"There's no place like your dreams..."

"Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home... Home! And this is my room, and you're all here... And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!"

Summer...ahh, sweet sweet summer in Alabama is unlike any other...flip flops are the shoe of choice for most occations and a pair of cutoff shorts are never far away from your reach...we say "Ya'll" and wave even if we don't a clue of who you are...a 4th of July is never complete without the cutting of a juicy, red watermelon, BBQ, apple pie and fireworks...Saturdays are filled with good food and SEC football and on any given Saturday night you can find your friends hanging out in some barn with the faint sound of a guitar with someone singing "Dinasour" by Hank Williams Jr...you can close your eyes and breathe deeply and your lungs taken in a breathe of fresh pure air...your senses instanly kick into high gear...your nose picks up the sweet scent of honeysuckle and fresh cut grass...you can faintly hear the crickets and the soft rustle of a pine tree in the distance..a gentle breeze tenderly caresses your cheek..without even opening your eyes you can envision the clear, pristine moon up above smiling down on you...

It's night like this..that while sitting under that moon and smelling that sweet honeysuckle that you allow your mind to wonder to places you usually never allow it to go...

Not quite sure where this is going to end up going..just kind of letting me mind wander...

As I think back to when I was a little girl..I can remember feeling as though I had no infinite direction that I wanted to go until second grade....there was a short story contest that our teacher told the class about and encouraged us all to enter...even gave us time during class to write it...I tampered around with the idea of entering...Finally, I jumped head first and started writing a fiction story about a witch named "Matilda"...At this time I cannot remember much about the plot of the story..but I do remember the day I went to class and my teacher called me up to her desk and handed me a certificate for first place in that writing contest...I couldnt wrap my brain around that..I won first place!! I don't know if my family even recalls that memory...but it stands out for me because that contest gave me a direction...I wanted to be a writer...I started writing about everything...I discovered that I could be anyone I wanted to be..It allowed me live in a fantasy world that I would create out of pencil and paper...and I loved it...and so with this new found direction...big dreams were formed of getting out of this small town..I had to...

I hated living in the "Bible belt" known as Alabama..being a small town southern girl my whole life..this is surely where I did not want to end up living for the rest of my life..I could envision myself in the picture perfect movie montage of the women riding down the interstate in her convertable..top down... "to big for her face" sunglasses..scarf wrapped around her hair...and she was leaving this god forsaken town and to where she had not a clue...cliche I know...but you can't tell me that you never thought of it at one point in your life...

Big dreams were formed at a early age..I told myself I would rather die than get stuck here..but here I am sitting in my back yard with the soft glow of the moon shining down on me..listening to "All I can do" by Lynard Skynard...and embracing all that comes with living in the South..Somwhere along the lines I started to not mind living here and actually started to embrace my southern roots..I still have dreams of walking the streets of New York City...visiting the Snow cladden castels of Germany...sitting outside a little cafe in Italy drinking the finest wine available...looking down upon the Grand Canyon and feeling so small in this big "ole world...

 For now though... I am content upon being a small town girl that still has big dreams..writing is my dream...its what I have found that I am good at...and it doesnt matter whether I am in a big city or a small town...I can write anywher..as long as I can still sit outside in my swing at night hearing the song of crickets in the backdrop... =)