Who Is CedarTree?

This is my second attempt to start this blog. The first was lost in Blogger Hell after some sort of technical disaster by the blogmasters. Starting over on a new day, of course, will lead to a different introduction. First of all, it's raining today. When I started my soon to be lost blog, it was sunny.

Also, when I started my other blog last week, I was younger. Now a few days later, I've had a birthday and am further entrenched into middle age. So life is older and cloudier today, and my mood is sleepier and bit grumpier because I just can't reproduce that brilliant first attempt at bloggerhood.

Why start a blog? It's an exercise in self care I suppose. I put my thoughts on the page, give myself time to consider my life, define what it's about, and then share that portion with an unknown, and right now imaginary, audience. I like to write, as all bloggers do. This gives me a forum in which to discipline that impulse. I have a place to go to with my words and thoughts. It is mine, and it waits for me everyday. (unless of course the technical gods decide to make it disappear again.)

I could have chosen a private diary instead, but this page is also a way to connect. I love people, love talking about the important things, the funny things, the things that rend our hearts or expand our minds.

I don't see myself as fitting into any particular niche. I'm a member of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). I'm a Democrat. I have a trauma background that tends to keep me feeling somewhat different in the way I view things. I also have had to deal with family members with severe mental illness for the majority of my life. I love to talk politics and religion (the no-nos), as well as ideas, stories, history, movies. My family members and most of my closest friends are spread out and far away. Although my husband's family is close by, and I fit in with them well.

I will call my husband JJ because he loves the movie Jeremiah Johnson and would be happy to live in an isolated mountain cabin for the rest of his life. In reality he has a job that takes him around the world talking to people, and he holds a very socially intense ecclesiastical position in our church. He's a good man, who loves doing the right thing and helping others, but he also revels in time alone. His solution is to bike, and bike, and bike and bike.

And of course there are the kids. Kids I love. Kids who have no idea how much potential they really have even though I have done everything I know how to help them see it. Ah yes, my kids.

The rain has turned to snow!! Time to turn up the heat and let winter take one more swipe at me while I sit in my warm house. This blog has turned out so differently than the other, and, to be honest, the other one was much better, but that's ok. Each day and each mood is different, and unless the crazy preacher predicting apocalypse in yesterday's newspaper is right, there will be many more.