Dear Woman In The Nissan Who Tailgated Me On The Way To Work

I understand that we were on a one lane road. You also made it perfectly clear (to me only) that you were in a hurry. However I don’t know if anyone has shared this with you or not, but you can tailgate someone all day long, but if the person in front of them is only going 12 miles per hour, it is useless.

What I should have done is come to a screeching halt and let you rear end me. Then your pretty little car would have been all smashed up. However, I didn’t want to be inconvenienced while your insurance company was paying to have my car fixed.

You can thank me any time.

Actually, I should have followed your ass to your place of employment and shared this with you face to face, but I probably would have punched you and keyed your car and my husband would not be happy with me.

Again, you can thank me.

Either leave in enough time to get to work on time, or take a different route, but if you tailgate me again, I can’t promise that you won’t be seeing my back end in the front seat of your car.

Consider yourself warned.

Love,

Melissa

Wake Up Susie and Lay Down Sally

For those of you who really know me, you know that my dad and I are extremely close and I think he hung the moon and the stars.

It is hard on me living far away from both of my parents. I just recently went home for a visit. It had been 6 years since my last visit. It is not that I don’t like visiting, I do. It is the leaving that is the hard part. I am trying to convince my parents to move to Georgia, however, I am not being that successful.

There are a lot of things that can spur an instantaneous memory. One of them is smell. To this day, if I smell the original scent of Jergen’s lotion, it immediately reminds me of my grandmother.

Another is taste. When I was home my mom made a punch that she used to make for me and my brother when we were young, and one taste of it took me back to being little.

But lately I have been hearing all sorts of music that reminds me of my dad. When I was little I was attached to his hip on Saturday’s. If he was going somewhere, I was with him. That means I listened to music with him in the car. It seems lately, that I have been hearing these songs on the radio and it sure does bring a smile to my face and an instant memory

Lay down Sally
And rest here in my arms.
Don’t you think you want someone to talk to?

Wake up little Susie, Wake up
Wake up little Susie, Wake up
The movie wasn’t so hot. It didn’t have much of a plot.
We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot.

And Honey I miss you
And I'm being good
And I'd love to be with you
If only I could

Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down its stall
In a blizzard he was lost

Simply irresistible
She's so fine, there's no tellin' where the money went
She's all mine, there's no other way to go

My dad can tell you the name of song, the artist, the year and what car he had when the song was popular. He will tell you that he never liked the Beatles. He raised me on the oldies, but let me listen to my music in the car when it was just me and him as I got older. He had me appreciate the Bee Gee’s and still watched MTV with me back when they actually showed videos. We both discovered John Cougar Mellencamp at the same time and when the Beastie Boys were popular, he tried, for my sake, to understand that whole scene.

When Scott and I are in the car and flipping stations, a song will come on and I will tell him how this song reminds me of my dad and then I make him listen to it. And Scott is always very nice about it.

I miss the days of hanging out with my dad. And when I see Courtney look at Scott with that look that says he is perfect, I know exactly how she feels.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

I have always said that if you surround yourself with positive people, you will be a positive person.

I believe that.

I have a pretty darn good life. I have a husband who loves me. I have a daughter that is turning out to be a pretty, funny and good person. I come from a family where both of my parents are still married and taught me that some things are worth fighting for, some things are worth walking away from and to always try to find the good in everything. I have friends who would move mountains for me, and when I got married and had a child, they automatically included the two of them.

Recently, someone I work with was making fun of my weight. This person did this in front of a whole lot of other people. It was very obvious that he was teasing me. He was not trying to be malicious in any sense of the word. The next day he called me and asked if I was mad at him. He must have gone home and thought about it. I said to him "if I am going to get mad over something that you were just teasing me about, we have a whole other set of issues." But see, I am a person who enjoys being teased and teasing people. And so it was easy for me to blow off what he was teasing me about.

It has taken me many years to learn that some people don't like to be teased at all. And sometimes, after I go home and think about things, I have to call the person later and ask if they are mad at me. And sometimes I have to ask for forgiveness.

The best things in life are free. Free to forgive and free to be forgiven.

I love the fact that I am easy to forgive people. But I love more that people forgive me.

So just for today...let's all forgive someone something. I'll forgive you and you can forgive me.

Then we can sit down and find the good. Because finding the good is way better than pointing out the bad.