For the love of facebook.

As most people know I am a big fan of facebook. I have gone through periods of being just short of obsessed. Looking back I can honestly say that during the periods of obsession it has mostly been because those were times in my life when I was looking for a distraction and facebook provided it. I don't play computer games, I don't watch much tv, and I certainly don't watch movies... so facebook was where I turned.
Facebook has been good to me. Not facebook itself but my friends on facebook. What an amazing thing that these young guys came up with. The whole social networking idea is genius. The idea that we can become 'friends' with people that we haven't seen or spoken to in ages is wonderful. Or become 'friends' with people you have never even met in person but maybe meet through a friend of a friend or a blog or whatever the case may be... Some people aren't into it, I personally know people that want none of it, they do not want to be in touch with those people. They can't figure out what the big deal is. Why would you want to re-connect with people you obviously didn't find important enough to stay connected with. You know why? Because people change, we grow up. We end up going through similar life journey's and find support in one another along the way.
During the last two years my family has been on a tremendous journey. We have had some major struggles and some serious life changing situations... through it all I had the support of so many. So many amazing friends. I can't even tell you how many people along the way have said to me 'wow, I really wish I would have gotten to know you better in high school, I think we could have been great friends'. In high school we are kids. We are judgemental, we stick with what we know. We don't venture outside our comfort zone. As adults we open ourselves up to 'different' we let our guards down and we hopefully let our insecurities go by the wayside. People that may have intimidated us at 16 are no longer quite as intimidating.
I have a friend on facebook who is going through a very stressful breakup of an abusive relationship. I can imagine she is stressed, sad and lonely. But every day she has been able to log on, post a status and get immediate response/support/love from her 'friends'. People have reached out to her and want to help. How awesome is that?
I know for me personally when things were bad, real bad some of the people that I really thought I could count on, the support that I always thought for sure I would have, it was gone. Several people in my circle didn't get what we were going through. Didn't understand that just getting out of bed in the morning was hard for me most days. Knowing that every day was going to suck was so hard to take. I have never ever said this on here or out loud to anyone but my husband and a couple of really close friends but there were times when I was on the verge of a breakdown and would consider taking my own life. It was bad. It was really bad. I shut down. I lost it. But at the end of the day I would sit down in front of my computer and see all the support and love from these people and things would be a little better. I saw that other people were going through similar situations and I was able to talk to people who didn't judge, who just seemed to 'get' me.
I didn't mean for this post to get so deep, my intentions were to keep it light and upbeat, just make it about sharing the facebook love... but sometimes I start writing and my emotions get the best of me.
I have to also mention how awesome facebook is for business networking. For spreading the word when you are trying to promote something. If it wasn't for facebook I would have only had two sales on etsy! lol. My friends support me and I so appreciate it. I hope that they think the same thing about me. I really hope that I have provided some of the same love and support to some of these people that they have to me.
The bottom line, the moral to this story is.. facebook rocks.

Revelations... and no, not like the book in the Bible, just things I have been thinking about.

************Disclaimer************
To all my friends/family in Southern California please do not take anything in this post personally. Do NOT assume that I am ever speaking of you. This is a post about ME and the way I see things and the way they relate to me. I love each and every one of you and am so unbelievably grateful you are in my life. I do NOT want another situation like I had when I wrote the post 'unsolicited advice' in other words... I don't want to piss you people off. Thanks

I am so happy here. Like stupid happy. Like even if something kind of bad happens I am smiling and happy anyway. I have been trying to put my finger on it. Trying to figure out how one state can be that different from the last and change my whole way of thinking and make me feel so incredibly happy. I think I finally got it.

OK, so this is going to sound crazy but today when I was thinking about all of this Chastity Bono jumped in my head... bear with me here... So you know how Chastity Chaz Bono is all "I was totally born in the wrong body, I was meant to be a man" Well today I related to that. NO, I DO NOT WANT TO BE A MAN. I do, however relate to the whole 'born wrong' situation. See I was born in Southern California. Born, raised and never exposed to anything else. Every single one of my relatives had been from So. Cal so I was never even exposed to other lifestyles/ways of life. All I knew was the way we did things in So. Cal.

Ever since I was a young girl I have never felt like I fit in. When I was in elementary school my friends were all super athletic and active, while I was super uncoordinated and kind of well.. lazy. In middle school my specific group of friends began rebelling a big and doing things that I wasn't interested in. Not to mention the fact that middle school just basically sucks anyway. Then in High School I found a new group of friends and they were all in student council, cheer, or took all honors classes... oh boy NONE of those were me. I loved these girls, I loved all my friends from elementary school and middle school too. No matter how much I loved them or how much time we spent together I never felt like I 'belonged'.

Fast forward to when I was 22 and moved to the desert. I never, ever felt like I belonged there. It was a whole different world. Especially when I first moved there and it was a total retirement community and everyone I met that was my age was a recovering alcoholic/addict. They were all super nice people and I enjoyed hanging out with them, however we didn't have a ton in common.

It's no secret that the last couple years have been hard for me. I have been nothing but candid and honest when telling about our struggles. Not just financial but also how alone I felt and how hard it was to lose my mom. After my mom died last year I really couldn't get out of the desert fast enough. When I look back now I realize that so many bad things happened to me while I lived in the desert that no matter how many great friends I made that the place was always and forever going to hold sad memories for me. Both my parents died there, my dad's twin brother died there and loads of other family things that I choose not to talk about on here happened while I lived there. It really is just a depressing place for me. As a matter of fact when my mom was dying, during her last couple of weeks we talked about where we were going to bury her. She said she wanted to be buried in the desert, I told her absolutely not. I had no intentions of staying there and I didn't want her somewhere I didn't want to be. Unfortunately hind sight is 20/20 because if I would have know then what I know now I would have gone the creepy route and brought her ashes with me across the country. You know why? Because I have decided that I don't think I ever want to go back to California. I have decided that I was born on the wrong coast. I really, truly should have always been a country girl. Not a horse riding/mud slinging/chicken feeding country girl. But a Carolina girl. I was meant to be here. There is not a doubt in my mind that we have ended up exactly where we belong. I am NOT a California girl. I just happened to be born to two people who lived in California. This kind of hit me yesterday when I was on the phone with my nephew (who is the most amazing 17 year old boy I know, just sayin) and I told him that I was trying to win the lottery so I could buy them all plane tickets to come out to visit and he said "well if you won the lottery you could just come home" and in the beginning I would have said the same thing but now, now I say "I AM HOME". My heart belongs here. My family belongs here. I want my brother and his family to move here too... I think this is where they belong too!

The reason I wrote the disclaimer at the beginning of the post is because I don't want anyone to ever feel like I am bad mouthing California... it's a great place, it really is. Ninety five percent of the people I know and love happen to live there and are very happy there. I just wasn't. Either was my husband. My kids were, but I think that is because that was all they knew. The other night we were with our friends at their pool and when we were leaving we got in the truck and Gianna said "this is it, this is home" she went on to tell us that she had just had the best night in her life, that for the first time she felt like she belonged. She was the happiest I have ever seen her. That? well that right there is what I call stupid happy. Even Allison has said to me "mama, well shoot I think I was just born to be a country girl". She has been planning her wedding... yes you read that correct,  my 15 year old daughter who doesn't even have a boyfriend has been planning her wedding... anyway, the whole thing is going to be a regular old country shin dig. She wants it to be in a barn and she wants to wear cowboy boots. Shoot. Y'all have no idea how happy that makes me (not the planning the wedding part, I mean honestly the kid needs to get a life, who plans their wedding at 15).

I just wanted to share my revelation with y'all and explain why I now have a kinship with Chaz Bono... the good news is, I don't have to have any kind of surgery to make my wrong right, I just had to move to South Carolina.

For my Dad.

Over the last year I have written so much about my mom, I have written her letters on here. Talked about her death. Written posts about how much I miss her. Somebody reading might think I didn't have a dad. Oh I did have a dad. The BEST dad in the whole world. A dad who called me 'baby' until he died when I was 23 years old. A dad who loved his kids so much. He was an awesome man who loved his family and his culture with a passion. To look at him one would think he was a 'made' man in some east coast Italian mafia. He wasn't, he just liked to look the part. He had a temper, don't get me wrong but mostly he was a pushover who just wanted things around him to be peaceful. He hated confrontation but admired people who could say something when they felt they had been wronged. He also loved music. Oh how he loved jazz music imparticular. He would listen to a song that he really liked with his eyes closed. He would just get lost in the saxaphone. He could put headphones on and tune the rest of the world out. He passed on his love of music to all of his kids. Mike was the only one that played an instrument but our love of music is still a huge part of our lives. I am so glad that he taught me to appreciate music. I love listening to music that reminds me of my dad. There are so many songs that make me think of him.

Here are some interesting facts about my dad: He was an identical twin and although both his parents came from really big families (20 siblings between them) they only had the twins, some speculate because those two were enough for anyone. I guess they were a handful when they were young. I mean I know my dad was, he himself became a father at 16... yes at the tender age of 16 he and his girlfriend had a baby... my brother Danny.
Have you ever seen the movie 'Hope Floats'? You know the part when Sandra Bullock says 'the daddy did all the hugging' when she is talking about her childhood... well that is my story too. My dad was the nurturer. He was the one who held my hair back when I was getting sick. He rubbed Vick's vapor rub on my chest when I had a cold and couldn't breathe. He was the one I went to when my boyfriend and I broke up and I was heartbroken. My mom wasn't that person at that time in my life, she wanted me to 'get over' things. My dad understood. He took care of me. He was the taxi for me and my friends, driving us to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the mall... where ever. I was his youngest, his baby.

 By the time he had died he had buried four of his own children and both his parents, his heart was broken and no matter how much he loved me, Danny and my mom he couldn't be here with us anymore. He had to go be with those he lost. The children he lost and missed so much. The parents that were his world for so long. It was a difficult time for so many of us. It hadn't been that long since we had lost my brother Mike and we were all still reeling from that pain. Looking back I wonder if that took some of the focus off of losing my dad. It was still part of our every day conversation, we were still mourning the tragic, sudden loss of my 26 year old brother. We weren't ready to start mourning somebody else... not even my dad.

Tomorrow would be his birthday. He and my Uncle Don would be 76 tomorrow. It's hard to believe. Hard to imagine what they would even look like at that age. My dad died young, we lost him when he was just 57 years old. He only ever met two of his grandchildren, their are three more now. Three more grandchildren that are being taught about their grandpa through pictures and memories. My brother and I are both so good about telling our kids about our father. We both miss him and we both have great memories of him. We are so far apart in age that our own memories of him are so different, he was a different dad to me than he was to Danny, and in a way it's kind of a good thing because we each learn something different about him when we share our stories.

I miss my dad every single day. I think about him every day and sometimes can hear his voice. I look in the mirror and I see him. I look at my brother, and my nephew and I see him. I hope that I do him justice when I tell my kids about him, I hope that they get it, that they know what a truly amazing man he was. I know my two oldest nieces get it, they have memories of him and pictures of him with them when they were young. Those are precious memories that those girls are so glad to have. I can only hope that the rest of the kids get it. Ron Sabella was an awesome father, grandfather, brother, friend, son and husband. Those who knew him loved him.

Happy Birthday Dad. I love you and miss you very much.
Love,
Nina