My best friend Nikki... I met her a few years ago at work. We had a laugh when she transferred a call to me and it came from a Karen. I questioned her since it's my name too and I didn't know there was another Karen. Turns out it's her first name, she went by Nikki her middle name. We became friendly acquaintences. A hi when we crossed paths and an occasional chat in the break room. Fast forward a few years and we both end up in the same department. We become fast friends. Find out we have tons of things in common. She's even right there beside me when I meet and fall in love with my now husband. Things started getting out of control for her. She eventually got suspended from work and ended up in rehab. It turned out to be a great thing for her. She started attending AA, NA, and SLA meetings. Then my job did layoffs and they cut her. She got really depressed, and then last week she called crying. I calmed her down, we made plans. I get a call a few hours later and my best friend is in the ICU. She was drowning her sorrows and over did it, especially due to her gastric bypass. She had a seizure and fell into a pillow. She went without oxygen for an unknown time when her mother found her and got her breathing again. She stayed on life support for a few days and then one morning she slipped away. I miss her instensely.

Funny things I've seen while experiencing and escaping Ice Storm '09: 1. Leaving town a liquor store marquee reads: THIS SUCKS 2. Driving through Memphis a tax place named: MAS DENIRO TAXES- a few blocks down the road another tax place: MO MONEY TAXES 3. Cruising through Memphis trying to purchase bathing suits mid-winter a TARGET that's been tranformed into a: PAWN SHOP - complete with huge blinking neon sign. More to come I assure you....

It seems in my lifetime I've seen news stations coin phrases for weather atrocites a million times. The only time I was ever a part of it was growing up in San Diego we had El Nino and La Nina but that was just wind and heat. While living in Arkansas we welcomed many people that lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. Now however I am experiencing the horrific results of a weather based tragedy. I live dead in the center of Ice Storm '09. I live about 25 miles from Jonesboro, Arkansas. My town is called Paragould and Tuesday night for the first time in history we experienced a city wide blackout. Now many towns in our area were just as affected but they are primarly smaller towns or towns with only partial outages. We unfortunately hold the title of the biggest city that is entirely without power. Even Wal-Mart was closed for three days!! My story is much better than others. No one in my family has been killed by tree branches, but it has been horrible nonetheless. The storm started Monday with sleet and rain companied with freezing temperatures. Tuesday trees started freezing. We realized just how bad things were going to get when trees, branches, and cables started freezing, bending, and breaking under the weight of the ice. First our power went out, not horrible we had lots of blankets and flashlights. Then a tree fell and broke our fence. We went outside to smoke and saw our animals running free. So we packed up the puppies and the kids and went to my mom's who still had power at that point. My mom lost power with the rest of the town around nine pm. Again not so bad until we tried to sleep and it sounded like a war zone outside from all the freezing and cracking tree branches. Not to mention the exploding transformers and telephone poles being pulled down. We got up Wednesday morning and saw that layers of ice were under a layer of snow under a layer of ice under pelting freezing rain. Driving to work that morning there was not a street or traffic light working in town. In fact there were three business with power: Kum N Go (gas station), Lowe's, and Teleflora (my employer). I got to work and discovered power was the only thing we had. All of the tools it takes to do my job weren't available and I was the only person in my department that even showed up. I spent the day warm, however my husband and children spent the day like human popsicles. My company offered the building to employees as a refuge from the cold. There aren't beds, but we had power, heat, and warm showers. So that night we discovered the joys of trying to sleep on a hard floor with motion sensor lights. It was just as bad as freezing our asses off. So Thursday we decide we are going to suck it up and stay at the house. It can't be that bad right? Wrong, it was 45 degrees and no amount of blankets could get us warm. Even with all four of us in the same bed. So I gave up, we had lots of hotel points saved up from before my husband got laid off (story to come in another blog) so we took off in search of a room. Every hotel within a hundred miles was booked so we packed our stuff and came to Memphis. We've been living out of hotels ever since but at least we're warm and have a place to sleep. Two things we could not accomplish at home. It's now Saturday and we still don't have power at home. Monday will bring a work day that I'll be required to attend, so I certainly hope someone in my family gets power back so we have a place to stay. Pray for the people who couldn't just take off to a hotel and are having to brave the elements. My family included.

The concept of rehabilitation these days is lost I think. I believe that at some point prisons, mental hospitals, drug rehabs, etc. were truly meant for rehabilitation and realease. Now if you have a drug problem you get 10 days in rehab if you're lucky and then you're back on the streets. Unless you are wealthy that's about as much care as you're going to get. The prison part really hits home for me. My oldest son's father was convicted of capital murder in 1998. He was then sentenced to life in prison, which in Arkansas is anywhere from 15 years to life depending on the governor. He has spent 10 years rotting in the prison system so far, and they have done nothing but turn a man with problems into a monster. He isn't even really human. He has no clue on how to express feelings, any emotion comes out in an explosion. Guards bring in whatever they think they need from the outside: drugs, tobacco, cologne, watches, cell phones. Pretty much anything an inmate can pay for. The saddest thing is because he may have a possibility of coming home, they give him this hope and then they do NOTHING to prepare him for that day to arrive. If he got out tomorrow he'd be useless. Please don't get me wrong he without a doubt is guilty as can be. I just don't see how doing nothing to make their lives better helps anything. Great he can play basketball on the yard, and he sees movies before I do, but how about teaching him how to be a human being. I'll step off my soap box for now, but I step off in disgust of what this country has deemed as acceptable rehabilitation.

Lets just get these facts out of the way so you don't have to ask me about them in my shoutbox or inbox: 1. Yes I like them and I'm very proud of them. Hence the five billion pictures in different bras with practically the same pose. 2. No you can't see them under any circumstances. I'm happily married and he gets to see them and that's it. Now if you happen to have been on this site for awhile or know someone who has been then I guarantee they've seen them. Ask around if you're that interested. 3. Size 38ddd 4. Yes they are completely real. Big breasts run in my family. Plus I'm not a small girl which enhances them. I thought I had more but I guess there's only so much you can say about a pair of tits huh?

I just knowingly got blocked for the first time. It was a pretty awesome experience. He adds me as a friend, with a blank add I might add. He starts out pleasant enough. I go to read his page and it clearly states he doesn't want to talk to women who are: a) not single b) smoke There were lots more letters but those pertained to me. So I politely tell him you should know I'm married and I smoke. The response I got? "You look like a smoker I should've known, you're blocked". Now I'm not sure if I'm the only one that sees issues with his logic, but if you have that many requirements before even speaking to a girl on the INTERNET then why send blank adds to random women? Some people will forever mystify me.

I understand that this is a place for adults and that every "Social Networking Site" is going to have a lot of people who are here for cyber satisfaction. What I don't get is how they're so blunt about it. Do women actually respond to that sort of thing? For instance this morning I woke up to "hey, wanna watch me stroke my 9 ince cock on cam?" I am quite used to sexually explicit things in my shoutbox like "damn gurl those tits are huge" and "I'd like to shoot something all over those things" so I wasn't surprised so much as curious. The problem is when I ask the people who write those types of things, if it actually works on women I never get a response. Truthfully I'll never know since the only people that read my blogs or profile are people who would never write that kind of thing to me. At least to start out a conversation :)

For Arkansas children tomorrow is the first day of school. My oldest is entering sixth grade, my youngest should be entering pre-school but I procrastinated so he's still in daycare. The sixth grader is a skaterat. There is no other classification to put him in. He cares for nothing but skateboarding. He isn't completely obsessed yet but he's heading there at an alarming rate. He's a boy, I get that, he doesn't want to bathe or brush his teeth, I get that, he could care less if his clothes are clean, I can even get that. What I cannot wrap my head around is having to blow dry and straighten my 11 year old SON'S hair the day before school starts. His hair is longer than mine and it and his skateboard are all he exists for. I started teachng him how to do his hair today. Tricks for keeping the frizz out, ways to ensure you get it stick straight, and how to get his hair to lay down around his double crown. Did I mention this is my SON? I am only doing this because the one thing my mother and all the other smart mother's I know that has stuck with me is the saying "Choose your battles". He's not doing drugs, having sex, playing violent video games, cussing me out, or many many other things that plague children and parents these days. So the long hair stays. The only thing is I wanted BOYS for a reason. I hate doing hair...bleecchhh UPDATE: His best friend informed me that when my son spends the night at his house they blow dry each other's hair. I just stared at him blankly. Skaters have come a long way since I was a kid.

When I started this site on Lost Cherry my life was not in the best place. I was seeking a world that didn't disappoint me and when I blogged it was either expressing my sadness over my loss or pointwhoring myself to the masses. The thought of that now makes me laugh. I titled the blog My News....Beware It's Sad Sometimes, and when I was a popular kid it made top 10. My life has changed a lot since then and while I still morn my loss, the smiles are much greater these days. My fiance tells me I sound like I'm blogging all the time even in conversation. So now when I get distracted and go off on some tangent he says "Shiny Nickels" and I can concentrate again. Hence the blog name change. This is now a place for me to purge the distractions I come across instead of the sadness that filled my heart. I'm here to stay boys and girls! No more month long absences. Thanks for sticking by me all these years.

I haven't written a blog in way too long, so I thought I'd catch you all up on things going on in my life. 1. In case you haven't seen the recent wedding folder I added, I'm getting married! I'm 31 and never been married so I'm super excited. He's a wonderful man, my children love him, and he's treats me like gold. The coolest thing is we're getting married on Halloween. With a traditional wedding (mostly) and a Halloween reception. I can't wait!! 2. Just because I'm getting married doesn't mean I won't be around Fubar anymore. In fact I'll probably be around more since he travels for his job. 3. We're buying a house. Granted it's just across the street, but we are getting our own space. I currently live in a three bedroom two bath house in Arkansas with me, my two sons, my 21 year old aunt, her 1 year old baby and my fiance. So as you can imagine it's getting kind of cramped. My immediate family is moving across the street, and my aunt and her daughter are staying in this house. Those are the big things. You may have also noticed that lots of my pics are gone and they're not nearly as racy as they used to be. When I was a point whore I got into the whole skin showing and competing with the other women here for attention. I'm over that now. Well mostly, it still gets me some days to be barely in the top 200 when I used to be in the top 20, and somedays it takes everything I have not to buy a blast and jump back in with the herd. For now I'm fighting off the cravings and am just here to kill time. More updates to follow....