Amy Currioman

When I was younger I had hoped to have two children, one girl, and one boy. Life had other plans for me, and I ended up with two wonderful boys. Every now and then, though, I tease them that one of them was supposed to be a baby girl! They just roll their eyes at me and laugh; they know that I love them dearly. When my niece had a baby girl last year I was very excited to be able to go shopping for new baby girls clothes for her baby shower present. There are so many adorable outfits available on the market today!

To be perfectly honest, that is probably one of the biggest reasons why I wanted a baby girl way back then; the outfits for baby girls are always so adorable! The outfits always bring back memories of my childhood when my sisters and I would play with dolls and dress the dolls up in frilly outfits. Sometimes I wonder if playing with baby dolls was brain washing us, or simply appealing to our maternal instincts. Seems to me that I was just as happy playing with toy trucks and building blocks when I was given them to play with. That’s probably a good thing, though, since I had two sons and I ended up spending many hours with them playing with toy trucks, building blocks, trains, and action figures!

As much as I tried to avoid it, I finally arranged to have texting enabled on our family’s cell phone plan. Up until now I had ordered it blocked because I think texting is dangerous and rude on many occassions, and people don’t seem to have the common decency or sense when to use it or not. But my son told me that his boss really wanted him to have text messaging enabled, so I went ahead and enabled it.

So I had to have my son teach me how to use it, and he laughed at me because he thought that I should already know how to use it! It was easier than I thought it would be, and I have used it a couple of times. I wonder how much I’ll use it in the future. I can’t imagine doing it while driving. That would be dangerous and dumb.

When I was a lot younger I decided to invest in the stock market. The reason that I decided to do that was because my employer was offering a 401K plan where the money was invested solely in the company stock. Several years later I decided on a whim that I wanted to buy Disney Stock because I had just gone to Disney World and had a great time. I wanted to own a piece of Disney! At the time Disney Shareholders got special discounts (not anymore!) and a really nice magazine that came out a couple of times a year (again, not anymore!)

And a few years after that I read in the local newspaper that a Wal-Mart was going to build in a nearby town and the Motley Fool column in the newspaper suggested that Wal-Mart stock would be a good investment.  So I bought some Wal-Mart stock.  Not a lot, but I still bought some.

For the most part, the stocks that I have purchased have done relatively well, but a couple of months ago I met a financial advisor that suggested that I take some of my 401K money that was largely in the stock market and roll it over into an IRA that is full of annuities.  I really did not even understand how annuities work, but he sat down with me for about an hour and explained them, showed me some great Annuity Rates and convinced me that moving some of my money into annuities would be a smart thing to do at this point in time. I sure hope he’s right!

When we arrived at Monhegan we had to walk up a short hill,  The hotel we were going to stay in was the first building on the right.  I was grateful that we didn’t have to walk very far because there were no motor vehicles on the island except one truck and that was used to shuttle people’s luggage around the island.  Monhegan is a small island and the people there get around simply by walking or riding bicycles. I know that sounds like a quaint and romantic idea.  But I was really surprised when I learned in the wintertime the children of the island have to be sent to the mainland for school.  They stay with relatives during that time, but I just can’t imagine as a parent sending my young child away to live on the mainland with someone else for the entire winter.

Guest post by Sandra Ouellette

I think that it is absolutely amazing how much technology has changed just in my own lifetime!  When I was in high school, personal computers were a thing of the future, and the Internet was probably still a gleam in some genius’s eye.  When I was looking at going to college, my parents refused to let me go to the college of my choice – they wanted me to live at home.  The college I wanted to go to was a five hour commute, one way!  Back then a girl needed her parent’s consent to go to college!  Needless to say, I didn’t get to go to the college I wanted to go to, and could not get the degree I wanted.

Oh, how things have changed since then!  Anyone can get access to many different University Degrees Online without any fear of commuting, or whether they have to live at home or on campus!  My fifty-year-old brother-in-law just got his Master of Public Health degree last spring, getting the degree from WaldenU.edu,  I’m proud of him for continuing his education on into his middle aged years!