A cup half full

I happen to be a person who looks at life as if ..."the cup is half full!" It is not hard for me to remember with thankfulness all the good things that have happened and the great and awesome plans that the Lord has for me and my family. I always like to believe the best about people and I want to try to see life as a gift and make the most of it. I have always had ...HOPE. Even when I was a little girl growing up on my beloved farm...life was good. I was in my heaven, the one place that was all mine and where I was most free. I would dream, just like most kids, chase butterflies and watch the June bugs fly, while noticing all the beautiful sights of the landscape. The huge Sycamore tree and my wild daisy field and the apple orchard with the best apples I have ever eaten. I have so many memories of the changing of the seasons and the wondrous sightsof the Tennessee countryside. I believe this is why I had always wanted to be an artist. I could always recreate the scenes on canvas. It was such a beautiful world for which I wanted to always remember. I loved to draw and paint and I would spend so much time pondering on when the day would come that I would take off to New York, live in a snazzy studio apartment and recreate my lovely world on canvas with all my dreams of living in the big city, easel and brushes in hand. And New York....don't get me started, "That Girl!" with Marlo Thomas was actually me! Needless to say I wanted Danny Thomas to be my father, how lucky was she I thought, her life was so exciting, skipping across the street holding her cute hat, I love hats! Then, what if I was like Doris Day and I met Cary Grant i.e That touch of Mink.......how fun would that be? It is pretty obvious I have a very exaggerated imagination and I lived through fantastic imaginings. All the beautiful people who lived in that little box in our living room were Miracle Grow for my young mind. It fed me with all the ideals that Madison Avenue had planned for it to. I was the audience they were after, I believed it all, I drank the punch, I was bit! Life was always good! It seemed to me that the world was collectively reaching toward a goal. We were all trying to get there...what or wherever there is. I grew up with aspirations and goals that I never believed wouldn't happen. It isn't that I had all the encouragement and inspiration that my two parents could bestow upon me. Nope, zilch, none, nada! My poor mom did her best, she just didn't have the time, four kids and an awful husband and then no husband at all and working three jobs at one time for years. Then my dad was AWOL! He left and never looked back. So it wasn't that I was daily encouraged to reach for the stars! But I was told to work hard and to depend on yourself and there's no free ride in this world so you better get up and get going! We didn't have very much hugging and lovey dovey-ness. I consider that part odd, how do parents not do that, it is so foreign to me, as a parent, how do you not? But anyways I sometimes wonder if that is why I turned out the way I did. I have always had hope of MORE!
I meet kids these days that don't seem to have that hope of more. They seem to not have many goals or aspirations. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They just don't know...how odd! Maybe it is because we have given them so much. They didn't really have to wish for things for very long.....boy do I regret those times when I gave in all too fast. They just don't seem to make kids like they used too! HA! Okay I am treading on a dangerous track now, feeling very old. This brings me back to my initial thought...the glass half full or is it half empty? Life is a struggle sometimes, get over it...grow up already! I know the answer......I got stinkin' thinkin'..haha! Time to get off my lazy rear and get moving...the glass is half full, I have a million amazing reasons to stop pouting and get on with life. I am too blessed to be so whinny! I have fresh clean canvas and nice brushes and paint, time to get busy livin'! Somebody slap me please, line forms now!