Morning!

I am a morning person.  I can't remember how long I've been a morning person; as a teen, I loved sleeping in and staying up nights.  Guess it switched somehow when I became responsible for others, became a mom, and grew up. 

Here in the Valley of the Sun, the wide open skies make it light very early in the morning.  Usually.  This morning was quite the exception.  With unusual rain for the past 48 hours, it was cloudy and at 730 there still wasn't any morning light to speak of. 

Which made me want to crawl back into bed until light reached the windows here.  And in fact, I did just that -- crawled back into bed and finished up a book I'd been reading:  Edge of Evil by J.A. Jance.  she writes good mysteries, nothing too complicated, but the neat part about reading them is they're set in Arizona, right here in the Valley for the most part, and landmarks, highways and towns are all familiar names.  A big part of the story involves the Sugarloaf area -- seen here. 
That part makes me smile :)

The characters are easy to identify with - the good guys and the bad guys.  But one of the things that stands out for me was this paragraph:

"All those years I lived with my [ex-husband] I was a mealy mouthed namby pamby. I put up with his bullshit and got along no matter what.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about that the last couple of days and wondering why I did it, and I think I've finally figured it out.  I did it because I was afraid something might change.  Afraid something might happen.  Afraid that if he dumped me I wouldn't be able to make it on my own."

How many of us go through parts of our life afraid?  afraid of change?  afraid we aren't good enough?  afraid of being alone?   The hardest thing in the world is to change our thinking, to stop being afraid.  Trust me, I know.  It's hard. but its not impossible.  Each of us is worthy of living the life we're meant to live, the one that makes us happy.  We deserve to be happy, to be respected, to be loved.   Yes, you too, TS.

In the story, Ali gets "cut loose" from her job, finds out her husband's been cheating on her, and relocates back to Arizona only to find her best friend from high school has died.  Suicide? Murder?  As lots of mayhem ensues, we're drawn in to the story, and find that Ali is no longer afraid, who finds that she CAN make it on her own.

Life changes.  Every day.
But sometimes we're the ones who need to do the changing.