What a great day it was today, if you don't count having to be up, dressed, hair done and make-up on by 7:30 AM.  I am not a morning person so this kind of rushing around tends to stress me out.  We were car pooling to Philadelphia today to attend the RE/MAX Demand Success, Today and Tomorrow seminar hosted by none other than Dave Liniger!  Dave did not disappoint and gave us tips on prospering in today's economy and in the market ahead.  Then, as my bosses are prone to do, the agents in the office who attended were treated to a great lunch at Maggiano's Little Italy on 12th Street. Twelve Schstreet as someone from my hometown would probably say!  Lunch was great, the company and laughs wonderful.  I can't say enough good things about both of my brokers, Mike Santoleri and Mike D'Adamo.  Two great men who treat us wonderfully and provide the latest in learning and technology so we can all be our best.

After lunch and the ride back to Chester County, I was treated to a hero's welcome from none other than my beloved JJ. 

This little fella throws me a wiggle parade every time I come home.  His entire body shakes with the sheer joy of seeing me again!  The best part is, he will do the same thing if I am gone for 5 minutes or if I am gone for the day!  I almost can't bear to leave him early next year when I go to my first RE/MAX convention!  Weighing a week away with my best female friends at a convention in Orlando and missing JJ is a tough choice.  I will miss him, but I am going!

Tonight, I am taking my son Max and his best buddy Alex to the West Chester Halloween Parade, where I am sure a good time will be had by all!  Our 3 high school marching bands, representatives from the local fire departments, antique cars and lots of kids in costume will float past us as we cheer from the sidelines.  Maybe that will be me cheering and Max and his friend pretending they don't know me!

This past weekend, I got a visit from my first born, home from college for the day.  He left with a full tank of gas, a full trunk of food, including my homemade gravy (sauce for you non-Italians) and we were left with warm hugs and emptier wallets!  It's always great to see him, he's a great young man.

Today, 10/29/09 I am thankful, as always for my sons Mike and Max, my little love JJ, my family, my friends, my bosses, Mike and Mike and for life in general.  So many things to make a person smile every day.  You just have to look for them sometimes!

Carpe Diem!

The sellers and I have just reduced this absolutely gorgeous home in East Goshen!  This is no trick!  You will want to treat yourself this Halloween to seeing one of the nicest homes on the market at this time!

Hey!  This is a great first post written by Eileen Burns.  Pop over to her post and add a comment, I'm sure she'd appreciate it!  Carpe Diem friends!

I cannot sing.  It is pretty much unanimous among the people who know and love me that I cannot sing.  I don't care what those people say, I love to sing.  I sing all day, all night and every time I am in the car.  Max, my 13 year old has a request.  That I do not sing in the car.  Pffttt.  Too bad, I say.  I try to refrain when he has his friends in the car, but sometimes, it just pops out.  I can think of a song for almost anything my kids say to me.  The latest conversation with Max was whether or not 13 is too young to have a girlfriend.  I think so.  He disagrees.  Next thing I know I am singing "they try to tell us we're too young". 

My own mother regularly turns off her hearing aides when I sing.  Seriously.  I do have a few loyal friends that insist that I sing well, but frankly, I think they are lying!  The other problem is that I am hearing impaired.  This is a two part problem.  The one part is that I can honestly not hear how bad I am and the other part is I rarely get the words right, because I didn't hear them correctly in the first place.  Lyrics.com is one of my favorite places!

When I look at my dog, I burst into " who loves you pretty JJ, who's always there to make it right, who loves pretty doggie, who's gonna help you through the night, who loves you....., who's gonna love you love you...".

I also love to sing happy birthday to my friends on their birthday.  This is generally greeted with either a groan or laugh but always with the words, "you don't have to sing the entire song".  I ignore this.  I am making joyful noise!

When I am particularly exasperated with my life, I sing the song from Moulin Rouge... "One Day I'll fly away, leave all this to yesterday".

On the first day of school in September, when "mom held hostage" is over, I can be heard belting out Barbra Streisand's "Free again"! 

I love Broadway musicals and have been known to sing all of the parts!  Not well, but hey... if the only songs you heard in the forest were from the birds that sang well, it would be a pretty damn quiet forest!  There's a quote from someone in there, but for the moment, I can't remember who said it.  My favorite musical is They're Playing our Song!

Sing, sing a song.  Sing out loud.  Sing out strong.  Sing of good things, not bad..... Sing of happy, not sad!  Sing, sing a song.  Make it simple to last your who life long.  don't worry that it's not good enough, for anyone else to hear, just sing... sing a song!!! 

So, for today, 10/22/09, I am thankful for music.  It makes our souls soar, it lightens our load, it brings us together.  In my case, it makes people laugh!  So sing!  Sing a song!

Carpe Diem!

I live and work in East Goshen, Chester County.  It's a lovely township, some liken to the suburbs of Delaware County, as East Goshen is sometimes as far West of the city of Philadelphia as some buyers would like to be.  The mission statement of the township, as per their website is as follows:

           Endeavor to be one of the premier communities in Chester County by continually
           improving the quality of life while, at the same time, managing growth and development
           in a manner consistent with the protection of our environment and preservation of our
           natural and historic resources.

I can speak to my experience here as a convenient, clean and welcoming township that boasts two gorgeous parks, with great walking paths, a responsive township, some decent pizza places and a place to get one of the best Italian hoagies and cheese-steaks this side of the river!

East Goshen is part of the West Chester area School District.  My college aged son, now at Kutztown, had a very nice education going through the school system and my younger son is having a successful time in middle school.

The following are market statistics form the past year, October 2008 to the present time.  All numbers are compliments of TREND MLS.  The numbers show that East Goshen is quite a diverse township with homes ranging from modest condominiums to large executive homes.

There are currently 141 active listings in the township with the current average list price of $500,194.

During the past year:

Minimum Prices are $112,000 Original List Price and $110,000 Sold Price.

Maximum Prices are $1,595,000 Original List Price and $1,500,000 Sold Price.

Average Prices are $362,731 Original List Price and $334,241 Sold Price.

Average days on the market for the past year is 89!  Not too bad considering what is going on in other parts of our country.  Average days on the market so far for October, 2009 is 47 days!

I am the marketing agent for two of the homes currently on the market.

426 Eaton Way is a lovely one bedroom condominium located in the popular over 55 community of Hersheys Mill, listed at $193,900.

919 Nathaniel Drive, a gorgeous colonial that sits at the end of a cul-de-sac street and has a new kitchen and master bath, listed at $698,800.

If you are interested in knowing more about East Goshen, or any part of Chester County, or if you just want to know where to get a decent Italian Hoagie, call me or email me.  I'm happy to help.

While perusing a diet book called The Full Plate Diet, I came across a quote from Albert Einstein.  "A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"

This got me thinking.  I am a fairly optimistic person prone to occasional fits of deep blue that don't usually last very long.  What do I need to be happy?  The first that popped into my head was JJ, my dog. 

Of course my children make me very happy, but there's nothing quite like the uncomplicated, undemanding and totally no strings attached love that you get from a dog.  Having spent my entire life yearning for a dog and finally getting JJ last summer, I honestly can't believe I lived this long without him. 

Another thing that makes me happy is quietly reading a book.  If I have to picture my happy place in my mind, it would be on the porch of the house we rent every summer at the beach.  My feet up, my hair being stirred by a soft ocean breeze, a full glass of my home made ice-tea on the end table and my JJ right next to me.   One hand turning the pages, one had stroking my best friend in the world.  Yes.  That's it. 

The smell of a baby's warm head is another of my happy places.  I can so remember my babies as babies and the feelings that welled up in me when I held them in my arms to nurse them.  Surely there is nothing quite like it.

The warmth of a cat and the contented sound of it's purring.  I had a cat from around aged 9 until I was about 22 or 23.  Cleo was her name and she slept on my bed, right next to my pillow.  Cleo had a loud purr and she would start to purr the minute she walked into my bedroom.  She purred as I fell asleep and for a long while after she died, I simply couldn't fall asleep without the sound of her steady rumbling in my ear.  Animals have always been a big part of what makes me happy.

Having been away from church for many years, it's been a pleasure to be back in the fold, so to speak.  After every service, they now sing a song called Bind us Together.  We sing this while facing each other across the aisle.  It's a lovely song and I find myself singing it for most of the day afterward, thinking of my sons and how bound we are to each other in love.  My mom and I are very close and we talk almost daily.  She is another of my happy places and I am so grateful to have been raised by such a warm and strong woman.  She's very funny too and says just about whatever pops into her Italian head.  I love that little woman!

What else does a woman, or a man need to be happy?  The knowledge that your children are safe and well and happy, a warm animal by your side, a good book, a nice glass of wine, laughter with friends, contented fullness from a good meal shared with people you love.  There's not a thing here that requires a lot of money.  But these are things that this woman needs to be happy, and how lucky and blessed, that these are the things I have.

So, what does it take for you to be happy?  I'd really like to know.

It's a gray and gloomy day in West Chester today.  This kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and my best friend and I decided to try to write a story and of course, it started out with, "It was a dark and stormy night"!  If weather reports can be believed, we are heading for some bad weather this weekend.  Plans are shifting left and right due to the weather forecast.  Mind you, I never listen to the weather.  Never.  So far, due to the forecast, our neighborhood block party for tomorrow evening has been canceled and an appointment to show houses on Saturday morning has been postponed by the buyer.  There is supposed to be a lunch and football game after church on Sunday, one my 13 year old is looking forward to.  Our Pastor says we will play in the rain and my son is thrilled by this.  I will not be playing football, but if it does rain, it looks like I'll be doing mud stained laundry later in the day!  I'm not sure if cooler heads will prevail, but I'm kind of hoping not because it will be fun for all involved.

Why do we spend so much time worrying about things that may not come to be?  I can't tell you how many times I've spent a sleepless night worrying over something that didn't happen.  I spent most of my childhood trying to quell the fear that I would lose my mom.  I could work myself up to actually crying at the thought of it.  When I had children, I would do the same thing.  Lay in bed, while the world was asleep and worry about all of the things that could befall them.  I talked to a friend about it once, assuming that everyone does this.  Apparently not.  The expression "Let Go and Let God" is a lovely one.  I have a hard time letting go of the things I worry about.  Somehow, in my mind, I am holding the world together by worrying about it.

But I do learn things from time to time and one of things I've learned is that most of what I've worried about over the years hasn't happened.  I just lost precious time and peace of mind worrying over them.  I still have the worrying thoughts, but I am getting better at letting them go.  I can't stop bad things from happening, so I tell myself to think of something else. 

I can across some great quotes about worrying.  This is attributed to Nancy Drew, one of my favorite heroines from childhood:

"If worry were an effective weight-loss program, women would be invisible."

This is an unknown author and is so true:

"Worry doesn't help tomorrow's troubles, but it does ruin today's happiness."

This one hits home too:

"We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today."

When I think about all of the worrying I did over my quiet and shy older son.  If you saw him now, surrounded by friends in college, tall, handsome, you'd wonder what the heck I was worrying about.  He's more than fine and he makes me very proud. I've worried myself sick over my younger son's vision.  I can't predict the future so I have to trust that this child, so full of life and potential, will be just fine.

So today, 10/15/09, as I head out to start a busy day, including delivering meals on wheels, I am thankful that so many of the scary things I worried over, did not happen.  I am grateful to realize I have a choice about what I think about.  I am thankful for my family, my friends, my home, my dog and cat (of course) and the new friendships being made every day. 

Carpe Diem!

As an Italian American, I always felt very proud that Christoper Columbus discovered America.  There's usually a big parade in South Philadelphia, where I grew up, and there's even a park named after the famous explorer.  The public school system where I live now does not give the kids a day off and Max has often come home to tell me that they do not teach that Columbus discovered America anymore, I think Leif Ericson is given this honor and rightly so..  Max is half Italian and is affronted by this fact, if only because he doesn't get the day off!  According to Wikipedia, Columbus day became an official federal holiday in 1934. although it says the Americans have celebrated this day since the Colonial period. 

According to Wikipeida, the influx of Catholics in the mid-nineteen century induced discrimination from activists against immigration such as the Ku Klux Klan.  There's a shocker.  The KKK was against immigration... I wonder if they stopped to think where their parents had been born?  But I digress. To help struggling immigrants, Catholics developed organizations to fight discrimination with groups like the Knights of Columbus, a name chosen in part because it saw Christopher Columbus as a fitting symbol of a Catholic immigrant's right to citizenship.

While doing some reading to write this post, I came across disturbing facts about Christopher Columbus, most shocking to me is that it's claimed that he is the founder of slavery in the Americas. 

According to this article, Columbus, in his log, noted:

"They brought us barrels of cotton thread and parrots and other little things which it would be tedious to list, and exchanged everything for whatever we offered them...I kept my eyes open and tried to find out if there was any gold, and I saw that some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose. I gathered from their signs that if one goes south, or around the south side of the island, there is a king with great jars full of it, enormous amounts. I tried to persuade them to go there, but I saw that the idea was not to their liking...They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Well, this is kind of a kick in the head to me and further proof that ignorance is certainly bliss. They certainly didn't teach this part of the life of Christopher Columbus to little Italian school children was I was growing up. 

Living and learning is part of growing up, I suppose.  As a 50 year old woman, I also suppose it's time I grew up.  But rather than be serious, I'd rather tell you something funny.  When I was younger, Dean Martin used to host celebrity roasts.  I loved them, and loved all of that silly humor.  Red Buttons did a skit and I've always remembered it and laughed.  He said that Christoper Columbus, while trying to convince Queen Isabella to let him explore said... "the world is round, you're the only one who's flat"! 

Rather than enslaving the indigenous people Columbus came across, I would have much rather he'd left them laughing.  And free.

Life has been working lately!  I am working hard, and things are working with me, which is a marked change from earlier in the year.  I have a home inspection this afternoon and I am feeling confident about it.  My family room window was just replaced this morning... Jack hit a golf ball with the lawn mower a while back.  It's a double pane window and only one side got broken, so there was no urgency except to get it done before the cold weather hit. One more thing checked off the "to do" list.

My favorite tree on the property, a Bradford Pear lost a huge chunk of itself the other day during a rain storm and we hired a tree guy that a friend of my husband knows to try to save it.  When they were finished making a lot of noise yesterday, they left without knocking.  When I went outside, this is what I saw! 

Here it is from the other side.  Does one side look significantly taller than the rest of the tree?

I am not a very picky person, but this tree looks like Larry, Moe and Curly had a hand in the pruning!  I was trying to save the tree, not set it up for public ridicule!  When Max came home from school the first thing he said was "Mom!  We're not going to keep that tree out there, are we??"  I called Jack and asked him to kindly call the tree guy.  He suggested he call the tree guy and have the tree guy call me back.  There is definitely a disconnect somewhere between the way men and women think.  If I wanted to talk to the tree guy again, wouldn't I just call him myself?? I had already called him once after he left because I couldn't believe they were really finished, what with all the debris left in the yard.  The other reason I called was because when I went out the back door, the other tree I hired him to prune still had a huge tree limb hanging from it.  Neatly sawed off, but hanging off the tree!  I tried to pull it down, but it was firmly stuck!  I didn't go out front yet!  I suppose I should have walked out front before that first phone call, but I didn't.  After I saw the mess they made out of my poor Pear, I wanted Jack to step in.  And by stepping in, I surely didn't mean for him to call the tree guy and ask the tree guy to call me.  Is anyone following this logic??

By now, I'm sure my friend Rob is wondering where the thankful part is!!!  Every now and again on a Thursday, I come to it slowly!  Here it is!

I am thankful to be alive and kicking and actually living in a country where I can have the beauty of nature around me and the freedom to enjoy it.  I am thankful to have a little extra money to actually hire the 3 stooges to trim my trees.  I am thankful for the health and well being of my children and my family.  I am thankful for this little guy, that keeps me smiling, even though he had me up at 3:30 AM this morning, barking at imaginary things in the night.

Life is Grand.  Make the most of it!

Carpe Diem!