In My Words

i LOVE summer. this is a fairly new love for me, i used to be a fall/winter kind of girl but not anymore. like right now as i am sitting in my house listening to the heat kick on I am cold...and that's with a blanket over my lap too. i wish i could open the window and listen to the birds chirp outside and feel the warm breeze on my skin. doesn't that just sound so inviting?! i keep reminding myself that it is just around the corner and with the beautiful 60 degree weather we have been having (minus the past few days of solid rain), i am starting to believe it. my love of summer began when my family bought a cottage on west  island. it is one of the most peaceful places to be. we can just grab our towels and walk down to the beach. writing about it, i can almost feel the sun warming my skin while i sit on the beach. hmmm... one of my favorite things to do is ride out on my dad's sailboat. i am much more of a power boat girl, but i'm certainly not going to give up...

i am a sucker for "the good ol' days". you know what i mean, the days back when a community acted as such rather than the now-a-days every man for himself attitude. more specifically i miss what i have heard of what my city used to be (keep reading, more on that below). unfortunately i never knew it as that community-oriented place. but i still miss it. i think you all have an idea of what i mean though, you have probably heard similar stories about places near you or even your own towns. like this photo of downtown brockton...it was a HOT place and anyone who was anyone was there (especially when hometown hero Rocky Marciano came home as in this pic)! while campaigning for his presidency even JFK made several stops in brockton because it was such the place to be. movie stars used to come here because they chose to. so my question is what makes a place turn from such splendor into a rather depressed area? sure we've all heard that it was when the shoe factories mo...

i turned down a full-time job on friday . It was a full-time job with benefits at the Juvenile Resource Center (JRC). why ? i would have had to give up my current job at the boys and girls club in brockton and i just couldn't do it. most of the people i talked to about it told me hands down to take the full-time job. of course i should have, right? benefits, good company, an actual salary. but i didn't. i chose to remain at the teen center. again, why? i have wondered this very thing several times just since friday. BUT , i call it a God thing. Some call it woman's intuition, and others have different names for it. whatever you choose to call it, i feel called to work in this community and with these kids. right now, i feel that "pull" to remain at the boys and girls club. the kids can be mad and angry but also fun and lovable. i get it. if i had gone through half of what some of them have gone through i would be angry too. i would take it out on others ...