Happy B-day Mikey!

Today my husband has finally caught up with me...... in age - he is now 38 for a really long 11 days till I'm older than he is again...dang-blast (I love this emotional word my bff Nancy uses it...I had to use it). Why can't this be the other way around? I don't like being the older one in the relationship...I can't tease him about it!

Happy B-day Mike, I hope your day is as special as you are! I love you and I wish all the best for you - except for being younger than me...HAHA!

Sending My Brittnee Off To School This Morning

First Day of School

I will never forget the first day my daughter, Brittnee, went off to kindergarten I was so particular with how she was dressed, what she eat for breakfast and if she remembered her lunch, but most importantly – I was concerned if I had fully prepared and equipped her socially for how she would behave away from home; do not hit others, be respectful of others, listen when your teacher or someone else is speaking to you, don’t talk about people - view people through your own eyes and not others, etc....

First Day of School - Into the Transitional/Non-traditional New America

8 years later I find myself with similar anxious feelings and having to give another lecture to my 14 year old daughter this morning before she left for school, “Brittnee, today you may witness and be involved in discussions about our new president-elect...some conversations could turn quite negative and may even spin out of control. It’s very important to diffuse any negative talk. We have evolved as a country and it’s important to be supportive and hold your head high. Be a good role model and express your happiness for such a long awaited accomplishment that has happened here in America.”

Practicing What Our Mother's Have Preached

After telling my daughter this, I come to the realization we must teach our children to be positive, supportive Americans..even when the outcome may not be in our favor. Therefore, as adults, it’s equally important for us to apply the same historically taught social approach.

Hope

I’m very happy America has come this far and I hope and pray that Obama leads our country into a new positive direction.

The Future

It's amazing, in the next election, Brittnee will be old enough to vote!!

Pep Rally

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by jenece

I got Treated and Tricked Today!

My Treat...ment

I had to get my 8-hour Rituxan treatment today...it was rough sitting in that terrible chair..after about 3 hours into the treatment my legs started aching all over then I started having right sided flank pain and all over body pain and now I'm exhausted and weak (it's like the treatment puts the disease in reverse!). I go back in two weeks to get another...I'm hoping this will put this disease into remission!

My Trick... was a real TREAT!

I had a nice surprise, most of you know I love Bottle Caps..by Willie Wonka! While I was getting my treatment today, I had live entertainment...one of the nurses and doctors dressed up as Willie Wonka and the other one as an umpa and they did a live performance and passed out my bottle caps! It was a wonderful surprise for Halloween! They danced and everything...it was too adorable!


Happy Halloween!

Titter-tottering

• Hope is the medicine that prevents heart-sickness and the tree that produces life. There is no tonic as potent as the hope that tomorrow will be better; and there is no tree as fruitful as good things desired and expected.

• It gives hope to realize that your difficulties are only the common lot of man; other’s have them, too, and they persevere – so can you!

– Leroy Brownlow, Making The Most of Life

The early a.m. alarm consistently rings, growing intensely louder and louder as my ears hear - my fatigued painfully ill body remains with no reflexes - my shins throbbing and burning with such intense pressure - fearing the potential damage it could do to my soft skin. It’s as if I hadn’t slept for an eminently long decade, eyes are so tightly shut. My hands stiff and ache profoundly feeling the sting through my dainty nail bed. I hold off on moving because the reality in the great efforts lie ahead of the day decreases my pulse. Gingerly I pull back the covers from my head; my arms feeling as though I had been relentlessly lifting 400 pounds for a week; the bending of my elbow’s cry-out, “I’m being pulled apart at the socket.” The sound of the shower being turned on by my daugther in the room next door echoes through my thoughts - I know she needs a well-balanced breakfast and an education, therefore the pain looses the titter and the love of life shifts my body propellently north.

-Jenece Austin

I'm So Unthoughtful!

Shame on me, I forgot to send out a shout-out to my mother-in-law today! It's her B-day..Happy B-day and thanks for doing all that you do for us...we are thinking of you and we love you!!

We celebrated 4 people's Birthday on Sunday at my house; Brittnee, my mother-in-law, Mike's aunt and little John (Mike's sister's fiancee's boy). I'm still trying to recover, so I'm a little slow right now.

Socialism

On a cold Winter’s day, my 61 year old mom and I came to a stop light on a busy street corner, a man wrapped in a thin blanket holding out an empty Folgers can with holey gloves waiting anxiously - his eyes and face daunted by a far from lavished life style reaches out, for all we know - one more time, after a month of begging, to get the very basics; a clean shave, bath and some food – as my mother gladly reaches into her already limited pocket-book, to pull out her last five dollar bill, I question her intent.

My mother doesn’t make a $50,000 dollar a year salary she is considered a low income leveled earner and she works very hard for her money…but when I questioned why she felt she should give him money her "S" answers were short, simple and sweet!

Short

My mother has a warm roof over her head, food in her mouth, health insurance, a family that loves her and a job to go to daily...it was very apparent this man had absolutely nothing! She didn’t know what condition his health or life had been in to get him to this desperately needy point …he could have been ones next door neighbor, someone’s father or son…he could have been God’s son! It wasn’t her job to judge him, or figure out the specifics on what he was going to do with that money, only to love and try to help him!

Simply

Some of us in the US, particularly those that are in the lime light, make billions of dollars sending their money to other countries, giving their donations to big named charities in order to gain more lime light! In essence these individuals are beggars too! Instead of asking for money directly, their asking for it indirectly through marketing….and we contribute and give to them all the time via buying their music, watching their movies etc… It’s called a Head Fake - Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture! Their making more money by giving money and receiving the blown-up publicty that goes along with that! This is exploitation too, just in a different form.

The reason we don’t complain is simply because everyone receives instant gratification by gaining something versus the unilateral gain.

Sweet

I know there is nothing sweet about paying taxes because we feel we're giving our money to the government to do what they feel fit..in some respects this is communistic too. But we are giving it back to the US and this is how we should view it!

So why, when our government talks about raising taxes in order to distribute more money amongst the poor, do we complain? In the grand scheme the increase would only be that last $5.00 bill my mother so sweetly gave to that homeless man. Hypothetically and relatively if everyone had to pay an extra $5.00 dollars more a year on their taxes, this could ultimately create new health care plans for those that may not have one. The long-term gain would be some homeless people or people that are barley making it could get health care and maybe a small percentage of them would be able to flourish gradually and broadly increase the strength of the US preventing the small business owner from closing due to a slowed economy.

I understand the control concern…not knowing what our government is doing with our money but should we be judging or using my mother’s sweet approach and just contributing gratefully?

Lets face it...life isn't free! Nothing is ever free that's worth living or worth fighting for but we continually live it with our innately God given faithfulness, so why not use the same approach with a new system? Our old one isn't working, we are in so much trouble with our economy that we must reinvent! I don't like the fact that the government had to bail-out our banks ...but I really don't like the idea of having to beg for food and shelter on the side of the road. So, we have to be open-minded. Americans are smart and resilient we will be a much stronger country after this learning experience but we have to come up with an amicable solution for everyone and I know that we will prevail but not without sweet change!