Ladybugs and Bees, WHY?

I would love to publish a book. However, a blog is so much easier with immediate publication, so I thought I would start with this. Ladybugs and Bees, I have a tattoo of a small bee on my back and keep trying to figure out how to add a ladybug to it, nothing too big or obnoxious, just small and tasteful. My son is Ben, we have always called him B, my daughter is Annabelle, we started calling her AB or AnnaB. So, that explains the Bees in my life. Ladybug is a little more complicated, but no less important to me. My youngest sister, Joanna (yes, partly a namesake for my daughter) was 17 years younger than me. A couple of years before she was born, I spent a summer in Portugal and fell in love with a small yummy chocolate covered cookie, called a Joaninha, looked into it and found out that Joaninha was ladybug in Portuguese. Joanna was born in 1989, the same year I graduated from high school. She was a surprise (not planned). We had another surprise 2 years earlier when my other sister was born. Same parents, must not have heard of birth control. My brother and I were more shocked than they were, try explaining that to your high school friends: twice! You think naming a baby is difficult, imagine what it is like when you have 4 family members with equal voting rights. So "the baby" was 2 or 3 days old when we finally agreed on a name: Joanna Elaine. Joanna my idea, Elaine my brother's, all of us loved it immediately. We began filling Joanna's room and life with ladybugs. She never really told us she liked them, she was autistic. The last 4 years of her life she could not even communicate at all, before that it was very fragmented. I always dreamed that she would one day have a miraculous recovery, wake up and pronounce "What is it with you people and ladybugs?" But she never did, no miracle, no recovery, and no proclamation about ladybugs. When she was 17, she left us, went to heaven. She left for us a rather ridiculous ladybug collection that we all cherish, it's amazing how many things you come across with ladybugs. Most of my closest friends think of me whenever they see a ladybug. All the girls in my family have ladybug charms that we wear on a leather necklace, I bought them the day before Joanna's funeral. My mom is probably the most religious person I know, not the tattoo type at all (stereotypically speaking), neither am I for that matter. However, where no one would ever see it, she does have a small ladybug tattoo, much like my small bee. So, ladybugs and bees, seemingly meaningless insects to most people, but both full of meaning for me.
So, there. That is my first blog (hopefully of many more to come). I hope someone reads my blog and finds something wrapped up in my random thoughts: the questions that keep me up at night, the mundane daily events that make my mind swim, the raw emotion exposed way too often: LIFE!