Author: Life According To Laurel

The Sound of Good Music

Well, it’s been a bit, but life just doesn’t slow down. Finally had a little down time tonight and decided that music therapy was just what I needed. Music is an important piece of my life. I listen to music when I am having a good or bad day. I love listening to movie scores while I read a book or in this case while I write. It helps to bring ideas to my mind and let me put into words what I want to really say. It is a proven fact that listening to an upbeat song when you are in a bad mood can make a difference. For me it works both ways. Slow music doesn’t necessarily put me in a bad mood, but it will help when I need to really focus on something, or I am wanting to think something through without having outside distractions. Good music goes to my soul, it lifts me up and also has the ability to calm me down. I can hear a song that I haven’t literally heard in years, and it can take me back to a memory in an instant. When I hear a song that catches my ears, I will download it and listen to it a minimum of fifty times because I like the way it sounds or the way it makes me feel. Some people are picky about the clothes they wear, or how they choose to decorate. My music choices are eclectic in the sense that I can go from one genre to another within five songs. I hate to admit this, but I care more about how my music is arranged than the outfit that I choose to wear to work. Music has saved me on more than one occasion. It has given me the strength to get through times in my life that other humans could not even begin to touch. It has lifted me up when I needed something to look forward to. It gives me the ability to feel emotions I don’t usually feel because I get too caught up in everyday life to stop and take a mental break. I celebrate with music when something great has happened. I am that girl that will dance around the house even though I have not had decent dance moves since I was 12 years old. I am a music junkie in the car. It is an absolute must on road trips. I like to listen to what my father used to refer to as “ticket music”. Now, I know you are wondering what that is. Let me give you some insight on this. While traveling down the interstate my father would listen to songs with upbeat lyrics and as this particular song would speed up in tempo so would the speed of the car. The music had such an effect on his soul that it apparently also had an effect on his lead foot which usually ended up with the whole 20 mph over thing going on. I won’t go into details, but that man seriously was the king of B.S. when it came to getting out of tickets. But that is for a whole other post on another day. One of my only regrets when it comes to music is that I didn’t take it as seriously as I wish I would have. Thirteen years of piano and voice lessons and I still never really learned how to read music and after years of thyroid issues, I can no longer sing the way I used to. I sing, but the days of a steady voice and being in tune are long gone. So, kids if your parents are going to throw away thousands of dollars on music lessons, do yourself a favor and at least make it worth your while. Practice and practice and don’t give up. You make not realize it now, but there WILL be a time in your life when you will wish that you had really given it the dedication it deserved. Cause some days music is life. Give me all the songs that affect your life and have made a difference in the comments. Until next time. 🙂

Missing my Best Friend

When I started this blog, I forewarned everyone on the intro page that there would be both good, bad, and sometimes ugly on here. Well, here is one of those instances. It isn’t necessarily bad, but it isn’t a light hearted post. Today marks a day that still takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. Nineteen years ago today, I lost my very best friend. A man that raised me to believe that even though I was a girl, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do, and that if I wanted something, I would have to work hard for it. While it feels like 19 years has flown by, it also feels like yesterday that his life was suddenly over and I was left without a father. While I do my best to suppress most of the memories from that day, there are pieces, I will never forget no matter how hard I try. As far as I can remember, it started out as a normal day. Noah was only 10 months old, and I was a stay at home mom. Joe was home from his deployment and was back to work. It was a Saturday, we had been doing some stuff around the house and dad had been in Pinckneyville at the Thresherman’s Association Day. It was all about the tractors. He had come home and Joe and I decided to go ahead and do our grocery shopping. We had almost decided to leave Noah at home with Grandpa, but ended up deciding to get something to eat while we were out and take him with us. As my dad entered the house, we were leaving and he looked at Noah and said the very last words I would ever hear him say. Noah had put his pudgy little arms around his neck to give him a hug and my dad told him he loved it when he did that. After getting the groceries we headed home. Dad had been at the house and had parked in the driveway. We decided to call him to let him know we were almost home so he could move his truck. He didn’t answer his phone and we figured he probably was crashed out on the couch. We tried to call again with no answer. When we pulled up to the house, Joe opened the garage door and ran in the house to grab the keys. I started to get Noah out of his carseat and head inside when Joe ran back out the door, looked at me with a panicked look on his face and told me to go to my moms. I knew something was wrong and I took off running with Noah in my arms up the stairs and what I was met with will never leave my mind. My dad was laying motionless, gray in color on my kitchen floor. He had just poured a glass of his favorite blue kool-aide, the ice still in the trays. The moment I saw him, I knew what had happened. He had a massive heart attack and according to the paramedics, he was gone before he hit the floor. Everything after that is mostly a blur. I somewhat remember running to the neighbors house for help. They took Noah from me and the neighbors fiancé and Joe tried to revive my dad. It was too late, but Joe didn’t want to give up. I will spare the rest of the details of waiting on the coroner and watching the funeral home take my dad from my house. The next day I joined my mom and husband at the funeral home and did one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, which was pick out his casket. The whole thing never really felt real. The day we buried him, and I saw the name engraved on the vault, it hit me. I never truly grieved the loss of my father. I was too busy keeping it together for everyone else and knew that Noah wouldn’t understand. I think about him often and wonder what he would be doing at this age. I’m sure spending time in the barn teaching Noah everything he knew about tractors, cars, and everything in between. He was only 53 when he died, which for me was too young. He had so much life left to live, and so many things left to experience. Losing my father at 27 changed the person I am today. I no longer feel like I can do anything I set my mind to as a lot of that came from the support and encouragement he gave me daily. When you lose a best friend, a piece of you goes with them and you never really get it back. Over the last 19 years, I have learned that life isn’t fair. It doesn’t always go the way you think it is going to and loving someone isn’t enough to keep them from dying. I have dreams about my dad, some where I get to talk to him and it is like he never left. Other times the nightmares happen and it is always the same dream. I am fighting to keep him here with me and no matter how I try, the result is always the same. I wake up on an emotional roller coaster and a tear stained face. I miss him. I miss his smile, his laugh, and his infectious personality that made him who he was.

Driving Home

I was driving home yesterday from a birthday party which took me about a solid hour. I had just about made it home when I realized that I had driven 55 minutes in complete silence. I never turned the radio on, my phone had not rung, and I had not received one message or notification. It came to me that I had been thinking all the way home. Not about anything in particular, but just a little of this and that. It was that perfect time of day of when the sun was setting, and the sky looked like a watercolor painting. It was warm in the car, so I had the window partly down and the breeze was cool, but still had bit of warmth left to it from the setting sun. One of the things that had crossed my mind was my grandmother. She just recently turned 97 years old. This last week, her furnace stopped working and we had to have someone come out to look at it for her. She doesn’t quite understand that the amount of money it takes this day and age to fix something when it breaks. Instead of having her be upset about the money, we just told her that it would be fixed, and the cost would be minimal. That situation made me get to thinking about why she would be upset, and it didn’t take me long to realize. She was born in the 20’s, a time where the country was in a financial crisis, money wasn’t easy to come by and most families had multiple children in order to have help on family farms as soon as the kids were old enough to work. She has never had much, always been poverty level on some degree. She was raised with the mindset to never waste anything, and unless it could not be fixed, you didn’t buy new. Most of the time you went without anyways because you couldn’t afford it. Kids these days laugh at the old stories of a one room schoolhouse and memes of walking a mile to school barefoot, when in reality that is exactly what she had to do. Although, she did it with the younger siblings at her feet and would be the first to school to start an old coal stove for heat. I can’t think of a time in her life that has been easy going or without some sort of heart ache. She is now the only surviving child out of 11 kids. Most of her family has passed before her, and even those friends that she has known, have passed. She is a woman of great strength. She lives by the means of a small check given to her once a month. She saves her money in envelopes to pay bills and has a hard time understanding why she can’t pay those bills locally in person. She has lived through 16 different presidents, and 6 major wars. She has never had cable, a vcr, a cd player, or a computer. She still uses a rotary phone and listens to Elvis on an old record player. Her favorite book is the bible, and she has read it more times that most people. When I think about her, I don’t see a feeble old woman. I see a woman that has conquered more in her lifetime than most will in half of theirs. I see a woman to took care of everyone else long before she took care of herself. I see a woman who takes everything thrown her way, and deals with it. I don’t know that I can ever be even a portion of who she was. I say was because with every passing year, her mine isn’t as quite as sharp as it used to be and things that she would have normally power housed right through, take a little bit longer. She also comes from a time when things were broken, you tried to fix it. You didn’t take it and just throw it away. That is a problem I see far too often in people. Whether it be a relationship, a broken handle on an axe, or even their own children, they are too quick to throw it away instead of taking the time or energy to try and fix it. A lot of us would do well to take a look back and listen to a few of the stories from those that came long before us and learn a little something.

Back In The Saddle

I had almost forgotten that I had even made my own blog until I realized that I had a funny story that I should share with every other human that has worked or currently works as a barista or bartender. I thought my days of having funny stories would be over since I was now working at a college with older, more mature people. For the record…..I was very wrong. In the last 5 days alone, I have encountered two subjects that were indeed college age students and managed to leave me totally and utterly face palming and wondering how I ended up there. The more terrifying thought for me however, was the fact that I was wondering what their parents might have said or done had they been in my shoes. We are going to name these students James and Judy for the mere fact that I have no idea what their real names are. Shortly before closing time, James approaches the counter. He asked me for a glass of ice. I reply with “Of course, sure I got ya.” As I grab the cup with one hand and the ice scoop with the other, I see him wave me down from the cash register. What happened next, is I swear on every coffee bean in the place, what truly took place. James asks…”Can you put that in a cup?” (This is where the face palm came into play) Again, without hesitation, I say “Sure, no problem.” In my mind, I was asking myself, where the hell else did he think I was going to put it? Did he want it in his backpack? Was I supposed to throw it on the floor and wait for him to fetch it? I handed him the cup full of ice and watched him walk away. Now, before a Karen reads this and says something, let me answer the basic questions. 1. I have waited on him before, so he is familiar with the cups that we have. 2. He did not have a personal cup with him that he wanted the ice dispensed into. 3. As far as I could tell, he was not under the influence, however, that is not to me to assume and or ask. Now, here comes Judy. Judy is a new customer. I have never waited on her, or seen her roaming the halls. She comes to the register, I greet her and ask her “What can I make for you?” She replies quickly with
“I want a cold espresso, but I don’t want it to taste like coffee.” (Insert another face palm here) I explain to her that espresso is concentrated coffee and that she might want to reconsider if she doesn’t like the taste. I offer her cold brew to which she proceeds to tell me, “tastes nasty,” and she doesn’t want that. I offer her a flavored lemonade to which she then replies “I want the caffeine.” Ok, well the only other thing I have to offer is an energy drink. I go through the entire list of every energy drink that I can make with every flavor available. Judy then shrivels her nose, looks me dead in the face and says, “Well I will just take a hot coffee, just put lots of flavor and milk because I want it super sweet and I don’t want to taste the coffee.” I wish that I was making this up, but I am not. I should have led her in the direction of the cafeteria. Perhaps they could have helped her find the chocolate milk she really wanted. On a serious note….any of you that happen to be in your 40’s and 50’s. When you read this, just keep in mind that this is the generation that is going to be taking care of us when we are no longer able to wipe our own rear ends. Now, that is really a scary thought!!

So You want kids?

So, I work on the weekends with my son at a fruit orchard selling cold brew coffee, energy drinks, and custom made lemonade. This last weekend was busier than the previous weekends, mostly due to cooler temperatures and not as much rain in the forecast. When we are not busy making drinks, I sit back on the cooler and just people watch. You see all types. Young, Old, Married, Single, One kid, 8 kids…..all the above. We had a family of 4 walk up to the tent, looking to get some lemonade for their kiddos. Thats cool, we can do that. As I take the order and Noah is taking their payment, I notice out of the corner of my eye, the three year old girl admiring the neon chalk colors on the bistro style sign that has our menu of drinks. She looks innocent enough. I turn back around to finish filling the cup and low and behold, as I do another 180, this tiny girl has taken a hold of this sign with both hands and before I could say a word, she took her tongue and wildly licked the letters right from the sign. I guess the father saw me looking and turned around to tell his daughter, “Hon, you probably shouldn’t do that”. Geeesh dad ya think? I handed the parents the lemonade and wished them a great weekend. The father grabs the little girls hand and they walk away as if nothing has happened and now the word coffee reads as co e. I can fix that later, no problem. A little time goes by, we serve several adults needing a good caffeine fix and another family of 4 arrives. This time a mom with two toddlers in tow and a dad that looks like he needs a cocktail rather than a cold brew. The older of the two kids stands quietly beside her mother, never saying a word, waiting patiently for her drink. The younger one is wearing his sisters Elsa hat, backwards for that matter, and running circles around the tent. All I can think to myself is how I wish I had his energy, as I would get so much more done in a day. Again, I make the drinks, Noah takes the payment and wish the parents a great day. Like a flash, the little boy suddenly grabs a hold of one of the tent poles, and viciously slings his entire body around in a circle, rocking the tent from one side to the other. Before I could get a word out, he is upside down with his feet in the air like an exotic dancer in the middle of a packed house. The mom looks over at her son, and with very little authority in her voice asks him to please come back over to her. This kid was so into whatever song was playing in his head, he wasn’t about to let that pole go. Finally the dad who I know by this time was wishing he at home in his recliner, tells his son, if he wants his cotton candy lemonade, he will surrender his magic mike dancing skills and come hither. Now, You can’t make this stuff up. I worked at a grade school, and more than once I have said things that you would swear were made up and no kid, ever would have done. You haven’t really lived life until you have looked at a Kindergarten age child and asked them to please stop tracing the brick wall with their tongue all the while they explain to you that their tongue is a race car. They also proceed to tell you, they have done this everyday on their way to the lunch room and that the paint tastes like chicken nuggets. If you are thinking about entering parenthood at any various stage of your life, you should read this because this is the real deal.

Meet our son.

Our son is 19 years old and has just entered his sophomore year in college. He hasn’t been in a big hurry to get his degree and I am ok with that. He is working towards a degree in computer engineering and loves every minute of it. It feels like I just sent him off for his first day of Pre-K not so long ago. He is your typical teenager. When he isn’t working at a locally owned coffee company at the college he attends, he is playing on his PS5 or hanging out. He has great taste in music and movies and is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to anything history related. He makes creator content on TikTok and is really good at it. He saves most of his money, and with a few more tips from mom, he will make someone a great husband someday. I put strong emphasis on someday…….

Meet My Husband

I have been together with my very handsome husband for 29 years, married now for 23. We were engaged at the ages of 17 and 19. Obviously it took us a while to get married, but it worked out for the best. He is an awesome husband and a great father. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are days that he gets on my last nerve, but I am sure the feelings are mutual. He is a hard worker and an honest man. After spending 20 years in the National Guard/Active Army, he retired only to decide that he wanted to be a lineman. He spent three and a half very long years as an apprentice, starting at the age of 39. He is now a journeyman lineman and absolutely loves his job. He would give the shirt off his back and his last dollar away to someone in need. He is the kind of guy you could call on in the middle of the night to drive 2 states over for a favor. I guess that’s why he makes such a good lineman. He never turns down a call for overtime regardless of the weather and has spent countless holidays and special occasions in other states repairing lines and “digging holes and setting poles” as they say. Not to get mushy, but I love him more after 29 years than I could have ever imagined. He is my best friend, and some days my better half. So, here is a shout out to my hard working, blue-collar, fine-looking lineman. You still make my heart pitter patter!