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When my oldest son moved to Florida for a new job on Little Gasparilla Island, he couldn’t take his recue dog, Jackson, with him, so my son looked at me and said, “Will you please keep him until I can get him?” I looked at him and said, “Yes,” with my husband looking at me like I was crazier than ever. He asked me, “Why would you tell him yes?” I looked at him and said, “I didn’t hear you pipe in and say NO!” Jackson is now a very big part of our family and Barley and Guinness are happy to have him at the house with them.  He is our protector and the one who thinks he’s a lap dog. Jackson is half lab and half mountain cur.  Our son adopted him from the Greenbrier Animal Shelter when he worked at the Greenbrier as a chef.  I’m very proud of my son for adopting a dog from a shelter and, as a matter of fact, Jackson was a broken dog.  He went to a family twice and was taken back to the shelter twice.  They said he couldn’t get along with his sister, which they kept. Jackson and his sister were found out in the woods all alone, hungry and in very bad shape. Jackson’s tail was broken and had to be amputated to a hooked stub.  He was also broken in spirit.   He was in the paper and this was Jackson last and final chance to find a furever home or they would have to put him down.  Our son went and looked at him and took him home that very day.  Our son worked very long hours at his job so Jackson was alone most of the time and he did just fine.  When we would go down to visit our son we took Barley and Guinness with us and the three of them would play and have a very good time.  It was a no brainer to keep Jackson in our family.  Barley and Guinness love him, my husband loves him and if you know me at all, I loved him from the first day I set eyes on him. Jackson is staying with us. Our son has come to terms with that and it wasn’t easy for him to do so, but he knew in his heart it was the best thing for Jackson. So now Barley and Guinness are Uncle Barley and Uncle Guinness to Jackson. They have no clue what this all means, but it’s so much fun to tell people about our all three of our boys, my two, four-legged children and my one, four-legged grandson.  Life is good at our house with our four-legged boys. Remember, don’t shop, adopt from your local animal shelters. If you want to support a local animal shelter here in the Ohio Valley, Moundsville Animal Shelter is hosting a Wine Tasting fundraiser on May 12, 2016. I will be serving wine that night to help raise money for the shelter. For more information about the event, call the shelter at (304) 845-9770. Bark on, Bordas dog nation, bark on.

Voting is one of our most precious American rights, but yet many of us do not understand the process by which our President, the leader of the free world, is selected. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.  So, it is no accident that the structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. The Electoral College was created for two reasons. The first purpose was to create a buffer between population and the selection of a President. The second as part of the structure of the government that gave extra power to the smaller states. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence, but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region.  Many of the founders believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the Electoral College no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. The founders also believed that the Electoral College had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Each state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators. Under the 23rd Amendment of the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated three electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. The process for selecting Electors varies throughout the United States. Generally, the political parties nominate Electors. On Election Day, the voters in each State choose the Electors by casting votes for the presidential candidate of their choice. The winning candidate in each State—except in Nebraska and Maine, is awarded all of the State’s Electors. In Nebraska and Maine, the state winner receives two Electors and the winner of each congressional district receives one Elector. This system permits the Electors from Nebraska and Maine to be awarded to more than one candidate. There is no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their States. Some States (not Pennsylvania), however, require Electors to cast their votes according to the popular vote. These pledges fall into two categories—Electors bound by State law and those bound by pledges to political parties. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that Electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties’ nominees. Some State laws provide that so-called "faithless Electors"; may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged. Since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 156 faithless Electors.  Seventy-one of these votes were changed because the original candidate died before the day on which the Electoral College cast their votes.  Three of the votes were not cast at all. These three Electors chose to abstain from casting their Electoral vote for any candidate.  The other 82 Electoral votes were changed on the personal initiative of the Elector. Sometimes Electors changed their votes in large groups, such as when 23 Virginia Electors acted together in 1836. Many times, these Electors stood alone in their decision. Four times in our Nation's history the President won the election despite not having the popular vote. In 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning either the popular vote or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson was the winner in both categories. Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes than Adams, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson didn’t reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president. In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House. In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election (by a margin of one electoral vote), but he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Grover Cleveland’s 168, winning the presidency. But Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes. In 2000, George W. Bush was declared the winner of the general election and became the 43rd president, but he didn’t win the popular vote either. Al Gore holds that distinction, garnering about 540,000 more votes than Bush. However, Bush won the electoral vote, 271 to 266. Throughout our history as a nation however, more than 99 percent of Electors have voted as pledged. Please go out and vote.  Your vote does matter.  Without it, we would not be able to debate issues surrounding the voting process.  For instance, without the popular vote, on the Democratic side, we would not have sufficient information to determine whether “super delegates” are appropriate.  On the Republican side, without the popular vote, we would not be able to have an intelligent discuss whether it is appropriate to preclude voters from voting in the primary, like in Colorado, or, in Louisiana where the winner of the populous vote did not win the majority of the delegates.  The only way we can have these discussions and truly understand how important your vote is, is if one votes.

The sun is finally shining! With the first thoughts of summer come the images of vacation.  When I was growing up we didn’t really take vacations.  We did go several times to Bear Lake, Mich., and stayed in a cottage right across from the lake.  I remember those times so clearly even though I was only five or six years old.  When we were in our early teens we started camping and every weekend at the lake was a mini-vacation. One year when I was in high school we went to Disney for Christmas. When I got married and had kids, we did a few vacations.  We also had a camper and went camping in the summer as much as possible.  We went to Myrtle Beach a couple of times and Rehoboth Beach once.  We also took the kids to Disney and took a trip to Asheville, N.C., to visit my sister.  The highlight of that vacation was taking the kids to a drive-in movie to see Ghostbusters! As an adult I have had a couple of vacations to San Diego and I’ve been to Naples, Fla. quite a few times.  At this point in my life, my vacations are visiting my daughter and grandkids in Miami and visiting my friend, Carla, in Texas.  Don’t get me wrong, those are my favorite vacations of all time but I still have that dream vacation in the back of my mind. My dream vacation would be to travel to Tahiti and stay in an over the water bungalow!  Of course, I would need a cabana boy to bring me fancy drinks and gourmet food.  I could recline in a lounge chair on the deck of the bungalow all day and just drink up the sun and the fancy drinks the cabana boy delivers.  Can you imagine going to bed and listening to the water all around you?  While I am sure there are plenty of things to do at these Tahiti resorts, I don’t think I would even leave the bungalow, unless of course, they took away my cabana boy!  I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to make my dream vacation a reality but it’s fun to have a dream vacation.  What’s yours?

I came across an article in one of my online news feeds recently which set forth a list of life regrets that you don’t want to have when you are facing the end of life. Some of them spoke to me.  Others, like not traveling enough or not pursuing your dream job, did not.  Traveling is OK and I do enjoy seeing new places, but I tend to like being just where I am, in good old Wheeling, W.Va.  And I guess I’m a little too practical to pursue a dream job when there are bills to pay.  That said, the other “regrets” identified really caused me to pause and think, and I wanted to see what others had to say.  After reading quite a few online articles on life regrets, I saw the following “regrets” mentioned over and over again and a theme started to became apparent.  See if you can identify it. Regret: Losing yourself to make others happy. This is a big one. We all want our friends and loved ones to be happy.  Many of us will do whatever we think it takes to make them happy.  When your life is focused on doing what everyone else wants you to do or thinks you should do, you eventually begin to lose yourself and your own happiness.  Of course, if you take the risk and stop focusing on making others happy, the others will definitely not be happy at first.  However, a harsh reality, though, is that everyone is responsible for their own happiness.  If you lose yourself and your happiness trying to make someone else happy, no one is happy in the end. Regret: I didn’t express my feelings or didn’t express them soon enough. Did you ever just feel a connection to someone, something different than what you ordinarily experience?  Was there ever that one person who it’s just easy to be with?  This is definitely a high-risk, high reward situation.  You risk embarrassment, rejection and maybe the loss of a good friend if you express your feelings. But what if the feelings are mutual?  Then, the possibilities are endless.  A corollary to this is not waiting too long to express your feelings because you don’t think circumstances are right or you are waiting for the “perfect” time.  There is no perfect time and waiting too long may result in the loss of an opportunity for something great if your “other” has moved in a different direction in the interim. Regret: I stayed in an unhappy relationship. Every article mentioned, in some form or another, the regret of staying in a painful or loveless relationship out of the fear of change, loneliness and hurting those closest to you, including your children.  Whether you are talking about a romantic relationship or not, the consensus was the same: leaving the relationship resulted in everyone being much happier in the long run even though the initial transition period was extremely difficult. Regret: Living the life others saw for me instead of the one I wanted to live.  It’s a fact of life that expectations are placed on us throughout our life by parents, family, friends, loved one, teachers and colleagues.  Many times, what is expected doesn’t necessarily correspond with what we want or what is best for us.  Nevertheless, we continue to do what is expected because we don’t want to disappoint the person or persons who placed the expectation on us.  Yes, going against expectations is extremely difficult and scary.  However, in the end you only have one life to live and you should live the life you want and not the one others want you to live. Regret: Worrying too much about what others thought of me. One thing we can’t control in life is someone else’s thoughts and feelings.  The main thing is to be true to yourself.  If you let the fear of disappointing or hurting someone else control how you live your life, you may never get to live the life that will make you happy and fulfilled.  Sometimes standing up for what you believe in will turn others away, but in the end there is one person in this world that you cannot live without and that is you.  People who don’t know you may have harsh words at first, but they will quickly forget.  People who do know and love you may not be happy at first, but, in the end, will always want what is best for you.  If you have the courage to stay true to yourself, everything else will work itself out even if it doesn’t look like it in the short term. Regret: Not trusting that voice in the back of my head more. We all have it.  Whether we call it our heart (like I do), our intuition or the little voice in the back of my head, there are things we just know.  More often than not, we can’t explain how or why we know this, but we just know.  Also, more often than not, what that little voice is telling us to do isn’t what our head or others say we should do.  So far in my life, my biggest regrets have come when I followed what my head or others said I should do and didn’t listen to my heart. Have you seen the theme yet?  It is being true to yourself even if that means someone else may be unhappy in the short term.  It’s a lesson I wished I learned long ago.  Although you can’t change the past, it is never too late to move out of your comfort zone and start taking the risks that may lead you to a life you’ve only dreamed of having and never thought possible.   Remember that catch phrase Robin William’s character in Dead Poets Society made popular?  Carpe Diem.  Seize the day.  Tomorrow is not promised.

It’s that time in life when roles between parent and child start reversing. After saving, planning and carrying out many years of family vacations for my two children and myself, it’s finally paying off!  My daughter and her family have invited me to join them this year at Disney World and my son and his family have invited me to join them on vacation to Williamsburg/Busch Gardens/Virginia Beach. What a sweet surprise to be invited to join them!  More than just getting away from the hustle and bustle of a 40-hour work week -- more than spending my time and effort in planning – and more than incurring the full expense of a family vacation by myself – the real joy is the fact that they actually WANT me to join them.  Makes me think I may have done at least one thing right as a single parent.

I’ll admit it: I’ve always had a competitive streak.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve played to win.  I’ve always been driven to do my best.  For better or worse, it’s something that’s worked its way into almost every area of my life. I’ve written before how much I liked playing softball when I was a kid.  I even played in an adult league when I came home from college every summer.  My wife, Brenda, and I were still dating in those days, and I would call every few days just to check in.  Brenda swears that she knew within the first minute of our conversation if I had won or lost my latest ball game.  Apparently I was pretty cranky if my team lost! Throughout my college years I struggled to keep my competitiveness in check.  Even the simplest card game could turn into a cage match if I wasn’t careful.  Brenda could tell many stories, I’m sure.  But I began noticing a real change in my way of thinking and my behavior when I had kids of my own.  Kids love to play games.  But I wasn’t the kid anymore.  No, I was supposed to be the grown up.  I was supposed to be the one setting a good example for my kids to follow.  So I had to learn how to play for fun instead of always playing to win.  I even found myself losing intentionally so I could pique their interest and keep them playing.  That wasn’t an easy adjustment for a win-at-all-costs player like me! I like to think I’ve done a lot of growing in my 55 years on this planet.  I like to think I’ve become a better winner and a better loser.  But, believe me, the struggle is still very real. Every time we have a family gathering we play a board game that’s called “Settlers of Catan.”  The game is set in the 1700s.  The object is to build as many roads, villages and cities as you can using the resources that are available.  There’s a lot of bartering involved--and that’s where things start to get ugly.  It seems that everybody enjoys teaming up against me and having a little fun at my expense.  So what happens when I innocently ask, “Does anyone have any brick?”  I get the silent treatment.  I know they’ve got brick in their hands.  I know it!  I saw them drawing brick cards with my own eyes, for Pete’s sake!  But they say nothing, hoping to gain an advantage by keeping me from getting the resources I need.  It’s so exasperating!  My nephew, Bryan, says that he knows their strategy if working when he sees the veins popping out in my neck.  Unfortunately, that’s probably true. It’s safe to say that I’ve come a long way.  Competition has its place, but playing games should also be a way of promoting friendship, team building and critical thinking.  Playing games should also be a source of enjoyment, not drudgery.  Those are a few of the things I’ve learned through the years.  But, in all honesty, I still have a long way to go.  I still haven’t passed the “vein” test.  When I can play a game of Catan without my neck veins giving away how aggravated I really am, I’ll know I’ve truly arrived…

After the long winter we’ve had it is so good to finally feel the warmth of the sunshine and to see blue skies. I love this time of year when everything is “new” again—the grass is a brilliant shade of green, my magnolia and dogwood are in bloom, and my lilies, tulips, and hostas are all poking up through the ground.  In addition to the changes in the temperatures and the foliage, there are many other things going on at our farm.  It seems several people I know, including us, spent last week building new fence for the cattle.  We have also had 11 newborn calves so far this spring, with three more expected.  I’ll admit, despite the fact I have lived on a farm most of my life, I am not a fan of cattle (but I love pigs)!  To put it nicely, they are not the brightest of animals.  What other animal will go to the farthest boundary of the field, next to a steep hill, to decide to give birth?  Apparently ours do, and then what ultimately happens is the newborn calf rolls down over the hill clear to the bottom and can’t get back up to its mother.  My son has performed two calf rescues this season, both of them taking place while we were on vacation.  I’m glad he was home looking out for things and, thankfully, both babies were okay and are now thriving.  I do have to admit that even though cows are not my favorite, the little calves are very cute to watch when they are running and playing in the field. In addition to the new babies being born, it is also time to start thinking about planting a garden.  We have planted a garden every year that we have been married except one.  There is nothing like eating a fresh tomato picked out of your garden—they just don’t compare to what you buy in the store.  I freeze and can almost all of the produce we get from our garden, so it does save quite a bit of money at the grocery store.  In addition, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am feeding my family a quality product that is all natural and organic.  Since I have a lot of produce still left over from last year’s garden, this year we are changing things a bit and although I will still plant some of the usual green beans, corn and tomatoes, I am not going to plant quite as much.  Instead, we are going to do a section of the garden just for fun and plant pumpkins and gourds to use for fall decorations. Living on a farm and raising livestock and produce is a never-ending job—there is always something to do.  Your livestock will require medical care; hay will need to be cut and baled to feed them in the winter, which means fertilizer will need spread on your fields; barns and stalls need cleaned out regularly; fence and farm equipment need maintained; your garden will need plowed, weeded, fertilized and watered, etc., etc.  The chores on a farm are varied and many, but all of the hard work can be very rewarding.  So the next time you go to a grocery store and pick up some produce or a package of steaks, someone, somewhere, put in a lot of hard work to bring that food to your table—and they probably wouldn’t change a thing.

As I have been going door-to-door over the past few weeks, people have been asking me the same question: “What will be your number one priority as our judge?”  I’ve answered that question on multiple occasions in speeches and in private conversation, but for those who are still wondering, I thought it might be helpful for me to answer in this column. I believe that the primary responsibility of a circuit court judge is to protect the communities in which he/she lives and serves.  Sure, there are many, many other responsibilities that go along with the office, such as applying the law as it was written, working hard to make sure cases move toward a conclusion quickly and fairly, making sure that litigants are treated with courtesy and respect, etc., etc..  However, everything else takes a back seat to making sure our streets and our homes remain safe places to live and raise a family.  When parents send their kids off to school, they should not have to worry about whether their sons and daughters will return home safely. I don’t think anyone would argue that the number one threat to our safety today is the epidemic of illegal drugs that have flooded into our communities over the past several years.  Our state leads the nation in the rate of drug overdose deaths, and we lead by a very, very wide margin.  With the increase in drug use comes an associated increase in violent crime and deadly diseases transmitted by addicts who share needles to inject themselves.   As I have said on many occasions on the campaign trail, our society is under attack.  We have to fight back.  We have to take a stand together, as a community, to rid ourselves of this evil plague. As a judge, I believe it is my responsibility to do whatever I can to help eliminate this threat to the safety of our communities.  The way to do that is to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the supply of and demand for illegal drugs in our area.  To eliminate demand, we must work to educate our young people about the dangers of drug use, and to treat those who are already caught in the web.  Experience has proven that simply locking drug addicts in jail will do little to reduce the problem, because once they are released they are still addicted.  We need to utilize and expand the Drug Court program, and we need more treatment facilities for addicts. I take the opposite approach in dealing with those who sell drugs.  I believe the way to eliminate those people, and thus the supply of drugs, is to create an atmosphere where they are afraid to bring their drugs into our communities.  We do that by supporting law enforcement in their efforts to catch the dealers, and by making sure that once they are caught and convicted, they are given the maximum possible sentence for their crimes.  If they know they will face the most severe possible penalties if they are caught and convicted, they will go elsewhere to peddle their poison. There may have been a time when lesser sentences were appropriate for those convicted of selling drugs, depending upon the particular circumstances of their cases.  However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and the last few years have shown us that we are truly caught in desperate times.  Our people, our children, are dying every week.  Our response needs to be equal to the threat we are facing, and I don’t ever recall our communities being confronted with a greater threat than we currently face.  We have all heard the saying that says you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.  The drug dealers have been firing their guns at us for several years now.  It’s time for us to respond in kind.

Discussing with my husband why I wanted to delay opening our pool this year with my curious teenager listening, I pled my case with the little information that I knew about the 17-year locust and the fact that this spring marks a year that they will emerge from the ground. I know they will come for a few weeks, be a bit of a nuisance and then be gone, so I just thought we should wait.  I certainly don’t want to be out there swatting them away from me or the pool! Well, I didn’t realize the impact this would have on my daughter until the other day. Dealing with the typical mid-week exhaustion, I was running errands after work including some grocery shopping when I was walking through the aisles of our local Kroger store and my cell phone started ringing.  Expecting to hear the latest request to be added to my shopping list, I was rather shocked to hear a crackling voice of terror on the other side of the phone from my 15-year-old daughter, Aleigha, because her personality is not anywhere near frantic. In fact, she is the calmest one of us all.  It was just then that she managed to get the words out, “I don’t know what I just did or what I just clicked on…” At that moment when I realized she was not harmed, my immediate thought then went to WHAT DID SHE DO TO MY COMPUTER?  Then she said,  “These things are so scary.  I am not going outside at all!” Remember now, she is 15, so she has no idea what this 17-year phenomenon entails. Yep.  She looked up a cicada. I agree with her 100 percent that these things are very scary to look at and the thought of them flying around and possibly landing on my head makes my stomach turn, but for the sake of the children, I know I must be strong, so I explained that they would only come for a few weeks and be gone. That was not good enough.  Nope.  My Aleigha did some research and wanted to look for holes in our yard so we could spray those holes and the bugs would not have the opportunity to emerge from the ground.  Again, being the strong one here, I suggested that perhaps because it snowed in April, that many won’t be able to even rise out of the ground and we may just have a mild case. Not good enough either. More research.  Every noise she hears outside she thinks are the locust coming.  I explain that she will know the noise when they arrive. It is a hum you just recognize. Now as we are not so enthusiastically awaiting the arrival of the cicadas, we have gone over our calendar to develop strategies for how we will handle our outside events during this timeframe.  Basically, we do not have a plan. We can’t say for sure what this spring will bring or how long it will last, but as I explained to my daughter, I do not ever remember the locust being so bad that it made any particular impact on me, so hopefully this will come to pass quicker than not. So, we haven’t opened the pool yet and we decided to go out west on vacation to run away for a little relief once they arrive.  In the meantime, we will try to face them fearlessly, but I have a feeling you may hear a couple screaming girls here in the Valley in the very near future.

Throughout my career as an attorney, I have had the opportunity to speak with many people about very difficult situations in their lives. In these conversations, there have been times where the person I am speaking with has had a strong legal claim and has suffered great damages, but we have not been able to help them.  One of the reasons a person may not be able to file a lawsuit is because of something called a statute of limitation. A statute of limitation is a law that limits the amount of time someone has to file a lawsuit.  The amount of time provided by the law is incredibly important.  Moreover, each state has its own specific laws regarding the amount of time someone has to file.  While some exceptions exist, if the statute of limitation for a claim passes, the claim will no longer be able to be brought. For example, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, the statute of limitation for a personal injury case is generally two years from the time of the injury.  Therefore, if someone was hit by a drunk driver on April 22, 2014, they would have until April 22, 2016 to file suit.  If the person does not file suit by April 22, 2016, they would not be able to bring their claim.  Additionally, the injured person would have to contact an attorney well in advance of the April 22, 2016 deadline to give the attorney enough time to file the case. Every type of claim has a statute of limitation.  Therefore, it is important for a person to be aware of their time restriction regardless of whether they are claiming a contract was breached, their property was damaged or an insurance company improperly denied their claim.  As a result, I would recommend anyone who thinks they may have a claim to contact an attorney as soon as possible. At Bordas & Bordas, a case’s statute of limitation is one of the first things we look at when deciding whether we will be able to help someone.  If any of our readers have a question regarding a potential claim, I would encourage them to reach out to our firm.  All of our initial consultations are always free.  Additionally, if we cannot help someone, I always do my best to try and point the person in the right direction.

I hear and see young adult children still living at home a lot these days. (I have one who still lives at home.) People will ask, why do they still live with you? Well, it’s just easier and cheaper for them to live in our homes/basements than to move out on their own.  Some are not good with their money and would be evicted and broke before they even moved in to their new place, others have student loans that they have to pay back before they can even think of moving out.  Then there are the credit cards that most of them have that they think they don’t need to pay on every month, which will destroy their credit for almost the rest of their lives. We as parents try to make sure our children learn the value of working for and using money, but no matter how hard we try, some of our children have to learn the hard way and hit rock bottom with finances before they truly understand the big bad real world of credit and money. College campuses are filled with credit card companies giving out “free” gifts if you sign up for their card on that day.  They extend what I think is an outrageous credit limit to these children and most don’t have jobs to pay the bill when it comes due.  They are too busy buying stuff that they think they need.  It’s really just stuff they want and by the end of all this, they are in way over their heads and drowning in debt. This, to me, is why most young adults live at home with their parents. Plus we still feed them, do their laundry, keep the house clean, cook and last but not least, keep a roof over their heads and they know most parents will never ask/tell them to leave. We love our children so much that we are a willing to let them live with us for the rest of our lives, or do we pay for them to live in their own place?  Regardless of how it works out, it’s scary to think if something happens to me, what will happen to them? I raised two boys the same way. One went off to college and has lived on his own ever since and he’s out of state. My other son still lives at home with us and he tell us all the time that he’s living with us until he’s 50.  Only 25 more years to go!!!  It’s OK for our kids to live with us. At least we get to see them once in awhile as opposed to having a child move out or away and never seeing them. We love our children no matter where they live. Just remember,  we may have to live with our children in what they call our “golden years.”  We can repay them for when they lived with us all those years ago!!!! Rock on, people. Rock on.

I was driving to the office the other morning listening to the local radio station and the hosts were having a very inspirational discussion about life and how we all have experienced difficulties at one time or another, whether that be death of loved ones, losing a job, illnesses etc. Although those difficult times are hard on us and we probably all wish we could rid ourselves of those life experiences, without those difficulties would we really know how to appreciate the good in life?  As I look back on the years past in my life and think about all of the difficulties I have personally experienced, it really inspired me to stop and appreciate what I do have. We might not have what we would like to have in life, and while we should never stop striving to always do better in our lives, I also think it is important to stop and appreciate what we do have.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day struggles of life and to get down about all the struggles that you may be experiencing, but when you have a moment to reflect on those struggles consider that you almost always gain something from them, learn something new, perhaps start a new chapter in your life or just build your only personal strength.  It is so easy to get down about what we don’t have because it is part of human nature to always want more than what we do have, but there are far less fortunate people in this world and someone out there is having a harder time with life’s struggles. The radio show message really opened my eyes to think in a new way, instead of dwelling on what could be, be excited about what is.  Live your life to the fullest and enjoy yourself.  Be happy in all that you do and when you hit a bump in the road, give yourself time to morn or reflect on that situation, take away from it what you can and keep striving on. I think we should all take a moment today and stop and think about what we are so fortunate to have in our individual lives and be thankful for those difficulties in life we have experienced because without them perhaps we would not be who we are today.