Wow! Liebster Award

When I started blogging here at Being Free, I never expected that I would still be posting 9 years later. The blog has progressed in a lot of ways, but still has a limited following. Limited, but very loyal and supportive. (Thanks you guys! ~MUWAH~)

One of the most amazing ladies I have met is another blogger. I only use the word "amazing" because there's not a nicer one to describe her. Sandy authors the addictingly inspiring Sandy's POV. My blog wants to be her blog when it grows up! LOL

It is Sandy who nominated me for the Liebster Award and I cannot thank her enough.

Now comes the fun part. I'm going to share some information about myself via the following Q & A, then I will pay this honor forward by nominating 11 blogs of my choosing. (Don't worry, I will list the rules at the bottom of this post.)

Ready? Set. Go!

1. How did you decide on the name of your blog?

At that time of my life, I was going through a lot of personal changes. The blog was my way to connect and share with people in a safe way - like free therapy. I didn't want to use my actual name so I decided to call myself "Free" (as in breaking free) and I was temporarily wanting to be "free" of a lot of things. So... I decided on Free Being Free. Because of something to do with Blogger (I don't remember exactly), I ended up with just "Being Free". 

2. Where does your blogging inspiration come from?

At the start, I just wanted to express my own take on people I observed and things that were going on in my life. As I progressed, I started focusing on specific things that interested me. In the past year or so, I have been doing product reviews. Since I like using as many "natural" things as I can for nutrition and personal care, I really enjoy reviewing products and sharing information for that.

3 What is it that you love most about blogging?
Everything, especially since I was hit with a chronic disease that limits my life in other ways. I've "met" so many nice people through blogging. Also, blogging allows me to feel productive and useful during the times I am able to function well. I joke that blogging lets me exercise the parts of my brain that still works well!

4 What is your favorite food?
Pizza. Otherwise, I'm easy. I like just about anything that isn't spicy. My favorite snack is salami sandwiches. I like blended fruits and veggies. And smoke clams. I love smoked clams.

5 What is your favorite thing to drink (alcoholic or not)?
Coffee. With sweetened creamer. I'm not much for alcohol, but I do like iced wines for special occasions. I'm recently drinking more water and trying to make it a habit.

6 What is an item you cannot live without?
My phone. That's because it contains just about everything else I need: my Bible, my address book, and so on. If I didn't have my phone, I'd want my Bible more than all else.

7 What are eleven random facts about yourself?

1. I like being a loner 90% of the time.
2. Blue jeans, t-shirts and tennis shoes as a wardrobe make me very happy.
3. My writing spot is a tiny vintage travel trailer on the side of our house that I am attempting to pretty up. In about 2 weeks' time, I've managed to sand a 12-inch section of a wall. 
4. I don't have kids, but I helped raise four of my nieces and nephews. Now I have a "grandson" who I adore. He also adores me. Mostly because I make him PB&J "sammiches" every day.
5. My nickname is Penny, but my grandkid calls me "BooBoo". He calls people whatever they call him and I always called him "my little booboo". I'm lucky. He calls one of his aunts "Stinky" and a friend of ours is labeled "Juicy". I'm good with BooBoo.
6. I love playing Farmville 2 (and hate myself for it). It's the only way I can farm without being outdoors. 
7. I'm fiercely in love with my big, crazy, wonderful family and can't be happy when I'm too far away from them. I tried to live in England once and lasted about 3 months before I had to get back "home".
8. I was born in Texas, but raised in Alaska. I don't like extreme heat or cold. Go figure that one out.
9. My favorite colors are (currently) red and gold. Unless it's jewelry. I don't like gold jewelry. Unless there are pearls in it. Lots of pearls.
10. I have a piece of metal behind one eye. Don't know how it got there, but I can't have MRIs. I think it might have something to do with having 4 brothers. That's what my doctors have decided.
11. I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist and I don't think that's a bad thing. Conspiracies happen and I'm allowed to have a theory, right?

8 If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?

Just about anywhere with 4 seasons. And with family somewhere really close by. For now, I'll stick with Alaska because 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

9 If you could meet anyone from history, alive or dead, who would it be?
I'd really like to meet whoever designed freeway roundabouts. So I can smack the back of their head. If I can't have that, I'd like to meet my maternal grandmother because she died when I was a baby.
10 What is your favorite outdoor activity?
Walking. To get back indoors as fast as I can. I'm not an outdoors person.

11 Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Living happily in my "tiny house" travel trailer, finishing the novel I started about 9 years ago. I'll settle for just living happily.

Here are my nominees for the Liebster Award:

1. Bama Blog
2. Seattle Amie Ryan
3. Gwen Sutton
4. Dacotah
5. Small Town Life
6. Samalexwrites 

THE RULES

For those who have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you: 

• Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog. 
• Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
• Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
• Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
• Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
• Create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.
• List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
• Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

These are your 11 questions:

1. How did you decide on the name of your blog?
2. Where does your blogging inspiration come from?
3. What is it that you love most about blogging?
4. What is your favorite food?
5. What is your favorite thing to drink (alcoholic or not)?
6. What is an item you cannot live without?
7. What are eleven random facts about yourself?
8. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
9. If you could meet anyone from history, alive or dead, who would it be?
10. What is your favorite outdoor activity?
11. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Peace

--Free

Don't Like and Do Love. A List.

The Don't Likes:

• Automatic doors that hesitate so long that I almost run into them.
• When I'm too stupid to realize the automatic door is 'slower' than I am.
• Well-dressed people who ruin the look with a bad attitude. 
• The mean thoughts I have about those people, like hoping they trip and fall while I'm watching. 
• Parents who let their bad-assed kids loose on the public, and then act as if you were the one who advised them not to teach the little monsters how to behave.
• Other shoppers who hog the aisles with their carts, then get pissed if you bump into it while trying to pass.
• Shoppers who pretend to be deaf and blind when you are trying to pass them in an aisle.
• Adults who never use the words/phrases "Thank you", "Excuse me", "Please", "Hello', "Sir" and "Ma'am".
• Children who aren't being taught the above words/phrases.
• Men who don't hold doors for women. 
• People who find the above statement sexist or anti-feminist.
• Drive-through coffee service when I can't just request cream to add for myself.
• Weak coffee.
• Coffee so strong that an entire bottle of creamer won't mellow it out.
• Men who wait for a woman to make the first move.
• Women who scared men out of making the first move.
• People who think a man holding a door for a woman is a 'statement' of some kind.
• Sloppy kisses. Unless it's from a dog.
• Kissing a dog. Of any kind.
• Not being able to cancel obligations at the last minute without appearing rude.
• Cancelling obligations at the last minute.
• Fake apologies.
• Making fake apologies.
• Morning breath so bad that hazard lights ought to start flashing with your first words.
• Mistaking someone's long, thoughtful stare for flirting.
• Flirting with someone you only thought was flirting with you.
• Getting halfway through a manuscript before you decide to change a character's name.
• Seeing descriptions on social media that could mean anything.
• Not understanding exactly what it means to be a "brand specialist" or "life optimizer".
• Having someone who lives in the shadows and stalks your online profile.
• Wondering if that person is masturbating to your profile pic.
• Trying to take a cute-but-not-whorish-looking profile pic.
• Trying to look attractive, serious, intelligent, fun and un-posed in a profile pic.
• Trying not to capture glass-cleaner streaks or runs when you take that bathroom mirror selfie.
• Getting stuck in a check-out line behind a person who bought everything that needs a price-check or that they have a coupon for.
• Not having one of the coupons for the same thing you have in your own basket.
• Having hair that only behaves the way you want when you aren't going to be seen by one damn person you care about.
• Not feeling well and not being able to explain why.
• Drinking coffee on the patio and swallowing something that could have been a lump of powder cream or the baby spider you saw earlier.
• Not being able to find that baby spider anywhere near where he was before.
• Not being able to make yourself throw up the coffee.
• Thinking about that nasty, unidentified lump every time you drink something for the next week.
• When I visit my toddler nephew and he's so busy playing that he pays me no attention at all.
• Having nothing to write with or on when you have an idea for a story.
• Damn near hurting yourself to get to pen and paper and forgetting the idea you had.
• When the idea you had really sucks snot once you get it written down.
• Writing what is possibly the most eloquent thing ever to leak from your brain only to read it over and think, "Meh."
• When you're so broke you can't pay attention.
• Finding a great sale on a product you've been wanting at the time you're brokest.
• Being broke. Period.
• When you've re-arranged all your bills so that you have lights, food and gas, and then reading news about someone who bought diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Knowing that, if you could, you might also splurge on diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Spending forty bucks on something frivolous to cheer yourself out of the blues, then realizing you forgot a bill that's due.
• Returning that frivolous thing so you can pay your bill.
• Realizing that you don't really miss the frivolous thing you returned.
• Buying a lipstick that looks so good  in the store only to realize, once you get home, that it makes you look a little scary.
• Doing the same thing with an outfit, only the outfit makes you look scarier. Or desperate, or cheap, or, maybe, just sad.
• Realizing you can't wear the same cute clothes at fifty-something that you did at twenty-something - or even at forty-something.
• Realizing that maybe you should never have worn some of the clothes you did.
• Wishing you had a "significant other" only because you want someone to have sex with, and you're too good for one-night stands.
• Wanting to have sex and having no one to have it with.
• Wondering if that last item was grammatically... what?
• The term "significant other". 
• Wondering if that term makes you the insignificant one.
• Kissing with no sex.

The Loves:

• Kissing with no sex.
• Having really pleasant conversations with someone you'll probably never ever see again.
• A whole day to do whatever you want.
• Knowing what it is I want to do for a whole day.
• Watching a comedian that makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
• When I visit family and my toddler nephew runs screaming for the door the minute he hears my voice.
• That big, nasty chocolate-and-slobber kiss I get on my ear from my nephew.
• Having a really cute stranger flirt with me, even if I'm never going to see him again and there was no chance that, if I did, anything would come of the flirting.
• Waking up too fast because I think it's a Monday when, really, it's Sunday and I can go right back to sleep.
• Making a CD of that one really good song so I can play it on loop and dance like a maniac if I want to.
• Dancing like a maniac to that one really good song.
• That first perfect cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• Any cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• When I wake up with breath so fresh that I wish I had someone to roll over and kiss without throwing their body into shock.
• That one special guy friend I can talk to about any and every thing.
• That one special guy friend who makes me feel beautiful and isn't going to ever (say he wants to) sleep with me.
• Reading a book so good that I adopt the characters as imaginary friends for the rest of my life.
• Writers who write so well that I swear I can hear them telling the story inside my own head.
• Falling in love with the characters I write about.
• Remembering something about a loved one that makes me break into a big smile.
• Knowing that there is a person out there who is going to meet me and make me fall as in love with them as they will be with me.
• Hope.
• Dreams.
• Goals.
• Beating the odds.
• Being here.
• Being me.
• Having so many more "Loves" that I will have to continue this at another time.

Peace

--Free

When Life Hands You Lemons...

When life hands you lemons, make...

Blah, blah, blah-ba-de-blah. Just another cute saying. Unless you put it into action.

After I read about this family - who turned an unfortunate happening into a beautiful event, I had to ask myself when was the last time I did something for anyone.

To be truthful, as generous as I would like to think that I am, I'm really more apt to break out into a rendition of "What Have You Done for Me Lately" than I am to be a quiet blessing to someone in need. And, you know what? Shame on me. My mother raised me better than this.

I can only count one decent thing I've done in weeks and weeks, and -  still being honest for the moment - it wasn't totally without selfish motive. (Loussac Library has set out places for food to be donated to hungry children. I dumped in a couple bagfuls a week ago. Generous of me if you don't count that I had just cleaned out every pantry in our apartment. Cleaned out of all the can goods and box-stuffs that the roommate and I never use. Don't even know why we had them in the first place, so... Yeah. Hold that applause for us two greedy, over-fed bitches.)

My parents taught me that generosity isn't giving a dollar when you have ten, but giving ten when you have eleven. In the case of my sorry-assed donation to those hungry children, I had ten dollars and gave ten cents. To children!

While there are young ones out there, in need of basic nutrition, I'm hoarding boxes of cereal (when I eat cereal once about every other Saturday) and 3 bags of brown sugar because, heaven help me if I ever run out of brown sugar for me coffee. Isn't that kind of pathetic? Even worse: my roommate has, at this very moment, a Costco-sized box of breakfast sausage in our freezer. That heifer don't cook! How big of us to give away three-month old food that we were never going to eat... Basically, we gave those children our throw-away food. We gave them our garbage.

(Right now, If I believed in ghosts, I'd be looking for my mother's hand smacking me upside my head.)

Since I read about the Fowlers, I've been telling myself that I really want to be better about sharing. I want to be a better person. The next time I have a chance to do something for someone - with time or money, or whatever - I want to give ten of my eleven.

I hope we all take the Fowler family up on their challenge to start a trend in giving.

Peace
--Free