A time to mourn, and a time to dance

Today is Tracy's birthday. She would've been 42.

I've been in a funk all week. Realistically, I think it has to do with overly high expectations and tensions at work, training for the Tour de Pink, and lots of other things . . .

And then sweet Jamie posted her blog update today about it being Tracy's birthday . . .

I keep Tracy's remembrance card from the funeral in my car and I look at it almost every day. I wonder if by some strange act I happened to catch that this week . . . this day . . . was Tracy's birthday. I wonder if subconsciously that fact settled into my thoughts and moods and has driven me into a funk . . .

A poor excuse because in all actuality, I should not mourn the fact that Tracy is not here. That is selfish for me. She is without pain, without cancer, with her hair, her beautiful strong body, and her spirit is free to do what ever the hell she wants to do . .

But most importantly, in my mind's eye, I see Tracy doing the chicken dance. Because that is what she wanted to do most at her son Jason's wedding some day.

She will not get the chance to do that in her mortal form . . .but many of us will . . . on many other occasions with her on our minds and with smiles in our hearts.

We miss you Tracy . . . and now we dance!!

Social Networking...or...How I Found 400 Old Friends, a Few Hundred New Ones, and One New Best One

Last year some time early spring-ish, my dear hubby Brian was telling me all about Facebook. Now, certainly I had heard of it. All the cool kids were on it. But I am not cool. "I'm too old!" I told him. He informed me that many of his peers were on it from high school and they are only a few years younger than me (yeah....I'm a cougar...grrrrrrr). He convinced me and I signed up. Yikes. Addictive that Facebook is. No sooner had I gotten started than I was playing Scrabble until 2am with complete strangers, and taking all sorts of quizzes, and spouting off song lyrics like nobodies business.

But beyond that I found so many old friends who I had long ago lost touch with!

You see, I am an Air Force brat as well as the only child of wonderful mom who was divorced twice before I graduated high school. These are not meant as judgemental statements - they are merely facts. But the clearest memories I have come from the years that started in 6th grade when we moved to Kings Mills (a suburb of Cincinnati). From there, she divorced (this was the 2nd divorce), joined the Air Force and we moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I went on to Mobile, Alabama where I graduated from the University of South Alabama (Go Jags!) and hung out there until 1996 when I moved back up to Ohio, landing in Columbus. So those years can be grouped as such: Kings Mills, Ocean Springs, Mobile, and now.

Up until now, I had completely fallen out of touch with the other three groups. Whether it was through my own nomadic habits of moving on and hating good-byes, built from years of Air Force moves; or whether I left some bad business here and there...the memories were all I had of those times. Sad, eh? Completely my fault. I had tried to track some people down here and there and connected with a few.

But Facebook was like connecting on crack! I could see photos, chat, keep up with daily minutiae, go beyond the general catching up and almost bond again! I reconnected with people I had not talked to in decades (By the way, can I just lament how hard it is to think in terms of decades? It truly sucks!) Soon I was FB'ing like a pro! Brian connected me with other friends and I even connected with some of his friends and some "friends of friends." And that is how I met Alison Lukan - whom I consider a new best friend. Well, not how I met her...I knew her already. But we FB friended and started chatting and it went downhill from there - a whole 'nother post for another day because she deserves a post solely unto herself.

The other day I was stunned and incredibly touched to stop by a friend's FB page to see her father had passed and 45 people had given their sympathy in a mere few hours. And this is not to say that anyone is shirking their duties to attend a funeral or extend a sympathy call to her...but merely to let her know they were thinking of her as soon as she got a chance to check. What a hug that must have felt like.

And then I discovered Twitter. Holy 140 characters of pure sweetness and brevity! It's a multi-taskers dream come true! I am constantly amazed at the new tweople who follow me or interact with me! I am also constantly amazed at the brilliance, sympathy, and sadness that is out there. It is an amazing dose of reality. But just a teaspoon at a time.

There are several other networks out there and I have yet to explore them. I'm sort of waiting to see what will be the real wave. I am totally willing to ride it. I see the beach and it's brilliant white sand and I get the complet picture of this island of social networking and what it has to offer.

I'm Back!

Well- actually - I never went away!
I've been busy with other projects...
Perhaps you have been made aware of the YSC Puck Bunnies? It's the team that consists of myself and Alison Lukan , riding in the Tour de Pink to raise money and awareness about the Young Survival Coalition. We started a website/bog, a twitter, page, and of course have been fundraising like mad-rabbits in order to meet our minimum.
Then, as a part of that, we also organized a hockey game to raise money for the local YSC chapter in Columbus.
And of course now I am in training for the TdP itself.
So, yeah - I'm busy. Lots going on.
But I want to get back into writing because I need this outlet, even if no one reads it :-)

I'm updating my links too - so please make sure to click on those to read up on some of my favorite writers.
Some of them are new:

• Alison has her own blog~ it's this incredible project wherein she writes up about how someone or something has touched her life. It's very personal and thoughtful.
• Several months ago when I was grieving for Tracy Pleva Hill, I mentioned that her sister Jamie had also been recently diagnosed. Jamie has invited us all to join her on her journey and her treatment is ending soon. You can go back and see her evolve to where she is now. The healing will begin!
• Leigh is a person I am acquainted with only professionally through a YSC project and she is smart, funny and a brilliant writer. Through her blog you will want to click on and on and on...
• LeAnn has always been there from the start. Luke and Anabel (A) are growing and gorgeous!
• I love Three Woofs because the writer has the same humor as me for humanizing the thoughts of animals!
• and finally, FUPenguins, puts it all into perspective because, honestly, we take ourselves much too seriously.

So - hopefully you will tune back in and I will have something interesting to say!