Honesty!

I'm teaching a lesson in church tomorrow on "Honesty"!  What did I learn from preparing this lesson?  I realized that people have so much more respect for you when they know you are a "truth teller" and not a "liar"  Don't ever lie and then you will never be "caught in a lie".  "Honesty is the best policy" 

What a great lesson so much great material I can't wait to teach it to the girls!

What exactly is MS?

I often get asked that question.
MS is an inflammatory disease of the Central Nervous System (CNS) The myelin sheath around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged.   Which leads to scarring in the brain and a broad spectrum of symptoms. 
Everyone with MS experiences different symptoms, depending where the scars are in the brain.  Usually people with  MS have fatigue, sometimes severe.  Most people who live with MS have difficulty in hot temperatures and sometimes have trouble getting warm.  Also muscle spasms seem to be common.   I'll tell you more about my life with MS and how MS affects me in future posts.

I love this song!

I was watching Ellen DeGeneres last week and Bruno Mars was on singing Just the way you are.  The song is so sweet.  I just love it!  I can listen over and over.  I had to download it as soon as I heard it!  To be completely honest I'd never even heard of him. 
I love  Ellen she makes me laugh and her attitude is amazing!  I wanna be on her show some day! 

Always Looking up?

I was being creative when I came up with my Blog title.  Anyone who knows me knows I use a wheelchair, a high tech wheelchair at that!  So therefore because of my positive attitude and the chair "Always looking up" fits me perfectly.  My friend Teri asked me yesterday "is your blog name because you use a wheelchair or because of your outlook on life?"  I said "both" so now I can write about it in my blog.  Thanks Teri!

Letters to Juliet

I watched Letters to Juliet this morning such a cute romantic story about destiny and love.  Of course I'm a sucker for a feel-good romance.  Italy is a beautiful setting for any movie and definitely doesn't let us down here again. 
Amanda Seyfried is the star, but Vanessa Redgrave is certainly a star here as well.   Definitely a chick-flick, but I'm a sucker for those too!  Very refreshing in this day and age to have a PG rated romatic love story.  You should absolutely see this movie, I highly recommend it!

How I use my computer!

I sit in front of my computer, usually my laptop.  I wear glasses so I put a reflective dot in the center of my glasses.  I use a mouse that looks like a camera and with infrared technology called Smartnav/Naturalpoint I can operate my cursor around the screen like a pro!  The camera picks up my head movements, (slight head movements).  There is a toolbar at the top, or wherever you want it on your screen,  called a Dwell clicker.  I select single click, double, drag or right click.  I just dwell slightly like less than a half a second and then I use an on screen keyboard called Click-N-type to type or I can use Dragon naturally speaking voice recognition software.  You customize your natural point to your own needs. 
I LOVE IT!!

And life goes on!

Well it's October already and I realized as we get older time goes by faster and faster!  The holidays are right around the corner! 
Five years ago almost to the day, October 7, 2005, my husband left us!  He kissed me good-bye, dropped our son off at school and hit the road for his new life in Idaho.  It was surprising to me that he could do that.
He left a detailed letter explaining how he had reconnected with a former high school girlfriend and he loved her since he was 15.  WHAT?  Looking back it all fell in to place!  I was so busy trying to figure out how to make things work; I should have seen he already had 1 foot out the door.  This woman had mailed my husband a cell phone so they could speak without me finding out and of course there was e-mail.  He let my son speak to this woman and showed him pictures of what was to be his new family, she had 3 children.  He had asked me earlier in the year to see a counselor with him, a woman we had seen earlier in our marriage (1999) after I had discovered his infidelity.  It was during that session he said he wanted a divorce and was taking our son and moving out of state.  As luck would have it Susan, our counselor, was a children s court advocate and told my husband he could not legally take our son.  This threw a wrench in his plans.  Unfortunately he had been sharing all of his plans with our son since before his 11th birthday he had turned 12 by now and had turned 13 before his father left.  What a horrible burden for such a young child.  My son  left in February of 2007, when he was 14 to live with his father and new step mother.  They were married and divorced in early 2006.  This was more difficult for my son than I knew.  First the two people who came together to create him had moved on, his father to a new relationship and myself struggling to make our life work.  My family and friends were here by my side through it all.  My son was feeling more and more disconnected from us all.
It's been 5 years now and life goes on.  I'm so much better off now.  I miss my son everyday and I'm sorry he is the one who will be permanently scarred by our divorce. 
I am now an advocate in our community for the Elderly and disabled and hope to be an example to others who live with disabilities like Multiple Sclerosis.