Help others Donate

Hi everyone, I just realized that I haven't spoken on here about one big aspect of my life. So here we go lol. Several years ago, myself and a few friends, decided that we wanted to help people that are less fortunate than us. We were motivated to do this, after seeing a homeless with his family on a street corner wearing rags. We each took our money together, bought them a burger from McDonalds, (I know its not a lot), and then took them to a good will store where we bought them each a set of clothes and a new pair of shoes. Since then, my friends and I have tried desperately to continue this. We have sent out many letters, asking for people to donate any items that they no longer use, so that we can give them to those that will use them. I know that many people donate their items to the good will, or the salvation army, ours put a price on the items, and I don't think that's fair. I think if they were given the clothes, then they shouldn't be able to put a price on them. So we receive clothes, and boxes of things all the time, and every Saturday we go out and give the donated items to those who are in need of it. How do we know who needs the items? Simple, we have signs posted up around town that encourage those that are in need of things, to send us a note, letter, email, or simply come by and tape a note to the door, with their name, address and the items they need. We don't need a lastname, because I think it's too personal and may deter some people from coming by even when they are in need. So that's what I do on my free time, and every Saturday, the rest of the week, we all go through the boxes and sort out what each person needs and hopefully are able to give them at least something for that week. It makes the people receiving the items happy and it makes me feel amazing. If you would like to donate any items please feel free to contact me, I'll gladly send you the information you need to send it. Thank you again for reading, thanks in advance to any help you can give.

BTW WE DO NOT ACCEPT MONEY!!! If you feel you must send some type of money, please make it a money order, or something to that affect, but in all honesty we do not need any money. I nor my friends started doing this with the idea of getting paid. We are paid when we are able to help others, that's our payment. When I am able to give a shirt to a girl who doesn't have one that fits, and she smiles that huge smile, I'm paid.

Thank you again,

Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com

Update on my life....

As many of you know, I've been extremely busy with school, but it has been going well aside from all the work lol. This post isn't about school however, this is about what I've been over the past several days. As some of you know I have been looking at houses and have been going to see a few but have only found a couple that I enjoyed enough that I wanted to purchase them. So the other day doing my typical house search I ran across a house that seemed like it was in a good neighbor, seemed like it would be big enough and wasn't far from where I currently live so I decided to go see it. My family and I load up in the car, drive over to see it, it may have be 10 minutes from where I live if that. So we get there my fiance says, "hey I heard stories about this house when I was younger", and of course I ask what type of stories, and he just says "oh just stories", and so we look around the outside while waiting for the lady to come show us it, and it's close to all the schools, the middle school is pretty much in it's back yard. It was close to stores and restuarants so I was pretty happy with it, it needed it's grass mowed and you could tell it hadn't been lived in for a bit but it appeared to be a good house from the outside. Finally the lady arrives, she shows us the inside, it was cool looking, she said they had added on the second floor in the mid 70s and that it was to be sold as soon as possible and for us to just make an offer and she would send it in. The carpet was different in some of the rooms, and the bathtub was rather old looking and had some staining in it, but that was fine, we can replace a tub and it didn't have a shower so we'd replace it anyways. We talked about it for a bit and ask the general questions about its foundation, and heating and cooling, and pipe work etc, and I noticed that the lady seemed really anxious when we walked toward certain areas of the house and she seemed to want to go outside as opposed to staying inside the house. It was 106 degrees outside, it was hot as hell and the house seemed a bit cooler given it wasn't cool but it was a lot cooler than outside. I don't like seeing people uncomfortable so I ask her if she'd rather go outside and talk, and I didn't even finish the sentence and she was like "YES, Yes please can we go outside, if you don't mind". And so I agree, we go outside, and my curiousity is being peaked because of her reaction. So I say how my fiance' had said there were stories about the house when he was growing up, and ask if she knew anything about it, that's when shit got weird. She turns pale white, ghostly white, and I'm like "are you ok ma'm" and shes all "yes, I'm fine, ummm, there's always stories about older houses you know how that goes" and I say "yeah" and nod, and I'm waiting for her to answer my question but I see that she's just got this terrified look on her face, and so my fiance' asks her if she's sure she's ok, she's looking rather pale, and if she needs to sit down. And she says to us, "I know I can lose my job by telling you this, but you don't need to buy this house, don't buy it please.", and I'm like, "What, wait why not", and she just tells us to go home and search it. So she gets in her car and leaves, and we are standing there like what the hell was that. So we go home and of course I'm going to search the damn internet for the house. It only took a few minutes for me to find it and what I found absolutely terrified me.
The article read like something out of a horror novel, a lady who once was a teacher at the middle school behind her house, was killed in that house. Her name was Mrs. Clay, she was awaken by an intruder, who broke in he had been watching her for a few weeks, knew that she was a widow and lived alone, waited by a tree outside her house for almost 4 hours by his own admission, waited for her to go to sleep, cut her screen door, and unlocked her back door. He crept into her room where he beat her with a rubber malet which he found in her kitchen, raped her, stabbed her over 47 times before dragging her body to the bathroom placing her in the tub and practically decapitating her. The family that moved in after her death had added on to the second floor and never took out the tub that she was officially killed in. The STAINS that we seen in the tub where that of her blood!!! When I finished reading the articles about that house, I called the lady thanked her dearly, decided that from this point on I will research every house I even remotely think I'm interested in because according to our laws, you only have to inform a person of a prior death in the house if it has been less than 2 years since it occurred. So that was my experience with house searching, it's scary as hell to think I was in a house where someone was murdered, let alone tried to scratch the blood stains off before realizing they were stains in the tub and all while not knowing anything that had occurred in the house. How many of you have ever experienced something like that? Anyone every researched their house to find out it's history, you may be surprised what you find.

Willow Monroe
www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com

MY PHONE!!!

Oh My Goodness!!! My phone!!! AHHHHH!!! Ok so you get the idea, something very wrong has happened to my phone and here's what...

As many of you know, today was my first day back to college, and other than the tons of homework it was pretty good, given I'm over looking the six flights of stairs somehow I'm hoping they disappear before I go back but that's not going to happen but in my dreams it will hehehe. So I was tired, my body hurt from all the stairs, I've got a ton of homework to do, I've been cleaning the house and helping the kids with their work, when I decide it would be a great idea to take a shower. I can relax because the kids will be in bed, it's gonna be fun and well deserved. WRONG!!! So here I am in the bathroom showers running, I'm getting all my stuff ready and I happen to bring my phone with me so in case my fiance' calls I can answer it, but I had the music player on (I have/had a Matrix Pantech phone), my youngest son bless his heart, came into the bathroom and decided he thought mama would like to hear her music up close, and the lil darling dropped it, yes, he dropped my phone in the shower. Now if he wasn't such a good kid, and so cute I probably would have rung his neck, but since I knew he was only trying to help mama, and it was an accident. I simply reached quickly in and got my phone out, and yelled to him AHH go get mommy the dryer!!! He runs to my room, gets me the blow dryer brings it back as fast as his little feet could bring him, and I knew without much thought my phone was destroyed, but I wanted to try to save it, and we plugged in the blow dryer and he was wiping and I was drying and he knew that mommy needed her phone, and he knew it wasn't gonna work because the light's wouldn't come on. So I go ahead and get in the shower, and when I get out, my beautiful son had put one of his fake phones that's almost identical to my real phone, on my desk, and had his brothers help him write me a note, that reads as follows

"Mommy I'm sorry I dropped your fone, you can have mine". Now I know to some that doesn't sound like anything special, but it melted my heart. He is such a precious boy I can't be mad at him especially when he wants to give me his toys to try to make up for breaking mine, so sweet. So needless to say my phone is broken I think I'm going to let it dry out and see what tomorrow brings, if all else fails I'll buy another one.


Lesson from this story~~~ Be prepared for anything when you have your electronics in the bathroom, especially if you have children, and remember accident's happen, things can be replaced but people can't.

Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com
www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com

Dragonfly

This is so freaky, I have had many animals throughout my life, and anytime one of them passes away we bury it at the cemetary, not a pet one just the normal one where everyone suppose to buried. I sometimes go and put flowers on their graves and things, it's weird I know because to many they are just stupid animals, but to me they were part of my family and were there when I needed them the most and so I treat them just like I would humans. Except this time when we go there it was different, there was a new planted person about 7 feet or so from where I bury my animals, the body was new and you could tell because of the soil. I didn't pay too much attention to it, I walked past and went to visit my animals, but while I was visiting them the craziest freakiest thing ever happened to me. I kept seeing this blue like glowing thing out the corner of my eye and when i'd look it would be gone, and it happened a few times and I looked at my fiance' and said "watch over there and just tell me if you see anything", and so he does for a bit then he's like no I don't see, wait, what the hell was that, and I was like "what did you see", and he's all I don't know, it's like a blue bug or something, and I was like "it was flying wasn't it", and he's all yeah, and so he watches some more, and sure enough he see's it again so this time he starts walking over towards it, and he sees it, it's like hiding kinda, and I of course wanting to see what it was go behind him, and it's this huge dragonfly, it's the most beautiful dragonfly I've ever seen it was big and blue and had some tints of teal and yellow but mainly a bright blue. My fiance' tells me don't touch it because they sting, so of course I don't because I don't want to be stung and besides that I'm not a big bug fan. While we are watching it fly and swoop I notice we are close to the newly planted person, so I being nosey, go and look to find out who it was that passed away, this is where the freaky part comes in, it says it's a lady named Adelle she was born in 1936 and died this year. Now none of that in itself seemed freaky, but the fact that they nicknamed her "Dragonfly" and they put a blue dragonfly on her headstone, yeah it freaked me out. I can't help but wonder if that was her somehow communicating that she was ok and at peace.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? If so how did you react, if not how would you react?

Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com
www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com

College

What a week it has been, between fixing up things in the house and rearranging, and getting the kids to school and my baby to work I have let it slip my mind that as of Monday morning, I too will be in school. That's right, this soon college has begun, I get to do internship which I am happy about but nervous too, I'm worried what if I mess up, but that's why I've went to college this whole time, to perfect my skills. I'll try to blog as much as I can even if it's just short sweet somethings, to let ya'll know that i'm still alive. Wish me luck, I'm glad to see some of you have been leaving comments and writing me email's. If you have questions as I've said before feel free to contact me, either via email or through comments. I will be happy to respond to you.

Willow Monroe
www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com
www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com

WillowRMonroe@gmail.com

Follow up to Strange Calls

This is some of the pictures of the fire that happened at my fiance' job, (read strange calls for further info). Our truck prior to him moving it, was sitting about 20 feet if that away from he little front door of the shop, the car right beside our truck (that was closest to the shop) had melted head lights, and their tires were melting, which gives you an idea of just how hot this fire got in a short amount of time. Let me know what you think, these pictures were taken with a cell phone so not the best but better than most, also the pictures go backwards, so to see the beginning of the fire just start at the bottom of this post and go up. Thanks again for visiting come back anytime

Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com


In this picture you can see into the shop, if you look close you'll notice the front grill of a diseal, that was a complete truck, it's now sitting on its' frame, along with a work truck that had been purchased only a few months prior to this fire, both of which were total losses.
This is the outcome, looking at the damage that was done to the building, obviously a total loss

Notice in the picture the two guys walking, the one in the gray shirt will be putting water in his truck and blasting it onto the fire momentarily, this is when the fire trucks ran out of water, and asked the works to load their trucks and reverse the flow to blow back the water onto the fire.

This is pretty self-explanatory, its just the fire and rescue team

This is another angle to show just how bad the fire got, on the other side of that black diseal truck is tanks, tanks full of diseal. The idea at the moment was not just stop the fire, prevent it from reaching the diseal.

Here is another shot, you can see the third door with black soot around it, it's the office that was where the guy Tony who was watching the shop and first to discover the fire was at, prior to going into the shop room to see what was happening.

My fiance' first seen black smoke and thought it was a small amish store, that was until he seen the amish store wasn't on fire and then knew it was his job. This picture is of what he seen first when he arrived at the yard after moving our truck, if you look close, you can see theres a small door with fire in it, next to the garage door with lots of fire. Our truck was about 20 feet from that door prior to him moving it, the car beside it had melted head lights, and it's tires had began to melt as well.

Talking ATM

Today I went to the vision bank ATM; I’ve never used it before but heard the fees were cheaper than the other bank’s here. So I go to it, slide the card, and then I hear a voice, you ever seen the movie Resident Evil, any of them, you know the little girl Angela Ashford that pops up and says creepy things to the groups as they walk through the hive. Yeah, her voice, it was her voice saying “Hello, thank you for choosing vision bank, please enter your pin.” I’ve never been to a talking ATM, I always go to the boring one’s I guess it just sits there, and gives you money when you slide your card. So I do as she says, I enter my pin number, and then she says to me “please wait while your transaction is processing”, creepy voice, I’m thinking to myself “did you drink too much caffeine today, are you hallucinating”, so of course I ask the kids in the back seat, “do ya’ll hear that voice”, and they’re all “yeah, she sounds like the girl from resident evil, make her say something else mama”, and she does, it spits out my money, and she says “Thank you again for using Vision Bank, Goodbye”. It was crazy, but it sold me on the idea, I’m going to go to the talking ATM from now on, not because of fee’s they are the same as my previous bank, but because it talks. It’s kind of like the gecko on TV, the rates may not be better but not all insurance places have a talking gecko either lol. Is this something new, have you been to a talking ATM what did it sound like, did it sell you on the idea of using them, and if you haven’t would you use a different service if it had a cute little talking gecko, or even a talking ATM?


Willow Monroe

http://www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com/
http://www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com/

Bugging Out

As promised I would tell all of my “happenings” to make up for my recent absence. Before I begin, let me state a few facts about myself

I hate bugs, plain and simple, I hate them can’t stand don’t want to be around them hate them
I hate spiders, snakes, scorpions, oh and the gecko, not the cute on TV but real ones, which is a story for another time. I also dislike birds of any type, they have beaks they can peck and they dislike me as much as I dislike them, and yes a duck counts as a bird and I’ve had them chase me before and it was not fun, at least not at the time now I can laugh about it lol.
I don’t like snails, slugs, rats, or anything that is remotely slimy, or has a chance of eating its way through a box. There are other things that I dislike but here are just the top few I guess you could say.

So now for my “happening” the other day, it was on Friday I think but not positive, we were going to the wal-mart to get some groceries. My fiancé in the driver seat, me in the middle seat, his work junk riding shotgun, and the kids in the back seat. Music up and windows down, eating sno cones having a jolly time, and what to my horrific surprise do I see, this thing, this big giant bug thing, with what appears to be stingers on its tail, and it’s on me. Of course I scream and knock it off, I quickly remove my seat belt, and am squatting in the seat, both feet in the seat, my fiancé trying to control the car, me trying to climb out while it’s still in motion, all while still screaming AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT’S A BUG, IT’S A BIG BUG!!!!!!!!!!!! Sno cone is everywhere, the truck comes to a stop, the kids are panicking because mom’s screaming about a bug, (my children are like me, they can’t stand bugs), my fiancé trying to calm me down, begins to move his junk in the seat next to my feet, what to my horror again do I see, the big giant bug, I jump over the seat, am now sitting in my son’s lap with my feet up in the air, screaming about the bug. I help myself up and perch in between the seats themselves, so I’m literally on the top half of the seats in our truck. I’m ask my fiancé in a panicked voice “Did you kill it”, in which he replies “No, and I don’t know where it went.” I lose it again, I have myself a little come apart right there in the middle of the seat, then I hear the kids start screaming “WE SEE IT, AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH IT’S BACK HERE” I do the most rationale thing, I jump over the seat, open the door jump out of the car, open the back door, grab my kids, and let my fiancé fend for himself, wielding only a shoe to fight the bug. I’ve stopped screaming, the kids have stopped screaming and we are all looking, like “this is it, daddy’s gonna die, the big bug is gonna eat him, then come kill us”, but thankfully my fearless fiancé says “ok, its fine I let it go, its out the car”, in my head I have a thought “what did he say”, so I ask, what did you do with it, did you smash it really good, is it in thousands of bits because if not, it may come back and eat us”, he of course laughs and says, no I let it go, it won’t hurt you. We get back in the car and alls fine, and I tell my fiancé “honey, from now on can you leave the critters that you work with, at your work instead of bringing them home for us to see”, we all laugh and with sno cone soaked seats and clothes, and red faces and messed up hair, we go into our wal-mart and we successfully got our groceries. So what is it that one can learn from this experience, obviously I’m terrified of bugs, you also learn that if you are with me and a bug is around us I’m more prone to having a come apart, you will also notice that a time with me is usually a time filled with laughs, and while many people probably would be offended at their significant other laughing at them, I think it’s one of the greatest things about my fiancé the fact that we can laugh at each other and still love each other means a lot to me, and more times then not he’s usually simply laughing at how I say something, the look on my face, my actions, or the situation in itself, and the fact that after it's all over I'm laughing at me too, makes it even better so I don’t take it personally.

I’ll write about my other experiences with animals I dislike soon, until then, what animal(s) if any do you like or dislike, and how many are you afraid of?


Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com
www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com

Deer, why are you

If you’re like me you’re probably saying to yourself, she spelt dear wrong, it should be DEAR, not DEER. However, it’s not a typo, this blog is about my deering experience if you will. It all began with me wanting to go look at a home, but we didn’t have a full address, we knew it was on north 1st street and had a MLS# and a phone number. So we decided to call the phone number and spoke to a lady about how to find the full address of this home that we felt would be nice to buy and fix up, we gave her the MLS# she said she’d call us back within the hour, the hour passed and no returned call, so we went and looked at a few other places then gave her a call back, in which she tells us she forgot and will look up the information immediately and give us a call back. So we come back home for about 30 minutes and then she calls us and tells us the home is pending contract so she simply gives us directions to the house, and I say to the house loosely and you’ll understand why in a bit. So here we go, were’ in our truck, the windows down the boys in the back seat driving, and we see some nice scenery, and we turn left and go into a place that looks like our current community its cute and small, then we cross onto a highway, and I start thinking, gosh this is way out here, and then we turn onto a dirt road, and then I really start thinking and even say out loud to my fiance’ “ this house is out in the boonies, no?” and laugh, that would be the first and last laugh during the next 15 minutes. No it’s not because my fiance’ did something wrong, or because one of the kids misbehaved, it’s because as I finish my laugh, I look up and notice something in the bushes just up ahead, and then I notice that it’s deer, yes deer. Let me stop for a minute, I may be from a small town but I’ve never seen a deer up close, I have seen on TV how they will bust through a window and hoof people to death. So I’m sitting there while the car is moving forward, and I notice there’s not just 1, there are 4 different deer crossing, we are now may 2 feet in front of them and I start screaming, not a small scream a big loud scream of panic and terror, now I’m not just completely screaming some of my screaming is words, like for instance DEER AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH STOP, TURN AROUND OMG OMG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Yeah so, I was screaming and there this one deer who has horns, and looks like something from a Santa movie because he flies, yes not steps, not runs and jumps, but flies over this damn fence that had to have been at least 6 feet high, I’m having a little come apart right in the front seat, my body has went into complete fight or flight mode, and it’s telling me there are more deer, than you and one has horns and can fly and you need to get the hell out of there. And then there are another 2 deer that have ran across the road once and are now back in front of our truck looking at us, and at the two sides of the road as if to say “Which way do we go George, which way do we go” seriously, they were looking at an escape, and finally to my happiness they moved their asses back to the woods. So now it’s just me against the other two one of which has already jumped a fence and is running away, the other just standing in someone’s yard. I’m still screaming, and panicking, and my fiancé in a soft, calm, monotone voice looks me dead in the face and says “Why are you screaming”? seriously, he said it as if I had lost my damn mind, that any minute someone was going to be coming to give me a shot of Thorazine and straight jacket I’m not kidding, I really wish I was but I’m dead serious. I look at him, like “Why the hell aren’t you screaming”, and then I notice, no one is screaming but me, the kids are fine, he’s fine, I’m still screaming, and I begin to say to myself, “Stop screaming, stop screaming”, but they just kept coming out. Finally after what seemed an eternity, the truck goes back to moving, and the deer are gone and I can breath again, I’m calming down and I look at my fiance’ and ask “Why did you look at me, like I lost my damn mind, why are you so calm”, and he says to me “it was just deer”, just like that, like it was something he’s seen a billion times over, and I’m like, “yeah a deer that can kill us”, and “stomp our heads”, “I don’t want to die with a hoof mark in my head” he laughs, you heard me right, he’s laughing at me, and then looks at me and says “they are more scared of you then you are of them”, “they run from people”. I look at him and say “oh really, because I recall those two ran past us then ran back in front of us and started looking around, probably for a place to hide the bodies”, yes I know deer can’t carry a body, and I don’t think they eat meat, but I was in the moment. My fiance’ just laughs, and I tell him, I’d never seen a deer up close, a live one, and that I know those were Santa’s deer because the one flew over the damn fence, and how the movie Bambi is a damn lie because none of those deer were cute and none had white little tails, these deer were all wild and crazy. So we were still driving during this conversation, and we were still looking for this house, and we’ve been driving down this same dirt road for a while and haven’t seen it yet, then the road goes into a fork, one way leads directly to a persons home, which we obviously knew wasn’t the place we were looking for, and the second road lead to somewhere but was curved so we didn’t know at that time what, so of course, we take the turn, and then we notice it’s a house, not just any type of house, this house looked like something out of a scary horror film, one in which I’m sure if we stuck around long enough would have starred someone like me getting slaughtered by whomever this house belonged too. Why was this house so creepy, I’m not sure, maybe it was the way it looked kinda ran down, or maybe it was the thousands of cars in the grass, or perhaps it was all the dead carcasses laying about, or the fish heads on the fence posts, or possibly the two attack dogs, one German shepherd the other a poodle, the German shepherd was smart he was going to attack when we got out of the truck, the poodle not so much, it began running toward us barking while the truck was still in motion. I again go into panic mode saying “this isn’t the house let’s go before we die and our heads end up on the fence post!!!” My fiance’ and children are laughing, we are backing out, everything’s fine and then the truck started to act up, so we have to turn it off, then hope it starts again, before someone resembling leather face from chainsaw massacre comes out and tries to eat us, and we are SOL if it doesn’t because we haven’t got our cell phones thinking we wouldn’t need them still being in town. Thankfully the truck started up again and we made it home safely. When we get home there was a voice mail on my phone from the lady saying there was a mistake in the directions and in the ad, instead of going across the highway to the dirt road make a right and follow the street down until the second stop sign then turn left, the house is on the left side. I listen to the message, and let my fiance’ hear it, and we both start laughing, this lady and this mis-written ad had gotten lost to the point, that I’m sure we would have been eaten by something had our truck not worked. So that’s it, that’s my first and hopefully last deer experience, I have no desire or need to see a deer again especially not up close.

Willow Monroe

www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com
www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com

Who are they now

I know I have been away for a while and I apologize for my absence. I’ve been so busy with getting ready for school to begin, not only for myself but my three boys going back to school as well. Over the past few days a lot has happened and I plan to tell you about them as quickly as I can, some you may find funny or silly, others you may find crazy, but either way I will be telling them as my schedule permits. I’ll begin with the most recent of these “happenings” first.

Last night while sitting in bed and being bored out of my mind, there was nothing worth watching on TV, I was tired of packing, and unpacking and I didn’t want to start doing that again. So I decided to get out my mini laptop and start a game that I called “Who are they now?” my objective was simple, I look up people that I went to school with and find out how much they’ve changed and in essence who are they now as opposed to who they were when I knew them in school. In all honesty I didn’t think I would have any luck with my game but I was bored so I was gonna give it a whirl worst case scenario I wouldn’t find anyone. However to my shocking surprised I actually found a lot of my old classmates, also to my shocking surprise was just how much some of them have changed, in some instances I would have never known who I was looking at, had they not had identifying marks, birth marks on their face for example, freckle patterns, eyes etc. Now before I go any further I want to state a few things, because I’m sure someone will read this and be like “People change” and yell at me for what I’m gonna say. So for the record I know people change, I’ve changed a lot since grade school and so I’m not saying that other’s don’t change, I’m simply stating that I was surprised by some things I learned while playing my game. So here’s some facts about myself that has happened to me over the years…

I grew up an angry child in a completely dysfunctional home, yet my family and I were close. I learned early on that as long as you’re smile people won’t ask questions, so it was no surprise to me that I’ve been in therapy more times that I can count. I went from being captain of the dance team to 16 and pregnant, from having no want or need to go to college, to completing high school before my class while pregnant and earning a degree in communications, and working on the second one. I went from living day by day and sleeping on a floor to living in an 8bed/8bath house that was loaded, then turned around and gave it all up for love. While I may not be proud of all the thing’s I’ve done in my life, they shaped me into the person I am now, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.

So now back to the original story, I know people change, if you placed pictures of me over the years next to each other you may not believe they are all of me, sometimes I find it hard to believe that they are me. So anyway, I’m playing my game, and finding people left and right, and I start realizing something (And I’m sure this is where people will start badgering me, saying the whole spill of how people change, and all this other stuff), I begin to notice...


THE SIZE 2 GIRLS
The Size 2 Girls were different; the size 2 girls at one time not so long ago were really pretty, peppy girls, who were skinny and the "it" girls. Now they are not so pretty, in school their motto was "if you aren't a size 2 or less you are fat" and thus in their mind none existent, now they are bigger than size 2 some with children some without, but still the point I’m making is they are bigger. Here comes my inner thoughts, I wonder if they would have still had their mentality of a “size 2 or less, or your none existent”, if they knew that in the future they would have been on the opposite side of the spectrum.

THE A SQUAD
I also noticed that some people that I knew were great students, decided against going to college and are now in their own words miserable. My inner thoughts “What happened to make them not go to college, was it that they didn’t want to, or did they not attend to retaliate against their parents, or was it another reason completely different”?


THE LADIES MAN
Another interesting thing I noticed was some of the guys I went to school with who were “ladies man” back in school are now single, and ugly. When I was in school the “ladies man” usually had his own car, money to spend, was always wearing the top name brands, didn’t speak to the ugly chicks (none size 2 girls). My inner thoughts “Was the way they treated people really how they were, was it not a façade put on to show others who the top dog was, was their personality really so bad that people wouldn’t want to be around them as they grew older”?


APPEARANCE
And another thing I noticed, was some of the guys who had typical boy cut, now have long hair, the girls that had been called dykes for short hair, now have long flowing locks. That part was shocking to me, especially Dale, who would have thought he’d look like someone out of a rock star performance. And then there was the dieting thing, girls who once were above the size 2 or less spectrum, now were closer and under the size 2, Catherine was at max a size 1, but I’m thinking double zero, when I knew her, to me she wasn’t fat, she was average, a size 5-6 at most now you can see her bones. I almost cried when I seen how much she had changed, I’ve battled with anorexia and bulimia, and it hurts me to think she may be struggling with the same problem. My inner thoughts “Did what the size 2 girls say to her make her that way, did she really believe you have to be a size 2 or less to be perfect and to exist, she was/is a beautiful person rather they knew it or not”.


THE FIGHTERS
And lastly I noticed that people who once were in different cliques and hated each other, those that would have physical altercations with each other, were friends now, I had to take a double look at some of them, and yes I know more badgering will probably follow because of this but oh well. I took the double look, not because I don’t think people can change, I know they can and I’m glad they are friends and were able to work through their issues, but I took double look because those were people who couldn’t stand by each other without throwing punches. The fighters were friends, those who were picked on during school because they were poor, who were treated like dogs, because they were big, who were knocked down and beat up because they did well in school but sucked at sports, these people are now friends, not associates, friends that actually hang out together in public. My inner thoughts “I am so proud of these people for changing and becoming great friends, they have much more forgiveness in them than I think I could have”.

So there it is, what started out as a game became something completely different, it went from fun because I’m bored, to searching for answers to why they changed, and trying to find a way to help them if they needed it. I wasn’t really every picked on, but I got called some names once in middle school and after fighting the boy, yes I said boy, I never got called names again, until high school when I got pregnant, and at that point in my life, I didn’t care enough about others to fight with people, I had already decided that if people don’t like me and accept me for who I am, then they can kiss my behind, because I won’t change for anyone, and I’m not going to pretend to be something or someone I’m not, I’m gong to be true to myself, and if doing that bothers them, I won’t be losing sleep over it.

How have you changed since grade school, how have those you knew in school changed, if they have changed at all?

Willow Monroe

http://www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com/
http://www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com/

Journey in Time

The other dayI ran across a blog that reminded me of one of my hobbies so I decided to write about it. I enjoy finding old pictures, journals, diaries, etc. I enjoy the feeling of connecting with people from the past and seeing the world through their eyes. I have several photos', a diary that speaks about the bombing of Pearl Harbor amongst other topics, and a journal from a man that served in the Vietnam War and suffered PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Here are some pictures I have, let me know if you like them and if you'd like to see more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Willow Monroe

http://www.willowmonroe.blogspot.com/

http://www.willowmonroe.wordpress.com/

Normal or Paranormal...

I want to know if anyone else has experienced this before. and before I explain what it is we (myself and family) have experienced I'm going to give you a bit of background information...I currently live in an older (built in 1938), two story home. We don't use the upstairs for anything other than storage because it hasn't been wired with ac/heating or electricity (there is however a ceiling fan with a light fixture but it doesn't work because again the electricity hadn't been wired for upstairs), it has three small (approximately 12 inch by 6 inch) windows that are nailed shut, we didn't nail them shut they were like that when we moved in and we just left them that way. Our upstairs also consists of three different closets all of which lock from the outside, none have door knobs you just pull them open and push them shut. Now while the pulling opening and pushing shut part sounds like an easy task it's not, the upstairs has carpet and the doors drag across the carpet when they are shut and opened making it more difficult than opening and shutting the normal door. Now it should be noted that while we have carpet in the upstairs area, carpet isn't in any of the closets. When we began moving in we noticed in the smallest upstairs closet (and by small I mean it's height is about 3 feet tall and about the 3 feet wide and no I'm not kidding it is that small if not smaller) we noticed that a board seemed out of place, so we nudged it with our foot, and there was a crawl space about 2 feet deep, there was old ragged clothing in it and we didn't think anything of it so we simply nailed the board back down placed our boxes and things in the closet and went on our way. We also had our homes foundation inspected since it was old to make sure it was sturdy and not shifting, according to the inspector our house was perfectly fine for being as old as it is.

Now lets get to what we've experienced. Since we've lived here which has been slightly over a year, we (myself and family 3boys, and my fiance') have experienced cold spots, wet walls for which there was no explaination, doors opening and shutting, sounds of people walking, whispering when no one was around, lights flickering and other things. However, with all of these experiences we never really thought too much about it, I brushed it off as being an older house, it's trying to settle, we've got carpet but underneath is wooden so that's where the creaks and noises come from etc. That was until more recently, it began when our cable kept messing up, it seemed like everytime we'd turn around to watch tv, our tv would pop up a poor signal sign and wouldn't work. So we call out the cable guys and a man named Steve came to our home to fix our cable, and I was home by myself, now I'm not one that's easily spooked, so when what happened that day happened I became a little paranoid I suppose for a couple of days after. I know your wondering what happened and I'm about to tell you. The morning had began like any other day I got up got the kids to school, seen my fiance' off to work, and since we were having a yard sale I had decided to go upstairs while it was still day time to get down some stuff for the sale. I had went up and down several times getting boxes and ended up picking up a box that wasn't going in our sale, so I go back up the staircase like I had done all day to put the box back and get another, when all the suddenI hear a voice ask me "would you like the light on" (Remember we have no electricity upstairs) I looked up and I seen this glowing figure thing, that looked like a little girl, I couldn't see her feet, however I did see her dress and her facial features even though she seemed translucent yet bluish looking, I dropped the box and ran down the stairs the fastest I've ever ran in my life. I slammed the door, and went outside to the front porch, and tried to calm myself, I told myself I was imagining things, that I didn't see what I know I seen and tried to shrug it off. A short time later our cable guy Steve came up, and I invited him into the house, and showed him what was happening with the tv, he said he'd look outside for the problem, and went out our backdoor. I stayed in the front room trying to tidy up some and I heard him talking, and of course I thought he was talking to me, so I walked through our dinning room and into our kitchen where he was closing our backdoor, and I was like "I'm sorry what did you say", and he looks at me and said while pointing toward my son's bedroom "I was just telling her, it was wired backwards and now it will work", I looked at him puzzled and said "who" and he says "that girl that just walked down here and went into that room" I started to get a bit nervous because I notice the door to the staircase which I had slammed is now open and told him "No one's here but me", and he says as he walks toward my son's bedroom "No that girl with blonde hair that...well she was right here" I take him through our entire house and show him no one is here but me, he turns pale white, gathers his belongs, tells me he won't be able to come back to our house again and leaves. I was obviously shaken and stayed outside my home until my boys arrived a while later. I told my fiance' about the incident and he suggested we get a recorder and leave our home for a few hours, with it recording. I was more than happy to leave the house and so we took the kids bought a recorder he placed it upstairs, made sure all the closets were closed and shut the staircase door behind him, made sure all the doors and windows in the house were locked and we leave. When we come back almost 4 hours later we get the recorder from upstairs and he begins listening to it, and then he became a bit more weirded out I guess is the best way to put it.

What was on the recorder you ask the following things...

Shortly after myself and my family had left our home (we know this because my fiance' stated the time he put the recorder upstairs and the recorder has a timer so we could see exactly what time things occured in our home), nonetheless shortly after we had left, you can hear the staircase door open and then shut, you hear walking up the staircase, and then what sounds like children playing. We also heard a lady moaning, someone playing a guitar, a noise that didn't sound human at all and more like a growl than anything else. What sounds like someone messing with pots and pans, a lady humming, some whispering that couldn't be distinguished, what sounded like our recorder was moving, a man and woman talking, and what appears to be either someone bouncing a ball down our staircase or possibly running up and down it quickly among other things.

Now we don't nor have we ever owned a guitar, the upstairs isn't wired with electricity so the music that is heard, and lady humming obviously isn't from any electrical source. Everyone in our home was gone so there wouldn't be any children playing, and besides that, we don't allow our children to play upstairs. We don't live by a busy street, nor do we have neighbors who are close enough for us to have somehow picked up their conversations.

So my question is has anyone else experienced this, is this normal or paranormal?

While the recording did freighten me as much as seeing the little girl, I am much more comfortable today with strange things happening around our home, and less likely to jump when things go bump in the night. I would also like to say that while I do believe in the paranormal and have had strange experiences as long as I can remember I've never been able to pick up any activity on a recorder although I had never thought about it before my fiance' had mentioned it. And while I'm sure many of you will think I'm just another delusional crazy person, and ghostly sightings, and paranormal things aren't real I feel they are, and am ok with those who disagree with me.

Lastly my first ghostly experience came when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I was in our bathroom and was talking to a man in the mirror, whom at the time I did not know and I knew him just as my friend Hansel. My father walked in one night when I was speaking in the mirror to my friend Hansel and asked me, who I was talking to, and I told him my friend Hansel, and he asked me to describe what this person looked like, and I told him how he wore a checker/stripped shirt that buttoned up, and wore a hat with a red feather in it, and was an older man. My father explained to me, that I had described his dad who had passed away 2 years before I was born, I never met him and never seen pictures of him and had never heard anyone in my family talk about him. So that was my first "ghostly experience" I suppose.


Willow Monroe