I had a favorite stuffed bunny that I carried around with me every place I went.  It was a short-haired stuffed animal with a rubber face and you would have thought it was real, the way I carried it around.  I would even wrap it in a blanket like a live baby.

So, my brother and I are sitting in reclining lawn chairs on the big, screened-in front porch of my grandmother’s house, me holding my little bunny, wrapped tightly in a blanket. All of a sudden, there came a strike of lightning right across the road from the house and one very loud, booming crack of thunder.  It scared us so badly that we both jumped up, screamed and ran into the house. I, of course, dropped my little bunny and I remember I looked for that thing for at least two weeks and could not find it. I had given up hope and figured it was lost forever. Then, a couple of weeks later, as I was playing on the porch, I looked under the chair (for the umpteenth time) and there it was, where I had failed to see it before.  It was like a miracle to me and made me very happy indeed.

So, I was walking up the sidewalk, getting ready to cross the first of the two streets that I cross, when I see the strangest sight coming across the parking lot behind the bakery.  At first I could not tell exactly what it was, but as it came closer, I could make out a squirrel.  Now a squirrel is not an unusual sight during the springtime, but this one was, for it was carrying in it’s little jaws a large, chocolate cupcake, wrapped in plastic wrap.

It struck me as unusually humorous, since you seldom see a sight like this one.  The cupcake was almost larger than the carrier!!  He managed to get it across the street, and make his way carefully up a tree.  It started my day off with a smile.

His career spanned 5 decades!!!  That is absolutely amazing.  I used to love Bandstand and loved to watch reruns of it as well.  The reruns were a little hard to find, but occasionally, I would come across one.

After his stroke a few years ago, he was still doing cameo spots on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.  He was a trooper until the end.  I don’t think there will ever be another like him.

I have a close friend whose family has been affected by the recent tornadoes in Iowa.  The town his son lives in was 75% wiped out this weekend by a killer storm.  People who he knew that had lived in their homes for 30 years or more lost everything.

Nature is a strange thing.  It can be so beautiful, peaceful and wonderful, then it turns around and becomes mean, violent and relentless.  I wish only the best to those who lost their homes.  But remember, things can be replaced, lives cannot.  No lives were lost where this friend’s relatives live, just belongings.  I know that you can’t ever get back the family pictures and memorabilia and that part hurts the most I guess.

Think about the sacrifice that was made for the benefit of all mankind.  It is truly an awesome thought that someone would give their life up for the good of all men.

Most people today have lost the real meaning of Easter.  It got lost somewhere along the way with the Easter Bunny and colored eggs.  I hope that the world starts to remember the true meaning before it is too late.

I get up at 5:00 a.m., get ready for work, spend all day running around, answering the phone, doing work at the computer and then I come home and have to do laundry, dishes, fix dinner or clean something.  I hate work!!!  I need a vacation and soon.

It wouldn’t be so bad I guess if my days weren’t so hectic at the office.  Some days I just want to crawl into bed when I get home.  Maybe I need to start taking vitamins; coffee just isn’t working anymore.

She grew up like most of us, a normal kid.  She left home at 19 to act in NYC and she struggled (like most of us did when we first left home).    I was surprised that she suffered from bulimia.  She led a happy childhood, but found out in later years that her parents were not the happy couple she had believed they were, when she read her mother’s diaries after her death in 2008.   Her mother suffered from Alzheimer’s (such a cruel disease).

I really respect this woman and what she stands for.

I have a very common condition known as plantar fasciitis.  It is a very painful condition of the plantar surface (bottom of your foot) that is caused by a variety of things, such as being over weight, injury or bone/heel spurs.  In my case, I have a heel spur that is digging into the ligaments and tendons on the bottom of my foot and causing extreme inflammation.

The doctor put me in a walking cast for a month to see if that would help, and it did not.  It got so the only way I could even stand on the foot was when I was wearing the cast.  So now I am in physical therapy for the foot.  The PT seems to be helping.  They are putting a patch on my foot that is soaked with an acetic acid solution, this is supposed to help dissolve the heel spur.  The patches cost $109 each and insurance will not cover it!!  I did a little research online and discovered that acetic acid is nothing more than common household vinegar!!  I can do the treatments myself at a very low cost!!  I am elated!!

In thinking back, as an adult now, I seem to think of all of the things that could have happened to me while I was out there wandering all alone.  I never ran into a bear, or a snake (and I did a lot of rock climbing in those days) or any rabid animals.  I guess I was very lucky indeed.  I did, however, when I was 16, run into a black panther just up the road from where I lived.  I thought it was the neighbor’s dog, so I whistled and called her name.  The cat turned around and looked at me (thank goodness I was on my bicycle).  I never rode so fast in my life!  My Grandmother said that my face was as white as a sheet.

I also remember riding my bicycle “around the block”, which consisted of a 5-6 mile ride.  I loved it!  I really miss the country life sometimes.

She and Rebel are unique in that they both liked to ride the lawn mower, the snowmobiles and the three wheeler whenever they got the chance.

You see, Theresa’s husband, Terry had Rebel when Theresa and he met.  They got married and Rebel and Theresa became close.  He loved to ride the mower and three wheeler.  Not on the back, mind you, but right up front, so he could “drive”. Well, Rebel got old and passed on into that big doghouse in the sky. He is laid to rest out back under a pine tree.

So, Terry and Theresa got Lacey a few months after Rebel passed.  She took to the house as if she had been there before.  She did all the same things that Rebel had done with the machinery.  It was if Rebel was talking to her from dog heaven.  It made Theresa so happy that Lacey was so much like Rebel had been.  Here is a picture of Lacey and Theresa.  I miss them both, for they live very far away from me now.

Theresa and Lacey mowing the lawn