Mams is still kicking...

My grandmother died again...

(don't freak... it was her second time and they got her back again)

This time she was at my cousin's house and NOT in Odessa...

Thank God for that one!

Apparently when you die anywhere except Odessa they actually (get this)

RUN TESTS UNTIL THEY KNOW WHATS WRONG!!!!!!!

She is the most attractive zombie I have ever seen...

Rushed by ambulance to a hospital in the Fort Worth area on Friday night and had a pacemaker put in by Monday morning.

Its amazing what happens when you get away from this town and experience decent medical care!

My grandmother is still kicking, and judging by our conversation this morning, the woman is definitely feeling her "Wheaties" again.

Man, she gets ornery when she is healthy!

I've missed it... well, sort of...

Sometimes you feel like a nut...

So its midnight.

You have way too many heavy thoughts in your head to possibly get to sleep any time before next March. What do you do?

Practice a new musical instrument?

Do stupid Internet quizzes for hours?

You Are Running on 90% Adrenaline

Your Adrenaline Level: Very Dangerous Life is passing you by so quickly, you hardly can notice what's going on. You definitely need to slow down before you crash hard!

Are You Running on Adrenaline?

Blog?

How about all of the above?

Yup... I'm brilliant.

more good music...

Blessings...

It occurs to me that you guys get a lot of posts about things that are bothering me, because that is when I have the most motivation to write. Writing has always been a therapeutic process for me and I use it to work through the things I am struggling with. I thought that today, for a change of pace, I would list a few of the things I am thankful for in my life.

My Husband

I never thought is was possible to find a man who knows everything about me, knows how to deal with my moods, is a phenomenal Daddy to our children, works his little butt off to provide for our family to the best of his ability, and most of all... loves me so much more than I thought anyone could.

My Parents

Who have been there for me even when I am a complete idiot (1998 comes to mind). They are the best parents a kid could have ever asked for and they are even better at the grandparent thing! They changed diapers and ran stoplights and let me go when they knew I needed to fall and learn to get up again on my own.

My Grandparents

Who always try to feed me and send me home with garage sale finds that are too small or too big 90% of the time that I walk through their door. For being confidants in my teenage years, friends when I need them, and a constant guiding light in my life.

My Daughter

Who has taught me that we can overcome anything together. She has shown me all the extremes that exist in this world, from the cruelty of some strangers towards a disabled child to the selfless love and compassion from the hearts of others. She makes me notice small blessings that I would have missed without her in my life.

My Son

Who has turned me into my mother. My protective instinct comes out full force because of his trusting nature and un-tamable spirit. He can disassemble toys, break the TV, tear pictures off the wall, reprogram the remote and cause a massive computer crash all before lunch time (and I love that he is healthy enough to be such a tiny terror!)

It is a short and incomplete list, but it is the top of my list of things I am thankful for. Kind of funny when you think about it... none of them are "things".

Want in one hand...

According to Babycenter.com, the bun in my ever expanding oven is now about the size of a sweet potato. I can feel the baby move from time to time and I know I should be happy or even excited about the tiny new life there.

Baby's are a blessing whether or not they are planned or expected.

I KNOW that.

I have a friend who has been trying to get pregnant and can't. She and her husband would be phenomenal parents.

I get mad at myself when I see people I know who deserve children and can't have them and here I sit feeling all ungrateful and overwhelmed about this pregnancy.

I WANT to be excited.

I have always wanted a big family and we are going to have one. I KNOW that I have been very blessed in my life.

But for some reason I just feel overwhelmed and angry.

I do not want to have another baby in this town. I do not want to watch the neglectful attitude of the medical community in this area effect yet ANOTHER person I love. I do not want to live in this tin can for the rest of my life. I do not want my children to have to be in this school district. I do not enjoy the 20 hour round trip to get my daughter to decent medical care. I do not want to live in a neighborhood surrounded by drug addicts and child molesters for any longer than I already have. (I want to feel safe letting my kids play outside.) I want doctors who will listen to me. I want a house that doesn't have holes in the floor and a heater that catches on fire at least once a year. I want to be able to pay our bills AND still afford to buy groceries.

We are supposed to find out on April 3rd if the new baby is a boy or girl.

I hope I can be excited once I know what we are having.

I WANT to be happy.

But...

Like my Dad has always said:

"Want in one hand, sh*t in the other. See which one fills up first."

Here I sit with two handfuls... You can guess what they are full of...

Never Alone...

Speak No Evil #1...

Feelings are NEVER wrong. Just because you may not agree with how I feel about something does not give you the right to tell me my feelings are wrong. Feelings are just feelings and they most often cannot be helped or controlled (at least not without a valium the size of Wisconsin). For those of you who are NOT judgmental jerks out there… Think of the following as three helpful hints for the next time you encounter a friend or relative who is having a personal crisis.

1) Please do not tell me “everything will be OK”, or “things will work out”, or (my personal favorite) “it will get better”. They might seem like helpful things to say when you are at a loss for words, but I would much prefer an honest “that really sucks” or even an “is there anything I can do to help?” Telling me that things will get better is a moot point when I just got pushed over the edge of the Grand Canyon. I know things will get better just as much as I know that they will not STAY better. Life is a roller coaster full of ups and downs. For every up there is a down and, most of the time, an up for the downs. Anyone that tells you otherwise is severely delusional. NOTHING EVER STAYS BETTER. For you to tell someone going through a difficult time that they need to “look on the bright side” or that “things will get better”… well, it just comes across as belittling their entire situation. I say call it like it is: “that sucks”, and if you feel the urge to be even borderline condescending by telling them “things are not as bad as you make it out to be”, you should be thoroughly prepared to get punched in the face!

2) Please do not tell me what I need to do, or how I need to LOOK at it, or “at least (insert optimistic bull crap here)”. It is not helpful to me to know how much better you think you could handle being in my shoes than I am. The fact remains that no one is in my particular shoes but me, no one is in my Mom’s shoes except her, and no one is in my Dad’s shoes except for him. (Similar, just as uncomfortable shoes, but not the same pair.)

3) Please do not tell me that I just need to “have a little faith”. That statement implies that I have been leaning on something OTHER THAN my faith for the past seven years full of trials and heart aches. I have more practical application of clinging to nothing except my faith than most people ever have to wake themselves from nightmares about!

T-"Bawl"...

I find it exceptionally amusing that I can be a perfectly functioning human one moment and at the drop of a hat bawl like a newborn. There is no real warning about what will set me off now days. It happens out of the blue several times a week and sometimes, like today, several times a day.

Before long every major store in this town will think my family is nuts!

Today it was a t-ball mitt that set me off bawling through the isles of Target.

My husband is not a huge fan of baseball or softball. He prefers other sports. I like t-ball and baseball and softball.

I used to love to watch my Dad play in the church league and got a kick out of watching my cousin Tim steal home at least once in almost every baseball game he played. (I am horrible at sports so I sit in the stands and cheer.)

I have dressed Auron in baseball themed clothing from the day we brought him home from the hospital.

Dad never got a son to play catch with, and I was too girly to want to learn, so I have looked forward to Dad teaching Auron to play for the past two years.

Walking down an isle at Target today I saw a tiny blue t-ball mitt and showed it to Auron.

He put his hand in it and said "ball?".

I was doing OK until Darrell leaned down and said: "When you get a little bigger I will get a mitt and teach you to play catch."

It suddenly hit me that my Dad might not be around to help teach him and to cheer beside me in the stands at his games.

It isn't that I don't want Darrell to teach him... it just isn't the way I always pictured it.

We were having a perfectly good day and I suddenly get side-swiped by this huge wave of emotion!

GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

As if being hormonal and pregnant wasn't enough!

This Sucks!

The Bear Story...

The following is a true story that happened 22 years ago. My Dad has wanted me to tell him the whole story since that day when he picked me up from school. My teacher laughed and told him that she really enjoyed the bear story. I have never given him all the details. This is how it happened:

I HATED her. She was a snotty little twit who enjoyed showing off all the fancy clothes and new things her parents bought for her. She was five or six and already thought that richer meant better. Her family was wealthy and liked to show it off. I sat quietly steaming as she sat in my favorite teacher’s lap going on, and on, and on about how HER Daddy was the BEST Daddy in the world. I wanted to hit her and knock her perfect little pigtails crooked!

“…And MY DADDY took me to Disney World this summer. (She looked down her noses at the rest of us.) That is the BIG one… not the little fake one.” She bragged. “MY DADDY dressed in a tuxedo and my Mommy put on a fancy dress every night for dinner. MY DADDY loves me so much that he bought me a special lunch with Cinderella!”

I couldn’t take it any more! My five-year-old little ego had taken all it could at that point and the lie started to spill out of my mouth with very little consent from my brain. “Oh yeah, Well MY DADDY took me camping this summer and he killed a bear with a pine cone!” I practically shouted it. I KNEW she couldn’t have the best daddy in the world because I did and I just HAD to out do her story.

“Oh really?” said Mrs. Godlevski with a knowing twinkle in her eye. “Why don’t you tell us about your camping trip Melissa.”

I knew I should stop and tell them I was making it all up, but my whole class was mesmerized and Little Miss Better Than You was sitting there with her bottom jaw on the floor. I just couldn't stop myself.

“MY DADDY took me and my cousin Tim camping this summer. One day Tim and me were cooking lunch on the campfire cause MY DADDY taught us how, and a BIG brown bear smelled it and got hungry. The bear came into the camp and started chasing us and me and Tim climbed a pine tree to get away from it, but it started climbing up after us! So me and Tim were in the very top of the tree throwing pine cones at the bear’s head and just then MY DADDY grabbed that mean old bear by his little stubby tail and started pulling him back down the tree away from me and Tim. MY DADDY was so mad that that mean old bear was trying to eat me that he punched that bear right in the nose! When the bear came back at MY DADDY he picked up one of the pine cones up off the ground that me and Tim had been throwing at the bear’s head, and he used it to hit the bear real hard right between his beady little eyes, and that mean old bear just dropped dead! MY DADDY got me and Tim out of the tree and we went back to our camp and had lunch and all the other bears knew that they better not try to eat me and my cousin cause MY DADDY would whoop ‘em just like that bear he killed with a pine cone!”

I ended the story with a flourish and looked around at the amazed and captivated gazes from every one of my classmates. Well, all but one. Little Miss Better Than You just looked jealous.

Mission accomplished!

(I Love you Daddy, and you have always been my hero chasing away the bears and boys in my life that needed to be chased away.)

Sanctus Real