This is My Story...and i'm sticking to it

excuse me, while i scream....

2011-08-02T18:55:00.000-04:00

i was minding my own business.

i had picked out my own little corner of the pool to lay on my raft. and read my new book. my new hardback book. i know that most normal people don't take books into the pool with them. but, i don't consider myself to be normal in any sense of the word. and i am very careful not to let it get wet.

there were quite a few people out this day, both in the pool and laying out on chairs on the deck. daddy was sitting in his chair under the only shady spot at the pool, drying off and taking a cat nap. so his eyes were closed. but, he could still hear all the things going on around him.

let me stop here and explain something. there are many different types of screams. there is the one where you raise your voice a few octaves higher than normal while speaking to someone to try and get your point across that you are right and they are wrong. there is the one where you have reached the end of your rope and just want to kill someone. or strangle them to the point of death. (usually a grumpy husband or a group of kids playing marco polo for hours on end when all you want is peace and quiet.) there is that shrill, whiney one that comes from an outright temper tantrum. there is even one that comes from pure, unadulterated joy. or from seeing someone you haven't seen in years. there is one that comes from watching scary movies and one when you are talking very loudly to someone that can't hear well. there are many, many different kinds of screams. and people can usually differentiate one type from another. you know when someone is screaming because they are mad, or hurt or playing or being annoying, or because they are happy. or scared.

in my family, there is a scream that is totally unique from all other screams. it is known by its sound to every single one of us. it is a scream that tops all others in its shrillness, its intensity, in the building up of the scream. it starts at the toes and spreads upwards through the body at an alarming speed, bursting out of your mouth uncontrollably. much like a menopausal hot flash. it is a scream, without question, that is one of pure terror. and just seconds after hearing it and recognizing it for what it is, it is mostly ignored by the male members of my family. if there are any other female members near the vicinity, it immediately catches on like wildfire and becomes a chorus of ear-splitting screams. it is, of course, "THE ROACH SCREAM." the males are so accustomed to hearing it that they no longer jump up and come running to see if one us might be hurt. or dieing. or being held hostage and tortured by someone who just broke into the house. they no longer think that maybe they should call 911 or that they could maybe perform cpr and save the life of their loved one. they simply hear it, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing before being so rudely interrupted.

so there i was. laying on my raft and reading. like i said, minding my own business. and then...out of nowhere...i felt and i heard the thud of something landing on my stomach. now you know for me to have FELT it, it had to be quite big. not large, like a ball or a frisbee. but not small. like a horsefly or a bee. in one fluid movement, i looked down, i threw my book into the pool, i sat up so that my raft folded up on either side of me, like a sandwich. with me being the meat. and i let out a bloodcurdling ROACH SCREAM!!! only it wasn't a roach that was on me. it was the only other insect that terrifies me as much as a roach, and it has little barbs on its legs that had attached itself to my bathing suit and i was swatting at it the whole time i was screaming and i knew i looked like a crazy idiot. but i didn't care. i wanted that THING off of me!

after what seemed like forever, its legs became unattached from me and it landed in the pool. right beside my new hardback book that was now beginning to sink. i glanced over at daddy and saw that sure enough, he had recognized the scream. and he was just sitting there. observing. everyone else at the pool was looking at me and wondering what in the world was happening and this one man ran over to see if he could help me. i'm sure that for a brief moment he thought i was being attacked by a shark, forgetting that i was in the pool and not the ocean. he was very excited and saying, "can i help you? can i help you?" but the only word that i could get to come out of my mouth was GRASSHOPPER!!!!!! i was pointing towards my book, where the thing was just sitting and the man burst out laughing and took off his shoe and scooped it up and threw it over the wall into the bushes. i apologized to the man. and thanked him. and explained that i was terrified of those things. everybody around me started laughing. and went on with what they had been doing.

daddy went back to his nap. i fished my book out of the water and set it on the side of the pool to dry out. and got back on my raft. and tried to breathe normal again.

i want you to know that this was not one of those little green grasshoppers that you always see hopping around in your back yard. this was a LUBBER GRASSHOPPER. one that is about 2 inches long and is yellow and brown and looks like he is made out of wood. with chompers that look like he wants to eat you alive! in fact, this is a photo i got of one while on a walk at a nature preserve. it was taken with a zoom lens, because i wasn't getting anywhere near him.

　

　

when i was a teenager, us kids had to take turns mowing the grass. we lived on the sugar refinery property and there was a lot of grass to cut. there were also a lot of men working at the refinery that could see every little move we made. being a girl that noticed men noticing me, i hated mowing. because stupid things always happened when it was my turn. like having these LUBBER GRASSHOPPERS get on me and me jumping off the riding mower while it was still going. or the lawn mower suddenly just cutting off, for no reason that i could see and daddy calling one of the men over from the refinery to "fix it" only to have it pointed out to me that while i was ducking under the Norfolk Island Pine trees to cut as close as i could, that the plastic gas tank had fallen off. my first husband, James, worked at the refinery, as did my brother-in-law, Glenn. (the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures also worked there.) shortly after Landon was born, Glenn and his wife Mary, had a baby girl, Natalie. we decided that we would drive up to North FL, my husbands whole family, and go take the babies to see their great grandparents. they lived in Steinhatchee and when i say they lived in the woods, i mean they lived waaaaaaay out in the middle of nothing. our very first day there Glenn said he wanted to show me their fresh water creek. he said the water was ice cold. so, he and James and i went for a walk. down a loooooong dirt road. i kept hearing this loud noise and asked what it was. they both acted like they didn't hear anything. we kept walking. and the noise kept getting louder and louder and louder. so, i knew that they couldn't have possibly NOT heard it and i asked again what it was. Glenn started laughing and very non-chalantly said, "it's MATING SEASON for LUBBER GRASSHOPPERS!"

and the very second he said it, one of those things landed on me and you could hear my scream all over those woods. i took off running and swatting and screaming my head off, and not one person came to see what was going on. if i was hurt or being killed. if they could perhaps be a hero and save my life. i got back to the trailer the great grandparents lived in, and everyone was just rolling laughing. see, they all knew i was terrified of those man-eating critters! and they knew exactly what Glenn had planned for me. and they all thought it was just the funniest thing watching me hoot and holler. that was just plain ol' mean of them.

anyway, i survived it then. and i survived it the other day in the pool. i'm so glad God gave me the ability to laugh at myself. otherwise life would be so boring. i was a drama queen that day at the pool. everybody got a good laugh, at my expense and i didn't care one bit. a few days later i went to pick up my book to see if it had dried out so i could finish reading it. and this is what it looks like now. with the pages all stuck together.

　

it wasn't really worth reading anyway. so i went and bought a few paperbacks. for the pool. i figure if they get tossed in while i'm here, i will have saved myself some money on the price difference of a hard back. i guess i can consider the whole episode a lesson learned, huh?

and i wanted to say...

2011-04-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

i was sitting in the waiting room at the oral surgeons office, along with about 25 other people. there was a row of chairs facing me and another row that backed up to that one. and on that row was sitting a couple that i would guess to be pretty close to the other side of 79 yrs. old. he was obviously the one that was to be the patient and also, just as obviously, he was a little hard of hearing. so, his wife had the clipboard which held the papers requiring you to fill out your life history, and she was having to stop now and then and read the questions out to him when she was unsure of the answer. and i know from experience that when you live with someone who can't hear all that well, that you tend to speak a little louder than you normally would. it just becomes habit. so, while the rest of us were either reading a book or glancing through a magazine or just sitting there quietly, we were able to hear her voice just a little above the usual noises in a waiting room. SHE: "how much do you weigh, honey?" HE: i didn't say anything." SHE: no, i asked you how much do you weigh?" HE: oh, i don't know, about 175." SHE: "what are you here for today?" HE: i'm here to see the dentist." SHE: i know, dear, but they want to know what trouble you are having. which tooth is hurting?" HE: well, on my right side. on the bottom. i think part of the tooth broke off." she fills out a few questions on her own, and then we hear this. SHE: "do you have trouble urinating?" HE: "no, no i don't have to pee right now. i went before i left the house." SHE: "do you have trouble maintaining an erection?" HE: making what? SHE: never mind, i can answer that one myself." of course, everyone in the room is doing what they can to stifle their laughter. some are holding magazines in front of their faces, some are completely turning around in their chairs and some are looking anywhere but at the person across from them.

and i'm sure we were all wondering the same thing...WHY in the world would an oral surgeon need to know the answer to that question? it bordered on stupidity. even the lady asking her husband the questions finally got tired of the ridiculous questions and stomped off to the front desk with her clipboard, muttering to herself..."i'm not going to sit here and answer these kind of personal questions." this event happened BEFORE i became the caretaker of both of my parents.

Neither of my parents are in the best of health and a few years ago i stopped working so that i could stay home and be available to help them. they were neither one able to drive anymore and my mother was no longer able to keep up with the house of the size they live in. i would go over there in the mornings and clean the house and fix them a big dinner and run their errands for them. and over the years, as their health has worsened, we have begun to spend quite a lot of time at dr. offices. between the both of them. we go to internists and dentists and cardiologists and podiatrists, and urologists and neurologists and pain management drs., and eye, ear and throat specialists, and opthomologists, and dermatologists, just to name a few. daddy has aqua therapy twice a week at the rehabilitation clinic, to help him keep his muscles working and to help ease the pain in his back.

and mama has to go once a week and have a protime blood test done, because she has atrial fibrillation and has to take a blood thinner, so it's very important to make sure that her blood is neither too thin or too thick. we call Walgreens our second home and the people that work in the pharmacy dept. know us by name.

daddy is diabetic and has macular degeneration, which causes you to lose your eyesight. his vision has deteriorated over the last couple of years to the point that he only has partial vision in one eye, and even in that eye he describes his vision as if seeing through a fog. his hearing has also begun to get worse. i take both of them to all of their dr. appts., and with daddy, because he can't see, i have to do what the lady at the oral surgeon did, and fill out all of the paperwork. and after doing it time after time, i know the answers to most of the questions by heart. but, every now and then one of the office managers will decide to make you start filling out a new form, every single visit. and they have these stupid systems to "rate your level of pain." case in point: daddy and i were at the pain management center where he goes to be treated for spinal stenosis in his back. and this place is always packed full of people and they are always running behind schedule. which means you can sometimes be there all day long. so on this one particular visit, they gave us one of the new forms to fill out. and i have to read the questions out loud to daddy, who, remember, is a little hard of hearing. and by the way, while i mentioned earlier that we who live with someone who is hard of hearing, tend to talk a little louder when speaking to them, they also tend to talk a little louder. i fill out his name, date of birth, address, ss#, and a page of all of his current medications and their dosages and strengths, and then i get to these types of questions. ME: "where, on this little figure of a man, is your pain located. they want you to fill in the areas you have pain with your pen." DADDY: well, lets see. it's in my back, the lower part of my back. and my legs are weak and i can't keep my balance when i walk. " ME: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain in your life, how would you rate your pain?" DADDY: i don't know, it depends on what i'm doing at a particular time. i guess about an 8." and because i have been to this office many times and know what to expect in terms of waiting to see the dr, I WANT TO ANSWER...WELL, IT DEPENDS.RIGHT THIS MINUTE WHILE HE'S SITTING HERE IT IS MAYBE A 4, BUT, BY THE TIME HE SITS IN THIS HARD CHAIR FOR 3 HOURS, WHILE YOUR STAFF IS BACK IN THE KITCHEN EATING THEIR LUNCH OR DRINKING THEIR COFFEE WHILE DISCUSSING LAST NIGHTS EPISODE OF THE BACHLEOR, AND TALKING ON THEIR CELL PHONE TO THEIR BABY DADDYS MOTHER OR TAKING THEIR 10TH SMOKE BREAK OF THE DAY, AND BY THE TIME THE DR. IS ACTUALLY READING HIS CHART, IT WILL PROBABLY BE AT LEAST A HIGH 10, IF NOT OFF THE CHART COMPLETELY." ME: which best describes your pain...shooting, stabbing, throbbing, burning, itching, tingling or numbing? DADDY: hmmmmm...well again, it differs according to what i'm doing. it's hard to describe, i guess just say throbbing. AND I WANT TO ANSWER...WELL, YOU KNOW, IT STARTED OUT THIS MORNING ITCHING AND TINGLING. AS THE MORNING WORE ON, IT BEGAN TO THROB SOMETHING AWFUL AND IT COULD BEST BE DESCRIBED AS A FEELING OF BEING STABBED IN THE BACK WITH A KNIFE. AND THEN HE CAME HERE AND HE'S BEEN SITTING IN THIS HARD CHAIR FOR SO LONG THAT HIS LEGS AND HIS BACKSIDE ARE BEGINNING TO GO NUMB. AND HIS BACK IS THROBBING AND BURNING REALLY BAD NOW, AND IT'S NOT REALLY A SHOOTING PAIN IN MY BACK, THAT PAIN IS IN HIS DAUGHTERS HEAD AND IT IS SCREAMING OUT THAT SHE IS GOING TO SHOOT SOMEONE IF THEY DON'T GET OFF THEIR BUTTS AND DO THEIR JOB. BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE SITTING OUT HERE ARE IN PAIN! ME: do you have trouble urinating, is their blood in your urine, or does it burn when you urinate? DADDY: no, i take diuretics, so i urinate pretty much all day long. ME: are you constipated? DADDY: well, i'm not constipated right this minute, but yes, i have been constipated before. do they mean have i EVER been constipated? or am i right this minute? ME: i don't know. DADDY: just write off to the side that i've been constipated many times, but i'm not right now. ME: do you have diarrhea? DADDY: a little bit too loud..."well, again...do they mean have i EVER or do i right this minute? because i don't have it right this minute, but i might have it in a little while because of that fried food you cooked for lunch. sometimes fried food gives me diarrhea. just don't answer that one yet, and we'll see if i have it by the time i get in to see the dr.." i'm getting really embarrassed at this point. i notice some people looking our way and a few magazines going up over faces. i plunge ahead. ME: do you suffer from ED? (oh my goodness, i can't believe i am having to ask my father these questions.) DADDY: what is that? ME: never mind, i'm just putting no to these next few questions. DADDY: well, i need to know what they are, you might not know the answer. ME: i know the answers. DADDY: but i want to hear them anyway, just to make sure. you might answer wrong on something that could be very important. ME: ok... are you pregnant? when was your last period? have you had a mammogram in the last year? are you impotent? do you have hemmorrhoids? DADDY: alright, just put no to all of those. AND I SAY... are you sure? there is no chance you MIGHT be pregnant? because if you might be pregnant and they have to do any x-rays it could be dangerous to the baby? DADDY: i'm not pregnant. i march myself up to the front desk with my clipboard, muttering to myself, much like the lady at the oral surgeons office. WHY do they need to know these kind of personal questions to give him a prescription for his back?

i took him in to get a colonoscopy one day. he had to drink a gallon of whatever that stuff is they make you drink, and it cleans you out real good. then i walk with him to the room where he is supposed to remove his clothes and put on a gown. i have to hold his hand when he walks, because his balance is off, and this, for some reason, gives the nurses the impression that i am his wife, instead of his daughter. so i have to let them know that he will need some help and that it's not really appropriate for his daughter to be the one taking his clothes off. i wait out in the hall and they take him back to the procedure room and do their thing. i go out to the waiting room, to wait. and soon a nurse comes and gets me and tells me to go the recovery room, that he will need to stay there for maybe a half hour or so. so i go back and they wheel his bed in there and pull the curtain closed. there are several little rooms in a semi circle, all full of other patients who have just had their own procedure done. and the nurse walks in and proceeds to tell us that before he can be discharged he has to pass gas. a lot of gas. and that she needs to hear it. AND I WANT TO SAY.."WELL, I CERTAINLY DON'T WANT TO BE THERE TO HEAR IT...THAT'S NOT MY JOB! but... not only am i forced to sit there for 30 minutes listening to my father pass gas, but i have to hear all of the other patients doing the same thing. WHO wants to go to work everyday and have THAT job?

my mother suffers from back pain too. only she has several things wrong with hers. spinal stenosis, spondylosis, degenerative disc disease. and she takes pain medication, which in turn makes her extremely nauseated to the point where she can't even lift her head. she has to lay in bed most of the time because when she stands up, the pain is agonizing and the nausea becomes so bad that she can't walk. so, she goes to the dr., in a wheelchair, because the pain has now run down into her leg and she can't lift her right leg at all. after the filling out of the stupid questions, she is finally taken to an exam room 1-1/2 hrs. later. and we sit. and we wait. and wait. and wait. and then i get...ummmmm...a little ticked off shall we say. and i go hunting down someone to find out what is taking so long. i go to the front desk and there i am confronted with a young male receptionist, with spikes in his hair, which is jelled to the max and who is holding his hand and running around the office screaming, "owwww...owwwww...oh, My God...ooowwwwww. i think he has cut a finger off or something and someone comes running over to him, asking him what is wrong...and he actually says...i just chipped one of my fingernails. and i just had them done yesterday. AND I WANT TO SAY...OH, GET A LIFE, YOU LITTLE DRAMA QUEEN AND STOP THAT CRYING OR I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!! (that's what my parents used to tell us when we were little.) i explained to him that we had been waiting a very long time and my mother was sicker than a dog and she needed to see someone NOW. and he informed me that the nurse practitioner that will be seeing my mother is in with another patient and my mother will be next. i reply that she is so sick that we don't think she can wait much longer. she is in excrutiating pain. she is throwing up into a plastic bag and the receptionist says that he will let her know right away and that it shouldn't be much longer. i go back to the room and we wait. and we wait. and then i can't wait anymore. i'm getting really, really angry. and it takes a lot to get me angry. mama tells me to just wait a little bit longer, because she knows that when i get to the point i was getting to, that somebody is going to feel the wrath. i open the door, because it's stifling in that room and my senses are accosted with the smell of garlic. very strong garlic. and i follow the smell trail and it leads me right into the kitchen/breakroom, where the entire staff is partaking of the nice lunch provided to them by the nice drug rep that came in WAY AFTER we did. now, don't get me wrong, i don't begrudge them eating lunch. they have the right to eat when they work all day. BUT, when they have a waiting room overflowing with people who are in agony and are sitting there for hours on end because they were overbooked to begin with, and the staff is all sitting in the kitchen eating Olive Garden, while the patients are being told that they are running behind schedule due to an emergency...well, that's just WRONG! and the nurse practitioner who was "in with another patient" was right there in the middle of them, with a breadstick in her hand and a mouth full of salad! and i, very politely, ask her exactly how much longer she thinks it will be until she finishes her lunch, because my mother has been waiting for hours, with a plastic bag held to her mouth and i think she might need a fresh one in the next minute or two or somebody is going to be cleaning that exam room floor after eating that nice pasta dish. she comes right then. and she apologizes for the "delay." and she looks at my mother with a smile on her face and says "hello, Mrs. Willis and how are YOU today?" and mama says, "i'm doing okay." AND I WANT TO SAY"...WELL, SHE'S NOT QUITE AS GOOD AS SHE SHOULD BE. SHE HASN'T EATEN ANY PASTA OR BREADSTICKS LATELY, OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ANYTHING ELSE. IN WEEKS. BECAUSE SHE CAN'T KEEP ANYTHING DOWN. SO SHE'S LOST 32 LBS. IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS AND SHE STAYS IN BED 95% OF THE TIME, BECAUSE THE PAIN IS SO BAD THAT SHE HAS TO BE LAYING DOWN TO GET ANY RELIEF AT ALL, AND SHE CAN'T GO OUT ANYWHERE WITHOUT CARRYING A PLASTIC BAG IN HER HAND BECAUSE SHE STAYS NAUSEATED 24 HRS. A DAY. AND RIGHT NOW SHE'S HAVING A LITTLE BIT OF TROUBLE BREATHING BECAUSE THE SMELL OF THE GARLIC FROM YOUR OLIVE GARDEN PASTA AND BREADSTICKS IS OVERWHELMING HER SENSES...BUT, OTHER THAN THAT,...SHE'S ALIVE AND ABOVE GROUND AND THAT BEATS THE ALTERNATIVE, WOULDN'T YOU SAY?" she decides she needs to get an x-ray of her back.

i wheel her back to the x-ray dept., where she is given a choice of two robes to put on...one, a little short paper thing that opens in the front and doesn't come anywhere near to both ends meeting in the middle. OR, a ginormous one that you could wrap yourself up in like a burritto. she opts for the latter. and then they hand her a pair of thin, tiny white shorts with a drawstring, and a tag that reads, "one size fits all." FITS ALL OF WHAT? A TWIG? she handed the shorts back. a very young boy, with half blond/half brown, hair and a nose ring, that looked to be about 15 yrs. old, comes and wheels her in to the x-ray room and puts the locks on the wheelchair wheels and says to her, "ok, sweetie, i need you to walk across the room and climb up on that table, using that box as a step and lay down on your right side." and she just stares at him, dumbfounded. AND I WANT TO SAY..."LOOK HERE, SWEETIE, SEE THAT WHEELCHAIR THAT SHE'S SITTING IN? SHE'S IN IT BECAUSE SHE CAN NOT WALK. AND SHE IS HERE TODAY, TO SEE THE DR. BECAUSE SHE CAN NO LONGER LIFT HER RIGHT LEG! WHICH MEANS THAT SHE WON'T BE WALKING OVER THERE AND CLIMBING UP ON A BOX TO GET ON A TABLE THAT HAS NO RAILS, ALL WHILE HOLDING ON TO HER PLASTIC BAG THAT SHE IS VOMITING IN! SO IT KINDA LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE GOING HAVING TO HAVE TO WORK OUT SOME OTHER KIND OF ARRANGEMENT!" but, mama is a real quiet lady. she won't tell him any of that. she struggles to stand up by herself. and then falls back into the chair. and gets violently sick. and THEN he decides that maybe she needs some help. when the x-rays are done, i wheel her back to the exam room and we wait some more. and FINALLY, the dr. himself comes in.

and he sits on his little stool and leans back and right in front of my mother and myself, begins to ummmm...how do i say this without being crude...scratch himself. in a place that should only be scratched in private.

all while looking us straight in the eye. and i don't mean just a quick scratch. i'm talking about the kind of scratching that maybe means he has a bad case of chiggers or red bugs. the kind of scratch, that seems endless. and what do you do? where do you look? and he starts asking mama about the pain, but by then, her mind is not even comprehending his question because it's trying to find a place to escape to, to keep from watching him scratch. i'm telling you, it was embarrassing. to us. not to him. she tells him that she thinks the pain meds are what is making her nauseated and he says, ok, then i am going to switch you to the liquid instead of the pill form. and the visit is over. just like that. she gets the new prescription filled and when she goes to take the first dose, she can not swallow it. the taste is horrible. worse than Nyquil horrible. she can not keep it down. the pharmacist suggests she bring it back and he will add cherry flavor to it. still, horrible. my sister tries it. no can do. so, it's back to Dr. Scratch. and hoping that his "problem" has been resolved. she gets in the room and she tells him she can't swallow the stuff and he takes a swig himself! and he is still scratching! AND I WANT TO SAY..."STOP ALL THAT SCRATCHING!!! GO FIND YOURSELF SOME OINTMENT OR SOMETHING TO TAKE CARE OF THAT ITCH AND THEN GO WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP AND HOT WATER BEFORE YOU COME BACK IN THIS ROOM AND TOUCH ANYTHING!!" but, he just sits there and writes her out a prescription for a different kind of pain pill. and we leave there, again, disgusted.

i am not a mean person. really, i'm not.

but i AM an advocate for my parents healthcare. they have worked hard all their lives and they have paid taxes and social security and they are good people. and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. as do millions of other seniors. many of the dr. offices today are staffed with some of the rudest people i've ever come across. they are there, eight hours a day, not because they care about the people who come to them for help, but because at the end of the week they get a paycheck. and it's sad. and it's wrong.

one of the drs. that my mother went to, after hearing about the agonizing pain and the unrelenting nausea, put his hand on her shoulder and she said, "i feel like i'm dying." and he said "it's not the end of the world. you must decide which you can live with, the pain or the nausea?" AND I WANTED TO ASK HIM..." AND YOU, DR.? IF THIS WAS YOU, WHICH WAY WOULD YOU CHOOSE? TO LIVE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, IN BED, UNABLE TO MOVE BECAUSE THE PAIN THAT RACKS YOUR BODY WHEN YOU DO, IS UNBEARABLE? OR WOULD YOU RATHER LAY FLAT ON YOUR BACK THE REST OF YOUR DAYS SO NAUSEATED THAT YOU CAN NEITHER EAT OR DRINK AND JUST WASTE AWAY?

and as we turned to leave his office I WANTED TO ASK HIM..ON A SCALE OF 1 to 10, with 10 BEING THE WORST PAIN OF YOUR LIFE, HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE PAIN OF MY POINTED-TOE BOOT UP YOUR BACKSIDE?

A Promise...kept.

2011-03-31T17:37:00.000-04:00

i have always been a dreamer. since i was a little girl and played with baby dolls, i always knew that i wanted to be a mother. most girls have visions of college, big careers and having that fantasy wedding in the beautiful white dress with her hair and makeup done to perfection, everyone commenting on how gorgeous the bride is, and then the fabulous honeymoon on some exotic island and coming back to a beautiful home in some grand neighborhood, where bad things are kept away with locked gates and guard stations. of driving fancy cars and having all american kids that play sports and excel in dance or music or any number of other things they might have an interest in. and they dream of maintaining their "high school" figure long into their middle age, at least. and they have assurance that if they just marry the "right" prince charming, they will live happily ever after.

sometimes...their vision turns into that reality. more often these days...they don't. they turn into a different kind of reality. a reality of student loans and a huge wedding that their parents couldn't really afford. with a honeymoon where they find out that being "engaged" to someone and being "married" to someone are two very different things. where evil lives, even in gated communities and behind locked doors, with expensive cars and expensive car payments to go along with them. and with all of these luxuries, debt...up to their necks. with kids that have no interest in living out their parents dreams of being the star football player or the ballerina or the next Liberace. and sadly, they find that with the birth of the children they longed for, comes the reality that childbirth forever changes your body. sure, there is always the gym they can join, where they will spend countless hours trying to make their bodies be what they used to be. (i'm not knocking exercise, i belong to a gym myself and believe we should all try to maintain a "healthy" weight, while being realistic enough to know that i will never wear a size 5 again.) and, if the gym doesn't do the trick, there are countless ways to shape your body into something it was never intended to be, with dr.s and silicone and collagen and botox. more big bills, and sometimes with the chance of injecting something into your body that will have horrible consequences later down the road. and sometimes...in this pursuit of living the "dream" we lose touch with what our ultimate goal was in the beginning...to live happily, ever after.

husbands start spending longer hours at work to avoid coming home to a house filled with crying babies and teenagers with attitudes and wives that constantly nag, nag, nag. wives start confiding in their girlfriends how unhappy they are and how if their husband looked like that guy at the gym, it would make all the difference in the world. and before they know it...they forget about their commitments. they forget about their children...they forget about God, if He was ever there in the first place. divorces get filed, attorneys get rich, children lives are forever changed when they are seperated from both parents. and their dream dies. turns into a nightmare. and then, after the proper amount of time, they go out in search of the dream again...and in comes step-children that don't want a new parent, most of your spouses take-home pay goes to pay the ex's alimony or child support or mortgage payment. half of your new spouses 401K is gone to his "first" family and retirement is not even an option in the near future. and an endless cycle has started all over again, just in a different house.

i had dreams...but they weren't those dreams.

i wanted the prince charming and the babies...but i cared nothing for having the big wedding or the white dress or the exotic honeymoon. i didn't have lofty illusions of having a high powered career or living in a gated community or being a member of the country club. i never dreamed about what kind of car i would like to drive or where we would vacation next year or what sports my kids would end up being the star of. and when i thought about growing old, i had only one dream. there was a couple in the church i grew up in as a child and into my teenage years. they were very good friends with my parents and they were always faithful members of the First Baptist Church in Clewiston, FL. every time i ever saw them, walking up the steps of that church, they were holding hands. some would say that maybe that's because they were older, that they were holding onto each other for stability, but that wouldn't be true. they held hands because even at their age, they still had a deep and abiding love for each other. and a love that was centered on Christ. and that is what i wanted in my old age. a husband that would still be holding my hand when i had wrinkles or liver spots or extra padding. one, who would be holding my hand when God called one of us home to Heaven.

my parents have always had that same kind of love for each other. married now for 56 years, i asked my dad just the other day if he still loved my mother the same way he had when he proposed...and his answer brought tears to my eyes. he said, "oh my goodness, there is no other person in this world that i would want to spend my life with." wow. that was always my dream as a little girl. to hear something like that by the man i loved. (i have yet to hear it.) :-(

i am going into all of this just to get to what i'm about to tell you now.

when i was in high school, i wasn't interested in learning about algebra. or history. or science. i didn't care anything at all about p.e. or music or beta club. but, i loved to write. i was always writing in notebooks while the teachers were talking, sometimes stories, sometimes poetry, sometimes doodling what my name would look like if i was married to such and such a boy. i always made good grades in english and writing. and when i went to college, i took a creative writing class and i did well in it, because it allowed me to express all the things that were going in my head. i think that was the first time that a teacher told me that i should go into journalism...that i had a talent for writing. i didn't pay him any attention. i didn't pay attention to any adult at that time. i was more interested in my life outside of the classroom.

over the years i've had people tell me all the time that i should write a book. and i always said the same thing...what would i write about? my own mother has told me for years that she thinks i should write. but, being me, i always let my low self esteem come in and tell me that i wasn't smart enough, or that God didn't give me a talent to write. or that i didn't have anything worthy enough to write about.

then...the world of Blogging opened up. i was very much into scrapbooking and genealogy, so i thought what better way to preserve lifes little stories for my children and my grandchildren? sort of like journaling. i tried it, and i didn't really think i was very good at it. but then, i started getting a few people following me, and then, a few more. and pretty soon, i was really getting in to it and i loved reading the private messages that people would send me, telling me how a certain thing i had written had touched them, or made them cry or laugh. at this same time, i was going through my divorce from the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures. and it was getting harder and harder for me to focus on anything but what my life was becoming. eventually, last April, i stopped writing. altogether. i stopped scrapbooking. i stopped doing geneaology. i stopped doing pretty much of everything that gave me joy. i was spending a lot of my time talking to God.

asking Him questions, endless questions and searching for answers. and through this last year, God has been doing something in me. He has been building up my faith. He has been showing me my purpose in this life.

He has been preparing me for a work that He started in me 35 years ago. a work that began when i was just 16 years old. and when i was 17 yrs. old, God made a promise to me. I have NEVER doubted for one single second, that He would fullfill this promise. I have doubted a lot of other things, but NEVER this one promise.

and, a few months ago, like a puzzle, little pieces started coming together. in the strangest of ways. through a verse. through a song. through a website. through a simple message on Facebook. through a little wooden Noah's Ark.

(when i tell the story, you'll be very surprised who gave me the Noah's Ark...all a part of the plan) through the reconnection of the ONE person God aways intended me to be with.

God has shown me, over the last few weeks, that i DO have a story that He wants me to tell. He is showing me that the time has come for me to start doing what HE wants me to do. He has been building me up for THIS, so that He can be glorified and so that others can see and know, that He is faithful to keep His promises. Always.

i have a story to tell. it's a love story. and i am only just now beginning to write it all down.

but, there is someone else who is a part of this story. before the next chapter can be written, God has to work on his heart. God has to show him that to have Faith in what He is doing, we must first put ALL of our Trust in Him. and then, when we are committed to following His will, He WILL give us the desires of our heart. Love can not be based on physical attraction only.

and that is what we had as teenagers. Love must first be in God and in being willing to do what He leads us to do. He will not steer us down the wrong path. We have that connection. we are both seeking to live Christ-like lives. We have the emotional connection and the mental connection. you are strong in the areas where i am weak. and i am strong in the areas where you aren't. a perfect combination. when God has tested us and found us to be faithful to Him, He will give us a passion that is only reserved for the person HE chose for us to spend our lives with.

can you imagine what kind of good can come from our story? for our children, for our parents, for the people it will minister to? i know it's a little scary, but with God leading...we can perhaps change someone else's life. there is a third person to this love story...and that is where God will write the last chapter. i don't want to teach my children that they must accept what other people judge them to be. that they must look a certain way, or be beautiful or "hot" to be loved. because they will always be disappointed by MAN's view. they will never be good enough or pretty enough or smart enough. think of your own daughter...would you want the man she loves to tell her that first he has to "test drive" her to see if he is going to like the "ride?" you would probably want to shoot him. if God put that kind of test on us, i think we would all lack in some department. when He chooses to call us as His own He doesn't care that the tires on our truck aren't big enough, or that the color is way off or that the interior isn't what He wanted it to be. He sees the whole person and He motivates us to change the things in our lives that are not pleasing to Him. He accepts us, as bad as we are, and He refines us through time. i want to be an example for MY children, that when they put their faith and trust in the Lord, and when they care what HE thinks about who they are and how they are living their lives...that He will bless them and lead them to their own hearts desires. God is not in the business of making mistakes. God leads us to it...and God brings us through it.

It may take 35 years, but when He knows that the timing is right, then it will be in HIS PERFECT TIME. and i know, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that THIS is God's perfect timing. i am praying, diligently...and waiting. i will not give up on what I know to be the right thing. there is someone waiting to meet us. and the story God wants us to tell can't be written without you. i love you, with all of my heart.

How do you know?

2011-03-28T19:46:00.000-04:00

after reading my previous post, someone asked me, "how do you hear God? how do you know when it's Him?" so, i decided to answer her here. i don't know how everyone else hears God...i suppose its different for each of us. but i know that He comes to me through whispers. through the words of a song, through a verse from the Bible, through ordinary, everyday things. sometimes i will ask God something and He is silent. i don't hear anything, i don't feel anything. and then something will happen and it's then that i know...without a doubt, that it's God speaking.

i've written about some of these things in previous blog posts, but i will share 4 that have happened to me recently.

when i was at Ft. Myers Beach last summer, i was waiting on the trial to be set in my divorce. i was very stressed out and not looking forward to testifying. having your entire marriage, with all it's problems, come out in open court can be very embarrasing and humiliating. God had given me my "word" to live by earlier that year, which was actually two words, BABY STEPS. He had assured me that He would be with me, every step of the way. that i just needed to chill out and let Him take over. He would expose the truth if i just trusted in Him, and Micajah and i would be fine. A few days after giving me my "word" the date was set for trial and i learned that my ex was going to try and call my parents to testify. and that was not something that any of us wanted. they were not well and didn't think they could make the trip back home, and more importantly, they didn't want to have to testify for or against my ex. they had loved him like a son and it tore them apart when our marriage ended up like it did. i knew that he was just threatening me, out of spite, but still, it upset me. i grabbed my camera, like i did every day and went for a walk down the beach. it was early in the morning and there weren't many people out yet. but, ahead of me was a family of four, with the youngest being about 2 yrs. old. she was holding on to her daddys hand and walking right at the waters edge and when the waves went back into the ocean, their footprints were exposed. i just snapped a picture of them, because i love that poem about when you didn't see the footprints, it was then that God was carrying you. Later that day, when i was uploading the pics to my computer...THIS popped up.

one little baby step. i had taken the picture of the daddys and the baby's prints, but only this one little footprint came up. one little BABY STEP. and i knew that was God speaking to me, reminding me that i had turned it over to Him and He was going to take care of things. and He did. the judge decided that my parents didn't need to go back to GA and testify.

When it came time for the trial, i left the beach and went home. my sister, Paula went with me to court. it was only going to be a one day trial, but still, i was so nervous about getting up on the stand. he had served me with a bogus counter-claim and i was going to have to prove that he was lying. a friend of mine had suggested i take something physical in with me to hold on to, that would remind me that God was in control. So, i grabbed a yellow legal pad and in big letters, i wrote my favorite verse, "Be still, and know that I am God." my attorney had warned me not to show anger or hostility towards my ex, and not to let his attorney try and provoke me into getting into an argument. well, he did try and provoke me and each time he tried to twist my words around or make it look like i wasn't telling the truth, i just held my breath and looked down at that verse i was holding in my hand. and it calmed me instantly and i was able to answer him, with no hint of anger, even though i wanted to scream out LIAR, LIAR. God calmed me with just those words and the judge saw through all the lies and i came out of the divorce very well. He took care of us, just like He said He would.

this year God gave me another "word." FLY. i thought ok, this one is a little strange and i wasn't really sure what it meant when He gave it to me. but He let me know that this year He was going to take me to new places. not necessarily that i was going to be traveling, but that He was taking me to a whole new level of faith in Him. that He was going to show me just how much He loves me. and a few days later my family and i went to eat at Cracker Barrel. they all knew my word beforehand, and thought i was a little bit nuts. i was walking around the gift shop when i spotted a little basket sitting up on a shelf with these little tiles that were like dominoes, but they had words written on them. HOPE, FAITH, BELIEVE. very common words that you see everyday. i stuck my hand in the basket and pulled one out and it said this:

and i was thinking, well that's pretty close but it's not the "word." i went to put it back into the basket and i turned it over and saw this:

now, how often do you see the word FLY on something like this? mixed in with hope, faith, believe? and it was the only one in the basket. i bought it and took it to the table and showed my family and they couldn't believe it! THIS was God speaking to me.

in the post previous to this one, the one that actually sparked this one...it was a friday night, a little over a week ago, when i did the nosedive. i had been flying high and suddenly came crashing back to earth. i was so full of hurt and questions and i was repeatedly asking God, WHY? i had asked Him to slam the door if this was not His will, because i knew i was getting in deep and instead He kept opening doors. and as i wrote, i didn't hear anything. God was not speaking to me. He was there...but, He was silent. for days. and then He decided to speak to me. it was this past friday. Micajah got up at 6:30 to go to school. i had fallen back asleep after waking him up and just as he was getting ready to leave, he came and opened my bedroom door and very nonchalantly, as if this was something he said to me everyday, he said, "mom, i just wanted to let you know that the dining room window was left open last night and there is a bird in the house." and he closed my door and left. WHAT? i thought it was part of my dream. i got up a few minutes later and walked into the dining room, and sure enough, there was a little bird flying from one end of the room to the other. i went through the kitchen and opened the door to the screened in porch, hoping i could shoo him out that way. he flew into the living room and down the hallway and back to the dining room. it was as if he was saying, "here i am, now i'm over here, everywhere you go, i go." i thought it was a little weird and i went back to my room to get my camera, because i take pictures of things like birds flying around in my house. and he was gone. i suppose he found his way to the open door and took flight. no picture. but, i went back to my room and turned on my computer and hit my itunes playlist. it was set to shuffle the songs so i didn't hear them in any particular order. and of all the songs on there, THIS song began playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZI2gOBvBHk

did you catch the part where she sings "He'll do and He'll use, whatever He wants to...to show you I LOVE YOU." God had spoken to me. through a bird. He was telling me that no matter where i go, or what i face, HE is always there, always waiting on me to turn to Him and to trust Him.

THAT, my friends, is how God talks to me. it may seem silly to some of you, but, i KNOW that i KNOW...and that's what is important to me.

Oh, and right after i posted the story of being in His will, satan came right in and started telling me that i shouldn't have put on that on my blog for who knows who to see...and i was a little bit worried about it...until i scrolled down my newsfeed and saw these two quotes that a friend had posted: (thank you, Lisa Sinclair)

* Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open * Pauline Kael

Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts * Rick Warren

it was for me. it was affirmation that i had done exactly what God told me to do. and i feel good about that!

I am in His will...God's will

2011-03-28T15:15:00.001-04:00

Dear Lord, you spoke to me, and i heard. this past week has been difficult for me and i come to you now, asking for forgiveness...for allowing even a moment of doubt to creep inside of me and cause me to look away from you. i know that you only want the very best for me, and when things don't go the way i think they should, the flesh in me starts the questioning, which leads to an open door for satan to come in and start telling me lies. filling my head with things that are only meant to destroy me. and while some may think i am strong, i'm not. you know Lord, that i am weak and that i struggle every day of my life with low self esteem. for so many years i tried to do things my way. i allowed myself to think that my happiness depended on other people accepting me and loving me and i was so wrong. i have allowed other people to dictate who i am and what i should be. and i have made so many mistakes. years ago, when my boys and i were in that horrible accident, i wondered how you could possibly make anything good come out of that, but that was the very day that i knew how much you loved me. you saved our lives and i drew closer to you than i had ever been. i saw where the life i was living was taking me...and i didn't want to walk that path anymore. you became the rock i stand on and my faith over the years has continued to get stronger and stronger. still, i tried to do things my way, on the pretense of doing what you wanted me to do. and i failed. miserably. staying in a marriage for so many years that was wrong from the beginning. unequally yoked. and you allowed me a way out. and over the last couple of years i have sunk to a low that i never knew existed. i was in a very dark place and wondering why you would let me stay there. but Lord, you brought me through it, understanding that we must go through the fire to be refined. that you allow things to happen so that we will be drawn closer to you, putting all of our trust and faith in you. it's hard to see that sometimes, through the tears and the pain, but you always put me back on the right path and ask only that i follow you. Lord, i seek your will for my life. you have blessed me with so much more than i deserve. i have godly parents that love me despite my many flaws. i have children that will spend eternity with me in Heaven, and grandchildren to love. you have brought people into my life that encourage me and pray for me and with me, who i can confide in and laugh with. you have brought me to a church where i can hear your word preached and where i can find comfort when i feel lonely. and Lord, you brought someone so very special to me, back into my life, for reasons that i can't fully understand yet. i asked for you to open the doors, only if this was of you, and you did. and i know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was of you. i come to you now asking for wisdom. satan has crept in and seeks to destroy me once again. he is filling my head with lies, trying to turn me away from you, help me to be strong, to flee from him and to run to you. Lord, you know the desires of my heart, yet, you may desire more for me. if that's the case, help me to let it go, without anger or bitterness. fill me with your love, with laughter, with joy. with understanding. help me to love the person you are shaping me into. fill my head and my heart with thoughts that are pleasing to you. empty me of me. i love you, Lord, with my whole heart and i thank you for loving me enough to die for my sins. giving you all the glory for the work you are doing in me.

Ok, God is still talking...and i'm just going to go with it here.
when i was very young i accepted Christ into my heart. but, from the time i was a teenager i put God on the back burner of life, knowing He would always be there, but i chose to live my life the way I wanted to live it. i was pretty, i had the kind of body that boys liked and i loved the attention that it got me. i never had a shortage of boyfriends. my parents prayed me for every night, but there were many times, i'm sure, that they questioned God as to WHY i was always making such bad choices. i made A LOT of mistakes. when i went on to college, it was the same. there was no shortage of guys and i looked and felt better than i had in high school. i lived for ME. i didn't care what my parents thought of me, or anyone else for that matter. certainly i didn't care what God thought about me. He wasn't even on the burner then. it was then, i can look back and see now, that i began to put my happiness in the hands of others. i let men tell me who i was and who i should be. i let men take control of my life. they determined if i felt good about myself. and i made A LOT more mistakes. i got married, had two kids, seperated and lived life in the fast lane. i fell into a horribly abusive relationship and i began wondering why God was letting all these bad things happen to me. but God wasn't hearing me. He was still there, but He was waiting on me to let Him have the controls. and i jumped into another marriage, thinking that because this man was so unlike any other guy i had ever dated, that he was going to fill my life with all the things i had ever dreamed of. i didn't ask God if he was the one He had chosen for me. i just did what i thought was right at the time. he was going to protect me from the evil that had come into my life. he was going to give me back all the love i was going to give him. he was going to be my savior. and i found out right quick that i had just landed myself in an even worse kind of evil. i tried to fix things. we went to church, he (supposedly) got saved. we had a lot of friends and we had a new baby. things should have been ok. but God wasn't in our marriage. and it was doomed to fail. i stayed because i had made a commitment to God, for better or worse, and i was determined to make things work. i had been in the accident the year before we got married and i had rededicated my life to the Lord, but i still wasn't seeking HIS will. i was still trying to do what i thought would make me happy. when i think of all the years i wasted being so unhappy...it makes me so sad. with the divorce came the dark time, when i felt like i was drowning in hopelessness. i knew God loved me, but i had allowed the world to tell me all the bad things about myself, and those voices are so hard to turn off. i did more praying in that time of darkness than i ever have in my life. i asked God to bring me good christian friends that i could surround myself with. many of them He led me to on facebook. still others were in my church. God began working on me and i began to let loose of the controls and let Him have it all. He has brought such a change in my life from the girl i used to be. i would not wish that girl on anyone. He has strengthened my faith, He has taught me to listen for His voice. He has shown me how to ask Him for help when i just don't think i can make it another day on my own. there are still times that i find myself asking Why? but those times come less often now. a short time ago i made a commitment to let God have complete control of my life. whatever the costs. to use me and to shape me into the person He had always wanted me to be. and when things come into my life that i'm just not sure of, i am quick to turn to Him and ask Him...is this of YOU, Lord? is that what you want for me? Open doors. or slam them shut. give me a peace about it. and a few weeks ago He brought something into my life that i was totally unprepared for. He brought me the desire of my heart. not MY desire, but His. and i prayed, Lord how i prayed. and i felt total peace. it was right. and i allowed myself to feel things i had not felt before. i had never been as happy as i was then. others could see it. others felt good about it. others prayed and felt total peace. and then, one minute i was flying and the next i was taking a nosedive. it was like a force that came out of nowhere and things just started spiralling from there. and you can bet that the first person i went to for answers was God. but, i couldn't hear Him. not a sound. and i begged and pleaded for answers. and He was faithful. He spoke. and He hasn't quit speaking. and He showed me that at times we pray for His will to be done, but only if it fits our list of criteria for what WE think will make us happy. do we think for a minute that WE know better than the one who created us, what will make us happy? WE look toward the outside first, that's just the flesh in us. we judge people on whether or not they meet OUR expectations. and when they don't, we back away and say to ourselves that maybe we were wrong. maybe that wasn't Gods will. and we flounder around, asking ourselves what went so wrong. God will lead us to the well, but He won't make us drink the water. He gives us the ultimate freedom to choose which path we will take. and sometimes, we take the wrong one. sometimes we are so caught up in our "feelings" and what WE want and we don't see the whole picture. we don't stop ask God, is this of you? because it's so much easier to give in to the flesh. and that just may be what we end up with. flesh, with no substance. flesh, with no heart. flesh, without God. we've all been guilty of judging people based on their race or whether or not they look good, or if they weigh too much or if they're too short or too tall. but we are told in Gods word, not to judge by the outward appearance. but to look at and examine the heart. is God truly there in the everyday living? is God the center of your life? for some reason we find it so easy to believe what satan tells us we are. instead of believing we are what God says we are. i AM awesome. i AM beautiful. i AM smart. and i choose to believe that because God thought i was all these things and more. He sent His son to die for me! He called me to be one of His own! and sometimes, sometimes...you just know. am i in Gods will? yes, i am. do i BELIEVE God and not just believe IN God? i do. do i believe that He is going to fullfill his promise to give me the desires of my heart? absolutely. do i trust Him enough to have complete faith that He is going to bring me through this? more than enough. and i know, with certainty, that God has brought people into my life who are supposed to be there. if they choose to walk out, it doesn't mean that it wasn't Gods will...it simply means that God brought them to the well and they made the choice not to drink. He will still love me and He will take me down another path. but, i am praying and asking my friends to pray...that He will open our hearts, examine them to see if we are being true to God or true to our own desires and helps us to be still and listen for His voice. thank you friends. <3<3<3

HEY "NAKEY" LADY...bathing suit bottoms are NOT optional.

2010-04-29T19:02:00.002-04:00

i want to begin this story by saying thank you, God, for not allowing us to see into the future! because it we could, then yesterday would have never happened. if i had even had an inkling of what was in store for me yesterday afternoon, i can assure you i would have never gotten out of bed.

the morning started out okay. i got up, dressed and swung by to pick up mama and daddy for our weekly Bible study that we go to on Wednesdays. just before we got there my sister, paula, called and asked me if i wanted to go shopping with her after lunch. now, if you know me personally, then you know that i am NOT a big fan of malls! i am claustrophobic and can not stand to be in crowds of people. especially when we are in an enclosed space. so usually, if i have to go to one, i will park outside of the store i want to go in, grab what i need/want and then hightail it back to my car. and then, if i need/want something else, i drive to the next store and do the same thing. it's a pain, i know, which is why i rarely do malls. but anyway, i said yes. i needed a few things. for summer. for the beach. so, after a nice lunch at Fiddlers with mama and daddy, i picked paula up and we headed to the mall. when we got to the store i asked her what she wanted to look at first...and my stomach started turning at that moment when the dreaded words spilled out of her mouth. (thank you again, God, for giving me the sense to have just a few small bites of a chef salad for lunch.) she wanted to go to the AAAIIIIIEEEEEEE...bathing suit department! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! my good day was going to take a nosedive into depression. i absolutely DETEST shopping for a bathing suit. why, you ask? well, if you are a woman reading this, no explanation is needed. if, however, you are a man....well, i will try and explain.

i was practically raised at Ft. Myers Beach, FL. my parents have owned a condo there for many, many years. and before that, we stayed in a cottage on the beach, usually for several weeks in the summer. now, my parents go there for several months in the summer and the last two years i went with them. because they need someone with them. and that someone would be me. and my sister, terri. i remember a couple of years ago, when i was there with the middle aged man who would later leave me for greener pastures, and my two grandkids. we were taking a walk down to the point and letting them look for shells. we passed this couple, probably in their late 30's, laying out in their chairs, just 15-20 feet from the edge of the water.. she was was a rather large woman. i would say about 350 lbs. of large. and she had on a two piece bathing suit. and i was thinking to myself, "oooookkkkkk....she is very confident in her skin. she is telling the world that it's ok to be big and still put on a bathing suit. and walk down the beach. she wasn't concerned about what other people thought of her. good for her. and we continued to walk. on our way back the kids were walking just a little ahead of us. suddenly they turned around and started running back to us really excited about something. we thought they had found a "treasure" in the sand. but as they got closer they said, "grandmama, that lady up there is "nakey!" she don't have no bottoms on! WHAT???!!!!" we kept walking and we came up on the same rather large woman as she was coming out of the water and walking back to her chair. and she really didn't have on a bottom! because when she was out there swimming, the bottom of that two piece bathing suit had crept up and disappeared into her nether regions...and she had not bothered to try and find it. she just walked back to her chair and layed back down...ON HER STOMACH! naked as a jaybird on her backside. and this was a public beach. now, don't get me wrong. i applaud her for being brave. or confident. or whatever she was being. but exposing herself to other people who were just there for a nice stroll down the beach was just wrong folks! i didn't want my grandkids seeing her in all her glory! I didn't want to see her in all her glory! so, women need to be very selective when picking out a bathing suit.

first of all you must make the really big decision...which department do i head to? do i want to fantasize that i am still a 16 yr. old and head over to the JUNIORS section and pick out a really, really cute two piece that was designed for stick people and convince yourself that well, you still FEEL 16, and make stupid remarks to the salesgirl like "my daughter is about this small (making a circle with your hands) so what size do you think she would be? knowing all the while that SHE KNOWS you probably don't even have a daughter and that you are a 50 yr. old woman who wants to dress like she's still a teenager. and that she's looking at your 50 yr. old body and thinking to herself..."lady, there is no way on God's green earth that you are going to fit THAT into THIS! PUH-LEEEEEEEZ.

or, do you totally avoid THAT particular humiliation and head over to the MISSES section. where you fantasize that you are still a 21-35 yr. old and pick out a really, really cute "tankini." that was designed for stick people and ask stupid questions like "my daughter-in-law wears a size 6 in jeans...do these suits run small?" knowing all the while that she is wanting to say, "get real lady...you are 50 yrs. old. you probably have grandkids. your daughter-in-law would NOT be having her MOTHER-IN-LAW in here picking out HER bathing suit! who are you trying to kid? go on over to the WOMENS section, where you belong. grow up. you had your heyday...a loooooong time ago. face reality. your prime passed you about 15 - 20 years ago."

or, do you just accept the fact that you ARE, indeed, a woman. with curves. in all the wrong places. and head on over to the WOMENS section. where you can now browse the limited number of "bathing skirts" or "bathing dresses" or, as my sisters and i like to call them, "parachutes." where every suit you see was designed for a stick people person, who is pregnant. or very, very small breasted and requires 3 inches of padding in the cups to make you look like the WOMAN that society thinks you are supposed to be. i am totally bewildered in this section. i don't wear dresses to church! why on earth would i want to wear a dress in a SWIMMING POOL? where when you get in the water the bottom of the "dress" floats up around your neck...and all the little kids in the pool jump in with their googles on so they can go underwater and see the "humpback whale...with a dress on!"

so, yesterday i considered my options. (and it was a rude awakening.) i finally admitted to myself that i will never ever again, in this lifetime, be a JUNIOR size. i decided to avoid the JUNIORS department altogether. the MISSES and the WOMENS sections were combined in this particular store, so i was able to look at both, while still feeling slightly incognito. i grabbed a few suits and made a bee line for the dressing rooms. and it was there, behind door #3 that i sunk into the deep, dark abyss of mortification.

first of all, the few times i have gone with my boys into a mens dressing room, i found them to be nothing at all like the womens. they have one mirror in a closet sized space. and one hook to hang your clothes on. because men usually take in one thing, try it on, take it off and buy it. they don't really care how big those jeans make their butt look. they don't seem to mind if their pants are dragging on the ground when they walk, or worse, have the crotch hanging down to their knees. they put on a shirt, button it and voila' it fits! to the cash register they go. their shopping is finished. they go home and watch the ball game and eat ice cream and popcorn. and double quarter pounders with cheese. super-sized. and spend the rest of the day flipping the remote back and forth and back and forth and...you understand what i'm saying.
behind door #3 was a good size room. with a chair. to put your purse on i was guessing. and 3 hooks. and THREE mirrors. so you can see yourself from every angle at the same time. now THAT alone is pretty alarming.) the lighting is bright. harsh white light. i don't like to try clothes on in a store. because i have always heard on these undercover stories they do on dateline and 20/20 that some stores have security officers watching you, behind two way mirrors. or they video you trying on clothes, to make sure you don't steal anything. (right...i think somebody is either a) a pervert. b) likes to watch women make fools of themselves or c) have been forced to watch by their employer, who is twisted.but, in this case, i decided to try the clothes on because i did not want to have to come back to the mall. to return them. i wanted this horror to be over in one day.

so i loaded one hook with shirts, one with bathing suits and one with pants and shorts. i tried the pants on first. mmmmm...ok, they fit. but i really didn't want to wear long pants all summer. because i get really, really hot. not just outside in the sun, but inside in the air conditioning. so, i grabbed a pair of shorts. they were looooong. somewhere in the middle of shorts and capris. nope. not for me. i tried on a shorter pair. cute, but i was pretty sure you would be able to see part of my cheeks when i walked. not pretty on a 50 yr. old woman. another pair, too big (wow on that,) another pair, too tight. i had one pair left. a really cute pair of jean shorts. they were just the kind that i like. but when i picked up the ones in my size i thought, good grief, these things must run really big! they looked ginormous. so i grabbed the next size down, thinking they would be a better fit. WRONG. i managed to get them up, and over my badonkadonk...but as far as the two sides meeting in the middle where the zipper was....ummm...NO! it wasn't going to happen. no matter how much i sucked in. or tugged...they were not going to cooperate. and now, you are probably thinking the exact same thing that popped into my head. OH MY GOODNESS...that means my butt must be even more ginormous than i thought. that means that ginormous pair i had picked up earlier in my size, WAS MY SIZE!!! the depression crept in. forget the shorts. i'll just get some cute shirts and wear them with what i already have.
i put on the first one. a really, really cute tank top that i just loved. bright, cheery colors. GASP! it fit so tight that it looked like it was painted on. you could see the freckles on my stomach if you looked close enough. and everything else...if you catch my drift. off it went. it was getting warm behind door #3. i was beginning to perspire a little bit. i tried on the next one. a gauzy white, button down the front, which would look good either buttoned, or open, with a tank underneath. you know, the layering kind of look that's so popular nowadays. it fit. i could wear a tank under it. but if i wanted to wear it buttoned, with a pair of pants or capris, WAS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. because while it DID button, there were gaps in between each button. large gaps. because these kind of shirts were obviously designed for those same stick people. who have no "girls" to speak of. the ones that need the bathing suits with the three inches of padding. not for women who have more than their fair share of "girls." not for women like me...who have more than enough natural padding of their own. back on the hanger it went.

i had a few left. the next three fit and i decided they were keepers. YAY.

then i was down to the last one. and it was the one i liked the best. it was a really unusual, funky type of shirt, but it looked so summery and light and i was really hoping it was going home with me. it had all these little cut out thingys on the shoulder and the back. you could dress it up or dress it down with jeans. it went on over my head and i had just the teeniest bit of trouble getting it down over my "girls." but i managed and once in place it actually looked really cute. i was a happy camper. i was feeling the depression lift just a little. i was going to go home with at least four new shirts! and then...everything went downhill. quickly. as i began to take the shirt off i began to realize that i had put one of the shoulder straps on wrong. i tried pulling the shirt up, back over the "girls," but it wasn't going back up. what is that saying...what goes up, must come down?. well, there is no saying, that i know of, that says once it is down, it must go back up. and this shirt knew that too. I couldn't get it off. and i started sweating. not just a little perspiration. BIG, HUGE drops of sweat. i started breathing hard. and i could feel the panic crawling up towards my throat. which i knew, being claustrophobic, would turn into a full fledged scream when it got there. i began tugging and pulling on that shirt and i started hearing little sounds come bubbling up out of my mouth. and at that point i didn't care if i ripped that fabric in two pieces...i was getting that thing off of me come hell or high water! i gave it a final tug and it gave up. i now understood what the chair was in there for. not to lay your purse on. it was there for people who were hyperventilating because they couldn't get free of their clothes! i collapsed on that chair and tried to breathe. and i found some kleenex in my purse and dried the sweat off of me. and i rested. all that was left was the bathing suits. and there was not a chance that i was trying those on in that room behind door #3. i could just envision the person who was stuck on security duty...watching the show that i had just put on. i feel the need to apologize to them for having to watch such...such... a freak show. and i also need to apologize to the lady who was behind door #2. i can't even begin to imagine what she must have thought was going on in the room next door. all the heavy breathing and the little noises that erupted from somewhere deep inside me. i was just mortified. and the depression had not only crept in. it decided it was going to stay awhile.

i paid for the things that i wanted to keep. and i told paula i was ready to go home. i was worn out.

after a long, cold shower and an hour of bed rest, i decided to try on those two bathing suits i had brought home. looks like i have to go back to the mall. to return them. and i came to a conclusion that i'm not happy about at all.

it is going to be a very hot summer for me this year. because i'm going to the beach ...IN JEANS.

once you've seen a BIG HEADED WOMAN...well...

2010-04-25T19:24:00.033-04:00

when i was growing up in clewiston, fl,

one of those small, three traffic light towns, we lived in one of the only two houses out on the sugar refinery property about 4-5 miles outside of town. across the road was a piece of property that looked to someone passing by, like a big clump of woods. there were little dirt roads on either side, so the woods kind of sat in the open part of a V. on one side was sugar cane fields and on the other was a railroad track. we called it "ghost town." when it was daytime and it wasn't so scary to walk back there, you would find the remnants of an old community that had been destroyed by a hurricane in 1926.

there were maybe 8-10 tiny wood houses back there, all leaning and falling apart. there were even some old headstones in a small cemetery that were broken and scattered.

when we were in our teens and our friends would come over to the house (which in my case, wasn't all that often, because i spent the majority of my teen years...grounded. for life. my parents thought i was "wild.") we always liked to walk over there and scope things out and find "treasures." sometimes there were huge piles of trash and furniture, like someone had just emptied all the contents of their houses out on the side of the road. occassionly me, or my older brother or sister would have a party at night, in our garage, (always with my parents there, just in case you were thinking this was done when they were away from home. wild girl that they thought i was) and we would gather up our nerve and act all brave when one of the boys would suggest walking over to ghost town. but, we never got that far. somebody would inevitably scare a girl and we would all scream and go running back to the house. i think the boys did that because secretly, they were too scared to go back there themselves at night time. they eventually tore it all down after we moved to ga.

we moved to savannah in 1996. and soon after arriving, we began hearing all the stories that savannah is so famous for. they have alot of haunted tours in the downtown area, and ghost walks that take you down to the old historic cemeteries at night. by candlelight.

one of the tours is even done in an old, decked out hearse.

if you're downtown at night on riverstreet, there is sometimes this guy, all dressed in black, from head to toe that jumps out at you and scares the heebie jeebies out of unsuspecting tourists. all in an effort to get you to sign up for the hearse ride. it's really, really popular at halloween, as you can imagine. and downtown savannah, while beautiful in the daytime, can be downright eerie at night, with all the moss hanging off of every tree and all the old houses that look like they are centuries old. the cobblestone streets and all the town squares add to the spookiness. and the historic cemeteries...i can't even tell you. they have some of the most elaborate headstones known to man, and i cannot even imagine how scary it would be to walk through one of them at night time, especially by candlelight.

once, when my brother, ray and his wife, pat, came up to visit, we all gathered our nerve and decided we would go on one of those walking ghost tours. we all had our tickets and we met at the designated place..our guide had on this black, gauzy outfit and was holding a candle, and we were psyched. we were ready to see some ghosts. and wouldn't you know it, it began raining. hard. so instead they let us go on a tour of one of the famous "haunted mansions."

we were touring the downstairs parlor, when we decided we would sit down and wait for the rest of the group to come in. mama and someone else sat down on this antique couch and one of the legs broke completely off. and the front corner of the couch was now sitting on the floor. my brother was trying to prop it back up on the leg, discreetly, so the guide wouldn't see that we had broken it and make us pay for it. no telling how much money they could have charged us for an antique couch. we were dying laughing and to this day, we think it was a set-up. we walked up this huge staircase as the guide began telling us that sometimes, late in the night, you could hear marbles rolling down each of the steps, as a child played at the top of the landing. they said that lights would inexplicably go on and off, all by themselves and one thing after another, which of course, none of us witnessed. we began going through each of the bedrooms, looking at old clothes that were supposedly the original owners, (yeah, still laid out right where they left them over a century ago) and suddenly we noticed that all of the menfolk in our group had disappeared. we didn't see them leave. we didn't hear them talking. had a "ghost" gotten them? was this another set-up? we went down the hall to another bedroom, which faced a street that was lined with "row houses" and there we found all the men standing at the two windows, jostling each other to get a better view at something across the street. pat and i managed to squeeze in until we could see what had them so interested, and there, across the street, in the upstairs bedroom of one of those row houses, was a woman. an almost naked woman. who was soon going to be very naked! she lay down on the bed and she stretched and then got up and began bending over and removing every stitch of clothing she had on. and pretending that she didn't know that people were watching her. she got completely naked, like it was just the most natural thing to do, in front of an open window, at night, in downtown savannah, and then she walked over and closed her curtains and turned out the lights. we had just paid $15 a piece to see a stripper ...strip. and i have a hunch it was all planned that way. and us girls...we were ticked off. and our menfolk? they were scared... because they knew they were in trouble when they got home!

we heard about another story that had been brewing around savannah for many, many years. the legend of TIGER RIDGE. the stories had it that this was a community, about an hours drive from savannah, out in the boonies of effingham county. a community of big-headed people. two-headed people. people with twelve fingers and as many toes. people that would as soon shoot you, as look at you. a community of inbreds. you know. people that cohabitate with other family members. incesteous relationships and deformed dwarfs. people with extra eyes and other body parts. scary, scary people. people always said to stay away from TIGER RIDGE, if you knew what was good for you. the stories made it sound like there was a community of some kind of other worldly freaks living just outside the city limits. characters you would see in the freak show part of a county fair. where you pay $1.00 to see the "half man, half-woman." or "the head of a man on the body of a pig." don't go out there alone," they would say. or "make sure you have a gun with you, cuz those people don't like strangers coming into their community."

there was an article that came out in the savannah news about TIGER RIDGE.

http://old.savannahnow.com/stories/122498/LOCtigerridge.html

it told about all the rumors and it debunked alot of them. and confirmed some too. it told about how the people that lived out there had decided to allow people into the community for the first time, i think to dispel alot of the rumors, by putting on a fantastic light display for Christmas. they were taking donations of old christmas lights and they would repair them and string them up and they just went nuts with all the decorations they started collecting. they claimed to have 10,000 or so lights up and were inviting people to come out and take a look and leave a small donation, or better yet, any old Christmas decorations or broken light strings. for the next year. this went on for several years and the display got larger and larger. people started coming from all over the country to see it. (or so the paper reported.) the paper made it sound like a spectacular light display that you shouldn't miss seeing at least once in your lifetime.

so, a few years ago, we started getting the itch to go. and see the big headed people. to see if it was really true what people said about them.

instead of waiting until Christmas and going in the dark, my mother and i decided one day, that since we were close to that area for other reasons, we would ride down there and check out the community. in the bright light of day. we vaguely knew the directions and we ended up on this really long road. in the middle of the woods. we kept going further and further, thinking that this was all just a hoax or that we were on the wrong road, when all of a sudden we came upon this old, ramshackle house. there were a bunch of old cars, all rusted and broken down, with car parts scattered from one end of the yard to the other. and there was a large group of men standing around one of them. the front door was propped open and there, sitting in a chair, right in the front doorway, was a BIG HEADED WOMAN!!!. we looked at the men. and they looked at us. and they started walking. towards us. and i accelerated. we were scared half to death. and praying that there was a road we could turn off on and get the heck out of dodge! as we got further down the road we both noticed at the same time that there seemed to be a "pall," a misty fog, like a curtain hanging right over the road and we were driving right into the middle of it. now i know you're thinking that it was just our imagination. but you would be wrong. it was like being in the twilight zone. and as we came out of the fog, we realized that we had come to a dead end. it struck us, then and there, that we were going to have to turn that car around and go back past those men and that BIG HEADED WOMAN!! there was no other way out. and we remembered the stories about them shooting people who ventured into their community to gawk. and we had definately come to gawk. and they knew it. as we got closer to that old house i told mama to "hang on" i might have to take that car sideways, but we were going to get out of there alive. we were not going to meet our Maker at the hands of these TIGER RIDGE big headed, multi-toed people. i floored that accelerator and flew right past them. and they were gawking. at us. at the two idiot women with terror written all over their faces, who were flying by them about to pee in their pants! I'm pretty sure that to them, WE were the freak show. it was totally ridiculous, but when you get caught up in "legends"...well, you start to take them as truth.

that same year, at Christmas time, my two older boys had come home for the holidays, and we decided that we would take the ride out there and look at the lights display. if the paper was reporting that it was ok to go out there, then surely we would come to no harm, right? i mean, people from all over the world were coming. it was me, the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, micajah and christian. i wasn't quite as scared this time since i had men with me, so we loaded up into the truck, this time with a "glock" underneath the drivers seat and our cell phones fully charged. we didn't tell anyone where we were going. we drove over and just before we got there, it began storming. i mean, like cats and dogs coming down. this time there wasn't a "pall." you just couldn't see two feet in front of you. we drove down that long, dark road and we finally came to a hand made sign that said turn here for the lights display. so we turned there. and we drove some more. and finally we came to the TIGER RIDGE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS DISPLAY. it was several old trailers on a cul de sac. out in the middle of the boonies. and there were more lights and gawdy displays than one human could fathom. it was pretty pitiful.

none of the big headed people were out taking donations that night. in fact, there was no one else out there in those parts at all. just us. so i got a notion to call mama and tell her where we were. when she answered the phone i said, "you won't believe where we are right now...TIGER RIDGE!" and right at that moment lightening struck and we all started screaming and my cell phone went dead. and back at mama's house i was pretty sure that mama was probably dying at that moment. not knowing what in the world had happened to us that would cause us all to start screaming out in the middle of TIGER RIDGE. a few minutes later when we got back on the main road i got service again and called her and she was still alive. breathing harder. but alive. she thought that maybe one of the big headed people had gotten us. but no, it was just lightening. we made it out alive and the glock never left its hiding place underneath the seat.

i started seriously wondering what all the hype was about. i mean, the Bible says, "judge not, lest you be judged." and we, like everyone else, were judging these people. without having ever even met one of them. is it possible that these were actually good people, just like you and i, and just misunderstood? i googled TIGER RIDGE to see what i could find out about the community. and it turns out that some of the rumors are true. just as many are not. the community actually started out many years ago, with one man intermarrying with a woman from his own family. they had children and some had deformities. over the years, they began staying within their own little community, to avoid people, who gawked, like we did. there certainly was alot of inbreeding and is to this day. but most people who have actually met some of them say that for the most part, they just like to be left alone. that they are really nice people, just a little different from most of us. and they wanted to put on a light display to show that to the rest of the world. they would spend hours and hours replacing burnt out light bulbs in thousands of strings of lights. they would paint large pieces of plywood with the words Happy Birthday Jesus on them. and it would take them several months to prepare for their spectacular light display. on nights when the weather was good, unlike the night we went, they all sit outside in lawn chairs and talk to the people that venture out to their little neck of the woods. they even have a guestbook for you to sign, saying where you came from.

it's a shame that we live in a world where anyone who is not like "us" is a freak, or is someone to avoid at all costs. that we get caught up in stories like the legend of TIGER RIDGE. Jesus loves those people, just as much as He loves us. if it sounds like i'm pointing fingers, i am. at myself. i'm guilty. but thank God he forgives my stupidity, when i ask Him to.

i've been to TIGER RIDGE. twice. i never did see multi-toed people or deformed dwarfs or anyone with extra body parts...just some lights, strung from one end of the community to the next. but...it was scary. that part of the stories is true. and well, once you've seen one BIG HEADED WOMAN...truthfully, twice was enough for me.

RUN....NO, WAIT...come back

2010-04-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

hey there everybody! i've been absent for a little while...but...I'M BAAAAAACK! i know this just gave you a little thrill, didn't it? ...it's okay to admit it. you've missed me, haven't you? i've had alot of things going on these last couple of months...and truthfully, my humor has taken a backseat to everything else. i've missed writing, i've missed laughing...shoot, i've even missed peeing my pants...a little bit.

hang in here with me...i've got some stories coming! after all, my life is like a three ring circus...always something going on...and i'm more often than not, the CLOWN in the middle of it all.

thank you to those who "follow" me...i will try very hard not to lead you astray...like i did my friend in...just kidding. i was always the one led astray. BWAHAHAHA!!!!

stay tuned...

a tale of two Valentines Day THIEVES

2010-02-20T13:49:00.000-05:00

i have always loved valentines day. ever since i was a little girl and we would decorate our "mailboxes" at school with markers and little heart stickers, and lay them on our desk where everyone would go around and put their valentines in each others boxes. i couldn't wait to get home and dig through the pile, looking for that "special one" from that "special boy." then i got older and started dating and instead of the little mailboxes i started getting big red heart boxes filled with chocolates and then it was a dozen roses.

when "the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures" and i were trying to decide what day we would get married we settled on february 15. i had owned a flower shop at the time and of course, valentines day was the busiest day of the year. so we thought that since i was ordering so many flowers it would be a good time to just add my wedding flowers to the same order and get married the day after. and so we did. and that always made it a little more special because i got to celebrate two holidays in two days. and that usually meant two presents. and i liked that part. about the two presents. after we had been married a few years he started just combining the two and getting me one gift. i didn't like that part so much. but hey...i didn't complain, because one gift is better than NO gift...right? i love the whole idea of romance. sappy love stories, men who cry, unexpected love notes...flowers and chocolates. and hearts.

this last week mama and daddy got an unwelcomed visitor at their house. MR. STOMACH VIRUS. i packed a few things that i NEEDED, like my own pillow and my laptop and headed over to their house to stay with them while it ran its course. and play nurse. then my nephew, ryan, got it. and then my sister, paula, got it. i avoided it because my uniform of choice was this

i wore these for eight days. because that's how long it stuck around. and i am the only one who escaped that evil man's clutches!

valentines day fell in the middle of this week. and i realized when i woke up that this was the first year EVER, that i did not have anyone that would be sending me a valentine. and deep down inside, and a little bit on the surface, i was mad. at "the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures." not because HE had a NEW valentine, but because i DIDN'T! he had ruined this holiday for me. all i had was virtual valentines from a few of my facebook friends. (don't get me wrong, i loved them,) but i was not going to hear the florist delivery van drive up the driveway so he could deliver me roses and i wasn't going to get a card in the mail. and worse...i was not going to be getting any CHOCOLATE!!!! and on top of that, i wasn't going to get an anniversary present the next day either. that stunk! this was the second holiday he ruined for me. (mothers day was the first, but that's a whole nother story.) at this rate, i wasn't going to be celebrating anything anymore...and trust me when i say this...i gave him a tongue lashing like you wouldn't believe!!! only he wasn't around to hear it. dadgum it!

my second oldest son, christian, sent me a valentine's message on facebook. and my oldest son, landon, called me that night to tell me happy valentines day. but i didn't hear anything from micajah, except when he called me to see if i was coming home that night. he was staying at our house to take care of all the animals. i told him no, that i needed to stay one more night. he told me what he had gotten his girlfriend and i waited to see if he was going to say Happy Valentines Day Mom! i love you! but he didn't. and i whined about he never thinks of me, except when he needs something, and how all he cares about are his friends. i whined about it alot. he called me the next day to see if i was still coming home that night, but by then daddy was getting sick again so i told him no, it would have to be the next day. i wondered why he was wanting me at home. he doesn't talk to me a whole lot when i AM there, so i figured he needed some money or some laundry done. he speaks to me alot when he needs MONEY .yesterday afternoon i returned home like the prodigal mother, draggin my pillow and my laptop behind me. i walked into my bedroom and there on my other pillow was a card that said MOM. it was a valentine from my baby boy. and what he wrote inside just melted my heart. "i love you whether you think i do or not. micajah" i had tears in my eyes. and i went in the bathroom to get a kleenex and there in the trash can was a single yellow rose in cellophane. i went to his room to thank him for the card and asked him what a rose was doing in the trash can. i thought maybe he had gotten it for his girl and then decided not to give it to her. but he said, "i got it for you but you didn't come home in time and it died. and i didn't want to give you a dead rose." awwwww...tears welling up. sigh. sooooo sweet. my baby boy loves me. and i realized right then that valentines day is not just for the romantic kind of love. it's just about love. plain and simple.

a few years ago when micajah was in the sixth grade, he had his eye on a girl in his class. valentines day was approaching and i kept asking him if he wanted to go to the store and get her something. but he kept saying no, he didn't think he was going to give her anything. i thought that was a little odd, because at his school the kids would all exchange things with their sweetie and come walking out the door at the end of the day with flowers and balloons and teddy bears. i couldn't figure out why he wasn't giving her anything. a couple of days later, it was a sunday, and i had just gotten home from church, when i walked into my bedroom and noticed immediately that something was a little off kilter. i'm one of those people that can tell instantly if someone "strange" has been in my house. or if something has been moved. and i was noticing then that something had been moved. i kept my jewelry box on top of the dresser and in front of it i had two little wicker baskets and a little doll of some sort. and they had been moved. just a little to the right. and one of the drawers on the jewelry box was slightly open. i asked "the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures" if he had been looking for something, but he said no. so, i asked micajah, the only other person who lived there and he too said no. SOMEBODY WAS LYING. so i pulled the jewelry box down and began to go through it and noticed right away that one of my rings was missing. and i knew it because i know where everything should be because i have ocd, remember? i'm organized. everything has it's own little place in the world. i thought, well who in the world would come in my house and just take ONE ring? hmmmm. doesn't make sense to you either, does it?

and then it dawned on me. i knew who would do something like that. an eighth grade boy with a girlfriend. whom he would want to impress on valentines day! i called micajah in the room and asked him point blank if he had given my ring to this girl. and after a few futile attempts to lie about it, he confessed. so...i did what any normal mother would do. i thought of the "worst punishment for him" and i told him that he had to call the girl and tell her she had to give the ring back because it belonged to his mother. and that if he didn't do it, and in front of me, that i would be calling her mother myself. he did it. and he was humiliated beyond belief. and i felt sorry for him...but i wasn't about to let him off the hook after giving away my jewelry to a girl he would be breaking up with in a matter of days! he told me i was a mean mama. (he steals my jewelry and lies about it and i'm a mean mama!) but he lived through it. and i got my ring back the next day. and he dumped the girl two days later.

i decided this year that since i won't be celebrating an anniversary anymore that i would come up with something NEW to celebrate on that day. so...i'm thinking on that. and i'm thinking that it needs to involve me eating an absurd amount of chocolate. sounds like a plan is forming.....

the "reconstruction of ME"

2010-02-01T22:59:00.000-05:00

ok. soooooo...today is DAY ONE of my "reconstruction of me" project. a project that will involve sifting through the rubble that my life has become and digging deep, to see if i can find any gems that are worth salvaging. (you know...bits and pieces of self-esteem, self-worth, good qualities, etc.) these things have been sorely lacking in my life for the past year. well, actually, more like the last 18 years. and now that i am "going through the big D, and don't mean dallas" thing, i thought that i would re-invent myself. undergo a major reconstruction job both on the inside and outside. "fix" some things that need to be fixed. sort of like plastic surgery. nip a little here and there. cut some things out. add a little bit of this and that. but first, i wanted to do a little self examination and see if i could find anything about me that might be worth keeping or if i need to just start over from scratch. (after a few hours of looking at myself under a microscope i'm thinking i better go with the start over from scratch idea.) God is going to be with me throughout this process, so i know i'm in good hands.

as a lover of all things scrapbook related, i am jumping on the bandwagon and beginning the Project 365. this is where you take a picture a day, all year long, of things that encompass your daily life. people you love, people you love that don't love you back, friends, pets, places you shop, places you go, things you eat, things that will eat you. you get the idea. little things in life that add up to the big things. i will be posting the pictures here in an album entitled "Project 365 minus the first 31 days of 2010." because i got started late. but better late than never, right? so, if you are at all interested in bits and pieces of "me" check out the pics. if you're not...well then...don't. HA!

last week my family and i got into a big discussion on OCD. for those of you that don't know what that is...it stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. and i have it. but personally speaking, i feel that people who DON'T have it are the ones with a disorder! i tend to believe that it GIVES me order. anyway, i do not suffer in this alone. many others in my family also tend to "lean that way." with varying degrees of the disorder. i think that my own degree is slight, however, there are those who would tend to disagree with me. i have always known that this a part of me, though i wasn't always aware there was a name for it. i have always liked to think that i am very discreet about it. if you don't know me well, or if you weren't reading this, you would probably never know that i can be freakish about some...things. and if you're wondering right about now why i'm talking about OCD, it's because after our big discussion about it i have determined that this is one of the areas of my life that needs to be reconstructed! makes perfect sense now, huh?

one symptom of OCD is when a person has a compulsive desire to do something. maybe a certain number of times, or a certain way. and there is usually a reason WHY you need to do it, although you might not always KNOW what that reason is. for instance, i have to do certain things in even increments. not everything. but certain things. and i can't tell you what those things are, because they can change on a daily basis at any given time. i can tell you that i have to do them an even number of times. and this can drive a sane person, well, insane. like turning a light switch on and off. and then on and off again. or scratching my head. and then scratching it again. or having to have everything in the food pantry organized. by fruit, soup, breakfast foods, baking items,etc. and then within the food group itself. and labels facing out. and all in a perfect row. my sister, terri, and i used to own a gourmet gift basket business. we stocked alot of boxed candies and nuts and fruits. we also had alot of different gift lines. every day before i went home i would go around and line up all the little boxes. in perfect rows. but at an angle. and when i would come in the next morning, all the little boxes would be in perfect rows still. but lined up one in front of the other. i would "fix" them again and the next day...same thing. this went on for awhile. one day i mentioned it to mama (who worked with us) and terri, and told them how it drove me nuts that someone was always "undoing" the order of things. and terri admitted that it was HER! see, she has this same disorder. but where i like things at an angle, she likes them perfectly straight. so...most people would just do some sort of compromise...or let it go altogether. but not us. not TWO people with OCD. we just continued on with what we were doing. i would "fix" things and she would "mess them up." drove mama up the wall.

terri also has the "even" thing. but she is waaaaay more conspicuous about it than i am. one thing she does...when we are in the car and she is driving, if anyone is sitting in the backseat and says something to her...she has to flip her head around like you would do if you were looking for oncoming traffic before merging into a lane. and she does it twice. and if you happen to be going on a long trip with this going on...let me just say that by the time you reach your intended destination you have a car full of unhappy campers and a driver with whiplash. it even drives a fellow OCDer batty!

there is a show on tv called HOARDERS. these people suffer with a form of OCD. i watch the show...but i don't suffer anywhere near this degree. i don't hoard junk. or trash. or food. or animal feces. i went to mama and daddy's house the other day. when i walked into daddy's office there was mama sitting on the couch surrounded by empty boxes and...stuff. i asked her what she was doing. she said that alot of things they had gotten for Christmas had been left down there and she was taking it all out of the boxes so she could put it where it belonged. so i jumped right in and began tearing down the boxes. you know. to put in the trash. and then mama had a little "OCD issue."

"what are you doing...i want those boxes!!!"

"for what?"

"because they are "good" boxes. just put them in the closet over there."

"ummmmmm...for what?"

"because when i need to mail a gift and i need a box i'll know where they are. you can never have too many boxes."

"but you don't even shop anymore. so you don't mail gifts. so you don't need boxes. and if you ever DO need one...i will go to the store and get you one...if you don't already get one free with whatever it was you bought."

"but i hate to just throw away "good" boxes." (said as i am madly tearing them down still.)

"mama...you do not need boxes. you are wanting to get rid of "stuff" not collect more "stuff." the boxes GO!"

"fine!! but at least give me that big shoe box. i need that to put my tax stuff in." so i let her have the shoebox. (and today she told me she lost it.) go figure.

two of my sisters, paula and terri, AND both mama and daddy have a thing for boxes. and empty bottles. and styrofoam ice chests that daddy's insulin comes in every month. so i have to keep them all in check because i don't share this trait, and i throw them away when nobody's looking.

to top all of this crazy behavior off...i was a decorator. and for any of you fellow decorators or scrapbookers...you know what it's like. certain things have to be in groups of 3 or 5. what kind of chaos do you think THAT rule does to an "even numbered" OCDer like me? YES! you do understand don't you? you can spend literally hours working on a page and everyone will ooooh and aaaah over it (you caught that i had to do 4 o's on each word, didn't you?) and tell you how pretty it is and how talented you are. but YOU KNOW that something just isn't right. it's missing that one little thing. and you can't be happy with it or done with it, until you find that ONE little thing. then...and only then...is everything right in your little corner of the world. thank you! i knew there were people out there that can relate to me!

in my very first picture of my Project 365 minus the first 31 days of 2010 album, you may notice in the background a large pile of clothes. on hangers. but not hanging in the closet. yep...this was taken in micajah's room. i wash the clothes. i hang up the clothes...on plastic hangers...because i CAN NOT have wire hangers in my closets! and he lays them on the bed. why? because he is 17 yrs. old. and his job is to drive his mother looney. which he does mighty well. MIGHTY WELL INDEED!!!

all of this to say...this problem needs some attention. some "fixing." i drive myself nuts sometimes. i tell myself over and over again that NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN IF I DON''T TAP THE TABLE FOUR TIMES. OR FLIP MY PILLOW TWICE BEFORE I GO TO BED. OR BRUSH MY TEETH TWO TIMES BECAUSE I CAN'T REMEMBER IF I REALLY DID BRUSH THEM OR IF I JUST THOUGHT I BRUSHED THEM. but, i have a hard time listening to myself. therein lies the problem.

so this will be a work in progress. this is just the beginning. hang on if you're going on this ride with me. it might get a little ummmmmmm out of sorts!.

BIG HAIRY THING

2010-01-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

I was driving over to mama and daddy's house the other day to take them this for lunch.

a huge crockpot that was filled to the brim with beef stroganoff. not from a box, i might add. ten hours of home cooked goodness. i had it sitting on the floorboard of the passenger seat and during the 20 minute ride i had to kind of bend over and hold the lid on, so as to keep this goodness from spilling out onto my floormats. see, i had cooked this very same meal about a month or so ago, and on the ride there i didn't notice that it was making a puddle. that's because i was having a moment of road rage, i'm sure. and when that happens i don't notice much of anything except the person who is making my blood boil with their obvious lack of driving skills. so, when i finally made it to mama's house and went to get it out of the car, i saw that half the contents were no longer IN the crockpot, and therefore, someone would be getting a much smaller portion on their plate. unless they wanted to go scrape it off my floor mats. then they could have a little dirt with their stroganoff, and call it pepper. HA!

anyways...this time i didn't want to have to tell anyone that might be riding in my car anytime during the next week, that the fragrance they were smelling was "Eau de la stroganoff," so i bent over and made sure the lid stayed on.

it's hard to keep your car in between the lines when you are hunched over, holding the lid on a crockpot while driving 45 mph in traffic. it is even harder to do when you bend down and see movement on your windshield out of the corner of your eye. which is exactly what i saw. movement. and that movement was attached to something BIG and HAIRY. and it had 8 legs! and i am not the least bit ashamed to say that there was some high pitched screaming going on in my car. because when i was able to stop at a light and focus...THIS is what i saw.

what? you don't see it? let me give you a couple of other views.

are you seeing this ginormous thing now? well, i saw it...and let's just say i was freaking out a little bit. okay, more than a little bit. i like watching spiders build their webs. i think they are fascinating creatures. but i don't want to give one a ride on my car. because i just knew that when i opened the door, that BIG HAIRY THING would be IN my car. with me. and that i can tell you would not end well.

so, i did what most anyone would do...i accelerated, hoping that the wind would be strong enough to blow him away. my hopes were dashed. that BIG HAIRY THING wrapped those 8 legs around the windshield wiper and hung on for dear life. i'm sure that people riding beside me thought i was having some kind of a stroke or something. there i was, bent over to the right, holding on to that lid, driving with my left hand on the wheel, screaming at the top of my lungs, like a banshee (i'm sure i was in violation of the "loud noises coming from your car law") and weaving in and out of my lane. but no one cared enough to call the police, or an ambulance to check on me and see if i needed any help. (nice, people.) i made it to mama's house and before i could figure out just how i was going to get out of my car and walk around to the passenger side to open the door and get my beef stroganoff out, without this BIG HAIRY THING attacking me and jumping inside my car, my nephew, Ryan, drove up. i was saved! here was a 19 yr. old macho man. i would get HIM to remove the BIG HAIRY THING. and then i could go on. with lunch. with life.

i called out to him. "hey, Ryan, you aren't afraid of spiders, are you?"

"ummmmmm. no. not really. well, it depends. on what kind of spider it is."

"well, i don't know what kind it is, except it is a BIG HAIRY one, and it is on my windshield. and if you want to eat lunch, then you have to come and get him off."

and Ryan strolls over to the car, very nonchalantly, (after all, he's a macho man) with a McDonald's drink in one hand, and he's expecting to see something the size of a dime. he's sorta thinking that i'm exaggerating and he's going to have to be the big man and come take care of this little nuisance for his BIG BABY AUNT.

and then he walks to the front of the car and sees it.

"Holy Cow...that is the biggest spider i've ever seen! what am i going to get him with? Oh man...that thing is huge!"

so i say, "just get a stick and knock him off." and i proceed to find one. but, when i went to hand it to him, he had walked off towards the garage and when he came back...THIS is what he had found to get the spider off my windshield.

a machete.

"NO, i screamed. you can't get him with that. you'll bust my windshield."

"well, i'm not using that little stick. i'll just try to brush him off with this."

and when he touched the BIG HAIRY THING it started uncurling those 8 legs and Ryan started backing away. and IT started walking towards us. and i was still screaming like a banshee.

yeah. you thought i was exaggerating too, didn't you?

not hardly.

THE BIG HAIRY THING ran down the side of my car and Ryan finally poked at it enough to make it jump to the ground and what happened next...well, i can't post a picture of it. it was too gruesome.

Ryan chopped that BIG HAIRY THING into a million little pieces. it was like he went into a frenzy. like something on a horror movie, where the guy has an axe and a victim and he just hacks and hacks and hacks. it was overkill, to put it mildly.

i said, "Ryan, i didn't want you to kill it. i just didn't want to have to give it a ride back to my house."

and he said, "well, i don't want it to get inside OUR house. that thing is HUGE."

aaaaah...big macho men. you gotta love em.

(but Ryan should have never let me know that he's afraid of spiders. i see some practical jokes in his future!)

i ain't never birthed no puppies.....

2009-12-31T17:19:00.006-05:00

aaaaaahh...september 29. as i remember, it started out like any other day around here. nothing really spectacular had occurred. until that night. the night that my home turned into a "dog house." our lab, zoe was pregnant and i wanted to find a book on what to expect when you're expecting puppies. like the book they have for pregnant mothers.

i wanted to know what was in store, as "i ain't never birthed no puppies before." and the more i read, the more terrified i became. this was much, much worse than the book i read when i was expecting my first child. i was only having one baby. not anywhere from eight to fifteen! i needed things. you know, in case i was called on to "help" with the delivery. things like white towels and a thingy you suction their nose and mouth with. boiling water and forceps and a scapel in case i would need to perform an emergency c-section. i would need scales to weigh them and tags to label them and a "whelping box!" what in the world was a whelping box? a box to put the mother in when she starts writhing in agony? or, a box to put ME in, when i started writhing in agony? so, i sent micajah to wally world...for supplies. i sent him with a list. and on that list was a package of white cleaning cloths from the automotive section (i'm cheap and didn't want to buy white towels that i would never be using again) and if he couldn't find those, to go to the baby department and get a package of white cloth diapers. he calls me from inside the store.

mom, "i'm in the automotive section and they only have one package of white cloths and there are only three to a pack."

"well, that's not enough. go to the baby section and get the cloth diapers."

"i don't know what they look like, mom. where are they?"

"they are in the BABY department. in a package. where all the other diapers are. just ask someone to show you where CLOTH diapers are."

"fine. whatever. i'm not going to ask somebody where diapers are. i'll find them. bye."

a few minutes later he arrives home. with these.

BWAHAHAHA! i asked him, "micajah, what am i supposed to do with these? these are pampers. am i supposed to put a pamper on each puppy? and besides that, they are jumbo size, for 35 lbs. and up!"

"well, i told you i didn't know what they looked like. you said cloth diapers. those are diapers...and they are made of cloth." hmmmmmm...is this the way all seventeen year old boys think?

we were sitting on my bed, with zoe. not suspecting that she was in labor at that very moment. she wasn't pacing. or whining. or digging her nails into my wrist, like i did to micajah's father when i was giving birth. she just sat there, licking herself, the way dogs do all the time. and then there was a puppy coming out. and then there wasn't. she had eaten it before it was born. and i began to panic. THIS i had never heard of! i had a cannibalistic dog! i grabbed the laptop and did a few searches on dogs who were cannibals and learned that this was a totally natural thing. that dogs instinctively know when the puppy is stillborn or when it won't survive, and they eat it. and it is actually good for them. but it was not good for me! i was in full blown panic mode. we didn't even have the whelping box yet! what to do?

we layed some towels on the floor in my bedroom and put zoe on them and i got out the camcorder and the camera and we waited. for a long time. and nothing. micajah went on to bed and i was just sitting on my bed when i heard a single groan and then i saw movement. she had given birth to the second puppy and this one was alive. i yelled for micajah and we watched her clean the baby up and get the sac from around it's face. and a few minutes later, more licking, a glimpse of a puppy, and then...no more puppy. another one stillborn. another panic attack from me. i thought birth was supposed to be a beautiful thing. this was not shaping up that way. about 30 minutes later she began the licking and then she jumped up and there was a baby trying to be born and she leaps up onto MY bed, walks around with this puppy hanging halfway out of her and then just sits down. on top of the puppy that is trying to make its way into the world. and hopefully, live here awhile. we managed to lay her down and "assist" her in getting the puppy out and she cleaned it and all was well.

to make this already getting long story a little shorter, i will just say that through the course of the night, until 6:00 the next morning, zoe labored and gave birth to 12 beautiful little puppies. there were no more stillborns. there was no emergency c-section. there was no whelping box.

but there was another kind of box. one that micajah built in our garage. to keep the puppies in so i wouldn't have to smell poop all day long. it was large enough to hold all 12 puppies as they grew...and until they went to their new homes.

it was great too. or it was until they got big enough to be weaned and began eating real puppy food. then they would push their bowls all the way to the back of the pen.

which meant, of course, that this 50 yr. old woman had to climb over the front, which was built low enough for zoe to climb in and out, but still high enough that the puppies couldn't climb out. or that i couldn't lift my leg high enough to get over it easily. there were times when i would put one leg over, and get stuck. or i would get splinters in my hands trying to heave myself back over it. or in my backside when i just gave in and sat down to rest a minute. i just knew that one day i would slip and fall...into the pen. and into the poop and pee of 12 puppies. and lay there, unconscience, with the razor sharp nails of all those dogs digging into me. i had horrors of laying there for several days, bleeding, being wet on, until micajah got hungry enough to come in search of his mother who should have been placed on the missing persons list days before. had anyone missed me enough to place me there.

there were days through all these weeks of puppies, that i would cry out to God, "when will my life be normal again? when will i be able to have a conversation with humans again, instead of this dog language i had acquired while conversing with these animals? much like women who stay home with their children all day, longing for adult companionship. to hear words other than MOM, MAMA, MOMMY a million times in 24 hours. i began praying for the day these puppies could be listed on craigslist in search of a new home. i loved them. but keep in mind...i already had two yorkies, a cat and two ginormous labs. plus a teenager. a boy teenager. the food bill alone was killing me.

and finally. FINALLY the sun shined down on me and God spoke. He said, "today is the day." Oh, thank you, Lord. thank you. the puppies were placed on an ad and within three days, they all had new homes. the last to go to his new family was King Kong. the week before Christmas, he was going to be the biggest present under some little boys tree. i was ecstatic. i want to show you WHY the name King Kong...

the pen came down that very day. the wood went to the dump. the garage was cleaned out. the blankets were thrown away and my house was cleaned for company. my dog house had officially been DE-PUPPIFIED. and on its way to being a home again. for people.

a couple days later patrick, micajah's friend, came walking in my front door. with these words.

"hey mom, is Bailey pregnant?" (he just calls me mom because, well, he practically lives here.) (and Terri, if you're reading this, i mean that in a GOOD way! really. seriously. i love patrick.)

NOOOOOOOOOOO....this could not be happening to me. Lord, haven't i been good this year? haven't i done everything you asked of me? am i being punished for something? talk to me. please. talk to me. and He did. He told me that yes, indeed, bailey was pregnant. she's our "other" lab. zoe's sister. and we figured she would give birth sometime around the end of january.

Christmas Eve was last thursday. my son, christian, and his girlfriend, missy came up from florida for the holidays on wednesday. we got up thursday morning and went to one of the cemeteries to take pictures. we put zoe and bailey in the garage while we were gone. so they wouldn't terrorize the neighborhood (as my grumpy old neighbor likes to say.) we were going over to some friends house for dinner that night and when we got home i had some cooking to do and some presents to wrap. while i was in the process of doing just that, micajah came running into my room.

"mom, bailey is having her puppies. she already had some. come to the garage, QUICK!"

and sure enough, the dog that we had just found out was pregnant, was giving birth. once again, we weren't prepared. no whelping box. no clean, white towels, (diapers) no scapel or nose sucking thingy. she did it all on her own anyway. the first five puppies didn't survive. the last three she cleaned up and then she deserted them.

i had to clean them off once she had gotten the sac off. she wouldn't nurse them. she wouldn't go anywhere near them. she kept trying to eat them. so micajah and christian rushed to petsmart and got the last two baby bottles and a can of milk replacement. and we took the puppies to our friends house with us. and we all took turns bottle feeding them.

ryan, my nephew

sarah, our pastors daughter

beverly and sarah, pastors wife and daughter

caleb, pastors son

that night i had to get micajah up every two hours to hold bailey down, so i could put the babies up to her and let them nurse.

i knew they needed their mothers milk and i knew that bailey needed the relief. but bailey didn't like it one single bit. she hated those puppies. Christmas morning we were like zombies. we went to my sisters for lunch, puppies in tow and it was clear by that afternoon that the puppies were not liking the bottles. or the milk. so that night i tied bailey up to my bedpost with her leash and had the puppies on the floor in a basket, by my side of the bed. when they cried, i held bailey down and put the puppies up to her and after about the fourth time she began licking them and cleaning them and that mama dog has just about licked the skin clean off those babies since then. she won't leave their side for a minute. her motherly instincts kicked in some 24 hours after giving birth and she went from total neglect to "i'll kill you if you try to hurt my babies" mode. (notice the one puppy, laying between her front paws and the other, between her back legs)

twelve puppies...to three. and these three are already spoken for. and the mama's? oh, trust me. they will soon be on their way to the vet for a little ummmmmm...O-P-E-R-A-T-I-O-N.

i sometimes wonder WHY God allowed such a thing as this to happen to me. didn't i already have enough on my plate? was there a lesson here? well, of course there was. isn't there always, where God is concerned?

BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.

it's that simple. this verse comes to me time and time and time again. it's Gods way of reminding me to LET GO and LET GOD. i have a tendency to hand things over to God, only to snatch them back when i think i have a better plan. or i think He is not moving things along as fast i would like him too. having all these puppies to take care of in the midst of all that i am dealing with in my personal life, has taken some of the edge off. it has kept me focused on things other than myself and my problems. God could very easily have left me saddled with all those puppies. i would have had to take them to the pound where they would most likely have been put down. and then they would have needed to put me down. but God took care of the situation. he found new homes for all of them. with good people. and these last three?

they remind me of my own three boys. when you walk towards bailey and reach for one of the babies, she reaches her long legs out and gathers them to her. she looks up at you as if she's saying, "i dare you to hurt one of them."

that's how i feel about my boys. although they are all grown up now, and don't need my arms around them all the time, keeping them safe...that's the feeling in my heart whenever i see one of them. to want to protect them.

God has blessed me. tremendously. and i thank him for the lessons he teaches me on a daily basis.

and he answers prayers. whether we see the answer or not. it's always there.

oh. and one more lesson i learned through all this. puppy poop is hard to get out of most fabrics. i never knew that before. just saying.

Heroes...and a panty bomber

2009-12-30T20:27:00.001-05:00

so...today there are two stories making headline news, both of which are the meat of this post. the first is a story of an american father, who was married and had a son. his wife leaves, with son in tow, to visit her homeland in brazil. her husbands understanding was that she would return in two weeks, however, that didn't happen. instead, she divorced him from brazil and kept their son away from him, eventually remarried and then was killed in an accident. leaving the boy with his step-father and his maternal grandparents. for five long years, this man fought the legal system, in two countries, to regain custody of his son. finally, after 5 long years, the father and son were reunited, after brazilian courts turned custody back over to him, and on christmas eve, they traveled back to new jersey, to begin the long process of becoming re-acquainted and putting their family back together again.

the second story is of a would-be terrorist, who is being dubbed "the panty bomber" by the press. he tried to blow up an airplane, filled with passengers, enroute to Detroit. his weapon of choice...a bomb. strategically placed in his underwear. his attempts were foiled, when a nearby passenger heard what sounded like firecrackers going off, and saw smoke rising from the man's lap. he leaped over the man sitting next to him and on top of the "panty bomber." he saved lives. and was burned himself, in the process.

you may wonder what in the world these two stories have to do with me. and why would either of them be the subject of one of my own stories. i will enlighten you.

in the first story, this father is to me...a hero. a man, who would travel to the ends of the earth to save his relationship with his son. a man, who has proved, time and time again, that there is NOTHING he wouldn't do to make that happen. i, personally, don't know ALOT of men who would do that.

most of you who are reading this, know that i am a christian. i have a pretty close relationship with God and strive each day, to draw even closer to Him. most of you also know that i am in the process of going through a divorce. my youngest son, micajah, is also in the process of going through a divorce. as much as some of us would like, these kinds of things do not affect just the husband and wife, but the children, the grandchildren, the in-laws, and even your friends. suddenly, everyone you thought loved you, feels they must "pick a side." one day you wake up and realize that this person you intended to spend the rest of your life with...is a virtual stranger.

today, i am angry. today, i am sad and hurt and desperately need to pray. but, i can't pray. today is one of those days when the words just will not come. i know that in times like these, the Holy Spirit takes over for you and petitions God, the Father, on your behalf...but it makes me feel so inadequate. today, i find myself slipping back into the hole...alone and scared and without answers.

who was this man i was married to for almost 18 years? the father of my youngest child. the man i committed my life to. the man who said he was a christian? who was this man that i shared my family with, that came into my life like a whirlwind and promised me a stable home, filled with love and honesty and faithfullness? who i believed, would go to the ends of the earth for HIS son...if need be? he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. he devoured me. he took what self worth i had, and over the years has ripped it to shreds. until there is not much left. it is soooo cold here in this hole. a place i do not like to be, but find myself sinking to, quite often these last 9 months. and i wonder how much colder it is...for my son.

nine long months. and if i counted, and rounded off and stretched the time as far as i could, the amount of time my son has been face to face with his father would total maybe, MAYBE 10 minutes. that, my friends, is 600 seconds. in 9 long months. and how much more time has been spent with his "greener pasture?" as far as i can see, that "greener pasture" would be better defined as "gone to pasture." but that's just me. so, yes. the man in the first story is a hero to me. a man who would give up his life...for his son. i have 2 fathers like that. i know the feelings that come with having a Heavenly Father that has unconditional love for me, as well as an earthly father..., who would go to the ends of the earth for me. my son will know that kind of love from me, his mother, and from his Heavenly Father. but not from his earthy father. and that makes me angry. which leads to the man in the next story.

the "panty bomber." the would-be terrorist. no, he is NOT a hero. his religion tells him that if he dies while killing others he will receive 70 something virgins on the other side. i don't know what, had he succeeded with his plan, he would have done with those virgins, seeing as where the bomb was placed and all. but, i'm kind of liking the idea of a "panty bomb" as a form of punishment...for men who stray. and dump their families. i am thinking about petitioning my congressman to possibly use this device in my upcoming divorce. the "one who strayed" could be locked inside of a bomb-proof room, with a small device tucked into his underwear...at a strategic place. and the "one who was strayed on" could take their time...mosey on over to a switch on the wall and ask, very politely, of course, if they have any "last words" before they lose their....well, you know what i'm saying here. it wouldn't kill them, of course...but, they wouldn't stray again. i think this idea might just save some marriages. this idea is almost enough to get me out of this hole i'm in.

if someone would throw me a phone book down here...i'm going to start on that petition right now. but, i need the number of my congressman!

things that go BUMP, BUMP...in the night and the day

2009-12-12T00:07:00.000-05:00

in the previous post i mentioned some other "unusual" things my car had hit.

when i finished my first (and only) year of college, back in 1978, i went to work for a large law firm in downtown west palm beach, fl. i was in a pool of six girls who each did secretarial work for about 12 attorneys. we had an hour for lunch every day and so three of us girls, myself, marion and ginger, would sometimes take a ten minute ride down to palm beach and sit on the sea wall and eat our bag lunch. (which translated to scoping out the surfer boys.)

this day we decided to do just that and we were going to go in my car, a toyota celica, which meant that i was driving. we were in the right hand lane, cruising right along on the main drive through palm beach, (yeah, THE PALM BEACH) where all the filthy rich people live. now, any time the three of us girls got together, i can assure you there was plenty of noise, with us singing to the radio, laughing and checking out the local "dudes." to see if we might draw the interest of one of them. a filthy rich one. so that we might marry one and live in one of those mansions on the water one day. i realize now, some 31 years later, that cruising down worth avenue in a toyota celica would probably not draw the attention of anyone that had a dime to their name, but we didn't know that back then. we were young, and stupid and we looked good to boot.

the light turned red and i came to a complete stop. just like the drivers manual instructs you to do. we were laughing about something and when the light turned green, i put my foot on the gas to go, because i was the first one in line and those people in palm beach mean for you to GO when that light turns green. then, as quick as a lightening strike my little car collided...

with one of those humongous ROLLS ROYCES! we went right through the back door of that monstrosity and the old man at the wheel just kept on going...pulling my car, with us still in it! he was going to try and make this little accident a hit and run, but i think he realized that he would have a pretty hard time explaining to his wife exactly WHY he had a toyota celica with three young girls, planted in his back seat. he pulled off the road and that was the very first bag phone i had ever seen. he called the police and we just sat there, until they arrived with a tow truck to pull the car, and us, back out into the real world.

this man had been drinking during his lunch hour, and while we were heading east, towards the beach, he was headed west, towards home...or a bar...or somewhere. he didn't know, because he was drunk. he had come to the same traffic light, on the other side of the median and had decided that the red light didn't apply to Him, so he made a left turn and i put my foot on the gas just as he passed me. he never spoke one single word to us girls throughout the whole time we sat there. in his backseat. and we weren't physically hurt or anything, thank God, but wouldn't you know, out of all the cars in the world, i would have to have my little bump with one of the most expensive ones. my car had to be hauled off on the tow truck, and he got to call someone to come and drive his away, since he was under the influence, minus a back door.

the old man, of course, was charged in the accident and us girls...well we got to take an extended lunch hour that day. and then we had to get a ride back to work from the policeman who was handling the accident. my insurance covered the damage to my car and life went on.

fast forward a few years.

i had just bought a brand new silver volkswagon jetta. my sister, terri had just bought a red mitsubishi eclipse. just a few short weeks after my large purchase, my radio and cassette player just quit working. a girl can not have THAT! we must have our tunes to rock out to...so i had to take my car over to west palm beach and leave it for a couple of days at the dealership, so they could replace it. i was living in clewiston at that time. and it so happened, that mama was over in ft. myers, in the hospital. i can't remember if it was for gall bladder surgery or if she was having a kidney stone...but that's where she was anyway. ft. myers was an hour and a half west of clewiston, and west palm beach was the same distance, east. i needed someone to drive me over to get my car, which was on a friday, so terri said that she would take me.

now. let me stop here and tell you this. mama was always telling us girls, "y'all don't need to be out at night in those little miniskirts. if you got stranded on the side of the road some maniac serial killer/rapist would surely get you."

we didn't always listen to mama though. we were bad girls. and besides, we were going over to west palm in the daytime anyway. we would be back home before dark. let me also stop here. and tell you that mama doesn't like to hear about things we did when we were younger. even though many, many years have passed, and we never really did anything that every other young person did/does. she might still get mad. like sometimes how you might have a bad dream about your spouse having an affair with your best friend, and the next morning you would wake up furious at them, and be mad all day long. and they don't even know what they did. (don't pretend like you've never done this before) so...mama, if you're reading this, you might want to stop. now.

after we picked up my car we decided we didn't really feel like driving right straight back home. there wasn't anything to do there on a friday night. so we made the bad decision to go visit some friends. and it got later and later, and it was really, really dark by the time we decided we need to go. so, we left, with me driving my car in front and terri following me in her car. we were on a main highway, but it was not a busy highway. not in the middle of the night. and it didn't have street lights. and on one side of the road was a canal. a very, very deep canal. it was a four lane road, and i was driving along at a pretty good pace, when i suddenly started getting very sleepy. it was getting to the point where i could hardly keep my eyes open, so i rolled down my window so i could get some wind blowing in my face. thinking that this would wake me up.

i turned my head, briefly, towards the open window and when i turned back towards the road, in that instant i saw that there was something in the road, and i knew that i was going to run over it. and i did. it was lying horizontal to my car and it was longer than my car was wide. it got caught on something and my car began swerving, because i was trying to put the brakes on...but my brakes went out. and then my power steering went out. and i ended up in the far lane...the one going in the wrong direction than i had been going in, and then this thing, whatever it was came free from the car and started rolling down the road towards terri, who was fast approaching. she swerved to avoid hitting it and ran her car along the guard rail that was up to keep idiots like us, out of the canal. she was scared to death that i was dead, and that whatever or whoever i hit was dead and that she was out there in the dark all by herself. she got out and came running over to my car and there i was, slumped over the steering wheel...i don't know if i had been knocked out for a minute or two, or if i was just in shock. what i did know was this. we were out on a dark, lonely highway, in the middle of the night. not a soul knew where we were. i had just possibly killed someone. and we were both wearing mini-skirts. now there were two of us scared to death. we knew that if a maniac serial killer/rapist didn't get us, mama surely would when we got back home.

there was no such thing as cell phones in those days. and the closest thing to us, that was inhabitated with humans, was five miles back down the road. and before we could go anywhere to call anybody, we had to walk down the road and see what it was that i hit. and see if we could render first aid. soooo...huddled together and muffling our screams we headed in that direction, and the closer we got...the bigger it got! we didn't see any movement at all, or hear any thing resembling a cry for help, or a breath. or a gasp. we crept closer. and this is what had hit my car

not exactly this one, but one that looked just like it. a 9 1/2 ft. alligator. with his head smashed in. we started screaming bloody murder and ran as fast as we could back to terri's car and hauled our badonkadonks five miles back down to that truckstop we had passed. one of those 24 hour ones. where truckers hang out in the middle of the night. and ogle young girls. in mini-skirts. we went inside and had the cashier call the police and they told us to wait there for them, so we could lead them back to the gator. when they finally got there we drove back to the scene of the "crime" and waited while the trooper took his report. and then he told us that we would have to wait for a wildlife officer to come, because i had run over an endangered species! and i was thinking, "whoa there officer...that alligator was "jaywalking" on a dark highway in the middle of the night. it was not MY fault he couldn't outrun my car!" i was thinking that i was going to jail that night. the officer finally came, after about an hour, and he had to measure the gator and they removed the head and then they put the body of the alligator in the back of his truck. i don't have the faintest idea why they did that. but i imagine they took it for the tail meat. gator tail is considered a delicacy in those parts of south fl. we were finally free to go. minus my car. it had to be towed away.

we made it back home, and then the scariest part of the whole night came when we had to call mama and daddy and tell them what had happened. (the "not the WHOLE truth version") and of course, mama wanted to know what we had been wearing. and we had to listen to her telling us, in that way that only mama's can do...I TOLD YOU NOT TO WEAR THOSE MINI-SKIRTS AT NIGHT!!! WHAT IF A MANIAC SERIAL KILLER/RAPIST HAD BEEN OUT THERE ON THAT HIGHWAY!!! and i'm sure we were probably grounded for life.

that alligator had done $3,000 worth of damage to my brand new car. tore out the whole bottom of it, blown two tires, took out the power steering, the brakes, and a heap of other things.

i never went down that road again, without thinking about how lucky we were...to have a mama that prayed for us. all the time. probably prayed alot for herself too...that she would live through all the stuff we kids would get into. we did some crazy things. some downright stupid things. but one thing we DIDN'T ever do again...was to wear mini-skirts out, in the middle of the night. we didn't want mama to have the satisfaction of being able to say she told us so...again.

the day i DIDN'T get my drivers license

2009-12-02T22:38:00.000-05:00

i have often heard the question asked, "if you could go back in time and change some things, what would you change?" and of course, everyone has alot of things they would probably do different, but one thing in particular always stands out in my mind. because it happened to be one of the most humiliating moments of my life. and there have been MANY, but maybe this one was particularly bad because i was a 16 yr. old girl. from a very small town. where everybody knew everybody. and when things out of the ordinary happen in small towns, word spreads, like wildfire.

when i turned 15, it was time for me to start learning how to drive. daddy was the manager of the sugar refinery and our house was one of two that actually sat on the refinery property. we lived a few miles outside of town, down a long road that was bordered on one side by a canal and the other by sugar cane fields. i had an older brother and sister, who had already flown the coop and two younger sisters, and mama was not real fond of teaching me how to drive with most of her offspring in the car, so she left that job up to daddy. on the weekends, when the refinery would shut down, and the parking lots were empty, he and i would drive over there and i would practice my driving skills. now the company car was a hearse. not really, it was a big ol' yellow station wagon, but to a teenage girl, being seen in that car in front of your friends was comparable to carrying around a dead body. your own. because it was like dieing a slow death...of embarrasment.

anyway, there were some ramps over at the refinery that the forklifts would drive up and down and it was on these ramps that daddy tried to teach me about the fine art of judging distances. now, i don't know if he didn't teach me well, or if it was just that i didn't learn it well, but for the life of me, i could not judge distances. i was always too far away from the side, or way too close. i think those ramps were my first inclination that i would grow up to be claustrophobic; (fear of being in small spaces.) one day we had been over there practicing for awhile and i think he must have been frustrated with me and had more than likely gotten on to me about something, because when i pulled back up to the house i would normally have gotten out of the car and let him drive it into the garage. but on this day, he told me to do it. and i panicked. it was a double car garage and mama's car was already parked on one side, which meant parking in very tight quarters. too tight, if you asked me. but, daddy didn't ask me. he told me. to park the car in the garage. and i tried to remind him that i hadn't yet mastered the skill of judging distances. but you didn't talk back to daddy. so i put my foot on the gas, barely, and then slammed on the brake. and then the gas, and then the brake. and then the gas a little harder, and before i knew what happened, i had pulled too close to the left side and ran the car up the side of the garage door frame, taking off the door handle on the way in. and i remember crying and saying, "i told you the garage wasn't big enough for this car, and he told me that he had always managed to get in there with no problem. daddy didn't want to teach me too often, after that little episode.

when i turned 16 i had already gone through drivers education at school, daddy decided to let someone else have a hand in training me and i had studied that driving manual and knew it inside out. i was prepared. now, in clewiston, the small town where we lived, you could only get your license on one day of the week. so, anyone that had a birthday during that week had to wait until that day. and i believe it was on a friday. we pulled up to the tag office, where you took your test, in mama's car, which was another humongous car, a lincoln continental. that was one of the downsides to having a large family. you had to drive large cars. and be seen in them in front of your friends. i was excited about finally getting to drive on my own, and some of my friends were there to get their licenses too. we were like a little cheering squad for each other. there were also a lot of other people there, doing things like getting tags, or paying taxes or seeing the sheriff about one thing or another, because all of this was done in the same building.

i went in and took the written portion of the test and then waited outside with the rest of my friends to take the driving portion. they took you alphabetically, by last name, and my last name was willis, so i would be one of the last ones. which was fine by me, because i was more than a little nervous about the parallel parking. when my turn finally came, there was just me and moody left. the one boy out of the entire school, who if i had been able to choose one person that i would not want watching me take my driving test, it would have been moody. without question. he was the kind of boy that was always happy, always a jokester, and he was popular. he had already taken and passed his test, but decided he would stick around and be my cheerleader since everyone else had already taken the test and gone home. with their independence in their wallet.

the lady officer came out and got in on the passenger side of the car, with her little clipboard. i got in the drivers seat and was so aware of her watching me. to see if i would put my seatbelt on. and if i checked the mirrors and adjusted them, and if my hands were at the proper 10:00 and 2:00 positions. she was making her little check marks in all the boxes and i got real nervous. really fast. this lady was scaring me. and i looked up and there was moody, with a big grin on his face, cheering for me to "go girl!" i cranked up that big ol' car and i turned around to the back to check to see if there were any cars coming and i remember clearly that lady officer telling me to back out slowly. we were parked with a car on either side of us. i took my foot off the brake and eased it over to the gas pedal and put a little pressure on it, all the while turning the steering wheel all the way to the right. and then my foot just pressed down a little too hard and i got scared, and i backed aaaaaallll the waaaaaay down the side of the car on my left. oh, the grinding noise. between that and the sound of the lady officer screaming at me....i got even more scared and i put that car in drive and went aaaaaallll the waaaaaay back up the car. and it wasn't just any old car. it was a POLICE CAR! i looked up and saw moody, just bent over at the waist, laughing his head off. his face was so red i thought he was going to blow a gasket and keel over right there on the sidewalk. that lady officer got out of the car and told me to follow her and she was babbling about something or other, when my mother walked right up to her, and i will never forget, as long as i live, what my mother said next. she actually said to that lady officer, "does this mean she doesn't get her license?" and that lady officer, in the loudest voice possible, i'm sure they heard her over in the next county, said, "SHE JUST HIT A PARKED VEHICLE!!!! NO, SHE DOESN'T GET HER LICENSE!!! i could have died right then and there. between her and moody, i don't know which was worse. knowing that i would be the laughing stock at school the next week or knowing i would have to get back in the car with that lady again the next week!

turns out...going to school on monday was worse. by then, everybody in town had heard and i was the brunt of many, many jokes. it was probably the headlines for that weeks newspaper, i don't remember. but, when i went back the next week to try again, i prayed that none of my friends would be there, just in case i had another "experience." that lady officer saw me coming and she refused to get back in the car with me. she went and got somebody else to ride with me and i passed the second time around. i gained my independence, finally, but by the time i did, i was too nervous to drive for awhile and to this day my stomach knots up when i see a police car.

on the bright side....many years later, when my own boys would hear of this story, they thought it was pretty cool that their mother had hit a police car while taking her driving test. and me? that was only the beginning of "unusual" things i would hit with my car. i will share some of those other things in a later post.

so, if i had a chance, i would go back and change that day. i would have parked the car in a different place when we first got there. with wide open spaces on either side. and i would go on a day when i knew that moody wouldn't be there. and i would have tried to borrow a smaller car to take the test in.

my three boys are all grown up now. the youngest got his drivers license a year ago. and i thank God that i don't have to go through another teenager learning to drive. God is still working with me on the judging distances thing. thirty five years later and i still haven't mastered that. maybe by the time i'm 70 yrs. old i will have it downpat. i'll pray for that anyway.

a word to the wise...man.

2009-11-28T17:54:00.000-05:00

several years ago, while spending the summer at ft. myers beach, fl, where my parents own a condo,

i had the good fortune to meet randy.

daddy and i were in the pool one morning and an older couple was there with their two grown sons and their wives. it was their first year being at this particular condo and so we struck up a conversation with them, letting them know all the important stuff a person would need to know. like where to eat. and where not to eat. and about sights they should take the time to see, and places they should forget about and save their money.

the more we talked, the subjects would change from time to time and we would go from talking about our favorite restaurants to the subject of God or politics or real estate. over the next couple of days, we began looking forward to the times we would meet up with randy at the pool. because as we listened to his life story, we realized what an inspirational man he was. he talked about how he had gone from a broken marriage, which left him estranged from his kids, to his second marriage with Julie. and how he had begun a job as a window washer and built his company into a successful janitorial company. i could listen to him talk for hours. about anything. he had such a positive outlook on life and he just made you feel good. he never said a negative word. about anything. or anybody. he was so friendly and outgoing and just exuded happiness. i wanted to hang around with him forever. so some of whatever it was he had, would rub off on me. but, i didn't think his wife, julie, would much like that idea. so, after two weeks, they went back home to indiana.

the next year, randy's parents came back to stay for another two weeks. but they came alone. and it wasn't nearly as much fun. they're good people, don't get me wrong. but i didn't want to hang around with them forever. i missed the "inspirational one." BUT, this past year...the parents came back again...this time with randy and julie. and they were going to be there for all of one week. so, we had to stay on guard at all times and make sure that we were in the pool at the same time they were...so we could get our "happy" on.

mama and daddy started taking us to ft. myers beach every year, when we were little kids, for the summer. we started out renting a little cottage at the pink shell resort. it sat right up over the pool and mama could sit out on the porch and keep an eye out for the five of us kids. mama doesn't get in swimming pools. because she says it's like sharing bath water with strangers. plus, she knows what kinds of things people do in pools. gross things. like peeing, spitting, wiping your nose with your hand and then putting said hands in the water. gaaaaaaaaaaagggg. when you think about those things it's a wonder that any of us swim in them! later on they bought the condo and after they moved from clewiston to savannah they would go down and stay for the summer. my sister, terri, would also go. because she was still in college and had the summers off. after pickle was born, they would still go down, until terri and her husband moved to tennessee. then she and i started splitting the summers up. she would drive down to savannah and pick mama and daddy up and then go down and stay for the first half. then i would drive down and stay the second half and drive them back home. neither mama nor daddy were driving anymore and so they needed a "chauffeur."

so, the first year that randy and julie came, it was my time to be there and terri didn't get to meet them. but this past year we were both there at the same time, so she got introduced and she too, just loved to listen to randy talk.

now around the condo, mama is known as the "phantom lady" to the regulars. that's because in the more than 30 years that they have owned the condo, the regulars have never seen my mother! she is not a sun person. she never was. kind of ironic i know, that they would have a place on the beach and she doesn't even like to go out in the sun, but if you are really quick, you can catch her getting on or off of the elevator and getting into or out of the car. if you're not really quick, well, then you would never see her. there are 4 parking places underneath the condo, for owners to park their cars, and it backs up to the oceanside.

it has become a joke with us, that any time we would pull up in the car, we would ask mama if she wanted to sit outside for awhile. she usually said no. mama likes her air conditioner you see. and she doesn't like to get her hair messed up by the wind. not after she has spent 30 minutes with the curling iron on it trying to get it to hold a curl long enough for us to go eat dinner out and get back before it fell.

but, every now and then, it would be just cool enough, and we could talk her into sitting over by the grill area for a little while and enjoy the view and the beautiful sunsets.

this particular day...was one of those times. terri and pickle, and daddy and i, had been down at the pool all morning long. terri and i laid on our rafts and floated around the pool and listened to randy talk. she and daddy and pickle had gone up a few minutes before i had and terri had told mama, "boy, if i wasn't married, and if randy wasn't married...i would go after him!" and then daddy said something about him, like what a nice young man he was and just really brought out the best in people. about 15 minutes or so later, i walked in and said the exact same thing terri had just said. we were always just going on and on about randy in front of mama. saying, "oh, you should just come down and sit by the pool sometimes just to hear him talk." well... this day, after we got home from dinner, we pulled up in the owners parking lot and asked mama if she wanted to sit outside awhile. and she did! now to most people, this would not be a big deal! but to us, it was HUGE! so we pulled some chairs over so she could see the view and catch the sun setting and pickle ran upstairs to get her dog, tootsie, so mema (mama) could watch her walk the dog down by the water.

and i ran up (well, i walked and i went up the elevator)and got my camera...because, like i said, this was HUGE. and i wanted to document it. so MY grandchildren would know that their great grandmother really DID go outside once in awhile.

while we were sitting there, guess who came downstairs? randy and julie!!!! this was perfect. now mama could meet this man that we had been gushing about for the last week. we pulled up a couple of chairs for them and we introduced them to the "phantom lady," and we waited.

for randy to talk. and be inspirational. and we waited...and we waited. but he wasn't in a talking mood. for once. in all the time we had known him, he picked this ONE time to be kinda grumpy. maybe he and julie had had an argument. or a knock down, drag out fight. maybe his stomach was hurting or he had a headache or maybe he had already said everything he had to say. but he wasn't happy. or funny. or inspirational. and we were kinda bummed out. all this building him up and then this huge....nothing.

finally...after about 20 minutes or so, he slapped his hand on the table and he got this big grin on his face and he looked over at mama and he said, "I KNOW WHO YOU LOOK LIKE! all this time i've been sitting here trying to figure out who it was you remind me of, and i couldn't get it out of my mind! but now i know who it is!" and we were all like "yay, he's back! now mama will get to see the randy we know and love, and she will love him too!"

and we were all thinking he was going to say something like JACKIE KENNEDY ONASSIS or GRACE KELLY or some other beautiful movie star or actress. because mama IS a beautiful woman. she always has been. and very dignified.

but randy slapped his hand on that table again and said, "YOU LOOK JUST LIKE ROY ORBISON!" WHAT??? did he really just say that my mother looked LIKE A MAN? and a not very good looking man, at that! and just like that...mama formed a different opinion about randy. he had kinda, sorta just insulted her! he said it was her big sunglasses she had on, and the way her hair was the same color, and that when her head was turned just so...she could pass for him. ummmmmm. okay there, inspirational man. open mouth, insert foot. randy was just laughing and trying to explain that he wasn't being mean or insulting...but it wasn't come off too good. and the rest of us just sat there with our mouths open...not knowing what to say or do. then mama said she was ready to go upstairs.

we put on our nightgowns and all of us girls gathered in mama and daddys room for our nightly ritual. playing a rousing game of "ball" and laughing until one of us (me) wet our pants. pickle gets great joy out of someone (me) wetting my pants. so she insists that we stay until it happens. every night. and i always manage to oblige. this night while we were playing ball, we got to talking about randy and mama said that it had really hurt her feelings, after we had all built him up sooooo much, that he would say she looked like a man. and we were laughing about it, and trying to convince her that no, she did not look like a man, he had only been joking. and to prove it to her, i pulled out my lap top, so i could pull up a picture of ROY ORBISON and show mama that they looked nothing alike! and this is the picture i pulled up.

i went to close the lid on the laptop, before mama could see it, and i was just a tad too late. she wanted to see it. and when i turned it around...she looked at his picture and said, 'I DO LOOK LIKE HIM! I DO LOOK LIKE A MAN! THAT IS A PICTURE OF ME!" and we tried to tell her that she DID NOT...but the truth was, that with her sunglasses on, she DID! while mama and terri and pickle were over on one bed, laughing about it, i was on the other and just to be funny and also so i could get to laughing good so i could wet my pants and then get to go on to bed, i opened up the Paint accessory and did this!

and then i put these two pictures side by side and turned it around to show them.

it just so happened that it was at the exact same moment that terri and pickle had finally convinced mama that she and ROY looked nothing alike. really bad timing! we all busted out laughing at the same time and of course, one thing led to another and i got up to get a piece of candy, and wet my pants. not just a little bit. an "i wet my pants now i have to change the sheets and my nightgown, kind of wet." and that led to mama wetting hers and that led to pickle deciding that from now on and henceforth...mema would now be called "ROY."

we decided that ROY was a good looking man after all, after looking at this picture. mama got over her feelings being hurt. but she didn't change her opinion about randy. she said she didn't know what all the fuss about him had been over. and she was glad that terri and i were both married. because she said she wouldn't want him for a son-in-law.

just a little word to the wise.... man. if you're going to put your foot in your mouth and tell a woman she looks just like a man...make sure you insert your weaker foot...otherwise you won't be able to outrun that frying pan that's flying towards your head!

a movie, a snack...and the JAWS OF LIFE

2009-11-25T01:37:00.000-05:00

when i was fresh out of college (the one year that i actually attended college) i moved into an apartment with my sister, denise. we lived in west palm beach, fl and our apartment was just 5 minutes or so from the mall. and the theatre. we were both single girls at the time. not desperate, lonely girls...but just extremely...picky. about who we went out with. we both had busy daytime jobs, she worked at the chamber of commerce and i worked at a small law firm. ( i later went on to work at a very large law firm, and oh, how i wish i still had contacts there. there were many times in the years to come that i could have used a good lawyer.

on the off chances that a friday night came along and we neither one had a date, we would always go to dino's pizza to grab a bite. of pizza. and go see a movie. it was almost always a chick flick, and at times it could be a little awkward...like the 12 friday nights in a row when we were dateless and went to see robby benson in ice castles.

(i still watch that movie on the occasions i can find it playing...and i still cry, even though i know how it ends.) we would try to go to the early bird movie, while everyone else was still at work, namely, so no one who knew us would see us in a movie theater with our sister on a friday night, but mostly, because we were poor. and we could get into the matinees alot cheaper. which left more money for pizza. and popcorn. and candy.

we had alot of good times, though, seriously. there were many times that we were the ONLY ones sitting in the theatre, and we would be laughing our heads off at something...or in the case of ice castles...crying our eyes out. and there would be no one around to tell us to be quiet or to go blow our noses somewhere else.

a year or two after living together, denise moved to miami, which left me needing a roommate, so a good friend of mine, wanda, moved down to fl from ms., and we shared the apartment that i was living in. and my brother, ray, would come over alot and we all hung out together. one day a guy from clewiston, whom i went to school with, and who just happened to have been the very first "love of my life", keith, came over and we all decided to go catch a movie that afternoon. i don't remember what the movie was, but the funny part was, that keith was wearing a pair of flip flops. you know the kind i'm talking about. the flimsy little $.99 ones that you could get at the drug store or the five and dime.

he had sat through what was probably at least an hour and half long movie. with his feet in the same position, and when he got up to leave, he almost fell flat on his face because one of his flip flops had completely stuck to the floor! in whatever gunk it was that the people who had sat in his chair before him, had left behind. coke, popcorn, melted candy, vomit. i don't know. but whatever it was, it had turned into something resembling super glue. and the little piece of rubber that goes between your big toe and your second toe had ripped apart when he went to lift his foot up. and he came completely out of his shoe..er...flip flop. we were just hysterical with laughter. i was thinking about that day today, because keith's brother, greg, has recently become my friend on facebook. i've been talking alot with him recently, because we are both big FLORIDA GATOR fans.

anyway, i was sitting here reading something he had written on my facebook wall and it reminded me of keith and the flip flop thing and that brought to mind another funny story. about an incident in a movie theatre. only THANK YOU LORD, it wasn't ME that this happened to! (although i would have loved to have been present to witness it.) this little "embarassing moment" happened to my sister, terri.

she and pickle (her daughter, ashley) had decided to go see a matinee (she was trying to save money by going to the matinees too. so she could also get more snacks.) and they would take along one of pickle's friends, sarah. they stopped off in the lobby so she could splurge with the money she had saved on the matinee and get one of those very large tubs of buttered popcorn, with extra butter. and one of those ginormous diet cokes that come with it when you buy the the very large tub of popcorn..." the SPECIAL," they call it,

and then the girls got their candy and icees...all for the very low price of about $20. the girls walked a little ahead of terri as they went into the very dark theatre. and there were only about 10-15 people in there that had already taken their seats before they had come in, so they could have sat in any of the 200 other seats available. pickle and sarah chose the row that was about halfway up the stairs and they walked down to the middle chairs and sat down in their seats. terri came in behind them, trying to balance her purse, a very large tub of popcorn, with extra butter, and her ginormous diet coke and she did what most normal people do when they have both hands full and they have to sit down. she parked her badonkadonk on the top part of the bottom seat, so that she could slide down and the chair would move into the normal seating position.

but...you know how you know something isn't the way it should be, the second you know that you can't stop what you're about to do?

she knew the very second that her badonkadonk touched the top of the seat and she went to slide down, that something was about to go horribly wrong. there was no BOTTOM to the seat!!! just the frame. someone had completely removed the seat. and you're already getting a visual as to what happened next, aren't you? she went right straight through that hole and the next thing she knew, her badonkadonk was flat on the floor, her knees were at face level...buttery popcorn and diet coke went flying...and pickle and sarah were hysterical with laughter. i imagine the other 10-15 people in there were too! terri was trying to be very discreet about the whole thing, so as not to draw attention to herself. (i'm sure the people that were sitting behind her must have wondered where in the world she went to...to them, it must have looked like it does when the car in front of you has a very short person driving and you can't see their head over the headrest, so it looks like the car is driving itself.) i mean, one minute, she is standing there and the next they can barely see the top of her head!

pickle and sarah were trying to help her get out of the hole the best they could...but they are both tiny little things. plus, it's hard to pull with all your strength when you are laughing so hard. they thought they were going to have to call in the fire and rescue with the jaws of life to get her out of there,

but she finally managed to hold on to both of the chair arms and work her way out. she thought she had been PUNKED by someone. or was on an episode of candid camera. she HAD, however, managed to hold on to the popcorn tub and the now empty diet coke cup...which was a good thing, because once she managed to extricate herself and her badonkadonk, she was able to get free refills. good thing she had splurged for the SPECIAL that day!

price of the movie...$18.50, price of the snacks...$20.00, terri falling through the hole in the seat...PRICELESS!! just ask pickle. or sarah. they still laugh about it to this day!

a 50 yr. old SQUATS...for a weed.

2009-11-23T16:18:00.004-05:00

last thursday morning i was pulling into mama and daddys driveway and as usual, stopped to pick up their mail. they have a long driveway and the mailbox sits out on the main road. and this road gets a fair amount of traffic. as i got out of the car, i noticed this little yellow flower (some would call it a weed, i would beg to differ) sitting there in the dirt, all by itself. and i felt compelled to take a picture of it.

now i know that anyone else would have probably just said, "oh look...it's a weed!" they would not have reached back inside their car to grab their cell phone so they could take a picture of said weed. but, i'm not like other people. i'm a little strange. i know this about myself, and i accept it. but when i feel these compulsions about things like this, i know that it's usually someone whispering in my ear.

no, i don't have voices in my head. not that kind of whispering. more the whisper of God...telling me that it's something He wants me to do. and i try my best to listen to God when He whispers things to me. granted, sometimes i think He whispers just a little too softly for me to understand. (this is usually my excuse when He tells me to do something that I don't WANT to do.) but, this morning God told me to take a picture of this little yellow flower. so...i DID reach back into my car and grab my cell phone. and i set it to camera mode. and then i did something i know looked pretty silly to the people in those cars that passed by me (but i didn't realize this until i got back in my car) i squatted down, so i could zoom in on it. i am 50 yrs. old. and 50 yr. old women don't squat well. and i'm quite sure that it was not a pretty sight for the people in those cars that passed at that moment. nor was it very pretty, i'm sure, for the ones that passed as i was trying to get back up from said squat.

i proceeded to get the mail and go in to the house. and in the back of my mind i kept thinking about WHY in the world God would have had me take a picture of that little yellow flower.

the next day, friday, i pulled into the driveway again and i noticed immediately that the little yellow flower was gone. i got out to go over to the mailbox and as i was walking back to my car, i noticed this.

that little yellow flower that was so pretty the day before, had died. overnight. and then i did something even more stupid than the day before. God whispered in my ear to take a picture of the now DEAD yellow flower. and how weird do you think i looked THEN? a 50 yr. old woman, squatted down, in front of passing cars, with people in them, to take a close up picture of a dead flower (weed.)

i admit that by then, even i, was thinking to myself, "ok, God, this is preeeeeety strange." so i definately didn't tell my family about this. they would most likely have had me committed if i told them that God wanted me to take a picture of a dead weed! and i can't say that i would have blamed them. but....i thank God that i listen to his whispers. saturday, while at lunch with the family, micajah had grabbed my cell phone and was looking through my pictures. and he came to the ones i posted above. and of course, he had to ask me, loudly, so everyone at the tables around us could think his mother was insane, "Why did you take pictures of some weeds?" and i had to say because God told me to. and of course, everyone thought i was nuts. but on my way home that day i knew EXACTLY why He had me take those pictures. in the Bible, God gave parables (life's little lessons) all the time. and he was using this flower (weed)...as a modern day parable, if you will...to teach me and hopefully, those who are reading this now...a lesson. and THIS is the lesson.

earlier this week i was on the phone with one of my very best friends in the world, pam. she was on her way to pick up her daughter, emily, from a school field trip her class had taken to the mall. just a few minutes away from the school, she heard that little click in the background which signifies a call is waiting. she noticed it was emily and said she would call me back. a few minutes later she called and said that emily had been crying. softly, so her friends wouldn't hear her. when pam asked her what was wrong, she just said, in a quavering voice, "telllll you...laaaater." and instantly, with a mom's superpower intuition, pam knew what it was. it was, what she had warned emily about earlier...before the trip to the mall.

emily just turned 11 yrs. old a couple of weeks ago. she is a VERY bright, little girl, who is mature in some ways, beyond her age. just last week, out of her whole grade...she placed in the top three for a poster she had made on world peace. and then it was chosen, by the Lions Club, as the #1 poster! two honors for the same poster. and hers wasn't about depicting guns and violence...no, hers was about God holding the world in HIS hands. about how God is the ONLY source of peace in this world. her poster STOOD OUT from all the rest.

a couple of weeks before that emily won a place on the All Stars cheerleading squad. again, because she STOOD OUT.

emily comes from a broken family...like mine. her daddy left her mother, also for one of those "greener pastures." but emily's mother is a very Godly woman. she has taught and teaches on a daily basis, about God and His love for us. and emily accepted Jesus into her heart a long time ago. when she has to go and stay with her "dad" and his "greener pasture" she stands her place when her dad tells her that the stories in the Bible are "fairy tales" or when he forces her and her brother and sister to sit in front of the tv for two hours and watch a show on evolution and how we evolved from monkeys. emily stands up TO her "dad" and stands up FOR her God. many times parents come to know Jesus because of their kids...this is the hope we all have for her "dad."

and, emily loves to read. she is what some would call a "bookworm." i have a sister, myself, paula, who when she was a little girl, would always have her nose in a book. so many of her childhood pictures show her reading. and she grew up to be really, really smart. she went to college for 7 years and became a PA (physicians assistant) and she knows more than most doctors i know. she can diagnose us even when the doctors can't quite figure things out. and her son, ryan, is the same way. he has read literally thousands of books. he is 19 yrs. old now and a sophmore in college, studying for a major in psychology. people who read alot, are smart people. and smart people STAND OUT.

emily was looking forward to the trip to the mall, because she had a little money (she was given a monetary award from the Lions Club for her poster) and all she wanted to do was go to Barnes & Noble (a bookstore) and pick up a few books. pam tried to warn her that most of the other kids would not want to spend their limited time going to a bookstore. so, when the kids got to the school to prepare for the trip they were divided up into groups and told to vote on the stores they each wanted to go in. emily,of course, put down the bookstore, but the other girls in her group wanted to go look at clothes and Claires (for jewelry, purses, hair bows, etc.) and so they decided that the bookstore would be the LAST store they would go to. time permitting.

when emily got picked up that day, still sobbing, she told her mother that the group managed to make it to the bookstore FIVE WHOLE MINUTES before they were to meet back at the bus. wow. it takes 15 minutes just to check out in there...so, needless to say, she didn't have time to buy a book, much less, even, to LOOK for a book. when everyone got back on the bus all the other kids pulled out their purchases to oooh and aaaah over. except for emily. she was the only one that didn't get to spend her money that day. the only one who felt left out. and she STOOD out. but this time, for a very different reason. this time because the other kids, (her friends) didn't care what she wanted. because they made her feel that she was less than popular because she was interested in things that they weren't. that because she wasn't into the fashion thing or the makeup and jewelry that she was somehow not as "cool" as they were. and haven't we ALL been there? on BOTH sides, at one time or another? i have. i have been the bully and i have been bullied. and neither feel particularly good.

when pam and i were 11 yrs. old, all the rage at that time was autograph books. nowadays those are used to get signatures of celebrities and "important people," but in those days, we used them for our friends. it was kind of like signing your yearbooks when you got to high school. just recently, we BOTH found our old books. and looking through them we both remembered as though it was yesterday. when we would get mad at one of our "friends" we would draw a line through where they had signed "best friend forever" and write "NON-FRIEND." a few days later, after we had made up, we would then scratch though non-friend and write BEST FRIEND, again. our loyalties at that age changed on a daily basis. and as we got older, i think that we didn't really need a book any longer, to keep us reminded that a certain friend had committed a transgression against us. we simply wrote it on our hearts.

when pam was telling me about what happened to emily it made me stop and remember how much i disliked high school. i was not a bully...i was THE bullied. i was bullied because my body had matured at a very young age. there were certain girls that didn't like that...because their "boyfriend of the week" might have looked at me or spoken to me, so they would come up behind me while i was opening the combination lock to my locker, and they would look over my shoulder and get the code and then go back later and steal a jacket or my p.e. tennis shoes, or a shirt...and brazenly wear it to school the next day. they were the intimidators. and trust me, i was intimidated. then there were the boys...two in particular. one was a little short guy, in my own class, who every time i would walk by him, would reach out and pat my badonkadonk. i could not stand this boy. i was always looking around corners to see if he was anywhere near me so i could run the other way. this is a picture that one my girlfriends took from across the hall, where i am actually looking around one of those corners and he is coming up behind me!

i don't care about showing him here in public. he humiliated me so many times. i can only hope that he has "grown up" and stopped this behavior. (after all, he would be 50 yrs. old now, and i think there are laws against that!) then there was a boy on my school bus. i absolutely HATED riding the bus. every single day that he lived in clewiston (which, thankfully, wasn't too long) as i would get up to walk to the front of the bus to get out at my stop, he would do the same thing. reach out and touch my badonkadonk. and there were even the male teachers...that liked the girls that had mature young bodies. one even went so far as to try to attack me in a music closet. in his classroom he would call the girls up to his desk and while he pretended to be speaking to them he would try and run his hands up their legs, and if they had on a dress, even further. he was eventually fired...after the near attack in the music closet, when my parents called him at home and threatened to report him to the police. another girls parents beat them to the punch though. just the other day pam told me that HE was the main reason she had left our school in the 9th grade and moved to another state. and i had never even known the reason she had moved away,until this year, when we reconnected on facebook.

in our youth we have ALL made fun of other kids who were "different." maybe they wore glasses, or braces or had a lisp or "we" thought they were ugly. maybe we called them "retarded" even if they weren't. or stupid when they were really smarter than we were. or fat. or skinny. or a million other things. and "we" were the bullies.

Proverbs 20:11

Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.

and we do it as adults too. sometimes purposefully. sometimes privately. sometimes joking. sometimes not. we say mean things, or we think them. we're rude when people irritate us, or get on our nerves. we lash out at people we "love" when we've had a bad day. we want things "our way." we give the "silent treatment" to our spouses when they make us mad. we laugh when someone does something stupid or wears the wrong outfit, or falls in public.

Proverbs 26:20-21

Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.

and every single time we do one of these things...we lower their self esteem. we make them feel worthless or useless or lazy. or ugly. or fat. even if they don't hear it...or see us laughing...even if they don't know us. we kill them, a look at a time. a word at a time.

Matthew 12:36

But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

and this brings me back to the little yellow flower. emily is that flower i took a picture of last thursday. she STANDS OUT on a daily basis, amongst all the weeds. she is a CHRISTIAN. she is a cheerleader. an artist. a bookworm. she is beautiful. she stands up for her faith, at 11 yrs. old, even when her "dad" tells her she evolved from a monkey. or when her "dads greener pasture" gives her a box of anti-bacterial wipes for her birthday and "he" gives her a tube of chapstick. when her friends ignore her wish to just run in the bookstore so she can buy a book to read because "they" think books are boring. she blooms bright. and i am so very proud of her. her mama is too.

1 Timothy 4:12

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

and the dead flower picture taken the next day? that too, is a picture of emily. of what WOULD happen to her, without Jesus in her heart. when people are mean and ugly and judge others for being "different than they are." she would bend and wither up and die. people and circumstances can suck the life right out of you. they can hurl angry, hurtful words at you. they can bully you into submission. they can bruise you and batter you until there is no fight left in you.

1 Peter 1:22-2:1

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you. Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.

but this WON'T be emily. she does have Jesus in her heart. she knows she didn't evolve from monkeys, as her "dad" would have her believe, but instead was created by the Master Designer Himself. she knows that she is smart. her report cards prove that every semester. she knows what is right and good and she shouts it out without shame. she is, after all, an all star cheerleader. and she is a bookworm. she reads her Bible and she goes to church. and her mama, my friend should be commended. for the Bible says,

Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the ways he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

are we training up "our" children in the ways they should go? we should be. because God has commanded us to do so.

and i am so thankful, that i am learning to listen when God whispers to me and tells me to do things. He uses the simplest of things sometimes, to get our attention and to teach us a life lesson. and last thursday and friday he used a weed (flower), of all things. and even though i had to squat and then try and get up by myself, with nothing to hold onto, and humiliate myself in front of the people passing, i'm glad i did it. thank you God, for this simple little lesson. i hope i can remember it. (i'm 50 yrs. old, after all and my mind seems to be going...somewhere.)

little blue truck...and the unlikely car wash.

2009-11-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

it was the year 1983. james and i and our two boys lived at the time on a small piece of land in which the back yard bordered a man-made rockpit. for those of you who live in a city and don't know what a rock pit is...it's where these monster machines come along onto a big empty piece of land and scoop all the dirt out and use it for fill dirt and then they put water in the gigantic hole that is left behind and it looks like a little lake. they stock them with fish and of course, there are ducks. and turtles. and other critters that live in the water. occassionally, due to the wrath of mother nature, the edges of the rockpit will begin to deteriorate and you have to buttress the land with humongous rocks and plant trees or build yourself a concrete wall to keep the water from washing away your land. else you will walk out your back door one morning and find yourself walking on water. like Jesus.

well, mother nature must have had a problem with us at this particular point in time, because the water was just washing away our land quicker than you could bat an eye. and finding big huge rocks and then finding a way to lift them and transport them back to our house was no easy task. so, on weekends we would go riding around, in james' little blue truck, looking for errant rocks along the side of the roads that we could...ummmmm....borrow. you know, to buttress our land. i did not want my kids walking on water. i didn't particularly want to walk on it myself. we would haul our treasures back to the house and place the rocks just so.

one day james had come upon a building that was being demolished and the man that owned the property said that we could have all the cement blocks and rocks that we wanted...for free. we had hit the mother lode... we could do alot of butressing. but we had to load and haul them ourselves. so each afternoon, when james would get off work he would drive his little blue truck over and load blocks. and rocks.

THIS afternoon he had worked long and hard and filled the back of his little blue truck with as much as it would handle and still move along down the road.

now. my kitchen window faced the rockpit. my sink was underneath the window, and i was standing there that day, washing dishes. and i heard a very loud, very unusual sound. almost like a big splash, but not really... and then a kind of loud gurgling sound. i walked outside to see what it was and there was the little blue truck, which was now IN the rockpit. sinking...and there was james, climbing out of the window of the little blue truck. and he was kinda having a LITTLE bit of a panic thing going on, as he was in deep water, without a paddle. and he couldn't swim. our neighbor to the left of us had been out on his dock, and saw the whole thing unfold, and he yelled over to james that he would throw him a rope and james could tie the rope to the truck somehow and then they could figure out a way to get it up out of the water. but no siree...james wasn't having any part of that. he was in the water. and there were other living things in the water with him. like alligators. and water moccasins. and schools of piranahs that could rip the meat off your bones in 30 seconds or less. (he was pretty skinny, so it would definately be less.) he was outta there! he may not have HAD a paddle, but he could DO a MEAN DOGGY PADDLE!

what had happened, was this. he had decided to back the little blue truck up as close to the water as he could get it, as the rocks were very heavy, and that way he could just kind of slide them out of the truck and into the water. what he wasn't thinking about though, was that the spot where he was backing the truck, the land was on a slope. a downwards slope. a downwards slope towards the rockpit. he put his foot on the clutch to put the truck in park and when he went to open the door to get out, those huge rocks in the back went sliding and the truck went sliding with them, with james still in it. it was pretty deep water, just a few feet from the edge and by the time he managed to get out of the truck it had leveled out and was filling with water. and that was the loud gurgling sound i had heard. (some of the gurgling could possibly have been mixed in with his whimpering and that's why it was so loud...i don't know...just saying.)

so we (meaning me) thought it was just the funniest thing and i wanted to tell everybody because this was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to us. so i called one of james' brothers, who came on out to the house with their mom and dad in tow, and a friend he had picked up on the way. then our other neighbor, chris, heard all the ruckus going on and he came over to investigate and brought one of his friends that had stopped over after work for a few drinks. and then, of course, i didn't want MY family to miss out on all the excitement, so i called them and they all came over, and before long, we had a yard full of people, and none of us with any idea of how we were going to get the little blue truck out of the rockpit and back home where it belonged.

after alot of discussion, mainly among the men folk, who wouldn't even listen to any of us women folk's ideas, they came up with a plan. chris, the neighbor, would go to his house and grab his scuba diving gear and the guy that had come over with james' brother would call one of his friends who had one of those big redneck pickup trucks with the lift kit and the 4 wheel drive and tell him to come over and bring a chain. and chris would dive down and hook up the chain to the truck and mike would try to pull it up with his big ol' redneck truck.

james just wanted to leave the little blue truck in the rockpit. to meet its watery demise. he was a little embarrassed about the whole thing. he wanted everybody to just go on back home. and not tell anyone else about it. and get on with his life as planned. but this was a small town. and things like this just don't happen everyday in a town like ours. this was NEWS, people!

so...it wasn't to be the way he wanted. after a short wait the big ol' redneck pickup truck came pulling up into the yard and they proceeded to hook a big ol' chain to the back of it...and chris came over wearing his flippers, his mask and snorkel and a bc vest. he hooked the other end of the chain onto his belt loop and jumped into the rockpit and he was down there a pretty good while before he surfaced and gave the thumbs up sign. that was the signal for mike to put his truck in gear and gun it. he did...and after a few short minutes...

from out of the depths of that rockpit,

came LITTLE BLUE TRUCK, none the worse for wear, and even bringing a small gift up with it.

we let the little fish go. he was too small to fry up for dinner for all those people anyway. (course, if Jesus had been there, he could have blessed that little fish and fed all of us and still had plenty left over.)

and as for the LITTLE BLUE TRUCK... james let him dry out for a few days and then he put a new battery in it, and do you know, that little truck cranked right up. he had found a home with us and God decided it just wasn't his time to go. he wasn't ready for the scrap yard and he didn't intend to get buried on the bottom floor of an old rockpit. that little truck had alot of living still to do.

i did have alot to be grateful for that day. james made it out alive, without having his meat stripped by the piranahs. landon wasn't in the truck with him...which any other day he probably would have been. and i did manage to get these pictures to put in a scrapbook years later. and the little blue truck survived, which was a very good thing...because we sure didn't have any money back then, to get another one. and for these things...Thank you God! you've always got our back!!!

"the grass may be greener on the other side...but it usually ends up being astro-turf"

2009-11-16T00:38:00.002-05:00

today was a very, very hard day for me. today i had to practice "tough love" with my son, who will turn 17 this week, and i find that is not something i am particularly good at. being tough. in fact, over the past few years, i have been told that there are alot of things i am not particularly good at. but that's a story for another time.

what started out yesterday as my son being very disrespectful to me, his mama...his "only" mama, i might add... his "only mama" who has been very, very sick all week long, turned into a heap of anger on my part and which resulted in my telling my last little bird (just minutes before leaving to go to church) that it would be best for all those involved (me) that he leave our nest. within ten minutes. and i wasn't talking about him leaving for an hour, or a day. i was talking "pack up your feathers and move on over and share his nest with the buzzard (the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures.) and for me to get to that point...it was bad stuff. because my little bird means the world to me. i have fought tooth and nail for the past seven months to "save our nest" lest the buzzard push us out, to fend for ourselves. and today it just all hit me at the most inopportune time. right smack in the middle of the pastors sermon.

the Bible says, in Ephesians 6: 1-3, "children, obey your parents. this is the right thing to do because God has placed them in authority over you. Honor your father and mother. this is the first of God's ten commandments that ends with a promise. and this is the promise, that if you honor your father and mother, yours will be a long life, full of blessing."

so...my child should honor me. and he should respect me. and everything should be hunky-dory, right? yes. right.

but what to do when, for 17 years of his life he lived with a "father" who did not respect his wife? who listened to his "father" tell his mama, time and time and time again...that "she's wrong...about everything." who grows up every single day of his life watching his "father" belittle his mama and make her feel worthless and tell her she's lazy and make her feel as if her sole purpose in this marriage is to "submit to her husband."( funny, out of ALL the verses in the Bible, this is the ONLY verse that he knows. and can quote. ad-nauseum!)

does this earn my son a "get out of jail free card" because this behavior has been instilled in him since birth? does he then become entitled to treat his mama in the same manner in which he has become accustomed to seeing his "daddy" treat her? first, i thought no. no, it doesn't give him that right. or any other right to talk to me or treat me in any other way that he deems acceptable. and that i don't.

when i got home from church he wasn't here. but, he had not packed his feathers either. he had left me a note. a note is always easier when you want someone to think you are really, really sorry, but you don't have the guts to look them in the eye. because "sorry" is not an easy thing to say. much, much easier to look someone in the eye and say mean, hateful things, than to say "i'm sorry." that's another lesson he learned from the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures. he's been gone 7 months today, and he hasn't looked me in the eye yet. or said "i'm sorry." quite possibly because he's not sorry. and this thought led me to become angry about another issue.

the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, said (still says, but i don't believe it for a minute) that he is a christian. he attended church with my family on the few occasions that he was not at work on the weekend (or playing in that greener pasture.) people in our congregation thought him to be a christian. so did some of the men he worked with. so did alot of other people. he was very, very good at the Jekyll/Hyde thingy. but, what i became angry at today, and i admit, this is not the first time i have become angry about this same thing,) is that soooo many people, so many christian people who knew or now know, of our marital split and the reason for it, seeing as how he makes no attempt whatsoever to hide it, have chosen to look the other way and "not get involved." for the Bible also says in Galations 6:1-3, "dear brothers, if a christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help him back onto the right path, remembering that next time it might be one of you who is in the wrong. share each other's troubles and problems, and so obey our Lord's command. if anyone thinks he is too great to stoop to this, he is really a nobody."

for seven long months, not one single person, whom i know to be christians, have once gone to the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, to share with him, what God has commanded of us. to help him back onto the right path, and out of the greener pasture that will surely end up being astro-turf. not one, apparently, has felt God urging them to go and try to bring one of their own, back into the flock. aren't we, as christians, put here on this earth, to be soul winners for Christ. isn't that our sole purpose. if just ONE person had followed this command, might a marriage have been saved? might a son still know his "father." might a soul have been saved? i prayed about this, several times. i have asked God to put someone in his path...to burden SOMEONE'S heart to go...and share Christ with him...before it's too late. before he is lost forever and my son will not get to spend eternity with the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures. because, you see, he didn't just leave me. he left his son. he left his step-sons, his grandchildren, his mother and father in-law, my whole family. without a good-bye. without an "i'm sorry." without even the note.

can i be angry at my son for only doing what he has been taught to do, by the one person who should have been his hero? can i throw him out of the nest that has been his "home" his whole life, because he never got the "bring up your children in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it?" upbringing?

i find the answer to this question , again in Galations 6:7-9, "don't be misled, remember that you can't ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows! if he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life which the Holy Spirit gives him. and let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't get discouraged and give up."

my son wrote to me, in his note, "mom, i'm sorry. i made a mistake. and i want to make things better. i love you!

i gave him a "get out of jail free card," this time. he came home tonight, and as i type, he is sleeping. i looked in on him awhile ago and i thank God he is back in the nest, not yet ready to fly away. i can forgive him. and i can try a little harder to learn to be "tough." i have a feeling i'm going to need to know how. and i can do my best to "train him up in the way he should go..."

my prayer now...is that someone reading this, someone who knows the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, will be burdened to go and try to bring a lost soul back into the flock...not for me...but for the sake of my youngest little bird.

MAMA'S, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP...and bring one of these home.

2009-11-13T18:34:00.000-05:00

when landon turned 16 yrs. old, his dad bought him a car. a pretty nice car too, i might add. a champagne colored oldsmobile cutlass supreme. it was a used car, but not used so much.

when landon turned 18 yrs. old, he received a pretty fair amount of money that had been set up in a trust fund from the accident we had been involved in when he was 10. not a good idea, i don't think, to give an 18 yr. old boy anything larger than a $20 bill. (especially, when his mama has nothing larger than a $20 bill.) they will spend it. very fast. on very foolish things. and landon, well...let me just say that landon is my..ummmm...how shall i say this....my boy that marches to the sound of a different drum. he is an extremely confident, outgoing, popular, doesn't really care what people think about him, kind of boy. he was always the class clown, the goofball, the one who does not get embarrassed about anything. very, very unlike his mama. i am not confident, not popular, just a little outgoing (snicker), cares very much about what people i don't even know thinks about me. gets embarrassed easily (usually from the idiotic things i do to myself,) and i am not a boy. i'm a girl. i'm a woman. hear me roar.

anyway, landon and christian, his polar opposite brother, were living down in clewiston and i was living up here in savannah. it was christmas and the boys came up here every year for the holidays and usually stayed for a week or so. this year, 1999, would be no exception. landon had decided to get rid of his cutlass and buy another used car. a very used car. a very used, ugly car. a 1987 chevy caprice. and since he had his hands on this fair amount of money, he decided that he would splurge on a new paint job for the ugly car. to make it look "good", so he said. keep in mind that i had no earthly idea what a chevy caprice looked like. also keep in mind that he had forgotten to mention to me what color he was having it painted.

the afternoon he and christian were due to be at our house, micajah and i were anxiously awaiting their arrival and decided to sit out on the front porch so we could see them the minute they pulled up. it is NOT a good omen...when you hear the car approaching a good five minutes BEFORE you actually SEE said car. it is also NOT a good idea to sit outside on the front porch (before you have had a chance to view the car,) when said car comes careening down your street, so that all of your neighbors can witness your absolute humiliation first hand. (instead of hearing about it at the neighborhood block party.)

at first we heard just a booming noise that sounded like a drum beating. a very large, very loud drum. then we heard what sounded like a couple of kids repeating the same exact words, over and over and over again. i think he had 5 or 6 "ghetto blasters" installed, and then...just out of the corner of my eye, (the neighbors trees were blocking my view) i saw just the tiniest glimpse of PINK! MAGENTA PINK! METALLIC MAGENTA PINK! and my first thought was "OH DEAR GOD, NO! NO...NO...NO...please don't let this be them, please don't let this be them!" but it was. them. in a 24 ft. BARBIE MOBILE!!! i was dying. right there on my porch, in front of all three of my children and all of my neighbors, who just happened to be outside at that moment. i was surely dying. of utter and complete humiliation. i don't recall even hugging my boys. or speaking to them. what i do remember was crawling back into my house and hiding under the covers and praying that this was somehow a mistake...he was not SERIOUSLY thinking of parking this monstrosity in my DRIVEWAY!!!!

i could not even pretend to be thrilled when landon walked inside and said, well, mom, what do you think of my new "ride?" what i thought of his new "ride" was that i wanted him to get back inside of it and "ride" it right back down to FL and just forget that this had ever happened. if i could forget, surely in time, my neighbors could forget too, right?

but what i said was something like, landon, what in the world is WRONG with you? WHERE DID I FAIL YOU? WAS IT BECAUSE I MADE YOU WEAR SANDALS THAT TIME FOR YOUR PROFESSIONAL PROTRAIT, or DID THAT BASEBALL BAT THAT HIT YOU IN THE HEAD DO SOMETHING TO YOUR BRAIN ? WHY on GOD'S GREEN EARTH would you paint a car METALLIC MAGENTA PINK? do you want to be a girl? do you feel like one of those people who was born in the wrong body? are you gay and this is your way of telling me? i was mortified. but, he said he wanted it to be a color that would be noticed. that when people saw it moving down the road, they would say "there goes landon." well, clewiston is a very small town. everyone there already knew him. he didn't have to go METALLIC MAGENTA PINK to be noticed. but he loved it. and what is bad... really, really bad... is that my other two boys loved it too!

when we were getting dressed the next morning to go to church, landon walked into my bedroom and asked me if i wanted to ride to church with him...in the BARBIE MOBILE!! i was speechless. i wanted to beg off going, by saying i was sick. (i really WAS sick at the thought of actually having to ride in that car) and i prayed, "Lord, please do not make me ride in this car. i can not let my church friends see me come pulling up in that...that THING!" and, GOD saved me. when landon walked outside two of his tires were flat. as in pancakes flat. (OOOOOH, thank you LORD.) and no, i didn't go outside in the middle of the night and stick a knife in them. he had driven 500 miles on bad tires to get to my house in time for christmas eve. sooo...guess what he got for christmas? yep...new tires. four of them.

i never did have to ride in the BARBIE MOBILE. the boys were only able to stay a few days this trip and it took several days to find a place that could fit him in to get new tires put on, on such short notice, with it being the holidays and all. really, i called everywhere i could think of, but they were all booked up for the holidays. (hehehe)

the night before the boys went home, landon had parked the car at the top of our driveway. i wouldn't let him park on the street where he wanted to park, because (1) our mailman doesn't like you to park in front of the mailbox, and (2) you never knew when the streetsweeper was going to come. (and that way, we could park our cars behind him and our neighbors wouldn't have to see HIS car.) after getting new tires put on and having it aligned and balanced, he got up the next morning and they loaded up the car and it wouldn't crank. it turned over, but it wouldn't crank. he was trying to think of what could possibly be wrong with it. the battery obviously wasn't dead. it probably wasn't the starter, because it would turn over. hmmmmm...what could it be? like i said, he had parked at the top of the driveway, which is on a slope and having the needle sitting on empty (because, mom, i thought i had enough gas to get me into town) the car had run completely out of gas. soooooo, the middle-aged man who would later leave me for greener pastures, used the gas he had for the lawnmowers and filled his tank up with enough gas to get him to a gas station, where he could fill it all the way up.

i did, however, in a moment of guilt over how i had reacted, send him on his merry way with one really cute addition to the car. in his christmas stocking he got a huge pair of PINK FURRY DICE to hang on his rear view mirror. i wanted to get him a license plate that said WANNABE BARBIE, but he wouldn't let me. i don't know why.

fortunately, his love of all things pink ended and he now drives a much nicer car. a gray one. fits him better i think, now that he's married, with kids and all. every now and then when we went back home to clewiston to visit, we would see some other scmuck riding down main street in the BARBIE MOBILE. and i would say a little prayer for his mama. and for me. thanking GOD that MY little boy had finally grown up!

a sa-weeeet love story between chris & sarah...wait...WHO?

2009-11-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

in february, of 2008, we were getting ready to have our annual valentines banquet at church. my oldest son, landon was ready to propose to his girlfriend, kirstin, and i thought (and i made my thoughts known to him) what would be a more perfect time than at the valentines banquet? in front of all (well, alot) of our friends. how romantic. and how much more romantic it would be if it was a surprise to her! so, mama put her thinking cap on and came up with what i thought would be such a unique way to propose, and at the same time, entertain people at the banquet and allow them to be involved in the proposal. (sometimes mama comes up with some good ideas. other times, not so much.) we just had one small problem. the ring he had ordered specially made, was not due to arrive until the following week. so... i made a little trip to party city and picked out the most perfect "stand in" until the real thing arrived.

everyone was in place. the dinner had been served, a rousing game of "the newlywed game" had been played. there had been some special music, and my trusty little camera and video camera were placed in strategic places. (i'm a scrapbooker and have to have pictures of every single thing that goes on in the lives of my family) as people began filing in i walked around and gave random people a picture that i had cut out of different magazines. i asked them to place the picture, face down, and not to look at it until i called their name. (how many do you think "cheated" and looked?) mmmm hmmmm... i think so too.

when the time was right to play this little "game" i told everyone that pastor donnie would pick up his picture, show everyone, and then he would begin to tell a love story about a couple named chris and sarah. he could say anything he wanted, but it had to pertain to the picture he was holding, and when i said stop, he would then sit down and i would call the next persons name, and they would show their picture and continue with the story. at the end of the story, landon would be the last name i would call and he would end the story by proposing to kirstin. only my family, and the pastor were in on this whole scheme...and i must say it turned out sooooo much better than i even imagined it would. i have written out the love story, the way it was told, and have included each person, telling "the story" of chris and sarah. i love the ending and i hope you will enjoy this little story as well as we all did!

chris and sarah...a love story.....

donnie: (picture of a train) once upon a time there was boy named chris and a girl named sarah. they had met on a blind date and took a shinin' to one another. chris was an engineer down at the train station and sarah was a school teacher. chris had to be gone sometimes for weeks at a time and didn't get to see sarah every day.

diane:(picture of two cell phones) after that first date, chris and sarah were always on their cell phones, whispering sweet nothings in each others ears.

susan: (picture of a bouquet of roses) one day sarah was at home and she received these beautiful flowers and she found out they were from chris. and he wrote on the card that he missed her, and asked her to meet him at the train station. (oops, no picture of this one)

faye: (picture of a sewing machine) after they had gotten to know each other awhile, chris wanted sarah to make him some clothes to wear, but she said that he looked alot nicer in his sweat shirt and his baggy jeans with the hole in the knee.

warren: (picture of a roll of pink toilet paper) one day sarah had made a whole bunch of pies. chris ate one of the pies, and uh, where he had to eat it was over at sarah's place. she was making the pies for the valentines day banquet at church, but he thought it was for him and he ate soooo much of it. he excused himself to go to the restroom, where he saw that even sarah's toilet paper was pink.

frank: (picture of OTC pink-eye drops) and after chris had stared so viligantly at the pink toilet paper, he needed some relief, so he rushed over to the drugstore to get some pink-eye relief for the love he felt for sarah and from the pie that was rushing through his system.

miriam: (picture of a bag of dixie crystals sugar) when he got back to sarah's house from the store, chris saw this bag of dixie crystals sugar sitting on the counter and he said "darlin' you are sweeter than this bag of sugar."

genell: (picture of a sofa) after this long day with sarah, running around, riding on the train, eating pie, running to the store, all chris wanted to do was fall out on the sofa.

wayne: (picture of a car crashed into a tree) and while he was laying on the sofa, sarah ran out and jumped in her car to go the store to get some more stuff for her pies and someone ran her off the road and into a tree and she ended up in the hospital.

aubrey: (picture of a money tree ) chris and sarah, they just loved the train ride. They had done ridden on it together, ate pie, and chris felt bad that while he was at sarah's house, layed out on the sofa, sarah was in the hospital and would probably be there for a very loooooong time. so chris decided to sue and in the lawsuit that would follow hoped they would win bunches of money.

david : (picture of a puppy) since sarah had wrecked the car, and was in the hospital, sarah wanted a puppy to keep her company while chris was away on the train. so, chris bought her one and took the puppy to the hospital and sarah cherished it.

landon: (picture of an engagement ring) so, after all these wonderful times together, chris realized that he was in love with sarah.

she was always going to be the one for him and he wanted to marry her, so he got down on his knees and he said "KIRSTIN, we haven't been together very long but, i've enjoyed every minute of it. YOU make me happier than anyone ever has and i want to spend the rest of my life with you. WILL YOU MARRY ME?"

and of course, she said YES!!

and everyone wanted to see the HUMOUNGOUS DIAMOND that landon had given her (it even blinked)...

here...is the happy couple...

and here is kirstin, calling her mom in Chicago and letting her in on the news that SHE WAS GETTING MARRIED!!!!

to my baby boy.

and it wasn't the end...it only got better from here. on june 7, 2008, landon and kirstin tied the knot!...will share the wedding pics at a later time.

DEAR DR. FORBES, IN CASE I NEVER TOLD YOU.....

2009-11-10T16:45:00.001-05:00

i currently live in the BIG city of savannah, ga, home to 3 large hospitals. one being the trauma center for southeast ga, and of which i am a casual employee. we have literally hundreds of doctors in private practices. some of these practices are so large, that you will see a different dr. each time you make a visit. i don't like that part. i do, though, like the part where we have alot of choices as to which practice will house our "primary care physician." in helping to care for my parents these last seven years, i have had the pleasure, (and i am being VERY sarcastic here) of meeting some, who can be compared to stale crackers...dry, lacking taste, void of any "goodness." some, who are so intimidating that you would sooner spend 4 hours of research looking up the disease you've just been diagnosed with, than to actually ask the DR. to explain it to you, for fear you may receive a good tongue lashing for having the audacity to question him and take up MORE of his precious time. and i have met some whose bedside manner i would liken to sharing space with a snarling pit bull. we are also home to many, many "walk-in" clinics (i tread lightly here, because my casual employment with the trauma hospital is with one of these clinics...but i work on the workers comp. side, and then, not even in the office.) where you can sometimes literally pass your next birthday while sitting in the waiting room, waiting. and waiting. and contracting another disease while doing the waiting. from all the other sick people who are also waiting. and breathing on you.

in 1980 i didn't live here. my home was located in a small town in south fl, called clewiston. home of 2 of the world's sugar corporations. one, united states sugar corporation, and the other everglades sugar refinery, a subsidiary of dixie crystals sugar refinery, located in savannah. it was at everglades that my father was the manager and my first husband worked in the office.. (james, father of my two oldest sons, landon and christian.) we had only one hospital. and we had very few doctors in private practice at that time. i was a very fortunate girl back then, as i had married into a family where my sister-in-law, mary, worked as a nurse for the towns "best" doctor, Dr. James D. Forbes. i did not know in 1980 that he was the "best" doctor in town. but i would learn that very quickly, when in 1981 my oldest child, landon was born, followed in 1982 by christian.

Dr. Forbes' office was located in the center of town, down a little side street. from the main street in town you could look down Bond street and see his office, sitting down at the far corner. there were two doors on that side of the office. one, for patients, and one for employees. and it was a busy place, all the time. when landon became sick for the very first time, (which as a new mother i believed he had contracted a deadly strain of some rare disease) i called mary to make an appt.. and guess what she told me? she said, "come on in NOW, and come in the employees door when you get here." then i REALLY thought he had this deadly thing. scared me to death. but i got down there and went in and was immediately taken to a room in the back and there, already waiting, was Dr. James D. Forbes, the "best" doctor in town. he had made it to the room before i did and was all ready to examine my baby boy. (he had a cold. a simple little cold. he wasn't dying.) he gave me sample antibiotics and sent us on our way. and this became the "norm" for me and my two boys, who seemed to always be picking up one germ or another.

when landon was 18 months old, christian was 2 months. both boys had been sick for a few days, again with colds, and were getting better. one particular day they were both taking naps. landon was lying on the couch, beside me, while i folded laundry or something, and suddenly he began twitching. just a little bit. i thought he was just having a dream. then, that little twitch became a big twitch and he started flopping around and gagging . he was burning up with a fever and trying to swallow his tongue and i was freaking out. i had never been a witness to anything like that before and didn't really understand what was happening. or what i was supposed to do. i grabbed the phone and called james. he worked at the refinery, which was about a mile and a half down the road from our house. i figured that he could get there faster and get us to the hospital quicker than an ambulance. he in turn, called his sister, patti, who flew out to the house so she could be the one driving to the hospital while james held him. i then, called my mother, who lived on the refinery property. james and patti arrived first, grabbed landon and took off for the er. shortly after that, my mother arrived to take me and christian. by the time we got to the er, they had been there already for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. we didn't have cell phones back then, so there was no way for me to know what was happening. i was still freaking out. when we walked into the er, there was no noise that day. no one at the front desk. we walked down the hallway, searching out rooms, when we got to the one where landon had been taken. he was laying on his back on the table and he was literally surrounded by people. Dr. Forbes was there, and gary, his PA, and mary and other hospital personnel. and landon was not moving. at all. and he was not crying. or whimpering. and my mother and i thought that he had died. and i was quickly on my way to dying with him. Dr. Forbes came over and told us that he had had a convulsion, probably brought on by the high fever and that he wanted to admit him for a couple of days. they put him in a room and Dr. Forbes and mary and gary went back to the office. during the course of the day, they had been trying, unsuccessfully, to hook up an iv to give him fluids. they repeatedly stuck him with needles and had him strapped to a papoose board so he couldn't move, and he was just screaming and screaming and getting more and more dehydrated by the minute. by 8:00 p.m., they had still not been able to get the needle in a vein. so we demanded they call Dr. Forbes. and do you know, he was at a formal dinner, probably honoring Him for something, and got up and left that dinner and came straight to the hospital, in his tuxedo and boy howdy did he do some berating of the hospital staff when he got there! under his direction, they were finally able to administer the iv through a vein in his foot. it was a terrible ordeal for such a little boy and his mama and daddy. and Dr. Forbes became my hero that night.

when christian turned 3 yrs. old, he and landon were playing in the back yard. we lived on a small man-made rock pit and we had a fence up between the property and the water. i had taken our only car to the grocery store and when i left, james was outside mowing the lawn and the boys were on the swingset. i came home maybe 45 minutes later and when i pulled up i noticed several things at once. the lawn mower was sitting there, running...james and the boys were nowhere in site, my back door was wide open and my neighbor next door was running towards me hollering, "christian got hurt and her husband had taken them all to the hospital and it was really bad and i needed to get up there asap. i can not remember if i drove myself or if she drove me. but what i CAN remember, was that when the car pulled up to the er parking lot i could hear christian screaming at the top of his lungs..."MAMA, MAMA, I WANT MY MAMA" oooooh....my heart fell to my feet and i was paralyzed with fear. i somehow (or rather, GOD, did) managed to move and get inside the er where james met me at the door. he was trying to prepare me before i went into the operating room. but NOTHING could have prepared this young mother for what i saw. my little boy was sitting in his aunt mary's lap with a blood soaked towel wrapped around his upper arm and they had sedated him, but he was fighting it with everything he had in him. because he wanted his MAMA. they finally laid him on the table and waited for him to fall asleep, his little hand holding onto mine. then they told me what had happened. landon had been pushing christian on the swingset and he went a little too high and the swingset tumped over and trapped christian between it and an old boat trailer that was sitting a little bit too close. it pinned his arm and cut it wide open. he began screaming, landon took off running and hid in the bushes, because he was 4 yrs. old and thought he was in serious trouble. james was mowing behind the fence and couldn't hear because of the sound of the lawn mower. finally, as he moved closer to where the boys were, he saw that the swing set was lying on the ground and underneath it, was christian. the neighbor, heard all the screaming and ran over and that part is history.

they then removed the blood-soaked towel from christian's arm and i about passed out. i had never in my life seen what a "gaping" wound looked like. how far it spreads open. and this wound was in the upper, fatty part of the arm. to my eyes, it looked as though his arm was hanging by a thread. and the word that was uppermost in my mind was "amputation." i, not being in the medical field, and seeing things like this up close every day, saw no way possible way that his arm could be saved. but Dr. Forbes said that it would require alot of stitches, but that, of course the arm could be saved. it had been cut almost clear to the bone. at this time, Dr. Forbes was no longer performing surgeries. but i insisted that he be the one to sew up christian's arm. i was not in the least bit concerned with whether or not there would be a scar, i just wanted my baby to be "fixed." and i wanted Dr. Forbes to be the one to do the "fixing." This is christian, the next day, sporting his "gauze" and landon, showing his brother some love...

and this is christians "scar" some 21 yrs. later...a great job of stitching from a great doctor i know...

fast forward a few years. i was driving home from work one afternoon. on main street, when for some unknown reason, i just happened to glance down Bond street and there in front of Dr. Forbes office, i saw mama and daddys car and the two of them, with their arms around each other, walking into the employee entrance. this was one of those instant moments where you KNOW that something is not right with this picture. i went home and called my sister, who was still living at home with them, and asked her what they were doing at the dr.'s office. for some reason, i thought that my mother must have gotten sick. she said she didn't know anything about it and would call me when they got back home. An hour or so later she called and said that daddy had had a little chest pain and mama had taken him up to Dr. Forbes office, just to have him checked. just a short while later, mama called to tell me that they had run some test, and that it showed that daddy had experienced a heart attack. and they were going to take him to the hospital just for the night for observation. we dropped the kids off at James' mothers house and went on up to the er. within minutes of arriving there, the waiting room was filled with people from our church, there just to pray. a testament to the fact that so many people loved my daddy. besides us. they allowed each of us family members to go back for just a few minutes at the time. he was in no pain. he couldn't even believe he was in the hospital. he said he had actually been feeling really good all day at work and when he came home and laid back in his recliner he felt just a slight tightness in his chest. he had no idea it was anything as serious as a heart attack. had it not been for my mother MAKING him go to the doctor, he would never have given it another thought. and he would not be here today.

after a little while at the hospital they talked all of us into going home. so the waiting room cleared out and we all went home. mama had only about a ten minute drive home and when she got there the phone was ringing. it was the hospital, saying that daddy had actually died just minutes of her leaving him and had to be shocked back with the paddles. we all flew back up there, and so did all the friends from church. he had been taken to the ICU when he had first arrived and he was sitting up in the bed talking to the person in the bed next to him and telling them that he felt foolish tying up a bed in the ICU when he wasn't even sick! and then BOOM! just like that, he fell back on the bed and had to be brought back to life. this time, we were scared. really, really scared. We stayed up at the hospital all night long, and called family members and other friends and had this ginormous prayer chain going around. and Dr. Forbes was right there the whole time. taking care of my daddy. saving his life. the next day they took him by ambulance to Miami, where he received one of the first few angioplastys that had ever been performed. (i will be posting another seperate story on this visit to the hospital, as it was an adventure in inself.)

I tell you all this because i want people to know not only what a great doctor Dr. James D. Forbes was, but what a great man of God. i recently saw posted on his daughters facebook wall that her father was finally retiring. the whole town honored him with parties and a breakfast and i don't know what all else, because i moved away from that town 13 yrs. ago. Dr. and Mrs. Forbes, as well as their two daughters, attended the same church that i did. all those years ago. my years at that church were some of my most favorite memories. i met some lifelong friends while attending there. the town of clewiston, i know, will miss Dr. Forbes greatly, but now his wife and children, as well as his grandchildren will finally be able to stop sharing him with so many people that love him, and be able to love on him alot more themselves.

Dr. James D. Forbes is one of my heroes. he saved not only the life of my daddy, but took such great care of myself and my children, all those years they were growing up. He is a MUCH LOVED man and if i never told you, Dr. Forbes....THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH for all that you did. and do. and to Mrs. Forbes and Mary and Jenny and Davis...enjoy your dad and cherish every single moment with him. consider yourselves so very lucky to call him your HUSBAND and DAD!

Dr. & Mrs. James D. Forbes

THANK YOU GOD....for ZOLOFT...i'm going to pick mine up NOW.

2009-11-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

i have been without my zoloft for a week. not a good thing. for me or for those who have had the misfortune to cross my path. i get very, very irritable at the slightest things, road rage kicks in, in a really, really big way, i cry at commercials that show kids, or animals or laundry soap. the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures just gets on my last nerve...and all i have to do is think of him for it to happen. i don't have to hear his voice or see him. just think of him. and my blood starts boiling.

when you have been on zoloft for awhile, as i have been, people notice immediately if you haven't taken it that morning. well, they do with me. and i try to act as if it's all in their mind when they say to me "you didn't take your zoloft today, did you?" all because i was flapping my arms like a bird, at the lady in front of me who was driving the speed limit...like, who does that? drive the speed limit i mean. i was trying to get her to just GO ALREADY. i mean it doesn't take ten minutes to make a freaking TURN into the 7-11. or when i burst into tears because i forgot to put the sugar in the tea and it won't melt good now.

micajah was at work this morning. i had suffered yesterday, what i am hoping was just an extremely bad migraine. i don't know though. it's possible it was some kind of after effects from the flea bombs. but it was BAD. it came on suddenly and left me completely at the mercy of my bed and a hydrocodone. this morning, it is a little better. enough so that i thought i would get up and try to do a little cleaning. i had already mopped the entire house and handwashed a load of dishes that had been sitting in the sink ( i hate dishes in the sink) and fed all the dag-gum dogs around here. i had taken out the trash and was carrying my third load of laundry into the laundry room, when i heard my phone ringing. it was in the bedroom, where i left it, because it is hard to mop, do dishes, feed dogs and carry mountains of dirty clothes while holding the phone on top of my head. and besides, i was out of velcro. after putting the clothes down i went to see who had called. there were 7 missed calls, 3 voice mails and 5 text messages. all within the last few minutes. and they were all from micajah. i thought to myself, "uh oh, did he break down in the truck, was he hurt, i mean all those calls. i checked the texts, which were all duplicates of the same message. WHY CAN'T YOU ANSWER THE FREAKING PHONE? i decided to forgo listening to the voice mails. i was irritated. i was busy. i was dizzy and i didn't feel good. at all. he called again and i was ready for him. as soon as he said WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?... i screamed...BECAUSE I WAS BUSY...washing YOUR dirty clothes, washing YOUR dirty dishes that you left in the sink, feeding YOUR dogs and YOUR cat and i didn't feel like having the phone attached to my head this morning because i have a splitting headache!!!!! What was SOOOO important anyway? and as he spoke...i cried. He said, "i was just going to see if you wanted me to bring you something from Chic Fila on my way home or get you something else because i knew you didn't feel good and wouldn't want to go anywhere. and when you didn't answer the phone i started getting worried because of your head hurting and all."

pass me the kleenex. i'm going to get my zoloft refilled.

WHERE THERE ARE DOGS, THERE ARE FLEAS....AND GOD.

2009-11-08T19:49:00.002-05:00

(please scroll down to the playlist on the left side of page and click the button in the middle to turn off the music. you will understand why at the end of this story)

Yesterday afternoon i had plans. (i will pause a minute or two for you to get up off the floor.) no, sadly, they weren't any really EXCITING plans...i don't have those kinds of plans here lately. most days my plans consist of, i'm either cooking or grocery shopping, or washing and folding mountains of laundry or taking mama and daddy to dr. appointments. OR, i get to mop the wood floors, or bathe dogs, or mix up puppy food (since the 11 puppies' mama has decided she no longer wants to feed her babies.) can't say as i blame her. everytime she gets anywhere near them, this is what happens...

so, i now have to use canned puppy food, mixed with water and feed it to them, because they have decided to rebel against me and not eat the dry food softened with water that the vet TOLD me to feed them. nope. nothing ever goes easy for me. i can't just dump a few cups of the dry stuff into a bowl and let it soak for awhile and be done with it. i have to pull out the can opener and open cans, which i know doesn't sound that difficult, but when you have to do it 4 times a day, every day, you start having achy wrists and fingers. i absolutely detest the sight of a can opener now. then, after i have stirred the heck out of it (i use an old tea pitcher to mix it in) i have to drag myself out to the garage and climb over this...

and have 11 puppies, each having 16 razor sharp toenails, (that's a total of 176) clamoring to get to the food bowl first, therefore raking those nails down my legs as they attempt to crawl up my body to get to the bowl before i can get it to the ground.

(Thank you, Lord, that in just 3 weeks they will be old enough to go to their new families!) then i can retire my can opener.

anyway, i digressed a little. so, i had these plans. to go to one of my most favorite Japanese Steak House's for dinner with my family. since this kind of restaurant is one where they cook your food on one of those grills that are built into the tables, it usually ends up taking up about 2 hours of your time. which i have plenty of since the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, left me. for a greener pasture. we were to meet at the restaurant at 4:00, so i decided that while we were gone, it would be a really good time to set off some FLEA BOMBS in my house. (you have to expect that with 15 dogs and a cat to boot, living with you, there are going to be some fleas.) so i told micajah to grab some bombs from the cabinet, (and don't let the fact that i had these flea bombs on hand, lead you into thinking that my house is flea infested. it's not. it's just that i don't want it to be. infested) and help me place them around the house. so he did. the cans i had always used before instructed you to turn everything off, remove pets and open food containers and wait at LEAST two hours before returning to your house and opening windows and doors to air the place out. so the timing thing would work out perfect.

we left for the restaurant at 3:45, with the sound of spray being shot into every crack and crevice of our living space. we had a great meal, but they give you so doggone much food that we had to get carryout boxes for the leftovers. we had decided on the way into town that we would stop off at wally world on the way home to get some more of this...

then, as were leaving, micajah decides that he wants to go to the fair instead, with his friends (what kid in their right mind would give up going to wally world with his mother on a saturday night to go with his FRIENDS to the fair), and that since we had come in the same car i would have to take him all the way back home so he could get his truck. so, the plan changed. i would take him home, drop him off and then just run back to wally world and shop a little while to make sure the FLEA BOMBS had had time to do their job. that was the plan. but when you are ME, plans don't always go in the direction in which you planned for it to go. halfway home i thought to ask micajah, "micajah, by any chance, you didn't let blackie (the cat)

back INTO the house, after i had let him OUT earlier, did you?" and what do you think his answer was? remember, nothing ever goes right for me. he said, "yes, i did. he ran in and i thought that you knew that and had put him back out before we left." he said that because, he thinks i can read minds and that i just should just KNOW things like this. afterall, i heard my dead grandfather talk to me in the middle of the night. (see previous post) so, we both realized at that moment, that blackie was more than likely not with us anymore. dead. in cat heaven. or at the very least, in a comatose state. then we knew that at least one of us (him) would have to enter the house before the two hours was up. we were a little upset at the prospect of losing another animal and i guess being upset about that caused our stomachs to get a little upset as well. and we realized at THAT point that BOTH of us would have to enter the house. for a few minutes at best. so we decided that micajah would go unlock the door, put the leftover food in the fridge, check on the cat and remove it's body for burial before i had to witness it. i would run to the bathroom, and go, and then run back out, all the while holding my breath, so as not to breathe in the fumes. of the FLEA BOMBS. (i know what you were thinking, that's why i made that statement.) and after disposing of the cat he would then run to the bathroom, go, and then run back out. and we would get in our seperate vehicles and continue with our previous plans. the fair for him. wally world for me.

we pulled into the driveway and walked up the steps of the front porch and we could smell the fumes before the door was even opened. when he unlocked it and swung the door back for us to run in, it was like walking into a thick fog. ooooohhhh...the fumes were soooooo strong. i put my hands over my mouth and nose and ran to the bathroom trying not to breathe. but at some point the need to breathe just took over and i sucked those fumes into my windpipe and became violently ill. i coughed and i coughed and i coughed until micajah finally thought to ask me if i was dying. i was. (nice of him to inquire anyway) i ran outside to get some fresh air into my lungs but my old body wasn't co-operating. i literally thought i was going to die right there in my azeala hedges. right there in the dirt where my two yorkies do their business every day. i DID NOT want to go THAT way! i managed to finally stand up straight and make it to the car where i just sat with the windows down and the ac blowing full force into my face. micajah came out and said that blackie had survived with no effects. (darn. i mean, Thank God) i thought for several minutes that I was the one that was going to be having a burial.

i left for wally world and spent two of the longest hours of my life, killing time. (no pun intended) i was not looking forward to going back home to lay in the bed and have insecticide fumes lull me to sleep. or into a stupor. but i couldn't stay there forever. my buggy was already filled to capacity with every kind of junk food and chocolate they had to offer. when i got home for the second time, the fumes had dissipated a tiny bit. i put away the junk food and pulled out the despised can opener and whipped up a gourmet puppy mush. fed the dogs, mopped the wood floors which were wet with the spray and picked up all the empty cans to dispose of. properly. right into my kitchen trashcan. then i noticed something. yep. i bet you already know what's coming next, don't you? i noticed that these cans were NOT the usual SMALL FLEA BOMBS that i used. they were big cans. really, really big cans.

and we had set off 8 of them! and you were supposed to wait at least 4 hours before entering the house! by then i went to lay down. my head was splitting. my throat was sore. my chest was hurting from all the coughing. and dang it, i had missed the first half of the TIM TEBOW (oops, i mean Gators) vs Vanderbilt football game!!! i was not a happy camper. i got on facebook and was trying to get someone, anyone, to get a message to TIM TEBOW to come rescue me after he (i mean the Gators) won the game. but he didn't come. i don't think anyone gave him the message at all!!

while trying to drift off to sleep, amidst the still smelly fumes, i began to think about where my life was going and what God wanted me to be doing. for awhile now, since i started this Blog really, i have been feeling like He was leading me in a direction i had never ventured into. a ministry of sorts. my best friend, pam, is living a life that runs exactly parallel with mine. and we have been playing around with this idea for quite some time now. others have made statements to us both, that have seemed like maybe God was forming a plan. a plan which included the two of us working together, for His Glory. i must have laid there for hours, with all these thoughts just running through my head. (i think the fumes were depleting my brain cells at a rapid speed and it was trying to compensate by regenerating them at an even faster speed.) i finally fell asleep.

this morning, as i was driving to church, i began praying. and i prayed that God would speak through the Pastor and give me some wisdom to know what His will was for me. when i got to church and the Pastor got up to speak, you won't believe what his sermon was on! you guessed it! it was on how every member of the church has a ministry, whether they know what it is or not. it could be singing, or teaching or preaching or being involved in any of the various ministries of the church. and he was talking about how even in the Bible, God's disciples, while going out and spreading God's words, would sometimes be up high on the mountain, and sometimes, deep in the valley. and he told how when you are high on that mountaintop, it is because God is preparing you for those times when you will walk in one of those valleys. GOD was talking directly to me. He was telling me that He was preparing me now to be strong and faithful and to ALWAYS, ALWAYS rely on HIM, because very soon i will be in a valley with my divorce looming just ahead. i have already been through some valleys that i never thought i would come out of alive. on this side of Heaven. and all these past months God has been preparing me for another one. I prayed shortly after my separation from the middle-aged man who left me for greener pastures, that God would bring good, faithful friends into my life. and through the power of the internet and facebook, in particular, he has connected me to some of the finest people i've ever known, and some that i only know as a "virtual" friend. my "friends" list grows higher each and every day.

after the sermon was over i was just in awe, once again, that God had just answered another prayer. i went up to the front of that church and i got down on my knees to thank Him for speaking to me, as i had, just an hour before, requested, and for confirming to me what i am to be doing in these next few months. and then another little gift from God. the icing on the cupcake, if you will. a very dear woman in the church, whom i really have not had the chance to get to know that well, yet, came up and knelt beside me to pray with me, and for me. and she put her arms around me and very softly said these words. "God, help her as she embarks on this new endeavor." WOW. WOW. WOW. God had just whispered in my ear. and as soft as it was...i heard Him.

some of you may be thinking that it was just the fumes from the FLEA BOMBS that rendered me speechless. for a moment. but it is in these very small ways sometimes, that GOD speaks to us the LOUDEST in the softest of voices. the FLEA BOMBS had nothing to do with it at all.

postnote: on the way home from church i tuned in to HISradio 91.9 and THIS SONG was playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJwlmb4V-0Y

tell me again that we don't serve an AWESOME GOD!!!! you would be wrong.

A RELATIONSHIP...FOUND IN A LITTLE BOX

2009-11-06T21:38:00.001-05:00

who would have ever believed that a small box from Office Depot could totally change a relationship between a mother and daughter? i didn't. and to be honest, i never really thought about it either. but it did happen. to me. and my mother.

mama and i were never really close when i was growing up. i was one of five children, four girls and a boy. and i was the middle child. (and for those of you who know me on a personal level...THAT explains alot!) i think the rift between us began widening about the time i turned 11 yrs. old. mama thought that i was a rebellious young girl. she wanted me to "obey" the rules. and i wanted to live my life MY WAY. obey has never been a good fit for me. still isn't. i would never have considered myself to be rebellious. i was just carefree. when i was younger, (i know...that was a loooooong time ago)...i never really felt like i "fit" with the rest of my family. and it wasn't that THEY made me feel that way...i just never felt like i measured up. i always felt like the "dumb one," "the ugly one," and i always had a strong desire to be around people. i could not stand to be alone. in later years, when i was in college and living away from home, this feeling became all consuming. if there was no one in the room with me, i would get in my car and just ride the streets. and it wasn't that i was WITH people, it was that i could SEE people. years later i would discover THIS about myself. that i didn't like to be alone with "me" because i didn't particularly like "me." and who wants to be around someone they don't like?

but anyway, my mother didn't really like me. Oh, i knew that she LOVED me...i never questioned that. but i also knew that she didn't like the girl that i was. it was hard on her, raising 5 kids, and i was always a troublemaker. (i became the black sheep in my family and held that title for quite a few years. but, i am happy to say that finally, finally i have passed that torch on! yay me! when i wasn't looking i think i grew up.) but i was always doing things i shouldn't have been doing, and going places i shouldn't have gone, with people i shouldn't have been with. and there was always tension. i can remember slamming myself up in my room after getting in trouble for something or other, and just saying to myself, "she is soooo mean. i will NEVER treat my kids that way. why does she have to be so strict with me...why do i get caught at everything single thing i do!" and i DID. get caught at everything i did. it didn't matter one iota if everybody else was doing the exact same thing, I was the one to be caught! we joke about it in my family to this day that i spent nearly my entire high school years GROUNDED! i would probably still be grounded today, at 50 yrs. old, if we lived in the same house!

around 1986 or 87, my father was transferred from his job as plant manager at the sugar refinery in clewiston, fl to the parent company at dixie crystals sugar refinery in savannah, ga., where he was a vice president for several years, until he retired in 1994. my youngest sister moved to ga with them and was attending college, so my mother was pretty much alone in the house all day. which she liked. she is much more of a loner than i am. she can be perfectly happy being alone and doing her own thing. one day daddy went to Office Depot and when he came home he handed her a little box. it was a piece of computer software called Family Treemaker. it was for tracking your familys history. she asked him what he had bought that for and he replied that he had seen it and thought it might be something she would be interested in. (he's thoughtful like that.) but, she wasn't interested in it. and it sat there on a table for a pretty good while. then one day, i suppose out of sheer boredom, or maybe a lack of a good book to read, she picked it up, installed it on her computer and started entering the names of her parents and my fathers parents, and her grandparents and BAM! she hit a brick wall. she didn't know who daddy's grandparents were. neither did he. and that began her quest to document our family's history. she went to the library a few times and began to do a little research, but it wasn't anything that consumed her. then.

in 1996 my father called me one day, out of the blue. he asked if me and the middle-aged man who would later leave me for greener pastures, would be interested in moving to savannah and taking over a floral business that had decided to sell. he thought that my sister and i could buy the business together and the middle-aged man who would later leave me for greener pastures, could transfer from the sugar refinery down in fl, to the one in ga. i had experience in the floral business, as i had just closed my own when i got pregnant with micajah. we were having ALOT of problems with a certain someone's EX-WIFE from hell and 500 miles between us was something i was surely game for. so, after getting the refinery transfer approved and selling our home and packing up to move to savannah, the deal with the florist fell through. that was a blessing in itself, but i'll write that story another time. rather than stay in fl we decided to go ahead with the move and we would open our own gourmet gift basket business. which we did. and that is a story for another time also. WHEW on that one!

shortly after moving my mother asked me to go with her to the library one day. when we got there she told me she was doing a little research on our family's history and asked me to help her out on the microfilm machine as she couldn't read the small print. i began scrolling through census records, looking for an ancestor and right then and there, on that very day, i became obsessed with geneaology. as did she. we began going to the library alot more frequently. then we began going to courthouses to look up marriage records and wills and that took us on trips to faraway counties all over ga, in search of more information. and more. and more. the BUG had bitten us and we were SCRATCHING IT! i began my own research into the middle-aged man who would leave me for greener pastures, family. no one in his family knew ANYTHING about their ancestors. or, if they did, they weren't telling.

we have spent 13 years (so far) on our research. we have gone on countless road trips, logged in thousands of miles, been to more hidden cemeteries than you can shake a stick at, copied more records and stared at the grainiest microfilms of old census records...and we have had the time of our lives! we became so close, that you would never have known that at one time we could hardly be in the same room for long periods of time. we have laughed, we have wet dozens of pairs of pants, we have been chased by dogs and met some of the meanest and the nicest courthouse clerks. we have eaten at some of the worst restaurants that ga has and we have made more u-turns than any sane person would think possible. we have pee'd on countless back roads and in cow pastures and we have been attacked by angry bees and tripped over hidden barbed wire. and so many more things that i will be writing about one day. we both have huge volumes of family histories on every branch of our families. and they are priceless. to us. and through all of this, we became friends. i consider my mother to be my best friend, in fact. (sorry, Pam...but mama's come first.) and all of THAT leads me now to THIS!

about 2 or 3 years ago, mama and i were getting the itch to do just a short little day trip over to sylvania. it was about an hour and a half away from savannah and it was a trip we had made i can't tell you how many times before. it was NOT one of our favorite places to go. just a tiny little, rural town. but it was the town where her father and my grandfather, had grown up. it was very rich in her family's history, but there were two brick walls that she had run into. for eight long years she had been searching for PROOF that her father had a brother named Jesse. when she was younger, and many years before she knew she would have any interest whatsoever, she remembered her father telling her that he had had a brother named Jesse, that had died before my mother was even born. but, my mothers parents had long since been in Heaven, along with her older brother, who would have known, if anyone did, about Jesse. he was a history buff. but through all of her research, the only thing she could ever find was a reference to him in a letter, written by his mother in the early 1900's; and his name on a census record. she had gone through rolls of microfilm and newspapers looking for an obituary. we had spent hours at the family cemetery, me on my hands and knees, under huge shrubs, searching for his name on a headstone. but nothing. nada. zip. zero. she had all but given up on ever finding anything that would definatively prove that he had ever existed. and a good geneaologist knows you MUST have the PROOF. the other brick wall was that she could not find the maiden name of her fathers grandmother.

so, we decided that we would make one last trip to sylvania the next morning to see if we could locate the grandmothers death certificate. a death certificate will give the names of the deceased's parents, including the maiden name of the mother, in most cases.

that night, before we were to leave the next morning, i was in bed, sound asleep. suddenly i woke up with a very strong feeling that someone was in the room. someone that was not normally in my bedroom in the middle of night. the room was dark, but i could see a table and a chair, not my own furniture, and sitting in the chair was my grandfather. WHO HAD DIED in 1981. he was talking to me, but not out loud. i could understand every single word that he was saying. and what he told me was that "tomorrow, you will find Jesse." it was as plain to me as if he were talking to me now. "tomorrow, you WILL find Jesse." and you are probably thinking to yourself right now that this girl is NUTS! but i will tell you, that i know, that i know, that i know...that my grandfather was in my room and he spoke those words to me.

the next morning i picked up mama and we were on our way when i told her about what had happened. and she was like you are now. uh, huh, okie dokie. my daughter talks to dead people.

we got to the courthouse first and we went to the book that has all the old death certificates listed in it, which we had looked at so many times before, and checked once more to see if her great grandmother had one listed. she had never been listed before. at the end of the names of all the Wilsons was a half of a blank page, signaling the end of the wilson names. by sheer coincidence, she flipped to the next page and there...on a page all by itself was the name Sarah A.E. Wilson. we just looked at each other in shock. we KNOW that her name had never been there before. we rushed over to get the clerk to pull the original death certificate and there on that piece of paper under "maiden name of mother"... was written, UNKNOWN. can you believe it? from the top of the rollercoaster straight down to the bottom. that's what we felt like. another dead end. (no pun intended.) so we left the courthouse and decided to head on home. just before we pulled out of town mama decided to go to the small town library to look up a cemetery location or something like that. i told her that i was going to find jesse today i could feel it. she laughed and said yeah, i'm sure you are. i went over to where they kept all the old microfilm records of the old newspapers. we had pretty much narrowed down the probable years he would have died....had he ever even existed, to within about 4 years. i pulled out the first roll and began scrolling through every single issue of the sylvania telephone, the newspaper for that town, looking for an obituary or a story of an accident. something. anything. and there was nothing. i pulled out the second roll and began scrolling and suddenly, right there on the front page of the Feb. 16, 1912 edition was this

i began hooting and hollering and saying, "I FOUND JESSE, I FOUND JESSE!!!" and my mother just looked at me like i was crazy and playing a joke and i was just beside myself saying, "really, really, i did!" she came running over to the machine and read the obituary and was just absolutely stunned! we both were. and i had goosebumps like you wouldn't believe! just as my grandfather had told me i would. i scrolled over another issue or two and there again, on the front page was a a memoriam, written by, guess who...my grandfather. in memory of his brother, Jesse. This is it

i made the copies of both articles and mama put them on these scrapbook pages to go in her book. we rode home that day in awe. another one of those GOD things. no one will EVER convince me that i did not hear my grandfather speak to me that night. i know with everything in me, that he came to me in the night and whispered in the dark, "tomorrow, you WILL find Jesse." and i have goosebumps even now.

my own daddy never knew that day in Office Depot what that little purchase would bring about in his family. he was simply buying my mother a gift that he thought she would enjoy. but he brought instead a gift that I would enjoy for many years to come. a new relationship with my mother...in a box. and for that, i will always be eternally grateful. i love you mama and daddy!

post note: my mother had prayed that one day she would find Jesse. and she did. another prayer asked. another prayer answered!

GOD'S HEDGE OF PROTECTION...never needs to be cut back!

2009-11-04T22:51:00.002-05:00

this story will be difficult for me to write. it will probably be difficult for some of you to read. but if you will follow through to the end...i PROMISE YOU...you will see God's love and protection for his children. and you will also see that without a doubt GOD places his angels around us. (WARNING: some of the pictures included in this post are graphic and were included only to show you how truly miraculous our GOD is...

end of June, 1991 i was a single mother of two boys, landon 10 yrs., and christian 9 yrs.. we lived a few miles outside of town and in an area where people were always dropping off stray dogs and cats. at some point during this month one of these stray dogs decided to take up residence at our house. i was always cautioning the boys not to pet animals they didn't know...and my boys were always throwing that caution to the wind. one particular day the dog appeared in the back yard and was acting a little strange. not friendly. or playful. but snarling. and for no reason whatsoever...there were no sticks or rocks being thrown, the dog walked up to landon and bit him in the thigh. it broke the skin a little and bled for a couple of minutes, but it seemed to be fine. nothing really to cry over.

then the dog kinda disappeared for a couple of days. we found him, across the street, in the woods. dead. and green. and i panicked. i rushed him up to the drs.office where my sister in law worked as a nurse, and they advised us to start a series of rabies shots, as we didn't know why the dog had died. and because the tests on the dog would take a few days, it would be the safest thing to do. so, off to the health department we went. we lived in a very small town and this particular health department did not keep the rabies vaccine on hand. so we had to drive an hour and a half to west palm beach to the hospital emergency room. (you would think that in a small, rural town, they would keep things like that readily available.) anyway, at that time they had stopped giving the horrible shots in the stomach, Thank You Lord. he got two shots in the bite itself and one in each arm. we were told that he would have to have the complete series, and i think it was over a course of a week. (could be wrong about that.) the next time he needed a shot we had to go to the west coast, an hour and a half away, because again, the health dept. didn't have any vaccine. i worked that morning and then i loaded up the boys in my new ( 6 months old) Chevy corsica, to head over to Ft. Myers for the shot. this was THE DAY my walk with the Lord changed forever. let me back up just a minute.

i was raised by two very Godly parents. my parents prayed for their children every day. probably many, many times a day. they had 5 children. and i was one of them. this alone would give even the most spiritual parent in the world cause to pray! when i was growing up we took many, many road trips because both sets of grandparents lived in GA and we were in FL. i can remember that before every trip my father would pray... for traveling mercies. i never realized then that this simple deed would carry on into my own adulthood, with my own children. but it did.

that particular day was July 2, 1991. we were about an hour into the drive. Garth Brooks' song "The Dance" was playing in the cassette player. (i can not, to this day, listen to this song without having some kind of post traumatic thing.) i was a mother who always wore my seatbelt and always made my boys wear theirs as well. but that day i made a terrible decision ( this is one of those things where God turned a bad decision into a blessing.) the boys were sleepy and i let them take the seatbelts off so they could lay down in the seat. landon was in the back and christian was in the front, leaning against the front door. i took my own seatbelt off as well. in my mind i was thinking that if my kids were going to be at risk, so was i. totally, totally stupid of me. i know. i was driving along, on a two lane road, enjoying the music and traveling at about 60 mph.. the next few things happened simultaneously. the boys woke up. landon sat up and was leaning towards the front seat where the arm rest thingy was, with each of his hands on a headrest. he was saying something to me and in that instant a car that was coming from the opposite direction made a left turn directly in front of me. into nothing. there was no road he was turning into. he just turned. and there was that one split second when i knew absolutely that we were going to hit and there was not even enough time to put my foot on the brake. we hit him with such force that my car spun around three times before it stopped in the same direction as he had turned. i can vividly remember hearing and feeling the two cars hit. the sound of glass shattering, the smell of rubber burning...the screams. when the car came to a complete stop landons head was embedded in the windshield and caught on the windshield wiper blades. christian was slumped over in the seat and in front of him was a huge hole where his head had gone through the windshield and thrown him back into the seat. he was unconscience. landon was screaming. i was screaming and there were suddenly people everywhere. two cars behind me was a state trooper who had witnessed the entire thing. there was a little house right down the street and the lady that lived there had been sitting on the front porch and saw the whole thing. she immediately ran over with towels and there was a little convienence store there and customers came running as fast as they could. the next thing i remember was two men extricating landon from the windshield and placing him in my lap. i think i must have blacked out for a few minutes. when i came too and opened my eyes i saw my 10 yr. old son with the entire top of his head peeled away and bunched up around the back of his neck. he was bleeding profusely and they were trying to stop the bleeding and through all of that i had not even noticed that they had removed christian from the car. when i looked over he was laying on the side of the road with people all around him and i didn't know if he was dead or alive. in a matter of minutes the boys were both placed in a lifeflight helicopter and i was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. again, i must have blacked out because the next thing i remember i was in the er on a table, next to christian. he was crying and they had pulled my gurney right up next to his and he just grabbed hold of my hand. drs. came and told me that they believed he had a torn spleen and internal bleeding and may have broken bones. they told me that i had a severe whiplash and concussion and my lips were split open. but they didn't tell me anything about landon.

about 30-45 minutes later, a surgeon came to me in the er and told me that they had debrided landons head wound and put in internal stitches and staples on the outside. he said that landon had never cried once and in fact, had given the police the name and phone number of his father. They said that one of his ears had been torn completely in half and that had to be sewn and that he had multiple cuts and abrasions to his head and face. they told me that they wanted to put the two of us in a room together because they thought the trauma may be too much for landon to be away from me. they also wanted to warn me what to expect when i saw him so i wouldn't be horrified. (i was still horrified.) they told me how important it would be for landon that i remain as calm as i could. they also told me that they could not clean him up because they were afraid that small slivers of glass would dislodge and cause further damage and possibly get into his eyes. at the time they couldn't tell me whether or not he had suffered any brain damage. then they told me that christian was being taken to the ICU for futher tests and observations and that an operation would be needed to repair his spleen.

i can remember laying on that cold hospital table, naked and alone and just thanking God that my boys were alive. a few minutes later their father arrived, with his sister and brother in law. (my ex-husband and i had remained very close and were still very good friends.) it was a very emotional time in that er room. finally they came and got James, the boys father, and said they wanted him to go up and stay in the ICU with christian and they would be taking me to my room to see landon. when i walked in that hospital room and saw my son...(whew, tears in my eyes now) i can not put into words what i was seeing and feeling. my little boys head was wrapped in gauze, like a turban, and his face was covered in dried blood with glass shards everywhere. his ear was stitched up and clotted with blood. the whole top of his head had been shaved and the hair they had left in the back was just matted with blood and dirt and glass. i could not believe they could leave him there that way. shortly after being reunited there was a knock on the door and this woman and her daughter came in. she took one look at landon and the words that came out of her mouth just blew me away! she said that it was her husband (her 86 yr. old husband) that had hit us. he had alzheimers and was not even supposed to be behind the wheel of a car. he had disappeared that morning and driven who knows where and was trying to find his way back home when he made that fateful turn. and then she said and i quote, "we don't have any money so don't even think about sueing us!" WHAT? was this woman insane? there was a little boy laying in that big hospital bed, covered in blood and gauze, who may never be the same as he was that morning, and she never uttered a word of concern for him. never asked how he was or how i was, or christian. yet she had the audacity to come in my room after i had nearly lost not only my own life, but those of BOTH of my boys! then she turned around and walked out. just as quick as she had come in. by the way, her husband suffered no injuries and was released the same day.)

James, after hearing about the accident, had called his parents, who in turn, called mine. my mother and father were living in savannah at the time. His dad gave them very little information, as he didn't really know much at that point himself. my father tried to call the hospital and get some information, which they were reluctant to give out over the phone. he persisted in telling the woman on the other end of the phone that his daughter and grandchildren were 500 miles away and he didn't know if they were dead or alive...or if he and my mother needed to come to FL or what.finally, they were told the situation. they had run tests on christian and discovered that he did not have any internal bleeding or broken bones and even his spleen was not damaged as they had thought. but they were keeping him in the ICU to monitor him.

the next morning my mother and my sister arrived from GA. they knew that when we were released i would be needing help with the boys. shortly before they arrived, the nurses came in to remove the gauze from landon's head and this is what my mother and sister walked into and what i saw of his head injury for the first time.

three days later they allowed me to be wheeled up to the ICU to see christian for the first time since the accident. his father had stayed with him the entire time. this is christian on that third day. they had just removed the tube from his nose and he was being allowed to eat for the first time.

on the fourth day, landon was released to my mother, as i was still not able to leave the hospital. when she and my sister came to pick him up, they were shocked that they were told they would have to take him out of the hospital, still covered in glass and matted blood and clean him up themselves. they had to go first to the health department to get the rabies vaccine that he was still having to take. then they took him to a barber shop so they could have his hair cleaned and washed. the barber told them that he would not touch him. humiliated for landon, they went to a couple more places, only to have the same response. they finally decided to try one more place and the lady there took such good care of him. (she had to have been a mother.) she picked the glass out and washed his hair and cut it as best she could. he was a sight, for sure. but he walked out of that place with a smile on his face and just as happy as a 10 yr. old could be. he was getting to see his grandma after all! this is landon after the haircut.

the next morning christian and i were released as well. on the way back home we stopped off at the garage where they had towed my car, to get my personal things that were left inside. and this is what we found.

by all accounts from witnesses and drs. and nurses, the three of us should never have survived the accident. my car was completely totaled. in this picture you can see the holes in the windshield where both boys went through the glass.

on this one you can see strands of my hair stuck to the steering wheel, which was completely warped. one of my front teeth had come out (it has since been replaced and no, i'm not toothless.) i ended up with stitches on the inside and outside of my mouth.

the trooper that had been behind my car that day, and had come over to help, had come to visit us one day in the hospital. he said that what was so eerie to him was that the cassette player, which had been playing The Dance, had gotten stuck and during the whole rescue that song played over and over and over. one of landons shoes was found all the way across the street and my watch was found under my car.

after a week in the hospital and a few more days at home, my mother and sister had to go back home. so me and the boys went and stayed at James' mothers house. (his parents were still like my second mama and daddy.) school was getting ready to begin a new year and landon was very self conscious about the way his hair looked. he thought all the kids would laugh and make fun of him. the day before school started a group of his friends came to visit him and they had all gone out and had their hair cut exactly like his. i wish i had taken a picture. but i didn't. it was the sweetest thing i had ever seen such young boys do. we all recuperated and came out of this better for it, i believe.

i had given my heart to Jesus when i was 6 yrs. old. i always knew i was a christian, but my life at the point of the accident, was anything but exemplary. i was not LIVING a christian life. i was in a VERY abusive relationship and i never even talked to God. except when i would be traveling somewhere. and then those prayers of my father would surface and i would always pray a hedge of protection around my vehicle and my family. God provided that protection that day. free of charge. to a girl who was living her life in the fast lane and to her two small boys. this was never more clear to me than when, a year later i remarried in 1992 and had another son, micajah. years later, when micajah was in kindergarten they were told to write a short little story about something they were grateful for. micajah had heard us talk about the accident, but he didn't know any of the details. he was 6 yrs. old and this had happened 7 yrs. before he was born. this, my friends is why i wanted you to read to the end of this story. here, in micajah's own 6 yr. old handwriting is the story he wrote that day.

it reads: For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. Once win my mom and my brother Landon and Chris, they got in a bad car reck. my brother Landon did not have his seat belt on. he went threw the wind shild. he should have hit the road and died. but angels set him on the front of the car.) his spelling.

do i believe my son was physic? no, i don't. but what i do believe is that even before he was born on this earth he looked down from wherever he was and saw this accident unfold. i believe with all my heart that he saw the angels around our car. and i believe he saw those same angels lift up landon and settle him on the wiper blades of that car. he SHOULD have hit the road that day. he SHOULD have died that day. we all three should have. But GOD had other plans for us. my life really did change that day. it didn't happen overnight. but God came into my life in a really big way and let me know that HE always has my back. that HE is always with me. and that as much as i love my boys...HE loves them even more.

i thank GOD that i had parents that prayed for me. they still do. each and every day. and now i have my own children and grandchildren to pray that hedge of protection around.

If you want to pray for your children and their safety and their happiness...then you must first PRAY and invite Jesus into your heart. Only then, will HE hear your prayers. DO IT TODAY!

post note: the dog DID have rabies. a YEAR after the accident landon began having trouble with his teeth. we took him to the dentist where it was discovered that when landon had hit the windshield, it was with such force that it cracked every single one of his molars. he had to have steel bands placed around each tooth to help the tooth bond. they eventually fell off when the teeth fell out. he did not suffer any brain damage (although 18 yrs. later, i have occasional doubts about that! HA! just kidding landon.) christian and i escaped with little physical injuries. but for me, the memories of that horrible day will never leave me.

JUST ASK MY DOGS....

2009-11-02T22:23:00.001-05:00

so...this is me when i was 10 yrs. old

and here

i was really, really good at those splits, huh? perfect form. you would think i was a gymnast or something, wouldn't you?

ok, i'm lying, that's not me at 10. not me at 11 or 9 either. that's pickle. and she is a gymnast. these pictures i took of her at the beach last year brought to mind a little...ummmm... mishap that occured at my house a few days ago. to me.

i was on facebook, because i don't have much of a life since the middle-aged man that went in search of greener pastures, left me. come to think of it, i didn't really have much of a life than either. but that's another story. for another post. anyway, there i was whiling away the hours on facebook when someone tagged me in a note. it was a silly little note. i think it was called random things about me. one of the questions was "can you do a split?"

at first i thought it said, "can you eat a banana split" which of course the answer would have been "duh". do i LOOK like i can eat banana splits? (i don't really want you to answer that.) dang...does the punctuation go inside the parenthesis or outside? i always get confused on that.

but no, i was wrong. which i knew, and accept, because the middle-aged man that left for greener pastures has told me for 17 1/2 years that i'm wrong. about EVERYTHING. the question was "can you do a split?" my answer? "yes...yes i can. but when i do, it's purely accidental. and about 15 minutes or so later, i had to go and prove that. if only to my two yorkies and myself.

i went to take zoe outside to pee. she was nursing these 12 puppies

and she drinks ALOT of water. but i was too late. she couldn't hold all that water until i finished talking to my friend on facebook. nope. she had already gone to the front door and waited patiently for me. and i let her down. she had made a puddle in the front hallway the size of a small lake. and it wasn't just a big ROUND puddle. it stretched from one end of the hall to the other.

i had just gotten out of a nice hot shower and washed my hair and put on some clean stretchy pj's, because i intended to stay in bed all day. and rest. i walked zoe towards the front door to let her out and guess what happened? c'mon. guess. RIGHT!!! my bare foot hit that lake of pee (on wood floors that i had just mopped that morning) and i did a split. a perfect split too. and then i fell over. IN THE DOG PEE. flat on my back. with my clean stretchy pj's and my clean hair! and i was humiliated. my yorkies were laughing at me. oh yes, i have dogs that laugh. they sing too. this is bruiser and tj

yeah, they look all innocent now. but they were laughing at me, i swear. and when you slip in dog pee on a wood floor and do a split and then fall flat on your back..IT HURTS! then just to make matters a little more fun for the dogs, i had to put both my hands in the dog pee in order to lift my big ol' badonkadonk off the floor. EEEEWWWWWW!!! it was so gross. i had to peel those wet pj's off and i absolutely HATE taking wet clothes off, and take another shower and wash my hair. again. the only bright spot in all of this was that the humongous bruise on that big ol' badonkadonk that i was sure to have come morning...would now match the black and blue pj's i had to put on! i would be color coordinated. and that's very important to me. ask anyone who knows me.

so in closing...i say that YES, YES i can do a split. just ask my dogs!