I suppose everyone starts their first blog by announcing that it's their first blog, and I don't want to break that ancient tradition. This is my first blog. I'm not sure what I'll write about here, or how many links I'll decide to include. I don't surf the web all that much, really I don't. My husand thinks I might have a phone jack surgically inserted somewhere in my body for constant surfing, but he doesn't have any proof.

What will this blog be like? I want it to be a big mix of things. I just want to warn anybody who might eventually read this that I will probably write some fiction, but I'll try to make it obvious when I'm writing from Fantasy Island. The main reason I want to do this is to find out more about myself. You would think I would already know myself pretty well, living with myself for almost 40 years now, but I think I might be part empath, or chameleon. When I'm alone I have all these grand ideas and plans, but as soon as I come in contact with other people I start morphing into some kind of shadow of their personality. I want to write about the three main aspects of life: what I do, what I think, and what I feel. I also want to write about the past, and current events, and try to imagine what the future will be like. Basically I want to crawl inside my computer and drag the world in with me. I want there to be something saying I was here, I lived and breathed and dreamed.

I guess I should start with a short autobiography. I am 38, married, no children. In computer shorthand I'm a DINK: Double Income, No Kids. I have 2 dogs, a bunch of cats and an aquarium. I live in Missouri, near the Mississippi River. I've lived here most of my life. I've moved to different areas, but I keep moving back. There isn't anything special about this area, the school is average, the town is small, there aren't any impressive natural features.

Except the river. Maybe it's the river that keeps pulling me back. I grew up surrounded by water. There was a lake in front of my house, a swamp in back (yes, there are swamps in Missouri, not just Louisiana and Florida), and both of them connected to the Mississippi River with streams and creeks that circled my house. In the spring the river would flood, and the swamp and lake would rise up and join each other like long-lost friends. My house was built on piers so it would rise up out of the water. I don't have any idea how my parents kept their sanity when they had to drag 3 kids and 2 dogs around in boats from the house to the levee for weeks at a time. It wasn't that far, and if the weather was nice it wasn't bad, but some days it was windy, or rainy. Sometimes it even snowed. One Easter my mom actually went out in a boat and hid Easter eggs in tree branches so we could paddle around and hunt them.

Yes, those were the Good Old Days. My family owned almost 100 acres, but most of it was swamp or woods, and it all submerged at least once a year so it wasn't very valuable. The road was gravel and there were always cars driving by going to the river, stirring up clouds of dust. The lake was nice. We fished and swam in it. In the winter we could watch bald eagles perched in the trees around the lake, waiting for a fish. Believe me, bald eagles aren't that majestic. They spend most of their time sitting in trees like giant crows. I always liked the seagulls better. They seemed so gracefull, always flying around calling to each other. Maybe if I had read Johnathan Livingston Bald Eagle I would have liked them better than seagulls. The swamp would freeze over and we would go skating, but none of us had ice skates. We would just wear the slickest shoes we had and run around and slide on the ice. What did we know. We just knew we were having fun, and Mom would have hot coco waiting when we got cold and went back inside.