%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |
Things that I think every mom wants thier kids to know |
| This is something that I have been wanting to do for some time. I am not sure how to put all of this together and make it worth reading. Everyone says, " My life is an open book." I'm trying to put my life into a book that might be opened. |
| Today is going to be a crazy day around here. I have to call the landlord and leave a voice mail for them to call a plumber. Our neighbors plumbing got stopped up and now ours is also. The neighbors is running out into their yard and down my driveway and then down the road. Mine is just stopped up in one bathroom. This has happened before. You know what they say, @#it runs down hill and I am downhill from my neighbors. It is just going to be crazy because I have to put the dogs outside and then bring them back in and then put them back out, etc. etc., etc.,the whole time the plumber is here. He will have to go under the house and then back in the house and then back under and back in, I'm going nuts just thinking about it! Yesterday was a pretty good day. The B-day party was fun. My granddaughter got some binoculars that take pictures and then you can down load tham to a computer. They are pretty cool. She also got a new outfit with shoes and a purse with a note pad and pens and some little girl lipgloss. She got a craft kit with a velvet cd case to color and glamorize. It holds 10 cd's. She really liked that a lot! Her b-day cake was shaped like a daisy and she had purple and orange icing. The center was purple and the petals were orange. It was a strawberry cake. The cake was very good. She had her party at the park and luckily, it was warm enough for the party to be at the park. I was really glad that the weather was nice. After the party, I went back to the house and waited for my son to get his things packed for a few days away from home. He is going to spend some time at his friend's house. His firend is home from college for spring break. Sure wish he could have gone to college too.But. it just wasn't in the cards for him. Well,gotta go. Lots to do and not enough time. |
| Just a quick note today. I have a birthday to go to today. It is for my granddaughter. She is 10 and I feel really old today! On a soggy note, my house has sprung a leak and I can't get anyone over to fix it until tomorrow. Probably by then, the backyard will be ankle deep in water and we will have a small river going down our street. All courtesy of a shady landlord. If they would do the repairs on the house like they are supposed to, I wouldn't have these problems. But, if I continue with that thought, I'll end up on a rant and I don't have time today. I still have to wrap the b-day present and then go pick up my son's friend and then go to the party. After that, I will take them back to his house, I think, and then come home and do laundry, wash dishes and cook dinner. Maybe I will get to bed before 11. If I do, it will still be 1 or 2 before I go to sleep and then I have to be up at about 6:30 in the a.m. Hubby needs help with his clothes and stuff. Not really, but he makes me feel needed. Anyway, lots to do and no time to do it. BYE! |
How many people reading this little blog of mine have kids and pets? I had 5 kids and I have 5 pets. Only 1 child is still at home but all 5 pets are still at home. I had 6 pets but we lost one to a grand mal seizure. That was a very bad day. We have had many different pets through the years. Everything from parakeets to cockatiels, from hamsters to turtles, from iguanas to uromastyx and the ever popular dogs and cats. At one point in time, we had 3 dogs, 4 cats, 1 iguana and 2 uromastyx, and 1 child still at home. Well, over the last few years, we lost 1 dog, gave away 2 cats, then momma cat had more cats, kept 2, 1 left and didn't come back, gave momma cat to a friend that wanted her and her new litter she was about to have, gave the iguana, named Spaz, to another friend, sold the uromastyx to a breeder, we had a mated pair, so, now I just have 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 kid and a husband at home! Have you ever noticed how much like kids your pets can be? You have to feed them, clean up after them, break up arguments, evenly give out surprises and praise and dish out discipline. It is really rather funny, especially when you are fussing at one and they give you that look that says it wasn't me it was the other one. How many times have you seen that look from your kids? I swear, if dogs had fingers they would point to someone else every time they got in trouble. My dogs are really old and 1 of them is completely blind now. The momma dog is about 15 yrs old and she is going blind and getting senile. Her son is about 13 and he is the blind one. Today is one of those days when they are both in a bit of a mood and I have had to get after both of them for fighting. So, right now, momma is hovering at my feet and her son is in the livingroom, growling when she walks by him. It is rather comical but very annoying at the same time. Makes me think of my kids when they were little and arguing just to be doing something. When my kids were little, I let them solve their own problems up to a point. If it sounded like it was getting violent, I put a stop to it and the kids that were fighting got in trouble, both or all, depending on who was involved. If all of them got into it at the same time, all of them got punished. Sometimes it was the girls against the boys or vice versa. Sometimes it was the big kids against the little kids, but if there was an outsider involved, my kids stuck together and protected each other. Guess it goes back to the saying, I can hit my brother but you can't. They are still that way, if someone does something to one of them, everybody comes to defend. Sure is interesting to watch when it involves a spouse or significant other. Haven't had that happen very often, thank goodness. Don't know how much of that I could watch! I would have to try and stop it before it got out of control. It's a mom thing, at least I think it is. Anyway, getting back to my animals, they really are just like kids. At least dogs are, cats are a whole different story. You can't really break up a cat fight like you can with dogs. A cat will walk away but hold a grudge and continue the fight when you aren't around. They don't fight over trivial things either. Dogs will fight over chew toys and space on the couch or in the chair. They will fight over food and sometimes just because. Cats just wait it out if one is in their favorite spot or they will start playing with something and having a good time, then the other cat notices and gets down to investigate. Then the other cat will give up whatever they had and go claim the favorite spot. Dogs will not share food bowls, cats will wait patiently in line if they all want to eat out of the same bowl. Sometimes, it makes a difference if it is male and female. My dogs are male and female, they usually get along just fine, unless it comes to food. If one is eating and the other wants to eat, they have to wait. I only have one food bowl for the dogs because they eat at different times. They have always had one food bowl, since the female is the oldest and the male is her son. She only had 1 litter of puppies and they were all male. We gave 2 away and kept 2. She never had another litter. The reason she didn't have anymore puppies, I told her she couldn't have any stupid babies and that is what she would have if she mated with one of her sons. So, when she was in heat, we would keep them separated and if they happened to be in the same room and tried anything, she would attack them like they were strangers. She would bite their private parts and then they would leave her alone for a long time. The first time she did that to one of them, he did a flip and fell off the couch and left the room. If she went into the room he was in, he left the room. It was really very funny at the time. Well, it is about 9:30 a.m. and I just got the first of many phone calls from my 2nd daughter. She calls every day at about the same time and then every few hours for the rest of the day until about 7 or 8 every night. Sometimes she needs a ride to the store, but most of the time it is just because. Just because her husband is very controlling and she doesn't have hardly any friends. He won't allow her to have friends. He has to approve her friends and if he doesn't approve of them, he runs them off with his attitude and sarcasm. If that doesn't work, he uses anger and aggression to make them scared to come around for fear that he might hurt her. Yes, it sucks royally!!! I'm trying to talk her into leaving him but she is scared that she can't make it on her own with her daughters. She doesn't believe me when I tell her that she can, because I have been married to the same man forever. So, I can't lead by example. At least not in that category. I'm getting my sister to talk to her, she has been there and she did it all by herself for a long time with her girls. I just pray every day that she is kept safe and so are her daughters. O.K., time to do house work. Hooray, I get to do dishes, NOT! |
| I talked to my stepmom the other day and as usual, she was talking about my Dad. She calls to talk about him when she has been drinking. The drinking is an every day occurence. I really wish she didn't drink so much since her health isn't the greatest but, I can't control everything that everybody else does. I learned that a long time ago. My father passed away on Feb. 3, 2004. He was in the Army for 20 years before he retired in 1976, so, you could almost say we were estranged. What I mean by that statement is that he wasn't home very much when I was growing up. Being in the military, he was stationed anywhere and everywhere. After a few years of traveling around with him, before I was 6 years old, Mom decided that she had enough and we didn't go with him anymore. We came back from Germany when I was about 6 and I had a new brother and sister. I have lived in Kansas and Kentucky and Oklahoma. There may have been other places but I don't remember them and I can't ask either of my parents, since both are gone. After we came home from Germany, my Dad was sent to Vietnam. I'm pretty sure that was very hard on my Mom because it was hard on me. There were years that went by without a word from Dad. Eventually, my mom fell out of love with dad and they got divorced. That happened when I was 10. My dad met my stepmom about a year later and they got married. He was still married to her when he died. Like most kids, I held out hope that they would get back together. That never happened. I did learn from my dad that he still loved my mom even though he was married to my stepmom and I learned from my mom that she still loved my dad. She said that he was her first love and that she would always love him even though they couldn't live together. In a way, that was comforting. Anyway, back to the research about the past. I went to a website for the National Personnel Records Center and requested copies of my father's military records and copies of his medals and color bars. It was very easy to fill out the paper work. I have copies of his discharge papers from the military and it had all of the info that I needed. But, my stepmom told me that there are pictures of my father hanging in Ft.Knox. She said the photos are of my dad and his tanks and that they are hanging in the hall. I was trying to find a website or something where I might be able to see the photos. No such luck. I did find a website for the Patton museum though. That brought back a whole bunch of memories about spending one summer with my dad while he was stationed at Ft. Knox. My brother, sister and I used to play on the road they were building that would eventually lead to the museum. It was great! We had big dirt hills to run down and climb up and if you went across the road and climbed up the other side, you were at the museum/park. They park was great. We had a tank to climb on, in and over, there was a jet you could climb on, and the usual swings and stuff. Back then, the Patton museum was free We used to go there all the time. They even have General Patton's underwear on display! Needless to say, that was a big deal for us. Of course that was almost 40 years ago. It is funny, how the memory works. Doing research for one thing and then suddenly, you are transported back in time, to when you were a kid and times were good. It is one of the few times that I remember being with my dad and my brother and sister were there too. Most of the time, it was just me. They were really mad at him for many years because he married someone else and had kids with her. What really hurt them was the fact that he chose to stay and raise them and not my brother and sister. It really upset them for a very long time. The year that my father died, my sister had finally decided to make amends with dad. She was going to go visit him in th summer of '04 but dad died before she could do that. It was really hard for her to go to his funeral. She felt guilty for not knowing him and forgiving him sooner. I think she thought that if she had forgiven him sooner, he might not have died. That isn't the case but, that is how the brain works sometimes. I have good memories of my dad because I got to spend more time with him than my brother and sister. They only have a few good memories and those are very few. Most of their memories are of disappointment, where my dad is concerned. The times that he said he was coming to pick us up and then didn't show or he was going to come for a visit and then didn't. He knows now that the kids he left behind turned out better than the kids he chose to stay and raise. I have 2 half brothers. One of them is over 30 and still lives at home. The other is in his 20's and he is finally getting his act together. He lives on his own but still needs help from my stepmom(his mom). He makes plenty of money to support himself but spends it on beer and lots of things he doesn't need, before he pays bills and buys groceries. So, my stepmom has to help him out regularly. My stepmom is living on a fixed income with benefits from the army. She gets my dad's retirement from the army. The military has a program where you pay so much a month and then when you die, your surviving spouse or kids receive a check every month for x amount of time after your death. My dad paid for survivor benefits for over 20 years, so my stepmom gets benefits from that, along with her social security check. She gets a decent amount of money to live on but, having a son living at home that is over 30 and an alcoholic/drug addict, she doesn't make nearly enough money for his habits and hers. I say this reluctantly, my mom did a better job raising us than my dad did raising them. There, I said it and now the world knows it. My brother and sister would never treat my mom the way they treated their mom and live to tell about it. No, my mom wasn't that strict but there were rules and if you didn't follow them, you had to take the consequences. I learned a long time ago, Never ever tell your mom to shut-up! I made that mistake once and I said it in a whisper from the other room. My mom had the ears of a hawk and she heard me. Needless to say, I couldn't sit comfortably for a few days and the yard stick was just a ruler after the encounter with my behind! Even though my mom is gone, I still don't say shut-up to her. I might ask her to be quiet or I might say sshhh or hush, but, never ever shut-up! My kids don't tell me that either. Their kids don't say that to them. Guess that is something to pass on to your kids these days. Too many kids have absent parents. Their parents are there but not actively involved in the kids lives because they are too involved with their own BS to pay attention to the kids and how they are acting. There isn't any respect for others or their things or thier life. A lot of kids don't realize how precious their life is until it is too late and they have wasted it. That is a real shame. That is an abomination in my opinion. Life is too precious to just waste it. How can you not appreciate being alive? There are so many good things in the world and too many kids now days just don't see it. Sure wish I had a cure for that. |
| Today is a new day and I'm sure that I will be totally stressed out by the end of the day. I'm still having to drive my daughter around everywhere. Her husband thought he had her car fixed but now it won't start at all. Go figure! He is trying to get her car fixed but just because she is complaining about not having a car and it is driving him crazy! But, today I think that I will talk about the hidden competition between my daughter and my almost daughter-in-law. For some unknown reason, my daughter feels threatened by her brother's girlfriend. She isn't actually his girlfriend anymore. They still live in the same house and they share the bills and groceries and things like that. Occasionally, they are bed-buddies, but as for being boyfriend and girlfriend, that was over about a year ago. They have a son together and my son can't make himself move out because he wouldn't get to see his son very much. Yes, she is one of those women. It didn't start out that way, it just ended up that way. Anyway, my daughter has felt threatened by her long before she got hooked up with my son. She(daughter-in-law) used to be my oldest daughter's best friend. They were friends in jr. high and up until just a few years ago. She went to visit my oldest daughter for a while. That was when she broke up with my son. She took thier child to another state to stay with my oldest daughter. After about a month, things went from good to bad and then from bad to worse. Anyone with kids knows that 2 moms with 2 different parenting styles cannot co-exist in the same household without consequences. They had some major conflicts and my daughter-in-law ended up moving back in with my son. When she moved back in, she had her own bedroom, my son had his own bedroom and thier son had his room. Well, now they share a bedroom and a bed , but, that is about as far as it goes, unless she has been drinking and she is in the mood. Then it is ok for something to happen, but only if she is three sheets to the wind, so to speak. Anyway, as I was saying, there has always been a competition between her and my 2nd daughter. I don't know why. There is no way she could ever replace my daughter and I have told that to my daughter so many times that it should be tattooed across her forehead! But, she has gotten it in her head that I treat my son's girlfriend differently than her, I do because she isn't my daughter. But she doesn't get special or preferential treatment like my daughter does. It is such a trying situation between those two and sometimes it just makes me crazy. There isn't anything I can do about it and I shouldn't worry about it but it still bothers me. Aside from totally ignoring her and my grandson, there is nothing I can do to remedy the situation between them. I am not going to ignore my grandson, so they have worked out an uneasy truce between them for now. As long as neither of them interfere with the others child or parenting ability, then they are ok with the other. When it gets really strange, is when I make plans to take one of them somewhere, the other one tries to get me to do something really important at the same time. For example, yesterday, I was supposed to take my daughter-in-law to a no-kill shelter to take some puppies to them. The city won't let them have more than 2 dogs, mainly because the neighbors are complaining. My daughter had a dentist appt. for today. Yesterday, my daughter suddenly had the brilliant idea to call the dentist and have her appt changed. So, instead of taking my daughter-in-law to the shelter, I had to take my daughter to the dentist instead. Why, because my daughter decided to change her appt after she found out that I was supposed to take my daughter-in-law somewhere and she didn't want me to do anything with her, so, she fixed it where I couldn't. All the while making it seem as if it was just an innocent accident. It does no good to confront her on this issue because she has plausible deniability. Atleast she thinks she does. I am a very passive person. I don't like confrontation and will avoid it when possible. It is just easier for me and for my daughter-in-law to just work around it. Yes, I know I shouldn't do that but it is easier than arguing with everyone and listening to everyone call each other every name in the book and then some. If those two get into an arguement, then the grandchildren suffer, because they don't get to see each other. Not even at my house. They were arguing the christmas before last and when christmas day arrived, everyone was supposed to come to Grandma's house to get thier presents. Well, my daughter and her girls came in the morning and my daughter-in-law, son and thier son came in the evening, so they wouldn't have to be there at the same time. We had Thanksgiving at my son's house and Christmas dinner at my daughter's house. Instead of having them both at my house like we used to do before they decided to have an on-going fued over whatever it is they feel like fueding about at the time. How crappy is that? It makes for a really stressed out grandma! I love being with my grandchildren but it is a rare thing when I can be with all of them at one time. Even though I love my grandchildren, by the end of the day, I am ready for the peace and quiet of my own house. Atleast there, I am the boss, even though my husband thinks that he is the boss of the house. He knows that I run the house and just let him think that he does. He wears the pants but I make the rules and he enforces them when I can't. When the kids were little, he was the big meany because if they got out of line, they had to answer to him after they answered to me. Sometimes, the punishment had to fit the crime and sometimes the punishment from me was enough. It is really strange being a grandma. I still have some authority over my kids but not much. They all know how to act at my house and fortunately for me, they have passed that on to thier kids. I guess I have done a pretty good job raising my kids. They are respectful of others and thier belongings, they are well mannered and polite to others, they are hard workers and none of them are aggressive to others unless provoked to the extreme. The best part of having raised my kids, they still love thier momma and they know that momma will always love them. I have the best kids in the world, but, only because they are my kids and I am very proud of all of them! |
| Today is Leap day. That sounds so very strange to me. It just doesn't sound right, like Leap year. Guess I shouldn't look a gift day in the mouth. Technically, it is an extra day added to the days that I have lived already. Since I am almost 50, the extra day is a good thing. So, over the course of my 49 years, I have been given an extra 12 days so far. Who knows how many more of those I will get, certainly not me. I don't know where I was going with that thought, it was just there. I am so ready for spring and a little more warmth and new things growing. Don't get me wrong, winter is ok, I'm just tired of being stuck in the house. It wouldn't have been so bad this year if our landlord wasn't so stingy with his money. Unfortunately, the people that we rent from are just in it for the money. They expect us to fix things and still pay all of the rent without any kind of discount. If it something major, they do the temporary fix or a quick fix and then forget about it because it is fixed for now. There are a lot of landlords like that where we live. Things are hard for everybody and I understand that but putting one wall heater in a four bedroom house is hardly fixing the problem. We have small electric heaters in the bedrooms that we use and I use the oven to heat up the house enough that you don't feel the chill in the air all of the time. You can't use a gas oven for hours on end though. Yes, I have a window or two cracked, don't want to overload me brain with carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, whichever one it is. Things might be hard but they aren't that bad. You know, I always thought that life would get easier as my kids got older and moved out but it seems as if it is still just as hard now as it was back then. Aren't you supposed to have a little extra money for things for yourself? I had 5 kids and 4 of them have moved out, a long time ago. Most of them have kids of thier own and seem to be doing o.k. for now. My husband makes almost 3 times what he did when all of my kids were little and in school and living at home. So, why are we still living paycheck to paycheck, like we did back then? It doesn't make sense to me. It seems like it should be easier to make ends meet and have a few dollars left over every week, but that isn't happening. I mean, I buy groceries and the bills are paid but a couple of them are continuously behind. Seems to me that shouldn't be happening. It was that way when the kids were small and it shouldn't be that way now that they are grown. I know that the economy is in turmoil right now and that is probably why it is still so hard to make ends meet, but it shouldn't be that way. Things are supposed to get easier, financially, as you get older. You have less people to feed and less clothing to buy and your bills should go down because there are less people using the utilities but I just can't see where it has gotten easier for us. My husband works over 40 hours every week and he makes decent money now. A lot more than the 5.50 an hour he started out making all those years ago. But things just don't seem to be any different now than when all of the kids still lived at home. We still just barely scrape by every week. What's up with that? It just isn't right! Things are not supposed to be this hard as you get older. I know there are a lot of people out there and they will say that I am full of it. Atleast I have groceries and bills and a place to live and I understand that, but, it still doesn't seem fair somehow. I am grateful for the things that I have and I don't mean to complain but it just isn't right. On a good note, my oldest daughter is going to go to nursing school and get her LPN. She's already a CNA and has been for sometime. Now she is going to become a nurse. Ofcourse, that could change between now and December, when the next class starts. She usually keeps the goals that she sets for herself and it would be great for her to be able to take care of her kids without needing her husbands income. They have been having problems and it would be good if she had a job where she could support herself and her girls, all by herself. Just incase things don't work out between them. They are trying to make it work, but, you never know what the future holds. On that note, I will stop for today. I might not be able to add anything else until Monday. Maybe nothing exciting will happen over the weekend and I will be totally relaxed and stress free when I add some more to this little blog. |
| Yesterday was just crazy. Have you ever had one of those days when you just wanted to stay home but had to take everybody everywhere? Yesterday was one of those days. My daughters car isn't working right and she can't drive it any further than 2 or 3 blocks from her house. If she goes any further, the car dies on her. If her husband hadn't driven her car for about 3 wks, before he fixed his car, hers wouldn't be broken now. His car is all stock and he drives it like he is a nascar driver. She has a beretta and he drives it like he drives his car. He drove her car and blew some seals or something because there is water in the oil now. It is the 2nd time he has done that to her car. It is a control thing with him, if her car doesn't work right, he can keep tabs on her better than if it does work. I think he even has GPS on her phone. I say this because if she leaves the house and he doesn't know ahead of time that she is leaving, her phone will ring just as soon as we get out on the road. Doesn't matter if she is with me or not. If she goes anywhere and he isn't previously informed, she gets in trouble. I'm trying to talk her into leaving him but I'm not having much luck right now. When she gets tired of it, she will leave. I know it has to be her choice, not mine, but the waiting is really hard. I can only do so much and take so much before I explode and I am just about at my limit. Anyway, yesterday, I had to take my daughter to the dentist. She has a tooth that needs to be pulled and the dentist would have pulled it yesterday but she had to take her daughters to the doctor, so we had to reschedule for next week. So, after the dentist, we had to go to Walmart and get her prescription filled. That took 30 minutes of running around Walmart and waiting for the prescription. Then I took them home so they could put thier stuff up and I went home to put my stuff up. Grabbed a quick sandwich, then went back to my daughters house and picked up her and her 2 girls and took them to the doctor. Then after about an hour or so, we were done with that, then I took them back home. I was home for about 30 minutes, then I had to go to the store again because my husband came home and didn't have cigarettes, so back out I went. I felt like I was going and going and going all day long. Yesterday, I was the energizer bunny!!!!! Today, my day started normal enough. Got up at 7 a.m. and got my husband's stuff together for him to go to work. He left at about 7:25 as usual and then I had to get dressed and take my son's friend girl to an all day company meeting. I had to take her because she didn't know how to get there and it is about 30 minutes away and her car wouldn't make it there. So, I got to her house about 8:15 or so and dropped her off at 8:45a.m. Got back home at about 10:00 because I had to stop at Burger King and pick up sausage biscuits and ham&cheese cres'sanwiches. Dropped the ham and cheese at my daughter's house and brought the sausage biscuits back home for my son and I for breakfast. I still have to go to Walmart and return the car charger for my husband's cell phone because it is the wrong one. It looked like the right one but it wasn't, then at about 4:15 this afternoon, I have to pick up my grandson from after school care and then go pick up his mom from her all day meeting and take them home, then go home and try to start cooking dinner so that we don't eat at 7 tonight! I'M TIRED!! When my oldest son gets home he is going to try to take his friend girl out for dinner for her birthday, which is today, and I am babysitting so they can go out to eat. sometimes being a mom and grandma is totally exhausting. It has it's rewards though. You get those special pictures from your grandchildren that take up all the space on your fridge for months on end. I have four of them on the fridge now and they have been there since christmas. Those are the favorites for now. When I get new ones, the old ones go in the picture book for the grandkids later on in life. Guess that's enough for now. I'll add some more in a day or two. |
| Well, this past weekend was rather interesting. My grandson turned 8 years old and had his B-day party at Chuck E Cheese. It wasn't at all what I expected. Yes, I expected it to be crowded but not like that! It was wall to wall people and the adults were ruder than the kids. We were sitting at the table while the kids were playing the games and a man walked by and shoved my son into the table. He literally pushed him into the table and squashed him, so he could get through there. You would think that he would say excuse me and wait just a few seconds before doing something like that but he didn't even bother. He just pushed and kept going. Even when my son said something about it rather loudly, the man didn't even acknowledge him or anything. Then a little while later as we were getting ready to leave, another man came barreling through. If my son had not moved my granddaughter out of the way, he would have pushed her to the ground and probably kept on going without so much as a thought to the 9year old girl he would have pushed to the ground! I couldn't believe that adults could be so callous and insensitive. After all, everyone was there for someone's birthday. They should have some semblance of deceincy and respect for the other people there. I don't think we will be going to Chuck E Cheese for any other birthdays. Not only were the adults very rude and uncaring, the pizza was not good and the prices were outrageous. My son was supposed to get a party for six kids and ten adults for $100.00 That included the cake and tokens for the kids and goody bags for the kids. It also included 2 pizzas and drinks. They ended up paying $189.00 for this birthday party, not to mention the extra money they used for extra tokens for the games. I would imagine they spent over $200.00 before all was said and done. I told my youngest son that was the reason they never went to places like that for thier birthdays. It just wasn't affordable for us to do something like that. I had 5 kids and if we did something special like that for one, we had to do something like that for all of their birthdays. It simply wasn't affordable even back in the day, as the kids say. Most of my kids b-day parties were at home or at thier relatives house i.e. aunt or uncle or cousins house. All in all, I guess the birthday wasn't all bad because I was invited this time. There was a time when I wasn't allowed to see my grandson because his mother had a 2x4 stuck somewhere sideways. When she gets it in her head that you have done something wrong to her, you don't get the option of explaining anything to her. She thinks it therefore it is how she thinks it is. After a while, she will question you about it and then maybe you get to tell her what was going on at that time, if you remember. If not, then she assumes she was right the first time and you have to take your punishment, such as not seeing your son or his son for about a year. I didn't really get to see my grandson for about a year and a half because she thought that I was trying to be her mother. I couldn't be that cold-hearted if someone paid me. There is no way I could raise one of my kids wtih so much animosity and hatefulness towards other people. Granted, she has had a hard life before she became an adopted member of this family. Her family didn't do the loving caring family thing. Her mother made her go to work in jr. high so that she could pay rent. Her brother has ADHD and it is severe. To the point that he has to take medication just to be able to concentrate enough to go to school. He is in his late teens, early 20's now and he reads on a 5th grade level. Part of it is the ADHD and part of it is a learning problem. But, instead of dealing with these problems and helping her son, my daughter-in-laws mother, took her son and gave him away to the state. She did this while my son's girlfriend was at school one day, many years ago. My daughter-in-law was getting ready for school and talking to her brother. They had breakfast together and then she went to school. When she came home her mother told her that her brother didn't live there anymore and that she gave him to the state to raise and adopt out if possible. She signed away all of her rights and didn't even bother to keep up with him and how he was doing. My daughter-in-law found the number of his case worker, in her mom's(?) purse and called the woman. She set up visitation with him and tried to get custody of her brother. She couldn't because she was a minor and her mother stopped it because they were living in the same house. She didn't want him and because they lived together, that stopped everything in its tracks. After she moved into her own place, her brother had a safe place to live so she left him there. He was happy and felt safe. Her mother caused as many road blocks as she could ti keep her from seeing her brother and for a while, she didn't see him, talk to him or even write to him. They have just recently gotten back intouch with each other and now she is happy that he is ok. He still has the same problems but he is older and better able to deal with them. Anyway, I brought that up because my son's ex current ex girlfriend or his baby momma, got it into her head that I was telling her doctor that I was her momma. She said that she had a momma and didn't need another one trying to take over her life, etc.,etc., etc. So, for the first year of my grandson's life, I saw him once or twice. I didn't see him regularly until after he was 1 or 1 and a half. But, we have moved past that, for now. I am pretty sure that I will do or say something in the future and will have to wait all over again. |
| O.K., the reason behind the crying, I had just stopped by a friend's house to talk to her about the loss of her mother, a little over a week ago. Just to give her some moral support and let her know that what she was feeling was normal. I lost my mom last summer and I know what she is going through. There is such a strange mix of emotions that your brain wants to turn itself off but just doesn't. It is very hard to watch someone you love just stop living and even harder to watch it happen slowly. Her mother was diagnosed with end stage leukemia and alzheimer's, so it was exceptionally hard for her because there were days that her mother did not know her. I can't imagine how that felt but I am sure it was hard for her. When someone you love goes through something like that and all you can do is watch, it is very trying for your mind and your emotions. Then when the inevitable happens and they pass away, part of you feels relieved and then you feel guilty because you felt relieved that it was over. They aren't suffering anymore and your happy about that but you can't or shouldn't feel that way and then your sad ontop of all of the other emotions. Then your brain just doesn't know what to do and you walk around in a kind of fog for a while. It is almost a never ending circle of conflicting emotions and it is totally draining. Because you are so emotionally invested in the person, it becomes physically draining as well. You forget to eat, you want to be left alone but not really, you want everyone to go away but not really, you want things to get back to normal but feel guilty about wanting that to happen, it just feels like it never ends and your so tired that you just want to sleep until things are back to normal but not really. All of these things are normal at least that is what I have experienced and what I have been told by others who have been there also. When I saw that accident that day, I was just emotionally overwhelmed. Talking to my friend ahs helped me to deal with my mom's death last summer and life goes on as they(?) say. If you don't try to keep up, it passes you and then you have all kinds of trouble trying to catch up. My advice to my friend was to take it one day at a time and if something you see or hear makes you want to cry, then cry. Don't hold it all in, you will explode in one way or another. As for getting back to normal, the only thing I have found that seems to work for the short term, pretend that everything is ok and that you are fine in public for example, at work, at the grocery store where people know you but not personally. After a while, you begin to accept what has happened and there isn't as much pretending going on as there was. Life goes on. If you know someone that has lost a loved one and they tell you to go away and leave them alone, do so, but don't go far. Just leave the room they are in but keep an eye on them. Don't bother them but don't go away. Give them time to deal with the emotional overload, Just be there to listen and give them a shoulder to cry on or two arms to hold them up for a while. Help them to keep going and not give up. They need your love and support and comfort and understanding more than you know. Cooking dinner for them and bringing it over, that helps, especially if they have others who depend on them for the evening meal. Helping them by cleaning the kitchen or just something simple like vacuuming for them while they are out makes such an impression and believe it or not, relieves some of the stress they feel at this time in thier lives. Little things make the biggest impression.Sometimes the smallest thing is just the right thing to help them through the day. I am going to try to take my friend on a picnic lunch this weekend. Just to get out of the house and enjoy the day. When you have a good day, it is a blessing. |
| I was going to the bank the other day and there was a wreck in front of the grocery store, right down the road from my house. It involved an SUV, a van and a car. At first, on the way to the bank, everyone was out of the vehicles and it looked like everyone was fine. They were all waiting for the cops to arrive. On the way back from the bank, there was 2 ambulances there, they were trying to get a 2 or 3 year old to lay down on the gurney. It just wasn't happening. The child was hollering for mom and it just made me cry. Gotta go, beright back. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
