are happy for all his success.

 Zach is plugging away at life back in Georgia and making it on his own. He's had to learn the hard way, which often times is the best way.

Tim is doing great at his new job and mine is going pretty well and gets more lucrative every week.

Moving to Orlando meant I had to leave one sib behind but also meant I moved close to the other.

Cindy and I have lived less than thirty minutes apart from each other for the past several decades. The Leach bond is a tight one and has always been my saving salvation. Cindy and I both found the transistion to living in different states very hard to get used at first and tested our bond a few times, but never broke it.

It is what it is. I needed to move to Orlando for the good of my family and she needed to remain in Georgia for the good of hers. We never go more than about three months without visiting each other and have learned to live with the short absences. They even tend to make visits all the sweeter.

Her birthday is this coming Monday, so she is coming down on Friday and staying at my brothers' all weekend. I've been working like a mad woman so I could take the entire weekend off as well.

The weather here has been spectacular and is forecasted to be much of the same all weekend. My brother has healed nicely from his surgery and is in a walking boot now. He is stubborn (another Leach trait) and went back to work four days after having this done...not to mention this picture was taken several weeks after surgery.

He even took his two Dobes for their shots (by his self) while still on crutches and using a knee scooter to get around.

                                The male weighs as much as I do, the female a bit less than me.

                                      They are hands down the two luckiest dogs in the world...
                         and Cindy and I are hands down the two luckiest sisters in the world.


There's never really been a time when we weren't close except when we were little ones but what sibs get along when they are three, six and ten?

      Our parents must have kept these pictures as a form of birth control, that's for sure.

Talk about a gruesome threesome.

We still fought when we were around this age but were all beginning to realize we were pretty lucky kids.

                                            I'd say by this point, the bond was getting tighter.




Then our Mama suddenly died one day in 1977...in less than sixty seconds. It broke all our hearts but bound us together forever.

I know our Diddy never got over it, he just learned to live with it and carried on...for us.

This is the first picture I have of us together after Mama died.

It must have been our first trip to the beach without her.

After our Diddy died almost as suddenly (ten days from healthy to being taken off life support) in 2002 from West Nile Virus, you couldn't have pulled us apart with a pair of vise grips. All we had left was each other.


                                    And almost forty one years later, we still have each other.

As I type this post, it makes me realize no matter whatever happens to me, or in my life, I'm lucky.

So the scene is set for this weekend, and what a scene it is.

All this and both my sibs too? Oh yeah, I'm finally blooming again.

Bloom where you are planted...and I was planted next to the best.

Let the good times roll...and trust me, they will!



Till next time, COTTON

We May Think Differently But We're All The Same Inside

 I lived (for over fifty six years) in Georgia.  As a little girl, growing up,  it was overwhelmingly Caucasian where we lived. Our racial division was a road named Norman Berry Drive. The whites lived on the north side of it, the blacks lived on the south side of it. We had our schools, they had theirs. We had our parks, tennis courts and ball fields, at least three or four gyms and an Olympic sized swimming pool, complete with a high diving board which always had a line of us waiting.

 The blacks had one small swimming pool, maybe one gym and for the life of me can't remember one ball park or tennis court.

How humiliating (for them) and embarrassing (for me) was that?

It was just the way things were in the fifties and sixties, especially in the south. The high school I attended was the first one to be totally integrated. They closed the blacks only high school and made it a junior high for all eighth graders from both schools. By the time I graduated it was an even racial divide. There were never any problems or tension, we all simply got along. It was my first real exposure to black culture. The students were all bussed over, dropped off  or drove from the south side of Norman Berry to the north side to attend high school in an all white community.


I often wonder why we can't all still get along?

Not just blacks and whites, but every ethnicity, every religion, every gender, culture, political party or even every different mindset of thinking.

One thing is for certain, cut any person open and we're all the same on the inside.

I'm amazed by people, who while claiming to be a Christian, feel it is okay to bash others on social media, often calling them horrific names, posting derogatory comments, memes and personally attacking them and even their family members.

Umm...have you forgotten about that "Golden Rule" to live by?

Jimmy Carter is a man I admire and is wise beyond his ninety something years. I would have to say since I was born in 1960, three men have stood out to me in my life more than most. My own Diddy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter.

All men, who may have had faults of their own but overwhelmingly had excellent beliefs and visions for a better future.


I feel as if this nation , my nation, is almost polarized beyond the point of redemption.

We live in a society which seems to favor pointing fingers over extending a hand to hold or help.


I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of  Trump. I didn't like him on The Apprentice, or even before that, so certainly knew I wouldn't enjoy him sitting in The Oval, but he is.

I have never bashed him or his family. It is what it is.

He is our elected president and wish him nothing but success. To wish him anything less would be wrong for all concerned.

I've shaken my head often at his Tweets, especially when he spelled Marine Corps 'Core' and back pedalling on Mexico paying for the wall, which seems now like he intends for to come out of our pockets.

The real problem is that over forty percent of eligible voters never bother to vote.

What a true travesty for democracy.

Let's hold hands rather than hold grudges and point fingers.

Let's come to the table of our future existence, sit down and talk about what we want to leave as our mark and contribution to society as life goes on.

I'd much rather be a lover than a hater.

When will this world realize what my own Momma taught me at an early in the deep south of Georgia?

All you can do is hope. All you can do is pray.

Just don't hate.

Worst four letter word ever.

Till next time...COTTON

You're Killing Me Smalls

I just don't get people sometimes. Number one, it kills me when someone constantly gripes about their job...the entire shift...every shift. It's not like you're being forced to work there. If you hate your job, get another one, but don't make everyone else miserable, having to listen to your moaning and groaning the entire time. For Pete's sake, it's called  "work" for a reason.

It's like when servers complain about not making money after they have had two tables. My rule of thumb is to wait until the end...the very end of a shift, and then complain if your shift sucked wind.

Case in point:

A couple of weeks ago I had a lackluster shift. I was a closer...everyone else was cut but me. Only three more tables came in but two of the tables each tipped me thirty dollars and the third one tipped me twenty.

BAM... eighty bucks right in the ole pocket....my pocket!


The older I get, the more 'You're killing me Smalls' moments I tend to observe on an almost daily basis.

This past weekend was one of those moments.

Hundreds of thousands of teen agers across the country stood up together against gun violence.

They almost immediately became the target of social media bashing, photo shopping and many of their statements were taken out of context and used against them.

How sad is that?

I wonder how many of those bashers actually lost a child or loved one during those six minutes and twenty seconds on February fourteenth at MSD high school? I'd venture to guess none.

I, for one, was proud to see youth stand up and demand to be heard after suffering and witnessing a horrific killing spree in the halls they walk every week day of the school year.

When I was in high school, our biggest worries were winning the football games on Friday night or  getting caught rolling peoples yards with toilet paper on Saturday night.

Todays' kids have to worry about someone walking into their school with an assault weapon, and being indiscriminately picked off and killed by the spray of a high capacity magazine of bullets.

So these kids, some not even old enough to drive a car or even vote, did what they could do. They demanded to be heard and made their voices count even if their votes can't count...yet.

I could never imagine having to see seventeen of my friends and teachers at the high school I attended being killed right in front of my eyes. That's a pretty heavy load for any teen ager to bear.

Heck, that's a pretty heavy load for anyone to bear.

Yet as the adults...the ones who can vote (although almost 49% choose not to) are going to speak negatively about, and shake our heads at these kids, who are asking the adults and elected politicians to fix this problem before it happens again?


Once again...

I am embarrassed to say how many people I actually know who have bashed these kids outright on the Facebook Nation. Thank goodness I don't Tweet or Snapchat or Instagram.  I think my head would explode off my tiny shoulders. Every single one of them should be ashamed of their self. They are comparing these children to Hitler, calling them Communists.

I'm calling them what they really are... concerned children who will one day be in charge. Their speeches were eloquent and intelligent.


Not to mention I was also pretty under impressed by our own President not even responding to (or about) the fact that over half a million people stood together asking for change.


My father never owned a gun. My husband has never owned a gun, nor have I, but that's just us. We've never been interesting in hunting or ever been hunting, and luckily have never needed one for protection.

I have no problem with responsible, law abiding citizens wanting or owning a gun, after a proper background check.

The problem I do have is someone being able to have and use an assault weapon capable of firing at the enemy during war times.

                                     This is more than obviously a weapon meant for killing.


The only people who should have access to these deadly weapons are the military or law enforcement.

Keep your guns, if you are entitled to own and want one, but please let's be realistic and get these weapons meant for combat situations off the streets and more importantly out of the hands of people intending to kill as many people as they can in the matter of a few minutes or even seconds. How many more tragedies have to happen until politicians realize this?

And most importantly, don't verbally spit on these children or their agenda. At least they have one.

So we gripe about millennial generation being lazy and feeling entitled yet once they take an interest in political issues and a stand for their own well being and the rest of us as well, we spit on them.

Trust me, these kids are woke now...and going to be a force to be reckoned with once they step into that polling booth for the very first time.

And "No" that wasn't a Nazi salute. For Pete's sake, who doesn't know it is a sign of power?

I went to a high school that was split fifty fifty down the racial line between blacks and whites. Do you know how many fists I saw drawn on notebooks and book covers or the back of lockers?

A lot...and am pretty sure they had absolutely nothing to do with Hitler.


I am proud of these kids while at the same time absolutely horrified of what they have had to go through and lose to be heard.

Anyone who knows or has worked with me in the past ten years know what I'm going to say next...


"I hear ya!!"

And I do.

Till next time,


                               COTTON