Won't somebody be friends with me?

I'm totally stealing this from Fianna. She just posted something like this on her blog.

As most of you have probably noticed, I don't get by here very often to update my blog. I am doing really good if I put up a post once per week. I think it's because I'm entirely too word-y and don't have the time to write a long blog post more often than that. However, I update my Facebook status about 5 times per day because I'm limited to a certain number of characters per post and it just doesn't take that long.

So, if you are a regular reader and commenter and would like to be my Facebook friend (if you aren't already), please send an email to creativemoxie AT gmail DOT com and let me know your Facebook name and I will friend you. Then you can read exciting stuff like how I ate some paint at the studio last night because I thought it was hot sauce for my chicken, the fact that I spent today's lunch hour naming a box of Mexican jumping beans with a group of grown-up women, one of my bosses passing gas really loudly this week, and how I cleaned my left boob with Lysol last week in the office. You'll also get to see pictures of Hot Brazilian. And if you would be my FarmVille or Farm Town neighbor on FB that would be the AWESOME. It seems I'm addicted to growing soybeans and pumpkins lately. And I'm currently raising a very cute pig and a huge wild turkey. My rabbit is coming along, but he sure is slow about it.

There is only one rule: you cannot mention this blog on my Facebook page because no one I know in real life knows about my blog. Also, my Mom is one of my Facebook friends so you can't mention anything about my Dad or she will fo' sho' get upset with me. If you happen to mention my blog or anything about my family by mistake, please don't take it personally when I immediately delete whatever you've written.

Is that wedding bells I hear? Why yes. Yes it is.

Well, I went to dinner at my Dad's house last night. My brother and I had it correct: he and his girlfriend are getting married. They are planning a church wedding in February. Yes, he is almost 70 and she is in her 70's. This is the third marriage for each one of them. She's been widowed twice before, my dad has been widowed once and divorced once. And they are having a church wedding ceremony rather than running off to Vegas or the local courthouse. Oh boy.

Blog Share!!!!

Thanks to -R-, it's time for another Blogshare......an opportunity to get something off your chest when you don't want anyone to know it's a post you wrote. I have an anonymous post floating around in the blog world today but will not tell you which one is mine. I am hosting a post for someone else who wants to confess something. After the post, I've included the list of participants for this Blogshare. Check some of them out - you just might read some super amazing stuff.

The following post was written by an anonymous blogger. It is not mine:

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My husband and I have a massive amount of debt. It could be worse and it has been worse. We’ve been working really hard for the past couple of years to dig our way out of the debt we owe. It will still be 3-4 years before we are debt-free, but it is comforting to know there is an end in sight.

There are several reasons why our debt piled up, but for the most part it was because I was in charge of our finances, did not make good spending choices, and kept my husband in the dark about the amount of debt I was racking up on credit cards. Finally, I realized there was no way out of it without help; I fessed up to my husband; we talked to our family about the situation; we met with a debt counselor; and we started making moves to work toward becoming debt-free.

We could have taken the easy way out and filed bankruptcy (keeping my retirement and profit-sharing), but ethically and morally believed we were responsible for paying back what we had borrowed. So, we cashed out all of our stocks, my retirement fund and my profit-sharing and paid off as much as we could (after taking a huge tax hit). Then, we started using the Dave Ramsey practice of the “snowball effect.” This means we pay off the smallest debt first and once that is paid off we roll that money into the minimum we’ve been paying on the next smallest debt and the amount being applied toward the balance begins to grow as you begin to pay off the larger debts.

Also, we made a strict budget and have forced ourselves to live within our means. This has been challenging for a number of reasons, but it has been approximately three years since we’ve used a credit card! There are a few things that frustrate us, however.

1. We make enough money that if we didn’t have the debt to pay off we’d have a very comfortable lifestyle. However, my husband is good at reminding me that we got to do a lot of wonderful things – trips, etc. – when we were younger and we just have to pay for it now. I appreciate his understanding and encouragement when I get low about my past choices.

2. We moved a few years ago and have not been able to sell our house in the city where we used to live. So, on top of paying rent for our current residence we are stuck with a mortgage payment. It was on the market for over a year. Then, we took it off the market and rented it out – which was a total disaster. Now, we’ve done some additional work on the house and it is back on the market. I’m praying so hard for a quick sale (or a very directed lightening strike). Not having that mortgage to pay will make our lives so much easier and will allow us to put even more money toward paying off our debt.

3. We keep having all these little “unexpected” expenses pop up. I know we all have to deal with these, but it just seems we have more than average at the moment – new appliances, car repairs, medical bills, deductibles. Again, once these are paid off in the next few months it will make things much easier and give us even more money to apply to the big debt.

Fortunately, we have very supportive families who are helping us both emotionally and financially (for some of the unexpected costs that we can’t cover right now). It changes the dynamics in the relationships a little bit, but they are all very encouraging of what we are doing and how diligent we are being about staying focused on the goal of living debt-free.

It’s frustrating and sometimes belittling. There are times I wish we’d taken the easy way out and declared bankruptcy or let our house go into foreclosure. But, at the same time I am proud of the way we are now living and how we have stayed true to ourselves and our beliefs. Three to four years may seem like a long time, but in the scheme of everything in life it is a drop in the bucket. We will make it and once we are there I can’t imagine the pride we will feel in accomplishing what at one time seemed impossible.

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Feel free to leave this blogger comments here if you want to. She has been told by -R- that I am hosting her post so she'll know to come here to see what people have to say. I have no clue who wrote this post.

Here is a list of other participants if you'd like to check them out:

Not the Daddy: http://notthedaddy.blogspot.com
O is for Olson: http://oisforolson.wordpress.com
Red Red Whine: http://redredwhine.com
Rediscovering Me: http://leavingthecocoon.blogspot.com
Reflections in the Snow-covered Hills: http://snowcoveredhills.com
The Reluctant Grownup: http://gilliangaladriel.spaces.live.com/
Sauntering Soul:http://saunteringsoul.blogspot.com
Serendipity Now: http://serendipitynow.wordpress.com
Snarke: http://snarke.net
So, This Is a Treadmill: http://sothisisatreadmill.blogspot.com
Thinking Some More: http://3carnations.blogspot.com
Time for Change: http://ngradstudent.blogspot.com
Together They Come: http://togethertheycome.wordpress.com
Wondering and Pondering: http://wonderingandpondering.wordpress.com
And You Know What Else: http://andyouknow.wordpress.com
Andrea Unplugged: http://andreaunplugged.wordpress.com
Arctic-ulate: http://arctic-ulate.blogspot.com
Bright Yellow World: http://brightyellowworld.com
Bwildered: http://bbwilder.blogspot.com
Catheroominations: http://catheroo.com
Did I Say That Outloud?: http://tracyoutloud.blogspot.com
Dispatches from the Failed Mommy Club: http://failedmommy.com
Full of Snark: http://fullofsnark.com
Heidikins: http://heidikins.com
Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men: http://hotchicksdigsmartmen.com
Just Below 63: http://littlepieceoftexas2.blogspot.com
The Little Goat: http://thelittlegoat.com

It's that time again!

Tomorrow is the big day! It's time for another Blogshare hosted by -R-. For those of you who don't have a clue what I'm talking about, Blogshare is a way for those who participate to write a post that they want to get off their chest but don't want to post on their own blog for whatever reason. They want it to remain anonymous. Therefore, tomorrow I will be hosting a blog post written by another blogger. I will have a post on someone else's blog but I will never disclose which one is mine - the person hosting my post won't even know it's mine. In the past, Blogshare has resulted in some amazing posts: some are sad, some are incredibly deep, some are hysterical, and still others are downright bizarre. Please come back tomorrow and see what people need to disclose in an anonymous way. And a huge thanks to -R- for doing this......I don't know how she has the time for this every 6 months or so!

Very quick post - I know you are all shocked that a quick post is possible for me

My older brother, sister-in-law, niece and I have been contacted by my father. He said he's trying to put together a dinner at his house this week and we have to come either Wednesday or Thursday evening and that he cannot be flexible with the date. I asked him if we're celebrating something and he said yes, but that he would not tell me anything else because he wants it to be a surprise. I called my brother today and we both think the same thing: that he's getting married to the woman he's been dating for the past 6 or 7 months. I am speculating that they are running off this weekend to elope and that's why we MUST have dinner on Wednesday or Thursday. My hope is that my brother and I are wrong and my dad won the lottery and he's sharing his winnings with us. (But that ain't it y'all. He probably wouldn't even tell us if he won the lottery.) I have to teach a class at the studio on Wednesday night so we are having dinner on Thursday. Leave a comment with some other ideas of why my dad has an urgent need for us to come to dinner at his house for a big announcement. Remember: my dad is a bit crazy, so the crazier the thoughts the better! However, his girlfriend is in her 70's so we know she's not pregnant!

Brazil - Part 6

Okay, so I think this is really going to be the final post about Brazil until I'm permitted by Hot Brazilian to tell y'all more about what he's working on. However, I still have tons of photos I haven't shared with y'all - I took over 300 pictures - so it's possible I could throw one on here from time to time that I haven't shown y'all already. But basically, after this post, I'll return to my boring, nonsense posts about my life such as when a complete stranger walked up to me in the grocery story parking lot recently where I was very innocently loading groceries into my car, tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned around he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Sorry sugar. I forgot to take my medication." I responded that I was probably glad to have that sort of information about him, and then he continued walking towards the store and went inside. I quickly finished loading up my groceries and got the heck out of there before he came back out and decided to tell me God had spoken to him and I was to be his bride or something.

This last post is going to focus on a drive we took on the Friday I was in Brazil. In case you haven't read the prior posts, we were in a city in the middle of the Amazon but when you're in this particular city you don't necessarily feel like you're in a jungle with the exception that it was over 100 degrees and I sweated non-stop from the time I stepped off my plane until I landed back in Atlanta a week later. HB wanted me to see a more "jungle-y" part of the jungle, but if you read one of my prior posts, you know why we didn't go very far outside of the town we were in: he was afraid if our rental car broke down we would be in trouble since gas stations are few and far between, he wouldn't feel comfortable leaving me in the car sitting on the side of the road in the middle of the jungle, and he feared I wouldn't survive the heat and strong sun if I walked for what could potentially be hours with him until we could find somewhere to get help. He also wouldn't let me go with the Indian priest or his wife, a nurse, to meet a wild Indian tribe because if the chief decided he liked me, he might steal me away and turn me into his sex slave. Neither of these things would be a positive turn of events or make for very good vacation tales, so instead we drove about an hour out from the town we were in to another (small) town with a population of about 11,000 people.

First, a disclaimer. Many of the photos in this post were taken from the car window as we were barreling down the highway at a pretty high rate of speed. I never saw a speed limit sign (or any police) so pretty much anything goes as far as how fast you want to drive. It's like the Brazilian autobahn. We did stop a few places so those photos are a little better.

Along the way, we went through a fairly vast savanna area. I had no idea you could be smack dab in the middle of the Amazon and go through areas where there are very few trees. But it is so. The only time I saw a semi large vehicle the entire time I was in Brazil was along this highway. There were mountains in the distance along the way and one was particularly big. It was out the driver's side window and I couldn't get a good shot of it so HB told me to grab the wheel and hand him the camera and he would take it for me. And that's when the big dump truck was coming towards us. And it seems it's also the moment when I didn't think about the fact that I could have waited until we were returning back to the city we were staying in and taken the picture when the mountain was on my side of the car. Uhm, I'm not a well practiced passenger side driver and kept swerving over the center line like I had been drinking since I arose from bed that morning (I had not been for the record). Plus, this rental car was not exactly a luxury vehicle and did not have power steering. Or, need I remind anyone, air conditioning, so the windows were all down, we were doing about 90 mph and my hair was blowing out of the lovely bun on top of my head and whipping around in my eyes so that I could barely see through the hair and the fact that my eyes were watering like Niagra Falls from hair hitting me in the eyes. We had the priest with us in the backseat and he remained shockingly calm. This might be because he doesn't understand English and didn't know what I was saying when I was screaming at HB to HURRY! HURRY! HURRY! and take the stupid picture before I killed all three of us by slamming head on into the dump truck that was getting rather close by this point. He told me to calm down, that I was doing fine, and by the way, wasn't I excited that I would now be able to say I drove a car through the middle of the Amazon jungle? I screamed that I'd much more excited if we all survived it and I actually could tell people about it and he started laughing and finally took the wheel back from me after he finished stressing me out further by taking way more than one photo of the mountain but before we smashed head on into the huge dump truck in our tiny golf cart sized rental car. This is the picture of the mountain (and you can see how few trees there are in the savanna areas of the Amazon):

And this is how close we were to the dump truck when HB finally handed my camera back to me and took over the driving responsibilities again:

Would you like to see the size of the car we were in? Please have a look internet so that you can understand we would have been crushed. Crushed dead by that big dump truck. Here is our rental car the day before our drive when we got a screw stuck in one of the tires and it went flat. It was so small and lightweight that I probably could have held up the back end with my hands while the guy patched the flat tire and put it back on:

(Liz, please forgive me for this next paragraph. You may want to skip it altogether since you're vegetarian.) HB told me that the beef they eat down there is from wild cows. They have dairy farms for, you know, milk, but do not have ranches for cows that they use for the meat. They get meat from wild cows roaming around in the jungle and some people make it their career to go in the jungle and shoot cows. He said these cows are never given medications, fed anything by humans, etc. and they never get diseases and the meat is very lean. I had beef a couple of times down there and it tasted wonderful. They don't have to add anything other than salt and pepper to it when it's cooked and it's some of the best meat I've ever tasted in my life. The cows they shoot in the jungle are white. We passed a large herd of them on the way and I tried to take a photo. We were going very fast. Imagine that the white things in the middle of the trees in this next photo look like cows because that's what they are.

The mountains in distance of this next photo are actually in Venezuela. We were very close to the border of about 5 or 6 countries.

Wow, this post is getting way longer than I thought it was going to. Moving on......

The town we drove out to is a fairly poor town. HB said it appeared they were having some sort of community-wide party that evening because we saw a lot of people out cleaning. They were whacking long grass with hand-held tools (I didn't see any lawn mowers), sweeping the sides of streets, etc. He said parties are about the only reason they clean up around that particular town.

At the edge of this town is a huge rock thing. The priest says it's prehistoric. I have no idea if that's true or not. What I can tell you is that the chances of anyone seeing this on a guided tour of Brazil are slim to none. This town is no tourist hot spot. People stared at me. I don't think they see many Americans. The town put some crosses on it and they come here to pray a lot.

Here is a barber shop in this small town. See? It's pretty poor.

I saw more rivers in a week in the Amazon than I've probably seen in my whole life here in the U.S. I asked HB how many rivers there are in the jungle and he said that actually no one even knows. Here is one we crossed on our drive. Obviously, we were past the savanna area and deeper into trees by this point. I have quite a few photos of just trees that we drove through but I'm not including them in this post because I don't want to completely bore the pants off you. I just want to mildly bore you. The blue tarp covered thing is a gold mining operation:

I know I have a few librarians who read my blog, so this next photo is for all of you. It's a library in the middle of the Amazon jungle with Hot Brazilian's finger in the bottom left corner:

There are churches that look like this:

And churches that look like this:

The Paradise Hotel (this is not where we stayed):

On the way back, the priest told HB to pull off the road and show me something. So he did. Apparently, all over Brazil (not just in the Amazon area), they have little beach areas along rivers. They are free to the citizens of Brazil and people bring picnic lunches and hang out. There was no one at this beach when we stopped by to take a few photos. The water is supposed to be very clean and pure. It's really quiet, peaceful and beautiful:


And this is me standing on the edge of the river putting my hair up for the umpteenth time that day:

So, for now, that concludes my Brazil posts. I'm WAY overdue for a trip to the nail salon since I haven't been since the week before I went to Brazil. I'm dressing up as a gypsy and working at the studio tomorrow night (we're having a costume party/painting class/Halloween party). I'm planning to be a barefooted gypsy so I really need to go get my nails done tomorrow. On Halloween. This may be my most interesting nail salon visit yet. We'll see what happens.

Brazil - Part 5 (the one where I answer some questions some of you may have)

As I stated at the end of my last post, this may be the last Brazil post for a while. I'm definitely planning to talk about my trip more in the future, but need to come back to it at a later date. I previously wrote that I couldn't go into detail about what Hot Brazilian has been working on down there and why he's been gone for so long. I know a lot of people don't understand why he isn't back here yet, why I'm being so patient, etc., but he had asked me to keep it a secret so I've had to be a bit mysterious about it for the past 8 or 9 months since he started working on this project. I've had to listen to a lot of people telling me what an idiot I am for waiting around, that I'm wasting my life waiting on him, that he must be cheating on me and that's why he isn't back, that he's up to something illegal because he wouldn't tell me what he's doing (he WAS telling me what he was doing - I just couldn't tell anyone else and when I said that they didn't believe me), that I needed to move on, I needed to meet someone else, I needed to stand up for myself, I needed to give him an ultimatum and see if he came back, etc. It hasn't been easy to listen to all of that from the people who surround me. I heard it from at least one person almost daily. It's been a tough year. It wasn't something he planned on getting involved in when he left to go down there last year; he expected to be back here before the end of last year. But things changed. I've known a lot more than I've been able to tell anyone. And I know a lot more than what I can tell you at this point. My family didn't know exactly what he was doing, my friends didn't know, and I certainly wasn't talking about it on the internet. It isn't because he's ashamed of what he's doing and, in fact, I've told him it would be impossible for me to be any prouder of him than I am. But he was in the planning stages, research stages, etc. and telling anyone what he's working on could have caused huge problems for him, particularly if I had put it on the internet where someone could find out about his plans with a google search. It could have put him in grave danger. He has said to me on several occasions that if he dies while he's doing this, he hopes I'm proud of him. I've told him over and over that he needs to stop saying stuff like that to me because it makes me cry just to think about it and that yes, of course, I am extremely proud. Besides that, he's quite a private person and doesn't like for many people to know all about his business. (I understood his obsession with privacy a whole lot more after visiting Brazil - turns out almost all of them are obsessed with keeping their private lives, well, private.) While I was down there, he said I could start telling people a little about it, but I didn't want to put anything out here on the internet before he got through a certain event last week because I felt like it could put him in danger if I did. You know, google searches and all of that. I still don't feel comfortable going into many of the details on here at this point, but in a nutshell, Hot Brazilian is working in a small city in the Amazon jungle to help the poor. He's got a tough job ahead of him but feels that God is calling him to do this. He's up against some people who will be fighting what he's trying to do. And I'm very scared for him. One of his friends working with him has already come extremely close to losing his life and has been in the hospital for almost 3 months. The reaction of people down there to what he's trying to do is much more violent than it would ever be here in the U.S. I should be able to tell more by the beginning of the year because Hot Brazilian plans to put up a website to help spread the word of his cause. He's been working on it for a while and once he gets to a certain point he wants me to edit it for him and then he'll be ready to go public with everything he's doing. But I don't want to jeopardize his safety until he's ready to tell all so to speak. All of this is the reason I'm not blogging the name of the city I visited. Hopefully I'll be able to tell y'all much more in the next few months. Actually, I feel like I'm about to burst because I want to tell y'all everything right now, right now, right this minute, today for pete's sake. But I can't.

All of this is also part of the reason I want to move to Brazil. Would it scare the bejebus out of me to be there with him on a daily basis? Absolutely. There were a few instances while I was down there that I felt a bit uncomfortable. I kind of stood out like a sore thumb - me, the large "pink" American girl hanging out with a 6'5" Brazilian guy from another area of the country who looks very different and towers over the very petite Amazon Indians who live in this particular city. Let's just say we didn't exactly blend in and people gawked at us almost everywhere we went and I could hear lots of whispering going on around us. HB has been traveling to and from this city for almost a year and apparently a lot of people have wondered what exactly he's up to (it's a small town). Now he's got an American girl with him? You could tell certain people had a lot of questions. And there was one person in particular who began questioning some people HB knows while I was there and this person could potentially cause a lot of problems. See? Scary! But after seeing the people he's trying to help and the way in which they have to live, I want nothing more than to be down there helping him in any way I can. And I know, I know. There are tons of people here in the U.S. who are poor and need help that I could be doing work for. I can't really explain why I'm so drawn to Brazil and wanting to help HB. Obviously a huge part of it is because I love HB in ways I've never loved anyone else in my life. But there are other things that I can't really put into words and I'm not sure I even understand myself. It's just an overwhelming feeling I have in my heart and soul. And I'm not entirely sure I'll get to help in the way my heart wants to because HB would never allow me to be in the dangerous situations he puts himself in, but I hope I'll be able to help him somehow.

I took some photos of how the really poor live and HB pleaded with me not to show them to anyone. He loves his country and doesn't want people here in the U.S. to think everyone lives the way the poor live. I tried to explain to him that people would understand since we have very poor areas here too. But I will honor his wishes and not share them with y'all. Perhaps he'll show some of it on the website he's putting together. But I will tell you that it made me cry. I had the opportunity to look into the eyes of small children and they looked haunted and hopeless. I'll never forget their eyes as long as I live. And those are the ones HB wants to help most - the children. He realizes it might be impossible to change the parents and the older people, but he feels like if he can change just a couple of the children and make them realize there is hope and there are opportunities beyond their imaginations then they will in turn change other children and in this way he hopes to break the cycle that has a death grip on the poor souls in this town. We were driving through a poor area one afternoon and there was a mom with her two kids on the back of her bicycle taking them home from school. One of the boys was probably 5 or 6 years old. He happened to look over as we were passing them and he saw someone (me) who looked different than anyone else. His eyes lit up, he grinned from ear to ear, and he began waving at me frantically. I waved back and he began to giggle and scrunch up his adorable little face. I have no idea, but I kind of got the feeling that he may have thought I was coming to save them. Those are the kids HB wants to touch somehow. And I want to do everything I can to help him.

HB and I were at breakfast one morning and he overheard a lady at the next table talking (it was all in Portuguese so I couldn't understand it). I don't want to say who she works for and HB didn't know her and she's not working with him, but he said she had apparently gone the day before and saw how the poor people live and she was telling the person she was with that it broke her heart and she wasn't sure if she could handle going back that day and seeing it again. She said that seeing the children's faces made her want to look away because it was so sad to see their eyes. It's awful. I can't tell y'all how proud I am of HB and what he's doing. He is such a good man and I have no idea why God granted me the good fortune of a relationship with him but I thank Him every single day for it.

I was going to post some photos I took when we were driving through the jungle, but they really don't go along with the tone of this post. So perhaps I have one more Brazil post after this one before I move on and start talking about my normal boring daily life here in Atlanta.

......to be continued.......