Today’s Challenge: Make a decision about your life and then go for it!

Most of you know we have two dogs now and we’re trying to make a decision on whether or not to keep Marek. We have 3 more days to decide. This decision is entirely up to my man. I didn’t want another dog. As much as I love all animals, I was looking forward to a little more freedom. I just lost my cat of 18 years (who needed a lot of care and attention the last year of her life) and I still have my wonderful 8 1/2 year old pug who is very easy to have around. Marek is 2 1/2 and the most amazing dog. I do love him but our lives have just become more chaotic, and we are living in limbo. We haven’t two-dog-proofed our home, we haven’t really done anything to make me believe we are keeping him. On the other hand, I see no signs pointing to us getting rid of him either. THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY! I have asked my man and he just says, “I change my mind every day.” I assure him that we can keep Marek and we’ll make it work. But he just can’t make up his mind. He has this deadline because there is somebody patiently waiting to make Marek her own wonderful new dog. If this was up to me, I wouldn’t have brought Marek home unless I was sure I wanted him for life–That’s how I roll. And at this point, we know he’s a great dog, a little too playful/wanting to be dominant with our pug, and our lives are crazy and chaotic now, but it’s all manageable. SO PLEASE MAKE A DECISION!!! If we keep him, we’ll two-dog-proof our home and move forward. If we decide to give him to his new owner, we can make that happen and move forward. Living in limbo sucks. Making other people live in limbo sucks. I like moving forward. I like to make decisions, right or wrong, and move forward with that choice… making a decision makes life so much easier. 🙂

Today’s Challenge: Turn bad choices into life gifts.

I went to see Oprah on Friday night–I skipped the rest of the tour, because I really just wanted to see Oprah. She spoke for almost two hours about her life. I feel blessed that I was able to experience this amazing woman live. Although I had heard some of her life stories before, I love the reminder that when bad things happen to us, our lives often move in a better direction. This has happened to me many times… and even if I don’t see the positive in the experience right away, I know deep down that there is a lesson for me to learn. I wrote about this many years ago in my first novel, The Gentlemen’s Club: A Story for All Women. Angie, went through some hard times of homelessness and being assaulted on a bus, but she always knew that with every bad experience, something good was at work. These two experiences of Angie’s, were actually my experiences, and I’ve had many more… the one I thought about yesterday, was when I was in seventh grade, I spent the night with a friend whose father had a cupboard full of hard liquor. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to drink some, but because it was my first experience with hard booze, I over did it and became very sick, unconscious. Long story short, ever since that night, I’ve never liked hard liquor, or mixed drinks. I consider this to be an amazing gift. Don’t get me wrong, in my early twenties, I loved to drink and go crazy and have fun with my friends, but I only drank beer and I kept track of the bottles so I wouldn’t get drunk, unless of course that was the goal. 🙂 These days, I don’t drink at all. I’ve had too many people I love hurt by alcohol so I’ve just decided to skip it all together, besides, I’m a hell of a designated driver!