Carter

That Particular Ex

I had an incredibly rough weekend that ended up being much more emotional than it should’ve been. I seriously have to give the biggest props to The Boyfriend for knowing just exactly how to support me without me once needing to ask for a single thing. He was clingy and cuddly at the perfect moments and gave me my space exactly when I needed it. I am incredibly lucky.

It started at my Mom’s. We had been asked to help my cousin move, so Mom volunteered to take the kids for the night. The Boyfriend had worked the night before and worked his butt off moving everything and we were both pretty exhausted by the time we got back to Mom’s at about nine.

Carter suddenly decided he wanted to come home. Originally, The Boyfriend and I were okay with him coming home. But then Mom wanted him to stay. Of course, by this point she had already started drinking, and instead of being nice to us about him staying, she snapped that we weren’t allowed to take him home and that he was staying with Grandma tonight. Now, I know that she meant it playfully and I know that she wasn’t trying to be rude, but my exhausted brain and The Boyfriend’s exhausted brain took it all as horribly offensive.

Just as we convinced Carter to stay, she threw up her hands and said “Whatever, take him home!” and the whole drama-for-no-reason just hit me. We made Carter stay, because he decided he was good, and when we left, I broke down in tears. It took me a bit to realize why I cried as hard as I did…

We got home and The Boyfriend and I enjoyed some quiet time together. It was honestly a seriously beautiful night and around midnight, we headed up to our room and commenced an intense blowjob session. Sleeping came easy.

Three hours later, our doorbell rung. It was Alfie. He had come into town for a night rather suddenly. He kept saying that it was because he missed the kids and wanted to see the kids. About an hour and a half into his early morning visit, I get a message from an ex-girlfriend of his asking where he is. Turns out, he’s not actually here to see the kids. He’s here to get a booty call from his ex but his phone died and so he didn’t have her address. So instead of going anywhere else or figuring anything else out, he came here.

I’ve been prepared for Alfie to start hooking up with other people for quite a long time now and I’ve been curious about how I might react. With Alfie, I was incredibly jealous and very possessive, although not entirely for the wrong reasons being that he was unfaithful… But I never in a million years thought that he would get back together, in anyway, with this particular ex.

This particular ex is tied pretty closely to our relationship. He broke up with me twice to be able to get into this girls pants. Each time they dated for less than two weeks and each time, he came crawling back to me. Each time, I was stupid enough to take him back. Everytime he came back to me, she’d start calling me constantly, threatening to beat me up, as soon as I wasn’t pregnant…

Alfie and I always had a “thing”. Well really, we had a lot of “things”. But one of our most notable “things” was roses. When we first started dating, he said something along the lines of, “Of all the flowers in the garden, you are the sweetest rose”, and that was it, roses became “our thing”.

After every stay in the hospital, after every fight and after every child, even when he proposed, I got 13 red roses. And every rose I ever received had it’s petals carefully picked after dying and stayed stored in a bag our entire relationship. For one of our anniversaries, he got me a silver rose that was engraved. It was a big deal.

When Alfie and his ex hooked up the second time, he gave her my rose…

This particular ex left a seriously sour taste in my mouth and after Alfie and I broke up the final time, she decided she was over Alfie and tried to become my friend. It’s been a rather unsuccessful journey for us, though I have babysat her kids and we are Facebook friends. We agreed, her and I, that Alfie would be off limits to us both from now on. Alfie agreed that she would be off limits.

I mean, I wrote my best and most saddest song about this particular ex…

So, to not only catch him trying to hook up with her, but also to get the information straight from her before him, seriously broke my heart. I spent an entire day and a half in a deep, dark funk. The amount of disrespect I feel he has for me is just so intense to me.

He tried to compare it to The Boyfriend and I, because The Boyfriend used to be his friend. That’s how I met The Boyfriend, through Alfie. And Alfie had always feared that The Boyfriend and I would get together. It was his worst nightmare coming true. However, before anything even began to happen between The Boyfriend and I, before we even began flirting with each other, I went to Alfie (even though I didn’t have to, he had broken up with me) and asked him how he would feel if The Boyfriend and I hooked up or started dating. I asked him for permission to make any advancements with The Boyfriend and he said yes.

I have outright said no, and I’ve asked so freaking nicely.

He made it sound like he understood and like he wasn’t going to do anything. But then she called… She called my phone… He said that he couldn’t come over just yet because he was planning on taking the kids to breakfast. I went and got the kids early from Grandma’s so that they could spend the day with their Dad. Turns out, it was only breakfast. The moment that was done, he was off to her. Except he couldn’t remember her address, so after leaving for an hour, he was back on my doorstep asking if he could use my phone to message her. Like a sucker, I let him…

We are so civil to each other when we’re around one another. It feels like we’ve both moved on and away from hatred and bitterness. But his actions this weekend feel like utter contempt for me. And I have to wonder what the hell I ever did to him to make him hate me so much? To make him disrespect me so blatantly?

I’m more or less over the whole thing now, assuming it was just a booty call and doesn’t become a relationship – because that, I don’t think I can deal with at all. Mainly because I can’t stand the concept of that particular ex being my baby’s step-mom. I actually already know that will have negative effects on absolutely everyone, and most especially him.

Series of Amazing Days

I love when a series of days just goes so well. I mean, it hasn’t been perfect. The kids have been beyond irritating these last couple of days, mainly the boys. They have too much energy, too much strength, too much sudden emotion – it’s freaking exhausting. But save for the boys being brats, it’s been wonderful.

First, the weather has been blissful. It’s been hot, the sun has been shining bright and even though we all get a little bitchy about the heat at night, it’s so great. We’ve been desperate to get out of the house a lot, although it’s not being as easy as we’d like with The Boyfriend and his sleep schedule right now.

Today, we decided to wake up early and hit the beach. Best day ever! We missed our turn and ended up having to take a detour to The Boyfriend’s old hometown and he always enjoys doing that so much. He loves to show off all his favorite teenage haunts. Then, we got to the beach and almost immediately the kids were in the water.

The Boyfriend and I built sand castles together and then separately. He always gets a huge kick out of it, I never seem to be able to realize my vision. I had more fun tearing mine down than putting it up. We played at the beach for a good two hours and then headed back home.

The Boyfriend went for his sleep when we got home and the kids sat down to watch some Netflix quietly. Within thirty minutes, everyone but Kaeidyn was falling asleep where they sat. Keirnan and I dozed off for a good two hours, Kenzie slept almost the rest of the night and Carter probably slept for about an hour. It was amazing!!

The Boyfriend just has tonight left and then he’s got two days off. I’m so looking forward to getting a good night of sleep next to my man. I plan to go to bed early so that the night goes by faster. Hopefully we have more amazing series of days this summer.

10 Times My Kids Were Hilarious!

Over the years on social media, I have tracked various funny or quirky things that my kids have said. Tonight, I was going through old Facebook and Twitter posts and among a variety of great gems (like this shot), I found some seriously funny things.

So, I thought it would be fun to share with you 10 times that my kids made me laugh out loud.

  1. Not Sure What “Dagged” Means

  2. Don’t Mess With the Bacon

  3. For When Barbie Goes Ziplining

  4. I Keep Saying “Definition of Insanity”…

  5. Turn on the Lights

  6. Kids, Dating and Breakups

  7. Sprite or Water on the Face

  8. He Claims “I Help!”

  9. A Variation of “Who’s on First”

  10. Exciting Attitude Girl

This Has Never Happened…

With The Boyfriend on graveyards and the older three kids gone to their Dad’s, we’ve been doing a lot of lazing and vegetating. For the most part, I’ve been playing The Sims 4 and listening to a lot of music.

A new expansion came out for The Sims 4, which I went crazy tweeting and Instagram-ing about, because I was incredibly excited.

They’ve finally added some things that I’ve personally never gotten to play before. I’m relatively new to The Sims franchise for PC, and have really only had a lot of experience for consoles. So I’m getting to try my hand at a lot of things that I’ve always wanted to try in The Sims – like going to work with my sim or running a business of my own.

I even added a place of my own to The Gallery, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I’m working on writing up a more detailed piece on that over here.

And music…

Recently, Grooveshark updated their entire site. I’ve been using Grooveshark for quite awhile and I don’t remember how I found it or why I chose it over all the other options, but with this recent update and where it looks like it’s going, I’m glad I use it. So, I’ve been going around updating all my stuff there and this has resulted in a lot of listening.

From the two eclectic pieces that I’ve shared on Google+:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ValerieRayne13/posts/47Gdy5vBX6z

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ValerieRayne13/posts/1cHvhgujb59

And the new playlists that I’ve started working on (here and here) and my favorites. I’ve just been listening and adding and creating and editing like crazy on Grooveshark.

Tomorrow the kids finally come home. I keep saying that it’s a good thing too, because maybe it will finally be quiet around here. Carter has been so talkative since they’ve been gone that it’s rarely quiet. And when he’s not talking, he’s beatboxing. And while I love both of those things greatly, it gets tired after 8 hours straight…

Then, we get to go for Easter Dinner tomorrow night and see some people we haven’t seen in years and finally, I get to see my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew and I couldn’t be more excited about that. I only get to see them about once a year, so it’s always a pretty big deal.

Honestly, this last week and this upcoming week are probably going to end up being my favorite two weeks of this year. Lots of goodness happening, lots of lack of stress, I feel pretty darn content.

This has never happened…

Last Two Days

I’ve been slacking so hard the last two days, just barely completing any of my absolutely-must-get-done to-do’s. And not for any good reasons like illness or whatnot, but mostly because of Netflix. One night, I spent the entire night watching the entire second season of #TheFall.

I’ve been getting the stuff done, but I’ve been rushing through it and leaving it to the last minute and I’ve even neglected to update a few things, mostly on purpose. I’m trying my hardest to avoid the dreaded burnout that I’m sure is bound to hit when it’s most inconvenient.

The next day, I spent almost all day reading and downloading stuff all over the place. I’m doing a lot of things that I was planning on not doing this year in my blogging life – just getting distracted on it all.

It probably doesn’t help much that the kids have all been begging for attention. The second The Boyfriend leaves his spot on the couch, they’re all fighting to sit on me and around me. And everyone wants to tell stories that go on endlessly. They are a constant barrage of noise.

Kaeidyn has gotten into the habit of trying to be sarcastic, except most of the time it just comes out sounding like she’s being a total douche. More than once she’s gotten in trouble for what she considered innocent bantering because the parents thought it sounded beyond rude.

Keirnan has been instigating all sorts of trouble lately. He’s always been really good at sneaking. He’s a quiet little dude and he knows it. Half the time, you’re screaming at one kid for something, just to find out that Keirnan was the one behind it all. Tonight as the boys are going to bed, Kenzie keeps laughing and the parents are getting mad at Kenzie. Go upstairs and watch for a few seconds, turns out Keirnan is sitting there tickling Kenzie.

Carter has been a neverending ball of energy ever since he got his stitches. He wakes up in the morning and he’s talking away and running all over the house. We’ve been walking to and from school together for months now and normally it’s a pretty silent walk save for the few times I tell him to hurry up. If I ask him questions, he’ll normally just not answer or will do something like, “Fine”. Lately, it’s been non-stop talking the whole way home.

The Boyfriend was recently asked if he’d go back on graveyard. It’s been a few years since he was permanently on it and has been doing about one or two nights every couple of months pretty much ever since leaving nights. They’ve told him that they want him to move up to the “next level” but he needs to do a year on nights first.

I don’t want to say no to him, but I don’t want to say yes either. I hate the idea of him going back on nights so much but not for any good reasons. Maybe I need to read back through some of the blogs from that time period, because I remember not liking it while he was doing it.

We haven’t really sat down to have a discussion about it, because there is still quite awhile to decide. They knew that he would want to talk to me about it before making a decision, so they asked quite awhile in advance. Thank goodness too, because I would not have to make that decision lightly.

So, that’s been my last two days in a nutshell. How has yours been?

Injury and Fever

Our house phone has been on the fritz lately. It basically hasn’t worked at all for the last month and we’re not exactly sure why. And everytime that we’re about to go out and buy a new phone or call our phone company, the thing suddenly starts working like they’re was never a problem.

I was never more grateful for this than I was yesterday. Just as I’m getting my boots on to go pick up the kids from school, after over a week of not ringing, the phone rings. It’s the school. Apparently, Carter had gone to the washroom and managed to hit his head and the school nurse was pretty sure he was going to need stitches. No one knew exactly what he had done.

I rushed down to the school as quick as my little legs would carry me and the school nurse offered to drive us up to the hospital. So thankful for that. We seriously need to get a vehicle… When I got to the school, they had a bandage wrapped about his head, so you couldn’t really see the damage done.

 

Carter in Bandages

Carter in Bandages

He was in surprisingly good spirits, talkative as always. We were told it would be a long wait but I thought it was just perfect. I had had just the right amount of time to keep myself from panicking. We got taken back to the minor treatment area and Carter was still doing so great. Talking away, telling stories to anyone who would listen, babbling to himself.

I did not expect the gash to be as big as it was. As they removed the bandage from his head, my hand covered the gasp as they revealed the cut. It was very deep and a lot larger than I had been prepared for. It took me awhile to get over that…

They put some freezing cream on his head first and that was on there for about 20 minutes. Then the doctor came in and Carter was very excited about the idea of getting a needle. When they jammed the needle into the open cut, he winced a little bit, but other than that, took it like a total champ. Didn’t cry at all and kept going off about how strong and brave he was.

They put 6-8 stitches on the inside, although none of us are sure because between the two nurses they brought in to hold him down, my Mom and I and the doctor, we were all cracking up laughing over Carter’s calm banter during this ordeal. He was having a great time. Then, 12 stitches on the outside. By this point, the freezing cream had started to wear off, so his skin was a little tender and couple times he tensed up, but other than it was easy as pie.

When he was done, he was hyper. He wanted to go places and do things and talk to his Dad. So, we left the hospital and went down to Wal-Mart to see The Boyfriend and pick up a few things for dinner and breakfast. Carter was bouncing off of walls by this point and we had a hard time keeping him from jumping into the way of other people.

He was very excited to see Daddy and this theme carried on for the rest of the night. When we got home, after a couple hours, he decided he was ready for bed. After sleeping for about half an hour, he woke up with a headache, as we expected. By this point, the gash had started to swell pretty bad and all Carter wanted was Daddy. He was crying so hard, “Please, call my Daddy!”. Just hearing his voice on the phone calmed him down enough to be able to give him some tylenol.

I had come home from the hospital to Kaeidyn complaining about her stomach. By the time Carter was needing tylenol, so was she as her stomach got worse and she started to get a fever. She kept me up most of the night last night with a pain in her stomach that she couldn’t describe, constant fluctuation between hot and cold and a mild fever. The 4 AM lukewarm bath seemed to do the trick and she slept until about 7 AM.

For the most part, she’s slept the day away. She’s still got a little bit of the fever but has stopped complaining about her stomach. And Carter has only complained about the bandaids, which seem to be pulling his hair a little bit. Other than that, he’s been a bundle of joy and has been helping take care of his sick sister and is his happy, normal self.

I didn’t start feeling the stress of the day yesterday until close to midnight and then it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt so overwhelmed all of a sudden and I kept telling/asking myself that I had already done the hardest parts of the day, what was I freaking out about, but just could not quiet the stressed out feeling. By the time we went to bed, I just felt angry at the entire world. I was relieved beyond belief to wake up this morning and not feel any of those things. It’s incredible what stress can do to a person.

Now, it’s time to get to some computer work while I let the kids veg for a little while longer and then, dishes and dinner. Cannot wait for bed tonight, that’s for sure!

Venting All The Kid Stuff…

Ugh! My son has a terrible speech impetement. And you know how, as a mother, you never notice these things until their pointed out to you, because well, you know – they’re your kids and are perfect and wonderful and beautiful and could do nothing wrong!

I knew Carter had a speech impetement. It’s always been obvious. But, as is Mom, I’ve always been able to understand it. Most of his problem is learnt bad habits from Keirnan, who also had a pretty severe delay. What I couldn’t understand of what Carter was saying, Keirnan could easily translate.

Then Kindergarten started and we requested speech therapy. It took them awhile to finally get into it, but we recently got the first official report from the speech therapist.

Paperwork in regards to the kids is something that I don’t normally pay much attention to. All of the older three were born at really low weights and so immediately got reports of things like “in the10th percentile” or “below average”. I’m used to getting this kind of paperwork on the kids and I mostly just pass it off. If they’re healthy and happy, then who cares if they’re in the top 10 or the bottom. They’re too young for that kind of pressure and so am I.

So, all four of the kids now have been in speech therapy. Kaeidyn and Kenzie were both to work on one letter sound and that was it, basically just an intensive in sound reproduction for them. Keirnan had a moderate-to-severe delay, and after just over 2 years of work on it has graduted out of speech delay. Carter on the other hand…

His report was terrible. Beyond terrible. He didn’t even make it into the 1% category. All of his scores were very low and the written sections where they describe the issue were the hardest part of all to read. “Severe phonetic delay” and other such terrifying phrases were used.

And on that day, I was able to basically shrug my shoulders. Yes, I read it all. Yes, I agreed with every word. But to me, a “severe phonetic delay” can be fixed and isn’t this huge epic problem. It’s something that it’s like, “Okay now we know. What are we going to do?”, and it’s just one persons opinion.

But more and more and more, I’m noticing how bad it is with Carter. And for the most part, it’s just plain laziness. He’s gotten used to talking with his tongue all up in his teeth’s space and doesn’t even think to pull it back to make the right sounds. And that tongue is causing all sorts of issues when he actually is trying to make the right sounds. And his tongue is not that big…

Before it was pointed out to me, I could understand him. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I can’t help but hear the “severe phonetic delay”, and frankly, it’s driving me all sorts of nuts!

That being said, for the first time ever, you can see that he’s actually putting some thought into the words that he’s saying and trying harder than we’ve ever been able to get him to, to try and make some of the right letter sounds. I’ve found that to be one thing for sure – my kids do better with speech therapists than parents.

Every single one of them, when we try to get them to do anything speech related, it’s like pulling teeth. We can use all the same techniques, all the same tools, all the same everything and for some reason, it just doesn’t click in their little brains. Sit them down with a speech therapist and even after just one session, you can see an immediate improvement.

You know how long we would put our fingers up to our lips to make the “sh” sound with each and every one of the kids? Carter especially! And each and every time, it was “No, I don’t want to do that!”, “No, I want to say it my way!”, “No!”. After one session with the speech therapist, Carter comes home from school and as he’s saying something with the “sh” sound to start, he lifts up his finger to his lips and expertly “sh”s us.

In other kid-related news, Kaeidyn has been incredibly talkative lately. She almost never stops and while that’s not really new for her, for some reason the parents are not dealing well with it. I’ve complained to The Boyfriend multiple days in a row now about accidentally snapping at Kaeidyn, not for being bad or doing anything wrong, just because she doesn’t stop talking.

She doesn’t know when to stop, is probably the more accurate way of putting it. I’ll be getting mad at her brothers and she’ll decide that is the perfect time to put her two cents in – and they are never productive two cents, they are always pennies that result in further arguements. Or The Boyfriend and I will be discussing something like what day we’re going to pay bills and she’ll suddenly starting adding things to our neverending to-do list that we don’t actually need to do.

Today, I swear that she talked for an hour straight. The Boyfriend had just gotten home from work and as usual, we’re updating each other about our days. He starts telling me about something at work, and she breaks in and starts asking questions. Then, as he’s trying to answer the question, she breaks in and starts going off about one of the words he used in his sentence. He brings her back to his answer and she breaks in with a new question about another topic. So, they change subject and again, everytime she asks him something and he starts answering, she breaks in with something. This went on for the whole hour before he finally threw up his hands and said he needed her to stop.

He lasted at least 45 minutes longer than I would’ve…

Kenzie has been on the worst emotional rollercoaster ride. He’s at the prime age for it right now, where the littlest thing can set him off into an angry rage or throw him into a whiny fit. We are all absolutely terrible for teasing him when he gets really outrageous and he’s often heard “When are you going to start your period already?!?”, which seems to be a common theme around our house right now because Kaeidyn is so desperate to get hers already!

The only kid who is being the same ole same ole and not going through some traumatizing-for-the-parents stage of his life is Keirnan. He is not going through anything right now other than his usual stuff. Oh, he is getting three new teeth in, which we’re very excited about. He had four of his top front teeth pulled when he was about 3 and one of them is finally coming in. That’s about it for him.

Sometimes, it just feels so good to vent about the kids!

It’s Morning!

My morning is off to a pretty great start. Look at that, I just said morning and it absolutely is. Do you know how many weeks it’s been since I said morning and it actually was morning?!?

I’m up early this morning for a bunch of different reasons. First and foremost, because it is the first day of the return of #WritingChallenges for #EroticWriters and I wanted to be sure that it all worked the way it was supposed to. So far, so good.

Then, the older kids are coming home today and will be home right around noon. If it were a normal day, I’d still be upstairs in bed sleeping with Carter at that time. I woke up when The Boyfriend went to work this morning so that I could be sure to be awake when the older kids get home. I’m surprisingly more excited than I expected about them coming home. Cannot wait for Carter to have someone else to play with!

I’ve got a lot more stuff planned for today, all mostly online stuff. I do plan on cleaning the kitchen at some point today, but we did a bunch of cleaning last night, so my offline to-do list is dramatically shorter. I want to write a buttload of blog posts, but first I need to write those of which are necessary – then I can write for fun.

I wrote a post awhile back on my bucket list that has been getting a few comments. I need to go back and update it, to make it more clear that Alfie and I are no longer together. So I’ve gotten a few comments about “you just need to (a) where your relationship with Alfie is concerned”, and it’s amazing how hard it is to respond to those ones nicely. Mainly because of all the crappy drama that went down between Alfie and I (especially in terms of that post), although we seemed to get over it well enough and are friendly with each other, so I can’t really complain about anything.

Ah, the problems of a blog-a-holic 😉

Just to clarify, for those of you who may not know, Alfie and The Boyfriend are two different people. Alfie is Kaeidyn, Kenzie and Keirnan’s Dad, The Boyfriend is Carter’s Dad. Alfie is my ex-boyfriend, The Boyfriend is my current boyfriend.

It’s finally over!!

Christmas, that is. I’m more excited about the end of Christmas than Christmas itself. The older kids left around noon on Christmas day and aside from the constant “I’m bored” from Carter, it’s been beautifully quiet and relatively relaxing.

Christmas was really good too. The Boyfriend ended up doing all the shopping this year during his lunch breaks in the 2 or 3 days leading up to Christmas. He really spoilt the kids like crazy. Kaeidyn got a stereo and a huge makeup kit, Kenzie got lots of lego stuff, Keirnan got Transformers stuff (“just like I wanted”) and Carter got some Minecraft stuff. They were all through the moon with their gifts. I got a cellphone from The Boyfriend, mostly because our house phone crapped out and we both got a new set of dishes.

After the older kids left to their Dad’s house, The Boyfriend, Carter and I went over to his sister’s place for a delicious turkey dinner. It was so different from how it normally works going over – typically there’s about 5 adults and 8 kids and you leave with such a headache from all the noise. This time, there was 4 adults and 2 kids and we left and everyone was quiet and no one had a headache. It was so different.

Today I dedicided, kind of out of the blue, to go over to my Mom’s for a little bit. I just felt a little cooped up and spur of the moment asked if she’d be down for company. That was a nice little bit of time out of the house. Ran into some people from what feels like a really long time ago and spent a little bit of the day in a funk over that and then watched one too many hours of Oprah, so now I’m in that state of kind of heartbroken hope (hopeful heartbreak?) that she has the ability to put me in.

I’ve got lots of stuff that I’m supposed to be doing. I said, when I came back to blogging, that I wasn’t going to do this again and then… Since I’m such a good little blog-a-holic, did exactly what I set out not to do. Although, I’m not doing it in my personal blogging, which I guess means I mostly succeeded.

On my immediate to-do list is add the finishing couple of sentences to two draft posts, queue up three posts, create and add a total of ten to twelve images to those three posts and that’s just what I need to get done in the next 3 or 4 hours. Tomorrow, I have to get to work on writing challenges and for some reason, I just can’t make myself focus on it for anything. Planning all of it, I’m doing great and I’m so organized and that whole part of it is working out beautifully and exactly as planned (yes I plan my planning, don’t you?!?). But actually doing it all… Just need to breathe and get to it!

I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to getting 2015 underway. I normally look forward to the coming year because it means the horrible year that has just happened will finally be over. 2014 wasn’t an altogether terrible year. We didn’t have nearly as much drama this year as we have in years past, our finances weren’t as dire as they have been in years past and even parenting, while not by any means easier, wasn’t as challenging as it has been in the past. So instead of looking forward to 2015 to escape the tragedy that was 2014, I’m actually looking forward to 2015 to continue on the decency that was 2014.

It’s a very different way of thinking for me…

A Few of My Favorite Things

Favorite Posts So Far

It’s officially been about six months since I came back from my big long blogging hiatus. In that time, on this blog alone, I’ve written 40 posts (counting this one). So, I thought it would be fun to take a look back on some of my favorite posts over the last year, not only on this blog but also on My Bucket List, my Pictures & Videos and my Writing & Erotica.

Favorites from Valerie Rayne Rants (this blog)

For (E)veryone
For (A)dults

Favorites from Valerie Rayne Writes (Writing & Erotica)

For (A)dults

Favorites from Valerie Rayne Lists (My Bucket List)

For (E)veryone
For (A)dults

Favorites from Valerie Rayne Pics (My Pictures & Videos)

For (E)veryone
For (A)dults

Now that I’ve shared all my favorites with you, I’d love for you to share yours with me. I’d also like to take a moment to thank all of you who have been reading and following. I especially want to thank those who have commented on my posts and the valuable insights you have often given me. Thank you so much for the likes and I hope we keep on having them 😉