Work has been a challenge this week.  In our desperation to make the ride safer for our guests we have cut out ability to get everyone through the line fast.  God Bless them a two hour wait for any ride is crazy!

When all this happened on monday, I felt like my heart would break.  When guests were yelling at me about their wait, all I could do was agree that it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t fair.  And the biggest heart break is when I have to talk people out of waiting so long.  Sigh.

We have great minds working on the problems, and we are doing our best to make lemonade out of a whole bunch of lemons.  It will take some time to work out the issues, but there is no doubt in my mind that Toy Story Midway Mania is one of the best things the Imagineers have ever come up with for family enjoyment.  Am I proud??  yeah, of course I am.  Like I told one of my managers today.  I love my job just in case you have not noticed.

The thing that keeps me going is when I am able to make the kids smile.  Or the times when a guest shakes my hand, or when they give me a hug.  Just because I have done some little thing that made their day.  It is what makes me know I am where I should be, and doing what I am best at.

Life is throwing him one curve ball after the other.  He can’t seem to find work, and the one place that we always assumed would be his first job for some reason is not hiring him.  To say it is breaking my heart would be to put it mildly.  It is not only breaking my heart but crushing it.

He and I have had so many adventures together.  Often he has been who I have leaned on when things have been getting me down.  I really would have been lost without him.  And now here he is about to turn 20 years old.  My little boy will be 20.  sigh.

I remember when I first went to the doctor and he told me my baby would be born around July 31st.  I said “no he will come on my birthday”, and sure enough around 1 am on August 2nd my little boy was in my arms.  How fast time has gone by.

So I post this not to mourn the fact that I have grown another year older, but to celebrate 20 wonderful years of my son Travis.  Don’t ever forget how very much your mom loves you.

I am surviving the summer, it is so very hot.   The parks are so crowded.  I get so tired I still love what I do but sometimes I feel like I will collapse from exhaustion.  When I am driving to work I am dragging my feet.  But then something takes over in me once I step on stage.  A energy that I have in reserve, and when I get those smiles and waves and I make someone laugh then all is well in my magical world.

So this is me checking in.  Exhausted from the day, but wanted to reach out to all my friends and send a group hug.

It was sad packing up the last of my mom’s treasures,  saying goodbye all over again.  Remembering each story she had with each thing I held in my hand.  Missing her voice and laughter.  Missing her singing religious hymns in the morning as she puttered around the kitchen.

It was sad saying goodbye for the last time to a house, that the two of them built together.  It was a house that I did not grow up in so all the memories there were of my mom and her husband.  Many wonderful memories some not so wonderful, but still a memory is a memory.  It is what makes us.

The world seems to be facing one catastrophe after another, but still the sun comes up each day, the world still finds its way around the sun.  Just as we all find ourselves still standing, and making it through another day.

So here I am with some memories, and a new day.  And the world still circling, taking me one more year down the road.

Scattered amongst the dark sky,

casting our light out, hoping that we bring a smile to those who see us.

Often overlooked but we continue to shine, even when the clouds of our lives

hide our light from view.

We are no more permanent than the stars in the heaven.

But often our light continues to shine after the star is long gone.

We often feel that we are unimportant.

But our stars are often used by our loved ones for direction,

just like the sailors who are guided by the stars to find their way home.

We are all cast together in this world that is our sky and our universe.

There are those of us that our light will endure long after we are gone,

and there will be those that will continue to allow the clouds to hide their light.

It is up to all of us to shine as brightly as we can,

and like the stars in the heaven assure those around us that we are always there watching over them.

We are the stars that inspire poetry, music and dreams and wishes.

And when we think we are alone, look around you,  you are surrounded

by other stars just like you.

Find comfort in your place in the heavens, find peace in knowing your light brings comfort to others.

We have a special loading area for our guests that have disabilities.  It is called our WAV area, Wheelchair Access Vehicle.  This is one of my favorite places to be because often I am given a bit more time to visit with our guests.  And it is usually here my heart is touched by the families and the challenges they face.

Today there was a family that came to my area,  here was a mom, a dad, and two little girls.   But one of the little girls was in a chair that was more like a hospital bed.  This precious child hooked up to tubes, and machines.  But I could see in her eyes that she was very aware of where she was, even though she could not communicate it or move.

Since this was the first time that I had ever had this kind of chair/bed, I had to tell the family that we may not be able to load her on the vehicle.  But we would do our very best.  But before we would load the little girl, I wanted one of the parents to ride the ride in a wheelchair to experience it to let me know that it really was ok for her daughter.

When she came back she said lets get her on the ride.  This vehicle and this special area I am so very proud of.  We were able to take the time, and other guests were so very patient with us.  And we were able to put this fragile little girl on the ride.

I was fortunate to be there when they were done, and I said did she like it?  And the mom said she is mad because she could not stay on.  And I looked at the little girl and there were tears in her eyes.  She never got to play the game, she really never got to do anything but lay there, and listen, and watch as her mom held her in her arms.  With all of that, she still loved the ride.

What more can I say? I am blessed to work somewhere that can make that kind of magic.

Today I gave the park tour for my On With The Show Class.  This has to be my most favorite thing to do.  Today was one of the best, I had a good friend as my partner, lets just say even though he portrays someone from the Dark Side of the Force, the force was strong with us both.  It really seemed that the new cast members were enjoying their time with us.  I think they really did feel that they were now part of a family!  The family of cast members at Disneys Hollywood Studios.

One of my favorite things to tell them is “You know when someone says you are soooo Disney!”  you know exactly what that person is like.  And I told them I am very, very proud to be “Disney”.  And there really can’t be anything better in this world then having a job where the only thing I have to do is make people happy.

I have a new goal that hopefully I will get the opportunity to audition for this spring, and that would to be a Traditions Facilitator.  Traditions is a class taught at Disney University , and it is the class that every cast member must attend before they start work  anywhere on property.  I had tried out for it years and years ago, long before Dream Squad, and it was pretty clear that I had no business trying out for it with what little experience I had.  But now I have so many stories, and so much to say to all these new cast members.  Not sure if I will be able to get this or not but it will be well worth the adventure trying.

My family are all well, can not even believe it but my son will be going to Japan in just a few months for his long overdue honeymoon with the Princess.  I am beyond excited for them.  How wonderful that they will get to do something that I dare not even dream about for myself.  This will be be a trip of a lifetime for sure!

I miss my Mom just about every single day.  Even though my pet peeve was her saturday 6 am calls that never failed to wake us up.  I wish I could hear her voice once more.   The only good thing that has come out of this is that my sister and I are getting closer.  That is long overdue.

So my friends I promise for those of you still brave enough to come to this site, I will try to visit more often.

We learn things as we go along, hard lessons, bumps in the road, hills to climb.  And no I am not going to start channeling Miley Cyrus and break into song.  That is not my style.  No I come here to my little blog.

December has always made me emotional.  This one won’t be any different.  I miss my Dad, he loved Christmas so much.  He would always have his tree up as early as he could get it up.  And then call and tell me how beautiful it looked.  It was a soft side that I did not know that my Dad had until later in his life.  We would always time our yearly watching of  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and we would laugh about all the lines and characters that we knew by heart.  Funny how that movie in itself became the “Gift That Keeps on Giving” like the jelly of the month club.  It will give me memories of my dad always.

This year has been amazing at work.  Mostly just the fact that Toy Story Midway Mania is still so very popular.  I never get tired of seeing how happy it makes people.  I am very proud to work there.

I still do the Park tour for the new cast members, I still am amazed at how lucky I am to have been chosen to do that.  When I am there telling the stories and talking about the magic that we make working for Disney, again it makes me very proud.  I have this one spot in One Man’s Dream that I tell all of the new cast members to share with me their favorite Disney memory.  And then I tell them Congratulations you are now a part of your favorite memory.

I am going to try to get my act together this year and get this weight off that I gained when I lost my mom and I was in Ohio.    Seems like my body has decided to hold on to every pound now, and now its a matter of doing battle with what the years are doing to me.  I need something to work on to keep me focused, sometimes I feel depression trying to creep into my life.  And I think if I do this it might help.  If anything it keeps me busy.  And a goal to look forward to.

And I guess its just more than I can fathom.  Because I look at the smiles on the faces of the kids and their parents and I can’t believe how lucky I am that I am a part of their happiness.  It is so perplexing.  I guess its one of those things with the cast members that it always looks greener on the other side of the mountain.  And they don’t realize how lucky they are.

I guess my time when the parks were taken away from me and I was stuck backstage  stays in my head.  That was the worst torture of all.  Its hard for me because I know I can’t change the way they think.  And I can’t change the way I am.  So I seem to have hit a brick wall.  But there are days that I just want to yell at them all and tell them to snap out of it.  And today was one of those days.  sigh.