Broken Lives Matter

Hello loyal readers! I come to you from my cousin's small but very impressive, beautifully run (as it would have to be, since he's the general manager) Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Benton Harbor, Michigan:) We're on our little vacation a la Extreme Makeover: Home Edition , keeping our distance from the remodeling of our home, and we're enjoying it:) Comfortable, amazingly friendly, this town is surprising me after less than a year away! Speaking of comfortable, I slept beautifully last night and had a plethora of very good dreams. One of the only ones I remember was about the renovations. The size of the rooms in our home seemed to have quadrupled, and everything from floor to ceiling was covered in white sheets. It reminded me even in the dream of the scene in ET: The Extraterrestrial when government scientists take over Elliot's home and everything is covered in plastic sheeting. Weird. And I think in my dream the floor even shook like the plastic walls

Hey! Such an exciting day:) My mother and grandmother came to town earlier to take us out to lunch, after which they took my little dog Mary with them, so she'd be out of the construction worker's way while they tear apart and reassemble the back end of our house this coming week:) When I got home, the first credit card I've ever had in my name was waiting for me! I have to admit this was a little frightening. I've avoided credit cards all my life, afraid of unnamed horrors in my own mind that would ultimately lead to my imprisonment:) Silly, yes, but this is how "financially savvy" I can be. Mikel walked me through the process of charging my first ever purchase, an addition to the home I'm actually really excited about--these tumblers! They are almost exactly like a very pretty set my grandmother has in blue , which I guess confirms that I'm actually a grand dame in a 30-year-old's body! But hey, I think they're pretty, and now I'll