Happiness in hamburgers

Hello all...I recently left that horrible landscaping company. At the time of my departure I was optamistic and full of hope for a new career move. But after three weeks, 54 resumes and only 1 interview I realized that I was in serious danger of not finding a job before funds ran out. I was desperate and scared. Thats when I received a phone call from a friend of mine. He had a friend who owned a small diner and was desperately looking for someone to come work for him. I interviewed with the man and his wife the next day and accepted what I considered to be the lowest I could sink....a waitress position.

I have not been a waitress since I was 17 years old and I really never thought I would have to go back to that. I dreaded my first day, but to my surprise I absolutely thrived in the environment. I love people and have a very high tolerance for bitchy ones in particular. My first day flew by and as I counted out my $60 in tips I had made in 7 hours the joy of really enjoying my job was clashing with the realization that my income had just been cut to a fourth of what it had been.

The next day was better ($85 in tips) and the third day I almost managed to pull $100 ($96). My daily tips bounce from $60 to $90 on average depending on the day and the financial mood of my customers. I know I cannot make it on this but I am happy for now to be part of the Blue-Collar working class again. I get to work at 5am and am out the door by 12:30-1pm. I work 4 days a week which leaves plenty of time to explore other job options and still have time for my family.

So for now Jo has found happiness in greasy burgers, dirty plates and hands that smell of bleach water that desperately needs to be changed.

Ta ta for now...

~Darlin~

When You Hate Your Job...

I feel almost ungrateful writing this but I have to say I HATE MY JOB! I have had such a great opportunity given to me, I mean I fell into owning my own company but I just am not passionate about what I do. Part of it is that my company, like many others these days, is going through financial problems. The stress this is putting on me since I am the one responsible for the financial end of things is literally wearing me to the point of exhaustion. I hate going into the office, I cringe every time my phone rings and I am worn out from working 15 hour days, 7 days a week.

But with my new attitude (thanks to The Success Principles) I will not dwell on this. I will look at all of this as a learning opportunity and keep pushing forward towards my new dreams and goals. It is proving rather hard to get past all of the negative people in my life though. I never realized how negative people are (probably because I was one of them) until I made a promise to myself to change my own attitiude. I am laughed at, mocked, glared at and constantly getting the eye roll from almost everyone in my life. All of this simply because I refuse to let things get me upset or angry. Now I am not saying that I NEVER get pissed off or upset anymore but when I do I make a point (often vocally) to reject the negative and find the positive in it.

I make it a point everyday to say something positive to everyone I come in contact with. You would be amazed at the amount of smiles you can collect in a day from telling someone something nice about themself. But the people who know me, and know what a bitch I have been in the past often laugh, make fun of me or just plain tell me to knock it off or shut up.

But I will not give up! I will not give in! I will just smile at those mocking me or trying to quiet me and tell them how nice they look today!!

~Darlin~

Volunteering and life goals.....

Told ya'll I would be on here more often.

I finally heard back from my local animal shelter and will be signing up for their volunteer program. I have to take a volunteer training class on August 16th and then I am off and running on my first step towards me new goal of becoming a dog trainer.

"Starting out to make money is the greatest mistake in life.
Do what you feel you have a flair for doing, and if you are good enough at it, the money will come."
Greer Garson-Winner of the 1943 Academy Award for best actress

I have reached a place in life where I have realized that anything is possible. I have so many goals now I have had to narrow them down to the top ones and focus on those.

1. Become a licensed dog trainer
2. Open a pit bull rescue shelter
3. Buy a home in Northern Arizona (its cooler for the dogs)
4. Open a Bed and Breakfast (all my friends can come visit)
5. Quit smoking (doing this within the next few weeks)
6. Lose 20lbs. and get back in shape

Five and six will actually happen first but I will have all of these accomplished by Sept. 15, 2013. That gives me 6 years (my 40th birthday) to get it all done and then some.

More to come.

~Darlin~

Shameless copied from Toadee.....who copied it from KB!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your own journal/blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen.....LOVED
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien.....LOVED
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling....LOVED LOVED LOVED
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee....LOVED
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott....LOVED LOVED
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (when I was 16 to get an A in Literature)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens.....LOVED LOVED
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

This makes 42 for me since the Harry Potter series contains 7 books!!!!

~Darlin~

Finding My Passion

Most people who visit my blog know how passionate I am about my Pit Bull, Butter. She is my baby girl. I recently started reading the book "The Success Principles". It is a wonderful book that has made me re-evaluate my life and what I am doing with it. Although I like my job and love owning my own company, landscaping is not a passion for me. One of the first exercises in "The Success Principles" is to look inside yourself for what you are truly passionate about and for me I realized that that was my dog (outside of my children of course).

My baby girl is constantly looked down on and feared simply because of her breed. Ignorance has created hatred and hatred has created fear. So on August 6th I will begin my education to become a licensed dog trainer! I am so excited! My ulitimate goal is to open a Pit Bull rescue shelter but I will also take on classes and private lessons for clients also (outside of everyone in my family asking me to train their dogs for free).

I am giving you my word that I will now begin writing here at least 4 times a week. Most of them will involve my exercises from "The Success Principles" so you will probably be getting some pretty deep insight into ME.

On a side note...I took my 13 year old daughter to the doctor yesterday and as we were sitting in the waiting room she was reading over my shoulder. She made the comment that she wished they made a book like this ("The Success Principles") for teenagers. Well guess what...they do!! So she begged and pleaded and I of course went up and bought it. We have now made a promise to each other to discuss what we read that day at the end of the night before bed.

I will post again soon....

~Darlin~

A Good Burn

A new story I am working on.....tell me what ya think....

Cali cringed as she watched the milk Jason had brought into the bedroom almost spill as he set it on the bedside table. How many times had she asked him not to eat or drink in bed? Her new bed set had cost over $300 and the thought of taking it in to have a milk spill removed made her angry beyond belief. He plopped down on the bed with his peanut butter sandwich and smiled at her with a smear of jam on the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t cute like it had been two years ago. Now it just made her want to wipe his mouth off and tell him to grow up. The smacking sounds that came from his mouth as he tried to pry the peanut butter off the roof of his mouth with his tongue made her nauseous. She rolled her eyes as he scanned through the channels to Sports Center. A deep sigh and her back turned suddenly to him was her way of telling him to take it all to the living room and let her sleep. But as usual he didn’t take the hint and in fact turned the TV up so he could hear the recount of the Suns losing their asses again even louder.



“They’re never going to win the playoffs. Hell they won’t even make it in this year,” she said, her back still to him. She could almost feel the anger her words provoked in him.


“Why can’t you just let me have this one thing? I love this team. Always have and I always will. That’s the point of being a real fan. You love them through the good and the bad.”


“I’m just saying”, she growled, her back still to him, “They never win. Why have faith in a team that takes you right to the edge and then lets you down every year?”


“Ya know ya could just tell me to go out in the living room Cali. You don’t have to pick a fight every time.”


She rolled over and glared at him. “I am not picking a fight Jason but Jesus Christ I do have to work at 4:30 in the morning! It would be nice to be able to go to bed without this stupid shit blaring in my ears”, she spat pointing at the commentators on TV.


“Whatever Cali. I don’t think you even like me anymore.” He grabbed his milk and his sandwich and started towards the living room. “By the way,” he turned looking at her, “The dog threw up on the bed today. I cleaned up what I could but if you notice a funny smell I didn’t have time to take your shit to the dry cleaners.” With that he walked into the living room, slamming the bedroom door for effect and leaving her in the dark wondering if that was what she had been smelling.

Cali woke up the next morning with a feeling of freedom. She lay in bed for awhile, wondering why she felt the way she did. Just as she was about to get up and head for the shower the bedroom door opened and Jason walked in headed straight for the bathroom.


“Can I ask you a question,” she asked tentatively.


Jason eyes went straight to the floor. “You can ask me anything. You know that.”


“Do you get the feeling we are about to break up,” she asked nonchalantly.

Cali could almost see the weight come off Jason’s shoulders as he looked directly at her. “Yes,” he said loud and clear.


They both called into work that morning and spent the day on the bed they had made love on countless times over the last two and a half years. They talked about their hopes and dreams for the future and playfully squabbled over who got what in the house. It was the most fun she had had with him in months and it almost made her rethink the decision to break up, but in the end she knew it was what should have happened years ago but neither of them had been brave enough to confront the other. They had come to rely on each other and both felt that the other relied on them. Their love for each other was real and true but it was not a love that lives were built on. More like a love that friendships were made of.


They decided that Cali would keep the house and Jason would find an apartment. By the end of the month, which was only two weeks away, he would have all his stuff out. Watching Jason box up his things and take them away one by one was not as joyful as that day on the bed. She cried every time he left the house with a car full of boxes. Images of him coming home, smelling like grease, and throwing himself on top of her as she squealed, begging him to take a shower would flood her mind. How he would come out of the shower in nothing but a towel and sit on the end of the bed, demanding that she present her feet for a foot rub, how he would tickle her back as she drifted off to sleep and how he would always ask if she needed anything before he climbed into bed himself. All of these things haunted her as she watched him drive his things away.


When the day came where he would not be returning for another load she sat on the bed, trying to hide her tears and telling herself not to make it harder for them by begging him not to go. He walked into the bedroom they had shared for years, looking around at anything but her.
“I think that’s it,” he said.


“Did you get all of your holey socks, “ she asked trying to hide the hurt and fear that were quickly surfacing.


Jason looked at her curled up on the side of the bed and fought the urge to wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything would be alright. She had to learn to trust her own abilities to make it on her own. “I left one pair for you,” he joked. “Thought you might need them when you forget to wash yours.”


Cali tried to laugh. She knew that he needed to see her smile or he would never be able to walk out, but the smile just wouldn’t come. Her heart was breaking. She was terrified that she was losing the best man she would ever have and all because she wasn’t enough for him to love. After two and half years he still wouldn’t even talk about marriage. At first she had thought it funny. Typical male. Fear of commitment. But after two years she had started to resent the fact that she had absolutely no doubt that she would spend the rest of her life with him and that he could not even bring himself to talk about it. Her self confidence was being eaten away by the fact that the man she loved more than anything did not seem to share those same devout feelings. That he would get angry at the mere mention of marriage.

Cali felt the bed sink below Jason’s weight as he sat down beside her. She still could not bring herself to look at him. “Why couldn’t I be enough,” she whimpered as the tears began to fall violently.


Jason wrapped her in his arms, holding her close to his chest. “You were always enough Cal. I am the one who doesn’t deserve you.”


She let out a tiny laugh into his chest. “You are so full of shit and you know it.”


He pulled her face up by her chin to look him in the eye. “You know I love you Cal and I know you love me. I can’t imagine not coming home to you, but if I am honest with you and me I have to say that I can’t imagine coming home to you every night for the rest of my life.” Cali pulled her face away from him, her face twisting with hurt. “Cali,” he said gently grabbing her chin again and raising her face to his, “Can you really say that if another year from now I still am not ready for marriage that you won’t hate me?”


Cali pulled her face away from his hand again, moving her body slightly away from his. “I could never hate you. I just don’t understand why I’m not enough.” She couldn’t believe the hurt and anger that was welling up inside her at the realization that he was really leaving. She wanted to punch him and slap him and tell him she hated him for not loving her enough, but the simple truth was she wanted him to be happy and all the anger in the world could not overcome that.

My Landscaping Company

Hello again friends....I thought I would take the time to introduce all of you to some of the awesone people who work for me. From left to right....Kyle (my work husband), me, my partner John, Lupe, Herrold (my ex-husband), Jillian (my best friend), Marc, Sugar and Todd. I have been so fortunate over the last 6 months with the people that have came into my life. Some of them may look like ex-convicts but they are the hardest workers I know and I am proud to say I work with them.

On a seperate note....I am single now. Kevin and I have called it quits after 2 1/2 years. It was a good break up. We have ridden the "opposites attract" thing as far as we can and decided to get out before we hated each other.

So anybody know any hot, single men?

Love to you all.....

~Darlin~

Ok Here We Go

Hello to all my friends, bloggers and non-bloggers alike. I have returned and I have so many things to share with all of you.

First I have three new tattoos. I took my sister in a few months ago to get her first (she is my older sister) and ended up walking out with three new ones myself.

The monkey on my neck may look familiar to some of you. The Evil Monkey in the Closet from Family Guy. I am someone who has several evil monkies in my closet and he is constant reminder that I have them and they need to stay there.

The second and third are on my forearms. Beautiful Disaster...I do not think these need any explanation. It is how I feel about myself.

In case some of you have not heard I am now a partner in a landscaping company. I fell into in by chance and it has been an amazing experience. Our company has tripled its workforce in the last few months and things just keep getting better. The only negative in that is I don't have very much time for anything but work.

I will post more soon.....

~Darlin~

I Wonder If Anyone Will See.....

I can't even remember the last time I wrote here. I honestly can't remember the last time I wrote anything that wasn't some type of business form. I was so good for so long. I managed to keep that promise I made to myself about writing for almost a year....then the chaos that has always been a part of my life, that chaos that I thought had been caged, bit me in the ass for thinking such and consumed my life once again.

I will be working on writing again....posting more here, returning to my local writers group and of course continuing to work on my blockbuster novel that should be out sometime next never.

Love to you all-

~Darlin~