“Money can’t buy happiness”.

I hate when people say that, and it’s usually the people who have a lot of it – that say that.

I’ve seen a quote online that says:

I 2nd this!

While this quote is supposed to be funny, for those who are just trying to survive in this economy – money can totally buy happiness.

For those struggling with financial issues and not having enough money – money can totally buy happiness.

For those with bills, or big dreams that they want to go pursue and can’t because of the financial part of everything – money can totally buy happiness.

It’s wild because I’ve heard famous people, billionaires, and people with enough money in their accounts to be set for decades – say that more money only brought them more problems, and that they’re depressed. I’ve heard them say that money doesn’t buy happiness, and they were happier when they didn’t have so much money, but …………………………………………………………………………

I feel like telling them all ………………

“Send it to my account. Problem solved!”. 😁

There are so many things I’d be able to do with a lot more money, and any time I’ve had more – I’ve always been happy, so maybe for some – that saying is true, but for me and many others dealing with this economy right now and the inflation of everything, money can absolutely solve a lot of things and buy happiness!

I can also say that money and mental health definitely play a big part with each other. So, yes, I think if more people had access to more resources or money – mental health struggles would not go away, but the number of people that struggle with mental health may be lowered.

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With that being said – let’s talk about my birthday.

It was yesterday.

I woke up emotional.

I’m living in the middle of nowhere in a small town where I don’t know many people, and all of my friends and family are back home in IL.

My parents are gone, so they’re not going to call and wish me a happy birthday, and there’s absolutely nothing to do in this small town or even in the closest bigger city. I would have to drive hours and hours to go find something to do and I didn’t want to do that.

My morning started with tears. With me crying and being this emotional little baby and feeling sorry for myself. I decided I was probably going to go take a ride and get out of the house for a while, maybe grab a free birthday drink from Starbucks, run to a couple of stores, grab my birthday cake I had custom ordered and come right back home to go back to bed.

I planned to watch movies in bed all day. Sounds awful, right?

Do I have people out here that I do know – who I could have called and know they would have celebrated with me? Yes. Still, I just felt like not doing anything yesterday.

I will say that when I picked up my birthday cake – it was better than I expected.

I planned to watch one of my favorite movies (Second Act) with Jennifer Lopez and Leah Remini.

Great movie, and in it – it was also Maya’s birthday (played by Lopez), and she was feeling sorry for herself because of the things she wanted to do, the things she was doing that she didn’t want to do, and the way she felt unaccomplished. At 40, she was feeling like she should have done more, or be doing more, and that’s kind of how I felt yesterday – aside from not having my IL. family and friends here with me.

So, I was going to watch that movie when the kids went to bed, and I was going to enjoy a glass of wine – or two.

It’s a great movie if you ever need something cute to watch. ❤️

Anyway, I came home yesterday afternoon and sat on the couch for a bit just watching my little dude play his video games and thinking about life itself.

I decided I was NOT going to keep up with this damn pity party that I was having.

I got up, told my daughter to get ready to ride with me, and we went to the library.

I love a good book! I love reading and my daughter calls me a “book nerd” and a “book worm”.

She laughs about how fast I can get through a good book.

I decided I was going to do something I love to do.

Go pick out a few books!

I ended up getting two books.

My daughter told me I should try more fictions, because there’s some really good ones out there. Anyone who knows me – knows that I’m mostly about non-fiction books, but I’ll dip my nose into a good fiction love story or mystery / crime book from time to time.

One of my favorite authors from the fiction category of books is Raenne Thayne.

So, I always look for something new from her when we go to the library.

I just read her awesome book

Abby is a widowed nurse trying to move out of state to start a new life somewhere else with her young son, but before she moves to the new state she’s going to, her good friend Lucy asks her to spend a few weeks at Holiday House to watch over her elderly grandma who took a bad fall and was injured.

Lucy is out of town and won’t be back for another few weeks to watch over her own grandma, but when she does come back – she loves the idea of Abby and her son spending Christmas at Holiday House. So does the grandma (Winnie), who both Abby and her son have grown to love.

The problem?

Lucy’s brother (Ethan) stops by every so often, and Abby finds him so attractive.

Ethan (who had a fiancé in the past, but realized he didn’t love her and was perfectly fine when she left him), finds himself attracted to Abby as well, and as Abby knows she’s moving and leaving the state, and Ethan finds himself falling harder for Abby and loving her son like his own the more he sees her and spends time with her – now what?

She’s not staying in the small town she’s currently in to help with Holiday House and the grandma, so Ethan is fighting against his feelings and time. Abby is fighting against her feelings and ignoring time.

Meanwhile, Lucy is dealing with her own love emotions as she has a guy who is so in love with her and wants more than a “friends with benefits” thing that they’ve been having, but she saw her parents fighting a lot, and she never wants to go through that, so she tries her hardest not to get into a relationship with the man who is in love with her, and he refuses to continue to be just her “friend with benefits” .

It’s a really good book, and I totally 10/10 recommend it!

I’ve ready many of her books and love them all!

The one I got at the library yesterday is:

So, I’ve read this one before, but it’s one of my favorites, and yes – I’m going to read it again!

Serenity Harbor is about a wealthy businessman (Bowie) who is raising his little brother (Milo) who has autism and is a lot of work. He can be hard to handle, and uncontrollable sometimes. Bowie didn’t even know he existed until he has to become his guardian.

He and Katrina meet at a local grocery store one day, and she walks over to help him with a meltdown his brother is having, and once he sees how good she is with him, he hires her temporarily to help him with his brother. She ends up moving in with Bowie (short-term) to make things easier on him while he’s working on his business stuff, and whatever he needs to do, while Katrina is also trying to find out about adopting a special-needs girl she met while doing work in another country a while back.

The more Katrina is living with Bowie, and he sees how she is with his brother, and the more Katrina gets to know Bowie – they have to struggle to keep it professional and both fight the fact that there are strong feelings there, but neither one of them want to say anything.

10/10 – I recommend this one as well.

This book made me laugh a bit, and she’s just such a great writer – that many of her stories keep me interested, so when it comes to fiction – she’s my first “go-to” for a good book, but I’ve opened my mind up to checking out other fiction as well.

We’ll see.

I’m more into non-fiction as I said. Mostly autobiographies.

I also picked up the book

If you’ve seen the movie (The Blind side) – this is the real guy who went through everything that movie is based on. It’s a real movie. It’s a real story, and I wanted to read things from his point of view.

The library is one of my happy places. 😁

My daughter knows we can be there for a long time, so she minds her business, lets me pick out books, suggests books to me, and lets me just do my thing.

I love her for her patience! lol.

I had to laugh when we were checking out and she made a comment about how I can get through books in two days, and the librarian smiled and told me, “Well then – you need more than just two books!”.

My daughter was hungry, so as much as I wanted to tell the librarian she was probably right, turn around and go to look for more books, we just checked out and I went to grab Pizza for dinner. It was my birthday and I wasn’t planning to cook for it.

We had Pizza. We had my cake. The kids sang to me and I danced to it. I took some cute photos because again – I wasn’t going to be emotional all day and let it ruin my day, and I relaxed for a bit with the kids – waiting for them to go to bed, so I could pour a glass of wine and watch (Second Act), but I ended up getting so tired – I went to be bed as well.

Isn’t my cake pretty though?

And, of course – I had to grab a few selfies.

❤️

I look totally crazy in this, huh?! haha.

I plan to treat myself to something cute when I get paid in a few days.

Be it some new lotion from Bath N’ Body, or something from Amazon, I will treat myself.

I did see this and had to get it…………………………..

I had a decent birthday.

It wasn’t fantastic, but it was okay, and I’m okay with that.

If you want to laugh – there’s a trend on TikTok where women change the numbers of their candles around. If someone is 42, she’ll change the 2 to the other side to make it look like she’s 24. If she’s 32, she’ll make it look like she’s 23, and whoever is with her, changes the numbers back around to her real age. The woman who is doing this trend – will say “no”, playfully slap the hand of whoever is changing it back, as she changes it to the way she wants it to be, and giggles.

So many women are doing this trend right now.

I was going to do a video with this trend – until I made myself laugh because I’m 44 now.

No matter how I switch the number candles, they’re going to come out the same way. 🤔

I didn’t think about that when I planned to do this trend.

Ah well. It was a fun thought.

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Babies!

I mentioned a few days ago that I heard Bunnie XO and Jelly were getting divorced, and it broke my heart.

They are one of my favorite couples, and I thought they were so happy – forever and ever, Amen.

No.

The internet went crazy trying to figure out why they were suddenly getting divorced once the news broke, and people wondered who cheated on who.

The internet went crazy trying to dog out Jelly and sticking up for Bunnie. The internet went crazy gossiping, spreading rumors and lies, and sharing nonsense. The internet went crazy bringing up old videos of Bunnie and Jelly with other people or trying to decode the meanings of everything in their videos or on their socials.

I did none of that.

I waited because I knew that eventually – the truth was going to come out, and one of them was going to speak on it.

I knew one of them was going to come out with exactly what was going on, and why the divorce was happening, and yesterday – as I drove home from the library and grabbing Pizza, I noticed that Bunnie XO had put out a Podcast called, “The divorce”.

My daughter and I listened to it on the way home and it broke my heart.

I stand with Bunnie XO, and so does the entire world of women.

She spoke on how her and Jelly stopped communicating a long time ago, and she has always felt like she loved him – more than he loved her. She said they had a bad argument on Mother’s Day, and she screamed for him to file the divorce papers, and – he did.

She said she screamed it out of anger, but when he really went and filed, that was a rude awakening for her. She didn’t want the divorce. She doesn’t want the divorce. She wanted to try to work it out in marriage counseling, but Jelly doesn’t want to. He’s ready for the divorce and he’s ready to see other people now. He’s not happy in this marriage and she still stuck up for him and said he’s doing what he has to do, and she respects that.

She said everything beautifully in her Podcast and talked about being happy for him wanting to be happy, and finding his way now, and she even went as far as to tell women listening – that his DM’s are open and that if he finds a woman who is sweet, genuine and isn’t on some sneaky shit – she’ll welcome that woman with open arms.

She spoke highly of Jelly and talked about the years they’ve spent together. She spoke of building their empire together, and their struggles trying to have a baby, and even mentioned that they plan to keep trying to have a baby together / co-parent together if it happens – despite the divorce. (Which confused the hell out of me, but everyone does things differently).

She killed any rumors or gossip going around the internet and said she is NOT and never will be dating Chad Kroeger despite videos or rumors out there. She said Jelly is dating already, and she’s happy for him. She said he was kind enough to give her the compound they were building together and talked about how they will always be friends.

She shared her true feelings on everything, and despite her not wanting the divorce, she is okay being there for him during this time and being happy for his next chapter in life – whatever that may be and whoever he may end up with.

Bunnie XO is a beautiful person with a beautiful soul, and she’s not going to cause him problems or make his life hell just because he wants this divorce, and he’s ready to move on, and I respect her so much for that. ❤️

If you’ve seen his video from his concert (I believe last night) – now that the news of the divorce is out because TMZ got ahold of it and broke the news, and because now Bunnie XO spoke about it on her Podcast, he went on to say at his concert – that Bunnie Xo is his best friend and always will be – and I thought that was beautiful.

So, if you’ve been waiting on one of them to break their silence, or if you’re wondering what’s really going on – go listen to Bunnie’s Podcast, and if you don’t want to go find it, I also posted it below for you to watch.

My heart broke every time she wanted to cry, and I’m sure this is killing her, but still – she stays peaceful, respectful, and honors his wishes.

THE WORLD LOVES BUNNIE XO, and she’s going to be alright.

She’s already landing on her feet and working on herself.

I giggle every time I hear someone say Jelly is an idiot, or that he fumbled Bunnie, and I have to agree, but we’re not going to disrespect, or talk down on him. We’re not going to make him feel bad, right?

People fall out of love all the time. He did the right thing by filing the divorce, not cheating on her, and not leading her on to believe that all was still good when it wasn’t / isn’t.

I think if a married couple can work things out and love each other, by all means – I cheer that on, but if one falls out of love, or one knows that it’s not working and he or she chooses to file divorce before cheating, so they can go see other people or see who else is out there that may be more for them – I’m all for that as well.

He never talks down on her or bad about her, and I know that despite all of this – them being one of my favorite couples – and now – no longer together – they will always love and be there for one another and that’s all we need to know.

Bunnie said she’s “Getting her sparkle back”…. but baby never lost it!

She’s always had that sparkle!

Loves.

Have a beautiful day my loves.

I’m going to go enjoy my Coffee and the Michael Oher book, and tonight – best believe me and that wine have a date. ha. I plan to watch that movie I planned to watch last night.

📚Shel📚