These ain't ruby shoes
I can't click my heels anytime I choose and fly away
-- Jessica Andrews

More posts are forthcoming - I really promise, y'all. Hang on, ok?

-ames

Woo Hoo! I know this is a bit gratuitous, but I must acknowledge the FOUR year anniversary of amydabbs.com. Can y'all believe it? FOUR YEARS of rants, raves, complaints, bad luck, funny stories, debates, comments, etc. Thank you to everyone who reads this site and thanks again to Chris and Keith for pretty much making me have a site when I left that other dark hole of a job place four years ago. =) You were right. And many thanks to Chris, master of all things www for keeping it up and running all this time. Here's to many more years!

-ames

So you’ve got to live it while you can
-- Keith Urban

This summer pretty much sucked. Why am I even telling the world wide interweb (or whatever the crap they are calling it these days) that? I have no idea. And don’t get all excited because I’m not about to reveal details, but suffice it to say, I got knocked around a wee bit but I have, I hope, successfully picked myself up and will be coming back for more. I’m just glad the fall season is now on us so maybe I can move on and watch some of the junk in my life fly away along with the falling leaves. We’ll see.

Here’s the thing, life is entirely too short. No matter how much time you have, it isn't enough.

My grandmother isn’t doing that well. I have been blessed to have her for this long and with each passing year I was amazed the old bird was still kicking it, but then again, I wasn’t too surprised. She falls into that category of too mean to die. She’s the original bad ass – the smart ass, the back talker, the not taking your shit today or any day type that I always studied with awe. She’s improved some, but when she does go it will be really hard on me. But that’s selfish; it’ll be hard on anyone that was privileged to know her.

As I peered at her from the end of her bed last weekend I thought back to all those times I spent with her as a kid – running around the house on Easter and the 4th of July; a reluctant teenager on Sunday afternoons sitting in her living room, a college kid so excited that she actually came to my graduation, and as a trying to find my way semi-grown up going to dinner with her and my dad each Tuesday night while I lived at home. Priceless. Those are the times I’ll remember. When she’s gone, that’s all I’ll have of her.

Louise – I called her that to piss my aunt off, but she loved it and would always laugh at me for it. She’s the one that said if Saddam showed up in her back yard she’d “take that shotgun right there, off that wall, and shoot that son of a bitch.” The one that ever so softly got right in my aunt’s dog’s Sandy's face when she jumped on her lap and said, “GET. OUT. OF. MY. FACE.” The dog jumped out of her lap and honestly did not go near her the rest of that Thanksgiving Day. The 5 foot tall, small woman that ate an entire gallon of ice cream EACH WEEK and dared you to tell her not to do it. She was coffee and ice cream. God, I love her. I hope she knew it because she doesn’t know too much of anything these days.

She has had a good, long life. I hope when I get to the end of mine I can say the same. I hope there will be a few that will say I impacted them or somehow made their lives better. And if I want that to be the case, enough with my head up my own ass, time to shake it off, get back in the ring and live life for all its worth.

I want to be just like you, Louise.
love,
Amy