Well, this is it, March 1, 2007.  I will be 40 at the end of August, 2007.  This means I have right at 6 months left of my 30’s.  UGH!  It could be worse – I could look like a hag.  I must admit that I still look pretty good.  The picture of my husband and I was taken on my 39th birthday in Vegas last August.  Thankfully, I’m aging gracefully.

People say that if they could go back and do it over again they wouldn’t, but I feel differently.  I WOULD go back and do it over again.  My life has been a blast.  When I had ups they were really up, and when I had downs they were really down – I’ve been so poor that I have had to go two weeks between paychecks with as little as $5.00 to my name.  I did a juggling act with my bills each month that would have made Barnem and Bailey proud.  My mom used to tell me that I could stretch a nickel into a dollar.  I was so poor that I routinely made three nights worth of meals with a $2.00 chicken.  Seriously, I was POOR.

Then I moved, I mean married, up to upper middle class.  You want to talk about a shock?  Try going into a store for the first time in your life and not have to bring a calculator to make sure you didn’t go over the amount of money you had in your wallet.  Or getting your first credit card and being scared to use it.  Or finding it IMPOSSIBLE, even to this day, ten years into the marriage, to go into the mall and pay full price for a piece of clothing.  Everything I own comes from sale racks.  Not because I have to, but because I just can’t stop myself.  But would I do it over again?  You bet your back side.  I’d do it again – and not just the good stuff – all of it, because even when I was poor as dirt I was happy.  The reason is because I was born poor.  However, because we lived on a farm and raised our own food, we didn’t know it.  We ate!  And we ate good!  We didn’t have many clothes, and our shoes were worn, but our bellies were full and I guess that’s most important.  So when I grew up and was on my own, dirt poor and struggling from paycheck to paycheck, I wasn’t missing anything because I never had anything to miss.

I can proudly say now that I put myself through college and graduated with a B.A. in Elementary Education with a minor in History.  Yea Me!  I put myself through the first few years, then married and my husband picked up the reigns and paid my way through the rest.  How lucky am I?  I’m serious – it’s times like this, sitting here typing this and seeing it in black and white, that makes me realize just how lucky I am to have married this man.  I think I’ll sign off and go tell him just how much I love and appreciate him.  Ya’ll have a great night!