Holly’s Happenings

Yes, I know that probably sounds kind of strange, but just stay with me here! When I first got my drivers license I was almost 19 years old. I was really fortunate in the fact that all of my friends were already driving and none of them minded picking me up when we all wanted to go do something, so not having my license was never a big deal, even after graduation.

When I finally did get my license I had grand thoughts about what my first car would be! I wanted a candy apple red Corvette, complete with some sweet looking Corvette rims. I imagined myself spending my free time washing, waxing and polishing my car, I also imagined myself being the envy of all my peers and that they would be standing in line for a chance to ride around town with me in my Corvette!

I was in for a very rude awakening when I discovered that my first car was going to be a 1979 Ford Pinto…LOL! It wasn’t that my Pinto wasn’t a decent looking car, it really was compared to most of the other ones I had seen! It had a shiny pearl white paint job and nice looking rims, but come on, wouldn’t you rather have a Corvette for your first car instead of a Pinto?

I didn’t have my Pinto very long though, after driving it for just 6 months I had my first major accident and totaled it! As much as I disliked the thought of having a Pinto, I cried when I got out of the hospital and went to the junk yard to collect my personal items out of it. Gone was the shiny white paint job, it was replaced with a crunched up front end and a thick layer of dirt and dust. It may not have been my dream first car, but it served me well in the short time I had it!

To this day I still have grand visions of some day owning a candy apple red Corvette with shiny chrome rims just like these Those are exactly the type of rims I dreamed of having on my Corvette! I think the style is very simple, very classy and I LOVE chrome!

**SIGH** Maybe some day!!

I don’t know if I have cabin fever, if I’m stressed out because of the kids being home on Spring Break this week, the “female” health issues I’ve been having recently or what it is, but I have been one mean and grumpy woman lately! If I honestly think about it, I know it’s not from the kids being home this week because my week with them, other than a minor incident Monday morning, actually went fantastic! And my daughter was with my mother all weekend, so since it was just the hubby, myself and our son this weekend, things were VERY quiet around here!

I made a slight detour when I took my daughter up to my mom’s house Friday evening and stopped in to see my brother and sister in law. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas time, and when my mom said they had their grandson for the weekend I decided that I needed to pay them a visit! While I was there, my sister in law let me look through the photo albums from one of their most recent luxury vacations. This time they spent two weeks in the The Turks and Caicos Islands and from the pictures, it was obvious that they were having a wonderful time! My brother works very long hours at his job, he’s worked for the same company for almost 30 years now, and my sister in law said that when they’re on vacation like this, he’s so much happier and at ease than what he is when they’re at home! It makes me feel good to know that they take vacations like this! Their children are all out on their own now and some have children of their own and they both deserve to do wonderful things like this for themselves!

My husband and I are already talking about taking a long vacation to somewhere like Hawaii once our kids are out of school. Our youngest finishes 7th grade in May, so only 5 more years until we can go away on our own luxury vacation!

OK, I’m not sure what’s with my recent influx of strange dreams, but if you’d like to read on I’ll tell you about my most recent one. It’s not bad, but it is semi funny!

Last week a couple down south won several hundred million dollars in the Mega Millions lottery. I seen an interview that they did on one of the national morning news shows and it just kind of made me chuckle! I can’t help but think that if I’d have just won that much money, I’d be a tad excited about it, ya know? But this couple was just totally not coming across as being excited in their interview. I know that it was early morning and all, but getting them to talk was almost like trying to take money out of an empty bank account….LOL!

Anyway, back to the dream. In my dream it was my husband and I that actually had the winning lottery ticket and we found our lives suddenly in a whirlwind. After the initial “media circus” calmed down we went about deciding what we were going to do with our lives. We immediately decided that we wanted to build a new house. First we searched for land that could be built on that suited our requirments, then we sat down and started figuring out exacty what kind of house we wanted to build. We’ve talked on and off over the years about what we would want if we could buy or build our dream house, but the reality of it was, we honestly didn’t know what we wanted when it came down to it!

We ended up settling on a house that resembled the southern plantation homes that I’ve seen many times in the movies. It was two stories tall with beautiful fiberglass columns across the front of the home. Both the first and second stories had porches that went across the entire width of the house with the one on the second story being completely screened in. As you walked into the front entrance you were greeted by a gorgeous grand staircase that led to a large open foyer area at the top of the steps.

I don’t remember a lot of other details of the house other than it seemed like it went on forever. There were rooms everywhere and the rooms were filled with the largest windows I think I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a gorgeous house but definitely a bit more house than I’d ever really want to own! But I guess that’s why they call them dreams, as nice as they are, they’re not real.

I’ve often heard that it’s a good idea not to eat heavy or “strange” foods close to bed time, but I’ve never really had a problem so I didn’t htink much of it.  This weekend, however, I think I discovered why that is a good idea.  Either Friday night or Saturday night I was in such a deep sleep that I had a VERY strange dream!  In my dream I was wandering through this HUGE room that was filled with more trade show displays than I have ever seen in my life. Some of them were colorful, others were very ornate and fancy. But what was so strange about the dream was the fact that the displays were all floating on water and surrounded by plexiglass walls to keep them from filling with water. I couldn’t figure out how you were supposed to get the information from the displays, you couldn’t touch anything or hear what the people were saying because it was behind the plexiglass walls. When I was telling my husband about the dream the next day, he reminded me that I had eaten a couple of slices of warmed up pizza shortly before going to bed and that’s probably why I had such a strange dream…LOL! I’m not sure if he’s right, but I do know that I’m not going to eat pizza late at night again…LOL!

If you’re anyone in this house, you don’t know what time it is unless you look at a wall clock or the clock on the computer…LOL!  Well, that actually excludes my husband, because he wears a wrist watch, but neither myself or my children wear them.  The kids each have a watch, they just don’t ever wear them.  And me, well, I’m holding out because I want a Technomarine watch, but currently they’re out of my price range. But when I get that pretty pink one, I’ll be sure to post pictures so you can bask in it’s beauty! It has to be the best looking watch I’ve ever seen. So until I get it, my wrist will remain bare!

Yes, I’m already awake. I finally went to bed shortly after 3:00 AM, at that point my daughters school was the only one of the 2 kids’ schools that had a delay. But I was fairly sure that by morning, she would not be alone. It was a very short nights sleep, my husband tried to wake me up at 6:00, before he left for work, but that wasn’t going to happen. I remember him trying to wake me up, and I remember telling him to PLEASE drive careful.

Apparently my sub-conscience is more tired of the cold and yucky weather than I am because when I woke up because my husband was calling to let me know he made it to work safely, I was in the middle of a dream. I was dreaming that my husband and I had decided to purchase some beach front property and we were sitting in the office of a Wilmington NC real estate agent discussing our options. The real estate agent was trying to talk us into buying a beautiful property in the heart of Wilmington that was more inland than we wanted, but we were determined to purchase a property that sat right on the beach.   Maybe I’m more ready for our vacation than I thought I was…LOL!

Yes, I know, I sure do a lot of dreaming don’t I? But tell me, what’s life without having some dreams? If you don’t have dreams, what do you have to work for in life? For as long as I can remember, taking a trip to Australia has always been a dream of mine. One thing that I had never really thought about, however, was where in Australia I would go. That was until I seen images of a few cities like this one of Perth, Australia:

Perth is a gorgeous city with many different types of attractions, but I’d really love to be able to go to the Perth International Arts Festival . I was thrilled to find out that Hotels in Perth were priced much less than I imagined they would be!I’ve also checked out Hotels in Adelaide and Melbourne Accomodation prices and was pleasantly surprised by what I found out! For instance, if I wanted to fly to Perth right now, I could get a 4 star Hotel for only $107 a night in US dollars, which I think is fantastic! If I decided to go to Adelaide instead, I could get a 4 1/2 star Hotel for only $123 US dollars per night. And in Melbourne I could snag up a 5 star Hotel for a mere $120 US dollars per night.

So, now that I know where to shop around when I’m looking for great Hotel prices in Australia, the only thing left to do is pack, anyone want to come with me?

The other day, at one of the game sites I play at, one person was mentioning that they were a retired military person and they were talking about all of the places that they had been to during their years in the military. We all ended up talking about Paris, France for quite some time which ended up making me start thinking about how awesome it would be to be able to visit France.

So, being the person that I am, I started checking out Hôtels en Paris (bet you didn’t know I could speak a little French, did you?). I was actually quite surprised at how reasonably priced Paris Hotels were. And the more I looked around for information about Paris the more I truly wanted to visit “The City of Light”.

Although Paris is most notably known for it’s attractions like The Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral, it also has a fantastic nightlife with unlimited attractions, bars and restaurants catering not only to it’s French residents, but to the millions of tourists that flock to Paris every year. If you or someone you know are considering a trip to France you might want to check out this wonderful Guide to France. It is filled with all types of great information about Paris and many other areas in the French region.

With everything that I have read about Paris and after seeing photos of the many beautiful my desire to take a French vacation is even stronger than it was before. And since I know that my husband isn’t willing to travel to foreign countries, this will be a trip that I’ll take with my daughter, whom I’m sure would appreciate it more anyway!

You may or may not know this, but I don’t particularly like living where I’m at right now. One of the things that I dream about often is being able to pack up and get away from here, and I often spend time online looking up different places to move to. I most recently looked at Branson real estate. I particularly seen some beautiful lodge homes that I could easily imagine living in. They’re so roomy and beautiful with stone fireplaces in the living areas and gorgeous woodwork throughout the entire lodge. It gives it an old cabin type feeling, but with all of today’s technology. Because if you know me, you know that I won’t move anywhere that I can’t have my internet!