Call me, call me, call me

Ok- That's' not actually an invitation to "wake me up in the dead of the night" unless you happen to be Luke Bryan :-)  I just have the song stuck in my head so thought I would share it with the rest of the world.. or at least the handful of people who read this blog:

So life has felt busy lately... or maybe I've just been filling life with busy work :-)  Hard to say really...busyness helps me ward off stress (or at least not think about it so much) so I tend to keep myself busy until I can't hold my eyes open at night and can just crash.  This does however mean extra coffee is often needed in the morning.

One really fun thing that kept me busy this last weekend though was seeing The Band Perry, Easton Corbin and Eric Paslay with one of my most awesome friends :-)  The show was fantastic. If you ever get the chance to see The Band Perry (or any of them for that matter) do it!  Kimberly Perry has more energy on stage than anyone I've ever seen before and did all the jumping around and dancing in a pair of what must have been 6 inch stilettos (black stiletto ankle boots to be exact- hey, I like shoes, I notice these things).  Seriously though, I'm hardly ever at a concert where I don't at least tune out a tiny bit during the songs I've never heard but that did not happen at all with The Band Perry - and they played lots of things I hadn't heard before.  My favorite was A Mother Like Mine (click the title to listen to it - I couldn't find a good youtube clip).  It's a beautiful song...and somehow I managed not to lose it in the middle of the concert.  I was very thankful to have a friend with me who knew immediately it might give me trouble and offered me a hug, I definitely needed it at that moment.  My favorite line from it is "I've got the best and the worst of her in me..." and I'm thankful for all of my mother's qualities I have in me...even my spectacular ability to dry out dinner no matter how hard I try not to overcook it :-)  I think we all grew to prefer our meats cooked until overdone throughout the years in my house.

I'll leave you with a live clip from the concert.  I have an odd love for the song "Fat Bottomed Girls" (which may or may not have anything to do with the size of my bottom) so I grabbed a clip with my phone.. the quality's not that great but hey.. I took the video.. it should be shared somewhere.  

Have a great week and a lovely holiday weekend!

Hugs, 

CarolJen

Mother's Day

There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss my mom.  Sometimes a silly story or warm memory will pass through my mind like a gentle breeze, leaving a quiet smile on my face for a few seconds in the middle of my day and sometimes the missing her is so sudden and intense that my eyes fill with tears before I even manage to grasp what's going on in my mind.  But the missing her all means one thing to me: that I had a beautiful, loving, wonderful mother.  There isn't the tiniest bit of me that doesn't realize that I am blessed to have had the relationship with my mother that I did and that's not to say it was perfect.  We certainly had our moments of anguish and disagreements that are a part of every relationship -- but there was not a day, hour, minute or even second in my life where I did not know 100% that my mother loved me with her whole heart.


I sometimes let emotions get the best of me and feel like I was cheated somehow, and that it's unfair that I'm a fairly young adult without my parents there to guide me through life, lending a listening ear, and loving arms to fall into when I feel like my world is falling apart.  But then I remember their love, I remember their resiliency in life and all that they taught me and all of unending warmth and support I felt and still feel over the years and realize that not only do I still have them with me but that they also gave me everything I need to get through. I know the words of comfort or encouragement they would give me and I can hear them in my mind in the moments when I need them most.

I know it sounds cliche, but my mother was truly the best friend I could ever ask for.  I'm sure some people would find it crazy how much I talked to my mother... often at least two or three times a day.  She's the person I'd call with a quick little silly story or simply to say good morning and also the person who talked me through several middle of the night heartbreaks.  I am blessed that I probably talked to my mother as much in the 32 years I had with her than some people do in 90 and because of that she is so vividly still with me.

So while the pain of taking my mother flowers to the cemetery on Mother's Day is still aching in my heart hours later, and while I wished with every fiber of my being today that I could have wrapped my arms around her in a tight squeeze and lifted her off the ground and spun her around like I was known to do sometimes -- I also know that the missing her and the sadness is because I was loved and she was loved and because we had a bond that was so special to us.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's out there and especially to the one I consider the best in the world :-) Love you mom <3