Well, I see no one noticed my first blog post, so I'll post a second. I wonder how many posts it will take before anyone takes notice. Will I win a prize? Some star coins maybe???
I just spent the last hour playing Super Mario on Wii, so I'm still hearing the Mario music in my head and I still have star coins in my eyes. Boy, is that game hard! Being a 46 year old mom, I'm not your typical "gamer" - actually, I'm not a gamer at all, really, so I guess it must be harder for me than it is for some... This game looks like something I will never be able to beat, not without Luigi's help anyway. Thank God for those green exclamation point boxes!
I guess I should tell you a little bit more about me. I spend most days at the computer. I visit forums, I skim through the news, check emails and oh yeah, I try to actually work. It is easy to forget to do that, especially since I work at home and don't have some pontificating boss to stand over me and shake their holier-than-finger at me. When I work, I earn money, or at least try to, and when I don't work, I don't earn money. It is my choice. Thankfully, I've managed to keep paying my bills and I have a wonderful husband that supports this family.
I work as both a graphic designer and an artist, and try to spend a good portion of each day doing both. The graphic design work pays better but admittedly the artwork is much more creative and satisfying. Between the two, I manage to pay the bills and have enough money to keep buying supplies for the business. I very rarely have to buy anything for the graphic design work, thank God!
Like I said before, I am married. I have a wonderful loving husband who is devoted to me and the kids in a way I rarely see men are. We married each other late in life, I was 38 and he was 39. He had never been married before, but I had just gone through a divorce after 16 years of marriage. My first husband distanced himself from the kids and me in favor of a love affair with Jesus (and an online girlfriend that I didn’t find out about until later) and as a result I lived a very lonely existence. You might think I should have followed him into his faith, but being raised Jewish, I was just not comfortable with that. The more my ex tried to shove Christianity down my throat the more I rebelled against it. I grew to hate Christianity simply because he was so hell-bent on converting me.
Needless to say, it was a very unhealthy lifestyle for me, and for the greater portion of that marriage I literally felt like I was the living dead; like I was a zombie.
I met my current husband just three days after my first husband and I split. I think I would have enjoyed a life as a single mom, but I like to think God had other plans. I really do believe that everything that happened in my life up until that moment had directly pointed me into the arms of my current husband. When I think of how many choices I had; how many turns I had to make in order to get here, it could have just as easily gone a different direction. No telling where I'd be today!
So, now we've been married for over eight years, and will have known each other exactly nine years the day after tomorrow. As important as our wedding anniversary is, the anniversary of when we met is even more important to me in many ways. Without that meeting, there would be no wedding anniversary to celebrate every year.
Together we have a seven year old daughter. She was a "surprise" as you can imagine. Although she was not planned, we are so very blessed to have her in our lives. She is highly intelligent and does exceptionally well in school. She is strong willed and she loves to entertain us with her sense of humor and fun loving approach at life. She has endured a few challenges and continues to remain every bit as optimistic about her future as I could ever hope she would be.
She enjoys playing games on the computer and we spend many hours each day side by side; her on the old Dell desktop from 2001 and me on my 2008 laptop. Sometimes we'll watch YouTube videos together, or play games together.
We live in the country, as you can imagine, with "Life on the Mountain" as the title for this blog. We live in a remote area of the Ozark National Forest, roughly some 1800 feet above sea level. Granted, it's not Mount Everest, but it's high enough that on a clear day you can see the distant valleys, mountains, lakes and rivers. It is quite a view.
It is very quiet here, but occasionally we'll hear the sound of a gun going off as hunters are known to hunt in the area. When I used to live in the city, I never could quite get used to hearing the sound of gunshots, but those gunshots were going off for different reasons, and that to me, was scarier than what I hear now.
We have a pond across the dirt road where we can watch the cows come in and drink. In the summer, they'll get into the pond all the way up to their necks to cool off. Even in the winter, they'll get in up to their knees. They are curious creatures. Every time I walk across the road to get the mail, there they are. They stop whatever it is that they're doing just to watch me. If they're a little close to the fence, they'll back off, but most of the time, they stand still like statues and don't resume their mundane activities until I return to the house. Every year there is a new crop of calves and it astonishes me that some are born so early in the winter that I think they can't possibly survive, but somehow they do... Just yesterday, the farmer was out with a shovel trying to break up the ice on the pond so the cows could get a drink. It has been unusually cold, with temps below freezing and into the single digits - and even the minus single digits - for well over a week now.
We have the usual assorted wildlife. We get plenty of birds and squirrels, competing for food at my bird feeder, but we also get rabbits, possums and deer and we even get a bear once in a while. They come up to the garden and try to figure out a way to get through the fence to get into it. So far, they haven't been aggressive at all.
We also have another pond, buried into the woods just north of the house that we like to call our "Secret Pond" because few people know that it's there. The Secret Pond has a Secret Creek that runs off from it in wet weather. The creek meanders towards the edge of the bluff and down into the hollow. It's really pretty back in there.
We love Arkansas, there is so much to explore and see. We visit the Buffalo River as often as we can; it is just a short drive to get there. There are many beautiful sights; waterfalls and caves and we've seen a good many elk. We’ve gone on many hikes and some are so treacherous we’ve had to turn back. We’ve tried twice so far to see Hemmed-In Hollow but have had to turn back each time.
Yep, life on the mountain is good, but it would be good to get a free green exclamation point box once in a while…
Lynn
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