And That’s….the Truth

Hey all!  Just wanted to wish you all a very happy New Year!  I really hope that for each and everyone of you that the new year turns out to be everything that  you hope for.  And, with a new year fast approaching, I would like to say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all my fellow bloggers and I hope that in the new year I will make new friends and build up on all the friendships that I have made in this past year.

So, I hope you all have a great New Year’s Eve with whoever you choose to spend it with, and I look forward to interacting with all you in the future.

What was Santa thinking??  This year for Christmas he dropped off an mp3 player for my daughter and myself.  Well he is well aware of a condition I have.  This condition I have is the fact that I am seriously techno challenged.  I’m not kidding.  It took me over a year to figure out my digital camera, it took me over two years to figure out how to take a video on our video camera, and don’t get me started on the DVD player.

So, he gives us both these mp3 players and expects me to load them both with a bunch of songs.  Gotta tell you this isn’t as easy as it sounds.  I spent most of Christmas day just trying to find sites on the Internet where I could download some songs that didn’t cut out in the middle of the songs.  I finally found a site (with some help) where I could get all the songs that I need.  Then I needed to figure out how to load all these songs on these machines.  Well, I’m happy to report that I was able to download a few songs by 10:00 pm last night!  Yay!  It only took me two days to figure this out instead of my usual year.  So maybe my condition is getting better??

Now that it’s December 24 I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and only wish you good things in the upcoming new year.  With the opportunity to spend time with friends and family, this is definitely a wonderful time of year!  If your anything like me, your just finishing up the final touches of your Christmas celebrations and this evening will be a time to sit back, relax and enjoy this wonderful season with your family.

So, from my family to yours, I wish you all the best during this wonderful season and hope that you have many, many more great Christmas celebrations in the years to come!

I am so….proud of myself this year. I’m done all my Christmas shopping and wrapping. I have filled out and mailed all my Christmas cards and yesterday I put up the Christmas tree. The reason why I am so proud of myself is because usually I’m putting up my Christmas tree on December 24 and most years the Christmas cards don’t even get mailed. (I’m so slack). But, yesterday I decided that I would surprise the kids and have the tree all up with the garland and lights on so when they arrived home from school they could put up the ornaments. They were so happy to be doing this job before Christmas eve and they were extremely proud of their efforts. Hopefully this is a sign that I’ll be on the ball every Christmas from now on. Not likely…but, a girl can dream right??

As it is almost the end of December and with the new year right around the corner, it has gotten me to thinking about New Year’s resolutions.  In past years I have always made a New Year’s resolution, but for some reason or another I have never followed through with them.  I think it’s awesome that some people can make their resolutions and actually stick to them!  Unfortunately I am not one of those people, never have been and probably never will be.  So, to be on the safe side this year.  My New Year’s resolution is NOT to make one.  Maybe this year I will be able to follow though with it!!

How about you guys?  Do you make New Year’s resolutions?  And, if you do, do you follow through with them??

This is a very personal post for me, but I thought I would share it with you all.  If after reading this post, you get something out of it or you have been in a similar situation yourself and have any advice to give then I know my decision to share this will be the right one.

Many of you may not know that I do in fact have three children.  I tend to talk about my youngest two a lot as they still live home with me so I am involved with their day to day lives.  My oldest son who is 18 does not live at home and lives quite far away so I am not involved with his day to day living.  Although I don’t mention him very often he is definitely on my mind a great deal and especially now.

When he was 17 he got in a little bit of trouble with the law (stealing) and instead of facing his mistakes and accepting the consequences, he has chosen to run.  In all honestly I really have no clue as to where he is living and he only contacts me (not very often) through e-mails.  Well just this past week I read in the newspapers that there is now a warrant issued for his arrest.  This turn of events frightens me a great deal.  I have tried (many times) to convince him to hire  a lawyer and turn himself in, but he is still on the run.

I know when the police do finally catch up with him, things will not go in his favor and there is even a possibility that he may go to jail for a short period of time.  I know this sounds extremely scary, but the longer he is on the run, the worse it will be for him in the end.  Since he is not taking my advice, all I can do is sit here and hope for the best.  It’s bad enough that he has to go through this, but at this time of the year it is especially difficult especially for me, my husband and his brother and sister.  It’s really difficult for them as they don’t understand why he won’t come home for Christmas.

Has anyone here gone through this type of thing with a child or even a loved one of any kind?  If so how in the world did you get them to finally listen to you and do the right thing??  If anyone here has some words of wisdom for me, I would sure love to here from you.

Well you know that the Christmas season is looming before us when all the Christmas celebrations and activities start to take place.  Tomorrow night is my daughter’s first violin concert.  She will be displaying how much she has learned over the past couple of months as well as playing some Christmas tunes for us.  She also has her choir concert tomorrow night as well.  So this will be a busy night for her.  Next Wednesday is my son’s grade 2 Christmas concert and he has been very busy practicing (in secret) for this event.  He won’t tell me what he has been practicing and just keeps telling me that I need to go to his concert to here all the surprises.  So for the next couple of weeks we will get too watch the kids perform and they are quite happy to be able to show off their talents to us all.

As you all know six months ago I had to quit my outside job due to babysitter issues.  Since then I have been trying to earn a little extra income off the Internet.  I have tried paid blogging and freelance writing.  Out of the two, I definitely preferred the paid blogging.  It paid better and I had so much fun doing it.  But, I’m thinking that I need to go in a different direction now.  Because of the latest Google update that took away all my page rank for all my blogs, I haven’t been able to make hardly any income at all through paid blogging so I have decided that I may need to look back into freelance writing.

So, I have a question for all you freelance writers out there.  How do you find good paying freelance writing jobs that are legit??  I have searched a lot of sites over the past year and most of the sites that I have discovered offer very little pay for the type of work required or they are just a scam to make people shell out their valuable money.  I’m sure there are some legitimate sites out there, but honestly guys I am unsure as where to find them.

So if you could give me a little nudge in the right direction I would be so grateful and maybe, just maybe, I can’t start earning a living again to help out with household expenses and things that my kids would like to have.

Honestly, I really can’t understand what motivates people to do and say some of the things that they do.  Yes. I am talking about a particular incident.  As you all are aware, I occasionally participate in some paid blogging.  That is, I get paid to write reviews about different companies and products for a small amount of compensation.  I’ve never tried to hide this fact, nor have I denied it.  I started doing paid blogging as a way to earn a little extra income working from home since I currently can’t work outside of the home due to baby sitting issues.  Up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this or didn’t realize how badly paid bloggers are treated on the Internet.

Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert in the world of blogging, Internet marketing or SEO.  So, I have come to depend on others to kind of lead me in the right direction.  Up until today that has worked out pretty good.  But, when a so called “expert” gives false information on purpose (their reasons, who knows??) just to scare the pants of us bloggers who aren’t quite as informed as they are, that really burns me.

Because of this misinformation that I was given today, it totally stressed me out and really got me to thinking about why even bothering doing what I am doing on the Internet.  Thankfully some other people who are a lot more knowledgeable in this field set me straight  and I’m not quite as stressed as I was earlier.

My point to this entire “rant” and yes, it is a rant.  Is WHY do some people set out to cause grief and unhappiness for others.  Does it make them feel better about themselves?  Do they think that if I get discouraged and quit doing any online activities at all that means more work for them?  Honestly I’m trying to figure out why these type of people exist on the Internet and what their motives behind messing with other less experienced people are.

On a brighter note, having this experience today did show me that there are people out there who are more than willing to share their “truthful” experiences with us all and to these people I would like to say thank you.  To the trouble makers, I would like to say “Go Away!”

And…the fighting has already started!  Today the kids are home from school today as last night we got hit with a major snowstorm.  This morning it is definitely looking a lot like Christmas.  Every piece of the ground is covered with the white stuff.  Including my car!  It’s a good thing that I don’t need to go anywhere, or I would definitely have a lot of work ahead of me.  Hopefully tomorrow, all the roads will be plowed and the kids will be able to get back in school.  Too many days of them being home together is not very easy on my head.  So hopefully the snow will stop, the roads will be plowed and the kids will head back to school in the morning.  Until then, I’ll be sure to have lots of Advil on hand.