Just checking in...

I'm OK

Thank you for every one's concern

It's been an exhausting week... not because of "him" but because of my own mind.

As much as I know, logically, that this had nothing to do with me. As much as I know, logically, that this was all him. As much as I know, logically, this was HIS choice.

I still feel myself thinking.... the what ifs

What if I hadn't of gone home?
What if I would of returned earlier?
What if my kids had been home?
What if ?

How many emotions can one man have?
The continuous crying and heartbreak that I have had to deal with is enough! Ive had enough of tears and poor me attitudes! The pity pot is no place for someone to live. Pull yourself up and move the fuck on!

He called Monday, to inform me he is in a treatment facility. I am glad he is receiving the treatment that he needs to continue on in life and to be able to function. He realized it's the alcohol that is ruining his life, and he has taken the necessary steps to attend AA and has gotten a sponsor.

He has asked me to come visit and to sit in on one of his "sessions"
I declined
Does that make me a cold callous person? Maybe, but I need to go thru my own healing.
I need to allow the anger to leave, before even actually speaking to him, I'm concerned with what words of hate & hurt will fly from my mouth.

I am looking for a new place to live, sadly that's easier sad than done, it's amazing how many people will not rent to owners of large breed animals. I have a mastiff... yes.. he's 175lbs.. he's only 17months old. But the most aggressive part on his body is his tail. He's got happy dog syndrome going on... that tail gets going, protect yourself... it's been known to make grown men cry... but not in a pathetic poor me way.. more in a "oh my god... my balls!"

Life is getting back to normal... the anger comes and goes, and it is exhausting to say the least.
The kids are dealing really well with it. Amazing how my 15 yr old son has really stepped up and is being really supportive to me. It warms my heart to see how much he truly does love me.
Giving me hugs when ever I walk by him (although he usually has to stop me to make me hug him, not because I dont want to.. but because I get caught up in my own drama and were not a touchy feely family), telling me how much he loves me. Asking if I'm OK, and refusing to go to friends house's because he doesn't want me to be alone. I finally had a nice sit down discussion with him and had to reassure him that I am fine... we are all survivors and that NONE of this was any one's fault!

My daughter too.. she is so much like her Mommy though. Sometimes I feel like I have done her a grave disadvantage in life. She is not a touchy feely child, as I am not. She is not free with her words or her actions. We tell each other we love each other, but we are not into random hugs or kisses. Her way of showing me she cares is by doing things around home, with out being asked.
She cleaned the whole house, did all the laundry, and made me chocolate chip cookies - even if I do say, she is the best damn cookie "artist" EVER!!!

They are my life
My reason

I love you Kiddo's!!!
today, tomorrow, forever!

Suicide is so final

My mind is in a fog yet the I'm riding the anger train, I think I will be riding it for a very long time.

How could he?!
Put myself through the that hell, and put my children at risk?
Who the hell does he think he is?
Is life so not worth living and so very bad that popping those pills chased w/a 1/2 gallon of your favorite beverage is worth the end result?

If I hadn't of found him, what then?
Was it truly a cry for help?
Or was it truly an end that he wished for?

What if my children had been there?

Why? Seriously why?

I'm exhausted...emotionally & mentally exhausted.
I cant take much more
How am I suppose to feel?
Am I being non-caring, cold, heartless?
Maybe...but I must be this way
I have lives depending on me

Your still alive
Now, find someone else to torment...
Leave me the fuck alone.
I'm done!

Just stamp my forhead **VOID**

There is a void in my life.
What that void is I haven't figured out

I'm slowly going through the motions of just living
I get up, I go to work, I go home, I cook dinner, I do laundry, I go to bed
Repeat
day in...
day out...

My life has taken on a series of nothingness
Its a mixture of
Hopelessness
Helplessness
Do-nothing-ness

How does one pull away from the blah's?
How does one know if they are in love or not?
I suppose if you have to question it, you arnt... but.. ????

I feel like I'm nonexistent - like people don't truly see me, am I so ordinary that I'm voidable?
Forgettable?

Confusion
lost
damn it!
Sucks!
Pathetic

Im not liking this alot..
wow.. seriously?

I need to go find some excitment..
Some.... SOMETHING!

Any suggestions?

An era come and gone...do u rememeber?

You could hardly see
for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears
as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the
TV set,

'Good Night, David.

Good Night, Chet.'



My Mom used to cut
chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost
hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli

Almost all of us would
have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone
would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not
PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in
gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an
option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than
gym.

Speaking of school, we
all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in
detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.


We must have had
horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then.
Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was
supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of
myself.

I just can't recall how
bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270
digital TV cable stations.


Oh yeah... and where
was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I
could have been killed!

We played 'king of the
hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when
we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked
it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt
spanked.


Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of
antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a
horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.


We didn't act up at the
neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked
there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.


I recall Donny Reynolds
from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop,
just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our
house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a
goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.


To top it off, not a
single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a
dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so
duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire
country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO
SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T -- SORRY FOR WHAT
YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING

Summer is coming

Hi all,
Only 3 more school days left, then summer officially begins. My son actually obtained a babysitting job for the summer, it's only 4 hrs a day, but he will be raking in a whole $100 a week!!! That's a lot of cash for a 15 yr old. Oh the plans he already has for that money. New IPOD, new bike, clothes, a new cell phone. Oh wow.. I can already hear it

"Mom, can you pay half and I'll pay half"
"Mom, I swear I will pay you back"
"Mom, P L E A S E!!!???"

It will be a great lesson in money management for him.

My daughter already has a part time job working for a professional dog handler. Her first work weekend is next weekend. She doesn't get paid alot, but she gets about $50 or so a weekend.. that's alot of money for her.. hell she's only 12.

The girl child graduates from 6th grade on Tuesday... moving on up into the great big world of Middle School, the drama is already surrounding her so much so that I cant keep up. What amazes me is how many friends that girl has. Especially because she's so dang bossy. Controlling, argumentative and well, she's kind of a bully... hey I can say that she's a mini me... ;)
But I swear there are always kids at our house, staying the night or just always there! There's even a boy that hangs out ALL THE TIME..... he seems like a good kid and he minds his manners.. I actually think he's in "like" with my daughter but luckily she has no desire to have a "boyfriend" she says their just good friends.. believe you and me though, I do not leave them alone for any point and time!

The boy... he's starting to run with an interesting group of kids. I cant tell him who to be friends with and who not to be friends with. I remember when my father used to pull that on me and all it would do would push me closer to those kids that he didn't want me to associate with. So I just told Wanna-be-man-child that he needs to watch his back and always keep his head about him. Of course this did make me pull the reigns in a little tighter and now he has an earlier curfew and his time is limited with these friends......

Other than that...
I'm going to go get my endorsement so I can start riding... I'm ready to hit the open road with vibrations between my legs and the wind in my hair. A few of my other friends are in the process of getting their motorcycle endorsements and that way this summer we can all hit the open road and ride ride ride!!! Woo Hoo!!! I'm really looking forward to that!

Nothing overly exciting on the man front. I'm in blah blah land.. not in the mood for much of anything.... even satisfying myself isn't satisfying.. what the hell is wrong with me?

Well.. on that note.. I'm out...
Peace!

Grammy - Always and Forever

Sometimes in life you are blessed not only to have the unconditional love of your parents.. but to have the unconditional love of a Grandparent.

I was blessed. My Grammy lived with us, she spent the majority of her time with us in our home, with the occasional trips to Minnesota - to spend time with other relatives. I was her baby girl.. not her first grandchild, nor her first Granddaughter.. but.. out of the 4 Grandchildren she was blessed with, I was one of her favorites.

Our home was less than a block away from the elementary school that I attended, Grammy would meet me at the local city bus stop after school - and we would jump on the city bus and head off to our daily ritual. She knew all the bus drivers by name, they all adored her. She was 5'4 - striking red curly hair and maybe 100lbs soaking wet. Full of piss and vinegar. Had the laugh of angels & the tongue of a sailor! She was my everything... I valued her more than my own Mother.

We would ride the bus to the local Woolworth's - where they still had a soda fountain in the store, I was allowed to have some form of sweets, as long as I didn't tell my Mother, while Grammy sat there drank her coffee and had her allocated 2 cigarettes. She always told me, This is a bad nasty habit little one - do not ever do as I do! - I realize now, so many years later, this was Grammy's way of 'hushing' me up...hehehe..she was a sneaky little gal!

Since I had my sweets & Grammy had her bad addictions, she would make us walk the 5 miles home instead of catching the bus home. We were always home in time for dinner, during the day while us kids were at school Grammy would bake some treat for desert. Homemade Blackberry cobbler/pie, Rhubarb/Strawberry pie, chocolate chip cookies, banana bread whatever tickled her fancy during the day. Something.. always.. every night.

As I got older and more independent our time was cut less and less. I got so selfish... Never did I realize that I would loose her so early in life.

By the time I was 12 - the Alzheimer's started to rear it's ugly head. Small bouts of dementia, forgetfulness, my parents were going thru a nasty divorce and little did anyone realize how bad Grammy was getting until we received the call in the middle of the night from the local police department stating they had picked Grammy up for trying to break into another house.

You see, Grammy was getting so bad that I think we were all so caught up in our own misery, we were all being so self-absorbed, not caring about anyone else.
I was starting to experiment with drugs. My Mother was lost in her own misery. Grammy was left to fend for herself.

She was diagnosed shortly there of. Alzheimer's. It's hard as a family to pull together when something so drastic is handed to you. Your hear of other people going thru these issues with in their families, but you honestly think never in your family. Things like that happen to other people. But never you.

There were calls a few times a week from the local police dept, they had Grammy in custody because she had escaped the house, would walk the streets late at night, find a house that she thought looked familiar and would attempt to enter. Luckily.. it was the same house every time, and luckily the police and the homeowners were very understanding. We had to provide the local police dept with decaf-coffee to give to Grammy when they picked her up and they always told us the same thing... She's a delight.. she would sit and talk to all those "fine young men" and flirt and tell her stories. In Grammy's mind.. even though she was in her 80's..she honestly believed in her mind she was in her mid 20's.

Mom had to re-locate for her job to Southern Cali... I decided to stay in Washington because by this time I was 15 - and a full blown drug addict. I stayed behind to live with my Father and Mom and Grammy moved.

Mom and I lost touch over the years, due to me being so strung out and not caring about anyone or anything but myself. I believe I visited my Mother once after she moved. The 2 weeks with my Mother and my Grammy broke my heart. Grammy was in an adult daycare center and home in the evenings, Mom had to literally lock Grammy in the apartment at night, disconnect the stove and remove anything that would harm her.

It got to the point that Grammy had to be placed in a full care facility.
As the years progressed and the disease set in further and further.. her body started shutting down.. she was bed-ridden and gang-green set in... they amputated her left leg before it spread...

I received the phone call from my Mom when I was 17 the Dr's were giving her 72 hrs - if that, her vitals were slowing down.
I drove 12 hrs straight to say my goodbyes...
I walked into that care facility, headed down the long corridors, looking at other patients and thinking how I never want to live like this. All these people that I'm sure have wonderful stories to tell, families somewhere but probably don't get enough visitors...
As I walked those halls, I couldn't stop, I walked right by her room and just kept walking, I could not face her. I was not prepared at all to see how she looked

When I finally gained the courage to walk into her room at the nursing home..My Grammy was not who was laying in that bed, the skeleton of someone else was there, her eyes were vacant, that vibrant perfect red hair was stringy & gray..gone was that twinkle.. that smile.. those words of encouragement.

Who laid there, was someone I didn't know..one look at the women who laid there, and you could tell, this was someone who was wanting to say her goodbyes... but was being forced to live, not on her own will either.

I lifted her frail hand.. kissed her cheek.. and told her I loved her... she turned her face towards me.. and said my name. I cried. Ive heard it said that Alzheimer's patients right before death come back to the present. They know who is around them, they know what is going on. I don't know if that is true. But Grammy knew me.. she hadn't known anyone for many years. My Mom was her sister. My oldest cousin was my Grammy's niece not Granddaughter and when I had visited her years before I was my cousin.

She hung on for the 2 days that I was there. We talked.. like the old days from so many years before. I was 6 yrs old again.. My Grammy was taking me to Woolworth's to the soda fountain for my sweet treat while she had her 2 cigarettes and her cup of coffee....

She remembered me. She knew exactly who I was. I would sit there, tell her how beautiful she was and how much I loved her. She would tell me she loved me and to be a good girl, and she told me that she would always be watching over me.

The day I had to leave... she grabbed my hand and said
"It's time baby.. I love you always and forever"

I drove home that afternoon.... I got the phone call the next morning
Grammy was gone

I named my daughter after her and I honestly believe that Grammy is there.. my daughter has her eyes.. that twinkle... and that piss and vinegar...

She's watching over me
I do hope I have made her proud!

I love you Grammy... Always and Forever

Vibrations!

The weather in the great Puget Sound was absolutely beautiful this past weekend...
I enjoyed the sun so much that my wee little nose it sun burnt.. What is it about fresh air, sun and the vibrations of a Harley between your legs that makes you so sleepy?

I attended the Port Townsend Rhody Festival this last weekend.. w/some dear friends..nothing like camping near the Puget Sound, bar-b-queuing, sitting around doing shots of Fireball, Slippery Nipples..have a few Rum n Cokes...and hearing the occasional sound of a well tuned bike rev it's engine. Ah... music to the ears!

Makes me realize how much I love the great outdoors, well, when it's not raining anyway, and believe me this part of the region gets plenty of rain so when the sun comes out, people that you didn't even know existed come out of the wood!

This weekend made me realize how much more I would appreciate the summer months if I could ride myself. Don't get me wrong I do love to sit astride a bike, enjoying the ride w/out a care in the world. But, I think I would enjoy it that much more if I was in control of the bars.. cruising the road w/all that power between my legs... oh yeah.. the power what an aphrodisiac!

Yes.. I am ready for the summer to come, I'm ready to enjoy my time... sun...sand..surf.. and Riding free!