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.

Rules to Follow While in Public with Your Children

Dear Woman Who Brought ALL of Your 4 Kids to the Doctor’s Office:

I understand that finding someone to watch your kids can be hard. Heck, I only have one and it was hard back in the day to find someone to watch her. But I do have some tips for you on how to handle your children should you have to take them in public.

1. Never under any circumstances should you leave the 2 year old girl in charge of her two older brothers. Do you really think she holds any type of authority over them? Let’s just say they were throwing books all over the waiting room (which they were) and let’s say that the little tiny two year old told them to stop (which she did), they will not listen (which they didn’t).

2. Should you need to have your children come sit down next to you, you might want to get up and go get them. Yelling for them across the entire waiting room isn’t really what you want to do. And a word to the wise, making eye contact with other parents and feigning complete shock that the angels are not listening is wasted feigning. Save that for when you get called to the school for a parent/teacher conference.

3. I admire the fact that your brought your sister with you to stay with the kids in the waiting room while you took the baby back to see the doctor. You might want to tell her that it is kind of rude to be talking on her cell phone with her baby’s daddy ON SPEAKER PHONE to find out “exactly what he is so pissed off about” and just how long he plans on staying “pissed”. This was the pediatrician’s office and some parents look down on the language that was used around their children. (On a side note, you might want to tell your sister, that if she washed her child’s hair more than once a month, that the food that was caked in it would come out and help the child smell better.)

4. When you feed your baby and your 2 year old gold fish crackers and they drop them on the floor, I would suggest you pick them up. But if you are not going to pick them up, please do not let your children and your sister’s child grind them in to the carpet. That’s just rude.

I hope you find these tips helpful. They don’t apply only to doctor’s offices. No, they will apply to anywhere that you might find yourself.

Very Truly Yours,

Melissa

Courtney

I have told you all Courtney stories before.

Like the time she came home from school and wanted to join the Girl Scouts, and then wanted to know if you still got to live at home when you were a Girl Scout.

Or the time she was in Kindergarten and got in trouble on a Friday. I was driving home with her in the back seat telling her how much trouble she was in when we got home and she told me that she knew she wasn't in trouble at home, because the Principal told her that she had all weekend to get her act together and it was only Friday.

Last week we had a meeting at Courtney's school to start preparing for High School. We have to start now if we want the transition to be successful. This was the first meeting that she was allowed to sit in on and have a say in. Her teachers had asked her some questions before the meeting and we were going over the results.

Special Education Coordinator - "Courtney does plan on going to college. She would like to be a kindergarten teacher or work with animals."

Scott - "Good. She can live at home as long as she is going to school."

*teachers and everyone laugh*

Courtney - "I don't know what you guys think is so funny..he is serious."

And with that the whole room busted out laughing. She was so concerned that they were laughing at something that clearly wasn't a joke.

We tried to explain why people were laughing, but it was lost on her.

At least we found out that she does want to go to College.

And now she knows how long she can live here.

I Want A Pop

As you know by now, growing up my parents always took us on some sort of vacation. As you are also aware, my participation was not always looked upon as gracious.

But I wasn’t always bad.

A couple of times, my parents rented a little, little beach house down in Newport Beach.

Little. But cute! It had two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It was on the side with the waves.

On that side there was a big long boardwalk. All along the boardwalk, were shops and restaurants. My mom would let me walk up and down it. Sometimes, my dad would take me to the pizza place. I thought it was cool because 1.) you could go in there barefooted and in your bathing suit and 2.) because everything was up high and my dad had to lift me to get on the chairs. You could order pizza by the slice and dad would get me a slice and orange soda and him two slices and a beer.

Back then my mom would drink Shasta…you remember the commercial for that…I wannna POP, I wanna SHASTA. I wanna taste PIZZAZ. All the great taste a SHASTA has. This vacation she stocked the fridge with them. They had ever flavor under the sun. And at night, she would let Jeff and I split one with dinner.

I don’t know who I was driving crazy this day. It could have been Jeff, but it was probably her. Jeff seemed to make friends easily and for me it was harder. I expected mom to play me and more than once was told “I was not put on this earth to entertain you.” So she gave me some money and told me I could walk ALL BY MYSELF to the liquor store and get myself some candy. Did I mention this was all by myself? Jeff wasn’t with me at all. Nope. I was flying solo.

And off I went, money in hand.

I got there and looked at everything I could buy and decided on a grape Whistle Pop. Clearly, I had got the best of both worlds. Not only was it a delicious candy, it was a loud ass whistle too! Proud of my purchase, I began my journey back to the beach house. There I was happily walking down the boardwalk sucking and blowing, blowing and sucking on my ever so wonderful CANDY WHISTLE!

I got back and walked through the door announcing my arrival with a long and loud blow on that whistle and was promptly told to either eat it or throw it away, but sure as hell, don’t blow that whistle anymore.

And I was so happy because I got to go all by myself without Jeff and get some candy! This was the best vacation ever!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I went to the movies this weekend and saw Valentine. I thought it was a cute movie.

There is a line in there where a wife says to a husband, after admitting that several years ago she had a brief affair with his business partner, that when you love someone you love all of them, the good and the bad. And the husband forgave her right then and there. Actually, he had forgiven her way before that.

There are people who do not understand the dynamics of my marriage to Scott. Some of these people are people who only know a little of what they see. Some of these people are close friends and some of these people are family.

People have told Scott that they don’t know how he can be married to someone who is so outspoken and opinionated. That he really should have a wife that caters to him just a little bit more.

People have told me that they don’t know how I can be married to someone who has to know about every dollar I spend. That I really shouldn't have to ask his opinion on the way I decorate the house.

Truth be told, no one knows the dynamics of our relationship. Just like we don’t know the dynamics of our friends and family’s relationships.

But I can tell you this, Scott and I have been together since 1991. No one held a gun to his head and made him ask me to marry him. And I said yes on my own accord. We are approaching 17 years of marriage and neither one of us have plans for that to change. I still miss him when I am away from him all day. He still tries to cop a feel every time I pass him by. Every single time.

Slow to trust, but I’m quick to love.
I push too hard and I give too much.
I’m not saying I’m perfect,
But I promise I’m worth it.

When you love someone, you love all of them, the good and the bad.