Why, “It’s Just a Fly”?

Well that’s a funny story that I owe to my wonderfully dramatic daughter, Alie… I was considering writing a blog in my first year of sobriety, but whoa… what a year that was! I’ll save that shitstorm of a story for another day, but I’ve been rolling around this idea in my head for about 7-8 years now and have often found myself running through names that I would use when I ever got my life together and made this happen. A couple years ago I started a network marketing business adventure, also a story for another day, and I quickly came up with “Strong is Beautiful” as my company name and while I love all the different ways that can be interpreted and how all those interpretations are so fitting for my interests and my life story, it just wasn’t right for what I wanted to for this blog.

Just two nights ago, laying in bed with a million things going through my mind, the perfect name finally landed! No pun intended. Now I feel a renewed sense of purpose with all these blog-y ideas that have been running through my head all these years. If you read my little “My Story” section, you know that I am a sickening optimist. I disgust myself sometimes… the bright, sunny, happy, unicorn, and rainbow sprinkle shit that I do and say is pretty nauseating, but it gets me through! Trust me, it’s better than the alternative which is the raging asshole that I used to be (if you know, you know). I refuse to let the little things fuck up my good time! I just won’t do it. I will not let a bad server ruin my meal. I will not let someone cutting me off on the road get me fired up. I will not let a broken dishwasher, a leaky roof, fucking Covid, or anything else drag me down. I’ve been at the bottom. I’m not going back. You can’t make me. I wanted my blog to send that message, cuz it’s an important one! Whatever it is that may be happening in your life, it will be okay. You will make it through. This too shall pass! It’s just a fly! Who cares if it’s buzzing around your head or floating in your soup. It’s just a fly. How perfect is that?!

So Princess Alie’s contribution to this… Alie freeeeeaks out about most bugs. She screams, runs, panics, just so many different levels of meltdown that I do not understand as I was the kind of kid who would come home with live critters in my pockets and would use my mom’s tupperware to freeze bugs to death so I could dissect them later. Oh yes, black widow spiders and all. But not little Alie. A fly would get near her while she was doing her thing and she would tense up and scream how people do with bees. We all know those people and what that looks like. They press their knees together, tuck their elbows in close to their body, clench their fists, close their eyes, and say shrilly and repeatedly, “Bee. Bee. Bee.” Well that was little toddler Alie with flies. So I would say to her, “Alie, it’s just a fly.” Well that didn’t prevent future freak outs, it just changed them slightly so that when a fly would start buzzing around her she would do the clench up, eyes shut thing, only she would say over and over, “Just a fly! Just a fly!” It was the funniest thing to watch! She’s nine now and hasn’t done that in years, but whenever she screams about any sort of bug, my son and I use our little high pitched baby Alie voices and say, “Just a fly! Just a fly!” So thank you, Alie, for your contribution to this blog.

I hope you enjoyed this and will read my future posts! Be sure to hit that subscribe button on the home page if you want to be notified when I write new things. Xo.

(The photo: Alie in 2014, when the fly phobia began and also the year I started to think about writing a blog. I took this photo from the exact place where I was standing the first time I started to make a list of names I may want to use for my site.)