Life is a beautiful thing. It can also be a fucked up mess of ugliness. How it looks is entirely up to you. What eyes you view it through make it good or bad. It's much like riding a bull in the rodeo ring. You have got to hang on at least 8 seconds to win. And sometimes it will be the longest eight seconds of your entire life, but dammit you held on while that giant animal did its best to kill you! Will it buck you off sometimes? Yes it will. Will it break and bruise you? Sure it will. What you do when that happens is what matters. Do you get patched up and get your ass back on the bull? Or do you quit and walk away? Do you keep riding through the blood, sweat and tears?

Freedom

The Constitution of the United States of America

We have certain inalienable rights. We have certain freedoms granted by the founding fathers and amended by others. Freedom of speech. What does that mean to you? For me it means I can write this note. I can say things and not be arrested for those words. I can freely say I don’t like what my government does or is doing. I can freely gather and listen to a speaker. It doesn’t matter if it’s hateful speech. The KKK, black activists calling for the genocide of whites, religious nuts drinking kool-aid and preaching the end of the world to sinners and sodomites and anyone who disagrees with them. They have the right to speak freely. Is it morally right? Fuck no. Do I approve? Fuck no. Hate is hate, no matter what it’s wrapped in. Will I defend their right to speak? With a quickness. I don’t have to like it or agree with it to defend their constitutional right to speak.

There are consequences to their hate speech. Just because you have a right, doesn’t mean you are free from consequences. But those consequences should not come from an over reaching government. It should also not come from folks throwing rocks or molotov cocktails. Violence is not a rebuttal or a consequence. It’s someone else acting like a giant dick. That isn’t exactly the answer either. Consequences are things like boycotting a business. Writing a bad review of said business. Spreading the information about the hateful asses. Those are consequences. Hate only begets more hate.

Have you seen how damn angry we are in this country? We are angry because our neighbor has more. Or the bakery next door made a cake or didn’t make a cake. Do you know what we aren’t angry about? Our own children being entitled, little jackasses. We give them everything we never had and things we never dreamed of and wonder why they have a tantrum over the difference between getting an Iphone 8 or an Iphone X. We wonder why they need a safe space at college because they got a B- on a paper. We have told them they don’t have to listen to the mean teacher. Because we blame the teacher or school when a bad grade comes home. Instead of teaching them about those consequences I mentioned, we give the teacher hell because our kid didn’t do their work! What the fuck are we doing? We aren’t all special and perfect. We all have to work hard. We all have to do things we hate. So let’s teach our kids to do those things and get them done and out of the way. Then they can go do the fun stuff.

We allow our kids the freedom and ability to verbally harass other kids day and night. How many of you look at your kids phones and computers? You would be surprised at how mean and ugly your kids are being. Teach them to be kind. Teach them to say please and thank you. Teach them to sit with the poor kid who is wearing the same shirt for the third day. His mom may have been too drunk to do laundry. Do these things. Teach them to work through their anger instead of acting it out on other people.

Now I move on to the right to bear arms. The NRA is a waste of space and skin. They will preach about the 2nd amendment until we all die of fucking boredom. I won’t give them money. I won’t put their sticker on my car.

With that being said, brace yourselves, I’m a gun owner. With the latest school shooting, folks are screaming for more gun control. See above to fix part of that school shooting issue. Now I’m not saying we don’t need some common sense gun laws. Universal background checks. They should be the same no matter what state you live in. 7 day waiting periods. Yeah, I said it. mandatory cooling off periods. 7 days isn’t that long. You can damn well wait. Think of it like Christmas. You have to wait for Santa to come.

The legal age to buy a pistol is 21. The legal age in most states to buy a long gun (including the dreaded AR-15) is 18. Some people are trying to change that. I disagree. Remember the universal background checks and waiting period? It should apply to long guns as well. In that UBC there should be a spot for 18-21 year olds school records. Any suspensions or other trouble for violent behavior means they don’t get a gun. Any juvenile criminal record that has violence as the reason for prosecution means no gun. Do you see where I’m going with this?

We also need better health care in this country. It’s the greatest country in the world! And we are sending straight down the fucking toilet. That’s all I’ve got for now. Come back another time. Ask me questions. Share this if you’d like. Thank you. Drea

Roots

You never know how important roots are until you realize you don’t have any and you never have had them. Growing up and moving every 6 months like a gypsy is hard on some kids. Especially when its a hurried middle of the night move. When the utility companies and the landlord are looking for their money and your mom drank it all. Those moves when you have to leave things behind because there is just no room in the car for everything. It’s devastating to a child. Not to all children. Some kids look at it as an adventure! A new place with new people!

But I wasn’t that kind of child. I was the kind of child who needed roots, one place to call home, a soft landing.

Recently I took a trip to Texas. It served a dual purpose. I moved one of my daughters there and got to meet some wonderful friends. One of whom is my sister by choice. I also got to meet a member of my fathers family. She is the tiniest lady! I felt like I might break her when I hugged her. When my father passed away I had no idea that I had cousins and other family. But boy was I surprised when my step-sister told me how big my family really was! And then the facebook messages started coming. One read “I’ve been waiting to meet you your whole life.” My cousin Nell knew about me from the beginning. And she wanted to meet me! My cousin Jimmy called me and said he thought my brother and I were figments of his imagination all these years. One day we were there, and the next we were gone, never to be heard from again.

But they knew of me. Mom didn’t tell me I had family. I could barely get her to tell me I had a father out there somewhere. So I packed a bag and got behind the wheel and headed to Texas. I had lots of offers for company but I really needed to take the second half of the trip alone. And the moment I met Nell I felt it, roots. I have roots in Ohio where I live but I also have roots in Texas. It felt like home.

It almost felt as though I could blink and be riding a horse out on the range looking for a stray cow. The blue sky, scrub brush, cattle and the horizon never getting closer felt natural. It also felt very much like Ohio. Flat, stark, and strangely friendly and welcoming. It was a long trip but it was too short.

I’m glad to be back in Ohio. At home with my husband and my dogs and the smell of farm country. But I’ll be back Texas. Don’t worry, you and I aren’t through yet. You still have places for me to see and people for me to meet. And California? I’m coming for you someday. I have family to meet and beaches to lay on.

We no longer think for ourselves. We are spoon fed a steady diet of death, destruction, hate, anger and sadness and we can’t figure out why we need anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, alcohol and other addictions to soothe the turmoil in our heads and hearts. We don’t think about turning off the news or using social media sparingly. Nope. We keep our steady diet of talking heads and tragedy going. We are so afraid we might miss something out there we don’t look at our childrens faces. We don’t notice the sun on our faces or how it feels to smile at a real person who is right in front of us.