Lauren Reagan

Had a surprise waiting for me down in the basement today when I went down with a huge arm load of dirty laundry to load into the washing machine. One foot away from the washer and dryer was a little black snake with a very bright yellow ring around it’s neck! I do not like snakes, they creep me out and scare me something awful. My Dad isn’t home for the weekend so I couldn’t holler for him to come down and take care of it so I looked around to find something to try and keep it contained and came up with a small bathroom type waste basket and carefully placed in over it and then put a heavy tool box on top of that to keep it weighted down, giving it no way to escape from there, at least that is what I’m hoping for!

After securing the critter I immediately got upstairs and got on the computer and looked up what type of snake it is. I knew that it was a Ringneck, but wasn’t sure if it was dangerous and thank goodness it isn’t, so I am thankful for that. Now I just wish Dad would get home and take care of the situation.

I have had the opportunity to visit and explore a good many of the states here in the good old U.S. of A. but one place that I never had the chance to go was to Hawaii and honestly I don’t know if I ever will at this point. With so many people out of work and dealing with the horrific economy issues that we have been experiencing these past several year, I don’t see how any body is traveling, but it appears that they are. There are not too many people that I know personally that are able to do much of anything but work their butts off, if they are able to find a job, much less a second and third like so many people are faced with.

Anyway, that is a real depressing topic to be dwelling on, but it is certainly a reality. Sometime I like to go online and just check out places, some times it will be places that I’ve been too, while other times it is places that I would like to have gone. You really get a bird’s eyes view via the Internet, pictures, links, videos galore as well as write ups on just about every topic you would need to know. As I said earlier I have never made it to Hawaii and I love going online and checking out homes for sale in Hawaii, especially the ones right on the water. It really must be as close to heaven as one can get without leaving the United States anyway. And you don’t even want to get me started on places like Bermuda and Jamaica!

Back in the 80′s Belinda Carlisle was one hot ticket. My favorite song on the radio was “Mad About You’ done by her. I found it last night on YouTube. It had me bouncing around the media room and the kitchen, feeling good about life. Music is so good for the soul!

This morning I was talking to a friend about country music and she asked me if I had ever heard of Keith Whitley. Well, DUH! OF course I have!

Keith Whitley had a string of hits back in the 1980′s and was married to Lorri Morgan, another big country music star. Everyone knew Keith was an alcoholic and he died young from acute alcohol poisoning. It was a huge scandal and I remember hearing my Dad tell my mother that “Lorrie Morgan killed Keith Whitley” by driving him to drink, even though she was out of town on tour when he died.

One of Keith’s songs is forever in my memory, “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” I felt that way one time when I dated a guy who had just been dumped by his girlfriend. I never felt like he was “there” with me, and this song expresses that feeling so perfectly. It makes me sad to think that Keith might have felt that way about his wife, Lorrie.

I love how Facebook has helped me reconnect with so many friends I used to have in the high school days. So many of us lost touch over the years, and I was not able to attend the last official reunion. But now I am finding several people who I liked a lot, and several of them have married or remarried so their last names are different now.

One of my best girlfriends from junior high school just popped up on Facebook and I’m trying to catch up with everything she has been doing. From her profile, it looks like she is married and has an adopted daughter. They’ve moved to Montana and she is working for the county’s agricultural department.

I have always been a little concerned about living in a remote area, but she assured me that an alarm system from home security butte gives her and Bobby the peace of mind at night while they sleep but also during the day while they are away working their jobs. The alarm system notifies police and her by phone if anything happens, and so far they have not had any issues at all. Funny, but I never realized that some people have to take steps to protect their homes from not only humans who might try to break in, but also from bears.

Of course, when you live that far out in a rural area, cable TV is not an option for hundreds of thousands of people. So to get TV programming, they found www.localtv-satellite.com to subscribe to a satellite package and this works out for them great.

It was so very cool to find her on Facebook – with them in Montana, its not like I would ever run into either one of them in the local grocery store!