Getting to Know Sara!

Cash for Christmas!

Every year I decide to get an early start on my Christmas gifts. That's not just about shopping, it's about planning and making the gifts I have decided to make by hand, and yes, a little bit of shopping too. It's also about my "goodies" that I like to make. Cookies and such.

Every year, I get my hopes up, thinking I'll get an early start. It never seems to happen.

This is year is different.

Jeez! I thought I was over the "rough patch" in my life. 2011 was horrendous: helped my mother in law battle cancer (we WON!), multiple deaths in my family, and other miscellaneous drama. 2012 hasn't been awful but has had its share of troubles.

I thought I had mentally and emotionlally turned a corner and things were looking up. I was thinking more positively and making positive changes in my life every day. Then my mom had to have some tests done.

What's On Your Playlist?

Remember these?

When I was growing up, we recorded music from the radio to our tape recorders. We got a little more sophisticated when we could fade in and out from one song to the next. We made "mix-tapes" for ourselves and our friends. I had a boyfriend in high school who loved to make mix-tapes of love songs for me. All together now, "awwwwww!"

It's Better to Have Loved and Lost...

You've heard it time and again..."It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." I found out today it comes from a poem:

From Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

I can think of a few loves lost that really hurt at the time. I knew I had to break it off with a boyfriend I have moved out of my parents' house to live with, yet it was still a very painful decision to make. I thought we would get married and have babies! Plus, I was in my early twenties! I had a timeline!

I rebounded from him and got together with an ex-boyfriend from high school. He just wanted to be friends, though. That was another painful experience. This song, by Expose really resonated with me back then because I never thought I would get over the fact that he had gotten over me.

I Wish I'd Known Then What I Know Now

On my birthday in 1995, I was in a car accident. My brakes failed and I rear ended someone. My neck was injured in the accident. I have needed periodic chiropractic care ever since.

The past few months, I have been having more and more headaches. They have really knocked me down. I have never had to be in bed for 2 or 3 days until a few months ago. The headaches caused my neck injury hurt quite a bit, but I could still get on with life. These recent headaches were completely different.

I finally had enough yesterday. These headaches