What did you pray for?

It is finally Friday.  I for one am grateful.  I thought it was Friday already twice this week.  Nothing more sucks.  Well, that is not true, but it does rank right up there in things that suck.  It looks like it will be a great weekend for hunters and gatherers (those buying stuff on the Scenic Drive.)

Do you ever drive to work or home from work or to the store, or anywhere I guess that you drive to often, could be the store, school, whatever, and you arrive at your destination and you realize that you don’t remember driving there at all?  It is like you have an auto pilot, because you are thinking about so many things while you are driving, that you are not actually paying attention to the driving itself?  I do it a lot and it is kind of scary actually.  This has no value to my blog I just thought about it on the way home from work the other night when I pulled into the driveway and realized I remembered nothing about driving home.   I am pretty sure I cannot recall most of the times I drive to and from work.  Ask me to tell you what I am thinking about while I was driving and I probably cannot recall that either.

ANYWAY…I have big plans for the Friday Blogs, but I couldn’t pull it together for this one, so be excited for next Friday.

I will however leave you with a question to ponder.  I don’t know whether I heard this on the radio, saw this on TV, Facebook, somewhere…either way I thought it was an amazing question.  Now, if you do not pray, or believe in God, or you only pray at Church, whatever, you may not have an answer to the following question I am going to present.  To each their own.  I have no problem with you if you do not pray, but for those of you who do, this question is for you.

If you woke up this morning and were given ONLY what you prayed for last night before you went to bed, what would you be given?

For a very strange reason, I prayed a lot last night, otherwise it is quite the opposite of the following:

Strength, comfort and peace for:
My Aunt Michelle’s father and family to deal with his news that he has cancer…
A little girl with Epilepsy and her momma…
A little boy named Jett fighting Leukemia and his family…
All of my friends and family battling cancer or any other illness…

That Brodie’s Epilepsy is manageable…
For my mother’s continued happiness and for Terry’s health…
As good a harvest as humanly possible for my father…
To have my heart, head and feet guided in the right direction towards the place where I find my own peace…
That my brother and sister and their families were watched over and protected…
Love and protection, for all of my friends and family I cannot be with…

Normally, I would have woke up this morning having asked for, no headache when I woke up, a money tree to have sprouted in my backyard, a new vehicle in the driveway, a week’s vacation to somewhere tropical…you get the point.

At the very least, it makes you pause and ask yourself, if I woke up tomorrow getting what I prayed for, what will I be getting?

What scares you?

With Halloween right around the corner…I decided to write about the Top 5 things that scare me.  I mean really scare me.   I love the scary, horror, thriller movies, but they do not scare me.  Halloween, Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, absolutely love them, but they don’t scare me.  Macabre movies like Saw and Hostel, LOVE EM, but nope, not scary, gross and gruesome yes, but not scary.  I will tell you that some movies that are based on true stories or “actual events,” have had the capacity to scare me.  The 2008 movie “The Strangers” scared me.  Although it was not entirely true, some of the events in the movie were which made it scary.  However, Psycho, Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jaws, etc.  Not scary.  And there is probably some argument that any of those are completely true.  

Certain “things” scare me or have scared me I should say.  Interestingly they are things that could’ve happened, or could have been worse.  And they all had something to do with my babies… (Nieces and nephews.)  Actually Brother and Sister have given me a scare as well…Brother when he had a rail drop on his leg and got a blood clot that went to his heart/lungs…that was very scary.  Sister had a stroke at the age of 36.  She hasn’t been right since, but it was very scary that she had one at that age.  Knock on wood they are both fine.

The Jolly Roger Pirate Cruise

A few weeks back I mentioned that it was National Rum Day.  I also mentioned I had a great story about Rum Punch.

It was December of 2002.  I had been back in Illinois almost a year.  I don’t know why sister and family asked Mom, Dad and I to go on a cruise, but I think maybe we split the cost for our parents or something for their Christmas present that year.  Sister and husband had been on one before and wanted to take the kids this time around, because apparently they missed them so much when they went alone that it wasn’t funny.  ANYWAY...off we went that December for 7 days to the Southern Caribbean on the Royal Caribbean’s "Radiance of The Seas," two weeks before Christmas.  Having only a brief stint in the cruise industry I can tell you this is the best time to go…the most economical anyway.

Mom, Dad, the kids and I had never been on a cruise so this was an experience.  We flew into San Juan Puerto Rico, spent a night there and boarded the most enormous boat I had ever seen.  Like twice the size of Maquon. 

Puerto Rico was amazing and I would go back in a heartbeat.  The minute we got off the plane though, all of our hair went flat.  It was quite humid and much different from the snowy tundra we had left in Chicago.

Off we went on our adventure.  If you have never been on a cruise, it is only the kind of vacation I need to take, but it is not for everyone.  Especially if you experience sea-sickness.   There are tricks to dealing with that if anyone wants to know (not medicine related.) 

This was a beautiful boat.  The rooms scared the hell out of us, because two people could not move side by side in them, but you were rarely in your room, so it really didn’t matter.  We both had a walk out deck (which mom slept on most of the nights because Dad had issues with snoring), but it was breath taking.  A city on the water.  A mall, 15 restaurants, a theatre, water park, the list goes on…you would never have to leave the boat to have the whole world at your beck and call.