Annie Melissa - Strawberry Girl

I was born and raised in the Provo, Utah area. My mother taught me the basics of cooking, my father handyman and scouting basics.

My parents value knowledge and I gravitated to learning early on. I love to create order out of chaos, and I am interested in a wide variety of subjects. Very straightforward and determined I was able to attend school, despite the setbacks I faced of being a young mother. I wanted my children to grow up with a respect for education and did my best in school, receiving the 'Dean's Merit Scholarship' and ranking on the Dean's List and graduating Cum Laud from Utah Valley University in 2006, majoring in Accounting. I had the opportunity to go back to school in 2014 and graduated from the MBA program at Utah Valley University, August of 2016.

I have stacks of books that I will probably never find the time to read, though I have read many of them. I feel that books hold the potential seeds of greatness and I love the power that they have to change hearts and minds. I always gain a new perspective when I read of another persons life or get a refreshing sense of new imagination from reading fiction.

I have many hobbies. My mother taught me how to sew and the fundamentals of cooking. I have used these skills creating clothing (when my kids were little) and good meals. My favorite cooking creations have been the most challenging, lasagna, spaghetti, and Tamales all from scratch. I learned alternative ways to cook when I faced food allergies, it is an ever evolving skill.

I love to dig in the earth and help good things to grow. I spend a lot of time in the summer outdoors, gardening, it always brings me joy!

Music is an ever evolving flavorful experience for me (in a similar deep sense that cooking is an evolving skill). There is so much out there to evoke emotion. to uplift and to mellow. I love music, the exception being rap which I just can't seem to develop a flavor for.

Art is also a passion, I love to paint and draw! I am a copier for sure but that's how talent is developed.

Travelling has been a surprising and wonderful thing for me, I never imagined I would be able to visit some of the places that I've been, Australia, Ireland and Germany. All beautiful, and interesting in their own ways.

I've always thought it would be wonderful to narrate a book, or to do other recording and to that extent I'm setting up a space for that in my new home.

That is me, passionate about life.

Annie Melissa - a.k.a. Strawberry Girl

Simple Post for the Day

It is so easy to lose sight of what you want out of life. For me I usually lose sight of that when I am under stress. I have this idealized image of what I want my life to be like and it seems like a pipe dream because I have yet to be able to realize this image.

Mostly it involves balance, being able to spend time in doing what I want to do, not just what I have to do.

I've been so tired for many months because of Edgar leaving me. He left right at the beginning of the busiest season for us at work. I performed horrendously at work during that time and almost lost my job, yet somehow I was able to pull out of the funk, find a condo to buy, pack up my home with tears running down my face and with the help of some angel friends and family get the minimum amount of painting done on the condo and all of my stuff moved over to the new place. It has been a constant stream of activity to get there. Painting, flooring, unpacking. Now I basically feel like resting but there is more to do.

At work they have pigeon holed me into a contract processing role and given others the bigger responsibilities. I have been resentful and hurt but I am trying to see the positives to this (I can focus on other things, balance my life). I have things I want to do with my time and spending it obsessively learning sql or other programs for work is not really what I want to do (though it would make me more competitive so I keep coming back to it as something that I should probably do).

What I want to do, get my house into order (wash and paint baseboards, put them back on, get dishwasher back in, get fridge hooked up to the water line, fix microwave, get new rug for living room, new furniture for living room, paint my bathroom, install dance floor downstairs, install soundproofing (to block sound from going out and coming in) and configure audio recording room with sound foam (to disperse reverb). Plus, put my desk together, and Angie's dresser.

THEN I can play around with my little audio recording projects. I've gotta talk my friend into helping me set up my computer...

So that's where I'm at. I want to have a nice steady relationship where I don't have to be too stressed out about. Hopefully. I definitely want to avoid wasting my time with guys that are looking for a hook-up.

Have a good one folks of the internet. :)

SG

American Freedom, Fight!

First Published 7/6/2010

Is that what you wanted America, mollycoddled living? Minds melting into mush as you endlessly feed off of stupidity?

Where did your fighting spirit go?

Daring, radiant life

Have we all retreated into dark corners, refusing to be stirred for humanities sake?

Enough!

I would rather live and die by my own two hands then go complacently into socialism.

Think! There are consequences for complacency.

Men and women have fought and died for our freedom, given all that they had so that we could choose.

Do you choose to be swallowed up in wallowing self pity over your lot in life or do you choose to embrace all that you have and fight the oppression of idiotically run government?

Live Americans, breath the air of freedom, taste the soil of salvation.

Do not be oppressed by the hidden crown.

(Elitists that are in control)

Fighting for Freedom - Idealism

First published 7/25/10

I am an idealist, which is difficult at this point in time. Why? Because it is so hard to live the ideal.

Ideally, I should still be married. My kids should have a stable, normal home. I should be there for them instead of working...

Yet I live in the land of reality where normalcy has been redefined, my son Sione is often gone to his fathers home and I am often not there for my kids physically or emotionally.

Ideally, I should move from this place, the landlord doesn't give a care for this duplex and has let it go down bad.

But in reality, I am stuck here, I don't earn enough money at what I am doing which is in some ways a self inflicted fate and in some a reflection of the economy.

Self inflicted because when I went to school I chose to have another baby instead of going into the workforce and thus I haven't gotten the experience that I need to have to make more money.

A reflection of the economy because jobs are simply scarce.

and so I deal with reality...

Fighting for Freedom - The reality of it is that we are being shanghaied into socialism, yet isn't it all of our responsibility to avoid government programs, avoid creating the need....?

Yet reality says otherwise, I cannot afford to pay for health insurance... it is as simple as that. I am now eligible for it but it will cost me $200 dollars a month that I don't have, if I put the premium on my credit card I would still end up paying for it plus interest at some point probably when I receive a tax return? How ironic!

Could I get the government to pay for my premiums? Perhaps

Could I get the government to pay for my housing? Yes

Could the government give me all this and would it be fair? Yes, Yes, Yes and NO!

How ironic that I am now faced with this reality!

That the very programs that I abhor and am fighting are the programs that I am forced to turn to!

Yet I still have a will, I can still fight this

But through the sacrifice of time with my kids, study of Excel to improve my job skills... yes but from the time with my kids... another job, yes... but it will take from the time with my kids...

Yet it is all I can do for idealism isn't it? Ideally I would stay with them, feed them healthy food and knowledge...

Ideally....

I hope I'm doing the right thing

Economy

First published 7/7/2010

So, what is going on in the economy?

I want to see if I can think through this thing.

First of all there is Adam Smith and his invisible hand. In this model there is a certain demand for products, there are x number of buyers and the number of sellers will increase until it is not profitable for new sellers to come into the market. If more people demand a product there will be an incentive for more sellers or increased production.

What happens if buyers cannot afford a product? If there was no credit they would not buy it. What happens if buyers don't want something anymore? Sellers reduce there price, and some sellers quit the business.

So here is a couple of things that have happened in our economy. The government has had some favorite projects. Since the Great Depression, they have been subsidizing farmers. This is supposedly to help small struggling farmers cope with losses. (There could have been a different solution to this I think. There is an insurance product to help avoid losses, farmers pay there premium every year. Some years are good and some bad. When disasters strike the insurance pays out).

Anyway, here is partially what has happened because of government subsidizing. It's not really, small farmers that are helped (it is usually big agribusinesses). The government comes in and pays people to not farm this or that. You get half a million for not raising x crop, what a deal. The government also suggests crops, like corn, soy, wheat for the farmers to raise. Guess what? We've got a lot of corn, soy and to a lesser degree wheat (there has actually been problems with not having enough wheat this year, corn and soy are more profitable). These crops are highly genetically engineered, highly covered in pesticides and highly profitable. They use them as fillers in almost every food out there (making almost all processed foods contaminated and GMO).

They use corn to make ethinol to "suppliment" our gasoline (incredibly this does not work out as a benefit to the environment). They also use corn to make the lovely detrimental High Fructose Corn Syrup (which leads to people getting fat, sick, and actually easily controlled because they don't have enough energy to question what is going on. Do I sound like a lunatic? Maybe, but I have experienced the energy drain. Then vs. now? Now is much better, never again HFCS or GMO's) They use corn in a lot of other things as well.

Soy, lovely soy. Toted as a health food, incorporated into almost every food out there. Soy is one of China's 5 sacred foods. Guess what? That was because it was used as a nitrogen fix for their fields. They never even ate it for millenia until they figured out how to ferment it, alot. Then they only ate it in very small quantities. Why? Because it is a known toxin, it is highly indegestible, an accumulator plant that takes up all of the nasty chemicals that are sprayed on it. American's get a hold of soy and they run around toting it as a cure for womens menstural problems, heart disease, etc. . . Telling everyone of how healthy the Japanese and Chinese are because they eat it. Well, it's true they eat a little bit, but not nearly the quantity that Americans have been eating. I have also seen reports that Soy is contributing to the feminizing of American men (i.e. they are growing breasts, and there manhood is getting weaker). Look for the Weston A. Price foundation online for more info.

Wheat is also a problemetic crop, it is not that wheat is (or was) not nutritious. It used to be very nutritous. Yet wheat too has undergone many changes in not to short a time. It has been genetically altered (to increase the gluten content), it is highly sprayed (to keep away pests) and it is highly refined (to feed Americans obsession with white bread). As an interesting side note, the ancient egyptians were the only ones that could afford white bread in antiquity, because they had slaves that they forced to go through the tedious process of seperating the wheat germ from the berry. It is also interesting that the egyptian rulers had dental cavities and more problems with illness than there slaves. So Americans come along and figure out how to do the separating with a machine and then they make everything they can out of their "white" flour.

How does this all relate to the economy? Well the subsidized crops are not or were not in great demand until they became subsidized. Then because we had so much of this stuff we creatively put it everywhere. The subsidizing of corn has led partially to the world food shortage (because other crops have not been grown and there have been failures in wheat crops). There are other ways that this relates but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

Well actually, the failure in crops, the massive hunger, has led us to have to pay for food aid. Large scale farms, create a great demand for oil. Oil is a limited resource that is running out, we don't have very much so we help defend oil producing countries and go to war (Iraq and other wars) to defened and aquire oil. (See the movie A Crude Awakening). This leads to massive spending, which leads to massive deficits, which leads to inflation (the government prints money without gold to back it up), which leads to things being unaffordable.

In comes the white knight, the credit industry. If we can get a loan then we can "afford" a car, a house, in some cases food and clothing. How dare we save our money, it's UnAmerican. We need to buy more, that's what good ol' Pesident Bush told us to do after 9-11. BTW we were in big trouble, even then and they all knew it. So the subsidizing of our lifestyles has made the cost of everything to go up (partially, remember inflation from printing too much money?).

More demand for a product, clothes, cars, houses, makes people want to get in to sell the product. So more clothes are made (as cheaply as possible, since they are meant to be used a short time and then thrown away), more cars are made (as cheaply as possible as well), more houses are made (also a lot of times poor quality).

How is this bad? Well think of it, everyone is not satisfied with what they have, they need new clothes, new cars, a new house. They don't want to save there money, so they are given loans. As long as they are working this is alright, right? Not really. They are now beholden to others, they are virtually slaves. But they are willing to do this, they get to drive their nice car, live in their nice house, wear their nice clothes. (Unfortunantly a lot of these people will be driving no car, have no house or clothes, sad).

Then what happens? It all starts to fall, the price of gas increases, the price of food the price of clothes. The demand for houses keeps going up, so people keep building. There are so many people building, the price of materials increases. The price of existing homes increases. What about those people who want to save their money 20% down and then an affordable mortgage? They want a home they can expand and put their own labor into for extra equity. Well too bad, the competition has forced contractors to build homes with all the extras, with finished basements, and a spa out back (please come buy my home). Guess what, the price of everything has increased (incredible how can this be happening). Very few people can afford to save 20% down and they can't even find a home with an affordable mortgage (houses cost to darn much). So "hero" loan officers come in and offer you a chance to get into your home, take out a loan for the principle and a loan for the down payment. Now you know and I know that something feels quite wrong here, but everyone is doing it, it seems to be working for them.

Now BOOM, it all explodes. We have too many homes, that cost too much (builders are dying here they put so much money into the homes they built, should have built smaller and more affordable). They file bankruptcy, they cant build anymore, they are out of work. Everyone out there who decided to buy their dream home they can't afford has been working two or three jobs. Maybe both mommy and daddy both, but guess what they can't do it anymore and they lose their home. This adds to the amount of homes for sale on the market. People cant afford their new clothes so retailers can't sell their clothes. People are putting money on credit cards to buy food, guess what they are still going to have to pay the piper. Banks are in trouble, because they have lent money to people who have overextended themselves and are going bankrupt. So guess what? We have banks going bankrupt. Where does it end?

Here comes the government, they are going to "Bail" out the banks. In all seriousness, and I am scratching my head here, do they really think that this is going to be a long term solution? Bail out the banks, what a joke. Everyone in America is suffering. Even those that lived on a budget, saved their money and didn't buy a home they couldn't afford. Some of them are reaping the benefits of their thrift and are now getting affordable homes. Some of them, still are not able to buy a home. Why? Because they have lost their jobs, they have used their savings and feel like they are getting no where (That's us). So what would bailing out the banks do? Perhaps temporarily this would calm the stock markets. It would also, reward people, executives, for there poor behavior. It would create 700 billion dollars more of inflation, this is an indirect tax on all of us. As if the war and spending on all of the natural disastors of the last couple of years has not hurt us already. Inflation, means the cost of living (everything) will continue to rise. Is this bailout a solution, NOT AT ALL. I don't know what the solution is, but I know that the underlying instability of the economy right now is scary and it leads me to my solution.

To be happy with what I have and grateful, to make a garden, to walk if I can to buy my food. To take care of the environment (I haven't even gone into how all of this is indirectly related to how poorly we have been treating the environment). I also haven't gone into a diatribe about how the GMO's and poor eating habits of Americans are increasing the cost of health care creating the big demand for the health care industry (health care, I think it should be sick care). Which also strains our economy and makes the big guy's rich and the rest of us poor and sick. That triad can wait for another day, there is a lot to say about that.

Anyway, I am sure I have left out a lot, and that there are other perspectives out there (one which my neighbor holds is that this crises is from the cost of foreign oil, give me a break). If anyone can expound on this futher please comment, it would be interesting to see other perspectives.

~Strawberry Girl

Rub a Dub Dub

I have been challenged to write the book that I always wanted to write. Reflecting upon this challenge I've decided that I just need to get into the habit of writing. So I am going to write stories from my life in a serial fashion (though I might jump around a bit).

When I was very young, a toddler, I remember doing a few quirky little things. I remember the smell of food coming from the kitchen, the awareness of my mother being in there. I remember climbing over the edge of the crib I shared with my older brother (who kicked).

One memory in particular stands out. Rub a dub dub, 3 men in a tub.

There was a tile missing on the wall, someone had tried to glue it back on but it didn't stick. The glue was bumpy, it swirled around like railroad tracks. The wall behind it was black, like a tunnel that something could come out of at any moment. We were all sitting in the bath covered in bubbles. I piled some on top of my head and Daniel laughed. A thought came to mind of a nursery rhyme I had heard, "Rub a Dub, Dub, 3 Men in a tub." "That's us!" I thought (Daniel, Jono and I) and inspired by the poem I thought that if I could find a boat to float in then that would be even better. So I climbed over the slippery ledge of the tub and snuck into the kitchen, there was a bucket under the sink in there that I knew I would be able to float in. I grabbed it and furtively snuck back to the bathroom. I placed the bucket into the tub, it was floating! Encouraged by this I tried to hop in, and it wiggled around so much I couldn't do it. So I filled it with a bit of water and tried again. This time I was successful! I was so proud of myself, 3 men in a tub and I in my bucket. Of course my Dad had to get a picture of it. I had the biggest smile on my face. :)

~Annie

Some thoughts on my relationships

All of my relationships have been quite different from each other, yet some similar themes have played out in all of them. Passion and betrayal. Attraction and disgust. On the one hand my heart has been full of the joy of discovering another person, my eyes have gazed beyond the ordinary and seen through to the soul of my lovers. At least I fancied that I could see into the depths of their souls. I love this image that I build up of my lovers and when in-congruence occurs between my belief and reality it is painful. There are aspects of all those who I have loved that I still love.

I think who I have loved reveals a lot about me. I love the flawed hero. I've never been into jocks, they think way too much of themselves and I always knew that they wouldn't really be able to relate to me. I was trapped in a way by my first-husband because I was so naive and lonely. Yes I admired his strength, but ultimately I felt alienated and alone when we were together because we had so little in common. I remember once he whisked us (me and the kids) off on a spontaneous family fishing trip. For some reason the feeling of alienation had been growing and I felt loneliness seeping into my heart and despair as I thought of the incongruity between how I felt and how I thought I ought to feel at being whisked away to spend time together as a family. I was, in a way, justified in my anxiety. I have trouble with spontaneity, especially when it involves the kids. I like to feel that I am prepared to take care of their hunger and their thirst. I was a bit angry and sullen, and forlorn. He had taken the kids down to the lakeside, the day was darkening. I sat in the Yukon with a book contemplating my feelings, contemplating the scene, I didn't understand at that time what made me feel as I did, I do now.

Sometimes I worry that I will never find the love that I am really hoping for. Only time will tell...

SG

Some thoughts on writing

It seems that thoughts filter through the mind and leave like the wind, so it can be very difficult to capture the bits and pieces that are floating in and out of the conscious mind. It is interesting how much information is easily at our fingertips about the process of writing and yet it is still a somewhat elusive topic.

I'm going to force myself to write something now. :)

Belief or the truth?

It looks like the trend these days is an open, honest dialogue about one's shortcomings, the "truth" about one's life.  My thoughts "Great! I can do that! I've got lots of shortcomings." Then I start thinking about how morose I can start to sound when I get down to listing my true thoughts and feelings.

There's a lot of truthful tidbits that I could go into; like how I examine every picture of myself closely to try and reconcile that printed picture with the image that I see staring out from the other side. I scrutinize my face, my expression, my body, my hair and most of the time I want to toss away the picture because it seems to so perfectly display all that I dislike about myself.

We are a species that edits the truth. We edit what we see in the mirror, our thoughts, emotions, the story that we tell ourselves and the story that we tell others.

I'm sorry but that is the truth. It is quite socially acceptable to do all of this editing, in fact we've been taught to do it. It's something like editing a paper for school to present a clear picture of what we want to say, but something happens to us somewhere in all of that editing.

The truth gets lost, it gets obscured, and it becomes difficult to say what is the truth and what is not.

So back to today's theme of truth telling. I've been going to therapy with my husband, this is supposed to be a good thing, I'm hoping it will be, but the past couple of Friday mornings (bright and early at 7:30 A.M.) my illusions about my relationship are being tested. First of all is the illusion that I'm not doing anything wrong. Apparently I am. I have an Ex-Husband, he was abusive in many ways one of the most destructive was the way he would interfere with my relationships with other men. He did this work in a very subtle way, you see I thought that my interactions with him were about our kids. But really what was happening was that he made other men feel less important to me. How? Well, I didn't want to hide anything from my sweetheart so when he called I would talk to him. I was cringing inside, trying to be civil and trying to get off of the phone as quickly as possible. Somehow though what was conveyed was that I wanted to talk to my Ex.

Well, I did and I didn't. I wanted to talk about our kids. It's hard to have a conversation with your new love about the children you had with your old love. They haven't had the same kind of experience with your kids and they know them differently than you do. So, I missed being able to laugh at my kids idiosyncrasies with my Ex. But that was about it, he drove me crazy (I say this in the past tense because he currently resides in jail). He was manipulative, made me think of myself as a bad mother, made me question my choices. He was always trying to get me to feel sorry for him (I have been more annoyed about this than anything for a long time). He threatened me and my new husband, indirectly he threatened to do things that would make the kids sad.

Yet from all of this I thought I was handling things pretty well, that is until my husband packed up and left me. How did things come to that? Poor communication I suppose, but also I think my husband was seeing a different version of the truth than I was.

Well, I'm out of time for now, I will write more on this later. For now, I just want to say that your truth is different from other peoples truths.

I don't believe in the truth. I believe in belief.

SG

Hopeless Hopes

I'm always a bit intimidated by the top of this blog screen, so open for interpretation, blank. Sometimes I feel that my mind is like that, devoid of meaningful thought. I guess that I just don't know what to want out of this life. I wanted a house with a yard, a little garden, perhaps a stream, I wanted an "eternal family", I wanted a priesthood holder. I thought these are the things that will bring happiness, church and family. I am stuck in a kind of miasma, I had to go look up that word to see if it fit... I guess it sort of does "bad air causing disease... or a specious cause of chronic disease." Well if not thriving in these conditions then yes, I suppose the word does fit. I suppose part of the problem is that I've hoped for too much, I've felt that if I worked hard enough then I could have what I wanted. I felt that my asks were small, yet now it seems as if I asked too much.

SG