My first tattoo

I just got my first tattoo today
on my 24th birthday! It is of a
ladybug. I have been thinking
for a while about getting a
ladybug for a tattoo. I think
ladybugs are really cute. I got
the tattoo on my right shoulder.
I also want to get a tattoo for
the Japanese symbol of either
love or peace, or maybe both.
Another one that I want to
get would be in memory of my grandmother who
died last November. She was German, so I was
thinking of either the outline of Germany filled in
with color with her name and birth and death
dates on it, the German flag with her name and
birth and death dates on it, or the outline of
Germany filled in with the colors of the German
flag and her name and birth and death dates.
That is one that I'm still not sure about because
I want to try to make up my own tattoo idea for that.

First anniversary

It's hard to believe that it has been a year since my mother-in-law passed away. If it wasn't for her, my husband Rolf and I wouldn't have had the wedding that we did in May 2006! She insisted on planning the whole thing, despite being tired all the time from her cancer and chemotherapy multiple times every month! The night before she died, I convinced my husband after I had gotten off work to go down to the hospital when he got out of work. He hates hospitals, so I knew that he didn't like that idea, but I kept bugging him about coming to the hospital after he was done at work.
He is now glad he stopped at EMMC on the way home that night, because the next morning at about 4am we got a call from his dad, who had stayed overnight at the hospital, saying that she had just died.
I miss her a lot, but I know that my husband and father-in-law miss her even more!

Springtime

Springtime has come once again. I can barely see through the trees to the house next door now since there are so many leaves on the trees now.

The lilac bushes and apple trees are in full bloom and beautiful as ever. There is that renewed smell in the air, the scent of new growth, life, the smell of rain. The scent of sunshine on the earth.

Back in March, I went to the Boston Flower Show with my father-in-law and took lots of great photos of landscape displays, flowers, and flower displays. That day it was really warm and slightly breezy in South Boston. All the snow was gone and the feeling of spring was in the air.

Soon after getting back to Bangor, we received a few big snowstorms that dumped onto the state of Maine. The hope of the arrival of spring got postponed. This was a disappointment, considering that we had already had a week long taste of spring in mid-March.

Now that it's the end of May, the snow is gone for at least six months. About a month ago I planted some flowers and they are starting to come up out of the soil. The feeling of the soil between my fingers felt wonderful. I even planted some marigolds around the 16 foot flagpole I bought my husband for his birthday.

It's hard to believe that Memorial Day has already gone by, and pretty soon it will be the Fourth of July. I'm looking forward to the American Folk Festival in August, but that doesn't mean that I want the end of spring and beginning of summer to breeze by quicker than the blink of an eye. It seems like winter lasts forever, then when spring comes it goes by too fast and then the same happens with summer. The process repeats itself and the only thing that happens is that we all get older.

Right now, I'm trying to savor the warm spring weather before it gets cold again, which unfortunately, is continually inevitable.

I'm rather excited about Christmas and all of the festivities that go along with the season. Recently though, especially since Thanksgiving has passed, I have felt like Dr. Seuss's "The Grinch" when I am at work. This tends to happen when it's really busy, after all, I do work for the largest corporation in the world....WALMART!!!

People spend way too much every year at Walmart, and I'm no exception. There are some customers that go into the Walmart I work at on a daily basis. That doesn't include those who work there. They spend a shit load of money shopping for materialistic crap that they don't need, then complain about how they have no money left to go grocery shopping or pay the bills, etc.

One day I heard a story that left me in disbelief. One of the associates that works in the toy department was saying that a woman who had come shopping with her daughter had made the irresponsible choice of purchasing a toy for her child and took the clothes she was going to get out of the shopping cart and left them on one of the shelves of toys. That didn't make much sense to me that a person thought it was a better choice to buy the toy instead of the clothing. Clothing is a basic necessity, especially in places such as Maine that get cold during the winter. On the other hand, toys are a luxury, which means therefore that they are not essential for living.

Then there are the children who go around Walmart with their parents, either sitting in the shopping cart, or walking beside it, and cry, throw temper tantrums and scream about wanting this toy or that toy. Kids these days tend to be way too spoiled for my liking. Christmas is less than a month away, yet children who I witness shopping with their families cannot seem to bear waiting to get that toy that they want so badly. Some of these children are the spawn of people who spend hundreds of dollars a year per child on Christmas toys, yet these are also the ones who wonder why their kids don't behave when they take them shopping to retail stores nationwide.

These bratty children should be fortunate to get spoiled, yet the want more. When I was a kid, my brothers and I were a charity case. We learned not to expect to see everything we wanted for Christmas under the tree Christmas morning or in brightly wrapped packages on our birthdays. We were the ones that got put on the charity Christmas lists and got used clothing from the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. We were the ones that grew up in section eight housing where there was always someone stealing something. One year it was my Cabbage Patch Kids doll whose head got ripped off, the next brother's bike, the year after it was Barbie dolls or Power Ranger toys.

Last weekend Rolf and I volunteered at the American Folk Festival doing the bucket brigade. The bucket brigade is a large group of volunteers who wander through the crowds of festivalgoers and carry buckets, collecting donations that help support the expenses to put on this event every year. This is the second year of the American Folk Festival.

In 2002-2004, Bangor hosted the National Folk Festival which greatly helped with kicking off the American Folk Festival.

This year, there was a band that was scheduled to attend the folk festival last year, but was not able to get here as the result of Hurricane Katrina. The Bahama Junkanoo Revue was dressed colorfully with extravagant costumes and carrying french horns, drums, saxophones and some various other musical instruments.

Every year, both the National and American Folk Festivals have been a massive amount of fun, vivid colors, and a variety of music and delicious foods from around the world.

It takes many volunteers and lots of money to hold the folk festival costing several million dollars each year, and hundreds of people.

I finally had the opportunity to go to the beach on August 8. I went with Rolf (my husband) to Sand Beach on Mount Desert Island for a picnic and to have some fun. That day there were many small yachts and sailboats on the waters of Frenchman Bay. It was a hot sunny day we were in need of some relief from Bangor. We spent a few hours at the beach soaking up the sun and having our picnic lunch.

When I was little, I used to body surf on the waves as they came into the beach. Then I would get out of the water after a few hours of nerve-numbing temperatures, get something to eat and drink, and my favorite thing- laying on my beach towel sprawled out on the sand and let myself tan in the hot summer heat. There were also the times that I would join in building sand castles, or digging really deep holes (about 3-4 feet deep) then crawling in and burying myself up to my neck in sand.

After leaving Sand Beach that day, we proceeded on to Thunderhole. Thunderhole is an inlet in the rocks that was worn away over a long period of time. At the end of the space is a partially enclosed area. When the waters rush into this space, the rocks on the bottom churn about. Air gets trapped in pockets and the water slamming against the backside of this cave-like place causes the water to have the effect of sounding like thunder, thus why it is known as Thunderhole (aka another tourist spot for vacationers from elsewhere). It's a pretty fascinating place for someone who has never been before, whether you are a tourist or someone who has just moved to Maine from another state.

That day, tourists were swarming everywhere. On the beach, the mountains, and in Bar Harbor. Recreation vehicles were lining the street by one of the parks in Bar Harbor, and hundreds of out-of-state cars, trucks, and vans were cluttering the narrower street in this quaint little town which has an exploding population during the tourist season, from May through October.

Working at Walmart

Working at Walmart is mundane. It wouldn't
be so bad if I had a different assistant
manager that I worked under for softlines,
or if I wasn't in ladieswear and on my feet
running around day after day. After a while
I begin to feel like a robot, doing the
same repetitive motions over and over again.

I get to do the same things every day. The
good part of it is that I learn something
new there practically every day. The one
good thing about Walmart, compared to
Burger King is that I don't have to worry
about getting burger grease on my hands,
fryer grease on my shoes and arms, and
smelling like a french fry every day when
I get out of work. Plus I don't have to
wear a uniform. I can wear my own clothes.
So if I want to wear my Superman shirt,
I'll wear it. Or if I want to wear my
Cheetos shirt, I'll wear it. The only
part about it that stinks is not being
able to wear shorts in the summer, but
we still can wear capris. Wahoo!