text
stringlengths 114
320k
|
|---|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
When my husband cheated on me , I had no idea I would be dealing with the emotional wreckage for so long . This blog is a heads up to others dealing with the trauma of infidelity . Brutal . After an affair , your life doesn 't belong to you anymore . For over a year , I couldn 't control my own thoughts . The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random . With this blog , I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage . A Year After the Affair began as a cathartic virtual diary of sorts . I needed an out of the box idea to move myself forward out of the bleak reality I had lived in since DDay . When I registered for this blog on E - Blogger , it was called BlogSpot then , there was no thought given to what my story might do to / for others that had been touched / brutalized by an affair . It was all about me and maybe a little about Jaymie . At first , I did think maybe I could use this as a tool to further embarrass Jaymie . Thanks to the Gods of Cyber Space , soon after I hit publish on my first post , I found the Healing Heart . The members on this support site , that I recommend very highly , schooled me pronto about staying away from the other woman . Still for the first few months , I had all of our last names right up in front for the world to view . I even added a couple of nice pics of the three of us . One of Richard and I celebrating his 60th birthday at Pebble Beach just nine short months after DDay , arms around each other looking as happy as newlyweds and Jaymie 's Google + mug shot . Shared both with anyone who found their way to my homepage . No doubt when I began the blog , I was still residing in Crazy Town and I was frantically looking for a way out . It was over a year after DDay and even though there were many days that I felt nearly normal , there were more that felt like I was living a cowardly life , too afraid to admit my marriage was a facade . We would not be able to survive Richard 's infidelity . I hoped by beginning to write , I would find a way to reveal the truth of what my future would be and how in the hell I 'd ever get there without ending up in a straight jacket . This is my 100th post . I am very proud of how far I 've come since the first day I began to write , 12 / 01 / 11 . I 'm still very selfish about it . I write mostly for me . I still need to get to the end of my Crazy Town adventure because that 's how I have learned to let it go . Type it , read it , briefly revisit the pain then exhale . . . . . Ahhhhh . . . . bye , bye unmerciful memory . Inhale and breathe in what brings me joy today . There is so much . I am very blessed . I am extremely grateful . A blessing I never forget to count is you . You have changed much of the direction of this blog . You gave me an additional constructive reason to write . If the blog had remained just a negative narrative or a tragic tale of my old news , I do not believe I would have been able to walk this far on my Road to Happy . For me to continue to rejuvenate my happiness , this can 't be all about me . I want this blog to be more than a record of my time in Crazy Town . I want it to be a place of recovery , a place for those of you that are struggling to find the strength to repair your damaged life . The fact is . . . I NEED you people ! Many of you thank me for aiding in your recovery , but you always return the favor ten fold . You are my new drug of choice . Jaymie is out , my readers are in . I guess it 's like switching from a crack pipe to a treadmill . Both can be addictive but obviously one is the better choice if you wanna live a happy life . Is that a shitty metaphor ? Yeah . . . probably . But , even after 100 posts , my writing will never win any literary awards . You 're not gonna get Hemingway here , but you 'll always get straight shooting . I tell you exactly what I think . I pull very few punches . Each of us is in a different phase of recovery . No two people find their way out of Crazy Town the same way . However , I have noticed that many of you use my story for a bit of a vicarious thrill . You 're too smart to lash out at your spouse 's affair partner , so reading about my antics brings you a small measure of not - so - guilty pleasure . Am I right ? It 's OK to admit that . You 'd have to be true saint to never wish ill will for the affair partner . Hell , you 're a Mother Teresa clone if you never imagined them boiled in oil or flattened by a steam roller . If reading about my feeble attempts at payback bring you some tiny amount of titillation , feel that shiver of possibility then remember I have proven beyond any doubt , it ain 't worth it . Here 's what we can do : If you wanna let it all out , declare your rage with the other woman / man , do it here . Write them a letter , say all you need to right here . Write it , post it or delete it . It worked for me . Maybe it can help some of you , too . Tell them exactly what you need them to know . Get it out of your broken heart and off your chest . I 'll start . My letter to Jaymie today will be much different that it would have been 100 posts ago . Here 's what I would write to Jaymie today : Jaymie , I 'm sorry . I 'm sorry that I wasted nearly a year of my life focusing on you . I 'm sorry that I wasn 't strong enough after finding out about your affair with my husband to put my pain on him . I 'm sorry that I didn 't know how to handle so much grief . I 'm sorry that you had a front row seat to witness my pathetic attempts to repair my shattered heart . I 'm sorry that I was so confused and damaged that I actually thought you might help me heal . I 'm sorry I let my shock and anguish blind me to the uselessness of your existence in my life . I 'm stronger now . I 'm smarter now . I 'm so much healthier and happier now . Richard and I love each other more everyday and I am grateful I gave him the chance to prove to me he is truly sorry for the mistakes he made with you . Life is good . I 'm done with you . But , I 'll share this bit of advice . . . . watch your back . The karma bus could be right around the next corner and you know you 're due for a ride . Your turn . If you think it might bring you any relief at all , start typing ! Writing can be such a powerful healing tool . I can surely vouch for that . You don 't really need to write 100 posts to find your path on the Road to Happy . Sometimes one good rant will start your journey . Glad you wrote about the karma thing . I never use " karma " ever . The reason is : If I tell someone that , then that means , to me , what the hell did I do to deserve this ? Then I must have done some bad shit to be in a situation to tell someone else , Karma 's a bitch . So , what do you think you did to deserve this karma ? I liked your letter to jaymie . But in your defense she should have known better . Especially given her Christian background . Also you were a bit hard on yourself . You understood that if you took out your pain on Richard your relationship would not have survived . Good luckPS I hope that Karma does come back to haunt Jaymie . I hope that one day her husband steps out on her with a younger woman . And I hope that you are able to hear about it . . . and giggle . October 17 , 2013 at 9 : 09 PM You tried but you didn 't succeed . Its pretty obvious you were putting on a show for this man that was from another world . You come from the gutter , but you haven 't really pulled yourself up from it . No , you can 't have my lifestyle or try to bring up my children , they now laugh at your tattoos , cheap clothes , silly hair and trying to look 20 when your passed middle age . My husband thought you were up for it ( which you were ) but he felt disgusted when he left your hovel of a flat . He hated your arse and your short legs , he felt your vagina was too loose , he couldn 't stand the amount of fake tan and the smell it gave off . He didn 't mind that you were thick and uneducated as he wasn 't bothered about the conversation and it made his bullshit more believable . He hated your stories about how many men fancied you , only because it made him feel so silly as he thought to himself , what fool could fancy this , but I must be a fool for shagging it . He really used you , but I think you used him too . Cheaper than those batteries . ( Sorry this is so long ! It does feel good to write : ) Here is what I would say : It is now about 2 - 1 / 2 years since you were last involved with our family . It truly took me a full 2 years to feel safe and sane in my own life again , but I am OK now . We are all actually OK now . I am never going to forgive you , pity you , or try to understand you in any way . I don 't owe you anything , and if I want to " blame " you for all eternity , I will . You were a stranger who came into our family and stole money , attention , time , and energy that belonged to my children . You never gave any thought to what was in their best interest , and during the time you were pretending their dad , my husband , was your " boyfriend " , our kids did truly suffer . Our family was in danger of almost falling apart completely . Because of your lack of concern for my kids , I will never forgive you . Though I will always truly despise you , I have learned how to move that emotion to a far place in my heart and mind . You aren 't something I really think about much anymore , and I am certain that time will make you even more of a nothing to all of us . I have found that I no longer need to speak of you or learn more about you . For what it 's worth , my husband and I did not have a strong marriage before and during the time you were involved in our family . That does not mean what happened was OK , reasonable , justified or expected . It just means we did not have a strong relationship at that time of our lives . ( We do now . ) Sometimes , when people are together for years and years , those times happen . You will never know or understand that because even though you are nearing 50 , you have not had an actual long term relationship in your life . A few days ago , I forgot your name . Sure , it came back to me after about 20 seconds , but for those 20 seconds , I realized I have given you so little thought lately that I actually forgot your name . You are becoming less and less . I have never spoken to you , and I have no desire to . About a year ago , my husband and I were talking , and he told October 18 , 2013 at 2 : 26 PM Anonymous # 1 : I do believe in Karma . Those were not just words . I don 't think I did anything to DESERVE this . No one . . . absolutely NO ONE deserves this kind of pain , but I gotta admit . . . it taught me a whole lot . I think that 's what Karma means to me . Karma is the way the world teaches us lessons we need to learn . I needed to learn my marriage was not as perfect as I thought it was . It needed work . The affair was my kick in the ass , my wake up call . Could I have learned that lesson in a much easier way ? You bet , but Richard also needed a Karma kick in the ass . He was subject to a whole shit ton of Crazy Town for over a year . He learned selfish actions have consequences . See how it works ? ? Asses kicked . Lessons learned . . . Karma . I figure Jaymie may have already been hit by the Karma bus . . . that bus was named Shawn , but I hope she gets backed over again . ; - ) Hope & Hugs , Shawn Anonymous # 2 : Thanks for the vote of confidence . I don 't think I 'm hard on myself . I 'm just really honest with myself . I know my behavior after DDay made everything harder . I was my own worst enemy . I can admit that now . Jaymie 's husband cheating on her ? That would be pure golden Karma ! ! I like the way you think ! But , truly , I don 't wish the pain of infidelity on anyone , so maybe she could just get hit by a bus or have to live in her car for a year or so ? ? Naughty thoughts ! Sorry ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Wonderful post Shawn ! I 'm nearing my 2nd year into this drama . I 'm nowhere near your perspective but I am so glad to read and learn from yours . you 're right . . . dwelling on the OW is a waste of our time . They aren 't worth it ! Thanks as always , lady ! October 19 , 2013 at 4 : 54 PM Dear OW , I don 't wish bad karma on you . I barely even think about you anymore to even put the energy into such a thought . If anything I want to thank you . Thank you for being the window I needed to see into his secret life . If it wasn 't for someone willing to give him an opportunity to show me who he really is , where would I be right now ? So thank you . I am a smart woman . I will not stay with a man who cheated on me TWICE with two different women ! Once was enough . I don 't care if he begged & cried to stay . My self esteem is not that low that I am willing to put up with that . I will not come home from work everyday wondering if I should be where I am . I deserve more . And I have some years left to celebrate life never wondering what if . So thank you OW for helping me see who he was sooner than later . If it wasn 't you , it could 've been who knows who else . I wish you well . I love that some people are posting their letters in the comments . This is the best blog ever about recovering from infidelity ( I subscribe to a few ) . I absolutely love the unvarnished truth ! I just had to sit back to count . It 's been 3 . 5 years since Dday for me . Everything is over in my case . No more crazy OW showing up drunk on my doorstep with her baby that was the result of the affair . No more lies from a man who continued to seek out the OW in the months and years after Dday . I 've ousted that insanity from my life as best I can . I 'm so glad you mentioned Karma , Shawn . My ex is still in major court battles with the OW over custody - - the battles have been raging for over two years now . I know this because I still talk with my ex almost every day due to the fact that we were / are business partners and the one thing left between us is that . The OW has done such a tremendously good job of kicking his ass it feels as if all I have to do is sit back and watch Karma playout like a football game on TV . At this point , I actually feel sadness for their child . I can 't imagine this woman ever doing the right thing , for the good of her child . She holds him like a pawn . That is the dark side of karma . No child should have to endure that . I see my ex 's pain over it yet all I can think is that he deserves it . But not the child . The child does not deserve it . I think all OWs will at some point experience infidelity from their spouse . As my brother put it men are dogs , and most men will take the opportunity to cheat if it is thrown at them . A man of high net worth and good looks is often a target for unscrupulous young women looking for a free ride , without having to pay any dues to help the man earn his good income . These type of women come on strong . My brother insists that a majority of married men cheat , at least once , but don 't get caught . As for Karma , I agree with Shawn , it is not necessarily a payback for negative behavior , although it can be . It is just as often a way for the universe to teach us a lesson we need to learn . Mine was that I needed to take my husband off that lofty pedestal I had installed him on . Also , another lesson was to never fully trust anyone so innocently , and ever again give a man so much freedom to go out with the boys or on men 's trips . My brother warned me about that , too . But , I did not listen . The freedom to engage in such activities makes it far too easy for a man to hide his cheating . I have many lady friends who never allowed their husbands such freedoms and warned me not to allow mine to have them . I scoffed but now know I was stupid to do so . I did not listen . I trusted too innocently . Also , It 's my understanding that the person who initiates a hurtful action is the one who will later suffer punitive karma as a pay back not the one who was hurt . So , even if a betrayed spouse were to make the other women 's life miserable for a time , the betrayed spouse will not suffer punitive Karma because she was simply protecting herself , not being pointlessly cruel . I do believe that Jaymie will end up married to a man who cheats on her one day . He may or may not get caught , but if she catches him , perhaps then she will call Shawn and apologize . Jaymie is very young , and despite her youth she is no where near as attractive as Shawn . Richard , really , affaired down . So sad Jaymie had an open leg policy . I seriously doubt that Jaymie will be as attHope Shawn , I 've been following your blog for the last several months now and am happy that you shared your experiences with the world . I 've been in a similar situation and can understand the healing power of releasing everything " on paper " because it allows oneself to say everything openly and thoroughly . You were put in a very unfortunate situation , and I 'm glad that you 've found your road back to happiness . Not everyone can say that after experiencing what you went through . Although you recognize some mistakes you may have made along the way , you had every right to feel angry , hurt , jealous , betrayed , etc … . and those emotions can definitely lead people to do crazy things ! ! I will , however , note that you still seem to ( understandably ) show a lot of resentment toward Jaymie , even in your closing letter to her . Once again , the focus was on her …… regardless of what you were saying in it . However , I also can see that you recognize deep down that your real beef was with Richard . It 's important to remember that Jaymie was in her early 20 's , practically still a child ( albeit one who your husband obviously found attractive and intelligent ) while it was your husband who was the real grown - up that broke a vow to you . I hope that Jaymie learns NEVER to do this with another married man in the future because she certainly wasn 't showing the makings of a quality person , but my real hope ( for your sake ) is that Richard didn 't just change his ways simply because he got caught with his last affair partner . Yes , people do often hurt the ones they love , but it 's obvious in this situation , and in all of the ones that came before the affair with Jaymie , that Richard loved himself the most . Lets just call a spade a spade . I 'm praying for your sake that he continues putting you and your marriage first , and that all of these things happened so that he could be the one who went through the biggest transformation of all . I just hate that you were the one that had to suffer the most from it . Best of luck to you boOctober 21 , 2013 at 9 : 40 PM Hope : Thanks for praying for me . We can all use a little more of that and I appreciate it . I do want to point out one issue with your comment : You might read resentment into my letter , but the intent was to express regret . The letter was TO Jaymie , but written about how I feel about myself , not her . I did add the little quip about karma , but mostly for a giggle . Jaymie has no hold on me anymore . Any residual issues I have today are with Richard and my own crazy self . It ain 't easy looking back at how broken I was , but I try to focus on the fact that I have done a pretty decent job of fixing myself . Not quite done , may never be done , but I 'm diligent and determined . So . . . not to worry ! Jaymie no longer plagues me , but I sure don 't care if karma eventually bites her in the butt either . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Susan Rubinsky : Why the kid ? Why does he have to deal with all the drama ? Selfish adults , that 's why . That is the karma twist I deplore . Others need to learn a lesson and loved ones get caught in the middle . Your WH 's karma lesson may harm his child . Brutal . So sorry for the child . Hope you are on a smooth and steady path on your Road to Happy . Hope & Hugs . Shawn The early 20s is not a child . Sorry . It so sad that society has provided an excuse for young adults to engage in negative behaviors by infantilizing them . October 22 , 2013 at 10 : 41 AM I agree with Hope . Early 20 's is very young . I still had a ton to learn at that age . I was still in college . I 'm sure Jaymie learned her lesson and will never fall for anyone married again . Let 's hope Richard has learned his lesson as well . October 27 , 2013 at 12 : 05 AM Karen Dunstan : There 's young and then there 's selfish and ignorant . 24 ain 't that young ! I had been married for 2 years at 24 . Jaymie knew being with Richard was wrong . 15 year old girls in high school beat the crap out of each other fighting over boyfriends ! ALL girls know you do not mess with a man that is otherwise attached . . . period . It ain 't rocket science . That said . . . Richard knew how to play her . No doubt . I do think he learned his lesson , but my eyes will forever be wide open . Hope & hugs , Shawn Agreeing with Shawn & BS . Early twenties may seem young , but it is certainly old enough to know better . Congrats on your 100th post ! Of all the blogs I 've read during this difficult , life - changing year , yours is the one that has helped me the most . I can 't say I got a vicarious thrill , reading about the stuff you did . . . I always feel such a mixture of things when I read your story . Empathy , pain , anger , but also , a kind of release . . . and often , you make me laugh in the midst of it all . I value the hell out of that , since laughter was in such short supply until recently . I notice I 'm laughing more again . No doubt , months of being on Zoloft and good counseling has helped with that . . . but so have you and this community of wounded - but - healing warriors . While I did very little in the way of lashing out at the OW , it wasn 't because I didn 't want to - it was more about her being the bunny boiler type and instinctively I knew that any exchange of energy would only feed her and make the problem worse . In the very beginning I said enough to scare her away , I think . . . she thought I was the passive type and I let her know she was sorely mistaken . She cares greatly about her reputation and I think she realized that a menacing / harassment / stalking charge and restraining order would not be a good thing for her . There have been many times I needed a reminder that what I must do is let the bitch whore go . . . and you have been instrumental in keeping my " angry self " in line . So once again , thank you Shawn . Your courage and honesty have been an immeasurable gift . October 30 , 2013 at 6 : 14 AM Has nothing to do with rocket science but seems more of you NOT putting more blame on richard as you should . I think of my 24 year old niece & how young she is in her looks , her thinking , her smarts and everything . . . . yes a 20 something year old should know better , not from school yard fights , more from common sense . . . however 60 year old man should know 10 times better than she . You really needs to stop focusing on her & by not focusing on her , I mean stop insulting her by name calling & all the other things you do . Take your own advice & let her go . She doesn 't have to be a bitch or a whore . It makes you look immature & bitter and you are better than that . Why don 't you ever call richard a dirty old pervert instead of calling jaymie a bitch whore . It seems more appropriate . KDunstan : There is plenty of blame to go around ! Richard holds the largest basket of blame to be sure . I lay the all the blame for his choices right at his feet and the stinking pile is as high as his ears . If it makes you feel better . . . Richard WAS a scum sucking , low life dirty rotten baby banging shit - head ! He was a lying , narcissistic pig of a man ! OR . . . maybe your looking for something like . . . Richard IS and always will be a selfish , philandering ass wipe with the morals of a penis flashing , sexual deviant ! If that 's what you wanna hear , I 'm not gonna be able to deliver . Richard WAS a cheating bastard , but now he 's not so I guess I don 't call him as many names as I do Jaymie because he has worked his cheating ass off to make amends . Maybe you don 't get it because my writing style , actually . . . my personality style , can be very sarcastic , cynical and irreverent . A favorite saying of mine is , " I know I 'm not everyone 's cup of tea . Doesn 't matter because I rather be someone 's shot of tequila anyway ! " I call Jaymie names because it 's easy and who does it hurt ? ? I do not give a feathery , bird 's butt about Jaymie so if I get a little giddy about calling her a ditzy , needy , dip shit , I 'm going to continue to take the liberty . Doesn 't make me immature . Doesn 't make me bitter . It makes me a recovering betrayed spouse with a cathartic soap box . Sorry if I disappoint you , but I like my blog just as it is . I like my life with my ex - cheating fuck - tard of a husband now , too . I love the filthy old , perv ! LOL ! Oh , crap ! Maybe I am a little immature ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn KateM : Laughter can surprise us after DDay . When we find joy in simple things again we can be sure we have made substantial progress walking our Road back to Happy . This blog is all about release . I put it out there and walk on down my Road . If it helps others walk on , too . . . that is such a HUGE bonus ! You knew to let the bitch - whore go right away ! Good for you , Sister ! It ain 't easy to keep the " angry - self " contained . You must be one very tough cookie . Thanks for your kind words . They mean a lot . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Karen Dunstan : Are you a betrayed wife ? It doesn 't sound that way . Perhaps you are the mom of a 20 year old girl who had an affair with a married man ? ? ? ? ? ? If I am wrong , I apologize , but that is what you sound like . I was a 20 year old girl once When , my married college Profs came on to me . I laughed at them . When my summer job married bosses flirted I laughed at them too . But , there were plenty of slutty women my age who targeted older married men . They tried to talk me into doing it too . I had to much intelligence , pride and self esteem to get involved with a married , mid - life crisis male . Those women knew exactly what they were doing . They liked the perks of dating an older married man . They were whores and worse prostitutes because they wanted money and knew and older man in a long time marriage was vulnerable and would spend money on them . Unless a 20 years old has a low IQ , she knows going after a married man is wrong . If your daughter went after a married man , making excuses for her will only enable her to do it again . Jaymie likely will never learn her lesson . She went after Richard for the perks . The perk was money she willing asked for and took to pay her bills . Jaymie is a whore , and a prostitute because she wanted money . By age 20 , a girl knows what a whore and a prostitute is and they don 't behave like one . Unless of course they actually are a whore and a prostitute . BTW : if you were a Betrayed spouse you would already know we have all called our spouses similar names and worse . The difference between Richard and my spouse and likely all the husband 's of the betrayed spouses here is that they were not prostitutes , because they were spending the money on the whore women who enjoyed having money spent on them . The men were not taking money . The outsider pushed for the affair , I saw the texts and emails . She was a shameless slut , hussy and money grubber . My husband laughs at her now , too . He can 't believe he fell for her ego strokes . He says when He sees her , now , he wants to puke . A mid life crisis is a November 4 , 2013 at 8 : 12 AM BS : As much as I appreciate you landing on my side of this discussion , I gotta do a little fact check here . Richard chased Jaymie like a hungry snake chases a mouse for dinner . He wined her and dined her to get her to drop her drawers . He told her everything he knew she needed to hear while handing out Benjamins . $ $ $ She ate it up . No way the affair was her idea . I think she may really have been in love with him . She is very needy and has next to no self esteem . Goes from guy to guy , never on her own for long . She was easy pickings . So . . . Richard owns the lion 's share of the blame but I still say any reasonable girl knows better than to fall for a married man . Any girl that knowingly gives it up to a man that is already in a relationship is a nothing more than a selfish piece of skanky trash . Your situation is far different from mine . Jaymie only tried begging Richard to leave me once . After he bailed on her like a bad investment , she got the message pretty quickly . I 'm the one that continued to drag her sorry ass back into our lives . That makes me nearly as simple minded as Jaymie ! ! YIKES ! I 've learned a lot . Hope she did , too . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn : I hear ya ' . Well , no one can say you let Richard off easy or made excuses for him . Not after reading your post to me . " A hungry snake . " What a great descriptive word picture . : ) I am glad Jaymie back off , when Richard dropped her like yesterday 's news . I am sorry you are here , anyway . I am sorry we are both here . It sucks to know our spouses cheated . No matter who is to blame . November 5 , 2013 at 9 : 21 AM Oh Shawn , I just found your blog and you give me hope , so much hope . For now I will tell you that my DD was on July 22 , 2012 . I will write more one day , but for now I must put on my happy face , go pick - up my kids from school and take them to swim practice . Thank you for your blog and thank you for giving me hope . xx L xxL : I 'm glad you found us . Sorry you had to look for us . Hope is what healing is all about . You gotta hang on to it . Hope for a better marriage . Hope for letting go of the pain . Hope for healing . Now . . . along with the hope , there 's a shit ton of work ! ! You gotta want it bad to fix what was so horribly broken . I 'm proof that you can be nearly beyond repair and find a way to walk the Road to Happy . We can have a stronger marriage after DDay . Walk with us . The path is easier when you travel with friends . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Shawn , I am really grateful I have found your blog . I am only 4 weeks post DDay , my spouse is a touring musician . I caught him 2 years ago with some inappropriate emails and I forgave him . 4 weeks ago I found out he was having an affair with his gym buddy , I refer to her as the gym rat . we live in a very small town , he brought her into our home , around our children . . . needless to say I am heartbroken and oh so angry . the entire friend circle knows and I feel like a fool . we started counseling and it is now known he has been cheating from the start of our relationship . . . quoted " sex addict " , my pastor suggested I read your blog and I am so thankful I found it . it has kept me from marching into the gym and smacking the shit out of the gym rat . . . im on the edge of crazy town and your blog saves me everyday from entering . thank you for your story , your honesty and bravery for putting it all out there . I 'm not ready to write my letter , but I just wanted you to know you have helped me . angry in az Angry in AZ : I can feel your pain through the screen ! I am so sorry you are suffering . I can only tell you , it will get easier , just not for a very long time . Healing after DDay is hard work . You have to heal yourself before you can begin to heal your marriage , if that is what you hope to do . It is so positive for you both to be in marriage counseling . Even better that you have individual counseling . You say your pastor suggested you read my blog ? ? Whoa . With all the " F " bombs I throw around , I gotta say that is surprising ! However , he is right to have you seek out others that understand your struggle . Please go to the Healing Heart online message boards . The link is on the bottom of my blog under " support & compassion found here " . The members there saved me from myself . I don 't know if Richard and I would still be together without their kind words and willingness to share their experiences . You 're already smarter than I was . You are keeping the OW out of your life ! Good for you ! Wrap yourself in the comfort of friends and be kind to yourself . if I have helped you , I am grateful for that . I care very much about my readers . I know we need each other . When we walk the Road back to Happy together , the journey is at least a little easier . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hey Shawn , thank you for your blog . I just wanted to comment , that the ow in our case is in her mid 40s and is a mother and wife . However , when reading her texts to my husband last summer upon dday . . . i finally took an opportunity to grab his unlocked cell . . . it was as if I had been transported back to Jr high ! One would have sworn she was a 14 year old girl ! She assimilated herself to movie characters and brought up private jokes , just like a teenager . So age and maturity level are 2 entirely different things . Obviously , she knew what she was doing was wrong . She said " it was forbidden " in her texts to my husband . Apparently she is still a child , incapable of thinking about anyone else but her self . She went after my husband , who is 15 years younger than her , because , and I quote " I had a crush on him " . So much for age in years meaning anything . Btw my husband is doing everything he can to rebuild our marriage and even left his job to get away from the ow . So only in his 20s but leaps and bounds in front of her middle aged self . I identify a lot with you so much Shawn . thanks again . Jen Jen : OWs come in all shapes , sizes , ages and attitudes . The one thing they all have in common is a very weak moral compass ! The drivel written between Richard and Jaymie used to melt my heart . I took it as gospel while in Crazy Town . It took me a long time and many words of reassurance from Richard to recognize the bullshit for what it really was . . . . a means to an end . Live the lie with vigor and deep passion and it doesn 't feel so much like a lie anymore . Richard convinced himself that it was real love so he wouldn 't feel so guilty about getting laid . I think maybe even Jaymie had an agenda , too . She NEEDED attention . She craved approval . She didn 't hate the cash and other goodies either ! So glad to hear your WH is working to heal your marriage . As you walk your Road to Happy , we will be here if you need a map ! Hope & Hugs , Shawn Hi Shawn , I have just found your blog a week ago and it has given me a lot of incite , so thank you . my nightmare started 27th December 2014 , I am 18 months into this hell . A week ago I had a melt down , I was on my own in the house wallowing in misery and thought maybe if I read my diary I 've kept since this started I could work out what still hurts , what I have recovered from etc . To my disbelief I still feel the same on many issues and no more forward than I was 18 months ago . I found a letter I wrote but never sent it to the spineless online whore who wreaked havoc in my family . " It " was a fake , an online whore who reeled people into believing she was gods gift and my husband lapped it up along with several other men . I call it " it " because I am unsure whether it was a man or woman . A romance scammer who didn 't get a penny out of my husband thank god . I had great pleasure showing my husband what a fake " it " was , how a website called tineye retrieves where a picture originates , what " it " was saying to other men whilst " it " was supposedly in love with my h , I exposed " it " within a day and I am no social media expert ! Back to the point I am writing . The letter was so deeply wrote that it made me crazy , I had forgotten all about it but I still feel those things . My h disgusting childish behaviour still makes me boil with rage so much so that in my crazy moment I completely flipped , I tore up all my diary entries and the letter and chucked them all over the bedroom , I then went into the wardrobe grabbed our wedding memory box ( this affair started days before our anniversary ) and threw everything everywhere then for good measure I threw all his clothes out of the wardrobe . I believe in karma but I will never see that karma because the whore disappeared well before I found it all and that is what infuriates me I think . " It " can play sick games online anonymously and disappear without a trace . No consequences no nothing ! ! It 's not fair these people have that power and I just can 't shake that anger associated with it . So sJuly 8 , 2016 at 3 : 55 AM ( ( ( J ) ) ) : I don 't think any of us ever get " Over " this . We get " Through " this . You gotta go through it . You can 't go around it or over it . Through it takes a long time , longer for some , but you will get through it . You seem to know leaving " IT " alone is the right move . Good for you . She can not help you . She means nothing to your recovery . There are easier Roads to Happy than others . My Road began when I found the compassionate , supportive members of the Healing Heart message board . Please go to the site and join the group . You can ask anything , tell your story , rant and vent or just read and learn . The link is at the bottom of my blog . You do not have to struggle alone . Hope & Hugs , Shawn Melissa , I have spent way too much of my time and energy hating you , wishing Karma would hurry up and kick your ass . I thought I needed to watch you be punished to make myself whole again . Turns out I don 't . I need to let go of the control I have given you over my life . Don 't get me wrong , if you ever try to approach me or my family I will scream " cheating whore " at you , but I will not allow you in my thoughts and dreams anymore . I will be free of you . I am done . Shannon I started writing this blog in 12 / 11 , a little over a year past DDay . The posts are mostly chronological , beginning at the point of inital impact . I have strayed from that pattern as issues come up , but for the most part this is a story . The story of a betrayed spouse . DDay was the harsh beginning . The rest of the story is the journey , searching for my Road to Happy . Please join us . Comment , anonymously if necessary , share your stories , ask questions or just let it all out with a good rant ! Feel free to email me privately from my profile page . I wanna hear from you . I wanna learn from you . I wanna heal with you . Blogger : User Profile : shawn , the wifeLet 's beat down the beast of betrayal together . shawn , the wife Started this blog a year after I found out my husband of 30 years had an affair with a 24 year old co - ed named Jaymie . The first year after DDay was hell . Desperate to get my life back on track , I decided to tell my story . I use a little humor , too much sarcasm and a truck load of truth . Sharing the sordid details of my husband 's betrayal and my insane behavior that followed , is cleansing my soul , but I still have a long way to go . . . my soul was freakin ' filthy ! Hope & Hugs ! Had my face - off with Jaymie . Felt vindicated . Sort of . MY MAN told her she meant nothing to him . Sort of . I told her , she was a pathe . . .
|
i am scared to start this . i am stuck in a " hush hush " family secret . and i am not allowed to speak about it . nobody to vent to , i dont ever want to see a therapist because i dont want to be seen as someone broken and weak . i am stuck in a house that pretends that nothings wrong . my brother sexually abused my sister and everyday it haunts us all , but nobody speaks a word . its brushed under the rug but you can still see the bulge . i want to escape and just be done with it . but its always there . i feel incredibly guilty talking with him , because i could never let my sister know . and i hate that he did that to her , i am absolutely digusted . but how can i just forget about him ? i could move out of my home and stop walking on eggshells but with a dead end job at minimum wage how am i going to afford to live . i am sick of painting on a smile in the morning and then by the time night falls i am completely exhausted from faking the smiles and half hearted laughs that i just breakdown and cry . i want a new life away from all this pain and bad memories . i want to forget , forgive and move on . i am 24 and the oldest child and felt almost stuck in the middle , call it * * * * * * up or whatever you like but he is still my brother and yes i absolutely am disgusted by even the thought of what happened and i rarely talk to him . i am here for my sister . through and through . . . i keep the relationships with the two of them completely seperate . . . but until you have gone through everything i have gone through . . . please dont judge me . . . i am doing the best i can possibly do in this hand i have been dealt . and my sister is doing okay , somedays are better then others , shes been in several different hospitals and facilitys to deal with this . . . she would come home and something would trigger her and her deppression would act up and get the best of her and she would be sent back . . . she has been gone this time since may 2011 and i miss her everyday especially when the holidays come around . shes about an hour away and i dont have the transportation to go to see her as much as i would like . my parents do everything they can possibly do to help her . no they never called the cops on their son . like i said . . . do not judge me or my family . until you yourself have been in my same exact situation . sometimes you just have to decide what you want and then do it ! I said goodbye to my whole family 10 years ago because they are bad people . it was the best decision I have ever made . so what if you make little money . find roommates ! some parts are going to be really hard and are going to suck but when the bad parts of living at home outweigh the good , you know what you have to do . a brother that could do that to his sister does not deserve either of you in his life . I don 't know the details but I really hope she is not still under the same roof as him because she cannot ever heal like that . good luck and be brave ! ! We all would want to be able to peel off layers . To see if we could find something we could live with . That we could call our own . Family secrets are just stories that scare children at night . You all have a choice to make it stop to not remember to not talk about it . But remember one thing what is in the past you cannot change what is in the future can be changed What is in the future is the key to all our troubles . We all can change the future but the past can never be changed . So focus on the future and let the past be the past what is happening cannot harm you or hurt you or change you for it is already set in granite . Tell you see you are your own person or your gate keeper you hold the chains and you hold the key . Only you can for yourself so free yourself and only think of the future change things if you choose to or do you live your life in hell and remember you choose that only you choose that And therapist are very waste of time you have the answers and the questions and you can only answer them and only can be the one to fix them . So look with inside yourself find the answers live with what the answers are in the forward and stop living in the past . I too , live in a family that is fractured beyond repair . The damage the abuse does destroys ANY semblance of family life . Even those who were not part of the abuse are tainted by it . We can never get together as a family because the guilt and the memories prevent us from doing so . We abused are forever broken and so we learn to compartmentalise it . I did not abuse my children and nothing enrages me more than dealing with kids that are . Even though I protected my kids from the horrors of my childhood I hadn 't noticed that I was carrying the emotional scars and in that way they were affected by it . Getting therapy would be good but it won 't take everything away . You must not , however , allow the damage done to your family to taint yours , your own family 's or your marriage / partnership . What people who have never been abused fail to realise is this . . . The abuser is usually someone you 're supposed to love ; a close family member and having them arrested , taken to court etc . etc only perpetuates the abuse . Everyone knows and once you become public property ( and you always do ) , you get the sneers , whispers and mix of judgement and pity . As I said , it perpetuates the abuse by now instead of it being just one it is hundreds . Get on with your life and if you can work in a field that can make a difference it helps to protect others . It must have been horrible having to live with this swept under the rug . You have to be admired for just being there for your sister . God bless you Okay , I havent bothered reading the comments ( whether good or bad below ) for one reason , I can talk from experience ( from your sisters position ) about the same kind of situation and I hope I can help you just a little bit . I am the abused sister and the one who struggles to understand why one of the people who were supposed to protect me , would be the one to hurt me . . . I told my other brother and best friend about it at the time - they both told me to try and forget it happened , so - i stayed in the same house , tried living life as normal and pretending nothing was wrong - most the time i got drunk with friends to try and forget . . . a year or so later after id eventually moved out following my brother hitting me , i told a boyfriend about the abuse and he persuaded me to tell my mum - i plucked up the courage and cried on the phone as I told her - she refused to believe me unless I called the police to ' prove it ' . . . I wasnt going to do that , for one how could I prove it and for two he was still my brother . For the next 10 yrs I didnt speak to my brother and tried to visit my mum as normal , I avoided family parties and christmas ' as I knew he 'd be there - my mum often made me feel guilty about her not having her children in the same room together and even insisted we both be there for her 50th birthday meal - it didnt once cross her mind that she 'd just guilt - tripped me into sitting opposite my abuser . 3 Years ago it all came to a head , my mum kicked off because she was starting what was to be a very successful business and wanted all her kids working for her - i told her i couldnt do it , and things got nasty . I walked out of her house telling her that was it , I couldnt take anymore and havent been back since . I still see my other brother once in a while and it kills me that this has torn my family apart - especially as my mum keeps it a massive dirty secret from the rest of the family and so i look like ive just walked away from everyone . I dont blame my other brother for not taking sides but sometimes I wish he wotrustmeigetit I hope the good outweighed the bad in the support that you have gotten through this forum . I can empathize with you not because it happened in my life but I understand how communication or the lack of it can leave you still with the bad feelings that never were addressed . Your family should have talked about this to heal but the decision was to not talk about it in hopes it would be forgotten . Most people feel that peoples perception of them is more valuable than how they see themselves . It 's a problem that hurts so many people because they strive for " Perfection " or as close as they can to it . The reality is every family has some sort of dysfunction and it 's normal . Some people think that the " Smiths " all act like this and anything outside of that is unacceptable . Society has placed that thought in peoples minds but it is so far from the truth . We are all individuals and once we start thinking , we develop our own thoughts and become whatever our minds lead us to be . Your brother did what he did and it wasn 't because of who your family is , it was because of who he is . If nothing else they should have gotten him help before it happened again and to someone else . That could protect the family as well because it shows that you guys don 't condone what happened . I pray you have started healing but I want you to realize that through this situation you too have become more of an individual and that you are from that family but you don 't have to be silent . You can be you and if they don 't support you then don 't be surprised because they have never done anything about anything so your healing while they are stuck in their pain . There is absolutely nothing weak or broken about feeling stressed and alone following such an incident . It is unfortunate that your family can not speak on the matter , but you must get it out of your system . Yes , love your brother and sister as you had and do keep the relationships separated , but for the love of who you are DO NOT keep that on your heart . It can only hurt you if you keep it bottled up . . . bless . I am sorry for what happened to your sister and I 'm glad that you found a rock in your life , cause everyone needs someone to be there for them . I noticed that you wanted to talk to someone and was wondering if you 've considered telling your sister what happened . I only suggest this because this might help her in her healing process . Cause she may feel the same as you when it comes to that . I have 2 sisters of my own and I don 't believe that any topic is off limits when it comes to them . We are each others closest and oldest friends . Why would anyone talk crap to you about this story ! This is rather sad , and a diffuclt story , and I understand , you have my full support . < br / >< br / > And when your sister is depressed , try not to send her off too much , she needs her family to be there most of the time . Just wanted to say to any and all who have suffered sexual abuse or know / are related to a sexual abuse victim , there is a book I highly recommend . " Miss America by Day " - author is Marilyn Van derbur . She was Miss America 1958 . Her wealthy father was a pillar of the community . He sexually abused her from the time she was 5 until she was 18 , and also at least one of her sisters . Now Marilyn is a speaker and advocate for victims . The book can be ordered or it 's available from libraries . I 'm really sorry for everything that happened . And you don 't have to apologize for writing about it here . We 're here if you need to tell somebody . I hope everything will work out in the best way possible . Take care ! Dear Friend , < br / >< br / > I am actually a pastor ; I am new to this site . I have had similar experiences . I was raped and fondled by a brother and father different foster homes . No one ever called the cops in my case either . I know how this can affect a person . < br / >< br / > Please allow me to be in your circle of friends . We can discuss things through an email . I would like the opportunity to help you . I have twelve years experience as a pastoral counselor . I can give you references and credentials upon request . Just let me know if you are interested in me helping you . If not I do understand but I could possibly could get u in touch with a pastoral counselor in your area . i am so sorry that you are dealing with this and to hear that this has happened . I do however feel your pain my family lives in another state and I live in TN . my niece was molested over several years by her dad . When she finally decide to tell someone her mother ( my sister ) said she believes her but she has been with this man her entire life and she dont know how to live without him . so my 12 year old niece refuses to report to anyone because doesnt want to be the one responsible for breaking up her family if he goes to jail and her little sister does not believe it and keeps telling her not to take away her daddy ! I want so bad to call the cops but then again I couldnt stand the thought of thme being in a foster home with strangers and there will still be no guarantee that she is safe . my entire family is acting like it didnt happen and my sister says it was a mistake and she needs to forgive him . I however would kill any man that ever touches my child and couldnt imagine ever seeing his face again unless it was in a coffin . My sister solution was for her and her husband to move in with a friend and now she is pregnant by him agian its disgusting . I could not believe that she is so screwed up in the head that she is ok having sex with a man and giving birth to his child knowing that he has put thos same hands on my daughter . . . . . . . . . Maybe u can give me some advice idk but you and ur family is in my prayers and agian I am truly sorry . but he will pay for it one way or another just because ur family want to turn their heads and look away doesnt mean god is willing to do the same . I wish I had something useful to say about this . I can only relate a little to what your sister and you might be feeling . I 've been sexually harassed by my mother 's boy friend and when I finally had the courage to say something about it she did basically NOTHING ABOUT IT ! On top of that I have basically no one else that would listen to me and I hate my therapist because she doesn 't want to help she just wants to shove pills down my throat . People , you need to talk about this . FORCE the issue with those involved . My sister went through a traumatic event in her life teenaged life , one she did not choose - our parents chose for her . She was not allowed to discuss it . And never did . Some 35 years later , after our parents died , it hit her like a ton of bricks . A wall of concrete . And if my parents had it to do over , I am certain they would have at least allowed her to talk to them about it , but hindsight and all . . . . And they are no longer here to help . < br / >< br / > COMMUNICATION . It is essential for relationships , yes . Remember that you have a relationship with yourself , and you have to protect and keep that relationship as top most in your mind . The saying comes to mind " if you can 't love yourself , how can you possibly love someone else " ? < br / >< br / > If your family won 't talk , talk anyway . What can ( reasonable ) parents do ? ? Put their hands over their ears ? Believe me , they do not want what my sister has endured to happen to you . Or to the other siblings , as we have all had to make our peace with what went down so many years ago . < br / >< br / > We are all only human . OP , your brother is human . We all have faults , and what he did is one of his , or a symptom of one of his . But holding stuff in - it is not good for anyone , anytime , anywhere . ( Now you all know what I mean - I 'm not talking about holding in an opinion that might be hurtful and will not help you to be " better " ) . It breeds resentment , anger , confusion , insecurity . . . I could go on and on . < br / >< br / > I understand why my parents asked my sister never to mention this to anyone , and never to speak of it again . But that was nearly 40 years ago , early 70 's . LOTS has changed since then re : knowledge of mental health , ability to see therapists without being labeled , etc . Lots has happened with parenting - which has huge differences now than it did then . But why oh why do we still not realize that communication is so key to being healthy ? ? ? < br / >< br / > Good luck . I know nothing of this subject , but I am sorry you are in this horrible situation . I cannot imagine what you 're going through . You will be in my prayers . I hope you can leave all this behind you soon . If you ever need a friendly ear just send me a message . I think it 's * * * * * * up of people to have written mean comments . Sounds to me like your doing all you can . No one knows how they would handle any situation until they 're in it , and that 's a Hell - of - a situation to handle . < br / >< br / > I 'm not one for forgiving intention , but I understand keeping a realationship of some sort with your brother , difficult as it may be . He is your brother and it would be crazy if you were able to pretend he no longer existed , even though it may disgust you to speak with him . Your parents have to be torn more than anyone . Surely they love all their children and would do anything to protect them from harm , but when the harm is one of your own children . . . . sad . I can 't imagine their pain . You probably feel like them , but at least you aren 't responsible for creating the " monster " your sister fears . < br / >< br / > Be strong and I wish you the best . I 'm sorry . I really am . This happened to my friend . . . kind of . Her friend like best friend taped her . She didn 't do anything and neither ur sister I can imagine . I guess its the set up of the minds of the people who do this . That make them do it . . I truely am sorry . I can relate to your situation , with one slight difference : instead of being a sibling to the victim , I WAS the victim , and my abuser was another foster kid living in the same house as where I was , and I went over 18 months before I felt safe enough and confident enough to blow the whistle on his sorry * * * . . . I can tell you , it 's not easy living with those kinds of memories . In my case , the foster care providers providing food , clothing and shelter to me ( they were NEVER parents to me , in case my choice of words hasn 't made that clear enough ) did little , if anything to help me get over my feelings . But I moved on from it on my own . But it sounds as if your sister is surrounded by many people who truly love her and respect her for who she is , and are there for her whenever she needs them . All I can say to you is don 't let her forget that you still love her , and that you will be there for her , NO MATTER WHAT . That sometimes boosts our morale moreso than any pill or any head - doctor ever could . It is okay . I am glad you have an outlet . You cannot let this fester inside you . I am so sorry you are going through this . I am in a similar situation with my brother being someone that was abused by a member of my extended family . It has destroyed my Mom and her side of the family . I know what it is like to have to paint on a smile and pretend . It is so not how anyone should live . I hope to god your brother gets help , you sister recovers emotionally and your family to get on the road of recovery . Know you are not alone . Dear Chenadoll 19 , < br / > Please remember that holding on to shameful secrets will make you sick . Only in truth and the light of day will the secret lose it 's power and hold over you and others . Perhaps maybe you think you have too much to lose if you spill the beans , perhaps you may lose your place to stay if you do share the truth . What about saving just 20 dollars or so a week and call it your " freedom fund ? " Also , I have found that sometimes we just can not possibly get the ( healthy ) relationship that we need from our folks . They simply are not capable ( for whatever the reason ) of doing so . I know , I chased my Mom around for years ( even after she gave me up for adoption and had another child ) only to find , that for my own sanity , I had to let the relationship go . She ended up committing suicide , but because I let her vanish from my life years earlier , my children were not affected by her toxic life . I in no way have a normal life now , I isolate from others , work too hard and am bullied by my bosses , and find it hard to connect with other women . Probably because of my failed relationship with my Mom and the lack of healthy life skills that I need to successfully interact with others . I do know that if I 'm quiet and keep my feelings to myself at home , I am left alone , but if I share my feelings or stand up for myself , my son verbally abuses me . I am finally now able to reach out for therapy and learn to receive the tools that I need to be a happy well rounded adult . Also , I have chosen a career and educational path that will keep me occupied for the next 8 years ( I 'm currently 48 ) with studying and learning in my new career path . But at the end of my journey , even with the amount of student debt I will have , I will be afforded to live the financial life I never before thought I might achieve . I hope you find your way out of your unhappy surroundings , I really do . But for me , it has been a long , hard journey . One that I 'm still working on that I hope will lead to joy and happiness . I wish that for all of us , each Lilafae This may show up twice because did it , but don 't see it showing up . I do want to say that would never judge you , or your family . As a person who also suffers depresion I would like to share what works for me . When I find myself in similar situations I allow myself to feel the pain . Y ou do not want to hang on to it for a long time , but you do need to feel it . After you feel it you want to process it . Ask yourself what is it that is making me feel this way . Is it that my values have been broken , and or you have fear that he could have hurt her , or even you . After processing , then I ask God to take this pain away . Your not asking him to change what happened , but to take away the pain you are feeling . This is a process I have used many time , and has worked quite well . God bless you and ALL of your family . I would never think of judging you , or your family . As a person who also suffers from depression I would like to pass on what works best for me . When I get in a similar situaiton , I allow myself to feel the pain . You don 't want to hang on to it for a long time , just feel the pain , proess the pain ( look at it and try to figure out what is making you feel such pain ) , and then ask God to remove that pain . Your not asking him to change what happened , it 's just that he is better equiped than we are for dealing with it . That has helped me in the past and I know he will do it for you as well . < br / >< br / > God bless you , and all of your family I would never think of judging you , or your family . As a person who also suffers from depression I would like to pass on what works best for me . When I get in a similar situaiton , I allow myself to feel the pain . You don 't want to hang on to it for a long time , just feel the pain , proess the pain ( look at it and try to figure out what is making you feel such pain ) , and then ask God to remove that pain . Your not asking him to change what happened , it 's just that he is better equiped than we are for dealing with it . That has helped me in the past and I know he will do it for you as well . < br / >< br / > God bless you , and all of your family I 'm sorry for the pain that this has caused you but if you allow this man to continue to run free then you are equaly guilty . You don 't have to like this . but it is what it is . You may as well have been in the room . Violence against women is so pathetic and easy for an abusive man . What if it was you being molested would you feel the same way . Call the police and turn this rapeist / child molester in . I have the same situation . . . My younger brother is sick in the head and molested my two youngest brothers . He needs help but my family doesn 't do anything about it . I am a very strong person and this might seem a little bitchy to say but I have been in your situation and I feel like you may need some consueling if that still bothers you . I am extremely strong and I understand that my brother is sick and to him it isn 't wrong to do . My brother has tried to touch me before and I wad strong and got away from him and told my parents . You couldn 't have changed anything . Stop worrying about the past . You seem like your trying to get attention by sharing that story . You do need to vent to a therapist and not online . People online can be jerks and crazy too . I highly suggest you see a counselor . well . . . I grew up in a house with secrets that no one talked about so I understanding where you are coming from . for example I told my mother about my grandfather on my fathers side and who was coming for a visit and she told me to tell my father which she knew I couldn 't do so nothing was ever done , I just avoided him and maybe he thought I was too old to play games on . < br / >< br / > My older half sister alluded to my dad having done something and my younger sister eventually said the same about my older brother . He was killed on a motor cycle so couldn 't defend himself . < br / >< br / > after my brother was killed ( the first of three brothers and a sister I 've lost } it became a taboo to mention his name around my dad because it was so painful for him . . . I went many years without hearing his name until my dad had to drive me to work a couple of weeks for some reason ? on the way there I would prattle on and occasionally mention my brother and some of the things we did as kids . he never said much but at least he listened and did know my brother through another s eye 's and I felt like I had done something for myself too . < br / >< br / > that being said . . . you and I and anyone reading this are a product of a very long line of survivors . Our ancestors went through trials we can only imagine so that we can be here today . There were some who had to scratch and claw just to make an existence . There were some who went through rape , torture , pain and suffering beyond knowing and survived so that we could be here today , and . . . . there are some who fell by the wayside because they couldn 't survive . < br / >< br / > today for the most part we have comfort and ease our ancestors couldn 't begin to imagine . < br / > but still we have not progressed past the point where whatever it is ? genetics ? emotions ? that there are some who just cannot survive their lives . There are events or maybe even just one event in their life they cant get around . I know because I struggle myself , sometimes tooth and nail lol . but I have a fairly good dose of " I can make itwhotookmyname I really admire you . . . You are facing such a situation strongly . . . I don 't know . . . . . You rock . . . . Be strong for your sister and ignore others words . . . . People talk * * * * about us all the time no matter what . . . . I am sure things will get alright soon enough . . . < br / > If you ever need a person to vent , I am a fairly good listener . . . . Take care sweety . . . . Hey , Chenadoll19 , < br / > I know how it can be with such heavy weights on one 's shoulders . Though I do not have an account of sexual abuse , I have lived an equally melancholy life . Depression bites . I 've always been one of those super - independent people who never ask for help , but in my last breakdown , I realized that I do need help . I used to think the same way - - asking for help means that I am weak . On the contrary , we are both wrong . You 're a stronger person for having the epiphany that told you that you need to get over it and be the best sibling you can . Also , I personally believe that you should cut your brother out of the picture ; he 's hurt your family so much , he 's not worth having in your lives . You and your family are worth more than that . Hopefully , you and your family , in unison , can come to terms with this ordeal . As you stated , that " bulge " is still there : it 's still giving your family incredible hardship , as can be witnessed by the state your sister is in . < br / >< br / > I wish you the very best brightest future , Chenadoll19 . : ) I hear what your saying this situation is horrible and you have done nothing but your best to cope for all concerned , All you are asking for is some empathy . In families like yours the atmosphere can be cut with a knife and it is hard to discuss smaller matters . Things are precariously balanced and there is fear if you open your mouth the whole family will erupt , implode or divide . You want the best for everyone obviously . I hope there is a way you can visit your sister more whilst she is in that facility because it will show how much you love her , Write to her as much as you can that will be healing too . Perhaps you could subtly mention to mum you are going for therapy over what happened or put it in a note , leave it at that and if she asks hopefully you can tell her it 's going well and that might open up a dialogue and introduce her into therapy too . I am sorry you have gone through judgment and criticism . I think you are doing incredibly well all things considered . Love and hope to you i understand more then most what this kind of thing can do to a family . as i am in the same boat as your sister . i was molested by one of my older brothers when i was 5 . my parents never called the police or anyone to help . i have never gotten therapy or any type of professional help . i am 16 now . i still live with both of my brothers . i grew up and at the age of 15 was molested again by my great uncle . i still have yet to get help . depression has kicked in , and all that is left for me to do is cut myself and hope that my pain on the inside will bleed out to the outside . literally . people need to learn to have more compassion for those of us who don 't have PERFECT lives . I think you 're on the right track . You 're doing really great and you 're absolutely right , NO ONE has the right to judge you on this matter . None of these people even know you or your family so they have no clue what 's going on and sometimes things are a hell of a lot more complicated than they seem . Good luck to you on your road to personal understanding and hopefully the road to some sort of recovery for your family . : ) It seems like you are introspective enough to find your way . Your therapist 's job is to help you improve the quality of your life , not to judge you . This being such a delicate but tense and horrid situation , you may want someone to hear you out and help you along . It won 't show that you 're weak . It 'll be you taking steps to make your situation better . Good luck honey : ( I can relate quite well , when i was 5 , my uncle molested me , and my family has kept it under the " rug " . I have ben raiesd to except it , and no one has ever brought it up . iv told my mom , and all she has done was say that i must be mistaking him with somone els . its hard knowing the truth and evryone telling you your lieing . if you ever need anyone to talk about it , or anything , im always open to conversation . i know im only 16 - 17 , but wisdom doesn 't come with age , but with experiences . Hey , keep up your spirit , time is a great healer . < br / > I was abused as a child , but I have a loving wonderful family for over 22yrs now . < br / > It is not true that all abused go on to abuse , most people dont even believe me when I tell them , because of the way I appear to them . They see me as strong , confident , supportive and a solid reliable person . They are correct , but it didnt change the mountains I climbed to get there ! < br / > I was also subjected to systematic abuse whilst in the care of the local authorities for my own protection ! ! I witnessed staff abusing my peers and teenagers abusing younger children . We were called trouble makers if we tried to report it and we were picked on . < br / > Stay strong and focus on the positive things in your life , or create some positive things in your life . I turned to music & became a musician & transformed my outlook on the world , which used to be very bleak . You are not responsible for what happened in any way shape or form . While going to a therapist sounds scary , it can actually help you . Therapists don 't judge you , they listen and kind of help your thoughts . The only thing is you have to find a good therapist . A good therapist is very patient and will not judge you . I 've been going to therapy for a few months now because of my depression , and I love it . Don 't be afraid to be vulnerable because someone out there does understand . So , maybe I haven 't been through what you 've been through but I can easily see how that could make someone so mixed up and afraid . Most likely you won 't forget , but you can heal . I can definately relate to this story from your sisters point of veiw . I was the youngest and he was the oldest half brother . I never once blamed or resented my < br / > 2 other brothers for what he did . But honestly All ive ever wanted was to see him pay for what he did to me . Hell just to see him beaten to a pulp would make me feel better , that and to never see him again . Sorry but to me being molested by a blood relative is unforgivable . I will never forgive my brother for what he did to me ! But my other brothers had nothing to do with it so Theres nothing to forgive ! ! . I think your a good brother for keeping your relationships with the 2 separate . We dont get to choose our family but we shouldnt have endur their wrath if that makes sense . I 'm sorry that people have been so unkind about your situation . Like you said , no one can judge b / c they haven 't been in your shoes . I 'm thinking of you & your loved ones . I 'm not sure how to work through what you all have been through but take it one day at a time < 3 Thank you for writing this from your heart , just as it is . I could have written this story . I totally understand and empathise with your situation . Unfortunately , even when the issue is out in the open , the sick family dynamics continue . I am glad that you are engaged . I strongly advise you to have pre marriage counselling . And I most sincerely hope you get to be out of the family home and living independently asap . But , they are still your family . You don 't stop loving them and belonging to them just because there are some pathological behaviours there . You sound like you are doing an awesome job , by the way . I keep things simple . Its not your fault at all . Its the people who made those choices who are to blame , not the people who try to roll with the punches . Try to give forgiveness but dont forget what happened . Living with hate in ur heart is a bad way to live , no 1 who hates is ever truely happy bcuz they r constantly aggravated by what they hate . . Just do your part to make the world a better place as best ya can Same thing happened in my family . My sister and I told my mom what our step - father did . My mom and dad left and went for " a drive " leaving my siblings and I home freakin ' out . Then they camne backhome later than nght and nothing was ever said about it again . He stayed in our lives and went around pretending everything was fine . My mom had not been married to my step - father but maybe a month or two - when I got in trouble with him . I was just nine years old and he told me to take all of my clothes and go ouitside ( we lived out in the country ) . . He came out and beat me mercilessly with a belt for what seemed like hours . I was terrified . I could hear my siblings screaming for me frominside the house . I kept looking at the door waiting for my momn to come save me . But she never came . That day still seems like it happened yesterday . How could a mother allow that * * * * to happen and not do anything ? I would KILL a man who laid a hand on my little girl . Why wasn 't I worth saving ? This man was more important to her than my siister and I ! No one knew the truth . I protected them and lied for them . Mom was a Sunday School teacher and dad was a prominent man in our town . Their reputation and image was and still is so important to them . So for years my siblings and I kept up the facade . I still have so much anger and rage at her . I know it 's not good for me , but I haven 't been able to let it go yet . But I 'm making progress . < br / >< br / > So this yearafter years of eating disorders and addictions - with the help of my counselor I decided to finally break the silence that was crippling me emotionally . I confronted them with the molestation and the naked beating and the hundreds of other incidents . Instead of getting support from my mom when I told her how thae abuse had hurt me so much - she minimized and denied and defended HIM . She said , " Everyone gets and * * * whipping once in awhile . " When she said that , it was just like she punched me in the stomach . It was like I was lookin at that door waiting on her to rescue me and she STILgruuvygirl Beat the sh * t out your brother , take your sister and walk out the door ! There are thousands of places in the world who will help you . Hundreds of ministries who would help you . Tell the sanest family member you have and let your sister stay there or both of you , Press chargers against your brother because he will do it again to someone else i am sorry for ppl . . there rude and no 1 cares . i am looking for sober chat rooms and found ur page . i hate that ppl think its ok to say hurtful things . . no1 knows but u . . im here for u an will pray for u and ur family . . . I have read your story before , and commented , if Inexit wounded the site right their all but long gone . I wil say this , Find a third party NOT FAM NOT LAW NOT ALLGED FRIEND , work through what you need too . After your with piece of mind onbwhat is the right thing to do , take action . Weather its just dialog or epilogue of sharing , figure the safest way to heal your heart , then grow . I am so sorry for all of you . Have mercy . I am so sorry you deal with this . Now my problems feel petty . Although it all affects us differently . Unfortunately I can relate to your sister , my brother molested me when I was 8 and continued for a good while . I 've suppressed these events so much that I can 't remember my childhood moments around those times . My father knows but didn 't do anything about it . No one else in my family knows so I feel trapped . My friends helped me get through depression and now I 'm seeing a therapist . < br / > I understand how you feel though , I still talk to my brother as if nothing happened . I 'm far too scared to confront the situation . I hate what my brother did to me , but he 's still my brother . As crappy as it was to have happened , it did make me a better person . If your brother has been kicked out of the house , that lump under the rug may not be too far under it as you might think . Talking about this is hard for everyone , mainly because they don 't know how to voice it . Going to therapy is good and if you can get the whole family to talk to a therapist it would be even better . < br / > You talk of moving out and how difficult it is for you sister to come home . If you could find an apartment that you and your sister could share , near the hospitals and other facilities , that she gets help , it would be ideal . You might even find a job helping people there too . I found that in helping people , I end up helping myself too . < br / > You can hate what people do but don 't have to hate the people . Unless your brother isn 't owning up to what he did , that 's one thing but if he is goin to meet him for coffee to talk , sending him letters won 't hurt either one of you . < br / > Have you parents help you in this by telling them it would be easier for your sister and you if you moved out . Your parents may be relieved , by the way you don 't even have to say what the problem is , they already know . I know it 's hard to have to just get home and end up going right back to the hospital . I think this will help you a lot . Let me know what you think about this . While most would tell you it 's not " weak " to see a therapist , I know that even an intellectual understanding of that fact in your pre - frontal cortex isn 't going to be able to override the associative and emotional belief of that in your amygdala / limbic - system . So . . . . . I say see the therapist in a different context ; not as somebody who 's broken down by it all , but as somebody who needs to vent their anger , and figure out what you 'd like to say in a paraphrased " I 'd like to [ blank ] that f * * * * ng * * * * * for what he did ! " . Then as you get more comfortable with the whole process , you 'll undoubtedly become okay with talking about your true feelings , but it 'll still be YOUR choice if you want to talk about them at all . < br / >< br / >< br / > Weakness and strength are abstract concepts ; nothing more than an arrangement of synaptic pathways . Don 't think of yourself as * being * weak , think of the fact that you can train your brain and re - wire it to be as strong as you 'd like . If you think you 're weak now , that 's just because you need to rearrange some plugs on the motherboard . ~ HUGS ~ and wow - be strong , even your speaking here with us will help you overcome . But I do recommend help - secrets break souls in the long run - an unattended wound . . . . it cracks after time . Atleast if healing begins there is a scar - which at least won 't split on you . YOU YOU YOU ! ! ! ! HOW YOU FEEL IS SUPPOSED TO BE IMPORTANT WHEN IT ' S YOUR SISTER THAT WAS RAPED ! ! ALL OF YOU ARE A BUNCH OF SELFISH COWARDS ! ! HOW COULD YOU EVEN LET THE PERSON WHO RAPED YOUR SISTER STILL REMAIN IN THE SAME HOUSE ! HOW COULD THE PARENTS AND WHY IN THE WORLD DID ' T ANY OF YOU THINK ABOUT THE HURT AND SUFFERING OF YOUR SISTER AND CALL THE POLICE ! ! ! SHE HAS TO SEE THAT MONSTER EVERY DAY TOO AND SHE IS HIS VICTIM ! ! IF THERE WAS A WAY THAT I COULD FIND OUT WHERE SHE LIVES I ' D REPORT ALL OF THIS AND HELP HER ! ! ! This unspoken secret is not yous to hide from or be ashamed of . Years ago when I was a child I was pregnant wit my fathers baby . To hide the family " s shame my poor little baby was killed before having even the chance to kmow life while even inside of me . No one was ever charged with any crime . I was hidden away until I healed , at least they thought I had healed . Please dont hide shame that is not yours to hide . Speak up ! It is our placed , the abused , to stand up for our futures and all the little ones who may someday be spared because someone spoke up . Please help the little children . God bles and I will say a prayer for you . Then do it dude . If it don 't feel right , it ain 't . Move out , move on . If the guy 's a * * * * * * * * * * * like that , tell him . What 's going to happen ? Ignoring * * * * 's easy . I do it all the time ( it 's called life in Oregon ) . But when I get into a situation where I don 't feel right and nothing 's changing for the better , no matter what I try , I move out and onward . That 's the kind of thing that shouldn 't go the way it is . Beat his * * * , man , and let him know what 's up . Or at least make your plans to move out , and when everything is set , do it , and then maybe send a letter or give him a piece of your mind before you leave . But take care of yourself . I think a lot of us can compare to what you 're going through , such as wanting to start all over , wanting to let the pain , and bad memories go away . But just like under any circumstances you have to stop and think things in a calming manner . I know it 's hard , but you have to learn that a hot and frustrated head isn 't worth anything . First of all you should get therapetic help , of course it 's your choice but in all honesty it really does help you in terms of reflecting . Just because you 're venting to someone who 's qualified to hear you doesn 't make you weak or disabled . It will make you stronger because you would be accepting help and you would be gaining trust . As for wanting to move out , you could always look for apartments that need roomates . You can look for it online , wether it be in a library computer or a friends , you could look in pennysaver , or newspapers . The thing is you can 't let what 's happened bring you down and crush you . You have to take from the experience and know that it will be something that has made your skin thicker ( stronger ) . Have courage , and take steps forward . NOT BACK . Also know that your sister didn 't deserve what happened to her , and that she also needs therapetic help . Unite with eachother and help eachother out . YOU CAN DO THIS : D First off im very sorry you have to deal with that atrocity . Its never easy to know something so terrible that it ruins your life on a daily basis . The only thing that I can tell you is that you should try to be strong and better yourself , go to college or search for something that can help you get out on your own . The other advice would be to see a therapist or councilor and get it off your chest to them . Or you can just tell your whole family and bring it out in the open , expose it , the truth will always set you free . Talk to GOD and ask Him what you would do . He is always listening even if u dont think so and he will answer you , just believe it hun . . and please be safe . . . There is NOTHING wrong with seeing a counselor or therapist ! You have a LOT to gain from it . I 've been and lots of other people I know , too . Most people just don 't talk about it . PLEASE say you 'll go so you can begin healing and have a great life . If you don 't go , there 's a lot better choice other people will " know " you have problems if you continue to carry the weight around and deal with them on your own ; the counselor will teach you how better to think about and deal with what happened AND how to have a positive approach to your life going forward . This problem / situation does NOT have to define who you are and you can be ! I see a therapist once a week and she has helped me through a lot of the abuse that I went through as a child . I would highly recommend researching one nearby that you might be comfortable talking to . I have a lot of trust issues , but I trust my therapist because of confidentiality agreements . It 's a start . Maybe you should think about it . It is not worth being miserable for the rest of your life because you are worried about other 's opinions of you . Taking the first step ( talking about it ) takes a lot of stregnth and courage . Good Luck ! ! I can understand . . . the price you are paying is the price of being good and wanting a good family . Dont know when but belive me one day you will speak - may be not to all but to few and feel better . May be the process has begun here where you can share and feel better . You dont have to carry the load alone . Share it with strangers - there is no fear of rejection when there are no known faces around . Dont be afraid , it happens to a lot of people , and sometimes staying quite and keeping it all in is not the best thing to do because it can cause more problems later on in life . I suggest to see a counselor someone who you feel comfortable with and just let is all out . they wont change the past but you will feel much better once you get it off your chest . you can do it get on your feet dont be afraid , no one is going to judge you , you need to get help . no one can help you unless you are willing to be helped . ill pray for you , God is great In the past three years , my life as I once knew it has fallen apart . I lost my home , and had to send my kids to live with their dad until I found a job and got on my feet . That was two years ago . Now , he doesn 't want to give my girls back . He had done nothing but insult me . . . I think about it often . . . about taking the children and just going . It 's not like there is a lot here for me but I guess more than I realize . I mean the X isn 't my favorite or most trusted person but he 's here if I really get into a bind and need them picked up or watched . And . . . I had a story of the Abyss in my life or the low point . I have made it partially back out by a new job that pays even more than my previous job . I have stated the same story of misery and a need to express it to others . I want everyone that reads this to know you are not . . .
|
Focus is a wonderful thing . I 'm an ' all or nothing ' kind of person , so I 'm either totally focused or there are enough butterflies in my head to trigger a fair - sized tropical storm . I 'm realising that focus is definitely a double - edged sword . It can be my best friend ( when I 've got a deadline to meet ) , or my worst enemy ( when I can 't see the wood for the trees ) . I can sit at my laptop , induce a sense of focus and write a few hundred words . If the words are non - fiction - the bread and butter stuff that actually earns me something - there isn 't a problem . But if I want to write good prose , something original and potentially mind - blowing ( I live in hopes of this happening ) then forcing the focus is counter productive . I 'm writing the first draft of this in a noisy bar , in a proper notebook with a pen in my hand and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc close by . I had no intention of putting pen to paper here , and I certainly didn 't feel the need to focus on anything but lunch . Then I had something of a lightbulb moment … . All my writing life I 've beaten myself with the stick of discipline . Daily word targets and schedules , on the days when I 'm free to write , have been the drivers of my industry . I think I 've got it wrong . I took out my pad and pen to write a list of all the little research tasks I want to accomplish in the next couple of weeks . Read some fairy tales ( unusual stories in a lovely slender book with tissue - thin pages that I found in a flea market ) . Research minor Victorian cults and goddess images . I caught myself thinking about the time I would need to do all this as a guilty pleasure . Fire burning in the hearth , cups of coffee , feet up on the sofa , tucked under a blanket , books and notebooks all around . And I realised I needed to embrace this part of my work , to dive into it and swim through other writers ' words without guilt , without rushing through the experience . Research , just reading , thinking , living - just being - these things aren 't a distraction from the writing , from the focus . They are the writing . Without them , words are sterile . Good fiction comes from interpreted experience , and life isn 't a sideshow that happens when I 'm not writing . Life IS the writing . My ' focus ' is a contradiction - a distraction from what really matters . I need to take my time , spend some days in unproductive endeavours . It is from here , not from some imposed discipline , that my best writing will emerge . A couple of posts back , I wrote about ' true words ' . I had no idea how to find them . Perhaps , after all , they will find me . Over thirty years ago an envelope dropped through my letter box , and the contents changed the direction of my life . It was my first acceptance from a woman 's magazine for a short story . The floodgates seemed to open after that , with articles , stories , even poetry , all accepted by various newspapers and magazines . But I always remember opening that first acceptance , the lightness of it indicating there wasn 't a returned manuscript inside . I remember the sheer joy of first success . No acceptance since has ever come close to that feeling . Until yesterday . There was no flutter of the letter box , no weighing up the envelope in my hands before opening . Just an email , waiting in the queue for me to read . I knew what it was , and convinced myself it was bad news , to soften the blow of rejection . ( That never works , but it 's a habit I 've developed over the years . ) It wasn 't a rejection , but a charming acceptance of my short story for use in an anthology . What made it so special was the change of genre . This is the first gaslight short story I 've written . I didn 't know if it was any good , although I loved writing it , and I loved reading it when it was finished . Yesterday I sat in front of a blank screen , wondering if I should even bother with fiction writing . Maybe sticking to articles was the way to go . The problem with that is that the ideas don 't go away , they just keep scratching away at the back of my mind until I release them on to the page to frolic and scheme and cause all sorts of mayhem . Today I am once again a confident fiction writer , thinking about the sequel to my finished novel , allowing the ideas for short fiction a breath of fresh air - just enough to get them moving . Confidence is a strange thing - totally divorced from reality . With the range of fiction and non - fiction I 've written over the years , and the quantity of published work to my name , one acceptance shouldn 't make much difference . But it does . Today , I feel like a new writer with her first acceptance - enthusiastic , creative and hopeful . What a difference a day makes . This quote was posted on my FB timeline a couple of days ago . Seems simple , doesn 't it ? Don 't we all try to write the truth , our own truth ? Then I really started thinking about the words - and wondered what a ' true sentence ' really is . Perhaps it 's not about the truth of what I write , the bare facts . It 's about how I choose to write it . The truth of the sentence is in the words themselves , and if one word is wrong , the sentence will not be true . I don 't agonise over every word I write . I see and hear things in my imagination and somehow my hand transcribes the thoughts into the written word . I don 't think in words , I think in images . And as the image emerges on the page I take the words for granted , as long as they describe what I need them to describe . Of course , as I edit and proof read , I look at the words - grammar , syntax , how I could say things better . But I don 't think I consider every word , weigh it and ask if it is absolutely right . Perhaps this is what Hemingway advised - the weighing of every word , the position of every word in relation to others , until the written sentence is as good as it can be - until it holds its own truth in the care that has been taken in its construction , in the rightness of each element , a finely honed creation . Nearly four months since my last post . Where does the time go ? I could say I 've had writers block , or that I 've been too busy to blog , but neither would be true . I just stopped blogging . Simple as that . I got out of the habit . And habits , good or bad , are largely what determine our progress through the days and contribute to the success or failure of our enterprises . To be fair , I think I 'd lost sight of what I wanted to do with the blog . Looking back , my posts are a fairly eclectic mix of ideas and happenings . Which is fine . As someone new to blogging , I needed to find out what I could do , learn the techniques , discover if I could maintain the habit of blogging two or three times a week . I enjoyed the editorial freedom of publishing my own work . Having achieved my primary goals , now is the time to add focus , to create a body of work and use the blog to showcase my work . Back at the beginning , in my very first post , I bemoaned the fact that the world of publishing has moved on since I was last involved in it some years ago . In particular , the submissions process has changed dramatically . Sending work to editors as email attachments made me nervous . No satisfying thud as a manuscript disappeared into the mail box , no piece of paper to say that someone has to sign for said manuscript at the other end . So far this year a short story and a complete novel of 78 , 000 words have disappeared into the ether without trace . I think the short story fell victim to an editor who just couldn 't be bothered to reply , but I 'm certain the novel never reached its destination , leaving me eight months on having to start again . In an attempt to redress the problem to my satisfaction , bearing in mind that , in general , short fiction earns little or no money these days , I 've decided to post some stories and perhaps some poetry , here and forget the whole idea of sending them off at the press of a button into an unknown future . I 've realised there is far greater earning potential in non - fiction writing , so that will satisfy my need to earn , at least to some degree . If this sounds like a mercenary train of thought , it is . Like everyone else , I need to pay the bills . It 's been a funny old day . I was ready for a good day 's work ( unusual for Monday morning ) , upcycling a bureau I bought at the weekend . It had already been painted , but very badly , so I thought I 'd get ahead of the game with it , rub the existing paint down and use it as a base coat . And it was cheap . I 've told myself so many times not to buy things unless have my glasses on . A closer inspection of the existing paintwork revealed so many runs I had to use almost a whole pack of sandpaper to get in into a reasonable state . By this time , with an untouched piece , I could have had the first coat of paint on and drying . It 's a hot day , and I was in the full glare of the sun . Usually I paint in the shade under the back porch , but we 've got young blackbirds in a nest just by the back door , so I 've been relegated to the open garden . I opened a new tin of undercoat and started painting , but the brush was dragging and the paint didn 't feel right . Then I read the back of the tin . Alright … I know that should come first , but undercoat is undercoat … isn 't it ? Apparently not . My usual , low - fume , quick drying , wash - the - brush - out undercoat had run out , so I 'd grabbed another tin from my local hardware store … without reading the back of the tin . This stuff is oil - based , high in fumes and takes 24 hours to dry . I persevered , after all , I 'd started , so I might as well finish . After that I just had time to check my emails in the office . I sit with my back to the fireplace , and I heard ominous noises coming from the chimney . On closer inspection , I saw the grate was full of soot and shards of brick and cement . I 've seen jackdaws on the roof lately , and they have a habit of nesting in the tops of chimney pots , so I assumed they were kicking the stuff down . Then I went out for three hours . I came back , checked the paint - which was still wet - no surprise there , then went upstairs . Now I 'm not a screamer . I can 't remember the last time I let loose with a full - throated scream of terror . Until today . The bedroom door was half open . I went in just as something launched itself from the corner of the room , straight at my head . Now , as far as I was aware , I was alone in the house . So , yes , I screamed . At which point , the poor terrified pigeon must have thought his world was coming to an end and starting flying in circles round the room before settling on top of the wardrobe . I thought at first it was a young wood pigeon - we have a lot of them nesting in the garden and surrounding trees , then I saw the ring on its leg and realised it was a racing pigeon . I opened the bedroom window , closed the door , and waited . But my new lodger seemed perfectly content with his new perch . Then I rationalised that , as racing pigeons are used to be handled , this one might just let me affect a rescue . It watched me climb on a chair , then lazily swept out through the open window and away . I was puzzled - how did the bird get in ? Then I remembered the rustling in the chimney . Not jackdaws at all , but my feathered visitor . Sure enough , the fireguard had been knocked over and there was a fair amount of soot in the hearth . On further inspection , it seems the pigeon had a good fly round while it was here , knocking over a mirror and several bottles in the bathroom and leaving sooty footprints in the sink . I think I 've cleaned up all the mess it made . I don 't usually blog about programmes I 've seen on TV , but last night I watched something so amazing , I thought I 'd share . Episode 1 of Tigers about the House documented the birth of two Sumatran tiger cubs in Australia Zoo . Giles Clarke is the zookeeper with special responsibility for the Sumatran tiger breeding programme . He has a remarkable relationship with the tigers under his care . The ethos of the zoo is that if the public can touch and stroke animals they are more likely to be interested in conserving them . So the zoo is very hands on for visitors . This idea extends to the keepers when it come to the tigers . They spend a lot of time in the cages with their charges , giving them treats , handling them , talking to them . They take them , on leashes , for wild walks , so they can experience more than the confines of their enclosures . Sumatran tigers face extinction in the wild by 2020 . 80 % of their Indonesian rain forest habitat has been cut down and they are poached ruthlessly for use in Chinese medicines . Breeding programmes , like the one of which Australia Zoo is part , may be the only chance these incredible animals will have to avoid joining a long , sad list of extinct animals . Kaitlyn is six years old . She gave birth to two cubs , initially named Spot and Stripe , last year . In the first programme of the series , we saw Kaitlyn with Giles as he performed an ultrasound , and took blood to check her hormone levels during the later stages of her pregnancy . She was totally unfazed by all this , the bond of trust between tiger and keeper is so strong . Giles stayed with Kaitlyn throughout her labour , and helped the weakest cub latch on when it had problems just after the birth . Again , Kaitlyn trusted him implicitly . I wouldn 't mess with new born kittens from a domestic cat - they can be viciously protective of their young . The two cubs are special . They represent a much needed new blood line for the breeding programme , so the decision was made to hand - rear them . Giles took the cubs home , and proceeded to feed them on demand , night and day for the next few weeks . The sight of a beautiful cub lying across the palm of his hand , fast asleep , while he stroked its back brought a lump to my throat . Giles was so unassuming in the way he explained his work , but he seemed to me to be a truly remarkable man - totally committed to the tigers in his care . But somehow it 's more than that - it 's the way the tigers seem to reciprocate his affection , the way they trust him . There is so much negative stuff happening in the world , and I guess this breeding programme wouldn 't be necessary if we hadn 't driven beautiful animals like the Sumatran tiger to the brink of extinction . But there is good in the world , and positive people like Giles Clarke , and beautiful blue - eyed tiger cubs with a future ahead of them . Just for once , I watched the end of a documentary feeling that all isn 't lost . If there is hope for the tigers , there may be hope for us too . As I sit typing this , I can hear baby house martins calling for food . Their parents have nested , as they have done in previous years , under the eaves above my office window . There is something sad about an empty martin 's nest . Every year these remarkable birds fly thousands of miles , often in terrible weather , to return to the same breeding spots . The empty nests are decaying memorials to the birds that didn 't make it . When we mow the lawn and disturb all the bugs , we are rewarded for our labours by a breathtaking aerial display as the martins swoop and swerve low over the grass to pick off the bugs before they settle again . All summer they breed and feed , often raising two broods . Then one day we open the back door and the sky is empty , the nests deserted . They have gone . I always stand for a moment , looking up , hoping that I 'll see them one last time , knowing it is a vain hope , that summer is over and autumn is on the way . On the other side of the house , two feet from the back door , a blackbird is nesting in our golden hop . She certainly has good cover , as the nest is wedged into a corner of the wall , away from the wind and rain . She doesn 't seem at all concerned about our comings and goings . So far the wood pigeons haven 't nested , as they usually do , in the huge espaliered pear tree on the other side of the back door . This is something of a blessing . In previous years , as soon as the sun came up ( very early ) the brooding bird began cooing to her eggs and , later , to her chicks . She has a very loud voice . I think she 's chosen the yew tree this year , which is further down the garden and out of earshot . We have a bee - friendly garden , and the foxgloves are proving very popular this year , especially now the aquilegia is finished . There do seem to be more bees about , but mostly bumble bees . I 'd like to see a few more honey bees , but they don 't seem to be doing too well . We spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon at Burnby Hall Gardens in Pocklington . It was like stepping back in time . Elland Silver Band played magnificently in the bandstand , watched by a huge audience , men in straw hats , ladies in summer dresses , all enjoying music and picnics in the afternoon sunshine . We just wandered round the lake , where the water lilies are coming into bloom . I realised how long it had been since we 'd had the leisure to just amble about , doing nothing in particular . We always seem to be so busy at weekends . That isn 't a problem , we enjoy our weekends , but it was so nice to have no plan other than to walk , linger over coffee and cakes in the cafe , and smell the new growth on the juniper trees . It was such an old - fashioned afternoon , gentle , timeless , and restful . I sat for awhile indulging my favourite pastime - people watching . There were families , with buggies and toddlers , old couples strolling , hand - in - hand , all quietly enjoying the day . If ever proof was needed that environment affects behaviour , Sunday afternoon by the lake was it . I didn 't hear raised voices , no - one was rushing to be somewhere else . People were talking quietly to each other and actually looked happy . I didn 't see one person texting , or using a mobile phone , other than to take photos , as we did . Just so that we could take a bit of the magic home with us . " She says she wants to shine a light into the darkness , " but thinks a blog will not accomplish the deed . Does she not realize that with every eye that looks upon her words , a heart might possibly be softened ? A mind might be altered slightly ? The power to share , to care , and to allow ourselves to affect others … " affect " because we are indeed changing them . It is a scary thought for some and this is not some super power we speak of . It is the power to care and that is a very human quality . That is a character trait that should never be overlooked and instead should be embraced . A borderless world is social media . This land that we stand in now , these people of all colors and no color at all , their personalities created on fonts called Calibri and Times New Roman . And yet we know … I love reading . Give me a good adventure , with lost treasure , hidden secrets , characters who solve clues and save the world , and I 'm happy . I 've just finished reading the final book in Simon Toyne 's ' Sancti ' trilogy , ' The Tower ' . Fantastic ending to a great story . The problem for me is an inability to multitask when it comes to reading and writing . I can 't write and read fiction , it has to be one or the other . So I decided to take a week off from writing ( it stretched into ten days , but never mind ) to catch up on a few books that had caught my eye and were stockpiled for a bookfest . I really envy writers who can divide their time between reading and writing , and I 've tried to work out why I can 't do it . I think it has something to do with having a very visual imagination . When I write I don 't see the words , I see action and characters and just describe what I 'm seeing and hearing . I do the same when I 'm reading . I translate words into images from the page to such an extent that I am usually unaware of the writing , on a conscious level ( unless it 's really bad or stunningly good ) . So reading and writing demand a similar level of creative input from me . Non - fiction is a different kettle of fish . I can speed read research material for articles , switch between that and writing my own stuff , with no problem at all . But for that I concentrate solely on written language , there is little or no visualisation . I am dealing with facts , not being actively creative . It would be interesting to see which bits of my brain light up when I write fiction and non - fiction . I have a feeling there would be quite a marked difference in the areas of the brain involved in each activity . The other problem I have with reading is that , once started , I have real problems putting a book down . As I like novels of at least 400 pages , this causes some issues with basic life support systems like food shopping , cooking and maintaining a decent level of order in the house . But it all gets sorted out in the end .
|
He called himself Arex after the ancient war god of his people . Or , at least that was what he said . Nobody was really sure what name if any other he had been born with or exactly who his people were or where they dwelt . In truth , nobody ever had the nerve to ask him . He was a big man . He towered over all of the emperors elite guard , who were the hand chosen biggest and strongest men in the capital . He always went about heavily cloaked with a mask covering the lower part of his face . All one could see were those cold ice blue eyes glittering from the mountain of a warrior 's face . It was rumored that only the emperor himself had seen the mans whole face , which wasn 't exactly true . But that 's how rumors go . The man had appeared in the capital city eight years before , unannounced and unbidden . On the steps of the emperors palace he had upended a large sack containing the heads of seven vampires which had been plaguing the southern marshes for years . Another sack , which remained on his horse , had contained all of the loot he had discovered in their nest which they had taken from the hundreds of victims the vampires had claimed . It was his by right . Never was there a beast that Arex could not slay and bring back it 's head as a trophy . The emperor himself was said to have dozens of his trophies adorning his halls . The greatest of them being the giant head of a dragon which was , in life , as long as a hundred ships . Just preserving that trophy took over a dozen of the very best skinners a year to complete . The very head of that very dragon now hung in a place of honor above the emperors throne . And the scaled hide from that dragon now made up the glittering breastplates and shields of the emperors own personal guard . In the back of his mind , Arex knew that one day he would perish from the jaws or claws or hooves or talons or spikes or venomous stings of one of the creatures he hunted . It was his fate and he shrugged it off . His only fervent wish was that whatever beast brought him his last breath did so while dying by his hand . Even now , as he walked into the marketplace , Arex walked with a slight limp , favoring his right leg a bit . That wound would have killed lesser men and left even the healthier of them laid up in bed for many months . Seeing the aftermath of that wound had made Deril , his personal slave and sole attendant , feel weak and slightly ill to his stomach . His master shrugged it off as nothing , but Deril noted that Arex now slept less comfortably at night and never on his right side as he used to . He fretted for , as hunting was life to Arex , his masters happiness and comfort was life to Deril . Serving such a man had not always been easy . In the seven years since Arex had bought Deril from the slave pens there had been many lessons to be learned . Some had been learned behind a sharp word or the back of his masters hand across his face or even , once , bound naked to a pole and taken to with a thin flat strap which had left Deril sobbing and covered with welts for days . But such an event had not taken place in quite a few years . Deril had learned that his new master was not at heart an evil or cruel man . He preferred to instruct calmly and quietly if it were possible . He never struck out in anger or frustration , always with the intent of getting his point across as quickly and efficiently as possible . The slave admitted to himself that he had been willful and rebellious and quite foolish in his younger years . And now , even though he was still a slave , Deril walked with a bit of pride . Those who knew him in the marketplace and beyond knew that when he spoke , he spoke with the authority of his master behind him . Even the fat merchants and burghers who would normally look on any slave with disdain , gave Deril the same preference due his master . He was , in all sense of the word , his masters right hand . But only while Arex was in town in his residence . While on a hunt , Arex worked alone and only hired local help after the deed was done to cart back the beasts broken carcass . It was his way . The months while his master was away were always long and lonely for Deril . To be sure , he had his duties to keep him busy . Arex 's manse was always spotlessly clean and well stocked , awaiting the masters return . And each night he kept a spot warm in his masters bed , whether Arex was in residence or not . Deril actually had a room to himself , just a small cell , more like a closet , just off his masters bedroom . But he could count the times he had slept in there in the last seven years on the fingers of one hand . Even on the nights when Arex was ill from some poisonous sting or an infection from some nasty claw or fang and did not want him in his bed , Deril always catnapped on the thick rug on the floor at the foot of his masters bed , ready in an instant to bring him whatever relief he might need . That had been one of the hardest lessons that Deril ever learned . As a matter of fact , that very subject had been the reason for the only time he had even been bound to the pole as the focal point of his masters irritation . Deril had never been touched by a man before up to that point in his life . Taken as a slave in his early teens , he had been a field hand for an owner with a large farm and never once even saw the inside of his masters house . Living in somewhat cramped conditions in the slave quarters , Deril knew that there were men who preferred the company of other men , but he shunned them . And once or twice he even managed to secure an entrance to the females quarters for a few minutes of hurried bliss . But such things were publicly frowned upon and if any were caught they were severely beaten for such transgressions . When Deril was twenty summers old , the master had been killed in a border skirmish with a rival lord and his beautiful mansion burned to the ground . He , along with the surviving slaves , were sold back to the slavers and returned to the pens . In abject misery and fear of who he might be sold to next , Deril awaited his fate . Standing naked on the auction block once again , the young slave quailed as he looked down at the huge man who was bidding on him . The man seemed to tower over the others in the crowd , all of whom gave him plenty of space to stand in . He was heavily cloaked and wore a mask that covered the lower part of his face . All Deril could see of his potential new owner was a pair of cold looking ice blue eyes . The quavering slave was quickly sold , for once his intentions became clear , nobody dared bid against the large dangerous looking man in their midst . For twenty nights , Deril slept on the floor next to Arex 's bed , chained to the bedpost , morose and despairing , knowing that soon he would no longer be able to sidestep his masters wishes and be forced to be his sexual plaything . The thought of the huge strong man taking him to bed scared Deril half to death . On the twenty first day he ' accidentally ' broke a plate while serving dinner . When he slipped into the kitchen to replace it , he slashed his wrists with a bit of the broken pottery . What Deril didn 't count on was the hunter 's keen sense of smell . Arex could track a wounded creature for miles in a blackened cave by scent alone . And had . For him to smell fresh blood less than ten yards away was nothing . Seconds after the blood began to flow , Deril found himself slammed face down on the hard stone floor with his wrists wrenched painfully up behind his back . For the next twenty minutes Arex calmly and coolly lectured Deril on what his duties as a slave were and what Arex expected of him . All of the duties expected of him . Including keeping his masters bed warm and his master as well . For the twenty minutes following that Arex calmly and carefully striped almost every single inch of Deril 's flesh with the strap . The only areas very carefully missed were Deril 's face , his bandaged wrists and his genitals . He was struck just hard enough to sting and leave a welt , but never once drew blood or left so much as a lingering bruise . On the twenty second night , Deril knelt by his masters bedside and begged forgiveness . When it was given , he crawled willingly into his masters bed and gave himself to him completely . As with most things in life , there was some pain at first , but the ecstasy quickly over - rode that . It was a night filled with cries of pleasure like Deril had never known in his young life . In truth , Deril loved Arex with his whole heart and soul and would gladly , willingly , sacrifice his life for his master . Arex had taught him how to defend both himself and his masters property with a skill that would defeat any half dozen robbers or thieves . He always carried two medium sized knives at the center of his back under his tunic in case they were needed , even though this wasn 't strictly allowed under imperial law . Deril learned that his master had a disdain for most of the imperial laws and followed them only when it suited him to do so . So far no cutpurse or brigand had ever been foolish enough to try and test the master in combat . But Deril was always alert , just in case . Such an important person as Arex could have ridden a horse or been drawn in a carriage to town that day , but such things were not his way . Unless time was of the essence or the distance far too great , Arex preferred to walk on his own two feet . Such it was that day . Arex walked the five miles into the marketplace with Deril a pace behind him , both marking his place as his masters servant and guarding his back . Deril wore a loose tunic and soft cotton pants tucked into his boots . The tunic covered the belt that held a purse containing quite a few of his masters gold coins as well as the two knives he carried . Arex , as he was always when he went out , was hooded and masked . His heavy cloak covered the sword and small blast rifle he carried on his back but deliberately did not cover the large pistol in his belt nor the wicked looking knife protruding from the top of his boot . Deril had learned that his master rarely ever left anything to chance . And what he wanted most when he went out was to go where he wanted to go and get what he wanted to get with as little interference as possible . In a city like Dunis going about heavily and visibly armed was the best way to do that . As they walked , Deril noted the somewhat pained limp in his masters gait and wondered for the umpteenth time where they were going and why Arex hadn 't just sent him . Deril was used to fetching and carrying for him . He did all of the grocery shopping and fetched many different things from the shops and bazaars in Dunis . ' Where are we going again , master ? ' Deril asked , quite innocently . Arex waved a hand at the street around them and said ' It 's quite obvious , Deril . We are going to the slave pens . Nothing else is down this lane . ' He turned and glanced at the young man behind him and said ' And wipe that look off of your face . I 'm not trading you in for a younger model . ' ' I am perfectly content , master . Myself , I need no others in my life . This trip is a needless strain on you . You should be at home resting . ' The young man slid to his knees in the dust of the street and bowed his head . ' You know I do love you , master . I would never serve another man . ' ' Get up , you fool . ' Arex said gruffly . Deril rose and brushed the dust from the knees of his pants . The soft leather of his masters gloved thumb caressed his cheek , then the hand slid to the back of his neck and held him firmly in place . He nodded reluctantly . ' I . . . . I miss you being home , master . The manse is so empty without you there . But I have my duties to keep me occupied . It is no matter . ' The big man put his other hand to his face and pulled his mask down . He leaned down and pulled the younger man to him and kissed him roughly and thoroughly . Deril moaned in the back of his throat and he felt his body responding to his masters touch . He wanted nothing more than for his master to take him right then and there . Yes , even if it was in the middle of the street ! Arex turned abruptly away and said ' You need company , Deril . We will find you some . And I have some other plans which will require adding a few more to our numbers . Come ! ' and he stalked away up the street . While the slave market was a nonstop business , they only held the public auctions one day a week . The other days were spent restocking ( for there were always bands of raiders wandering in with new supplies of captives ) and holding private sales for the elite of Dunis , should they not want to sully themselves bidding among the farmers and factory owners and other riff raff . Knowing that the public auctions would be held the following morning , Deril knew that the pens would be as well stocked this evening as they would ever be . Still wondering at what his master was thinking , he followed him dutifully into the one place he hoped never to see again . The guards at the gates were huge men and heavily armed and armored . The slave factors got the biggest and roughest men they could find to guard their gates . But Deril noted that Arex still stood several inches taller than the burly ruffians , who bowed their heads differentially to his master as he strode past them without a glance . He also noted the heavy iron collars about their throats which marked them as slaves themselves . The slave factors recognized Arex at a glance and ushered him into the inner chambers with many bows and flatteries . They offered him a large and comfortable couch to recline on and immediately pretty young serving girls began rushing in and out with platters of fine foods and jugs of wine and other drinks . Arex merely held up one hand and waved them away . He perched on the edge of the finely appointed couch as if ready to spring up at a breath . Standing at his masters shoulder , Deril shuddered slightly on hearing the mans voice again . Despite his outward trappings of civility and culture , he knew that Garl was capable of immense cruelty and uncivilized tastes , preferring partners way younger than was socially acceptable . His hands clenched tightly behind his back as he repressed the urge to slit the fat swine 's throat . Arex waved the fat man out of his field of vision and said ' Household servants . Young . Fit . Not that half starved and abused trash you sell to the factory men by the river . ' Deril saw the obese factor flinch slightly . ' Bring them quickly . ' Deril heard the snap of command in his masters voice and could tell that Arex cared not for the factor either . For the next hour slaves were trotted in and out of the large room in groups of twelve for their perusal . Some groups were sent away on sight and occasionally Arex would have one set aside for later consideration . It startled Deril that his master was also looking at young women . He already had three or four standing aside amongst the group of young men . Deril had never seen his master take an interest in women before . When they were down to the last of the chosen group , numbering about a dozen , Arex had them separated into groups of men and women . There were seven males and five females . All were fairly young and reasonably fit , showing little of the prevalent abuse of lifelong slaves , though many showed the bruises and marks from those who had captured them in some raid . Deril wrinkled his nose at the smell . It had been many years since he had been among their number and had almost forgotten the stench . The smell of fear and despair and lack of sanitation and being fed on nothing but scraps and garbage . His hands tightened into fists behind his back as the urge to chop the fat slave factor into quivering bits ran through his mind . A strong hand landed on Deril 's shoulder and his masters whispered voice cut through the haze . ' Control yourself . ' Nobody else in the room had noticed the tension building in Deril 's body . Covering his servant 's discomfiture , Arex pulled Deril in front of him and pointed out the group of male slaves , who eyed them with mixed hope and alarm , wondering what type of men Arex and Deril might be . ' Pick out one . ' Said Arex . ' Or two . However many we may need . You know my tastes . . . . And yours . Someone who would fit well in my household and not have to be beaten too often . A strong back and a willing heart . ' Then he leaned forward and whispered ' One who you wouldn 't mind having around for a long time to come . Choose wisely . ' Garl made a small grimace of distaste as Deril began perusing the line of offered captives . A slave ? Arex sends a mere slave to sample his wares ? It was a mark of dishonor on his entire house ! Garl practically quivered with indignance . Until , that is , he noticed the icy blue gaze of Arex above his mask . Those eyes held such calm cool malevolence , as if daring the factor to make a remark . Garl felt his anger melt away into fear under the unflinching gaze of the hunter and his bowels turned to ice water . Sweating profusely , the corpulent factor excused himself and fled the room . One of his younger brothers , his face masked in obsequious bland smiles , took his place . While Deril looked up and down the line of males , Arex stood and looked up and down at the females he had chosen from the groups of newly taken slaves . They huddled together on their knees and a few of them sobbed openly , cowering away from the giant of a man that approached them . He slipped off one glove and snapped his fingers loudly to get their attention . When the females looked up , he raised his hand and they all stood , hands across their naked breasts and clad in only filthy loincloths . They were all dirty and unkempt and a couple of them showed fresh whip marks on their shoulders and backs . Tears made tracks in the filth and grime on their cheeks . Tugging down his mask , Arex made a grimace of distaste . Not at the women , but at the way they were kept . Even animals deserved better than this . But in Dunis , as indeed in all of Kahedron , animals were usually treated better than most slaves . Arex knew that there was very little he could do about the situation . Pointing a finger , he beckoned one of the females closer . She was small , as all of the chosen ones were . A dark haired girl who looked to be from the isle of Nikkon . Pale skin and small breasts with large dark nipples and black hair all the way down to her waist . ' Have any of these men or the raiders lain with you since you were taken , Miko ? ' She shook her head , still trembling . His strong hand reached out and captured her chin and turned her face up to meet his gaze . She tried to flinch away but his grip was as strong as steel . She felt as if he could have crushed her head in his one massive hand . But though his grasp was firm , it was not rough or painful as she expected . The frightened girl hesitated , then looked up into those ice blue eyes and saw a man that was strong and forceful , one who got what he wanted when he wanted it . But she saw no hint of cruelty there , like in the eyes of the raiders or the slave factors . The huge man frightened her , for there was death in those cold eyes . Death , yes . But not for her . The eyes also promised protection . For she knew that such a man would protect what was his fiercely . She stood a little straighter and nodded her head the little bit that his grip allowed . She whispered ' Yes , master . I will serve you . ' The big man repeated the examination of the other four girls in the same manner . Three were sent away but one , another small woman with short reddish hair and green eyes and a Cairnish accent stood by the Nikkonese girl . Almost unconsciously , their hands twined together as they stood and trembled and wondered as they looked at their would be new master . Meanwhile , Deril had finished his examination of the males . He had chosen one who looked to be in his late teens or early twenties , compact and fairly fit for a slave . He was about as tall as Deril , but not as heavily muscled even though he looked like he would be a good farm hand or laborer . The boy 's eyes were bright blue , like Arex 's , and a startling contrast to his dark brown hair . Deril directed him to stand over by the two chosen girls and rejoined his masters side as they contemplated their choices . Arex looked at the young man his servant had selected . ' Only one , Deril ? You could have as many of them as you wanted , you know . Why did you choose him ? ' Deril made a small smile . ' He has intelligence , my lord . And can read and write . None of the others could . He 's young and strong and . . . reasonably attractive . I explained to him our . . . relationship , and what would presumably be expected of him . Outside of his household duties , that is . ' Arex gave out a short bark of a laugh that Deril knew was his masters equivalent to a rolling guffaw . ' And now , Deril ? Now that you are so wise in the ways of the world , are they no longer to your liking ? ' Once again he felt his body responding to his masters touch and words . He wanted nothing more than to tear off his own clothes and offer his body to him right then and there . Even if the whole world were watching ! ' Y . . yes , master . I did . ' he whispered , his cheeks coloring a deep red once again . ' I would gladly shed my blood for you any time you wish it . I . . . I am yours , master Arex . ' The bigger man released him and pushed him gently back with a soft smile . ' Yes . You are . ' he said . He pointed to the waiting slaver and said ' Don 't let him rob me . Give him a fair price . And slip in a small personal commission just because we didn 't have to trifle with that fat swine of a brother of his . ' The younger slaver had no qualms about making a deal with a slave . As long as his masters gold was good and plentiful , he had no problems at all . When the deal was concluded , he clapped his hands and a couple of his personal retainers scurried into the room with short chunks of rope . As was their custom , the new slaves hands were bound behind their backs and their ankles were hobbled so they could not take a full stride . Then their collars were strung together with short sections of rope with the smallest of the girls in front and the taller male in the rear . That made any sort of escape attempt that much more difficult . The two girls , unable now to cover their bare breasts , hung their heads in shame . All three looked frightened and apprehensive . Arex directed the slaver to have a cart and driver brought around for delivery . ' No cage . ' he said . ' A plain cart will do . And make it quick . I wish to be away from this place . ' Deril took the lead rope and led his new charges out of the chamber and into the courtyard . A small cart rattled to a stop , driven by a sallow and sour faced young man . As he wore no collar , Arex guess he was one of the youngest of the fat slavers siblings . He apparently resented having to act as a delivery boy . Deril lifted and chivvied the three into the back of the cart then started to climb up to the bench next to the driver . Immediately , a sneer twisted the sullen driver 's mouth and he started to bark some sort of order at Deril when a sudden excruciating pain on the side of his head made him stop and cry out . Arex pinched the young mans ear between two strong fingers , twisting it and almost unseating him from the drivers bench . He pulled the young man sideways until they were face to face . The only thing keeping him from falling in the dust was the formidable grip that threatened to tear the flesh from his head . ' My man , there . . . ' said Arex , in a voice full of cold calculating menace ' Will direct you to my home . Heed his voice as if it were my very own . Make sure all of my possessions make it safely and securely to my mansion . . . . ' the fingers gripping his ear pulled and twisted just a fraction more . ' Or your head will be the next one to adorn my dining hall . ' The young driver managed to squeak out ' Yes ! Yes ! Yes , my lord ! Anything you say , my lord ! ' before he was thrust roughly back up into the seat with his head ringing and his ear burning . He wanted nothing more to do with the huge man whose voice sounded like liquid murder . As his servant scrambled up into the seat of the wagon trying to hide the smirk on his face , Arex said ' Get them washed up and fed and bedded down . Make sure nobody goes a - wandering . I 'll be home late . ' Deril placed a hand over his heart and replied ' It will be as you wish , master . ' It was well after the bells had tolled the midnight hour when Arex slipped the lock of his front door and stepped into the hall . As he turned to secure the door against the night , he suddenly stopped and raised his head and said softly ' It 's good to know that you are always alert , Deril . No thief will enter my home unbidden , it seems . ' ' Not unbidden nor unchallenged , my lord . ' Came the reply . Deril carefully slipped the safety back on the large blast rifle held down by his leg and out of view . He trotted down the stairs and headed towards the kitchens , anticipating his masters voice saying ' Tea please , Deril . Something hot and spiced to chase away the chill of the night . ' There was a pause as Arex halted halfway up the stone stairway and said ' And your ears , Deril . Bring them as well . They will be needed . ' Deril calmly poured out the steaming hot tea as his master slipped out of his clothing and accessories . Arex carefully and methodically checked each of his weapons as he removed them and hung them on the rack . While the hunter was occupied , the young servant tipped a small envelope of powder into his masters drink and stirred it until it dissolved . The process had made an almost imperceptible whisper of sound behind his back , but Arex said ' I hope it doesn 't make me sleep too soon . I have things I need to say to you , Deril . ' Arex slipped the last of his clothing to the floor and stepped to the basin and filled it with hot water . Dipping a cloth in the steaming water , he began wiping his body down . Deril came to his side and got another cloth and dipped it in the water and began wiping down his masters broad back and shoulders . What he could reach of them , anyway . He knew from his ways that Arex would not submit to a proper bath this late in the evening , so Deril did his best to wipe away what he could of the dust of Dunis and hoped that in the morning he could coax his master into the tub . . . Deril stopped and shivered a little at the thought . He always did so enjoy spending time in the tub with his master . . . . The big man reclined against the pile of pillows and sipped his tea while the smaller one leaned against one side of his broad chest and did the same . Arex seemed uncommonly pensive and thoughtful and Deril was a little concerned . They sat in silence for a few moments , each lost in their own thoughts until Arex set his empty cup down on the bedside table and spoke . ' Yes , my lord . Though it was quite a trial . Jeni , the Cairnish girl , thought I was trying to either rape or drown her in the tub , she couldn 't decide which . It very nearly came to blows , but I had but to show her the back of my hand and she calmed down and submitted to the bath . I think once she decided that I was harmless she enjoyed getting clean again . The little Nikkonese , Miko , was aghast that a man would attend to her . I think she would have been more comfortable washing me than the other way around . Jaren , the boy , was a bit over excited . I think it was the sight of more naked flesh than he had ever really seen before . He nearly squirted in my hands when I washed him . ' Deril grinned a little and hid his face in his teacup . ' I guess it 's a good thing ' he said ' that we kept the servants quarters cleaned and ready . I never understood why before , but now I do . The boy is by himself in one room and the girls in the other . They each have a pitcher of water and a chamber pot handy . Their collars are chained securely to the beds and the doors are locked for extra measure . I took the liberty of throwing out those nasty breechclouts they arrived in and have given them each a soft robe for the moment . Their bellies are full . They are clean and warm and safe and are , the last time I checked , all blissfully asleep . ' Deril stopped and glanced up at his master and lover . He added ' I gave them each a bit of the same concoction from Jubeth so sleep would claim them sooner . I hope you won 't be needing the services of any of them tonight ? ' Arex shot him a look out of the corner of his eye and said ' And now you are thinking ' For the love of god , Arex . Won 't you tell me what the hell this is all about ? ' ' Deril sputtered into his cup and shook his head . ' I would never be so presumptuous , my lord . ' He paused and continued ' At least , not in those exact words . ' He reached across the broad body next to him in the bed and set his empty cup down on the table . A strong arm settled across his back and he curled into his masters body and laid his head on his chest and put his arm around the strong slim waist . ' I am going to die , Deril . Probably quite sooner than either of us suspect . That thought annoys me , even though I know it is inevitable . ' ' Hush your prattling and listen , Deril . This is important . I am a hunter . That is what I am and what I do . It is my life . If there is a vicious beast in this world that other men cannot kill , then I will hunt it and stalk it and find a way to kill it . I will kill it and it 's head will find it 's way here to my collection . Or . . ' he waved a hand vaguely ' Out there somewhere . In the emperors halls or the home of some fat burgher or rich merchant . Whatever . No matter where the trophy rests , the kill is still mine and mine alone . ' ' I am getting old , Deril . Not old in the years of men , but old in the years of a hunter . Every hunt , every battle , every new injury I get slower and slower . Very soon the day will come when I will not be fast enough and the beast will get the best of me . ' ' And if I do survive , what then ? To spend the rest of my days sitting around the fire telling tales of past glory ? ' He shook his head . His voice roughened and said ' I think not . I am a hunter . That is how I lived and that is how I will die . ' Deril said ' When that day comes I will go find your body and bring it home , my lord . And when we build your funeral pyre I will lay down beside you . . . ' he suddenly squeaked in pain and rose up as those thick fingers closed on his ear . Arex turned the smaller mans face until it faced his . Deril saw the lines of anger between his masters eyes . ' You will do no such foolish thing , Deril . If you ever speak such nonsense again you will find yourself back on the pole , dancing to the tune of the strap ! ' He shook him lightly then released his hold . Deril clapped a hand to the side of his head to ease the stinging . Arex continued speaking as if nothing had happened . ' Something must go on after I am passed , Deril . One of those things is you . I have made provisions in case of just such an event . The law - keepers in the palace have a document signed by me . A large portion of my estate will be yours when I die . ' His head swimming with pain and confusion , Deril said ' A slave cannot inherit ! The law clearly states ' Property cannot own property . ' It is one of the oldest laws in Kahedron ! ' ' No ! ! ' Deril sprang from the bed and rushed across the room to the corner where his collar had been thrown . He buckled it back around his neck again and stood looking at the hunter who , for once in the long years of their acquaintance , looked merely puzzled . ' It may be as you say and I am a free man . ' He said . ' And no man may ever call me slave or look down on me as mere property . And for that I thank you with all of my heart . ' He stepped closer and took Arex 's hand in his and held it to his chest . ' But even if I am no longer your slave , you will always and forever be , in my heart , my lord and master . . . . ' Arex pulled the smaller man up onto the bed and onto his chest , his arms wrapped around him tightly and kissed him long and deep . His large rough hands roamed up and down the smooth back and spine then settled on the firm cheeks of his ass as his tongue chased around in Deril 's mouth . He heard his young lover moan at his touch and could feel Deril 's prick getting hard and poking him in the belly , a little of the slippery fluid leaking from the tip and smearing on his skin . Rolling them over on the bed , Arex laid Deril on his back , their lips still pressed together and his hand slid down to grasp the thick hard penis standing tall from the younger man 's crotch . That was one of the things that had first captured the hunters attention when Deril stood trembling on the auction block . He had been stripped naked , as they always were , and Arex could see that the young man had a fairly large and sturdy cock hanging between his legs . While the hunter preferred his bed partners to be smaller than him ( which wasn 't hard , considering there were very few bigger anywhere ) he also liked them built strong and big enough to be enjoyed , no matter how they played . And Deril 's sweet body and fine prick had never left him disappointed in all of their years together . The former slave ( who was wrestling with the notion even as all thought flew from his head ) moaned and rolled his hips at the touch of his former ( but forever ! ) master . Arex always knew instinctively how to touch him and when to drive him quickly to the edge of bliss and beyond it . Since that first night when he had willingly given his body to the big man , Deril had craved his touch and sought it whenever and as often as possible . He was so big and so strong and so surprisingly tender that it made Deril seem safe and warm and loved as if he had been in his mother 's arms . Of course , his mother had never gotten him anywhere near that excited . Sometimes just thinking about making love to Arex made Deril ready to spend . Before , when he had lain with women , Deril had always assumed that a mans capacity for orgasms was one a night . For that was all that was ever had . He felt the big man move and Arex turned and put an arm over Deril 's slim waist and leaned up on his elbow . Arex neatly pinned his body to the bed with his own greater mass and was now facing down Deril 's slim body as his strong sure hand stroked the younger mans cock . Over his shoulder , Arex said ' Let me ease you body , and maybe your mind just a little . ' With that he lowered his head and took Deril 's hard prick in his mouth and sucked on it gently . Trapped beneath the bigger man 's body , Deril could do little but shudder and moan at the feeling of lips and tongue on the head of his cock . One of his hands wandered over the wide heavily muscled back while the other tugged at the short cropped graying hair as Arex 's head bobbed up and down slowly on his cock . Even if he was taking what was considered to be taking a sexually submissive role in their lovemaking , Arex was ever anything but submissive . He took complete control of any situation he was involved in . He pinned his lovers body to the bed like an arena wrestler and took him with his mouth like a victor enjoying the spoils of combat . Arex thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of his lover being helpless beneath him while he took what he wanted . He also enjoyed giving Deril pleasure . So much of his life revolved around fear and pain and battle and death , it felt nice to create something that was pure pleasure for another . And , despite his outward persona of being the cold and heartless killer , Arex truly loved Deril as much as was possible for him , and always wanted him to be happy . Deril was lost in the sensation . One strong rough hand stroked up and down the length of his shaft , abrading his skin just a little as it went up and down . His lovers mouth was surprisingly soft and warm and his tongue was nimble and slippery against the head of his cock in the gently sucking mouth . Arex slid his other hand down and gently cupped Deril 's balls in his hand and rolled them in his palm . While Deril moaned and thrashed beneath him , his hand slipped even lower while two fingers spread the firm cheeks of his ass apart and the middle finger slipped between them and pressed firmly at the entrance of his anus . He just pressed the tip of his finger there , not seeking entrance , just enjoying the feel of the muscled ring twitching and spasming against the digit . At the touch of the thick finger at the entrance of his anus , Deril cried out and thrashed his hips , driving his prick up into his lovers mouth . Just a touch there would drive Deril almost mad until his world narrowed down to a tiny microcosm of pure ecstasy . He wanted so badly for Arex to take him there . To be face down on the bed and feeling that huge prick splitting him open and filling him completely . For Deril , being held down and fucked hard and continuously by his lord and master was his vision of heaven on earth . When he had milked the smaller man of every drop of his jism , Arex released him from the submission hold and leaned back up against the pile of pillows , gathering his trembling lover in his arms and cuddled him to his chest . Deril still trembled and shook like a man running a fever and his skin was covered with goose bumps . Arex slowly ran his warm hands over Deril 's skin , soothing and warming him until his hands came to a rest around the smaller mans shoulders and lay still . Deril lay still until his vision cleared and the shaking stopped . Turning his head , he looked up at his master and friend and lover and saw that the big man had finally succumbed to the sleeping draught in his tea . For the first time in a week since he had returned from the last hunt , Arex slept with a small smile on his lips . When the big man was hunting , he ate wild game cooked over an open fire and fruits and berries where he could find them . His vast knowledge of woodcraft included every single thing that was edible in the forests and plains and also every single thing that was not . While he was able to feed himself out in the wild with a facility shared by few other men , Deril had discovered early on in their relationship that the man was completely hopeless when it came to the kitchen . One of the very few times that Deril had ever stood up to his master was the day that he forbade Arex to ever enter his kitchen intent on attempting to cook something . He fully expected Arex to beat him for that . And he would have accepted the beating and still insisted . But Arex had acknowledged his lack of culinary skills and had graciously acquiesced to the smaller mans demands . ' So ' Deril said as he stirred the slightly pungent goats milk cheese that Arex so favored into the skillet of scrambled eggs ' We managed to get side tracked last evening and I never did learn of your master plan . ' He glanced over at the man at the table and added ' But I suspect that part of your master plan was to distract me and keep me from asking too many questions . It worked , in case you were wondering . ' Deril paused and stirred the other skillet sizzling with sausages then added ' Until now , that is . ' Arex sighed and set down his mug . ' There are apparently things ' he began ' That when a man reaches a certain point in his life he begins to think about . One of them , as I told you last night , is the urge to leave something behind . Part of what I want to have go on after I am gone is you , Deril . I didn 't relish the thought of you suddenly being left all alone with nobody around you . ' ' This is hard for me , Deril . Caring about somebody . Worrying about their safety . Thinking about the future . I 'm not used to that . ' Arex waved his hands around vaguely . ' I never used to care about anything but the hunt . And the kill . And I never thought about the future unless it involved that . And now . . . . you . ' He waved his hands around again , taking in the whole room and the huge house around it . ' And all of this . What will happen to you ? And my home ? And my name ? Will Arex the Hunter just disappear into the legends and be gone ? ' He paused and looked his friend and lover in the eye and said ' I want to leave more than just a name behind me , Deril . More than just a name and a heartbroken lover . ' Moving the pans off of the stove , Deril began dishing out plates of eggs and sausages for the two of them . He left the remainder ( and there was plenty ) on the warm back of the stove to feed their new guests . He listened to his friend while he served up their breakfast . It had happened during his last hunt , Arex explained . There had been a great wolf marauding around the town of Irbenzia in the south . It had killed several of the townsfolk and their livestock . Hunting parties had gone out to slay it and had never returned . Only bits of their gear were found . And much blood . After months had passed and there seemed to be no solution , the chancellor of the town appealed to the emperor for aid . The stalk had taken Arex almost a month . The creature had a wide range of hunting ground and seemed to travel for many miles to reach the town . While tracking the beast , the hunter had noticed that it always seemed to avoid a certain mountain pass while it traveled . It was as if it knew it was being followed and led him away from that area . It took all of the skill he possessed to pick up the beasts trail into the mountain pass . It had taken great pains to travel the most difficult ways in and out of the rocky gorge . At the bottom of the gorge , hidden deep within the rocks was a cave . The hunter could see from a distance that there were the remnants of bones scattered around the entrance to the low cave . He sat awhile and waited . After an hour or so , the sun was high enough to warm the rocks and first one , then more , then a total of five wolf pups came out of the darkness . They were still young , but old enough to begin hunting for themselves . Once they realized that their mother wasn 't coming back , anyway . He knew that one day there would be a wolf problem in the area again . But it would probably be several years before those were big enough . And chances were that not all of them , if any , would ever live long enough to be as big as the creature he had fought and slain . ' I want heirs to my name , Deril . If nothing else , someone to remember me . Best case , one to follow in my footsteps . Hence , the females . ' Deril nodded and forked the last of his breakfast into his mouth and stacked the plate by the sink . ' I can see . . . . ' he said ' A couple of flaws in your plan , my lord . If you don 't mind me saying so . But . . . ' he added as the big man raised an eyebrow ' Perhaps my comments should wait . I need to rouse our new . . . guests . . . . and begin their first day and training . And , of course , we need to make formal introductions and explain their . . . . duties . All of them . ' Arex shoved his empty plate away and rose from the table . Deril poured him a fresh cup of tea and he took it and turned to stalk from the room , saying ' By all means , Deril . Awaken them and feed them . They must get quickly used to the hours we keep . ' He paused , then turned back and slipped a hand behind Deril 's neck and pulled him in close for a deep warm kiss . Their faces only inches away afterwards he said ' Tell them what you wish in advance . I leave that to your discretion . Then bring them to me one at a time . I 'll be in the study . ' During a hunt several years ago , Arex had tracked a nest of sliths to an ancient ruin of a castle high in the northern mountains . Though vaguely manlike in body , sliths are eyeless , with huge bat - like ears . They also sported a mouthful of razor sharp fangs and long claws on both their hands and feet . And when left unmolested they bred like insects . Cleaning out the castle and the warren of tunnels beneath it had taken days . Arex had slain fifty of the nasty creatures and had selected out the biggest of them to take as his trophies when he noticed something large in one of the biggest rooms of the castle , buried under a pile of debris . It turned out to be the throne of whoever had built the castle ages before . It was huge and made from thick wood and sumptuously carved with battle scenes and heroic figures . Hiring a wagon and crew to bring the thing home had cost Arex a good portion of his bounty , but he didn 't mind the cost . And Deril had spent several days cleaning the grime of ages off of the thing and replacing the cushions . In the end , he didn 't mind so much either . When Deril knocked at the door of the master 's study and gained entrance , he saw that Arex had changed into his more formal ' at home ' clothes . He was dressed all in black , fairly tight trousers and a loose tunic and his best soft black boots . All designed , of course , to make an impression as he lounged in the seat of the great chair before the fireplace . And make an impression he did . The sleeves of his tunic were rolled up to the elbow , exposing the corded muscle of his forearms and the trousers were tight enough that Deril could see the bulge of the big mans prick pushing down the side of his thigh . Deril wanted nothing more than to crawl up into his masters lap right then and there , but he managed , with an effort , to restrain himself . Pushing back his own excitement , Deril bowed slightly and said ' They are here , my lord . ' Arex nodded and gave a small smile , seeing the effect his pose had on the younger man . ' Excellent , Deril . Bring me the nikkonese , first . ' The young man led the slave girl into the masters study by a short lead attached to her collar . She wore a short robe of green silk that Arex knew belonged to Deril . When his lover had worn it , it barely covered the cheeks of his ass . It went down to mid - thigh on the smaller woman . He saw her eyes go wide and her step faltered just a little as she saw the master arrayed in his chair , looking regal and just a bit overpowering . At a gesture , Deril unclipped the lead and left them alone as he closed the doors . ' Look me in the eyes . ' With an effort , she raised her gaze to his face and looked into her new master 's eyes . As before , she saw a fierce strength in those eyes . Strength and courage . . . . And maybe even a little tenderness . It gave the little nikkonese girl hope that maybe her life here wouldn 't be the constant horror that it could have been elsewhere . That just maybe she didn 't have to live in constant fear and look forward to nothing but torture and toil and an early death . Her eyes still looking into his , Miko untied the sash of her short robe and let it pool to the floor at her feet . Her hands at first went to cover her small breasts , then she swallowed hard and they went down to her sides , revealing her body to her master . She was too thin from poor nutrition , as were all new slaves , but her body was fairly firm and sturdy . Arex could see that her nipples were erect with a mixture of fear and excitement . ' Yes , you are mine , Miko . Body and soul . Heart and mind . You are mine . ' He stroked her cheek again and said ' Your life here will not be as easy as if you were a free woman , but it will not be as bad as it could be elsewhere . I am not a cruel man by nature , Miko . But I do expect and demand obedience . If you disobey or misbehave , you will be severely punished . Do you understand me completely ? ' She nodded and trembled a little more against the surprising soft touch of his hand . ' Yes , my master . I understand . I will serve you faithfully , I swear ! ' ' To cook and to clean , master . To assist Deril in his duties and the household chores . To . . To . . . attend to your needs , master . ' She paused and swallowed hard again . ' No matter what they may be . ' ' I am not a cruel man , Miko . I do not wish to take what I want from one who is unwilling . If you will come to my bed willingly you will live a long and fairly comfortable life and bear me many children . ' He paused and his eyes hardened just a little and he added ' If you refuse me , you will be returned to the slavers and you can take your chances elsewhere . ' She shook her head and clutched his big hand in both of her small ones . ' No ! ' she cried ' Please master ! Miko will serve you in all ways , master ! I swear ! ' Her lip trembled and she lowered her eyes . A shiver ran through her body . ' I . . . . confess , master , that you frighten me . I . . . cannot help my fear . You are bigger than any man I have ever seen . . . . ' She looked up at him again , her lips firm in resolve . ' I will serve you willingly , master . In spite of my fears . I will happily bear your children and serve you all of my days . ' With that statement made , Arex slipped a hand behind her neck and leaned down , pressing his large rough lips to her small soft ones and kissed her tenderly and thoroughly . Miko felt a surge of passion rush through her body and felt a sudden dampness between her thighs . Even though her new master and his huge body frightened her still ( for she could not help but notice the immense bulge running down the leg of his tight trousers ) she suddenly wanted to give him her body in any way possible . When Deril heard his name called he opened the door , towing the small redheaded cairnish girl by her lead . Both of their eyes widened just a little as they saw Miko kneeling naked on a cushion beside the masters chair . She was calm and smiling , her hands and her robe in her lap . Arex winked surreptitiously at Deril while Miko caught Jeni 's eyes and nodded slightly . He cleared his throat and when the girl looked up , he gestured to the cushion . She arose hurriedly and knelt at his feet . He held out his hand and she placed her small hand in his . His thumb stroked the back of her small warm hand . She brought her head up and Arex looked at her and smiled gently . She had eyes the color of the greenest woodlands and short boyish hair like fresh cinnamon , with a spray of freckles that went across her nose and spread down to her chest and shoulders . She had small firm breasts and fairly wide hips and a slim waist . Her nipples were hard , like little diamonds set on her chest . ' That we were to assist him in the household chores , my lord . And to obey both you and he in all things . That if we disobeyed , we would be punished , but not excessively or unjustly . And . . . . and . . . . ' her voice broke a little and she looked down at the floor again . ' Think carefully right now , girl child . This is the first and last choice you will be allowed to make in my household . If you will serve me in all ways and come to my bed willingly , you will have a good life here and you and Miko will bear my children . ' Once again Arex leaned down and kissed the girl at his feet . Touching her only with a hand on the nape of her neck and his lips , Arex conveyed without words the passion with which he lived his life and promised many many nights of passion to come . When he released her , Jeni was faint and had to rest a moment before she could rise again . And to Arex 's keen senses , the scent of arousal in the room had just doubled . Blushing furiously , Jaren opened his robe and dropped it to the floor . Though he was a little undernourished , he was fairly well built . Arex noted that he had a thick sturdy prick that twitched just a little as he went back and forth between arousal and nervousness . ' That I was to tend to the house and the garden , master . That I was to obey Deril and yourself at all times or be punished . That I was to supply . . . comfort , when directed , my lord . ' The hunter put a finger to his lips and pondered for a moment , his eyes narrow , staring at the young man who stood naked before him . He was attractive , no doubt . And he suspected that the young man would be enough to keep Deril busy and chase away the boredom while the master was away . Arex absently ran his hand up and down Deril 's thigh as he thought . He also wondered what it might be like with the two of them in his bed at the same time . . . ' Just to let you know , Jaren . ' Arex spoke . ' Miko and Jeni have both sworn to serve me under my conditions . You will now have your chance . Know this , then . If you stay and serve under my roof , and that is not yet decided , there are restrictions and conditions . These two women . . . ' he pointed at the girls on either side of him ' . . are off limits to you . As you are to them . Any disobedience on this matter will be dealt with . . . . . most severely . Do you understand that completely ? ' He looked back at Jaren and said ' You have said that you are aware that at times you will be required to serve me in my bed . While I initially brought you home to be a helper and companion for Deril while I am away , there will be a time , fairly soon , when you will be required to fulfill that duty . If you stay in my household I guarantee it . It will happen . There is a very good chance that it will even happen this very night . ' He leaned forward and said ' Now is the time to choose , boy . This is the first and last choice you will be offered under my roof . You can stay here , now , and serve me as I will . Or be returned to the slavers to take your chances . The choice is yours . ' The young man 's gaze traveled up the big man 's body and when it reached the thick bulge in his master 's pants he gulped hard and paled visibly . With an effort he pulled his sight away from the huge prick only inches away from his face and looked up into his new master 's eyes . In those eyes he saw the immense strength and power that wasn 't just in the big mans size or muscles . And he also could see an immense love and a fierce protectiveness . Jaren knew right away that despite his fears , he could love this man to the end of his days . Reaching down , Arex hooked a finger in the kneeling slaves collar and pulled him gently to his feet . With one hand holding the back of his head and the other just below the line of his jaw , he leaned down and kissed Jaren just as thoroughly as he had the two girls previously . A kiss that promised love and the possibility of ecstasy Jaren had never known before . ' One more thing . ' said Arex . He reached up behind Deril 's neck , unbuckled the collar and removed it . He didn 't throw it across the room this time , he merely held it in his hand , much to Deril 's relief . The three slaves stared at them both , a bit dumbfounded . ' As of last evening , Deril is no longer a slave , but a free man . He chooses to stay with me for his own reasons . Just as he chooses to wear my collar . If you serve me well , as Deril has done , you will be offered the same freedom . Aside from the protection of my name and home , that is what I offer each of you . ' Deril took the leather collar from his hand and buckled it gratefully back around his neck and slid off of the big man 's chair . He gestured for the others to get dressed again . The three scrambled back into their robes as he ushered them out of the room . He instructed them to wait and shut the door on them and turned to his master . Arex nodded . ' We must discuss this more in depth later , Deril . ' He looked at his friend and lover and smiled slightly . ' Perhaps you can find some lingering chore for them to complete this afternoon while I have my bath . ' Deril felt his pulse race and his cock shift in his trousers at the mention of the bath . ' In the meantime , find them some decent clothes and things . I 'm sure you will think of something . I will be out back practicing . You can find me at the range if you need me . ' Hours later found them both soaking in the large bath in the master quarters . They had been in there for quite some time . Deril had achieved his hope of getting his lover and master completely clean . Arex had grabbed hold of Deril 's fine strong cock and stroked him with his hand until his salty come had added to the temperature of the water . In return , the younger man had Arex sit on the side of the tub and had sucked his masters cock until he had come down his throat . Now they relaxed in the steaming water . Arex reclined against the sloped back of the tub and Deril lay back on his chest with his head just below the bigger mans chin . ' I certainly hope so , my lord . But I do wonder if you have thought this thing through . It will , of course , make changes to your . . . . . schedule . ' ' For the first nine months or so , you should have no trouble . After that . . . ' he shrugged . ' Children need a father , my lord . If one wishes for them to be raised in a certain way , then one needs to be in attendance . And I am certainly no substitute . Not for you , at any rate . ' Deril turned his body until he faced his master , his legs straddling the mans slim hips and looked Arex straight in the eye . ' Oh , no . ' He said ' I would not even presume , Lord Arex . ' He straightened a finger and poked him in the hard muscles of his chest . ' Your children will need you , sire . Not some former slave who would try his best . If you want your children to carry on in your image , then you must be there to raise them yourself ! ' The hunter felt himself getting hemmed in by his lovers logic . He could see , in the very near future , his days spent in the wild dwindling away to nothing and the great beasts drifting out of his reach . Briefly , he regretted starting this whole business . Somewhat in desperation , he pressed down on Deril 's thighs until the smaller man 's butt connected with his crotch and the semi - erect prick that was laying there . As soon as it came into contact with the soft firm cheeks of Deril 's ass , his prick began to twitch and grow harder , poking straight up . Arex pushed him further down until his cock was trapped between Deril 's ass cheeks . Deril reached back and his hand wrapped around his masters mighty prick as it rubbed up and down his ass . He moaned lightly and ground his hips against the big mans , feeling his own cock rising to the occasion . He reached for the stone crock of lubricant that they used in the tub . It was the rendered down fat of some sea animal and did not dissolve right away in the water . He got a large gob of the stuff on his fingers and began smearing it all over his lovers hard immense prick . While he did so , Arex got some on his own fingers and reached underneath Deril 's body , his fingers questing for the entrance to his tight anus . ' If you think , my lord and master Arex , that merely by Unhhhh ! . . . ' Deril grunted as one of the mans thick lubed fingers slid up inside of him . ' . . fucking me you will distract me from this discussion . . Oooohh ! . . You are quite mistaken . . . . . Aaaaahhhhhhh . . . . . . . For the problem . . . . Mmmmmmm ! . . . will still remain . . . . . . Unhhhh ! ' He almost howled as two fingers slipped inside and opened his entrance further . ' However , ' he continued ' I am willing to uuuh ! God ! . . . . . table the discussion for later , if it is my lord and aaaah ! . . masters wish ! ' With his hand wrapped around his masters prick , Deril guided the head towards his willing ass . He had only been fucked once since his master had returned from his last hunt and his ass was feeling a bit neglected . He felt the large fingers slip out of his hole to be replaced by the plum - like head and he pressed down slowly , taking it inside him . Like the man himself , his equipment was larger than most . Every bit of eight inches long and as big around as a tree limb . Even after seven years of getting fucked by the big man and his equally big prick , Deril had to fight to completely relax his body enough to get him inside . It always hurt going in . Every time . But once it was in , Deril was in heaven . Arex held still and let Deril slowly lower himself on his prick , just watching and enjoying the feeling of being squeezed so tightly . At first he could just feel the soft skin of his ass cheeks as they slid past the head of his prick . Then the resistance of the ring of muscle that kept him tightly sealed shut . That was always the toughest part . Deril panted and whined a little in pain as those muscles were forced open by the huge intruder . Sometimes Arex wished he were a little smaller so he wouldn 't hurt his friend . But he knew that once he was fully inside of him , Deril reveled in the feeling of being so full of his cock . Finally the head slipped inside Deril 's super tight ass and he breathed a small sigh of relief at the release of the tension . Then Deril began the slow process of taking his lovers huge prick all the way up his ass , one small bit at a time . Arex knew that he had to wait until he was at least halfway in before Deril was relaxed enough for him to move . But he also knew that once he reached that point the could fuck the smaller man as hard as he wanted . It was a small price to pay and well worth the wait . He watched and waited , enjoying the view of his lover groaning on top of his prick and watching the muscles in his chest and belly flex as Deril alternately panted and sighed while he worked the big tool deep inside his tight hole . Finally Arex felt his lovers legs settle on his thighs and his balls resting on his lower belly . Deril had taken him all the way inside . He stopped moving and rested his hands on the big mans chest , panting softly . Arex could see the tip of Deril 's prick poking up through the water and he started to reach for it , but Deril batted his hand away . ' Oh god , no ! ' he panted . ' I 'm already close to shooting off . I want it to last . . . Aaahhh . . . just a little bit . . Oooh . . . longer . . . . ' Pressing down on the big mans chest , he slipped up and down just slightly , maybe moving a quarter of an inch . When that felt good , he moved a little more and began to revel in the feel of the mighty prick impaling him and sliding in and out of his ass . ' I always want you here , inside me . Forever and always , my lord and master . Ooooohhhhh . . . . . ' Arex slipped his hands down on the smaller mans hips and began alternately pushing and pulling , driving his cock up into his lovers willing bottom , taking longer and longer strokes each time . It didn 't take long . It never really did . At least not the first time . Between the bigger mans large cock and the smaller ones tight hole the combination of the friction between the two of them was enough to drive them both quickly to the edge and beyond it . Arex could both see and feel his lovers body tensing up as his strokes became shorter and shorter . Deril suddenly gasped and froze for a split second , then howled in ecstasy as his ass tightened down on his lovers prick like a vise and his prick spewed droplets of come all over the both of them . Fighting back his own release , the big man waited until he could feel his lover rebound from his orgasm and begin to relax a little . Then he started again . At first slowly , then with greater speed , moving the smaller man up and down on his cock like a child 's puppet on a stick . Arex moved Deril 's body up and down , driving his prick up into his ass over and over again until he could feel his own release nearing once more . He started driving his pelvis upward , battering Deril 's soft flesh with his body until he could stand it no more . With a roar , his hands tightened on the young mans hip bones and he drove his cock all the way up inside him and began flooding his bowels with his sticky semen . And , as was usual when they made love , when Deril felt his love and master shooting off inside of him , it triggered another orgasm and Deril came a second time , spewing more come onto Arex 's belly and into the water . His cries echoed off of the walls of the bathroom . Deril collapsed across the broad chest , panting and wheezing , his tight hole spasming around the slowly softening prick that still filled him to capacity . Arex put his hands across his lovers heaving back and stroked him gently . Every now and then the large cock would twitch inside him , making Deril squeak and shiver . Finally after a brief hesitation , the large prick popped back out of Deril 's ass . He gasped and tightened his arms and legs around his lovers body and cried out and shivered all over . Arex could feel a third salvo of Deril 's come spurt onto his belly . Deril had left his master relaxing in the den after their lovemaking in the bath and had gone in search of their three new servants to check on their progress . Before he had gone upstairs he had charged them with weeding out the back garden where Deril always grew their own vegetables . It was mostly a useless task , for Deril had always before taken care of that himself and not many weeds dared show their heads in his soil . But the garden covered nearly an acre of land and it gave them something to do and kept them out of the way for the time being . Unbeknownst to him , the three had slipped into the kitchen to share a pitcher of cool water and ease the heat of the warm afternoon . And , as the masters bathroom was directly above the kitchen , the cries of their lovemaking had echoed down the stone ventilation shaft into the kitchen with surprising clarity . But as Deril had never been , up to this time , in the kitchen while Arex was making love to someone else in the bath , he wasn 't aware of this phenomenon . When they heard him coming down the stairs , the three had rushed back out into the garden to pretend nothing had happened . They were all a little sober and red faced when he entered the garden and when he said it was time for them to bathe , all three blushed even redder . Deril wondered what that was all about , but was left with a mystery . There were two smaller baths adjacent to the servants quarters in the manse . Deril sent Jaren into one and told the girls to share the other while he prepared lunch . He instructed them to bathe quickly and come to the kitchen and assist . He slipped out into the garden to pick a few herbs to add to the stew he was preparing . As he chopped the herbs into fine bits , an idea formed in his head . He decided to give it some thought before mentioning to the master . But it just might work . . . . And where was his help ? They should have been done by now . Curious , Deril slipped down the hallway towards the servants quarters . Hearing some muffled moans coming from the girl 's bath , he peeked in the door quietly . And raised an eyebrow . Both girls were in the tub together , kneeling in the water and kissing each other with passion . Deril could see that they each had a hand between the other 's legs and were rubbing there vigorously while they panted onto each other 's mouth . While it wasn 't uncommon among slave girls , just as that sort of thing wasn 't rare among the men , and it wasn 't strictly forbidden , Deril had to wonder about their sudden passion for each other . Turning from that door to the other across the hall , he eased it open silently and saw Jaren lying in the water and stroking his stiff prick . As he watched and admired the view , Jaren gave a soft groan , lifted his hips and came , spattering the bathwater with his seed . And , as Arex had predicted , Deril thought that a needless waste . If he wasn 't already so tender and a bit tired , he would have happily assisted Jaren with his need . Deril slid the door gently shut , then waited a few moments for the sounds of passion in the two rooms to subside . Then he clapped his hands loudly and cried ' Let 's hurry ! The masters lunch is waiting ! If you wish to eat , come to the kitchen now ! ' He smiled inwardly at the sounds of hurried bathing that followed his announcement . Arex , unlike the majority of slave owners in Dunis , had what might be considered strange ways . Deril had always eaten at the same table with his master from day one , instead of at a separate table or even in a different room , as was custom . And now , with his three new additions to his household , Arex saw no reason to change his ways . But in deference to his status he did preside over the head of the table and was always served first . He was , after all , the master . The three newest slaves were a bit awed at eating at the same table and mostly sat with their eyes on their food , eating nervously . But by the time the meal was half over Deril had them a little more at ease and talking freely , even smiling a bit . Still being only their first real day in the household , they were all three still a bit apprehensive about this strange big man who had purchased their lives and controlled their fates . The hunter ate most of his meal in silence , listening to the chatter around the table . His mind was now back on his agenda for the future . He wanted to get his plans underway as quickly as possible so he could get back into the field . His eyes went back and forth between the two women , wondering which one he should bed first . Of course , he told himself , he could always just take them both at the same time . But no , it 's best not to be greedy . He should take the time to get to know and fully enjoy each of them separately , at least at first . Always time for the other stuff later . And though he had made love to Deril only an hour before , he found himself looking at both Deril and Jaren and thinking about having both of those sweet bodies in his bed at the same time as well . A brief image flashed into his mind of all four of them naked in his bed while he moved from one to another . . . . . Arex half closed his eyes and smiled . Swallowing the last bit of roast and gravy , Arex pushed his plate forward and his chair back as he rose . And as he stood , all of his servants also rose and looked at him . The hunter waved a hand at Deril to continue and said ' Miko . . . . Come . Attend me . ' as he left the room . The little nikkonese girl shot a wide eyed glance at the others before she turned and scurried after her master . Miko found that her mouth was suddenly dry and her hands were shaking as she followed her master up the wide stone stairs to the upper level . Although she had sworn an oath to serve the big man with her body as well as her hands , she still found herself unprepared to lie with him so soon . She knew , from listening to the sounds that had echoed down the ventilation shaft , that Arex was a man with great passions and her body flushed with both fear and excitement . The mere thought of the big powerful man lying on top of her made her knees weaken and turn to water . She also felt herself become damp between her thighs in anticipation . Arex pushed open the door to his chambers and said ' Close the door behind you , girl . ' Then he sat on the large padded chair and started to remove his boots . Miko shut the door firmly and scurried over to her master and knelt at his feet , assisting with his boots . When his boots hit the floor , the hunter looked down at the little nikkonese girl as she knelt at his feet . She kept her eyes on the floor and he could see she was trembling . He knew of no way to calm her other than to give her no choice but to submit to his demands . Swallowing hard , the girl rose to her feet and slipped her tunic up over her head and tossed it to the floor . Her hands went unconsciously up to cover her small breasts then slid reluctantly down to the waistband of her loose pants and she slid them off as she kicked off her shoes . Arex could see that her nipples were hard and her hips churned just a little with excitement . Her trembling hands kept going to her breasts and across the juncture of her thighs and back again . Arex pondered this for a moment . He and Deril often played such games . They both enjoyed it when Deril was tied face down on the bed or bent over a foot stool while the big man took him forcefully . Even though he could have easily overpowered the smaller man with his muscles alone , it gave him an extra thrill when his lover was tied down and helpless . And nothing gave Deril more of a thrill than being the totally submissive partner for his lover . As such they always kept a variety of leather thongs and straps and an assortment of rope handy near the bed . He rose and stalked over to the bed and grabbed a couple of the leather thongs . Returning to the trembling girl , he swiftly and securely bound her wrists together behind her back , just tight enough that she could not get loose but not tight enough to do any damage . As he did so he saw that some of the tension had leaked out of Miko 's body . It was if that by binding her hands , he gave her no choice but to submit to him and therefore there would be no conflict in her mind . Arex didn 't mind . He enjoyed playing that game . He raised the second thong to his teeth and bit off a short chunk of it . He used this to gather all of the girls luxuriant black hair together at the back of her neck and tie it into a long pony tail rather than the veil that covered most of her back like it usually was . The rest of the thong he secured to the ring in Miko 's iron collar , making it into a leash . Arex started to return to his seat then stopped and considered for a moment . He stepped over to the bed again and returned with a strip of black cloth about six inches wide and three feet long . Stepping up behind the small bound woman , he folded the cloth over widthwise and flipped it over her head , settling it firmly over her eyes and tying it behind her , completely shutting off her sight . Miko gave a small gasp then a long sigh and Arex saw her body break out in goose bumps all over and she shivered . It wasn 't cold in the room , what with the blaze going in the fireplace and all , so he assumed he had made a wise choice . With the end of the leash in his hand , Arex returned to his wide chair and sat , tugging on the leash gently . Miko stepped forward and almost stumbled , then regained her footing as he slowly drew her closer . She stopped when her knees bumped into the cushion protruding from the front of the chair . Still covered with goose bumps , Miko stood in front of her master and trembled . She felt her nipples were so hard they might snap off and her hips churned a little and she could feel herself getting increasingly wetter between her thighs . She was till frightened of the big man and what he might do to her , but she was also heavily aroused by being bound and blindfolded and helpless . It was as if he instinctively knew what to do to make her the most excited . And the big man himself was finding himself aroused by the bound little woman standing naked in front of him . Arex had been with a few women before coming to Dunis , but he actually preferred men in his bed . For the most part , because they tended to be stronger and more easily able to withstand his somewhat vigorous lovemaking . But . . . . He was all about control . And being able to control himself in any given situation is what he did best . Getting carried away with someone so small would not be a good thing . He wanted to keep both Miko and Jeni healthy for a long time to bear him many children . Reaching out , he placed a palm on the outside of each of her thighs , feeling her shiver at his touch . He slid his large rough hands down her legs to her knees . Slipping his fingers around the backs of her knees , he pulled her legs gently apart until her feet were about shoulder width apart . His hands slowly slid back up the outside of her thighs and he could see the trail of goose bumps preceding his hands as they moved upwards . The hunters large hand slid around to cover her taut belly . ' I will put many babies in you , girl . Will you be a good and strong mother to my children ? ' She nodded . ' Yes , my lord . I will bear you many strong children . ' she paused and let out a small moaning breath and said ' Please put your children in me , my lord . I want them inside me . ' ' Oh yes , Miko . I will put my children into you . Over and over again . I will make love to all of your exquisite body . In every way that a man can enjoy a woman . I will make love to your sweet breasts . . . ' and he lightly pinched both of her nipples , making her moan and twitch . One hand went up to her cheek and he pressed his thumb between her lips . Miko sucked his thumb into her mouth , her tongue laving it with her saliva . ' I will fill your womb with my body . ' He said as he slipped a finger deep inside her . Miko opened her mouth around his thumb and cried out as she felt him opening her up . Arex could see her knees shaking . He took his hand from her face and reached around behind her , placing his hand on her ass cheeks . ' Some nights I may even forget you are a woman , and take you as if you were a man . ' Parting her cheeks with two fingers , he pressed one large finger at the entrance to her ass and pressed there gently . Miko cried out again and jerked her hips forward away from the finger probing her most secret place . But that action , of course , drove his other finger further up inside her from the other direction . Before she could even stop the words from erupting from her lips she cried out ' Oh please , my lord ! Not there ! ' Her cheeks flamed red in shame as she knew that she had defied the man she had just swore to serve faithfully . The hunter took no notice of her defiance ( or pretended not to , anyway ) as he pressed his finger further up inside of her while her tight ass cheeks clamped down on the finger probing her anus from behind . Lost in a blizzard of sensations from the double assault on her secret places , the young girl stiffened and cried out and shook as she suddenly dissolved in ecstasy , wetting his hand between her thighs with her running juices . As Miko shivered and came against his hand , Arex removed his fingers from between her ass cheeks and slid his hand up between her shoulder blades and leaned her forward to rest her head against his shoulder . When her spasms had almost stopped , he rotated his hand again between her thighs until she stiffened and came again , her knees sagging with the release . Arex slipped his fingers from Miko 's secret places and rose from his seat . With one hand in the center of her back and the other beneath her buttocks , he lifted the small woman and turned , settling her gently down on the soft cushion of the seat he had just vacated . She sagged against the arm of the chair and panted and shivered just a little in the aftermath of the two back to back orgasms . While she sat and trembled , the little nikkonese girl hear a rustling noise and she turned her head this way and that trying to see through the blindfold to no avail . Being bound by a lover had always excited Miko a little but she had never before been blindfolded and she discovered that it aroused her like nothing ever had done before . Her fear of the big man and what he might do to her melted away in a haze of lust brought on by her complete helplessness . As Arex stripped out of his clothing , he looked at the small bound woman and pondered . He envisioned what it would have been like if he had brought Jeni along as well . Having the little redhead bound in another chair but not blindfolded so she could watch what he was doing to Miko . He also wanted Deril here too . Maybe bound in another chair next to Jeni . He gave a little shiver and his prick got even harder , which he hadn 't believed possible . The big man stepped up to the front of the chair and sat Miko up until her butt was perched on the edge of the cushion . He planted his feet in between hers and nudged her knees apart until her legs were spread wide apart . One hand went to his hard prick and tugged the foreskin back , exposing the large purple head . The other hand went to the back of her neck , pulling her gently forward until the head of his cock brushed against her lips . The unexpected touch against her lips made Miko flinch back slightly , then she opened her mouth and her tongue shot out and began licking the head of her masters cock , covering it with her saliva . Then Miko opened her mouth wide and the huge purple head of his cock slid between her lips . The little nikkonese girl had to fight down a sudden surge of panic as the huge prick filled her mouth . She had to open her mouth so wide to get him inside her that her jaws ached with the effort . ' If he thrusts very far into my mouth ' she thought ' I will surely choke to death ! ' Miko concentrated on giving him as much pleasure as she could with her lips and tongue , moving the immense cock in and out of her mouth the little bit that she could . ' And if it hurts me so much to get him just in my mouth , what will it feel like in between my legs ? He will tear me apart ! ' And she flinched and squeaked a little as she remember what her master had said earlier . ' And what if he tries to take me back there ? ' She moaned a little in terror of the thought and Arex growled a little in pleasure at the vibration of her moaning with her mouth full of his prick . The small woman was doing her best to please her master and pleased he was . Although she wasn 't as adept at cock sucking as Deril was , she was giving it her best and Arex knew he had to make allowances for her nervousness . And that soft little mouth on his prick felt mighty good . Almost good enough to make him forget why he had purchased the women from the slavers in the first place . With a little bit of regret , the hunter pulled his hips back and let his cock slip out of Miko 's hot little mouth . He quickly leaned down and replaced his prick with his own mouth , kissing her deeply as his hands went beneath her knees and lifted them as he rolled her onto her back on the seat cushion . Holding her legs spread wide apart with his arms , he slipped one hand down to grasp the shaft of his cock and rubbed the head of it against Miko 's opening . Between her own running juices and her saliva on the head of his prick , there was more than enough lubrication present so he slowly pressed forward , opening her up and sliding his mighty cock inside of her . Mindful of the fact that he wanted her to return willingly to his arms again and again , he slowed his pace , giving her body time to adjust to the intrusion . The girl beneath him gasped and moaned and cried out as his cock sunk deeper and deeper into her until he could feel the head of his prick resting against her womb . He still lacked an inch or so of being inside of her all the way , but there was more than enough prick in her to do the job . After giving her a moment or two to relax into the feeling , he began slowly working his cock in and out of her , increasing the pace as her moans of discomfort slowly turned to moans of ecstasy . It had been eight years since the hunter had made love to a woman . Deril had kept him more than satisfied during that time . It was different . Not in a bad way , just different . Arex didn 't mind the difference . While Miko threshed her legs and moaned words in what he assumed was her own language , he placed one hand under her taut wiggling buttocks and the other , after laving his thumb with his saliva , went down between her thighs and rubbed gently against her clitoris . It wasn 't long before she came , crying out and squeezing him with her legs . Not long after that for him but seemingly an eternity for her , Arex roared his delight and filled her womb with his come . After he had withdrawn from her body , Miko was barely conscious from the seemingly endless string of orgasms that had wracked her small frame . Arex carried her to his bed , unbound her hands and left her there to drift off to sleep . That evening Deril had to roust the two exhausted girls out of the masters bed for dinner . He gave them each a small cup of hot spiced wine with their meal and sent them immediately to their own beds for the remainder of the night while he and Jaren cleaned up the dishes . Afterwards , Deril and Jaren went upstairs to change the linens on the masters bed . It was inevitable that between the smell of sex in the room and the sight of the stained sheets that both of them became highly aroused during the chore . As Deril was still a bit chafed and tender from his lovemaking with the master in the tub that afternoon , they ended up in the large bed together lying in a ' 69 ' position , slowly sucking each other 's cocks . Deril found it novel to have a prick in his mouth that didn 't make his jaws ache with the effort and applied all of his considerable skills towards making the young man who was sucking his cock enjoy the experience . And enjoy it he did . Jaren , to his astonishment , came twice in Deril 's talented mouth , a feat unknown in his world up to that time . And even though Deril came only once , he thoroughly enjoyed shooting his seed down the younger man 's throat . It was no real surprise that all members of the household retired to bed well before the normal hour that evening . Before they drifted off to sleep , Arex reveled in the feeling of Deril 's lips and tongue on his prick while his friend and lover 's head bobbed up and down in his lap . Even though he was a bit weary and already well satiated , it didn 't take Arex long to lift his hips and spurt his come into Deril 's talented mouth . Several days later Deril entered the masters study with a bowl of various plants in his hand . Arex rested on the soft bilex - hide couch in the center of the room . The little redhead was perched on his lap , almost dozing in a post - coital bliss with her head against his shoulder while one of the masters hands was inside her short robe , absently cupping a small soft ( and a little tender ) breast in his palm . The other hand held open a large book against his knee while Arex read . Miko dozed likewise on the other end of the couch . Between Arex and their household duties , everybody was running short on sleep . In truth , all four of the masters servants were moving a little tenderly these days . When the hunter stayed out of the wilds too long he became bored and restless . And aside from training out on the grounds with sword and gun and bow as he did every day , Arex only knew of one certain cure for boredom . Since the acquisition of his new additions to his household , Arex had yet to spend a night alone in his bed . Or a morning . Or afternoon . Or evening . Even Jaren had not been spared his turn , though he had spent most of the next day lying face down on his own bed and groaning a little . But when he was offered another chance to spend time with the master and his fine cock , he rallied quickly . And though the big man would be loath to admit it , he was feeling a little chafed in the private areas himself . He was in a hurry to ensure both women were with child before he left for another hunt . But he was also greatly enjoying having them in his bed , which surprised him just a little . Jaren had turned out to be a lively and exciting bedmate as well . And even though he was faced with a veritable smorgasbord of sexual partners , Arex could not spend a day without Deril in his arms at least once . Even if he were just sleeping , he wanted his young lover within arms reach . But too much of a thing , even if it was a good thing , was still too much . On the first night that Arex had taken both of the females into his bed together , Deril led Jaren to his own small bed in the adjoining room . Deril had resisted taking one of the other , larger spare bedrooms as his own . In his mind , his duty to Arex outweighed his newfound free status . So with only a thin curtain for a door between them , their cries of pleasure mixed freely together that night . And many nights afterwards as well . He said ' Any fool knows what that is , Deril . It 's Queensfoil . You use it to bring out the flavor of meat . ' Jeni stirred in his lap , her hand going atop his inside her robe . She shook her head and said ' It 's Amarinth . You steep it in water to ease pain . ' Deril looked at the young man behind him . Jaren colored a little at being called on . He said ' If you crush it and squeeze out the sap , it makes a strong glue . ' He shrugged and said ' When I was young I was apprenticed to a bookbinder . We called it the ' Binding Weed ' . ' Deril said ' When I was a lad in the south by the great desert , this plant was extremely rare and limited to only the highest nobility . It was said to grow only where the mightiest warriors fell in battle and was supposed to enhance one 's bravery and strength in battle . We called it ' Athelum ' . ' He gestured towards the garden outside and said ' We grow enough out there in our garden to make myself a very wealthy man back home . ' He turned and pulled from Jaren 's bowl a cluster of succulent looking brilliant green berries . They seemed to glow with life and looked wet as if they had been freshly sprayed with clear spring water . Arex made a face and waved them away . ' Ach ! ' he said ' Where did you get those ? They are Fool Berries . They look very sweet and inviting and wonderful to eat . Even in the dead of winter or the heat of summer they look that good . But they will give you horrible stomach cramps and the runs . Even the birds will not eat them . ' Deril dropped the berries back in the bowl and pulled out a stalk of something brown and doughy looking . It looked like a stick of dried mud and about as appetizing . ' And this ? ' The hunter made another face . ' Mudwort . You can live on it for awhile if you have to . But you won 't be real happy about it . Not even Queensfoil will make it appetizing , but it will fill your belly and keep you from starving to death . ' He waved his hand to put the thing away and said ' Where is all of this going , Deril ? ' The young man turned and set his bowl down on the table and said ' Another question , lord . A hypothetical question . You have chased a wyvern into the middle of the Becalmed Valley and now find yourself lost . How do you find your way out again ? ' ' You always travel widdershins against the paths among the rocks . Head ever uphill and take only the second right hand turnings , never the first . ' The big man was beginning to look a little impatient . ' One more question , master . Then I am through . ' Deril pointed up to the wall where the head and claws of the biggest slith was mounted . It 's eyeless face with huge bat - like ears and slavering mouth full of razor sharp fangs always gave Deril a case of the shivers . ' It is said that sliths can hear the breath leave your body and the very blood coursing through your veins . That even removing their heads does not kill them right away . Yet you slew fifty of them . How ? ' Arex leaned back and half closed his eyes , remembering . ' That was a tough battle , indeed . I employed noisemakers . I purchased two dozen small clocks , wound tight each with a small stick holding their works until they were needed . Even so , you have to be absolutely calm and still until it is time to strike . I used the Kwang - Lieu relaxation method , taught to me by Master Shen - Sen himself . ' he stopped and looked at his young servant and said ' I taught you some of it last year , if you remember . When you were ill and could not sleep . We need to finish your training . Make a note , Deril . Remind me before the end of the month . ' Arex turned the little redhead in his lap so that her back was facing out into the room . He put one hand across her lower spine , just above her hips . ' A sliths brain is divided into two parts , here and here , about where a man 's kidneys are located . To put it down quickly you must strike twice across here and here . . . . ' he ran his finger over the girls back quickly , simulating blade strokes . She jumped and squeaked . ' And of course the finishing stroke should take off the head to keep it from spitting poison as it dies . ' He spun Jeni back around and kissed her quickly then turned to Deril and raised an eyebrow in expectation . ' Hear me out , O ' lord . You are Arex , the mightiest hunter and slayer of beasts in all of Kahedron . Perhaps in all of the world . You have seen and experienced and learned things that most men can never imagine . You know more about hunting and woodcraft and wild beasts and exotic places than any dozen hunters alive today . ' ' These scars . . . . These battle wounds . . . . ' he said ' Are your badges of honor and the reminders of your glory in battle . Yet . . . . ' he paused and tried to weigh his words carefully . ' Yet , they do slow you down , some . Maybe enough that some day you will be killed by some beast that is the lesser hunter than you . You could end up being taken down not by a mighty monster , but by some small and stupid beast that just got lucky . That would be a needless loss and disgrace , my lord . ' A scowl wrinkled the brow of the hunter . His eyes narrowed . He could tell that Deril was trying to trap him home with logic again , all while stroking his pride . Though he knew Deril was doing it out of love for him , he could not but feel frustrated . Deril held up his hands in defense . ' A proposal , master . You have in your mind and body skills which should not be lost carelessly , but preserved for the ages . Give me . . . . Us . . . one year of your time . One year to see at least the first of your children born and named . During that year we will extract and record as much of your knowledge as we can . I envision several volumes , broken down by subject matter . All illustrated and printed all over the kingdom . . . ' Arex shook his head . ' Schoolbooks , Deril ? Dry and dusty tomes of an old hunters ramblings ? Pfagh ! ' He lifted the book in his hand and said ' I read for entertainment and escape , Deril . I am no academic . . . . ' But Deril placed his hands on his masters knee once again and insisted . ' Do you remember when you taught me to shoot a bow and fight with knives and my hands , master ? And how to disassemble a blaster and clean it and make it shoot every time unfailingly and true ? You have a way of instructing that takes the subject to the meat without ego or getting side tracked . ' He gestured at the other servants scattered around the room . ' Will you teach them the same ? Will Jeni and Jaren and Miko also be taught to fight and hunt ? To defend themselves and your lands ? To feed themselves and survive in the wild if necessary ? ' Arex looked around and saw that all of them were looking at him expectantly . He had fully intended to train Jaren as he had Deril . A man should know how to defend himself , surely . But the women ? The mothers of his children ? Taught to fight with their hands and knives like men ? The thought had not crossed his mind before . But now that it did , he saw the logic behind it and vowed to begin immediately before they became too big with child . As that thought crossed his mind he realized how neatly his young lover had just trapped him . He shot a frown at the man kneeling at his feet . He opened his mouth to say something but a movement distracted him as Miko turned on the couch and crawled into his lap . She settled on the other side from the redheaded girl and placed a small hand on his cheek . Jeni laid a hand on the other cheek and said ' I am only a slave , master . But I am yours . No other man will touch me . No other man is worthy . Give me the knowledge and the skill to keep me safe from harm . ' She kissed his cheek gently with her warm soft lips and whispered ' Give me the strength of your mind , master . Teach me to be strong so your children will be strong . ' ' A school , Deril ? Is that your grand scheme ? A school for hunters ? ' He shook his head . ' I will teach these others , as you say . It is necessary . They must be able to defend themselves at all times . But I will not waste my time instructing fat burghers and perfumed lords who wish to hunt foxes and deer from horseback . . . . ' Deril raised his hands again and shook his head . ' No , no , my lord . We can devise a test . Physical and mental . So that only those who are serious and dedicated are allowed entrance . A maximum age requirement . ' he paused and raised his own eyebrow . ' Just imagine it , my lord . Dozens of fit young men . . . ' he paused again and glanced at the two half naked women lounging in the big mans lap ' and maybe even a few young women . . . all wanting to be just like you . . . . In as many ways as possible . . . ' One year later the household was no longer the lonely and austere place it once was . The grounds resembled an armed camp , as the students were housed in small tents on the grounds . Every other day they were invited to dine in the main hall with the master and his staff , but for the lions share of the time they had to live off of the surrounding land . And they were not allowed to forage in Deril 's garden under any circumstances . Two dozen prospective hunters divided their time between classroom learning and field training under the legendary woodsman . At first only men were admitted , but they had just gained their first female students the week before . At all hours of the day could be heard the ringing of the blacksmith 's hammer as he turned out swords and other weapons to Arex 's exacting specifications . Next door to the blacksmith a bowyer and fletcher made bows and arrows by the dozens . And to the other side of them , an armorer turned leather and steel into protective clothing for the students . The great hunter , his hair getting greyer all the time , had become the father of three children by this time . A fine pair of redheaded twin girls and a strapping dark haired boy who was the spitting image of his sire . And both Jeni and Miko 's bellies were beginning to show once again with the promise of more . There were no more slaves living in the household . All had been freed , but all four of them still wore the soft leather collars as a show of love for their master . In celebration of their freedom and to repay him for his love , they had conspired together with a furniture maker in town and had a huge bed constructed that would easily hold all five of them comfortably . GayDemon uses cookies to ensure you get the best user experience . By using our service , you agree to our use of cookies . Please read our cookie policy for more information .
|
I founded the Carnival of MS Bloggers in 2007 to connect the growing MS Blogging Community . My vision was to become the central hub where bloggers could find each other and to feature a collection of independent patient voices . As larger MS organizations have also begun to feature patient voices on their own websites in recent years , the Carnival of MS Bloggers is no longer the single driving force in serving this wonderful community . For that we should all be grateful . Thank you for continuing to support me in this one - person labor of love over the years . As of now , I will be taking a break from hosting the Carnival of MS Bloggers . Please feel free to continue to email me to alert me to new MS blogs to add to the comprehensive MS Blogging Community index . Sincerely , Lisa Emrich Howling from your dog may not seem like much to most of you , but Buffy NEVER howls . She has a high - pitched , Pomeranian bark , which she uses every chance she gets . Otherwise , except for snoring , she doesn 't make noise . Howling was quite out of the ordinary . Like most MSers , my hands often shake , legs wiggle and jump , back and arms buzz , etc . I have had times when I was afraid to pick up a glass or try to feed myself for fear of spilling it all over the place . Although this is not an everyday occurrence , it happens often enough to be considered a normal part of MS . When the earthquake happened , it was really strange because I could hardly feel the " extra " shaking that wasn 't coming from something I was doing on my own . I am on several website with other MSers . It makes me really sad to read that some have quit going out and socializing with their friends . Many of them do not want to embarrass the people they are with by going out to eat and dropping things . Many don 't go to the movies anymore , shopping , or anything in the public . I know how they feel . I have gone out to eat with my husband and he had to end up feeding me . Although it was a totally sweet thing for him to do , it made me feel so bad . I felt embarrassed , helpless and just wanted to cry . He just ignored everyone around us and kept talking and eating . He is so special ! I 'd like to think that multiple sclerosis doesn 't have something personal against me . I hate it , but I 'm pretty sure that we 're not in a fight with each other . My relationship with MS is not a battle . I will not defeat it , just as it will not defeat me . It 's a disease doing what it is programmed to do . To call it a fight or a battle or a struggle against some sort of oppressor is to make MS out to be some kind of third world dictator with a huge sense of entitlement and delusions of grandeur . body is your temple . Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in . " ~ B . K . S . Iyengar , Yoga : The Path To Holistic Health in rain or snow or sunshine . I lived in Weehawken , N . J . , a township located along the Hudson River that overlooked Manhattan . It was a ten - minute car ride into New York City - if by some miracle there was no traffic . Each day after work , when I returned home to my apartment , I would slip into my workout clothes ( no leg warmers or head band ! ) and pop my new Jane Fonda Workout video into my VCR ( for those of you too young to know what a VCR is , it is a video cassette recorder ) . The workout kept me in shape , feeling limber and balanced . I moved to the suburbs after I got married in 1988 and had my son in 1992 . When my son was in middle school I decided to take a yoga class . I was beginning to feel like my entire body was one tight knot , and the pounds were slowly creeping up on me . I asked my friends for recommendations for a good yoga class , and finally found a wonderful teacher at a local yoga studio . She taught an intermediate class ( you know - handstands and all ) but assured me she could adapt the more difficult moves to my disability ( by then my MS caused my right leg to be totally numb and weakened ) . In the beginning my version of the " Downward Dog " my calves and feet . My teacher had great patience with me , and weeks later I finally did a true Downward Dog with the rest of my class ! Once Somehow life got away from me , as it always seems to , with daily responsibilities as wife and mother . I stopped taking yoga . Months turned into years without any yoga classes . I went to a few Restorative Yoga is enough . If I feel like this now how will I feel in ten , twenty or thirty years ? It was time to take care of my body again . It was time to my local library . I nervously walked into the studio with my yoga mat and blanket ( dusted off ! ) and chose my place on the floor . I began my warm - up by stretching my legs straight up in the air while pressed against the studio full - length mirror , my arms stretched out behind my head on the floor . After the teacher began class we heard three gentle yoga chimes slowly ring in the air until their sound faded . We were ready to begin . I followed my teacher 's instruction for each pose , paying more attention to my breath with every move . We meditated with each pose , stretched every part of our body and balanced ourselves through deeper breathing . I immediately felt spiritually renewed . I knew in my heart I was in the right place doing exactly what I was meant As we age we need to keep our bodies and our minds toned , limber and active . We need to consider the quality of life we want to have as we grow older . Three of my grandparents died in their sixties from heart attacks . My mother , like her mother , has arthritis . Everyone reading this has his or her own set of family genes to contend with . It may be heart disease , cancer , stroke , diabetes - whatever it may be , we need to life . ( Of course the reality is that life doesn 't always go according to how we 'd like it to , but shouldn 't we try our best to have the best possible life ? ) You can consider yoga as I did , or perhaps you 'd prefer t ' ai chi , or another complementary therapy . Take a complimentary class first to see if the class you choose is right for you . Talk to the instructor beforehand if you need answers to This concludes the 115th edition of the Carnival . The next Carnival of MS Bloggers will be hosted here on June 7 , 2012 . Please remember to submit a post ( via email ) from your blog of which you are particularly proud , or which you simply want to share , by noon on Tuesday , June 5 , 2012 . I cannot put it off any longer . For almost forty years I have been shirking my vegetable consuming responsibilities and now it is time to face them . Don 't get me wrong , I would try to lean towards healthy eating often enough . If I decided to treat myself with a bit of fudge I always went for the pumpkin or cranberry variety to get some of my fruit When picking out ice cream flavor I would choose a vanilla base - vanilla being a type of bean . If went out to eat and was asked which side I would like with my entrée I would pick the French fries to get potatoes ( a veggie after all ) in with the meal . And , of course , I never held the lettuce , onion , or tomato on my burger . The pickles I would toss aside , you can only go so far on the health kick . But for some reason all of the hard work above was not enough . Apparently I needed to take a more thorough and active stance on eating vegetables in their natural form . I have been told that they are a necessary part of the diet and eating more of them will help my health and my BMI . But as someone who has taken great pains to avoid them whenever possible , where to begin ? I like the idea of corn - well cornfields anyway . They present such a nice image of middle - America and kids with overalls and ribbons frolicking in the fields . But a super healthy cousin who has a small farm in her backyard ( too weird , even for my family , a farm in Massachusetts , ) informed me that corn is now the root of all evil . Seems , she insists , that we Americans eat too much corn and give too much of it to our livestock and that is why we are falling apart . I guess that is good news . It is only the idea of corn that I like , the actual stuff is icky . Ok , I can handle a salad . I will go with that . But no , it turns out iceberg lettuce is really just a big clump of green water . It is not that healthy , the experts are starting to say . website that shows a super good - for - you eating plan , designed especially for people with multiple sclerosis . At first , it was terrifying . Dr . Wahls wants you to eat nine cups of green leafy vegetables a day ! That just seemed insane and totally overwhelming . I use the bagged , dry spinach and load it with dressing in order to pretend it is salad . That might work for me . The wet stuff Popeye used to chug is out of the question but maybe I could accept the dry stuff . Then Dr . Wahls said something wonderful , something I could totally work with . It turns out that kale is a green leafy full of all kinds of nutrients and good stuff ! Wow , I thought only Portuguese people knew about kale . This whole time it seems we Portuguese folks were already on the health track ! I did some more research and it turns out that kale is the new black , meaning , it is the new super food . And since it is super good for ms ' ers , it is the new orange as well . Yay ! It shouldn 't surprise me that my Portuguese friends and family were leading the way in this regard . Didn 't our Brazilian cousins discover last year 's new super food - the Acai berry ? Who knows what we will discover next ? Maybe the delicious Portuguese pastry trutas are the next What about codfish cakes ? The poor cod is one ugly fish but he is a fish and so maybe filled with good proteins and stuff . Hey , I bet he eats kale too so if you eat codfish cakes you might be getting protein AND a vegetable . And then there is the wine . I don 't care what the French or the Napa Valley people say , the best wine comes from Portugal . And , research shows that red wine is really good for you . The experts suggest drinking I guess my dad knew what he was doing when we visited his homeland when I was twelve and he wouldn 't let me drink American soda . " You are in Portugal and will drink wine like all the other Portuguese kids ! " I thought he was being weird . Turns out , he was just worried about my health . it is not it just adds a bit flavor so how bad can it be ? Red wine , some Portuguese bread - hello - grains , butter - dairy of course , codfish cakes as a side - all kinds of health benefit there , and trutas for dessert . Repeat this meal nine times a day . I love Dr . Wahl . This is going to be a cinch ! Don 't you sometimes have that feeling that you know exactly what your body is going through , what the problem is and where the problem is . Sometimes you really don 't have a clue . But sometimes you just know . Another one of those weeks when you 're going through so much you don 't know what to control or where to start . Can 't say what triggered it . I do vaguely recall saying that my throat was hurting . Then it wasn 't . Was going back and forth between the hospital to see an unwell relative . Also took some probiotics to cure a stomach bug . Had a few bad of acetaminophen to keep functional . Realized I had low grade fever throughout the day and all the ugly things that come with it . Body aches , dehydration , burning eyes . Sneakily getting worse , my bones started to ache , my limbs became weaker and weaker . " I have an infection . " I can 't explain but it felt like something running rampant in anything with my arms . All my other pains crept up with a vengeance . It was like a symphony , each one trying to out - do the other and make itself heard and noticed . The pins and needles , the stabbing , the aching , the crawling , and the shooting . on our own . The white blood cell count was high . Within a few days I was getting back to normal . I slept like a baby and my pains were gone . I have had many , many bad infections in the past , but never such a bad experience of tiding through it . Okay , so I 've had some pretty bad infections in my life . They 're really not so hard to wait through . But this time , it was crippling . Also , if you look it up , it is suggested that you see your GP if you have Multiple Sclerosis or a weak immune system and develop any Respiratory Tract Infection ( RTI ) . A simple course of antibiotics may pep you right back up . If you want , you may look up detailed studies on the subject ; http : / / www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed / 8534384 . [ Lisa 's note : Here is more information regarding infection and pseudoexacerbations . When living with MS , developing an infection can cause symptoms to temporarily worsen . It can be quite unpleasant , but it doesn 't affect the course of your disease . ] This concludes the 114th edition of the Carnival . The next Carnival of MS Bloggers will be hosted here on May 24 , 2012 . Please remember to submit a post ( via email ) from your blog of which you are particularly proud , or which you simply want to share , by noon on Tuesday , May 22 , 2012 . Hooray ! Summer officially arrives Wednesday , June 21 . That means school 's out , warmer weather , beaches , and suntan lotion , as well as family fun , vacations . . . So . I have been chastised by my wife ( Sarah ) about my frequent and voluble use of English language swear - words . I tend to NOT be very happy about the vario . . . Well , I 've just returned from a family holiday to Florida . It was 90 % Disney just like the last time we went . Both my wife and my youngest are big Star War . . . Buying the lot was a commitment . Once we owned it , we dreamed about what we would build . For many years , we constructed a house . We used the best . . . Spinning to the Left ! Spinning to the Left ! Ok now that we know it 's definitely Vertigo … So things have not been great . 😦 I haven 't been saying anything a . . . I 've been sick for days now . SO MUCH MUCUS . Coughing it up , stuck in my nose . . . it 's a problem . I 've been taking Robitussin , but carefully because it react . . . Let 's give " alternative " and its younger sibling " alt " the year off . They 've really earned it . Seriously . They 've paid their dues recently . First , " alt " w . . . Of every other day of the week , Sunday should really smell like bacon and coffee . Really . About a year ago , I let go of my frantic grasping of vegetarian . . . It 's been months since my last post . I have been overwhelmed by my most recent health challenges , and now I find myself in new territory . I 've got a new di . . . June 2014 - my last blog post . I was complaining about the " new normal " pain in my neck . Fast forward to March 2016 , approximately 20 months into the now . . . The 2 - year anniversary of my confirmed diagnosis happened on May 15 . Today is World MS Day . Today I share my anniversary - night reflections of what it has . . . It has rained and rained and rained and rained , BUT everything is green and spring is here ! We have lived outside more than we have inside . The woods behin . . . Betrayal , duplicity , loss , jealousy , insecurity . Sounds like a soap opera , right ? But those adjectives are just a handful I use to describe the many shades . . . I haven 't gone to Church weekly in about 8 months now . Part of it is laziness , part of it is MS Fatigue . However , I 've actually become more " spiritu . . . Okay , what an eventful month ! First things first , I 'm no longer working ( at least for now ) . About 3 weeks ago I could barely stand up . My Bambi legs were i . . . We are now living in our new town in Maine . It is a beautiful place and so small , the tour of it takes about 10 minutes . I love it . The remodeling of ou . . . I realized I promised to write more and that was in 2012 and now it 's the middle of June 2013 . Well , it 's been an outstanding year . I got sick and wound up . . . I have finished my Acupuncture Therapy . I had treatment during Jan . Feb & March 2013 . This therapy energized my legs to lift & bend at the knees . I could n . . . I am just sitting here while everyone is still asleep . Times like this just gives me time to think and reflect . I at times feel that maybe I do that too mu . . . It 's really looking like a house from the outside now ! They dry walled last week and will be finishing up priming the walls this week . We have a closing da . . . Well , this serves me right . I can 't think how to start . And , oh wow , I wish I 'd been writing smaller posts than I usually do , more often , so that there wer . . . I cannot believe it has been over a year since I have posted . At the same time , I think I needed a break . I have found myself overwhelmed by all of the b . . . Today has been an " ARE YOU FRIKKIN KIDDING ME ? ! ? ! " kind of day . It 's been so ridiculous I just can 't help but laugh . Mostly . The whole thing is just . . . cr . . . That 's what my 12 month post - CCSVI scans said about of my neck veins last week . Stent like new ! No narrowing ! No clots ! No blockages at all , in fact . Thank . . . Wow , I am just feeling so defeated and picked on right now . I can 't even really process how I am feeling . Just beat down . I can 't even process it enough to . . . I am proud to announce that I formed a team for the MS Walk on September 12th , 2010 . My mom & I came up with * April 's Angels * ! ! The reason being with all . . . I have been falling lately . Luckily , I haven 't fallen on my elbow that just was operated on ! We went to see a Shakespere play , and during intermission we . . . This past month has been Doctors . Doctors Doctors . . It all started at the end of April . I had the Pre - Op with the Internal Medicine Doc , The ECG signalled . . . Saturday went great ! ! ! ! Everyone had a great time and we raised more money than I anticipated ! I can 't say thank you enough to everyone who came and partic . . . Folks , your guess is as good as mine ! I 've been under the weather and just not feeling pithy . Pissy , yes , not pithy though . I will return . Computers are evil ! When they work , they are the greatest machines ever created . However , they have this tendency to " corrupt " over time . I think it mig . . . My sister lives in Portland , Oregon . It is quite hip there . She gave me the gift of some bath soap which I sadly came to the end of recently . I loved it . . . . A Be - Bot ! Recently , I started using a chatbot that a friend of a friend programmed . This chatbot works with Facebook Messenger and is clinically proven to . . . I picture my grandma and grandpa 's souls coming in to my body as I breath their souls in deeply . Their souls come in to help me to heal . My grandpa had a . . . Our Tour is about to start ! A scenic float trip down the snake river . Camera is ready and so am I . We arrived two days ago . The weather cooperated and th . . . It 's been a long time since I 've felt like writing . I guess to clarify I always write I just haven 't wanted to publish anything for a long time . What 's cha . . . Oh hi . It 's been awhile and I apologize for that . These past six weeks have been relentless . I don 't want to get into everything that life has thrown at me . . . Every time I have an MRI , I fill out the same safety form again . The form never changes , no matter how many times I fill it in . Warning signs . There are al . . . 2016 started out great ! Nacho and I were doing a lot of walking , on track to walk over 600 + miles . On August 11th I learned I have " HER2 " positive infiltr . . . Today , for the first time in ages , I feel a desire to blog . I often work things out best while I write . It makes thinking and problem solving easier but I . . . Americans are often unwilling , or unable , to empathize with chronically ill and / or disabled people . Some rough thoughts on this topic : 1 . ) Disabled peopl . . . I 'm back ! I had my treatment in late July and have been hesitant to post anything for fear of jinxing the ( so far ) amazing results . I did post something on . . . Ok , so what 's new ? We moved into a new house , a rancher that I can access everything . It 's raised , so we have an outdoor elevator to gain entry , pretty coo . . . I 'm on my way to healing with this candida cure program and a Facebook support group . I 've been close to following this plan for years . Finally , I have the . . . Just not here . Apparently I 'm not interested in my own self to even tell anyone else about me . Work has been excruciatingly slow so I spend many hours on N . . . I recently got my hair shaved ! My MS has now made it impossible to brush my hair . I tell you , since , I never realized how much effort it took out of me fo . . . Well , it 's been an incredibly long time since I have blogged . Having a baby really changes everything . EVERYTHING . Our baby is now 9 months old and I am . . . I didn 't realize how long it has been since I last updated this blog . So much has changed since my last post ! It is late tonight but I think I will try to . . . Twenty months . It 's hard for me to believe it has been that long since I 've last written . It literally feels like just a few months . So little has ha . . . Nothing new has been going on since the last post . Just mainly sitting around , cooking , cleaning and watching T . V . or movies . Yeah , thats winter in Ohio . O . . . It 's almost surreal to think five years ago today I started this blog . It was also the day I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis . As poor as my memory . . . Recently , I made the decision to start a medication for my Multiple Sclerosis . I have not taken one for several years . In the past , most of the ones I . . . Two days in a row without sun , an I plummeted into the doldrums again . I 'm really starting to take note of this " syndrome " . Cause you just KNOW I want so . . . ~ A couple of days ago , I went to a volunteer orientation for a place called " Muttville " . It 's a rescue center for senior dogs . I ended up staying for ab . . . I have not posted in quite some time ! It 's not because I have nothing to say . But I created this to track my progress , or lack thereof , with the CCSVI pr . . . so much has happened . . . welcome . . . sorry i was gone for so long . I went to oregon for awhile and now i am back in colorado . I am enjoying being back with m . . . I am writing this for everyone who followed me on my journey . I feel great . I am not a person who has never had MS , but I am working on ridding myself of f . . . It 's been almost two months since I 've written anything here but I have a very good reason for it : I 've been slowly and methodically losing my god . damn . m . . . Day 14 . Today 's weight is 232 . Spent last night swimming for an hour and will start doing it every night . I so much prefer being in a pool rather then . . . January 3 , 2012 Janice had a Tysabri infusion . After much discussion with her physician we decided to give it a break and see how she did without it . Aga . . . It 's been forever since my last entry . Lots of things have been going on . Mostly good . My Ms is under control for the most part . I try and keep a pos . . . Hello everyone ! This article on fatigue is short and to the point . If gives some great suggestions on how to combat fatigue . Please add any strategies yo . . . As usual the day after my Rebif injection I am an achy mess ! However , after popping Tramadol and sleeping most of the day I woke up feeling refreshed . I . . . I know I haven 't posted in a while , but there was not much to report . I 'm still waiting for this blood clot to dissolve so I can get off this Coumadin . I . . . So here I am , at the end of October . This may be my favorite month of the year . So much relief after the hot Texas summer . The heat still turns my legs to . . . Happy Monday ! Busy day in our NICU and our new unit is up and running . So fun to work with Amy today . She is the best and so talented ! Check out her Etsy . . . One hand typing here . Crazy life . Busy busy . Hazel is fantastic and amazing and beautiful and perfect . She is the best and most loving and helpful big sist . . . Merry Christmas , everyone ! Been writing more , so decided to update the blog . Been reaching out on the web to some relatives and friends . Also , welcomed gra . . . I was in this cardiovascular program with my job , and was trying to eat better . I decided drinking soda was probably something I needed to give up . Also I . . . The Sunday ads . Some say it 's the only reason to get a Sunday paper . Everything you need ( or could ever want ) is on sale . Here at My Odd Sock , I like . . . Today is such a big day . It is my parents ' 50th wedding anniversary . It is also my daughter 's dance recital and the first time she has a real dance solo . . . I know , the whole year has nearly passed already and you are still eating Christmas chocolate . I am the same . But we have to push on and go forth in the . . . * Hey guys , sorry ive not been on in like 2 days . I have felt really sick . Im not sure if i mentioned it or not in previous posts , but EVERYTIME i eat white . . . Someone knew exactly what I was talking about ! ! ! ! ! We showed our apartment to prospective customers as a favor to the sales team . The woman asked me if t . . . I am not a doctor and have no background in science . I am unwilling to study the why of my life . I don 't understand how my body works or why it won 't work . . . . The dog returned recently . Unexpected , unwanted but scratching at the door never the less . By some reckoning 50 % of the inglorious MS tribe suffer from dep . . . I don 't know what I 'm doing anymore . My life is just passing me by . I hate this disease . Literally hate this disease . My legs don 't cooperate half the time . . . It 's a beautiful , rainy morning . I enjoy rainy days . They 're strangely peaceful . Or something . I 'm sitting here in one of my husband 's old t - shirts and li . . . Well , it 's the morning of day 5 of Lemtrada . Currently I have very low energy and strength . Just walking for a few minutes feels exhausting . I guess I pret . . . This weather is just wonderful . I had most of the day to myself . Went for eyebrow wax / tint ( Holy crap - cost $ 60 ) Had what was probably my DQ cone for the . . . The surgery couldn 't have gone better than it did . Everything is awesome . No pain , no stiffness , no issues . I know I don 't post very often , seemly never it . . . Every time May 1st comes around , I make another tick in my mind . 3 years . It 's been three years since I sat in my neurologists office hoping for a dif . . . Had a bit of a set back with starting the Lemtrada . My shingles titer came back to low . So , I had to have a Shingles vaccine . Because it 's a live vaccine w . . . Breakthrough ! Breakthrough ! We MSers love to hear and read about breakthroughs ! This one 's a promising one and I hope it will soon be approved do that we a . . . All of a sudden , I 'm finding it hard to write about this topic . I am surprised . I guess I feel blocked . For as long as I could remember , I 've seen myself a . . . Wait . What ? Ok , well , it is really not the simple . But it is really not that complicated either . Let me explain … I won 't go into too many details because . . . Sometimes I feel that people really don 't quite grasp the concept of fatigue . People assume that you can 't be that tired all the time . You 're sleeping all . . . I know I have posted more recently , but don 't know where they have gone ! So , I 'll start over . A friend just started blogging and I thought maybe that would . . . I have realized I have a lot of fears . That my fear in so many areas influence my life in HUGE ways . I know I need to combat my fears with faith . That e . . . Do you know of someone who dislikes the " Church ? " I have heard several people within my lifetime try their hardest to disgrace the Church . When I was young . . . Almost a year since I blogged . WTH ? Quick self - indulgent catch up from 2014 : 1 . Bring on February - new job . The best move I 've made of recent career li . . . Almost a year since I blogged . WTH ? Quick self - indulgent catch up from 2014 : 1 . Bring on February - new job . The best move I 've made of recent career li . . . I 've often returned to blogs to find that there are no new posts for long stretches of time and I find myself wondering … what happened ? Where are they ? I d . . . On a roller coaster this summer . Not a literal one ( I hate them , plus I get motion sickness ) . I started the summer full of ideas . What I would do with my d . . . It has been a long time since I last wrote a blog . So much has happened in our daily life ; over all things are pretty awesome . The MS slowly progresses tho . . . Quick tip : I 've happened upon a great website that provides timed meditations with calming visuals and music . It 's called , of all things , Calm . com . I hig . . . Well , it 's been awhile since my last post . It 's been too long . Actively posting seems to help me manage myself better . I 'm sure I 've mentioned this before , . . . I 'm still struggling with the mess this SMS made in my life . It is quite a while since I received it . At the beginning I didn 't pay much attention to it , b . . . It has been a ridiculously long time since I blogged and I am not going to try to explain why . Not least because I 'm not sure why . Today I had a conversati . . . * Hello Everyone ! ! I hope you are as well as you can be ! I have been following an art journaling group on Facebook . It is Art Journaling with Terri Sprou . . . Jeff here . We haven 't done very well at documenting whats been happening . Basically , it 's been a no news is good news kinda few months or in the case of t . . . I 'm going to start off with a breast problem - - mine . I have rather large breasts and , because of my age , they hang down on my chest . Four times in the last . . . Well , this serves me right . I can 't think how to start . And , oh wow , I wish I 'd been writing smaller posts than I usually do , more often , so that there wer . . . The below diary piece is my effort to show how much work combating a progressive disease can require . It 's not * the * way , it 's just * my * way . This isn 't . . . Today he put a napkin over his mouth and proceeded to examine my teeth to look for cavities . He was being the dentist . Though it 's been 6 months since his . . . I can keep telling you about my failing body that you probably go through the same things yourself . I 've had a recent visit from my physiotherapist . This i . . . I 've been seeing a pain doctor . for about the last year now and she has been of great help to me . I didn 't even know they had doctors whose specialty was p . . . * I really hope I don 't find Snickers on America 's most wanted . Snickers accompanies Judi , his partner , everywhere . She told me that the other day , when she . . . This is Bear he 's our 150 lb Bullmastiff . As you can see Bear is no little dog . Bear is just about the perfect dog except for one small thing . . . . . . . . Today 's topic for MS Monday . . . Emotional Changes . The other side of the cin from last week 's MS Monday post . This part is a pretty prevalent symptom for me . . . . I began writing this blog in March , 2010 . It is amazing to me that it has been two years since CCSVI came into my life in November , 2009 . I started writi . . . Just wondering where all of our awesome writers are ? ? ? I miss reading the stories , the poems , the heart felt words to each of us . So . . . if you are out . . . How sad is that really ? : - ) My life lately has been tumultuous . I became separated from my husband in May 2011 and have gained a gazillion pounds . I don 't . . . As most of you know I 've had some ms issues going on a while ago . Well just when i got through one flare I had another . This one was more serious and has c . . . So today is World MS Day ! and so I feel it 's important to say a little something . WE NEED A CURE ! ! ! That 's just all there is to it . MS affects so many peop . . . Although I did not realize it had come and gone until 11 : 59pm , April 14 was my second tattaversary ! Jeepers , how time flies . It has been at least six month . . . Times flies when you are having fun , huh ? Or even when you are not I guess . . . . it seems as we get older the time just starts to fly by faster and faster . I . . . A community of twisted fibres reaching out , winding around one another to form something greater . I am woven , one of many . The calm of unity ignites despit . . . MS ? Pssssh . MS is just letters for me today . They could mean anything . My Song . Many Saved . My Sweet . Pick one ! Granted , I lost tuesday again . I went to be . . . So , stooopid MS interrupted my swim for the first time ! I should be excited that this is the first time in so many swims . . . But , on my last round of laps m . . . Wow , time is flying ! The walk was a few weeks ago , I cannot believe that it has been that long already . Like every year , the sky was dark and gloomy . . I hon . . . Just not on the MS blog . I am continuing to blog on my MidWestHorse Blog . I 'm not abandoning this completely , but I am concentrating my time on my other bl . . . It was a busy week , what with the Doobie Brothers / Chicago concert Wednesday and the opera Friday and the Pride March Sunday . Let 's start with Friday . Anne . . . Its ok to get angry , but its not ok to reside inside of it . Put simply , anger is the easy way out and deserves no honor . Stewing in it gives you a false se . . . Daughter of one , sister of one , married to one , friend to many . I will never know how it feels to be one . But I can thank you . For everything you 've tried . . . Oh , yeah . Now I remember . Maybe it 's a feature of my MS brain ( what 's left of it ) , or simply a human - evolution survival mechanism , or maybe it 's just me , b . . . It was a day in March three years ago that " Needle Fatigue " made its debut . Not much longer after that , the Fairy appeared . Today , March has turned into A . . . As this year ends and a new year begins , I cross over this bridge . With every step , I will let the negative things flow down the stream . Saying goodbye . . . Oh , she has a " fancy " phone , whatever that is , so she must have money . Therefore , she cannot complain about having no money . She cannot go on disability . S . . . Anyway , yes , it 's true . I really cannot wait for this year to be over . With the U . S . election finally being over , I expect I 'm not the only one . It was the best of times . It was the worst of times . It is our time , and we should celebrate the fact that we do our b . . . I hope everyone had a great New Year . I know I was very absent in 2015 and at some point this year I will go into the reasons why . With lots o . . . I very reluctantly ran my first Warrior Dash last weekend . I 've never had a strong desire to run around in the mud . But when a friend asked me to join her . . . Hi ! ( waves sheepishly ) remember me ? Its ok if you don 't because a lot of the time I don 't either . I am certainly not going to start this blog post off by a . . . I wanted to let you know that I am starting a new blog . She is Running Down a Dream has served me well for the last five years . As I move forward . . . Excuse me sir , could you direct me to correct aisle for new bodies ? What 's that , you 're running low at the moment ? Oh , just on the younger , hot looking mod . . . Last week I found myself sitting in a chair at the hairdressers . My mom had finally convinced me to get my hair cut because it was " too long " . I 've been ro . . . I decided to set up a new blog , and have forgotten to post it here . You can now follow me at MS Nomad . I also have a Facebook page for MS Nomad . Please che . . . One of the first things to go bad in an earthquake will be your windows . This poses all kinds of problems for us . As most of us do , we have windows in ou . . . I finally got around to switching out the theme ( that is the background ) of this blog . Stage one ( or is it post one ? ) on make - overs is complete . Like othe . . . . . . of my blog . I am not sure that I am getting readers , and making any difference . I am getting roughly 5 viewers a day , but no one leaves a comment or em . . . About 2 1 / 2 weeks ago I stood up and had a rather painful twinge in my lower back / pelvis . If I stood up straight or moved a certain way it would spasm . I . . . Facebook , you can love it or hate it , or maybe a little of each . It 's a great way to reconnect with those who we lost touch with over the years . It 's a fun . . . I think you are beautiful . Smile … . . it makes all of the difference . Here is a picture of me , no make up and pouting . Then another , no make up … smiling . I wil . . . Okay , so I 've had a lot going in the past few months , and blogging as taken a back seat . But I 'm going to try to do better . Now that the wedding is out of . . . NEW Life after the walk has been interesting . So much to talk about but not sure how to go about saying it all . For now I will leave you with this article . . . = D YAAAAY FOR ME ! ! ! I am thrilled b / c of my amazingly patient boyfriend who waits for me ALWAYS till I 'm ready … . I 'm braver when i have a drink , lol . OR f . . . So , its been a while . Theres been a shit - ton of stuff going on . My kids gma ( my ex 's mom ) was pronounced terminal so I spent my med money to get them down . . . * Time has certainly flown for me this past 3 months . I actually have my 3 month mark in 4 days . I 'm having a quiet morning so I thought I would post a cou . . . Today is my second anniversary on Copaxone . I have not missed a dose in these two years and I have been so fortunate to not have any relapses . Woohoo ! Whil . . . It 's been a while since I updated this blog . Much has happened in my life . Before I start , let me say that my MS has been stable , no exacerbations . I stil . . . I recently posted something a little negative about MS at another website . I was having a rotten day . My legs hurt , had bad cog fog and the fatigue was ove . . . As strange as it might sound . Leprosy , tuberculosis , psoriasis , type 1 diabetes and MS might have one common fact - clofazimine . Clofazimine has been on th . . . Today December 1st is my sons birthday . I wish I could see him but I 'm not sure where he is . Maybe later . I would post a picture of him but the last pictur . . . A friend suggested I try horseback riding . There are places that use horseback riding as therapy for MS . It helps with balance and muscle control . I 'm goin . . . It seems like my world is hovering right on the event horizon of a large black hole . My life - my little existence - is moving as fast as it ever has . One em . . . She took the phone off the hook . Left it near the wall With slippers and mismatched Legos , Reminding her of a simpler time . A time when she was small I 'm s . . . Hey there , folks . So far , June has been pretty rough . The higher - than - normal levels of nerve pain post - relapse have remained higher - than - normal but there h . . . I was recently pointed to an essay on the perception that our country faces a " Death of Expertise . " . The scary part is the article was written in 2014 . As . . . At this point , I was out of the clutches of western medicine and on my own . I was fortunate at the time to still have a good job . I was able to pay for som . . . So I 'm weird . I was told just recently that I 'm just compassionate . That being said , I poisoned this and other wasps building nests in the window sills on . . . " I need you to understand something . I wrote this for you . I write this for you and only you . Everyone else who reads it doesn 't get it . This is is the sig . . . Ugh hubby says when someone asks how im doing I shouldn 't go into this long story . Well its not a story its my testimony I told him . I have come so far t . . . Life is made up of many little moments . Some so small , that we might not appreciate them if we don 't slow down and reflect on them . Usually the moments t . . . Ok so whatever . . . . I haven 't wrote anything in a long time . Just got out of the habit . Seriously . Job Wise : still working at Wal - Mart . No excitement ther . . . Ten months . . . WOW ! Has life been a roller coaster ride . . . I mean , Life is always a roller coaster ride , IF one really stops and analyzes every twist and tu . . . Saw my new brain doctor . He 's more personable and communicative than my previous experience of neuros . In fairness , overall he said much the same facts as . . . A funny thing happened one Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago . Well , not so funny . I was in the ER , being diagnosed with a bilateral pulmonary embolism . . . Well , this serves me right . I can 't think how to start . And , oh wow , I wish I 'd been writing smaller posts than I usually do , more often , so that there wer . . . Life , for one . I don 't often want to talk about my MS , let alone blog about it , anymore . There are too many non - MS things occupying my mind and my time . An . . . I started adding more magnesium into my supplements , so I have been taking 3 400 mg a day . it seems to help the pain and numbness a lot . Still though , I am . . . WOW ! ! Hard to believe it was a year ago today that I was waiting patiently ( ? ) to see Dr . Martinov in the Tokuda Hospital in Sofia Bulgaria ! Little did I k . . . My daughter wrote me a poem a few weeks ago . Since then I think about the poem at least once a day , most days more . There are parts of her poem , and simple . . . I miss my little furry friends . It 's baby season and I 'm feeling it . Here is Truman from last year . I really loved that little beast and hope he is off in . . . Hard to believe it has only been a year . So much has changed in my and many MSers lives . We have had the fortune of Avis Favaro reporting on Dr . Zamboni 's . . . It 's been an odd time . 14 days into taking LDN and MS is really reminding me who 's boss . My left foot and lower leg are all but useless and I am so , so exh . . . I went to my neurologist yesterday and she told me that I am having another MS relapse . This one is not fun . It started after the farm field trip a couple . . .
|
WordPress . org copyright notice © Susanne van Doorn a . o . on Mindfunda . com and Courses . mindfunda . com , 2015 - 2017 . Unauthorised use and / or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site 's author and / or owner is strictly prohibited . Excerpts and links may be used , provided that full and clear credit is given to Mindfunda . com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content . Third Holy Night : Dec 27 - 28 Tonight the moon is in the sign of Leo . A sign associated with consciousness . The incubation tonight is focused on meeting our animus . This night we focus on the month of March 2016 . The beginning of spring , new opportunities , new changes . We are going to need animus energy in this month to achieve new goals . The question to concentrate on is : " How can I connect with my animus energy in the best way possible ? " Use the day to meditate on the incubation and make it your own . ( accessible exclusively for logged - in MoreMindfunda members ! ) The animus is the deposit , as it were , of all woman 's ancestral experiences of man - and not only that , he is also a creative and procreative being , not in the sense of masculine creativity , but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call … the spermatic word . ( From Anima and Animus , Collected Works 7 , par . 336 . ) In the incubation tonight , you will set out to meet the animus part of yourself that has an important message regarding your well - being next year . You will remember and understand his message . During the day , try to envision , or draw images of the four types of archetypical animus . You might recall or read back dreams with archetypical animus content you have had . I suggest that you write down and memorize several questions you want to ask your animus . The Moon is in Leo for the next two days . Leo is also the sign of the sun , a Western symbol of consciousness . You might meet a lion in your dream or in your meditation tonight . The king of all animals as a representation of your own instinctual animal side . The side that can roar , and tell other people what to do . Not afraid to claim space for himself . Lions have the Sun as an astrological sign , but they are nocturnal creatures . In that respect , the lion is a perfect connection between night and day . Tonight , while you retreat , take a deep sigh and blow away all the anguish and stress you collected this day . Shake it of your hands , whip it away . Imagine a Golden Shower hanging above your head that washes away everything that you picked up , but does not belong to you . Feel the warmth and the cleaning of the golden water along your body . When you feel " clean " , lie your body down . You start breathing very regularly , in an even pattern . Watch your thoughts slip away , like clouds on a windy day . No need to pay attention to them just let them go … Start stretching your muscles and relax them . Start with you Jaws , and work your way down to your feet . While you breathe regularly , start counting down from 10 to one . Imagine walking down a stairs with each count , going down untill you reach the bottom . At the bottom of the stairs , you find a path leading into the jungle . You hear the sound of the jungle , you smell the moist of it . And there you see him : the king of the forest : a beautiful golden brown lion . You stick out your hand with an open palm so he can get to know you . The lion walks towards you . You caress his mane . Before you realise what you are doing , you are on his back . The lion is on his way to the man you want to meet tonight . You arrive at a lake . You know the man you would love to meet is here . Your eyes scan the horizon . It is not your eyes , but your heart that sees him , He is walking towards you . You greet each other like old friends . If there has been any friction between you in the past , it is gone now . You feel completely at ease . You start asking him the questions you wrote down today , or just let your heart decide what you need to know . Ask your man how he can help you make your soul happy this year . Ask your man how you can make his life better . In my meditation I see - to my own amazement - professor Stanley Krippner . I immediatly remember another teacher dream of my old teacher in the French language . Like in a dream I had about him , our fingertips meet and golden lines of energy start to flow between our hands . I know I really admire Stanley because he is wise and kind and he is a walking around library he can give yo such good advice on books to read . In my dream I am working for a company that has a celibration later that afternoon . I am at a home with my elderly boss , a man who really is not interested in me or in what I have to say . He leaves forto party without me and i am outraged . I sms him that he is a * * * * for forgetting me and in the next scen I am at the party site . But thee people are walking towards the table : a girl dressed like a pornostar , in a corset , suspenders and she has no panties , a lady and a guy . I am very shocked and I call out to them to not spoil my appetite . Standing near food without nickers on is very very distasteful in my mind 's eye . I wake up , realizing that I am the only one who takes offense . Fisrt of all : is my husband having an affair ? was the first thing I thought . The dream clearly indicates a threesome . But it could also be interpreted symbolically . Because if my husband is having an affair I wonder why and when he is seeing that third person because we are almost always together . Sex and the animus are related off course and I must admit that I have lost my appetite for sex recently . I think the dream suggest a more subtle approach to sexuality : more flirting , more appreciation , the things me and my husband seem to have lost during the course of our marriage . So I will start courting my husband again and see if that restores my appetite . Before I fell asleep , I began to do the meditation as suggested by Susanne . I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the Lion to guide me . Instead , I found myself staring into the ice - blue eyes of a Wolf . This vision was so clear it startled me . Yes , it was a Wolf , and looking around me , I saw that we were in a northern forest full of pine trees . Surprisingly , it felt like summer . The Wolf trotted away from me then turned back , inviting me to follow him , which I immediately did . Although it was night and very dark around me , I followed my guide easily . He seemed to give off a silvery glow , and that was all the light I needed to go along the trail . He led me for a few minutes , until we arrived to a small clearing , like a meadow . Above me were unobstructed view of the sky , full of blazing stars , and the meadow was lush with grass and wildflowers . My Wolf guide spent a few moments with me as I settled myself to wait for my Animus , then with an affectionate small lick across my face He left . I simply sat in the grass , comfortable and content , and waited … I am in a nice home being greeted by an elderly kind woman . I never see her clearly , although I do feel a strong kinship with her . She tells me that Eleyna is very eager to see me again , and of course , I am just as eager to see her . I am led to through a living room , which is very tastefully ornamented in a combination of modern and vintage styles , to the back door . I can see the patio , and the many people who are laughing and talking out there . The woman opens the door and calls out , " Eleyna , she 's here ! " A striking woman with short curly dark hair rises quickly . She is wearing a pretty blue and white summer dress , and I think I catch a glimpse of her eyes , as ice - blue as those of the wolf . She comes to the door , almost running across the patio and … … time passes . In my dream memory I recall the enthusiastic greeting , and am glowing with love and joy from the meeting . I 'm standing by the fridge , when a sulky young man comes in . He looks resentfully at me . Somehow , I feel as though I should know him , but I don 't . Was he one of the people around the patio table ? No . I 'm confident that I have never met him before . He is in his late teens or early twenties , thin and lanky , with brooding dark eyes . He accuses me of not acknowledging him , and I apologize . He becomes more upset . In his hands he holds a pair of jeans , which he now soaks with running water at the sink . Abruptly , he flings the wet jeans at me and storms out . I calmly put the jeans in the sink again and murmur , " Very mature of you . " Then I turn to head out to the patio … 1 . The name ' Eleyna ' . That is the name of my sister who , if she had been alive still , would have been some two years older than me . It is also a name I have adopted for myself in the group The Society For Creative Anachronism ( SCA ) . In my dream , she looked exactly as my mother did in her prime . I have never dreamed of my sister or my grandmother before that I could remember . 2 . The elderly woman who greeted me and whose face I could not see - I 'm sure she was my grandmother . Since I only know her from stories my father told me . I 've never seen her in waking life , not even a photograph of her , so it fits that she would appear as a shadowy but comforting presence . 3 . I have no idea who the petulant young man was , however . His presence was disruptive , but only to himself . He refused to accept my apology or to make himself known to me . He simply acted as a spoiled brat . He looked nothing like my brother who had also passed on . Perhaps he was some relative of whom I am not aware , a cousin ? I honestly do not know . 4 . Back to the Meditation - What began as a visualization became a Vision that unfolded as I could only lay back and observe . It 's been a long time since something like this happened to me , and I am deeply grateful for such guidance . 5 . Regarding the image of the Wolf - I have dreamed about this Wolf before . He seems to have been my guide throughout the years . It 's not surprising that this would be so , since he also represents my Russian heritage , where wolves roam in the dark northern forests there . Also , wolves are common in northern Canada , where I live now . Your dream experience has a triple Goddess manifestation : you , your sister and your mother . The three of you must acknowledge the animus : a young guy upset because of his jeans . You don 't take him very serious and he is angry about that . Why does he care so much about his jeans ? What do they symbolize ? Why does he need them so bad ? He soaks them in water : he invites the water into the situation . He walks out : you take over : a very positive reaction you make to what seems to be to be the behavior of a spoiled child . But it is clear that that part of your animus needs to get acknowledged . Knowing you , you have already taken some time for an inner conversation with him . Urban Crone : Commenting further on my dream - I didn 't feel that the young man placed any great importance on his jeans . He just happened to be holding them . He was upset that I spent more time with my sister than him . Even when I acknowledged this and apologized , wanting to draw him more into a conversation , he became more upset . He used the nearest thing to lash out at me - his jeans . I 'm not sure if I actually dreamed this , or whether this is an add - on that my mind manufactured , but I seem to recall him slapping me across the face with the leg bottom of the pants , before he threw them at me . Thank you for your feedback . I 'm impressed by the Triple Goddess aspect you picked up . Now I 'm looking through my old photos to find the one and only picture I have of my sister ! I have been contemplating on the meaning of the animus in your dream who feels that he did not get enough of your attention . Jeans are blue , the name comes from De - Nimes , the French place . La France , famous for its love . Could it be that the dream wants to put your attention to a potential love affair comming your way next year ? I am in a dark forest with not much light . Ahead , I see light and as it comes toward me , I realize it is the mythological creature of the wood , Pan . He motions for me to follow him . As I do , I see tiny little lights on either side of the path we are on and hear the sounds of giggling . When we get to the end of the wood , Pan turns around , and I ask this question of him , " How can I best use my animus energy for the sake of myself and others ? " He answers , " Pay attention to detail . The magic is in the ordinary . " This is the second time I 've heard these words in a dream in the past few months . I notice that we are now at the steps to my house . Pan heads back down the path with his little entourage of giggling beings . The wood disappears as he goes , and I am standing on the steps to my house in my own neighborhood . ( End of Dream ) I say that all these are but dreams and shadows ; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes . There is a real world , but it is beyond this glamour and this vision , beyond these ' chases in Arras , dreams in a career , ' beyond them all as beyond a veil . I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil ; but I do know , Clarke , that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another 's eyes . You may think this all strange nonsense ; it may be strange , but it is true , and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means . They called it seeing the god Pan . I was in a space that had upright metal posts and posts with slanted guy - wires anchoring them . I began to notice that some of the posts had black plastic coating at certain levels , and I documented the spacing of these . I thought of the lines and spacing of the posts as a basis for a piece of artwork . Then I started exploring the slanted wire . I was able to figure out a way to exactly determine and duplicate its angle . I was really proud of myself for figuring this out , elated actually . I went to find my phone on a ledge so I could keep track of my discovery . I told someone about it , but I 'm not sure who that was . Later , I was met by a soldier , a guy my height , sort of stocky , in military fatigues . He was from a very successful military group , but they were alternative in some kind of way , like not destructive to people or the environment . He was escorting me to some location , and we passed by an empty store in a strip mall that had been set up for a concert and lots of people were there . The soldier said , " That 's John Treat . He 's a millionaire . " The performer was playing a fiddle . I asked , " Did he become a millionaire from playing the fiddle , or was he already a millionaire ? " The soldier replied that he didn 't know . " I 'll have to look that up , " I said . In the last snippet , I had been exploring three buildings , each behind and above the other in a hilly landscape . They were filled with shops run by women selling handmade items . It seemed like one of the shops was or had been mine . I talked with various women as we wandered down the halls , but I was trying to get back to the shop that sold chocolate . I got to a different shop that sold white chocolate and peppermint , but I wanted the dark chocolate , so had to keep going . If it were my dream , the common theme of the animus seems to be finding the common ground . The finding the ratio behind creativity in the first dream . The second dream combines tradition ( military follow rules ) with creativity : the fiddler , music . Again , a theme about combining two apparently opposite energies to work with next year . Your last dream shows you three buildings . In my eyes they symbolize your three main systems of being : your body , your mind , your spirit . Here dark chocolate , something bittersweet is added to sweeten things up . So to me the message of the animus in the dream you shared is : combine creativity and rationality and sweeten it up . Dream seems an Asian man in a church with an overflowing out the open front doors on to the sidewalk following . I am across the street standing on the opposite by a stone with iron fence wall . There are two stone heads there it seems connected to the church and man there like something not thought of before . One of the followers is curiously looking and listening to the idea . Dream I am talking to a woman in a house . We are by the front entrance where there is a shelf with a bowl and papers and a mirror above it . Seems I can feel what she is feeling . I leave but can still see her standing there . It reminds me of a home where the father passed away . He was a bus driver . I applied the italics in your story . I was struck by you dreaming about the material of the fence ! The stone - in my eyes - is of course the philosopher 's stone , and iron is a manifestation of the animus . Let me explain . Iron is a hard metal , used in what we now call " the Iron age " . A time period that Titus Burkhardt describes as : " An active descent of the Spirit into the lowest levels of human consciousness " . Because you described an Asian man in your dream I began to google for ancient use of Iron in Asia , and I found a pillar in Dehli , India ( see picture ) . It is from 400 A . D . Now , the connection withe the first dream becomes clear to me , in my interpretation of the dream . In the first dream you see a rat trap that forcefully make san end to unwanted lives . The proper use of Iron , the spiritual call of iron is asserting yourself without dominating others , or without yourself being submissive to other people . That - in my eyes - is the message of the asian man in the church . I would talk with him in my active imagination and find out if he has some more tips and inspiration in using my animus energy . In the last dream I interpret the bowl with paper and a mirror as a mandala . The tree of life is reshaped to fit into this symbol of the Self . There is an absence of the Father , the animus who served society by ways of transporting people on their life journey . The Father is passed over to another realm of being and now the women have to cope with telepathy . So , if it was my dream , the old aniumus is ging to be transformed in this New Year .
|
serve as material for a blog post . In this case , I came home feeling as though it might actually provide material for three or four posts . You see , networking can bring out lots of things in a person . When done well , it can also lead to a discovery or two . In preparing for tonight , I researched the people I might be meeting - - after all , it 's important to be prepared , right ? As I was researching them , however , I found that I was also researching myself . Researching myself ? Don 't I know who I am ? The thing about an " elevator pitch " is that it is a description of you or your project , short enough to be conveyed during an elevator ride ( or , in this case , during a six - minute appointment ) . What could I possibly convey that would make a twenty - something career that ranged from soap work to news make any sense , much less be of any interest , to people who were in neither of these worlds ? I was stumped , and as my networking sessions drew near , I had no idea what I 'd be saying . Worst case scenario , I thought , I 'd make a fool of myself in front of people I would ( because of making a fool of myself ) never see again . And so , it began . . . . say , " after twenty - something years working mostly in soaps , I am now working in news , which , for twenty - something years , I never thought I 'd do . " And my elevator pitch was born . From here , I could talk about how telling a story in news was a lot like telling any story . How my editing informed my directing . How much I had learned from doing news after so many years of doing dramatic . By the time I came home , I found that not Why would I be thinking about a giant Barbie head ? It 's odd , I agree , but as I started to ponder not just how many hats I 'd be wearing this week , but how many different heads I would have to inhabit , the image just popped into my mind . You see , by day , I will be a News Editor . But tonight , I was a Single Camera Dramatic Editor ( a favor for a the tasks at hand . At least I hope it has , so that I can make the most of all the places it goes with me . So that I can be the Editor and the Director and the AD and the Writer - - maybe not simultaneously , but all in she 'd still be doing this at this point in her life . Perhaps she thought that by now , she would have an assistant who laundered the costumes , or an infinite budget for dry cleaning them . But , arts budgets many of us have said this in reference to one thing or another ? We hadn 't thought we 'd still be refining a résumé , hadn 't thought we 'd still be unsure of what we wanted to do with our lives , hadn 't thought we 'd still be scrambling to pay bills or get household chores done each week . Often , life just doesn 't turn out quite the way we imagined . And yet , we move on . My neighbor , the dance teacher , still washes the costumes for her studio 's shows , and it is clear that she does it with great care , even if she might wish she had help . We renegotiate work and kitchen floor . I uttered a guttural sound , devastated by both the broken glass and by the loss of a non - valuable , yet beloved , part of my whimsical collection of glassware . Breaking a crystal goblet might have upset me , but breaking Curious George almost brought me to tears . Having cleaned up the glass , I thought , " I wasn 't even doing something stupid " when it broke . I wasn 't trying to fit things in obvious non - workable spots , or handling multiple glasses at a time , or counting on wet hands to put away glasses safely . This broken glass incident just yet from the glass , but . . . ) , I can 't help but think that perhaps it 's okay that we can 't control all the " just happeneds . " We would likely make the safe choices , the choices of what we know . And while this might keep Now , it could be that this just means we have a small kitchen ( which we do ) . It could mean that I am working far too hard on breakfasts and lunches if I have to be in so many parts of the kitchen in such a short time . ( Perhaps true , but I like people , including myself , to be well - fed , including snacks ! ) It could mean that we need a smaller kitchen garbage can that wouldn 't be a constant obstacle . ( Again , perhaps true , but then we want to do . We refuse to let the too - small kitchens and too - large garbage cans of life get in our way . We 've got meals to make ( and eat ! ) and things to accomplish . The process of writing is different for everyone . For me , fiction works when I am largely the scribe for my characters , listening as they talk , watching them move , and recording their words and actions . It is a process that lends itself to solitude , to quiet , to being " in the zone . " A book written by 20 people , however , requires a lot more than solitude and quiet . It requires discussion and consensus , compromise and middle ground . And for a person coming from solitude and quiet , these things are not easy . But , as I recover from my exhaustion , I remind myself that , like most everything else in life , this is a process . It is an opportunity not just to generate something new , but to learn something ( or a lot of somethings ! ) new as well . I am not just generating a chapter of which I can be proud . I am learning to work with a group to generate a book of which we will all be proud . on the ski slopes . There wasn 't even any jet lag ( unless you count getting up at 6am today after ten days of sleeping quite a bit later than that ) . Their return to school was from a week and a half at home . With me working , their break was simply that - - a break . things I hadn 't done or hadn 't planned for them . Now that the break is over , however , I am feeling a little " Dr . Seuss " about it . What Dr . Seuss could possibly apply , you ask ? Well , I could be talking about Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are ? ( one of my personal favorites , complete with pants - eating plants ! ) . The one that popped into my mind , though , was How The Grinch Stole Christmas . You see , while I may have felt a little like a Grinch , stealing some exciting vacation from my kids because I had to work , I am realizing now that it is the end of the story that rings true here . Despite the Grinch 's efforts , Christmas comes to Whoville . He marvels that " It came without ribbons . It came without tags . It came without packages , boxes or bags . " That is basically how this Spring Break came - - no airplanes or trains , no giant celebrations or gifts . And yet , I would venture to say , it was a break that we will remember ( and not just because my kids are now old enough to remember things ! ) And , in the end , I think they considered it ten days well - spent . No ribbons or tags , boxes or bags , but in the end , not a break stolen from them , but kind of one given . Their hearts may not have grown three sizes I found myself revising my kids ' book chapter again tonight . No new deadline , really , but I read the chapter someone else had written , and it sparked something in me . Just a few words here and there , and I immediately knew I had changes to make . It was as if something the other So , if there are always new sparks , why do we so often continue through our lives without changing ? The key , as I see it , is being open to noticing the sparks - - and to reacting to them . Last night , I could have read the other person 's chapter , thought , " great chapter , " and let it end there . Instead , I allowed it to affect me , and to spark a change in my own writing . I could view the bumps and annoyances of daily life as just that , bumps and annoyances . Instead , I allow them to make me think about where they really fit in , and what they mean , and quite frequently , they spark my daily blog . for me . As we rode up ( he got off way before I did ) , I thought about how long I 'd been saying that floor . How long I 've been living in the same place . Despite job changes that have made us talk about moving , and In my reverie about the " comfort of home , " I couldn 't help but think about a blog post I read recently - - a post by a friend of mine , who has recently started a blog , in which he describes his bi - coastal life as part of adapting to a changing industry . For him , the whole concept of " home " has had to change . In my eyes , he is a huge industry success story , but reading his blog , I see that success comes at a price . I arrived at my apartment , feeling as though more than just a few moments had surely passed , as if I had experienced a life revelation of sorts . There is home , and there is success . In the best of all worlds , we can find a lot of both . Most of the time , we find a little of each . When are even drink that much coffee , and when I drink coffee , it is full of so much milk that the volume of coffee consumed amounts to about eight ounces a day . And it 's a coffeemaker . A COFFEEMAKER . But that coffeemaker is part of And that is why I am over - dramatizing the death of a kitchen appliance . It is not the appliance itself that I am mourning . Rather , I am mourning Each day , we are faced with new challenges , and by and large , we handle them . No two days are the same , we think , and yet , in reality , some parts of our days ARE the same . The alarm that wakes us up , the shampoo we use in the shower , the coffeemaker we turn on each morning . It is these routine things that form the base from which we go out and face all of those challenges . And when a piece of our routine is gone , our base changes , and that can be unsettling . a certain daily schedule , certain buses and trains , certain coverage for my kids , that the hours at home seemed endless some days , largely because I hadn 't yet found a routine . Not only was my big picture life changed , each minute of each day was changed . So , rather than facing challenges from a base of routine , I was faced with the challenge of creating new routines . It was scary and daunting , but it happened , little by little , and ended up preparing me for the ever - changing routines of a freelance life . Many things will continue to change , but if we are able to find some things that stay the same , we can be stronger when facing the things that change . I will survive the loss of my coffeemaker , and before I know it , I will have purchased a new one . The routine has been shaken , but just for a few days . For now , you will find me pouring boiling water over a cup ( either improvising coffee or going with tea ! ) . In search of my new routine . A few days ago , I had coffee with a friend . One of those " see all the time , say ' hello , ' then go our own ways " kind of friends . We 'd talked for a while about going for coffee , but busy lives being what they are , we 'd never quite managed to make it work . Until this week . are doing one thing , we are thinking about another . Multitasking , we call it . It can make us more efficient , and more consistently aware of all the things we have to handle . I am actually a very good multitasker - - I don 't think I could get myself and my kids through each week if I weren 't . But what I learned this week from that coffee was how Tonight we saw Cirque Du Soleil , an extravaganza of movement and light and sound - - more going on than you could possibly take in all at once . I found myself having constant thoughts of " how did they do that ? " I was exhausted just watching the performers - - how could they even learn to do all those things , not to mention perform them , timed correctly , every day , sometimes twice a day ? day to make our lives work is a constant balancing act . Making our families and our bosses and ourselves happy often takes a bit of twisting ourselves into a pretzel . And who hasn 't felt as though he or she is constantly up in the air or jumping through hoops at least a few times a week ? They do a fantastic job entertaining and astounding audiences all over the world . Their work is hard , and it takes years of practice and a willingness to put themselves in potentially dangerous spots every day . But when we look at them , and wonder why we can 't do such amazing things ( aside from , oh , fear of heights and pain ? ) , I would encourage us to see what we accomplish each day - - whether it is at work or at home or in our communities . We may not be acrobats , but we fly sometimes too . We may not be jugglers , but we manage to keep all the balls in the air . We may not balance large objects , but most of the time , we get a lot of things done without hitting anyone in the head . I remember the day , years ago , when we got new carpet and decided that from then on , we would all take off our shoes in the apartment . Since then , I have read countless times about how much from the outside comes in when you leave your shoes on . Besides , many days , I would like nothing more than to take my shoes off as soon as I walk in after a long day . right ? Yet , somehow for me , leaving my shoes on keeps me active - - keeps me up making dinner , or going down to the lobby for mail . Shoes keep me doing and thinking and thinking of what to do . And the minute the shoes come off , it seems that the thinking and the doing just go along with them . 1 . Standing . ( I 'm actually standing as I write this blog . It may not be the most comfortable position , but I am still awake and writing , so who am I to complain ? ) 2 . Engaging . While I don 't necessarily need to help with every bit of homework or be a player in every video game , staying tuned in to what my 3 . Writing . Whether I 'm standing up or not , grabbing moments to write always makes me happy after the fact . I have taken off my shoes , and I actually still have something to show for it . 4 . Cleaning . Oh , never mind . It might be a good one , but who wants to give it that much credit ? When you write , you have something on paper or 5 . Putting away your shoes . You 'll be needing them , and in good shape , for your next time out ( if you let yourself sleep at some point , so that you So - - having made it through a whole blog post , shoeless and awake , I now declare that it is time to enjoy my shoeless wonder - fulness . Tomorrow is another day . And I suspect I 'll be needing to wear shoes . There was a time when I would have written extensive notes about how they should spend their days - - places to go , things to eat , friends with whom I 'd made plans . Not this time . Whether it has been choice or inertia on my part , this Spring Break , there are no extensive plans . It 's kind of like an extended period of " choice time " in school - - a period during which ( usually because the class has been good all week ) the kids get to decide what they will do for an hour . They can do artwork or play games . It is a bit of unstructured time in a very structured day . So , what does " choice time " mean at home ? Some days , I suspect it means hours of playing video games . But what I am seeing is that it also means learning a new card game , or brushing up on chess ( with a computer program , but still chess ) . It means getting creative about what 's for lunch . And , perhaps most important , it means working together as siblings to make a day work . Since there are not my usual extensive plans to create individual activities and play dates for each child , my kids need to rely on each other , perhaps more than they 're used to . While we are only a few days in , I would like to think it 's working pretty well . This " choice time " week doesn 't mean I 'm not planning for summer camp . Even the best " choice time " in the world can last too long . But for this In the early hours of this morning , I submitted the next draft of my children 's book chapter . It is full of holes in logic . It is bereft of the constant movement that I learned to keep up when I was directing soap scenes . It has a character I love whose heart I have probably not revealed enough yet for anyone else to love her . But I have submitted the chapter ( to my editing partners ) . It is on time . And , as I remind myself , it is just a draft . It is an unbelievably hard thing to think in terms of drafts . We humans like instant results , and drafts just don 't fit that . We 'd like our work to be publishable the minute it comes out of our creative heads . We 'd like someone to snatch it up , and tell us we are brilliant , just for thinking of it . We 'd like to be original , and wise , and relevant every time we put pen to paper . There may be people out there who have all of these things happen to them . I am not one if those people . I have to believe this draft will be a step toward something good , and that by writing drafts , I will come upon the things that work , and fit them all together in a chapter that will be more than a draft . In the meantime , I will be developing a healthy respect for the draft . It is a kind of trial run that we don 't always get in the other parts of our lives . It is a way of putting it out there without totally putting it out there , and for that , I am grateful . On the next draft , perhaps I can fix the logic part , and the movement part , and the heart part ( and likely at least six other parts that come up in the editing process ) . It doesn 't have to be publishable or brilliant yet . It just has to be in a turned - in draft . And I 'm happy to report , it 's turned in . We are pretty good guests . We bring a dish , we offer to help serve and clear , and most important , we hugely appreciate being guests . Despite having cabinets and closets full of daily plates and glasses and barely used formal dishes , we have rarely hosted any dinner party . A few weeks ago , we found out that our usual Seder spot was not to be . Relatives would be traveling , meaning that we would be on our own . Would we try to be guests somewhere else ? We are good guests , after all . Or would we go it alone , perhaps even become full - fledged hosts ? The guests ? Just us , plus one . A day early ? Well , at least I 'd be home to cook , and set the table , and have the brainpower to figure out what was It was an evening of improv , really . Improvising how much of anything to make . Improvising who would read what . Improvising the exact order in which we 'd eat the foods I 'd managed to assemble and prepare . But in the end , not only were we stuffed , as if we had been to someone else 's home for the Seder , we had ( if briefly ) told the Passover story , complete with questions and plagues and opening our normal holiday tradition , but it was an evening that I will remember for a long time . We took a holiday during which we normally just show up as guests , and we made it our own . We cooked and we ate and we learned Whether by choice or out of necessity , we are sometimes called upon to take over . To do more than just show up . To make the decisions , and , in doing so , to make our own new traditions . The fact that both the playwright / star and the director are my friends gave us the lovely perk of post - show pictures with the cast . I wasn 't surprised that the group of girls , many of them huge theater fans , were excited about that . What did surprise - - and impress - - me , however , was how they were genuinely moved by the vulnerability of the lead character . It didn 't matter that many of the characters might be outside of their daily experience . Their reactions were lovely and human . And I was glad to know that , at least in one little corner of my world , we are raising our kids with the compassion to understand choices and families other than their own , a booth PA , a job that , at that point , I barely even understood . But since , at least at that time , people knew what a booth PA was , my training to do that job would give me a marketable skill wherever I went . If I liked it ( it happened that I did ) , all the better , but either way , I would walk away with a skill set that could be transferred to other places . When I became an AD on OLTL , it turned out that the AD skills were also marketable - - I used them to transition to prime time work as well . And the editing that I learned as part of my AD job has turned out to be perhaps the most marketable skill of all . Obviously , you want to do as good a job as possible in the place where you are . Having people like you there doesn 't hurt either - - that will provide you with networking and references that you will undoubtedly need . But , as that producer told me all those years ago , the skills that While the bus won 't get me all the way , it will do most of the hard work , and that is tempting . Sometimes , I do take the assist . But most days , I find myself walking past the bus stop - - fighting through whatever Now , walking fifteen minutes to work is not a huge accomplishment . I am not infirm , and many days , that is all the exercise I get ( unless you count cleaning up after kids and boiling water for dinner ) . The accomplishment , as I see it , is the fighting through on those days when I really don 't think I 'll survive the fifteen minute walk . Fighting through that is generally just the beginning of the fighting through that I ( and we all ) do all day . Days are full of things we don 't want to determines our days . Do we look for the easy out - - like the bus ? Or do we fight through situations and find out that we really can handle them without any assist at all ? Tests of our fight - through ability happen every day - - how often do we find that when we do fight through , we actually reach our goals and feel better for it ? I can 't say that I will never take advantage of public transportation on the days when I just don 't have it in me to fight through . But most days , I 'll keep fighting . I know from experience that it makes me feel better - - and stronger - - at the end of my path . Not plot points on the show , of course - - any soap person could tell you that the important days , at least back then , were Mondays and Fridays . But behind the scenes , things happened on Wednesdays . Or so she said . Firings , edicts , big meetings , new policies . Perhaps even the announcement of the soaps ' cancellation . Back then , if it was a Wednesday , you would do well to watch your back . thing has not been consciously with me for years , clearly , it has been kicking around my subconscious . It was a feel - good moment , actually - - that moment of connecting the present with the past . I guess that 's the nice thing about having had a long history somewhere . That history is always somehow with you , even when you think you have moved far away from it . scientific study back then , I 'm sure we would have realized that . It was just interesting to feel as though we could see a pattern , even if we tended to see it in retrospect , rather than in real time . And , of course , if you 're always worried that something will happen - - on Wednesday That there will be pasta made for at least one meal a day in my house . The kids lobby for it , and it 's easy to make - - even on auto - pilot on those days when the kids are hard to wake in the morning . Which is ( predictably ! ) every day . It would be easy to think of " predictable " as negative - - boring , uninspired , unoriginal . What I am learning , however , is how very comforting it is to have a handful of things that I can predict . Whether tend to change CONSTANTLY ) , " predictable " means that I can plan , at least a little . " Predictable " means that , at least some of the time , life is not a complete guessing game . " Predictable " means that I know what to expect ( good and bad ) . I may not always like the outcomes , but at least I know enough about how things will work that I have a chance to influence those outcomes . that I sleep on every night or the breakfast I eat each morning . A little " predictable " gives a lot of much needed shape to my days and much needed comfort in a chaotic life . So , the next time you 're accused of being predictable , say " thank you . " You just might be doing yourself and others a huge favor . Now , as an editor , I know how often even the things you think are working don 't end up working . Whether it 's minutes or seconds or whole scenes that need to be cut , you do the cutting because it makes the product better . Or shorter . Or more suited to the needs of the audience , or the producers , or the network . That 's what we editors do , and if things are left on the cutting room floor , they weren 't meant to be - - at least not in the project at hand . One of the hardest things about editing ( or any type of creative work , really ) is letting things go . Even if our work isn 't always brilliant , it is our work , and we get attached . But in order to do better work , we need to keep honing , keep adjusting - - keep letting go and moving forward . This time around , my makeover and my appearance in front of the camera weren 't meant to be . Perhaps there 'll be another time . Meanwhile , I 'll just keep editing , in work and in life - - leaving plenty of things , I 'm sure , on the cutting room floor . As I watched the final performance of the show my daughter has been rehearsing for weeks ( and this past week , for many hours daily ) , I couldn 't help but think ahead to all the things that would now happen , since the time spent in rehearsals , and in transportation to and from rehearsals , would now be free time . In a busy life , there are rarely endings , happy or otherwise . There are simply events that punctuate the weeks , that make us pause for a moment , or celebrate for a few days . They are not endings . When they end , we simply move on to the next thing . Sometimes , that " next thing " is equally satisfying , sometimes not , but regardless , we move on , no real endings , just a series of new beginnings . A few weeks ago , my daughter and I heard a casting director speak . She talked about auditions and preparation , and all the things you would expect a casting director to know . She also talked about the real costs associated with being an actor . Or the parent of an actor . There are headshots and classes and tickets to shows your kids are in and travel to auditions - - the list goes on . The extra loads of laundry you do when the uniform has to be clean for multiple games each week ? The snacks you end up buying at the field for yourself and your child when you realize you brought nothing but the baseball equipment ? And the extra child care you might need if the games and practices are at times when the job you take ( see above ) makes you unavailable to go yourself ? When you send your kids to schools that aren 't close to home , your children may receive a free Metrocard to get there each day , but you 're on your own when it comes to getting to parent events . And whether school is far from home or not , there are the associated costs of supplies , and brownies for bake sales , and fundraisers . That 's just how it is . It has become clear to me that acting is not the only thing out there with associated costs . Everything in life pretty much has them , whether the costs are strictly monetary , or whether they are emotional as well . If there are things we Every day , we are faced with balancing the associated costs with the value of what we are getting . There are no easy answers , and the balance changes every day . The trick is making sure that at the end of each day ( or at least at the end of each week or month ) , we come out in the black . My son has just completed three days of New York State Tests . He is not alone . Countless kids have done the same thing , and will take more tests in a few weeks . Thankfully , he goes to a school where I believe he has been prepared . While I may not agree with so much time going into test prep , I do agree with a school 's giving kids the tools and confidence to succeed , and my son 's relatively calm handling of this week suggests to me that they 've done a good job with that . We 'll see what happens when the scores come out ( if I recall correctly , many months from now ) . Sometimes it seems as though a disproportionately large part of our lives ( and our kids ' lives ) is spent taking tests . Tests to get into kindergarten , tests to assess knowledge and aptitude , tests to move on to any new place you 'd like to go . Over the years , my husband has cautioned me countless times to remember that a test says something ( we may not be quite sure what ! ) about our child on one day , while we have known the child day in and day out for years . It is so easy to go along with test scores - - to give them the same power in our minds that they have over school choices and opportunities ( at least in New York ) . The hard part is separating out what the tests do say , and what they don 't . Does success on a test mean that the way ahead is clear ? For that matter , does lack of success on that test mean that the way is doomed ? I would like to think not . The reality is , at least in New York City , test scores are So you 're going about your daily life , making sure your clothes basically match and your hair 's basically brushed , and you have ways to get your children to and from every which place they need to go , when suddenly , you are asked to have a makeover . The makeover that maybe you wanted when you were suddenly out of work after twenty - some years and felt old when you read job postings . The makeover that maybe you thought Entertainment 360 , the magazine show on the network where I 've been editing news footage . " Who , me ? " I thought . Better yet , " Why me ? " Over my years in TV , I have been in front of the camera only a handful of times . I was a cow on several of One Life to Live 's Halloween shows . I Don 't worry . I won 't be giving up editing or directing or writing for acting . I actually found that I couldn 't help but think about how to direct and edit the shots I was part of . The experience , however , was a lovely break from my every day routine . A reminder that it 's okay to think out of your box a little . That it 's okay to think about changing things sometimes . And that it 's okay to accept an offer , even if you 're on the Arise . TV show Arise 360 . Hey , it might be your only chance to see me on camera . Unless you 've got a tape of me in the cow costume . The truth is , in life , " rules " change all the time . We - - and our children - - are constantly having to adjust because the rules have changed . It 's not easy . And depending on the personalities of our kids , it sometimes seems impossible . As parents , we might wish we could shield So , I will persist in my editing , and in shepherding my character through the " rules . " Who knows ? Maybe ( as my children often do ) , she 'll teach me a few things along the way . And maybe , when all is said ( written , that is ) and done , we both ( and my chapter ) will come out stronger . memory is . Of how one adventure is so quickly replaced by others , yet remains a part of our makeup as we move forward . Of how we work with what we are given , and our minds and hearts go along . . . At the moment , it 's hard to imagine a daily trip to a different state . A daily job that often deposits me at home at 2am , only to return a few hours later . A
|
Night 75 : Basement - Grand Ballroom [ from here ] Dim light met her eyes and Aigis blinked , attempting to adjust her sight . As usual , the depth of the ballroom was rather stunning in its own way , if it didn 't hold such terrible truths behind it . It was just another of Landel 's sick games , but here she was , looking to see if there was a way to escape after this . Surely there was something . . . A hidden tunnel or another secret room . There was the door that she had not yet gotten to pass , but surely could after the fight in the Coliseum . At odds with herself , Aigis reached into her pillowcase and pulled out one of the items she had salvaged from the pantry . A box of crackers . That would work . Taking out a sleeve of the crunchy treats , Aigis opened it and began to eat a few while she considered her options . [ From here . ] Meanwhile , the final door which had stood silently still for so long , suddenly began to budge and creak against its hinges . Inch by inch , the heavy marble door shifted forward , noisily grinding against white sand onto immaculate tiles , revealing a sliver of pitch darkness behind it . Rows of fingers then emerged over the door 's edge before it was finally thrown open , allowing entry for the two patients who were pushing it from the other side . Blinded by the sudden onslaught of light , Sechs was forced to squint and cover his eyes with his free hand as he stumbled past the door . Even if he couldn 't see much , he could tell by the familiar marble tiles beneath his feet that he and Taura must have made it to the ballroom . " Damn , for such a fancy marble door it sure felt as heavy as lead ! " Sechs said to Taura as he struggled to see past the stinging lights . So far his eyes were still adjusting and all he could see was a bright blur of a room . " Think we made to the ballroom at least ! " Just in case , Taura tucked away her radio and flashlight , and pulled out her stunner and unstrapped her throwing star . Then she joined Sechs in leaning on the big door , pushing with all her considerable weight . It was the ballroom . They 'd just come through the one door Taura hadn 't seen the other side of - - the one that maybe they could have gone through after what had happened in the Coliseum , but there 'd been too many other things to do . She hadn 't even gotten a chance to talk to Goku while they 'd been in Farwell , and she hadn 't seen Rita in a few days . Her eyes adjusted more quickly than Sechs ' did ; there was someone near the stairs , though she could only make out size - - small - - and maybe - female . " Hey , over there , " she said , pointing . Whoever it was had to have seen the door opening , so it wasn 't worth hiding in case it wasn 't Sechs ' friends . She waved with the hand carrying the throwing star , which was perhaps not as reassuring as it could have been , but she wasn 't throwing it . Aigis heard the hinges creak before anything , and her immediate response was to drop her crackers and fall into a defensive position . But she abandoned that plan after a moment , and turned , searching for a place to hide . There were some pillars to attempt to get around , but she would surely be seen , even if she made it there . So she pressed herself against the nearest wall , at least determined to keep her back from any potential hostiles . But what she saw , once the two figures had come through the door , was not what she expected , and though she was partly hidden from the dim glow of the torches that burned around the room , there was nothing to stop her gasp of surprise . Those voices . . . those faces . . . " I . . . I know you , " she said softly , but she could not wrap her mind about it . How could she ? Taura , she could believe , as she hadn 't noticed if the older woman had gone missing , but as for the other . . . " Sechs - san ? " The incredulity in her voice was unmistakable , and Aigis began to step forward . Trap set by Landel or no , she couldn 't help herself , needing to see if he was real with her own eyes and touch him with her own hands . " Huh ? " Sechs was still blinking and squinting his eyes when he heard Taura speak up . Squinting past the light , he looked up and followed Taura 's gaze . " Who - ? " Half expecting a brainwashed patient or a monster to attack , Sechs instinctively readied his gun - wielding hand for a sudden ambush . Yet he saw no foreseeable danger in the form of a large figure rushing towards him . Instead , his adjusting eyes made out a much less threatening sight - - " A - Aigis ? " Sechs had to really rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing right . Was that really Aigis waiting in the ballroom , alive and acting upon her own will ? It wasn 't some sick trick , was it ? Or another deceptive trap to stop them in their tracks ? The Replica 's mind raced over the all possibilities of trickery and danger . Yet that familiar voice he heard was unquestionably clear and sincere to his ears . Abandoning his caution , Sechs lowered his gun and began to step towards the fellow android . His eyes were wide and bright , wanting nothing more than for his senses to be true . The other droid wasn 't a shadowy mirage , nor was there any sign that she was brainwashed . Seeing that it really was Aigis , a relived grin came over Sechs ' face and he broke out into a full jog towards her . " Aigis ! " he cheered , reaching an arm out for his found friend , " You 're alright ! " Sechs ' friend was a friend of hers , too . Taura grinned from ear to ear and ran over as well , though she hung back to let him arrive first . He 'd been in the battle arena ; it was quite possible Aigis had been there too . No , Taura , say what you mean , even in the privacy of your own head ; it was quite possible she 'd killed him , with whatever powers she 'd regained . That was a pain best addressed in the relative privacy she could muster by standing a pace back . They could spare a moment for their reunion before putting together a plan for taking down Landel ; it made them human . So did the fire for revenge , because without Landel , they wouldn 't be staring at each other with guilt and pain soaked into the joy . But without Landel none of them would have met , either . She was still killing him if she had the chance . Or holding him in place while Sechs did the honors , she wasn 't that particular about it . Thread There was no mistaking it . There wasn 't a thread of doubt , despite how wary Aigis new she should probably be . The man chasing towards her had everything right , even the very familiar gait of Sechs . There was no way he could be an illusion . It was so real . When he reached out his hand , so did she , and Aigis clasped his with all the warmth and strength she had . It wasn 't much , considering her recent routine of doing nothing but lying in bed , but it was all she had . " Sechs - san , you are here ! And well ! It is so much more than I could have ever thought possible ! " She found herself blinking back wetness , but they weren 't like the hot tears that had chased down her cheeks days before . These were tears of relief and they were much cooler , almost soothing . " To think I would see you . . . both of you , " she glanced over towards Taura again to include her , " together again ; it is the most blessed I have felt since my arrival . " But the pleasantries would have to end soon . For the moment however , she would indulge in this feeling of joy and camaraderie . Sechs ' grin couldn 't get any wider , and for once he didn 't care if his face was blushing or not . He gave Aigis ' hand a tight squeeze , taking in her warmth as proof that she was real and in one piece . " Heh , couldn 't have said that better myself ! " he replied with a chuckle . " Damn , is it good to see that you 're ok ! Knowing how this place works , I wasn 't sure we would find ya in time ! " As relieved as Sechs was to find Aigis , he found himself taken aback by the tears budding in the gynoid 's blue eyes . His smile weakened at the distressingly familiar sight . Even though she was clearly happy , the last time he saw tears like that was just before he . . . " Look , uh . . . Taura and I came from this city outside of the institute , " Sechs hastily explained , gesturing to Taura standing nearby . " The rebels have a base there and they 're helping us out . They were the ones who got me out of here after . . . " Yet Sechs ' words trailed off and his gaze fell to the floor , faltered once again by another flashback of his last battle in the coliseum . That fatal moment he shared with Aigis was the most intense experience he had ever felt in his short life - - and at the time he was sure it would be his last . Now he was suddenly at a loss for words . Just what could he say to the last person who witnessed him take his own life ? To go through all that agony and leave Aigis behind poisoned Sechs with guilt he didn 't realize he had until now . There should have been judgment in Aigis ' eyes , a sign of resentment over the way he left her alone in that bloody patch of sand . . . But nothing of the sort came from Aigis , instead she practically radiated with pure acceptance and gratitude . What should have severed the two apart had actually left a connection Sechs didn 't think could exist between anyone . To win that impossible battle through death and reunite to fight together once more was a rare kinship few fighters could share - - an essential quality for those striving to become true warriors . Perhaps that was one silver lining to their imprisonment within LandeThread Taura 's eyes were wet , too , by the time Sechs made his final pronouncement . Her mind flashed to all the people who weren 't here ; all the times she 'd promised to break out and come back for those she 'd left behind . Now she 'd done it , but there were so few of them left . She knew better than to say that , though . Besides , Sechs was swiftly proving himself better at rousing speeches than she could ever be . There was artistry making the simplest statements profound , and she hadn 't been issued any . She was just good at saying the truth . She smiled , and her voice was a low , happy drawl when she spoke up . " I don 't know about you two , but I 'm not waiting for another day . How about we fight now ? " Sechs ' injuries had continued to heal , and he was moving less stiffly ; she didn 't think he wanted to wait , and while Aigis might want him to rest , he wasn 't going to . So they 'd go together . Thread It was unspeakably beautiful to have found her friends again , but in a place like Landel 's Institute there was only so much time for tender sentiment . They were still potentially in harm 's way and they needed to do something tonight ; Aigis was done lying around and feeling pitiable . " A city ? Beyond those doors ? " So that was what had lay beyond them . But if the rebels were there , why didn 't they storm in through the basement ? Were they still too few in numbers ? Were they unarmed for such a siege ? And while the questions continued to pour through Aigis ' mind she wondered if her friends could even answer any of them without only guesswork . " Well , it is good to hear that the rebels can offer us at least that one kindness . " Taura 's words could also be pretty stirring in Aigis ' humble opinion . She smiled . " I am perhaps not at full strength tonight , but seeing you both has rallied my spirits . Let us go then , and bring about the end of Landel 's reign of terror . " Bolstered by his ally 's words , Sechs ' smile recovered for a moment - - only to fall at the reminder of his second reason for returning to the institute . " W - wait , " he stammered , placing his hands on Aigis ' shoulders with his pained eyes focused on hers . " No , you can 't come with us . You have to get outta here and go to the city outside . It 'll be safer there ! " Feeling the happiness of their reunion slip away from his heart , Sechs was once again left with snake - like trepidation constricting his chest . He may have found Aigis alive and well , but as long as she was still within the institute 's boundaries , he was barred from any sort of relief from his reptilian anxiety . He wanted to fight alongside Aigis , but the battle ahead wasn 't just another tournament round with technicians at the ready to repair any damaged contenders , nor would they wake up in one piece in their beds like many mornings before - - it was a real war with death as a likely ending for most . It was just too risky . Sechs took in a deep breath , realizing just now how hard these words were going to be for him to say . " Listen , this damn place has taken everyone I 've known , one by one , without a single hint about what happened to them , " he explained , his voice lowered and heavy with the bitter remorse of a warrior who had lost too many times in the past . " I came here to get as many people out before things get real serious . Last thing I need is to have ya disappear like all the others . " He gave Aigis ' shoulders a squeeze . " You understand ? " Taura watched them argue , water welling up in her eyes . The problem was , she could understand both sides ; she What would Admiral Naismith do ? The Admiral , not Miles ; she was starting to understand how he made a distinction , even if she couldn 't see how he did it all the time without going mad . Especially since there was something else he was hiding , too . He would make everyone want to do exactly what he wanted . Ideally , thinking it was their own idea ; if that didn 't work , at least thinking they were the most important part of the puzzle . The question was , were their chances better with an inexperienced but uninjured third fighter ? In a perfect universe , she 'd have left Sechs and his injuries back in the city and gone in alone , in which case she could have used the help . She still thought they could use another set of hands , but if Sechs was going to fret over Aigis the entire time , having her along would hurt more than hinder . She cleared her throat . " Besides , we need someone on the outside . If this doesn 't work , who 's going to get us out to try again ? " Never mind that if this didn 't work , they 'd both be dead , and Sechs would know that . Aigis might , too , but she 'd be trying not to think about it . " M ' commander , " she added , deliberately imitating Miles ' drawl , " always said it was survive , escape , sabotage , and the order was the most important part . If you can 't do the first two , the second becomes irrelevant . " Thread Aigis could feel the conviction in Sechs ' words but she couldn 't let his worries impede her . She was hardly helpless , after all . She reached up her hand and grasped Sechs ' firmly , attempting to convey her resolve . " I comprehend , but Sechs - san , this is hardly the time for me to remain behind . As I recall , you do not have the ability to heal yourself or comrades . But I do . " Taura did have a point . Her commander was a smart man . Still , Aigis had her doubts . " But I do not know the layout of this city . Were I even to find my way there without you , I have little means with which to navigate it . Perhaps if I had a day to familiarize myself with the area it would be different , but for now I would feel much more comfortable following along to make certain you are both cared for . " Athena was not the best medic , but she was a good booster considering what little other options they had here . Her eyes turned back to Sechs . " I can remain at the sidelines if I must , but I would like to stay with you and watch your back , as they say . " Crap ! Not only was Aigis arguing back , but Taura was backing her up ! Their answers more than convincing for Sechs , but he fought against the pressure with a strained grimace . " I - I know but - ! " he stammered , averting his eyes from Aigis . He wanted to say yes , but he couldn 't hold back all the pent - up energy he had focused on his original plan . If she died because he didn 't get her out in time - - " NO ! You 're getting outta here and that 's THAT ! " he blurted out , giving Aigis a stern glare as he pointed back towards the open door behind them . " Outside there 's a lake and a guy named Charon who 'll get you across it . After that , there 's a subway that 'll lead you to the city . Once there , you stay there , ok ? ! So take your stuff now and GO - - " Yet Sechs ' angry words were cut short by an even louder voice . SECURITY SYSTEM SHUTDOWN . RED ALERT . RED ALERT . INITIATING EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS . The strident alarms and the digital disturbances rippling across every surface of the ballroom came like a bolt of lightning through Sechs ' senses . Everything changed in that moment . Whatever kind of forces were waging war upstairs , clearly the battle had taken a dramatic turn . Whether this change was in their favor or not , Sechs knew this was it . No turning back . The rescue mission was over . It was now time to attack . Shuddering with beastly excitement , Sechs released Aigis ' hand and stood back to give a knowing look to both her and Taura . " Ah , fuck it ! Change of plans ! ! " he barked over the wailing alarms . " You 're right ! Let 's take this damn place down together ! All three of us ! This could be the best chance we 'll ever get anyways ! " For all he knew , it could be their last chance . . . Taura 's golden eyes went wide when the walls shivered and a voice cut in . Her answer was one curt nod . She cinched the strap holding her throwing star on her arm down tightly , and took a step towards the stairs . " You got it , " she snarled , and bared her teeth . She wasn 't sure if Aigis would be any help in a fight , but she couldn 't ask her not to try . Besides , from what they 'd both implied , she 'd bested Sechs , and while he might have let her do so , that took some doing . This place had a lot to answer for , most of it centered on this damn basement . Hang on . Hold that thought . I just wanted you to know I 'll be back . . . She 'd said that , a few rooms away . She had a promise to keep . She 'd almost forgotten , in the heat of the moment . " There 's . . . something I have to do , first . It 's . . . complicated . I 'll be right behind you two . Go . " [ to here by herself ] Aigis felt she had the right to put her foot down on this matter . She was no weak fighter though there were times her confidence wavered . She belong on the battlefield just as much as Sechs and Taura . But as it was she didn 't need to argue . An alert went out and Aigis gasped , wondering what the implications could be . There had been times she had gotten her hopes up before but if the security had shut down . . . " A breach . We should take advantage . " Sechs was no longer fighting her position there so Aigis wasn 't going to bring it up again . She did , however , almost ask for a more detailed explanation but the older woman was running off before she had the chance . " . . . I suppose Taura - san knows what she is doing . " Aigis turned her eyes back to Sechs , hefting the pillowcase over her shoulder . " Well then , shall we head out ? " Before Sechs could even question Taura 's intent , she was already gone , dashing out of the ballroom into one of the darkened hallways . Gritting his teeth , the Replica could only nod to Aigis ' words and turn towards the marble steps leading upstairs . " Maybe she knows about the armory down here , " he mused outloud to himself as he ascended the stairs , " She better grab some good weapons then ! With all the noise going on upstairs , every little bit helps . . . ! " Indeed , just as Sechs reached the trap door to the walk - in freezer he could hear more than just the strident warnings of the catastrophic security breech . . . Now he wished he had more than just three bullets to shoot with . [ To here . ]
|
JASON ( 25 ) is sitting , by himself , on the subway . He looks tired . He looks as wore as his old pair of jeans . He leans his head back against the subway window , sitting still , as the subway stops . He gets up and leaves . Jason walks outside towards his car , an silver sedan . The car is standing in the middle of an empty parking lot . He gets in and quickly drives away . Jason drives up to a fast food restaurant . He gets out of his car , and walks towards the restaurant 's doors . He then hears a YELL . Jason turns around and sees a YOUNG MAN being chased by a couple of other young men across the streets . Jason immediately sees a look of panic on the face of the young man . They run and disappear behind an alley way . Jason waits . He hears a couple more SCREAMS so he begins to walk to them . Then he stops . The SCREAMS stop . Now Jason can just hear the other young men YELLING . He waits , hesitates , and turns back to enter the fast food restaurant . Jason is just finishing eating his meal . He gets up to leave . He sees that the young men from across the street are coming into the restaurant , without the person that they were chasing . He opens the door for them , takes a quick look , and leaves . December 5 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment After watching One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest ( and enjoying it immensely ) , I immediately wanted to see Milos Forman 's other best picture winner , Amadeus . I knew very little about the film , but decided to watch it anyway . My first impression was that I absolutely loved it and to my surprise , I felt that this is the better film over Cuckoo 's Nest . So first off , Amadeus is told in a three act structure that heavily relies on the flashbacks of the 0ld Salieri . The film starts off as Salieri tries to cut his throat . We find in in a mental hospital afterwards , where he is visited by a priest . This is the first plot point of the story . The priest wants to talk with Salieri about why he wanted to kill himself . Salieri confesses that he feels that he killed one of the greatest composer of all time , Mozart . The story is then told through flashback , where we see both the lives of Salieri and Mozart . The second plot point is when Mozart dies , which also is the end of the flashbacks . Mozart dies just after he was writing the Requiem with Salieri . Mozart was sick that night ( after heavy drinking ) , but still worked through the whole night to try to finish his last masterpiece , with Salieri . Amadeus is an experience driven film . While it tells a large story that spans over many years , it is told through Salieri 's point of view . Because he is telling this story of his past to this priest , Salieri can 't help but become apart of what he is telling . His emotions and thoughts affect the story that we see . It his his experiences and point of view that we are watching . Salieri is a very intriguing protagonist . The fact is , he is a very unsympathetic character . He truly appears to be an unpleasant man . His main conflict through out his entire life is why can 't he be a great musician like Mozart . He is jealous of him , he loathes him , but man , does he respect him . On the surface , Salieri 's body language and behavior make him appear to be swift , stern , calm , and proper . He 's a true aristocratic , and a passionate musician . His dialogue shows this very well also . He speaks kindly and properly with every single person that he encounters . But on the inside , he is holding back very strong hateful feelings toward Mozart . In one scene , Mozart 's wife begs Salieri to help Mozart get commissioned to make a new concert . She seems very desperate . He agrees , only if she comes later by that same evening . That evening she comes , and assuming that Salieri wants sex , she begins to strip . Just as she is undressing , Salieri purposefully calls in his butler , to embarrass a now topless Mrs . Mozart . Salieri 's hate towards Mozart extends so much that he even wants to put his wife through emotional pain . This scene is a fantastic example of Salieri 's internal become external . We see what he really is thinking about . Now , Salieri 's background is explained in the beginning of the second act . As a kid , young Salieri loved music and wanted to become a musician one day . His father didn 't approve . So one day , young Salieri prayed to God , that one day , " please , let me become a great musician " . We then see that Salieri 's father chokes to death and that a career as a musician was now inevitable . Salieri 's background really helps us to understand how much he loves music . He feels that it is a gift ( and a curse ) from God . Really , it is his life . Now moving on to the antagonist of the film , Mozart . He is the complete opposite of Salieri . He is energetic , eccentric , a risk taker , and a rebel in an aristocratic society . He also is truly obsessed with music . In a great scene , we get introduced to who the real Mozart is . He is meeting with the King of Austria , who wants Mozart to put on a concert for him . At first Mozart is clumsy , walking in , trying to act proper . Then after a bad joke , he laugh 's ( his weird laugh ) . The King doesn 't seem to be impressed , same with Salieri , who is also at this meeting . However , Mozart then plays a bit of music on the piano . It was beautiful , absolutely flawless . The king is impressed and wants Mozart to put on his next concert . What this scene shows is that Mozart is somebody who does not fit in the world that he lives in . He stands out . He stands out to Salieri , who hates him because of his uniqueness . However , what stands out the most about Mozart , is his music . And that is what counts . It counts because it is Mozart 's music that really causes the conflict in this film . Salieri can 't stand to listen to it . It just hurts him to hear a true genius perform his music . The lesson that I learned in Amadeus , has to do with the film 's conclusion . After telling the priest his story , Salieri realizes that he in fact is not responsible for killing Mozart . In fact , God is . How can God be evil enough to take such an amazing musician away from us so early ? Why couldn 't Salieri have the same skill as Mozart ? He has the desire which God gave him . Salieri than mocks the priest , and strolls through the hospital , preaching to the other mental patients . First off , this is just a fantastic ending . What I learned in this scene is that self - realization can be a powerful way for a character to fully develop , and that it can help them understand a solution to their conflict . Going through his whole history with Mozart made him realize that he was in fact was not responsible for Mozart 's death . While if it was God 's fault , that just Salieri 's opinion . The ending of this film works well because Salieri loses the guilt that he once had . While he is still probably a bit crazy , he has given himself some peace , knowing that he didn 't kill Mozart . All of these goals have to do with money . The fact is that Jason does not make a lot of money and that he is not a position to get a job that will get him a lot of money . Or at least that is how Jason feels . For Jason , these goals seem unattainable . Overall , Jason is very uncomfortable with himself . He is not happy , he is not content with his life so far . He has become pessimistic , depressed , and angry . His thinking is totally negative . He has developed a terrible attitude about his life . He can 't stand looking at himself in the mirror . But the thing is , he wants to change . He knows that this is not the way to live , but he doesn 't have any desire to change . He feels that if a nice girl came into his life , things might change . She would open his eyes , re - energize him , and change his life for the better . But he doesn 't date . For Jason , while he does have external struggles , it is the internal ones that dominate his life . He is trying to suppress those internal struggles with material things . All of his external goals are based on material things . He wants things that he has never been able to have ( A nice car , wealth ) . He believes that if he does get those external goals , that the internal ones will go away . The thing that he doesn 't understand is that they won 't . 1 . This event would obviously be the death of Jason 's father . At 19 , Jason felt that he lost his father to early . It was a devastating tragedy for him . Not only did Jason lose a parent , but also a mentor , and a person to look up to . This was a huge turning point in his life . This event did not just fill Jason with sadness and grief , but also with confusion . He simply doesn 't know what to do next in his life without his father . He looked up to him in every aspect of his life . Jason still misses him , and it just hurts him to realize that his father will never come back . Unfortunately , Jason isn 't able to realize that it 's time for him to take control of his own life . His father would have wanted that . 2 . This event , while not as significant as the first one , is an event that is a great example of what Jason has had to deal with as a child in a poor household . One winter day , Jason came home from school to realize that his house if freezing . He soon realizes that the power has been shut off in his house . For two days , Jason and his family are left without power . They simply couldn 't afford to pay it . It is simple but powerful events like this in his childhood that have developed Jason 's attitude into being a pessimistic one . 3 . I am not sure exactly what this event will be but it will be in this story , when he finally decides to leave the city and start a new life . Jason is going to a personal struggle with the people around him , the city that he lives in , and with himself . In this story , Jason will finally realize a couple of things . First , that he has the power to control his own life . Second , that his father will never come back . And finally , that the way things are right now will not change , unless he himself changes first . By being put through difficult circumstances , Jason will face and get through these struggles and hopefully start a new life . December 3 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment To start this post of , first I just want to empasis the fact that while these people are important influencing characters , they don 't matter to Jason as much anymore . Jason is lonely . He has also chosen to become lonely ( sub - consciously ) as a way of trying to forget his past . He chooses to have as little contact with these people as he can . She was a great mother to Jason but after her husband got cancer and eventually died , she has not been the same . She is now unemployed , and on welfare . She lives with Jason because she couldn 't afford to live in her own house anymore . She is even becoming an alcoholic to try to cope with her husband 's death . She is trying to suppress all of her feelings of grief and loss inside , which is tearing her apart . She is also a physical reflection of how Jason is beginning to feel about his life emotionally . He is Jason 's best and only childhood friend . They met in elementary school , and went through elementary and high school together . He is the only real friend that Jason really had . Also , Jason is seeing Paul less than he used to . Paul was able to go to college , get a job , and make a decent living . Paul has even has his own house . They still occasionally see each other , but they are slowly becoming more distant . Paul is disappointed with who Jason is becoming . Jason knows this , but doesn 't care . Jason 's father died when Jason was 19 years old . He worked as a cook in a hotel restaurant . He worked as a cook for his whole life , and died from lung cancer when he was in his mid 50 's . His death affected Jason because Jason was very close to his father ( probably more than his mother ) . Jason looked up to his father , because his father had a great attitude was caring , and never complained about life . Jason wanted to be like his father . Jason 's hope to one day own his own restaurant died when his father passed away . Of these people , Jason 's father was the most influential . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment As a kid , I was a big fan of John Hughes ' films . Ferris Bueller 's Day Off , Uncle Buck , and the Home Alone films were all great films that I enjoyed . It was probably two years ago that I watched this film and I immediately loved it . It 's actually my favorite John Hughes film to date . Planes , Trains , and Automobiles is a comedy about a middle aged advertising executive Neal Page ( Steve Martin ) who is trying to get home to his family for Thanksgiving . He is in New York , his family is in Chicago . On this disastrous trip , he encounters his worst nightmare , shower certain ring salesman Del Griffith ( John Candy ) . So , Planes , Trains , and Automobiles follows a three act structure . The protagonist of the film is Neal who is in desperate need to get home . The antagonist of the film is Del . An unusual thing about the structure of this film is that the plot points are at the very beginning and the very end of the film . In the very first scene of the film , we see Neal impatiently trying to get out of work , while his boss can 't make up his mind about what advertisement they should use . The last scene of the film is when Neal finally arrives home . This film is also both a narrative and experience driven film . While the story is a series of events that keep Neal from going to his family , it becomes a very emotional story . It reveals a lot about both Neal and Del , with Del 's story becoming the main focus for the ending . As a character Neal is very angry , honest , and hysterical through out the film . His behavior and actions show this . When he gets left alone at the car parking lot with no car , he yells , and throws his ticket away in anger . His dialogue only shows us the same thing . He is mean to Del , right to his face . In one scene when they share a room in a motel , he criticizes Del for being terrible at telling jokes . He 's literally deteriorating through out most of this film . Everything that can go wrong for Neal , does . The only thing that keeping him from completely losing it is the thought of being at home with his family for Thanksgiving . His background is created with cut away 's of his family at home , waiting for him . This is important not only to show us how his family looks like , but to emphasize his main goal , and to have the audience be able to sympathize with him . While Neal may seem like a bad person for most of this film , we realize that he 's not . He 's just very desperate to get home . As for Del , he is quite the opposite character . He seems like a positive , caring person , with only good intentions . Del might be clumsy , but he is trying to do his best to get to Chicago himself . Everything Del says and does reflects this . He sells shower certain rings when he and Neal are desperate for money . He offers Neal a motel room out of the goodness of his heart . The only thing about Del that we can 't immediately see is his main conflict , his inability to deal with his past . By the end of the film , we realize that Del doesn 't have a home , and that he was married but his wife died . For most of the film , Del has Neal believing that he has a wife . Del hid this information , but we are able to see signs of this with his body language , and even with some of the things that he says like " I haven 't been home for years . " He just laughs it off as a sarcastic joke . Unlike Neal , Del also doesn 't have such a strong main goal . Unconsciously , he just wants to travel with Neal . He 's lonely , he just wants some company for the holidays . A lesson that I learned in this film come from the famous f - word scene . ( This is the scene that gave the film an R rating instead of a family friendly PG one ) . It is the scene when Neal is left in a large parking lot with no car . He manages to walk back from a very long distance , where he then confronts a car rental employee about this problem . This is when he totally loses it and yells about 20 " fucks " in about 30 seconds . What I learned in this scene is that great comedy is not only unexpected , but it must also have a purpose . Up to this part of the film , Neal has been bottling up his anger . He has made little progress on his trip home so it is inevitable , and only natural , that he would finally lose it and behave this way . I totally buy his behavior . The scene itself is funny , but seeing Neal reach his breaking point is why this scene is so memorable . Well now for the conclusion for the film . I can 't get much better , really . Neal finally gets to Chicago with Del . As he rides the subway home , Neal realizes that Del doesn 't have a wife and that he didn 't say where he was going for Thanksgiving . He remembers some of the things that Del said about " Not being home in years . " So he goes back , and sees Del alone in the subway station . What Neal thought was true . So he invites Del to his home , to have Thanksgiving with his family . While this ending might sound cliched , it isn 't ( watch the movie to see why ) . The reason why I feel that it works so well is that while the film can be a bit ridiculous at times , these characters seem like real people . They are so well written that it works . You can 't help but get caught up in how emotional this ending is . Especially at the very end , when Neal gets home , meets his family , and introduces Del , you can 't help but get choked up ( at least I couldn 't ) . This is why having relatable , detailed characters is so important . Characters are what people relate to in a film , so by having them be so strong , you can turn a slapstick comedy into a beautiful film . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment All I know of Jason 's background is that he had a so so childhood . He had parents that loved him but they never had much money . His father is now dead , his mother lives with him and is on welfare . I don 't know too much more than that right now . Where - He lives in a crumby apartment in a mediocre part of the city . He has lived in this part of city for his whole life . He has never gone far outside from his home ( he 's never been on a vacation ) . What - Jason 's main dilemma is one that he has with himself . While this is not a love story , Jason 's conflict has to do with love . He doesn 't truly love himself . He feels that he needs to achieve a certain status in life ( more wealth , a partner , etc . ) in order to fill this void . He is lacking that self love , and he is always unconsciously seeking it . A lot of this has to do with his childhood . He was born into a family that barely had enough money to survive . He doesn 't want that problem . His dream as a child was to own his own restaurant , but that looks like its not going to happen . Why - Jason is now part of organized crime . With everyday that passes by , he is slowly losing his desire to live . He 's not suicidal , but depressed . He is beginning to feel worthless , because there is no need for him to exist . The world won 't be different without him . In this story , Jason will be forced to deal with a moment in his life where he will have to regain his confidence , and challenge himself to accomplish something important ( I don 't know what yet , unfortunately ) . You see , what I want to show with Jason is that only he himself , has the power to fix his problems . The reason why I want to write a story about a character like this is because I feel that at my age , most people have to make a decision of what you want to do with your life . While Jason is an extreme example , I feel that I relate to him because of this . I want to be a filmmaker . I know that it will not be easy and that I will struggle with some hardships , but I will persevere in order to do what I love . For me , taking that step to becoming a filmmaker was scary , but I have accepted it . Taking that next step is the main inner struggle that both me and Jason face . The only difference between me and Jason however is that he hates himself for not achieving his main goal yet .
|
JASON ( 25 ) is sitting , by himself , on the subway . He looks tired . He looks as wore as his old pair of jeans . He leans his head back against the subway window , sitting still , as the subway stops . He gets up and leaves . Jason walks outside towards his car , an silver sedan . The car is standing in the middle of an empty parking lot . He gets in and quickly drives away . Jason drives up to a fast food restaurant . He gets out of his car , and walks towards the restaurant 's doors . He then hears a YELL . Jason turns around and sees a YOUNG MAN being chased by a couple of other young men across the streets . Jason immediately sees a look of panic on the face of the young man . They run and disappear behind an alley way . Jason waits . He hears a couple more SCREAMS so he begins to walk to them . Then he stops . The SCREAMS stop . Now Jason can just hear the other young men YELLING . He waits , hesitates , and turns back to enter the fast food restaurant . Jason is just finishing eating his meal . He gets up to leave . He sees that the young men from across the street are coming into the restaurant , without the person that they were chasing . He opens the door for them , takes a quick look , and leaves . December 5 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment After watching One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest ( and enjoying it immensely ) , I immediately wanted to see Milos Forman 's other best picture winner , Amadeus . I knew very little about the film , but decided to watch it anyway . My first impression was that I absolutely loved it and to my surprise , I felt that this is the better film over Cuckoo 's Nest . So first off , Amadeus is told in a three act structure that heavily relies on the flashbacks of the 0ld Salieri . The film starts off as Salieri tries to cut his throat . We find in in a mental hospital afterwards , where he is visited by a priest . This is the first plot point of the story . The priest wants to talk with Salieri about why he wanted to kill himself . Salieri confesses that he feels that he killed one of the greatest composer of all time , Mozart . The story is then told through flashback , where we see both the lives of Salieri and Mozart . The second plot point is when Mozart dies , which also is the end of the flashbacks . Mozart dies just after he was writing the Requiem with Salieri . Mozart was sick that night ( after heavy drinking ) , but still worked through the whole night to try to finish his last masterpiece , with Salieri . Amadeus is an experience driven film . While it tells a large story that spans over many years , it is told through Salieri 's point of view . Because he is telling this story of his past to this priest , Salieri can 't help but become apart of what he is telling . His emotions and thoughts affect the story that we see . It his his experiences and point of view that we are watching . Salieri is a very intriguing protagonist . The fact is , he is a very unsympathetic character . He truly appears to be an unpleasant man . His main conflict through out his entire life is why can 't he be a great musician like Mozart . He is jealous of him , he loathes him , but man , does he respect him . On the surface , Salieri 's body language and behavior make him appear to be swift , stern , calm , and proper . He 's a true aristocratic , and a passionate musician . His dialogue shows this very well also . He speaks kindly and properly with every single person that he encounters . But on the inside , he is holding back very strong hateful feelings toward Mozart . In one scene , Mozart 's wife begs Salieri to help Mozart get commissioned to make a new concert . She seems very desperate . He agrees , only if she comes later by that same evening . That evening she comes , and assuming that Salieri wants sex , she begins to strip . Just as she is undressing , Salieri purposefully calls in his butler , to embarrass a now topless Mrs . Mozart . Salieri 's hate towards Mozart extends so much that he even wants to put his wife through emotional pain . This scene is a fantastic example of Salieri 's internal become external . We see what he really is thinking about . Now , Salieri 's background is explained in the beginning of the second act . As a kid , young Salieri loved music and wanted to become a musician one day . His father didn 't approve . So one day , young Salieri prayed to God , that one day , " please , let me become a great musician " . We then see that Salieri 's father chokes to death and that a career as a musician was now inevitable . Salieri 's background really helps us to understand how much he loves music . He feels that it is a gift ( and a curse ) from God . Really , it is his life . Now moving on to the antagonist of the film , Mozart . He is the complete opposite of Salieri . He is energetic , eccentric , a risk taker , and a rebel in an aristocratic society . He also is truly obsessed with music . In a great scene , we get introduced to who the real Mozart is . He is meeting with the King of Austria , who wants Mozart to put on a concert for him . At first Mozart is clumsy , walking in , trying to act proper . Then after a bad joke , he laugh 's ( his weird laugh ) . The King doesn 't seem to be impressed , same with Salieri , who is also at this meeting . However , Mozart then plays a bit of music on the piano . It was beautiful , absolutely flawless . The king is impressed and wants Mozart to put on his next concert . What this scene shows is that Mozart is somebody who does not fit in the world that he lives in . He stands out . He stands out to Salieri , who hates him because of his uniqueness . However , what stands out the most about Mozart , is his music . And that is what counts . It counts because it is Mozart 's music that really causes the conflict in this film . Salieri can 't stand to listen to it . It just hurts him to hear a true genius perform his music . The lesson that I learned in Amadeus , has to do with the film 's conclusion . After telling the priest his story , Salieri realizes that he in fact is not responsible for killing Mozart . In fact , God is . How can God be evil enough to take such an amazing musician away from us so early ? Why couldn 't Salieri have the same skill as Mozart ? He has the desire which God gave him . Salieri than mocks the priest , and strolls through the hospital , preaching to the other mental patients . First off , this is just a fantastic ending . What I learned in this scene is that self - realization can be a powerful way for a character to fully develop , and that it can help them understand a solution to their conflict . Going through his whole history with Mozart made him realize that he was in fact was not responsible for Mozart 's death . While if it was God 's fault , that just Salieri 's opinion . The ending of this film works well because Salieri loses the guilt that he once had . While he is still probably a bit crazy , he has given himself some peace , knowing that he didn 't kill Mozart . All of these goals have to do with money . The fact is that Jason does not make a lot of money and that he is not a position to get a job that will get him a lot of money . Or at least that is how Jason feels . For Jason , these goals seem unattainable . Overall , Jason is very uncomfortable with himself . He is not happy , he is not content with his life so far . He has become pessimistic , depressed , and angry . His thinking is totally negative . He has developed a terrible attitude about his life . He can 't stand looking at himself in the mirror . But the thing is , he wants to change . He knows that this is not the way to live , but he doesn 't have any desire to change . He feels that if a nice girl came into his life , things might change . She would open his eyes , re - energize him , and change his life for the better . But he doesn 't date . For Jason , while he does have external struggles , it is the internal ones that dominate his life . He is trying to suppress those internal struggles with material things . All of his external goals are based on material things . He wants things that he has never been able to have ( A nice car , wealth ) . He believes that if he does get those external goals , that the internal ones will go away . The thing that he doesn 't understand is that they won 't . 1 . This event would obviously be the death of Jason 's father . At 19 , Jason felt that he lost his father to early . It was a devastating tragedy for him . Not only did Jason lose a parent , but also a mentor , and a person to look up to . This was a huge turning point in his life . This event did not just fill Jason with sadness and grief , but also with confusion . He simply doesn 't know what to do next in his life without his father . He looked up to him in every aspect of his life . Jason still misses him , and it just hurts him to realize that his father will never come back . Unfortunately , Jason isn 't able to realize that it 's time for him to take control of his own life . His father would have wanted that . 2 . This event , while not as significant as the first one , is an event that is a great example of what Jason has had to deal with as a child in a poor household . One winter day , Jason came home from school to realize that his house if freezing . He soon realizes that the power has been shut off in his house . For two days , Jason and his family are left without power . They simply couldn 't afford to pay it . It is simple but powerful events like this in his childhood that have developed Jason 's attitude into being a pessimistic one . 3 . I am not sure exactly what this event will be but it will be in this story , when he finally decides to leave the city and start a new life . Jason is going to a personal struggle with the people around him , the city that he lives in , and with himself . In this story , Jason will finally realize a couple of things . First , that he has the power to control his own life . Second , that his father will never come back . And finally , that the way things are right now will not change , unless he himself changes first . By being put through difficult circumstances , Jason will face and get through these struggles and hopefully start a new life . December 3 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment To start this post of , first I just want to empasis the fact that while these people are important influencing characters , they don 't matter to Jason as much anymore . Jason is lonely . He has also chosen to become lonely ( sub - consciously ) as a way of trying to forget his past . He chooses to have as little contact with these people as he can . She was a great mother to Jason but after her husband got cancer and eventually died , she has not been the same . She is now unemployed , and on welfare . She lives with Jason because she couldn 't afford to live in her own house anymore . She is even becoming an alcoholic to try to cope with her husband 's death . She is trying to suppress all of her feelings of grief and loss inside , which is tearing her apart . She is also a physical reflection of how Jason is beginning to feel about his life emotionally . He is Jason 's best and only childhood friend . They met in elementary school , and went through elementary and high school together . He is the only real friend that Jason really had . Also , Jason is seeing Paul less than he used to . Paul was able to go to college , get a job , and make a decent living . Paul has even has his own house . They still occasionally see each other , but they are slowly becoming more distant . Paul is disappointed with who Jason is becoming . Jason knows this , but doesn 't care . Jason 's father died when Jason was 19 years old . He worked as a cook in a hotel restaurant . He worked as a cook for his whole life , and died from lung cancer when he was in his mid 50 's . His death affected Jason because Jason was very close to his father ( probably more than his mother ) . Jason looked up to his father , because his father had a great attitude was caring , and never complained about life . Jason wanted to be like his father . Jason 's hope to one day own his own restaurant died when his father passed away . Of these people , Jason 's father was the most influential . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment As a kid , I was a big fan of John Hughes ' films . Ferris Bueller 's Day Off , Uncle Buck , and the Home Alone films were all great films that I enjoyed . It was probably two years ago that I watched this film and I immediately loved it . It 's actually my favorite John Hughes film to date . Planes , Trains , and Automobiles is a comedy about a middle aged advertising executive Neal Page ( Steve Martin ) who is trying to get home to his family for Thanksgiving . He is in New York , his family is in Chicago . On this disastrous trip , he encounters his worst nightmare , shower certain ring salesman Del Griffith ( John Candy ) . So , Planes , Trains , and Automobiles follows a three act structure . The protagonist of the film is Neal who is in desperate need to get home . The antagonist of the film is Del . An unusual thing about the structure of this film is that the plot points are at the very beginning and the very end of the film . In the very first scene of the film , we see Neal impatiently trying to get out of work , while his boss can 't make up his mind about what advertisement they should use . The last scene of the film is when Neal finally arrives home . This film is also both a narrative and experience driven film . While the story is a series of events that keep Neal from going to his family , it becomes a very emotional story . It reveals a lot about both Neal and Del , with Del 's story becoming the main focus for the ending . As a character Neal is very angry , honest , and hysterical through out the film . His behavior and actions show this . When he gets left alone at the car parking lot with no car , he yells , and throws his ticket away in anger . His dialogue only shows us the same thing . He is mean to Del , right to his face . In one scene when they share a room in a motel , he criticizes Del for being terrible at telling jokes . He 's literally deteriorating through out most of this film . Everything that can go wrong for Neal , does . The only thing that keeping him from completely losing it is the thought of being at home with his family for Thanksgiving . His background is created with cut away 's of his family at home , waiting for him . This is important not only to show us how his family looks like , but to emphasize his main goal , and to have the audience be able to sympathize with him . While Neal may seem like a bad person for most of this film , we realize that he 's not . He 's just very desperate to get home . As for Del , he is quite the opposite character . He seems like a positive , caring person , with only good intentions . Del might be clumsy , but he is trying to do his best to get to Chicago himself . Everything Del says and does reflects this . He sells shower certain rings when he and Neal are desperate for money . He offers Neal a motel room out of the goodness of his heart . The only thing about Del that we can 't immediately see is his main conflict , his inability to deal with his past . By the end of the film , we realize that Del doesn 't have a home , and that he was married but his wife died . For most of the film , Del has Neal believing that he has a wife . Del hid this information , but we are able to see signs of this with his body language , and even with some of the things that he says like " I haven 't been home for years . " He just laughs it off as a sarcastic joke . Unlike Neal , Del also doesn 't have such a strong main goal . Unconsciously , he just wants to travel with Neal . He 's lonely , he just wants some company for the holidays . A lesson that I learned in this film come from the famous f - word scene . ( This is the scene that gave the film an R rating instead of a family friendly PG one ) . It is the scene when Neal is left in a large parking lot with no car . He manages to walk back from a very long distance , where he then confronts a car rental employee about this problem . This is when he totally loses it and yells about 20 " fucks " in about 30 seconds . What I learned in this scene is that great comedy is not only unexpected , but it must also have a purpose . Up to this part of the film , Neal has been bottling up his anger . He has made little progress on his trip home so it is inevitable , and only natural , that he would finally lose it and behave this way . I totally buy his behavior . The scene itself is funny , but seeing Neal reach his breaking point is why this scene is so memorable . Well now for the conclusion for the film . I can 't get much better , really . Neal finally gets to Chicago with Del . As he rides the subway home , Neal realizes that Del doesn 't have a wife and that he didn 't say where he was going for Thanksgiving . He remembers some of the things that Del said about " Not being home in years . " So he goes back , and sees Del alone in the subway station . What Neal thought was true . So he invites Del to his home , to have Thanksgiving with his family . While this ending might sound cliched , it isn 't ( watch the movie to see why ) . The reason why I feel that it works so well is that while the film can be a bit ridiculous at times , these characters seem like real people . They are so well written that it works . You can 't help but get caught up in how emotional this ending is . Especially at the very end , when Neal gets home , meets his family , and introduces Del , you can 't help but get choked up ( at least I couldn 't ) . This is why having relatable , detailed characters is so important . Characters are what people relate to in a film , so by having them be so strong , you can turn a slapstick comedy into a beautiful film . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment All I know of Jason 's background is that he had a so so childhood . He had parents that loved him but they never had much money . His father is now dead , his mother lives with him and is on welfare . I don 't know too much more than that right now . Where - He lives in a crumby apartment in a mediocre part of the city . He has lived in this part of city for his whole life . He has never gone far outside from his home ( he 's never been on a vacation ) . What - Jason 's main dilemma is one that he has with himself . While this is not a love story , Jason 's conflict has to do with love . He doesn 't truly love himself . He feels that he needs to achieve a certain status in life ( more wealth , a partner , etc . ) in order to fill this void . He is lacking that self love , and he is always unconsciously seeking it . A lot of this has to do with his childhood . He was born into a family that barely had enough money to survive . He doesn 't want that problem . His dream as a child was to own his own restaurant , but that looks like its not going to happen . Why - Jason is now part of organized crime . With everyday that passes by , he is slowly losing his desire to live . He 's not suicidal , but depressed . He is beginning to feel worthless , because there is no need for him to exist . The world won 't be different without him . In this story , Jason will be forced to deal with a moment in his life where he will have to regain his confidence , and challenge himself to accomplish something important ( I don 't know what yet , unfortunately ) . You see , what I want to show with Jason is that only he himself , has the power to fix his problems . The reason why I want to write a story about a character like this is because I feel that at my age , most people have to make a decision of what you want to do with your life . While Jason is an extreme example , I feel that I relate to him because of this . I want to be a filmmaker . I know that it will not be easy and that I will struggle with some hardships , but I will persevere in order to do what I love . For me , taking that step to becoming a filmmaker was scary , but I have accepted it . Taking that next step is the main inner struggle that both me and Jason face . The only difference between me and Jason however is that he hates himself for not achieving his main goal yet .
|
JASON ( 25 ) is sitting , by himself , on the subway . He looks tired . He looks as wore as his old pair of jeans . He leans his head back against the subway window , sitting still , as the subway stops . He gets up and leaves . Jason walks outside towards his car , an silver sedan . The car is standing in the middle of an empty parking lot . He gets in and quickly drives away . Jason drives up to a fast food restaurant . He gets out of his car , and walks towards the restaurant 's doors . He then hears a YELL . Jason turns around and sees a YOUNG MAN being chased by a couple of other young men across the streets . Jason immediately sees a look of panic on the face of the young man . They run and disappear behind an alley way . Jason waits . He hears a couple more SCREAMS so he begins to walk to them . Then he stops . The SCREAMS stop . Now Jason can just hear the other young men YELLING . He waits , hesitates , and turns back to enter the fast food restaurant . Jason is just finishing eating his meal . He gets up to leave . He sees that the young men from across the street are coming into the restaurant , without the person that they were chasing . He opens the door for them , takes a quick look , and leaves . December 5 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment After watching One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest ( and enjoying it immensely ) , I immediately wanted to see Milos Forman 's other best picture winner , Amadeus . I knew very little about the film , but decided to watch it anyway . My first impression was that I absolutely loved it and to my surprise , I felt that this is the better film over Cuckoo 's Nest . So first off , Amadeus is told in a three act structure that heavily relies on the flashbacks of the 0ld Salieri . The film starts off as Salieri tries to cut his throat . We find in in a mental hospital afterwards , where he is visited by a priest . This is the first plot point of the story . The priest wants to talk with Salieri about why he wanted to kill himself . Salieri confesses that he feels that he killed one of the greatest composer of all time , Mozart . The story is then told through flashback , where we see both the lives of Salieri and Mozart . The second plot point is when Mozart dies , which also is the end of the flashbacks . Mozart dies just after he was writing the Requiem with Salieri . Mozart was sick that night ( after heavy drinking ) , but still worked through the whole night to try to finish his last masterpiece , with Salieri . Amadeus is an experience driven film . While it tells a large story that spans over many years , it is told through Salieri 's point of view . Because he is telling this story of his past to this priest , Salieri can 't help but become apart of what he is telling . His emotions and thoughts affect the story that we see . It his his experiences and point of view that we are watching . Salieri is a very intriguing protagonist . The fact is , he is a very unsympathetic character . He truly appears to be an unpleasant man . His main conflict through out his entire life is why can 't he be a great musician like Mozart . He is jealous of him , he loathes him , but man , does he respect him . On the surface , Salieri 's body language and behavior make him appear to be swift , stern , calm , and proper . He 's a true aristocratic , and a passionate musician . His dialogue shows this very well also . He speaks kindly and properly with every single person that he encounters . But on the inside , he is holding back very strong hateful feelings toward Mozart . In one scene , Mozart 's wife begs Salieri to help Mozart get commissioned to make a new concert . She seems very desperate . He agrees , only if she comes later by that same evening . That evening she comes , and assuming that Salieri wants sex , she begins to strip . Just as she is undressing , Salieri purposefully calls in his butler , to embarrass a now topless Mrs . Mozart . Salieri 's hate towards Mozart extends so much that he even wants to put his wife through emotional pain . This scene is a fantastic example of Salieri 's internal become external . We see what he really is thinking about . Now , Salieri 's background is explained in the beginning of the second act . As a kid , young Salieri loved music and wanted to become a musician one day . His father didn 't approve . So one day , young Salieri prayed to God , that one day , " please , let me become a great musician " . We then see that Salieri 's father chokes to death and that a career as a musician was now inevitable . Salieri 's background really helps us to understand how much he loves music . He feels that it is a gift ( and a curse ) from God . Really , it is his life . Now moving on to the antagonist of the film , Mozart . He is the complete opposite of Salieri . He is energetic , eccentric , a risk taker , and a rebel in an aristocratic society . He also is truly obsessed with music . In a great scene , we get introduced to who the real Mozart is . He is meeting with the King of Austria , who wants Mozart to put on a concert for him . At first Mozart is clumsy , walking in , trying to act proper . Then after a bad joke , he laugh 's ( his weird laugh ) . The King doesn 't seem to be impressed , same with Salieri , who is also at this meeting . However , Mozart then plays a bit of music on the piano . It was beautiful , absolutely flawless . The king is impressed and wants Mozart to put on his next concert . What this scene shows is that Mozart is somebody who does not fit in the world that he lives in . He stands out . He stands out to Salieri , who hates him because of his uniqueness . However , what stands out the most about Mozart , is his music . And that is what counts . It counts because it is Mozart 's music that really causes the conflict in this film . Salieri can 't stand to listen to it . It just hurts him to hear a true genius perform his music . The lesson that I learned in Amadeus , has to do with the film 's conclusion . After telling the priest his story , Salieri realizes that he in fact is not responsible for killing Mozart . In fact , God is . How can God be evil enough to take such an amazing musician away from us so early ? Why couldn 't Salieri have the same skill as Mozart ? He has the desire which God gave him . Salieri than mocks the priest , and strolls through the hospital , preaching to the other mental patients . First off , this is just a fantastic ending . What I learned in this scene is that self - realization can be a powerful way for a character to fully develop , and that it can help them understand a solution to their conflict . Going through his whole history with Mozart made him realize that he was in fact was not responsible for Mozart 's death . While if it was God 's fault , that just Salieri 's opinion . The ending of this film works well because Salieri loses the guilt that he once had . While he is still probably a bit crazy , he has given himself some peace , knowing that he didn 't kill Mozart . All of these goals have to do with money . The fact is that Jason does not make a lot of money and that he is not a position to get a job that will get him a lot of money . Or at least that is how Jason feels . For Jason , these goals seem unattainable . Overall , Jason is very uncomfortable with himself . He is not happy , he is not content with his life so far . He has become pessimistic , depressed , and angry . His thinking is totally negative . He has developed a terrible attitude about his life . He can 't stand looking at himself in the mirror . But the thing is , he wants to change . He knows that this is not the way to live , but he doesn 't have any desire to change . He feels that if a nice girl came into his life , things might change . She would open his eyes , re - energize him , and change his life for the better . But he doesn 't date . For Jason , while he does have external struggles , it is the internal ones that dominate his life . He is trying to suppress those internal struggles with material things . All of his external goals are based on material things . He wants things that he has never been able to have ( A nice car , wealth ) . He believes that if he does get those external goals , that the internal ones will go away . The thing that he doesn 't understand is that they won 't . 1 . This event would obviously be the death of Jason 's father . At 19 , Jason felt that he lost his father to early . It was a devastating tragedy for him . Not only did Jason lose a parent , but also a mentor , and a person to look up to . This was a huge turning point in his life . This event did not just fill Jason with sadness and grief , but also with confusion . He simply doesn 't know what to do next in his life without his father . He looked up to him in every aspect of his life . Jason still misses him , and it just hurts him to realize that his father will never come back . Unfortunately , Jason isn 't able to realize that it 's time for him to take control of his own life . His father would have wanted that . 2 . This event , while not as significant as the first one , is an event that is a great example of what Jason has had to deal with as a child in a poor household . One winter day , Jason came home from school to realize that his house if freezing . He soon realizes that the power has been shut off in his house . For two days , Jason and his family are left without power . They simply couldn 't afford to pay it . It is simple but powerful events like this in his childhood that have developed Jason 's attitude into being a pessimistic one . 3 . I am not sure exactly what this event will be but it will be in this story , when he finally decides to leave the city and start a new life . Jason is going to a personal struggle with the people around him , the city that he lives in , and with himself . In this story , Jason will finally realize a couple of things . First , that he has the power to control his own life . Second , that his father will never come back . And finally , that the way things are right now will not change , unless he himself changes first . By being put through difficult circumstances , Jason will face and get through these struggles and hopefully start a new life . December 3 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment To start this post of , first I just want to empasis the fact that while these people are important influencing characters , they don 't matter to Jason as much anymore . Jason is lonely . He has also chosen to become lonely ( sub - consciously ) as a way of trying to forget his past . He chooses to have as little contact with these people as he can . She was a great mother to Jason but after her husband got cancer and eventually died , she has not been the same . She is now unemployed , and on welfare . She lives with Jason because she couldn 't afford to live in her own house anymore . She is even becoming an alcoholic to try to cope with her husband 's death . She is trying to suppress all of her feelings of grief and loss inside , which is tearing her apart . She is also a physical reflection of how Jason is beginning to feel about his life emotionally . He is Jason 's best and only childhood friend . They met in elementary school , and went through elementary and high school together . He is the only real friend that Jason really had . Also , Jason is seeing Paul less than he used to . Paul was able to go to college , get a job , and make a decent living . Paul has even has his own house . They still occasionally see each other , but they are slowly becoming more distant . Paul is disappointed with who Jason is becoming . Jason knows this , but doesn 't care . Jason 's father died when Jason was 19 years old . He worked as a cook in a hotel restaurant . He worked as a cook for his whole life , and died from lung cancer when he was in his mid 50 's . His death affected Jason because Jason was very close to his father ( probably more than his mother ) . Jason looked up to his father , because his father had a great attitude was caring , and never complained about life . Jason wanted to be like his father . Jason 's hope to one day own his own restaurant died when his father passed away . Of these people , Jason 's father was the most influential . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment As a kid , I was a big fan of John Hughes ' films . Ferris Bueller 's Day Off , Uncle Buck , and the Home Alone films were all great films that I enjoyed . It was probably two years ago that I watched this film and I immediately loved it . It 's actually my favorite John Hughes film to date . Planes , Trains , and Automobiles is a comedy about a middle aged advertising executive Neal Page ( Steve Martin ) who is trying to get home to his family for Thanksgiving . He is in New York , his family is in Chicago . On this disastrous trip , he encounters his worst nightmare , shower certain ring salesman Del Griffith ( John Candy ) . So , Planes , Trains , and Automobiles follows a three act structure . The protagonist of the film is Neal who is in desperate need to get home . The antagonist of the film is Del . An unusual thing about the structure of this film is that the plot points are at the very beginning and the very end of the film . In the very first scene of the film , we see Neal impatiently trying to get out of work , while his boss can 't make up his mind about what advertisement they should use . The last scene of the film is when Neal finally arrives home . This film is also both a narrative and experience driven film . While the story is a series of events that keep Neal from going to his family , it becomes a very emotional story . It reveals a lot about both Neal and Del , with Del 's story becoming the main focus for the ending . As a character Neal is very angry , honest , and hysterical through out the film . His behavior and actions show this . When he gets left alone at the car parking lot with no car , he yells , and throws his ticket away in anger . His dialogue only shows us the same thing . He is mean to Del , right to his face . In one scene when they share a room in a motel , he criticizes Del for being terrible at telling jokes . He 's literally deteriorating through out most of this film . Everything that can go wrong for Neal , does . The only thing that keeping him from completely losing it is the thought of being at home with his family for Thanksgiving . His background is created with cut away 's of his family at home , waiting for him . This is important not only to show us how his family looks like , but to emphasize his main goal , and to have the audience be able to sympathize with him . While Neal may seem like a bad person for most of this film , we realize that he 's not . He 's just very desperate to get home . As for Del , he is quite the opposite character . He seems like a positive , caring person , with only good intentions . Del might be clumsy , but he is trying to do his best to get to Chicago himself . Everything Del says and does reflects this . He sells shower certain rings when he and Neal are desperate for money . He offers Neal a motel room out of the goodness of his heart . The only thing about Del that we can 't immediately see is his main conflict , his inability to deal with his past . By the end of the film , we realize that Del doesn 't have a home , and that he was married but his wife died . For most of the film , Del has Neal believing that he has a wife . Del hid this information , but we are able to see signs of this with his body language , and even with some of the things that he says like " I haven 't been home for years . " He just laughs it off as a sarcastic joke . Unlike Neal , Del also doesn 't have such a strong main goal . Unconsciously , he just wants to travel with Neal . He 's lonely , he just wants some company for the holidays . A lesson that I learned in this film come from the famous f - word scene . ( This is the scene that gave the film an R rating instead of a family friendly PG one ) . It is the scene when Neal is left in a large parking lot with no car . He manages to walk back from a very long distance , where he then confronts a car rental employee about this problem . This is when he totally loses it and yells about 20 " fucks " in about 30 seconds . What I learned in this scene is that great comedy is not only unexpected , but it must also have a purpose . Up to this part of the film , Neal has been bottling up his anger . He has made little progress on his trip home so it is inevitable , and only natural , that he would finally lose it and behave this way . I totally buy his behavior . The scene itself is funny , but seeing Neal reach his breaking point is why this scene is so memorable . Well now for the conclusion for the film . I can 't get much better , really . Neal finally gets to Chicago with Del . As he rides the subway home , Neal realizes that Del doesn 't have a wife and that he didn 't say where he was going for Thanksgiving . He remembers some of the things that Del said about " Not being home in years . " So he goes back , and sees Del alone in the subway station . What Neal thought was true . So he invites Del to his home , to have Thanksgiving with his family . While this ending might sound cliched , it isn 't ( watch the movie to see why ) . The reason why I feel that it works so well is that while the film can be a bit ridiculous at times , these characters seem like real people . They are so well written that it works . You can 't help but get caught up in how emotional this ending is . Especially at the very end , when Neal gets home , meets his family , and introduces Del , you can 't help but get choked up ( at least I couldn 't ) . This is why having relatable , detailed characters is so important . Characters are what people relate to in a film , so by having them be so strong , you can turn a slapstick comedy into a beautiful film . November 28 , 2011 kjambor Script Development Film Reviews Leave a comment All I know of Jason 's background is that he had a so so childhood . He had parents that loved him but they never had much money . His father is now dead , his mother lives with him and is on welfare . I don 't know too much more than that right now . Where - He lives in a crumby apartment in a mediocre part of the city . He has lived in this part of city for his whole life . He has never gone far outside from his home ( he 's never been on a vacation ) . What - Jason 's main dilemma is one that he has with himself . While this is not a love story , Jason 's conflict has to do with love . He doesn 't truly love himself . He feels that he needs to achieve a certain status in life ( more wealth , a partner , etc . ) in order to fill this void . He is lacking that self love , and he is always unconsciously seeking it . A lot of this has to do with his childhood . He was born into a family that barely had enough money to survive . He doesn 't want that problem . His dream as a child was to own his own restaurant , but that looks like its not going to happen . Why - Jason is now part of organized crime . With everyday that passes by , he is slowly losing his desire to live . He 's not suicidal , but depressed . He is beginning to feel worthless , because there is no need for him to exist . The world won 't be different without him . In this story , Jason will be forced to deal with a moment in his life where he will have to regain his confidence , and challenge himself to accomplish something important ( I don 't know what yet , unfortunately ) . You see , what I want to show with Jason is that only he himself , has the power to fix his problems . The reason why I want to write a story about a character like this is because I feel that at my age , most people have to make a decision of what you want to do with your life . While Jason is an extreme example , I feel that I relate to him because of this . I want to be a filmmaker . I know that it will not be easy and that I will struggle with some hardships , but I will persevere in order to do what I love . For me , taking that step to becoming a filmmaker was scary , but I have accepted it . Taking that next step is the main inner struggle that both me and Jason face . The only difference between me and Jason however is that he hates himself for not achieving his main goal yet .
|
Always held early in December , and always looked forward to by the locals ( and a bunch of not so local riders ) . The Punk Bike Enduro race / ride is held by the Dirt Rag gang . If you 've never ready Dirt Rag , well , I don 't know what 's wrong with you . The Punks all gather at a local fire hall , where we 'll be led out to the local trails . Posts say we leave promptly at 11 : 00 , but because I 'm now a veteran of the Punk Enduro , I only show up at the parking lot at 11 : 00 . Actually cut it a little close this year . Some guys that park near me tell me they were on their way to some local trails and saw all the mountain bikes and had to see what was going on . I tell them just how lucky they got . We all start gathering . This is always fun for me , I ride around trying to find some of my riding buddies and get to see all the outfits and costumes that people have put together for the day . You see , the Punk Enduro is more an experience rather than a race . Yeah , the guys in the front race for points , but most of us go out for the ride , the people , the experience . At 11 : 30 Maurice starts us off , and by some accounts there 's over 200 riders ! We head up the road to gather for the first leg . What 's really cool is that most of our uphill riding is on the road , everything else in the woods . This is especially good this year as the temperature will be in the 40s with some sun , and of course this means mud . But the trail for the first leg is still mostly frozen . This leg leads into the first muddy downhill . Imagine being on top of a steep downhill with over a hundred people waiting at the bottom for you . They 're all cheering you on , ringing cow bells . You know when someone wrecks by the loud , " ohhhhhhhhhhs . " Imagine being on top of this hill with pictures of ABC 's Wide World of Sports images going through your head . Ah , the agony of defeat . Which is why I promptly take the go around . Yeah , I 'm a coward but I want to be able to ride the whole day . We then head along the creeks , and yes , through the creeks . This year I was sporting my Lake winter biPosted by Granny Gear announces this year 's 24 hour races . Well , I found my motivation for this winter 's training rides . I really love the 24 hours of Big Bear . The race course is awesome ; it has a little bit of everything . Big downhills , rock gardens , winding singletrack through pine forests . A big downside is the cost versus what you get in return . My perspective , if you don 't have a good race , you just paid for a really , really expensive t - shirt . If I go this year , I really want to get on a team of guys I know . Unfortunately , most of the guys I know from this area are really fast riders . I really would hate to be the slow guy on the team . I know someone has to be , I just don 't want to be that guy . The last two years , I joined groups from other states . One team was awesome , the other year was a bit of a disappointment . So , if I could motivate some of my buddies who are average riders , but want to go for the experience of it all , that would be my first choice . " The glaring sun was about to expose me for the fraud I was . I wasn 't an athlete like the down - bundled Euros , and I wasn 't a real Alaskan like the owners of those snowmobiles . The men at the Knik Bar and said it all between a couple swigs of beer . A girl like me didn 't belong in a race like this . " I really enjoy reading blogs , but to be honest they all blend together after a while . Then one day I stumbled about Jill Homer 's blog . She lives in Alaska and writes about her mountain biking adventures . What struck me is that she was mountain biking in the Alaskan winters . I didn 't think it would even be possible . Then I was amazed when I read on her blog about mountain bikers riding a portion of the Iditarod Trail in February . I remember following the race reports last year of the Iditarod Trail Invitational . I also remember reading about Jill on a record - breaking pace . Then there were reports of Jill being late coming in to one of the check points . Then reports of her bivying out in the open in below zero weather . I was transfixed , it was reading like a fiction book , but it was real . Finally , Jill made it to the checkpoint ; I was relieved - and I didn 't even know her . I always wondered what happened during those hours when Jill was stuck out on the Iditarod trail with her bike . Then I read on her blog that Jill was publishing her book about the experience and was looking for people to review it . I jumped on the opportunity ; I wanted to see what really happened . When I began reading Jill 's book , I was pleasantly surprised to see that I really got two books in one . The chapters alternated between her Iditarod experiences and her entry to outdoor adventures . I then reread the book 's title : Ghost Trails - Journeys through a lifetime . And I realized the real focus of the book was on her life 's journeys . Her Iditarod journey really started back in 1990 where Jill tells us of how she got involved in the outdoors , hiking with her friend Becky . But Jill just doesn 't describe the hike , she does what she Posted by So what do you do when fall race season is over ? When you 've hardly ridden in two weeks ? When the temperature plummets and the snow falls ? You enter a cyclocross race , that 's what you do . If all goes as planned , I 've decided to race this local cyclocross race in Murraysville . I 'm admittedly not a cyclocross racer , but the couple I 've tried I really liked . Now , I don 't know how much I enjoyed them at the time . Near unconsciousness and vomitting perhaps were the reasons . But for days afterward I would tell anyone who listened , and several that didn 't want to , the play by play of the race . I will be easy to spot at the race . I don 't have a cyclocross bike ( mtb might actually be a good choice anyway with this weather ) , I don 't wear one of those bright colored race kits with all my sponsors ' names on them ( ok , no one sponsors me ) , and I don 't have shaved legs . But I 'll be trying to burn off some Thanksgiving calories all the same . Hope to see you out there . Shakespeare 's words came to me as I sit here on this dreary , rainy day . I vainly grasp the hope that fall will last longer , that there will be a few more days I can steal away from the onset of winter . Alas , I know it 's a fruitless endeavor . But then reading some other blogs and forums , I saw the thing that will get me through the rides in the single digits , the icy slush finding that one bit of bare skin I inadvertently left exposed , the cruel winter 's wind that tries to toss me into oncoming traffic . I saw the proposed WVMBA 's 2009 race schedule . First , the color really does not match my dos niner , but then again I admire function over form . I was hoping to review the Fox fork and how it differed from my Reba , but a mechanical changed this a bit . On our weekly Wednesday night ride , I ran over some punji stick that punctured my rear tire but good . Why when people snip small saplings do they leave a perfectly shaped spear - like remnant ? Anyway , my rear tire was punctured by this evil object , leaving a gaping hole . Besides the sloppy work of putting a tube in to a tubeless tire , I was now in need of new tires . I really didn 't want to buy new tires when my new fork was installed , as I wanted to test the fork with as few variables changed as possible . So anyway , forced to buy new tires . Ended up with Kenda Nevegals , they went on easily with the Stans sealant . Mark the master mechanic put on my fork , and I was ready for a test ride . Went for a ride at North Park . I probably rode about 20 miles in 2 . 5 hours , on all of the trials that I 've ridden for years . I wanted to see how the bike reacted to familiar trails . So instead of reviewing the fork , I ended up reviewing the fork and the new tires . First impression : awesome . The tires gripped great , even with ( dry ) leaves covering the trails . Cornering was really good , I was able to stay off the brakes more than ever . I think not only did the tires help in the cornering , but I felt as if I had very little to no brake diving from the fork . The fork will still need to be tweaked a bit until I 'm completely satisfied ( rebound seems fast and not exactly sure about the compression ) , but overall the fork is set up pretty nice . The improvement in lateral stiffness was obvious as I rode over the rocky sections . Unlike the Reba , I came out of the rocks pointed in the direction I intended . The extra travel was very noticeable ( I went from 80 mm Reba to the 100 mm Fox ) and seemed much more plush . But as always , I often wonder , is it the new fork or the mental game that I play with myself . The confidence that I gain with new equipment Posted by I 'm not usually in to watching videos of guys doing big jumps . They all look the same after a while , but for the last couple of years I 've been addicted to watching the Red Bull Rampage . More so , I really like the behind the scenes kind of stuff . This video shows one of the riders prepping a big gap . Pretty impressive . Then while you 're at superhumanmag . com make sure to watch the Red Bull Challenge finals , you won 't be disappointed . Santa Claus , better known as the UPS man , knocked on my door tonight , and what did I find ? Yep , a new Fox Fork F29 for the dos niner . Can 't wait to get this thing on and put it through its paces . I 'm going from 80mm Reba to the 100mm Fox . From all I hear , I should really like the extra travel and the stiffness of the Fox . I 'll give you my review in a couple of weeks . So how does Lance train for his comeback for the Tour de France ? He races his mountainbike of course . If you haven 't seen this video of the Leadville 100 , well , you should . . . Leadville 100That video makes me want to get out and try a 100 mile race . Then I realized my lack of genetic ability , my extra weight , and my lack of any real training may hold me back a bit . Then I came across this video of Lance doing a recent 12 hour relay race . . . 12 Hours of SnowmassI like the part where the one racer says he thought he could gap Lance a bit in the technical sections , but he wasn 't able to . If you 're like me , I figured that , sure Lance had the legs of a roadie , but could he really hang with the top guys in the dirt during the technical sections ? Well , I guess he can . The skies they were ashen and sober ; The leaves they were crisped and sere - - The leaves they were withering and sere ; It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year : - Edgar A . PoeDid you ever have one of those days where you felt as if your legs had endless energy ? Where those killer hills seemed somehow smaller ? Where you normally stop your ride , but this time felt like doing it all again ? That 's what a great fall ride can do for me . When it gets brisk out , when the humidity falls away , when the sun hits the leaves just right I feel like I can ride all day . Took a great ride yesterday that reminded me of how much I love the fall . I started my normal loop and before I knew it I was atop the first major hill . I usually have to rest there , but this time there was no need . I turned on to the next section of trail and was just amazed by the colors of the leaves that the sun was bringing out , but this may have been the last good weekend for the leaves . The deer are in their rut , and I saw several large buck charging through the woods at the sight of me . I almost ran over a garter snake sunning itself on a rock in the middle of the trail . The sound of dead leaves crunching beneath my tires . For all of these reasons and more , I love riding in the fall . But alas , the fall reminds me that winter is not far behind . . . 11th place Masters - 9th overall in the seriesLast race of the season , and I should 've just stayed home . The Wednesday prior I started coming down with some virus that 's going around . By Saturday , I was starting to feel a little bit better . Sunday , I thought I might be okay . That is until I hit the first hill of the race . We all took off from Davis Hollow Marina at Moraine . The course was slightly different last year , in that we took the first climb all the way to the top and over . My plan was to start of at a steady pace , not a fast one like the year before . I figured I 'd pass a bunch of guys who blew their legs out , or that had mechanicals from all the rocks . Well , after climbing the first hill , I could tell I had no gas in the tank . The virus was just too much . I thought about dropping out about half way through , but kept going at a snail 's pace . I was walking my bike up hills that I had easily ridden in the past . Got to the end of lap one and thought again about calling it quits . Saw Dave atop a rock , and in my delirium thought maybe he had lapped me and was already done . He said his derailluer was bad and had to pull out . This made me want to quit even more . I could crawl up on the rock , with the sun filtering its way through the autumn leaves , and just watch the rest of the race with the cool rock soothing me . Then some stupid voice said that it was the last race , and I had to complete it , even if I was dead last . Emphasis on the word dead . I continued on with the second lap , but readjusted my goals . It was a beautiful day , so I was just going to enjoy it and not worry about my time ( as if I had a choice ) . Did okay on the second lap , the gels gave me a bit of a boost . Finished , got to parking lot , loaded up and left . Barely stayed awake enough to get home . Crashed on the hammock , and took a great nap . Overall , I rode really consistent this year . I think I needed to do more interval training in the month prior the races . Disappointed it was only a four race series this year . But as always , the guys that run MoM didPosted by Time 47 : 46 - 14 th MastersDeja vu , well sort of . . . Month of Mud race , but instead of the normal cross country race this is a cyclocross race . I 've learned to really like these races , and I 'm considering getting a cross bike . Anyway . . . Off we go . The course is like last year , we start on pavement , up a hill to the obstacles , down into some " singletrack " on the ball fields and finally back to the pavement to finish . Four laps , if you don 't get lapped . Well , like last year I had someone purposefully cut me off when it wasn 't necessary . Now , I don 't mind being cut off if need be . Back to the race . There was one point where there are trees on the left , and a metal pole on the right and only room for one bike . This guy in blue starts making a move on me right at this spot . I yell that there 's not room , but he doesn 't care . I easily could 've but him off , but he would 've been wrapped around the metal pole . So instead I get cut off and have to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting a tree . My only goal now , to finish ahead of him . I catch him on the road section and blow by him , round the hairpin turn and finish lap one . Second lap he passes me on the field section again , and once again I pass him on the road section . Third lap he passes me on the field again . We get to the road , but this time he gets grabs on to a pack of about five riders . I can 't catch him . That 's when I had this weird experience . I start slowing down to save some energy , when this guy on a green bike flies by me . But then he looks over his shoulder and slows a bit . Does he want me to get on his wheel ? Not sure , but I try anyway . He speeds up a bit and looks back again , I 'm still hanging on . He speeds up more , I 'm there , speeds up more , I can 't go any faster and he matches my pace . Quickly , we catch the group in front of us and the guy on the green bike peels off into the bigger group and I sling shot past them . We get to the hairpin turn and my mountain bike tires grip great and I take my lead up the slight hill to the finish line . Well it 's not really the Posted by Rattling Creek Single Trackers hold the annual Bash north of Harrisburg in the Weiser State Park . This year four of us made the trip from Pittsburgh to the Bash . Mark who used to live in the area told us this was a must - do kind of weekend . I 'd have to say after surviving the weekend , that he was right on . Arrived Friday afternoon , just in time for the rain . Set up tents and canopys with Mark 's friends from the area ( our future trail guides ) . Not much to do but sit around talk about the next day 's riding . One of the locals suggested that Saturday morning we might want to shuttle to the top of the ridge , while they rode their bikes up . Macho can cause so much trouble . We assured him we would be okay pedalling up , even though he warned us that in Pittsburgh we have hills , and they have mountains . Oh , how we should have listened . It rained most of Friday night , but that didn 't affect the Chili cook off . Dave , from our group , brought up some great chili to compete with ( oops , forgot to vote for his ) . After gourging on chili and mingling with the other riders ( maybe 60 - 80 people ) we tried to get some sleep . Like at the 24 hour races , it 's not an easy thing to achieve . Woke up early Saturday morning , got some breakfast , and readied our bikes and gear . We were lucky to only have a group of seven so that we wouldn 't be held up much . Of course later that day I cursed my self for not joining in with a group of 20 . We pedaled up the hill , errrrr , mountain . About 2 . 2 miles up some double track to get to the ridgeline trails . Halfway up I realized the sound advice of shuttling to the top . I was able to pedal to the top , but my legs were shaking from lactic acid overdose . Luckily the locals let us rest a whole two minutes before taking off to the rocky trail ( forget the real name of it ) . Very cool rocks to ride , had they not been slick from the rain . Finished that section of trail , and really considered going back to the campsite and calling it a day . Luckily , one of the leaders had deraiuller trouble which allowed us visitors Posted by If you look real close , you can see Tinker in the picture above . " It was the best of times , it was the worst of times ; it ws the age of wisdom , it was the age of foolishness ; it was the epoch of belief , it was the epoch of incredulity ; it was the season of Light , it was the season of Darkness ; it was the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair ; we had everything before us , we had nothing before us ; we were all going directly to Heaven , we were all going the other way . " - Charles DickensOr another way to sum it up - I paid a whole lot of money for a t - shirt . My team from the previous year had disbanded . I found a team online that were looking for a fourth member in the the just for fun category . Two of the guys were my age , one was about eight or ten years our junior . This seemed like a perfect team , riding just for fun so no pressure , and on a four man team so we could get some extra laps in . Then it was the worst of times . . . Torrential downpour hit the course the day before the race , and hot temperatures ( 90 's ) and high humidity moved in . Course had lots of big mud patches that had no way to ride around them . Our young guy took the first lap , and I knew we were in trouble while waiting at the transition tent when I saw Tinker Juarez go across the finish line twice before our teammate made it in . The next two guys went and put in respectable times at about 1 : 50 . I did my lap , pushed it hard but not too hard . With the high heat , humidity , and several more laps awaiting me , I didn 't push it as much as I could have . I also finished at 1 : 50 . Ten minutes slower than last year , but last year there was no mud and the course was fast . Consequently , I was happy with this time . Recovering for the next lap , I didn 't feel dehydrated nor that exhausted . It wasn 't my turn again until like 3 : 30 or 4 : 00 in the morning . Our young guy had even a worse lap time and he was feeling nauseous and dehydrated . My night lap was pretty cool , except for the endo . Bad move , trying to put a gel packet back in my pocket rather than throwing itPosted by The Perfect StormorA Dummies Guide to a DNFThe White Oak race was the culmination of every little thing that could go wrong . Any one of the events , when taken separately , was a minor inconvenience . Together , they created the perfect storm of misery . Let me list my many mistakes : not quite over my chest congestionrode the day before the race - was an easy ride but my recovery time is not goodstayed up late to watch the Pens loseate a bunch of junk food rather than the normal routinenot enough water in the days leading up to the raceSo then Dave and I arrive at the at White Oak . We hook up with Don and Aarron and a couple of other guys . Pre - rode the course a bit ( another mistakes as my legs already didn 't have any power and any preride was a bad thing ) . The race started up a long , steep hill . I just kept a steady pace , knowing a fast pace would blow my legs out . The first lap ( approx . 8 miles ) went pretty well . Not quite as fast as I 'd like , but I felt okay . Made it up all of the hills , passed quite a few people . Finished the first lap , and realized that this was going to be a loooong 17 miles and that I was a bit short on liquids . Second lap began with a huge hike a bike . This was the beginning of the end for me . Legs started shutting down . Ride down this hill was rocky but fun , that is until a root directed me into a tree . Ouch . And felt really bad for the guy behind me that had to ride off into the woods to keep from running over me . Got more into the second lap when it hit . I had to ride up an incline that on the first lap was no problem . All of a sudden I had no energy in my legs . I had to get off and push . Usually I mentally give up on a hill before I physically have to . But this time my legs were done . People started passing me , even the tandem . Cross the road and head back some long trails . Started getting light headed . Not good . Pushed for what seemed like miles , tried to ride when I could . Oh , and it was hot ! Cross back over the road and head toward the finish line . All I wanted to do was finish the race , even Posted by Henry Clay - 2 : 16 - 6th place master 's sport - 17 milesMud , rain , lightning , more rain , and oh yeah , mud . That pretty much summarizes what I remember about this race held at Cooper 's Rock , WV . Dave and I rode and got registered . While getting ready it started to rain and was windy enough to actually be somewhat cold . By the time we lined up for the start , the sun decided to poke its head out - mostly just to tease us . The race started on the paved road , but much lower than the previous year . I did better than normal on the road this time , but still entered the singletrack more than half way back in the pack . The dos niner ate up the rocky decent down into the valley . Started riding up out of the valley , but was pretty sure I was off route as I was trying to ride up a creek . No , I was on the trail though it was better suited as a creek . The riding was pretty much a blur , lots of loose rocky uphills , fun downhills that never seemed long enough . As is my usual routine , I passed a lot of people once into the groove of the race but I think I only passed two riders in my category . About halfway into the race , the rain came down in earnest . My brake pads were wearing quickly with all the mud on the course , and the trail was only getting worse . And then the lightning came . Luckily it wasn 't directly over us , there was a delay between the lightning and the thunder , but it was way too close anyway . Going down a hill , I tried to make a sharp left in the mud and rocks , but my bike decided to go visit some trees and shrubs instead . My brakes were really worn down . I quickly adjusted the mechanical Avid brakes and was off . A number of experts passed me , all being very encouraging as they went by . That 's what I really like about mountain bike racing , everyone is pretty courteous . They thank me for letting them pass , other riders quickly pull out of my way when it 's my rare turn to pass . I was under the impression that the race would end of that last really steep uphill , but either they changed their mind due to the weather , or I wasnPosted by Big Bear - 1 : 39 . 57 - 7th place master 's sport - 13 miles My favorite race of the year . Arrived at Big Bear and registered , ran into a new racer Bob . We jumped on the bikes to warm up a bit , and ran into Dave from last year 's Month of Mud on his new Hi Fi . Left them to do a few all out efforts as a warm up and got to the riders ' meeting late . This would prove to be a problem . We lined up and off we went for the first one mile road sprint before entering the woods . I know myself , and was certain I would not do well here . Even though I warmed up a bit , it 's never enough or worthwhile for me to blow out my legs at the beginning . So we ride up the road , me towards the back half and we ride by the normal right turn into the woods . Uh oh . We continue up the road and turn left into single track , the place where last year 's beginners turned in . The good news , we wouldn 't be doing the rock gardens or steep climb . The bad news , I wasn 't quite sure how many miles we would be doing . I felt pretty good and started picking up the pace , memories of last year 's 24 hour race coursing through my head . I slowly started picking off riders as we would enter a roller or a technical section . Knowing the course was paying off . Then I hit the wall . Every hill felt steep , I started wondering why I pay for the privledge of this torture . Then it hit me , I needed some gel . We were given free Hammer gel , so tried that . Wow , after about five minutes I could feel it . I picked up the pace and flew down the long descent that leads to the creekbed . It 's probably the fastest I had ever taken it , and almost lost it going over one of the rock drop offs , but held it together . This year the arms felt fine during the descent , but my hands were cramping from being on the brakes so much . Cleaned the creekbed with no problem . Up on to the fire road and realized two things . If the course was going to head back up toward the airfield , I had some good energy left , but if the course was heading back to the finish line , I didn 't pace myself well . Unfortunately , Posted by Challenge at Mountwood - WVMBA - 2 : 26 - 10th place master 's sport - 16 milesDeja vu all over againJust like last year , the drive down was scattered rain . Only oddity , stopped on way down at a rest area and came across some guy washing something in the urinal . Couldn 't see what it was , maybe luckily . Got out of there quickly . Registered , warmed up , start moved back to 12 : 30 but I anticipated that . A nice downpour hits us as we wait for the start and about 40 degrees . I overhear the guys in my class ask two of the riders why they weren 't riding expert this year . Yikes , not a good omen . Off we go , up the gravel road and on to some fire roads to help spread out the field . About 17 of us in our group , and I was about two thirds back in the pack . Entered the single track and passed a couple of guys taking off their rain jackets . I made that mistake last year . A lot of people who had race tires were sliding all over the trails . My tires though a little heavier were really good for all of the mud on the trails . Only fell once and it happened while going over some slick logs . My goal was to ride steady for for most of the race , and then turn it on for the last half hour . It 's the only strategy that 's worked for me . I hope that some of the other guys will blow out their legs and I 'll catch them later . I 've never been able to hold a fast pace the whole race . Don 't know if it was the nutrition , the accelerade , the new bike , or all of the training ( probably the combination ) but I rode this race so much better than last year . It took me three hours last year , and I was wasted and cramping when I finished . This year I felt mentally sharp the whole race . I played some mental games with some of the riders by hanging on their rear wheel and making them push too hard to keep me behind them . Little did they know I couldn 't have passed and held it . The entire race I was in the midst of all of the racers . Being passed and passing others . Races are so much fun when you 're not in the back of the pack by yourself . Well according to my pregame pPosted by Winter Training I 've only had to ride inside this winter four times . And each time I hated it ! ! ! But luckily this winter has been cold but not too much snow . Even when we get snow , it tends to melt pretty quickly . Not been on the mountain bike too much , but out on the road bike a bunch . Really don 't trust the cars on the roads . At least when I 'm in the woods , the trees can 't veer at me as they are texting . Really did enjoy the winter mountain biking though . Frozen trails , snow , and not another person on the trails but me . Highlights of the winter riding : riding in the teens with 40 mph winds , could barely coast downhill with the headwind ; riding in the unique quiet of snow covered trails ; getting caught at night , temperature in the teens , and my pump breaks after replacing a punctured tube - it was a looong walk out . * edit - after having three flats in a week , I decided to give tubeless a try . The front wheel didn 't seal up well the first time , but got it to work after doing the " shake " thing . So far so good on the tubeless , the ride feels a little softer , the traction is even better , and no flats yet . Still tweaking the right psi . Right now I 'm 30 in front and 31 in rear . I think I can go a little lower . Tentative race schedule for the spring : April 13 - wvmba 2 at Mountwood ( I don 't really like to drive that far but the trails are really good and I 'll be itching to race by then ) April 20 - wvmba 3 at Big Bear ( my favorite trails in the series , it will be nice to race it this year on the new bike , and hopefully with both brakes , lol ) May 11 - wvmba 4 at Henry Clay ( this was a blast last year , very rocky , and I was exhausted by the end . now that I know what to expect I hope to finish much stronger ) May 25 - wvmba 6 at White Oak ( never did this one , hope it 's a good one ) June 1 - tentative race at Massanutten ( will only do this one if I 'm doing well in the overall series - also the Sarver race is usually around this time but not sure yet ) June 7 - 8 - 24 hours of Big Bear ( was truly a blast last year , can not wait for thiPosted by
|
My eyes open as the sound of No Women , No Cry fills my room from my phone alarm … 5 : 45am . I get up , turn it off , and fall back asleep . Sorry Mr . Marley , I would normally bask in the glory of that song , but right now , I want sleepy time . Wake up again to faint sound of a … " Watrruuudoiin " . I look up , scratch my eyes , and see some type of dark - skinned Indian standing next to the bed . John is standing over me , showered up and ready to go . What ? ? John is up and ready to go ? Its 6am , John is non - functional before 9am ; he doesn 't know how to wake up before that time . First time I 've ever been woken up by Johnny . He has a glass of Sunny D , a Special K bar , and a yogurt . And you made breakfast John ? You 're on top of your shit right now . I toss some clothes on , brush my teeth , and toss some water on my hair … fuck showering . John and I say goodbye to Linds and Febes , and we head off to the ATM in Hartland to meet up with the Kohl bros and Mista Clarence . I hit up the ATM to get some cash and all of a sudden , I see Jordan dancing up and down in front of the car , just jacked up to jump out of a fucking plane . So Jake and Jordan hop in the car , and out comes the greens . What time is it again ? ? Ooo yeah that 's right , its 6 : 45am right now , wowzas . Tarrence comes zooming into the parking lot frantically , because we were supposed to meet at the Park - and - Ride in Delafied but changed it last minute . John thought Jordan talked to Tarrence , and Jordan thought John talked to Tarrence … ipso facto … Tarrence was left out of the loop . Sorry Mista Clarence , miss - communication . We all hop in John 's Volvo and start heading to East Troy where the skydiving place was . When we left , we had just enough time to get there by 7 : 30am . Once we left the parking lot , we sparked up . I took one rip out of that piece , and I was rippitty ripped . I think it was because it was so early in the morning and my body isn 't used to getting stupidman high before 7am . I look in the mirror … . hieediee hoo … take me to funky town , and call me towlie , cuz my eyes are redder than the devil 's dick . We kiesh the bowl and everyone concurs that we are gonna have to make a quick pitstop at McDonalds . Haha . Typical . Skydiving can wait for an Egg McMuffin Sammy . Drive - thru of McDonalds We get our McDonalds and it tasted like ' God 's Vagina ' . Fucking delicious . Tarrence packs up another one … oooo boy , this will be the death of me . I 'm just chilling in the front seat watching all the nature around me , taking in the scenery , because this could be the last time I ever see it again . I wanted to be thinking positive about skydiving , but there is always a chance that something can go wrong . We pull up into the parking lot , and a feeling comes across all of us . This is it . It 's for real now . We 're going fucking skydiving today . My heart starts beating faster and faster , I 'm fidgety , nervous , excited , and . . . baked out of my mind . We meet Justin , Curtis , and Nick there . Gus and his crew are a little behind . We walk into the place and head to the front counter . The guy behind the counter gives us all a little shpeal on the dive , hands us some clip boards , and then says , " Alright , who are the first three people that want to jump ? " Nick and Curtis say they will go , and then John chimes in and says he will go with them . It was supposed to be Nick , Curtis , and Justin , and then John , Tarrence , and me but John was being John . . . just kinda clueless as to what was going on . Watevs , it will all be the same in the end . The guy says , " Ok . So you three ? Come with me . " They grab their clipboards and go into the video room , while the rest of us go outside and start filling out our ' If you die , it 's not our fault ' forms . That 's when it started to hit home , when you were filling out this paper work , basically signing your life away . Kind of scary . Gus and his crew of people arrive , go through the same process we did , and start filling their paperwork out with us . I meet Bobby . . . bobby has never been on a plane before . Ever . Never been on one , but today he 's going to ride in one , and then jump out of it . Fuckin ' baller status right there . As we 're getting our paperwork finished and signing my legal rights away , John is getting strapped up in a harness . I thought that this was going to be an alWe get everything filled out , so Jordan , Jake , Justin , Tarrence , and I head outside to the viewing area . It was called the ' Raven 's Nest ' and it was a really nice elevated patio on the roof of the equiptment room . It had grills and picnic benches , and there was an indoor A / C part that had TV 's and whatnot . If you looked in a certain direction you would be able to see people skydiving and watch their parachutes deploy . As we are taking in all of this , we hear over the intercom , " Pack two … 5 min . . . pack two . . . 5 min until departure . " We look down and see John is already suited up with Nick and Curtis getting ready to head on over to the plane . Holy shit , He 's about to go right now ! We watch as John gets on the plane , and within five minutes , the plane disappears over the grassy hill . We watch the plane take off in the distance and John is in the air . I 'm like , " holy duck fuck , this shit is actually happening . " The plane gets smaller and smaller as it rises into the atmosphere away from us , until it is nowhere to be seen . We go back inside and get our names on the list because we want to go next ; I don 't want to have to wait and get super anxious and nervous , let 's do this shit right now . Jordan , Jake , and their pops , Jim , are the next ones up . Shit . Oh well , at least we will be able to go third . No biggy . Jordan , Jake , and Jim go with their instructors to suit up . Shit this is going fast , I thought there was going to be somewhat of a build up … not a chance . Tarrence , Justin , and I go to the Raven 's Nest and watch John free fall from 13 , 500 feet . I am anxiously watching … please open the chute , please open the chute . All of a sudden , a colorful chute deploys and I exhale as my heart slows down . John , Nick , and Curtis all land safely , and then hop on a golf cart to get escorted back to the equipment room . All of them are on the golf cart with the biggest smiles on their faces , their eyes were bulging out of their heads . We run down to the equipment room and all ask them how it was . They all start talking at once , their voices filled with excitement , " Dude it was the most intense thing ever ! So insane ! So fucking awesome ! " I ask John , " So Johnny ! How was it , was it really scary ? " John is twitchy , out of breath , holding his forehead , " Dude , I think I blacked out … I don 't remember what happened . " I started geeking out . Ahh classic . They said that would probably happen . You have so much adrenaline that after your jump , you have no idea what you saw or heard . John now knows the color of fear from skydiving . . . brown . Jordan & Jake about to head out to the plane As we keep talking to them about it , Jordan , Jake , and Jim walk by all geared up ready to go . Jordan is jumping up and down with adrenaline , and after seeing him and hearing about John 's jump , I started to get real stoked . I was getting stoked like it was my day job . We watch as Jordan , Jake , and Jim head to the plane to go . As this is happening , over the intercom , they instruct Tarrence , Justin , and I to head inside to meet our instructors . I never knew what a skydiving bro was like , but now I know . My guy was pretty cool , Justin 's guy , Homebrew , had a gigantic beer gut … looked like he was 8 months pregnant , and Tarrence 's guy was … . a douche bag . Tarrence 's guy , Kermit , was like 5 ' 4 ' ' , I couldn 't wait to see them tandem dive , just big ' ol lanky - ass Tarrence , with a little mini me on his back . We get suited up and head on out to the field and wait for Jordan , Jake , and Jim to return from their jump . Justin , Tarrence , and I They all land safely and come on back on the golf cart . They are all just yelling as they drive by , " SO SICK ! ! O MY GOD ! ! " We walk out to the plane , and wait for it to be refueled . We sit on the bench next to the plane and the plane is loud and windy , and my heart starts beating faster and faster . I was trying to keep calm , but I had so much adrenaline coursing through my veins , it was inevitable . We walk up to the plane and climb in . There are just two benches and we straddled it in front of our instructors , so they could clip us in on the ride up . I am the last person on the bench about 3 feet away from the door that you jump out of . The plane starts rolling and gets on the runway path . We have to taxi for around eight minutes , and the plane was getting really hot . I started sweating , and I looked back and saw Tarrence and Justin just sweating balls . We take off , and I watch the ground get further and further away … 100ft down … 300ft down … 800ft down … 1000ft down . Ok . . . there is no turning back now . All of a sudden , at like 2000ft , my camera lady opens the door . . . a gust of air slaps me in the face , sounds of wind howl through the cabin , and all I can see is blue skies . I am three feet away from this door , I was too rebellious to put a seatbelt on , my instructor hasn 't hooked me in yet , I am basically three feet away from death . I look up to my left , find a hand railing , grab onto it with a death grip . I 'm not dieing today . Shue and I at about 10 , 000 feet We keep climbing … and climbing … and climbing , later bro HOOOLLLYYY SHIIIITTT ! ! ! ! ! I 'm looking straight down at the clouds , my face is getting rocked by wind , and I 'm accelerating towards the earth at 32 . 2ft / s ^ 2 . I can 't even hear myself scream , " OHHHH FUCCCKKK YAAA BRO ! ! " Shue spins us round and round , I thought to myself , if this goes wrong and I die , I 'm gonna go out having a hell of a time . I can 't stop smiling , as I float through sky . I have a real sensation of gravity . I can feel it push me and pull me through the air in different directions . You really didn 't have any perspective as to how fast you were going because there was no reference to go off of . You were dropping from tens of thousands of feet and it was nothing but space . So much fucking space . Just swimming through a sea of blue skies . Your entire life , you are grounded to the earth . Every moment of your life you are touching the earth , think about it . But here , you aren 't grounded to anything , zip , nothing . You aren 't touching anything and you are using pure force of gravity to propel you through the air . An unbelievable , indescribable feeling that you can only get from this experience . You start off with the potential energy of around 4 . 5 million Joules , freefalling through the Earth 's atmosphere at 120mph with nothing but this backpack that deploys a couple of strings and a blanket to save your life . It 's like committing suicide . . . without the dying part , fucking incredible . Shue puts the altimeter in front of my face which is his signal to reach back and deploy the parachute . I reach back , and I can 't grab a hold of it … it 's flailing all over the place and I can 't grab it . Shue grabs my hand and we pull it together . A faint slow down feeling is followed by a gigantic sensation of being pulled upwards , follows . All the blood rushed from my head down to my feet extremely fast . Within seconds the camera lady is already hundreds of feet below us , flying so fast downwards . The parachute wobbles around a little bit and then levels out . I am out of breath , heart pumping out of my chest , feeling light headed , shaking with adrenaline , " Oh my god . That was the coolest fucking thing I 've ever done . " I take a huge sigh of relief , yessss , my parachute opened … wooo ! ! I sit there suspended by a harness , looking down over East Troy , WI . He grabs the handles that controls the parachute , and hand them to me . He is telling me what to do . " Pull as hard as you can on the right one . " I yank the thing down , and our parachute quickly dips to the right , and starts spiraling down to the right accelerating faster and faster . The parachute had an unbelievable amount of control . I sit there as the sun is halfway up the sky , a cool breeze hits my face , and I sit there on top of the world . Fucking majestic . parachute deploys . . . . o thank god We start getting closer and closer to the ground … 400ft … 200ft … 100ft . We come in for the landing ; I keep my legs up and we slide in the grass safely . An unbelievable amount of joy comes across me . I 'm safe , I 'm safe , success . Justin and Tarrence safely land close by and Justin is so relieved . He throws the baseball umpire sign of ' safe ' and just blurts out inbetwen gasps of air , " Fucking safe … . fucking safe … holy fucking shit … . I 'm fucking safe . " I shake my instructors hand for the unbelievable experience , head to the equipment room to take off my harness and get my certificate . I have a headache , but my body and mentality were in a total state of euphoria . It was such a crazy feeling - a surge of pure adrenaline , relief to be on the ground , exhilaration from the freefall , and joy from the entire experience . I walk up the stairs to the Ravens Nest and am greeted with a bottle of beer by John and Jordan . " HOW FUCKING AWESOME WAS THAT ! " I didn 't even know what to say , there were so many emotions , I was speachless . We all were so stoked from adrenaline we kept saying , " Oh my gosh , I have so much adrenaline , I need to do something . . . like do jumping jacks , or punch infants . " God forbid there was a nursery around , we would have gone on a baby punching spree . I 'm sorry baby , I have wayyy too much adrenaline not to not punch you . There were brats and burgers on the grill being fried up . We sit there and watch as the rest of the group went sky diving , while we ate brats and burgers , and drank beer . It felt like we had conquered something great , overcame fear , overcame physics … overcame death . Over the intercom we hear , " There is no alcohol allowed on the premise during jumping hours , I repeat … no alcohol on the property . " I think they are directing that towards us . I 'm sure they looked at all of our forms we filled out , looked at the ' age ' column and just saw … . 20 … 20 … 20 … 20 … 20 … and of course Tarrence , 21 . We polished off the rest of our beer and threw it away . the descent . . . Tarrence and I still wanted to drink , so we went to the car , grabbed a McD 's cup , grabbed the Admirals , and there was chaser in the Ravens Nest . We sit on the picnic table , toss in a fatty squad , and share a mixer . Mayo is the last one to go , and we just sit and watch all their reactions as they get done and come up to the Nest . Everyone had such a great experience , everyone loved every minute of it . We say goodbye to everyone , I thanked Gus for being assertive and taking the initiative to actually organize and go through with this event . We walk to the car and we all are so happy that today went well and everyone enjoyed themselves . We sit in the car , listen to the sweet sounds of 53 Chill on XM radio and watch our videos of our dives . It was so cool to see everyone 's dives and what they did . Thank god John got a video , because he completely forgot what had happened . Everyone had their own unique reactions when jumping out of the plane , it was so cool . I jumped out of a plane by 11 : 00am today , what the fuck did you do ? Probably still sleeping you scrub , learn how to be a boss before noon . I sit in the backseat watching the trees again , lucky to be alive , safe and sound . Feeling empowered , I thought , if I could stand in an open airplane doorway two - and - a - half miles above the ground and will myself to step into empty space , then I could do anything . Ughhh … I 'm hungover yo . It 's Thursday morning and I 'm chillin hard at my desk . Trying to keep my eyes open and head off the desk . The unproductively is through the roof , due to opening day at Summerfest last night . Went to bed at 2ish , had to wake up at 5 : 30 . I 'm in the car with my dad and I am still drunk . When I am in the office , I am still drunk . I keep saying to myself , " Please don 't throw up on your keyboard . " I seriously can 't keep my eyes open , and I can 't help but fall asleep . I am in and out of consciousness and I know I have to do something about this . Ding ( light bulb above my head ) . I got an idea . One word … two syllables - Carnaps . I go to my manager and tell him that I have a meeting with some guy up in Industrial Controls . I throw on an ' away at a meeting ' status up on my SameTime ( Rockwell Automation 's version of AIM ) and head to my dad 's car . I crawl into the backseat , use a pair of shoes as a pillow , set my alarm for an hour and a half later , and dose off . Wow - best decision 2011 … . furrrrr surrrree . I get out of the car and head back to work making sure I 'm not rockin any bed head . I stop at the Bridge Market and pick up some Alka Seltzer Plus for my unsettling stomach . Head back to work and do more unproductive activities … stumbleupon … facebook … CNN . com ( I 'm so fucking up - to - date on my current events ) . Lunch rolls around . Of course I 'm going to take an hour lunch today , even though I really don 't feel like eating , I do what I want . I eat with my intern bros in the cafeteria , we share stories about last night 's Summerfest adventures , and I tell them I am headed for another carnap . Round 2 . Head to my pop 's car and crawl in the backseat again to recover more . I wake up and head back to work . Wow … I feel like a piece of shit , but I lovvve to shleeepp . The rest of the day I knew I wasn 't going to get anything done , so all I did was write a drunk diary for my Buffet weekend . Once I was in the midst of writing that , my day started to turn around . I was getting stoked for tonight 's Sfest adventures . Vaughan had invited me , Sisler , and Tarrence aka Mista Clarence to the Kid Cudi and Kanye West concert . OFYB ! ( Which stands for : Oh Fuck Ya Bro … for those of you who don 't wear snapbacks or chill tees ) Kyle has the tickets and he said they would be to Summerfest at around 7 : 00pm . Well Rockwell is less than a mile away from Summerfest , so I decided to stay at work until 6 : 30ish and then meet them at the grounds . It was about 5 : 15 and there were very few people in the office . 5 : 30 rolls around and I am the only one in the office . Frump yes . I walk around checking every cubicle and office and there are no signs of life . I bust out a water bottle of vodka and head on over to the fridge and grab a soda . I do what Tech n9ne would do and grab a Mt . Dew , because " Vodka and Mt . Dew is the new shit " - ( Like Yeah lyrics bitch ) . I head on over to my desk , crank up some ' Kid Cudi ' Pandora jams , make myself a Abomb mixer ( which is one strong ass mixer ) , and continue typing my Buffet diary . Great Thursday evening . I polish off three mixers , and finish my diary . I look at the clock and I am running out of time . I grab my change of clothes , sprint across Rockwell to the locker room ( which is honestly a quarter of a mile ) , hop in the shower and throw my clothes on . I shut my computer down , throw it in my desk , lock that shit up , swallow the key , and start sprinting to Summerfest with a bottle of booze flapping against my junk . I 'm sprinting and it 's hot and humid . When I stop to cross the street , I feel myself pittin out and rockin ' some nice back sweat . Well this is great . I 'm gonna show up to the concert sweating like I 'm Mike Tyson at a spelling bee . I 'm almost there when I get a drunk call from Vaughan , " Oh my godddd duuudeeee … where the fuckkk areee youuu ? ? ? " Ahhh fuck these banana trees , I need to get this shit in . I try to conceal it more but its looking borderline sketch - tastic . We get to the entrance and the line is super fucking long . Mista Clarence and I go and cut the line , while Sisler and Vaughan cut a different line . After a minute or so , I 'm looking around and I notice they have Title 9 ' ed the shit out of this place and had two separate lines going … one for women and one for men . Well … . drunk Vaughan and Sisler are in the ladies line , just clueless as to what is going on . I 'm trying to send a text message to them , but there was so much cell phone interference it is frumpin impossible to send a message . They get to the front of the line , look like retards , and then switch lines . There were a couple of guys in front of Tarrence and me just making fun of them the whole time . Alright , only a couple people to go before I get in . Fuckin ' game time . ' Sir … you have to take everything out of your pockets . ' Not now chief , I 'm in the FUCKin zone ! Boom roasted . I play it smooth , look like I 'm not a terrorist or a high schooler trying to sneak in a half water bottle of Skol for me and my 12 other friends , and slip on past security . Boom roasted . Sisler and Vaughan go into the concert and I go to the concession stand to get some chaser . Tarrence gets a triple cheeseburger from the Wendy 's stand . I snag four chasers , meet up with Tarrence and head into the concert . I 'm looking at my ticket … Row P … Section 2 . Look up at the map of the Amphitheater and realize we are dead center front , and row P is the 16th row . Wowzas I almost creamed my pants . We get down to our seats , Cudi is already playing , and we have most of the row to ourselves . We are pretty visible to the security guards and we aren 't sure if they are going to care if we are pouring mixers and smoking doobie snacks . Fuck it , lets find out . We 're pouring mixers on mixers on mixers and start drinking . Tarrence looks at me , " Dood , would you like a bite of ma burgur ? " By the beard of Zeus ! I thought you 'd never ask . O my lanta I can taste that fuckin meat in my mouth right now . No homo . Cudi is playing some Pursuit of Happiness and all of us have so much energy just dancing , singing , and yelling . Straight ballers . Cudi tells his DJ to drop the next song but then stops it right away . It looks like it 's time . ( Tfreddy … you know when it 's time ) Sisler snags a J - bone out of his pouch and sparks it up . We pass it around once and then Sisler gets a tap on his shoulder . Ahh shit … I 'm afraid to turn around and look into the eyes of a 6 ' 4 ' ' security guard . I put my game face on , and slowly turn around . Why it 's not Rambo coming to grab us by our testicles and throw us out … no , it 's a 45 year - old lady who just wants a rip . Sisler enthusiastically passes it to the hippie , takes another hit and then passes it to me . Sisler quietly whispers , " Duude … that mom totally nigger lipped the shit out of our joint . " After that , about 4 other people asked if they could get a hit out of the joint . What is this ? Some type of public free - for - all doobie ? Get the Corn out ma FACE ! ! ! Even some high - school couple came down like 5 minutes after we were clearly done with the joint and asked us if they could get a hit . " Fur sure bro , ya we finished it a while ago , so … . . no " Cudi plays some dope ass songs but he didn 't play very long at all . I know he played : Erase me , Marijuana , Pursuit of Happiness , The Mood … I feel like I am forgetting something but he didn 't play very long . The concert in Madison was way doper . Cudi tells us that next up is mista Kanye West . Now I love Kanye West , but lately I 've steered away from him . I listened to his Late Registration and Graduation album over and over and I know absolutely everyone of those songs on those albums . But when he got all robotronic , T - pain , Autotune bullshit , like that 80 's & Heartbreak album , I was really upset with him . I never heard before that Kanye was a great live musician . People started piling into the Amphitheatre and everyone we turned to said that Kanye was unbelievable live . Well this should be fucking awesome … I wasn 't expecting anything spectacular but , hey I 'm down like a clown Charlie br . . . down like a clown Charlie babrrrraaaaa … . . down like a clown charlie braaabrraaa . . baaaa … . down like a clown brroownn . There is an hour or so gap between Cudi and Kanye . So what do we do ? Fucking pound mixers like it 's our day job , and I 'm starting to get a little tipsy . Tarrence turns to me and says , " Dood , that joint was justa little one , we still got two big ones left … hahehheeehee " Tarrence and his South African geek - out laugh . Ahh I 'm so excited for this fucking concert ! ! All of a sudden , the lights go dim , the backdrop curtain rises , the lights shine and a bunch of dancers come out on stage . These chicks were all really hot and had basically nothing on . They had their backs facing the crowd and you just looked up at the stage and just saw 30 asses . Ok Kanye … I like your style broski . The intro drops , everyone starts yelling and screaming , the dancers were going all fucking crazy , but there was no Kanye . After like 30sec of trying to figure out where he was , I hear his voice . Everyone turns their heads and looks up in the middle of the crowd . The main beat drops , Kanye starts rappin , " I 'm livin in that 21st century , doin something mean to it , do it betta then anybody eva seen do it , screams from the haters , gotta nice ring to it , I guess every supa hero need his theme music ! " I 'm jumpin up and down … " No one man should have all that POWWERR ! ! ! " Just going crazy . People are flippin shit , there 's arms flailing everywhere , there is so much energy in the crowd . Sisler turns to me and grabs another joint … should we do it ? ? Does a bear shit in the woods ? Does a one - legged dog swim in a circle ? ? Fuck ya ! Spark that shit up sissy - mayne . Right as we are sparking that shit up , we hear , " Bum , bum , bum , bum , BA , bum bum " Kanye is playing Jesus Walks ! ! ? ? Sweet grandmother 's spatula ! Ahh I 'm going HAM right now . We 're drinking and smoking , just raging along with Kanye West . Mista Clarence says , " Hey doods , should I get sum beers ? " We were just hammered drinking up a storm , smoking up a storm , just being belligerent . Sisler yells at this knob - shine bender of a security guard … " Hey bro , how much do you get paid to do this shit ? " He says something , I forget , but we were just being assholes to the kid . The whole night I kept on pointing at him and nodding my head just lip singing to him . Just making real suggestive dance moves towards him . I had an aisle seat so I was making it real awkward and creepy for this kid . There was a black couple in the next section across the aisle just lovin ' every minute of me messing with this kid . The lady said she almost pissed her pants watching me do this . I didn 't intentionally do it , but I was just in the moment , in the song , wasted , and it just came to me . Lol . The concert keeps getting blurrier and blurrier because I kept on drinking … and drinking . I remember it being like halfway through Kanye 's concert just yelling at everyone , " I 'm the perfect drunk right now ! ! ! " I loved every minute of that concert , it was so fun . Kanye had this unbelievable light show , and at one point there was just a shower of sparks raining from the ceiling . I was in such awe that I just held my phone above my head , started yelling , and kept taking pictures … just " AHHHHHH ! ! ! ! ! snap . snap AHHHH snap . snap . snap . AHHHHHH ! ! ! snap . snap . " I looked at my phone the next day and had 20 pictures that were basically the same . We polish off the first round of beers and I tell Terrance … more , more , more . He says , " Dood , I don 't have any muney . " I look in my wallet , pull out a 20 and give it to him . I look him dead in the eyes … buy beer , as much as you can with this . He comes back with another round of plastic bottled Miller Lite . Ahh that sweet ice cold nectar hitting the back of your throat on a humid night when you 're dehydrated and thirsty … couldn 't ask for anything else . I polish off mine real fast , and the rest of somebody else 's . Time to spark up the last joint ? OFYB ! Right as we spark it I hear Good Life off of his Graduation album . We are passing it around , I have the joint in my mouth just dancing and nodding to my head as Kanye is in the background , " the good life , it feel like Atlanta , it feel like LA , it feel like Miami , it feel like NY … summertime Chi … AHH . Now throw your hands up in the sky ! ! ! " Lights flashing before my eyes , Kanye goin crazy on stage , joint in my mouth , hands in the air , together with my bros … it was just so fucking awesome ! This is AWEsome , the is AWEsome , I lOVe soccer . After doing this for like 5 straight minutes , the joint was basically a roach . Sisler passes it to her , and as she 's taking a hit , this big black security guard grabs her and takes her away . Sisler and I started geeking out so hard ! We literally were laughing for a solid minute . I kept saying , " Take the hit … then take the blame . " Oh my lanta that was too funny . Check out this video I took ( have no recollection of ) . It 's funny to see everyone 's drunk / baked faces . Just watch it … it 's pretty funny . I taped it when I was drunk so don 't be judging my photography skills . We got another round of beers , and were pounding them . We had pulled off the perfect amount of booze . Don 't you hate when you go to a concert , or Summerfest , or some place else and you didn 't bring enough booze or enough weed ? Well we brought the perfect amount to have us sippin and puffing allll night . The concert ended and I was out - of - my - mind drunk and oblivious . So was everyone else lol . There was a mad dash and a herd of people leaving Summerfest . We kept thinking … shit ! We gotta get the fuck out of here ! Little did we know , Summerfest didn 't end for another hour , but none of us retards thought to look at the time . We start pushing our way through the crowd and all of a sudden we run into Mr . and Mrs . Vaughan . Fuck ya ! Woo ! We get on a bus with them , and I pass the fuck out on the bus . Wake up , have no idea where we are , get in the car … pass out . Kyle said Mr . Vaughan was loving me , and Mrs . Vaughan was wondering how I got so drunk . I was drunk , but I was even more tired . And I have to get up at 5 : 30am tomorrow morning for work . Apparently Mrs . Vaughan asked me if I had called my mom or not , and I said , " I justweabawa … " and didn 't say anything else and fell back asleep . We get to Vaughans , go downstairs and I fell face first on the couch and was out like a fat kid playing dodgeball . Tarrence and Vaughan made a za … classic and had to eat it all . I woke up at 5 : 30am to my alarm clock on my phone going off . I look at my text messages , one from my mom at 3 : 00am , " Where are you ? " Ooooo boy hopefully this isn 't bad . My mom is a worrier and she probably would call a fucking amber alert on me . I call her and she said she had to call the Vaughan 's house phone at 3 : 30am … woops . Ma baaadddd . She said she would come and pick me up . As I stumbled upstairs , I looked in the fridge , grabbed a cold piece of pizza and a Capri - sun and was technically ' drunk munching ' because I was still drunk as a skunk . My head hurts , my eyes are saggin real low , I have very few working brain cells , and somehow I have to make it to Milwaukee and go to work . My mom picked me up , and I just though … well this workday should be interesting … Posted by Bright lights are shining in my eyes , I 'm sprawled all over my bed , I 'm sweating . These curtains fucking suck ! ! It 's 8am and all I want to do is sleep in my bed , but I have the world 's dustiest shades that block maybe 10 % of all sunlight coming through and I have 4 windows in my room , so I wake up to a fucking tanning bed everyday . I 'm still drunk , stumbly , and sleepy from Friday 's Summerfest . My body feels like shit . Last night was my third consecutive night going to Summerfest and my body is paying the price . Both Thursday morning and Friday morning I had to wake up for work at 5 : 30am and I went to bed between 1 : 30 and 2 : 00am both nights . I walk over to my desk to find my wallet , take a look inside . Damn … no money … again . So far I 've dropped $ 130 on Summerfest . Between bus tickets , and 6 beers a night , there goes your money . Oh well … it 's not about material things in life , it 's about the experiences you have , and I 've had 3 great experiences … but only some I can remember . I walk into the main area of the basement to find the bazillionaire ( aka Frump dogg aka Frumple - stilskin aka Mike ) , Jordan , and Tarrence sprawled out on the couches . They all wake up when I 'm out there and we are just talking about the drunk moments we had the night before . All of a sudden I hear . . " What 's up bros ! ! " I turn around , only to stare straight into the eyes of Trevor Matthew Marks . " T - Marks ? What 's up buddy ? When did you get here ? " " Why da fuck would you do dat ? Go get it . " Tarrence gets crabby when doesn 't have his morning bowlski . T - marks needed a ride to the park - and - ride anyways so Frump , T - marks , and I hopped in my car and started driving . We are just chatting it up in the car and T - marks is looking at his text messages from last night . BTW … that 's my address . That would have been bad if 40 people showed up at 1am . I would have been hella pissed . I drop off T - marks and we head to Frump 's house to pick up ' pink princess ' . We pick it up and I call up Frank and Vaughan because they were supposed to stay at my house but they never made it there last night . Vaughan had some how gotten on the wrong bus … ended up at Gerke 's corner , which is 20 min away , and was stranded there . Frank and Colton Sweitzer picked him up in the wee hours of the morning . This was Jesse 's story ( From his perspective ) : So we find Vaughan at the park - and - ride and he 's got the drunk eyes going . I yell at him to get it the car and his response is , " FUCK YOU FRANK ! Where the fuck were you ! " I tell him to get the fuck in the car , and he says that his mom , Mare Bear is coming to pick him up . I called up Mary like 3 times to tell her that Vaughan was ok and we would take him back home . They ended up at Bauer 's house so … Frump and I went over to Bauer 's house . We pick up the knob - shines and Brady comes with . " Hey man … could you give me a ride to the park and ride ? " … fuck it . Get in . We go back to the park - and - ride and drop off Brady . I 'm texting Lindsay and she is saying that we should go over to Phoebe 's lake and have a lake day . Fuck ya . It 's like 90 degrees out , the sun is shining , great summer day to go out . Well … should we drink ? ? I mean … I 'm trying to recover from probably 10 - 15 cummulative hours of sleep from the past three nights , and I 've been drinking every night … ok … let 's get wasted today . We go to the nearby Sentry Foods and Frank picks up some booze . A handle of Tequila , Rum , and a 30 rack of Beasts . Looks like it 's gonna be a good day . We head on back to my house , Close the curtains in the basement , get real stoned , and play some FIFA . Frank is antsy to get out and not act like shitheads , and I jump on board . Let 's do this shit ! We toss on our swimsuits , get in the car and head on over to Phoebe 's lake . We get down to the dock and the lake looks fucking majestic . Nobody 's on the water , its calm and clear , we have a lot of booze , a lot of time , and we got bros and hoes . We get out on the lake , and we brought out the tequila and a gallon of orange juice with us . Taking pulls left and right , as Lindsay and Kelsey are out on the wave runner . Frank and I are like … lets fucking get on that wave runner . I love a good adrenaline rush and a wave runner is the perfect weapon . We wait patiently as all the girls go out and have their fun . Our method of coping with the wait was taking pulls to the dome with Vaughan up in the bow of the boat . When we finally get our turn , we jump in the water , snatch a life vest and hop on . Lindsay wants to come as well , so we let her on . I 'm driving , and I am one helluva driver . I have a wave runner up at my lake house that I constantly push to its limits . We are going crazy on it , I 'm doing donuts , whipping it , diving the nose , getting us really wet , and throwing us off . We were having a lot of fun but Lindsay said it was too much for her to handle , and she wanted to go back to the boat . We drop her off and then Frank and I get real crazy . Fucking LOVE wave runners . We go back to the boat and hand off the wave runner so somebody else . We get back in the boat and continue to do what we do best . Drink . We are all ready to go tubing now . We head back to the dock , pick up John 's tubes ( Sorry John for stealing your shit ) , tie them up and head out . Lauren and Jeff go out first , and then it was Vaughan and my turn . We are out there and I 'm jumping the wake and doing barrel rolls and whatnot . My first fall , I tried to jump Vaughan , my tube clipped his , and I went kerplunk . Vaughan fell the second time , and we went out for one more run . Phoebe is whipping us real hard one turn , Vaughan is holding on for dear life . His arms are fully extended , half his body is in the water , so I raise my foot , and give one swift kick to his tube . Annndddd boom goes the dynamite … down goes Fraiser . His tube flips sporadically and he 's boom roasted . I was geeking out … I felt bad but it was too funny to pass up . Both Vaughan and I get back to the boat and we are exhausted . My forearms are rock solid and tense from holding on while doing jumps , barrel rolls , and being whipped . Frank wants to go but there isn 't anyone that wants to go at the caliber level that we go at . Fuck it . I 'll go again . I hop back onto the tube trying to be a trooper so Frank can have a good time . Quickly after going , I realize that I cannot hold on . My arms hurt so bad that I cannot hold on . I was trying to stick it out as much as I could before having to straight up let go . After that workout out , my forearms and grip strength would be so great , I could squeeze cum from a rock . That strong . Abomb - 1 … Arnold Schwarzenegger - 0 . Get at me you old fat governor . I take Frank and Phoebe on a tube ride , and then take Lindsay and Phoebe on one . We head on back to the dock . We are pulling into the dock and we see on the patio a shit ton of people . Sweet baby bird ! We can 't fit all those people into the boat . We go up and greet Russell and his gf , Joey and Abby , Angela and her bf , and 4 of Abby 's friends . I find Russ just chillin real hard in a chair , no shirt , sunglasses on , with a bottle of champagne in his hand . Boss status right there . Extra dry Andre champagne . You sir know how to party . I bet you could put that on a resume . ' I drink extra dry champagne from the bottle . ' Boom … ur hired . No questions asked . Anddd no need for a drug test … if you 're that big of a boss , you definitely smoke weed . Lindsay and I go out on the wave runner and take turns trying to whip each other off . We come back in and hand the wave runner off to Phoebe and Jskank and let them go out . I run up to my car to snag my Techno / Dance Party CD because … well … it 's the greatest CD on this side of the Mississippi . After some time J - retard - Frank and Phoebe come in . Phoebe is holding her forehead for some reason . When they get on shore , Phoebe 's got a big ' ol goose egg in the middle of her forehead . Jesse - " That was me . I was going 50 or so and turned sharply . We both flew off and she whacked her head against the back of mine . " Jesse turns to me … " I 'm such an idiot . I literally thought I killed her . We went off and I landed on top of her and all I could think is … well … Phoebe is dead . " Phoebe always ends up getting hurt , whether it 's getting hit by a water bottle in the mouth on her b - day and having to go to the hospital , or getting kicked in the face and chipping a tooth while tubing , to winding up with a golf ball on her forehead from wave runner adventures . She was such a trooper though , didn 't complain one bit , and went on with her night . Not too many girls could do that . That 's why Febes is the shit . Luckily it tonight was Phil Vassar , so she could wear a cowboy hat to cover up her lump . Since we couldn 't go out on the boat , Mista Clarence and I decided to make our own fun . Tarrence grabs a Red Stripe and Modelo and we find a paddle board . But where is the paddle ? Don 't know … looks like I 'm going to have to get innovative . I find a water ski and an old 2x4 piece of wood . Tarrence tested out the ski , it was too heavy , so we decided to use the wood . We are both straddling the board and I 'm trying to paddle with a 2x4 . Where is John when you need him ? ? John is part Chippewa , or Sioux , or Navajo … one of those I think , I mean … he 's been to Pottawattamie Casino before , so that should count as something . He could have carved up a solid oak paddle from a tree with the use of only an arrowhead . That Indian . We are trying to paddle with a beer in our hands . The board was not meant for two people . We are trying any way possible to get this bitch movin . We keep falling and stepping all over these muscle infested rocks . My foot afterwards looked like it was ran through a fucking cheese grater . Tarrence gets off and I am just a lone ranger on the board … just me , my modelo , a board , and piece of wood … what else could a man ask for . I go out and just chill in the middle of the lake drinking by myself . After some while we decide to clean up and leave because Russell 's , Joey 's , and Tyler 's siblings are having a combined high school grad party at Joey 's house … fucking free booze . You know we can 't pass that up . We head on back home , Frank picks up his money and ID and we heaWe clean up back at my house , and head on over to Joey 's . We walk through the golf course and it 's a beautiful evening . We get to Joey 's , grab a beer , say hi to everyone , and grab some grub . I frumpin love BBQ pulled pork . Save me a piieecce of dat Corn ! All the girls show up and we head on back to my house to get sufficiently drunk and whatnot . About 8 of us hop into Lindsay 's convertible and drive to my house . We drink , drink more , and … probably drink a little more . We pile into my mom 's van and head on to the busses . We stop a gas station to get 5 - hour energies ; because Summerfest day # 4 in a row can do some work on ya , especially since I was Daging ( that 's Day Raging for those of you who have never taken a hamster pull from a 1 . 75 of Kesslers ) We get on the bus , head on down to Sfest , sing songs on the bus ride down , and take pulls on pulls on pulls . The bus ride is the most under - appreciated part of Summerfest . When you get a good group to go down , you can have a lot of fun in 30 minutes . You can also get wickedly drunk as well . We always start singing songs to get the whole bus involved . It 's awesome … we 're awesome . We get down to sfest and I 'm not feeling up - to par on my drinking abilities . I believe that is due to the ratio of how much alcohol I 've consumed to the amount of sleep I have gotten over the past 4 days . Probably 40 + drinks : 15 hours of sleep . Recipe for disaster . We lose everybody right away … typical , so Tommy , Kate , Lindsay , and I head to Phil Vassar . We couldn 't get great seats , and we were trying to get VIP , but no luck . We run into B - rad , and he has hookups up the shitter . He says he can get us up on the Captain 's Deck where there is basically free beer . We say : sounds like a frumpin plan , and head over there . We get these wrist bands that had 3 ' free beer or wine cooler ' tabs on it . We find a table with some playing cards on it , grab some beers , and just chill . B - rad says he has to go meet up with other people , and hands us a mound of free drink tabs . Wo . We didn 't have to pay for a single drink that entire night . We just sat there , chit chatted , played cards , with Stephen Marley playing in the background . Chill . Just chillin hard listening to Stephen play his father 's songs with the moonlight in the background . Tommy , Kate , Frump , and I go to the rocks to smoke a little snackaroo . After that I was at a really good state of mind . We go back to the busses and head on home . The line of course was super fucking long and it took forever . Tommy 's dad drove us back to my house where we all were staying . I walk into the kitchen to find my cousin on the floor with no pants on . ' NOAH ! What the fuck is up ? " He was stumbling all over the place , just wasted … probably off 5 shots , ahhh rookies . It was getting late Lights out . Freshman year of college is when it started . I remember it was on a sunday when my friends and I were trying to remember what had happened that weekend . We kept saying . . . friday . . . what did we do on friday again ? We would remember but some stuff was forgotten . I realized I never wanted to forget these times , so I started to make a list of what we did that night . At first it was bullet points . . . bullet points turned into paragraphs , and paragraphs turned into stories . . . and the Drunk Diary was born .
|
the bungalows surrounding Booger 's place , immigrants from everywhere slept off beer and garlic when they weren 't working , which was pretty often , according to my mother . My father always worked , digging graves with the other men , most of them , like him , from Ireland . He dug graves because in his previous profession some big Bulgarian broke his nose , after which my mother ruled no more boxing . He 'd been undefeated until then . was ten in 1948 and I 'd climb Booger 's fence whenever I was certain he was gone for the night . Once inside the yard I 'd climb the piles of coal until I got tired and then I 'd go home and take a bath before my father saw me . My mother never let my father see me cloaked in the soot of Booger 's coal and she always made me promise never to go back to Booger 's again . But Mass and sent me off with a caution to be good . I always went to Mass , every Sunday , and I would pray and sing the hymns and usually I was good . This time the weather was so nice I decided to go to Booger 's instead . He wouldn 't be there on Easter . It would just be the pigeons and me . I was gone for hours that day , and since no one knew where I was , a family furor flared . At where were you ? " he asked . I told him I 'd been sick and that I figured with all the polio going around , I didn 't want to cripple anyone on Easter . Timmy accepted my explanation because we were all still praying in school for our classmate Mickey Kane , who had spent a year , so far , in an Iron Lung . " And " Molly , " he roared to my mother , with his hand gripping the back of my neck , " the little bastid says he went to Booger 's ! He never went to Mass ! " And then , despite my mother 's protests , he grabbed a belt from behind the attic door that had been hanging there for years , waiting for a felony like mine to occur . I knew right away what I had to do and so I dropped my pants and bent over at the waist as far as possible . Without a didn 't cry , gosh no , since tears would have brought additional licks . We were Irish , don ' tcha know , so we didn 't cry and we didn 't watch English movies on TV , either . The accents of the actors would remind my father of the Black and Tans , the English soldiers sent to fight in Ireland after the uprising . They imprisoned him on Spike Island , off the coast of Ireland , when he was just 16 . They grabbed him barefoot in a stream sneaking guns to the IRA . In 1920 , Irish boys ran guns for the IRA barefoot through the bogs and streams , provided they were big enough to carry them . Decades father would have loved that snow . Back in ' 67 , when we got 30 inches of it , some of it in drifts as high as Booger 's coal , he was just delighted by the winter scene , so much so that he had the two of us shovel frantically for hours , albeit in our usual Trappist silence . When flair , that the hairs in his nose were frozen . Thank God my mother had his tea ready , steaming hot , as it should be , in its cozy next to his favorite chair . And she gave me lots of cocoa , swirling hot with a zillion marshmallows floating on the top . Now every New Year 's Eve at midnight ( and this has been going on for years ) , I can see in the labyrinth of my mind those same marshmallows swirling when it 's time for me to raise my glass and toast the past - - Holy Week 1948 , the week my butt survived Booger 's slingshot and my father 's belt . " Praise the Lord , " I shout , " and pass the ammunition . " As the years go by , fewer guests know what I mean when I offer my toast . But most of them never had a chance to hear Jack Benny on the radio . The young ones always ask where I got my old fedora . A couple of them have even said I should have it cleaned and blocked . But most of them , I 'm certain , even though they went to college , never saw a relic . They think this old fedora is just a hat . Tim Murnane was born to parents who lived in a small brick bungalow in a lower - middle class neighborhood in Chicago . His father worked as an electrician for Commonwealth Edison Company and his mother stayed home , a not uncommon calling for a housewife and mother following the end of World War II . After a peaceful childhood , life for Tim as a teen - ager became more complicated . His father loved all sports , even those he didn 't fully understand , and he encouraged Tim to play all of them , even the sports he himself had been unable to play due to an injury as a child . In high school , Tim played baseball and basketball . It was basketball , however , that he really enjoyed . His father understood baseball because he followed the Chicago White Sox and used to take Tim to games . Basketball was another matter . His father didn 't understand much about the game . But he always showed up for games that Tim played even though he never said anything after a game , win or lose . One particular game , however , sticks out in Tim 's mind even to this day , many decades later . In Chicago at that time , there were park leagues to play in and if your team won its park league championship , your team advanced to the play - offs against teams from other park leagues . It was a very competitive environment . In 1954 , Tim 's team won its league and advanced to the playoffs . Their first game was far from their South Side neighborhood . It involved playing in a gym on the West Side and their opponents were a team of black teen - agers . Tim and his teammates had never been out of their neighborhood before and had never played against black kids . This was a time before black athletes began to make their definitive mark in sports . It was a very close game , with the score going back and forth . There were no racial overtones - - just two good teams trying to win . And the referees called a fair game . At halftime Tim happened to look up in the stands and he saw his father . Tim knew that he must have ridden three buses for an hour - and - half to get to the game . As usual , he sat quietly in the stands , minding his own business and being careful not to " embarrass " his son by shouting or waving . This was before Little League gave birth to parents who today take an active interest in their child 's athletic achievements . Today , some parents coach their kids ' coaches during and after games . Tim 's team had a coach who wouldn 't have brooked parental interference . Besides , it wasn 't his father 's style to interfere . He just wanted to watch the game and see how well his son would do . The second half of the game was as tight as the first half , both teams racing up and down the court and scoring . Defense wasn 't a big deal back then . The team with the best shooters usually won . Tim was having a good night , scoring and rebounding . So were his teammates . But the other team was doing well also . With 15 seconds left in the game , Tim was fouled and went to the free throw line . His team was down by one point and Tim had two free throws coming . He missed both of them and his team lost by one point . Tim was the high scorer for his team , scoring more than 26 points at a time when that was considered a lot of points . After the game , the coach talked with the team in the locker room and did his best to make the kids feel better . Losing was not something they were used to . That night they had almost beaten a better team . The coach was proud of them . Tim was sitting on a folding chair by his locker when his father walked into the room . His father commiserated briefly with the coach . And he also said a few nice words to some of Tim 's teammates as he made his way over to his son . Tim had no idea what his father wanted because he had never talked to him after a game before , whether the team had won or lost . Maybe he had been impressed by how many points Tim had scored although other aspects of the game would have been a mystery to him . Finally his father was standing in front of him with a mystified look on his face . He bent over to whisper what he had to say . Tim can still hear his words today . " Why did you miss those free throws ? " Tim had no idea what to say . Some free throws go in , others bounce away . The tone in his father 's voice , however , left no doubt that he thought Tim should have made them . This was a major moment in Tim 's relationship with his father . He knew now that his father would always expect the best from him . So a few years later when Tim came home from college with semester grades that were all A 's and one B , he thought his father would be happy . College was tough back then - - no cheap A 's were handed out . " Why did you get the B ? " Tim 's father asked after looking at his grades . He gave Tim the same mystified look he had given him when he had asked him about the missed free throws . he could put a sentence together . He didn 't have to talk , however , since he was the only customer left and there was an hour to go before closing . All he had to do was tap on the bar twice in front of his empty away from Sammy . They ordered a couple of beers . They seemed to be concerned about something and Sammy always liked to listen in on other people 's conversations . will we get more room ? We 're not talking real estate here , " the little fellow said . " No one thinks this place exists anyway . They think we 're a women arguing the other day about where cats and dogs go . I know we don 't have any cats and dogs . Where would we put them ? Pretty soon we 'll didn 't know what to make of all of this . He wished he wasn 't drunk so he could join the conversation but all he could do was listen . The two men finally left and Sammy told himself he 'd come back tomorrow night and ask the bartender who the hell those two guys were . Then he tapped on the bar twice in front of his empty glass . Our society 's applauding the Bruce to Caitlyn Jenner gender transition , A majority in favor of the nationalization of marriage equality , LGBT education for our children pre middle school ! Anything goes ? Let 's take a look and see . While for a long time older men with younger women have been accepted , Cougars , liberated ladies , are now " behaving " the same , Today , we draw the PC line at selective protection of the kiddies , For what most recently Josh Duggar and Dennis Hastert have been branded with blame . At the same time , we push the embrace of the Internet ever younger , Growing lives awash in " plastic " and " porn " in so many ways , The more sex and violence polluting our " must " media , the better , Slippery slope contours shaping how nascent generations will conduct their days . Logically , exposing a child to anything he or she is not ready to handle , Can be as damaging as inappropriate physical contact between and adult and a boy or a girl , When we label one underage abuse and the rest an evolution in " normal , " we 're as confused . . . . . . And complicit as those against whom pejoratives we currently judgmentally hurl . Karen Ann DeLuca Homer remembers it well . He had been out in the fields plowing and his wife came out and waved him into the house . His daughter was calling from the city . She had a good job there but she was calling with bad news . A doctor had confirmed she had stomach cancer . He said she should begin chemotherapy and radiation immediately but Laura wasn 't sure that was the right thing to do . person . They 're able to tune into your condition . Vibrations of some kind . They cost a lot but they 're worth it . I 've been talking to mine ever since I came to the city . She was right when I had a bad cough . I still have my tonsils . I hope she 's right again . I bought a book on the diet and I 'm going to start on it immediately . Some good recipes if you like vegetables . " was not happy about the cancer or about the medical intuitive and he could tell that Laura had explained everything to his wife before she had called him in to talk to Laura . His wife was sitting at the kitchen table sobbing in her apron . She had been canning strawberry jam for the winter . this doesn 't sound too good to me , " Homer said . " I think it would be smarter to follow the doctor 's advice and maybe pray a little as well . Or eat the Mediterranean diet and follow the doctor 's advice at the same time . With cancer , chemotherapy and radiation are standard treatments . Your hair will grow back in . You can come back home and let it grow in down here . You 've been working there long enough to get medical leave . Please think about it . There 's too much at stake here . " was going to go on the diet and see if it worked . If not , maybe then she would try chemotherapy and radiation even if her hair fell out . And she promised her father if it did , she would come home to let her hair grow back . Homer never forgot that phone call . A year later , almost to the day , he repeated every word of it silently to himself on the ride from the church to the cemetery . His wife sat next to him crying . When they buried Laura , she still had all of her brilliant red hair . I 've told my wife too many times , the meaning of any poem hides in the marriage of cadence and sound . Vowels on a carousel , consonants on a calliope , whistles and bells , we need them all if a poem is to tickle our ears . Otherwise , the lines are gristle and fat , no meat . true when we both know the poem has no message and I simply want to hear the music , assuming there is some . Miles Davis made a living doing the same thing in jazz clubs . Why can 't I have a little fun and give it a fetal , not final . Afterward she said that reading this poem was no different than reading all the others I had given her over the years . She had thought I 'd improve by now . Maybe I should switch to fiction or the essay , she suggested , or else stick with editing the manuscripts of others since I had made a decent living as an editor for many years . " You 've well taken , I thought , point well said . The nuns for whom I toiled all those years in grammar school would have liked my wife . They might have even recruited her to join their order . I quit writing ? Start drinking ? After all I quit drinking when I started writing and I discovered that the hangovers from both were equally debilitating . The following morning she said , " You should never quit writing . " At should write even more , " she said , " all day and all night , if need be . After all , my line about the ' kaleidoscope and harpsichord ' needs a poem of its own . It 's all meat , no gristle , no fat . "
|
This blog has been about six months in the making . It began percolating last fall . The Women 's Bible study I teach fueled it further . The tipping point was a couple of weeks ago . A couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with a good friend . We were talking about some serious stuff … struggles , sins , victories … it was an incredibly real and raw conversation . She , too , is getting her physical health under control . She said what I have thought , said , and written many times over the past nine months , " It seems as I get one area of my life under control , three other areas that need attention pop up . " I call this Whack - a - Mole freedom . You know the game at a carnival or Dave and Busters where you have a mallet and you have to hit the mole in the head ? And once you hit one mole , two more pop up and pretty soon those stupid moles are popping up everywhere ! And by the time the game is over , you are exhausted . That is exactly how many of us view following Jesus . This is how I have felt for years . We are constantly trying to fix ourselves , to make ourselves presentable to God and to the world . It is similar to pulling weeds . We pull one out and notice five more that need to be pulled instead of focusing on the beautiful rose bush that is in full bloom with vibrant reds and a fragrance no perfume could ever match . We focus on our stuff instead of the really beautiful work Jesus is doing in and through us as we simply follow Him . I have been discouraged , exhausted , frustrated , and angry all in the name of trying to be and do better . And we Christians know how to spiritualize it . We call it becoming holy . Or constantly remind ourselves that we are Jesus ' representatives in the world . The pressure can be overwhelming . But when do we enjoy Jesus ? And the abundant life He called us too ? When do we live with joy and peace ? When do we stop worrying whether we are good enough ? One of my favorite books , How People Grow by Dr . Henry Cloud and Dr . John Townsend says , " Imagine that : Doing good , enjoying good , and not even thinking that we were " good " . Instead of being concerned with " Am I good enough ? " we just lived and experienced life ? " God simply wanted us to live life , not worry about whether we were good enough . Not worry about whether we were enough . I am tired of not being enough . Sin screwed that up for us , but Jesus fixed it . That 's the beauty of the cross . I am not saying we do not have to continue to grow . I am the most introspective person you will meet . One of my life mottos is , " If you are not growing , you are dying . " I am on a quest to be physically and financially fit by 50 . I have to address some demons in my closet . But I 'm not doing it for someone else … to get their acceptance , respect , affection . I am doing it because I want to live this life fully , with joy and peace . And these areas will hinder me . Jesus shows us how to live like that . Free . Unhindered . Arms wide open . Soaking up and enjoying every moment . Weeds need to be pulled . Moles need to be whacked on the head . I get it . But we don 't have to go looking for them . When they come our way , God will show us . And we deal with it . And in the meantime , we simply enjoy our relationship with Jesus and His people . Jesus really did mean it when He said that He came to give us abundant life . I have realized that I will never , ever have it all together here on Earth . No one will . Striving for perfection kills . I am 47 years old . I love Jesus . I have made some horrific mistakes and committed some heinous sins . I am tired of trying to whack the guilt down . I am tired of trying to fix myself . I am tired of thinking that I am too much . I am tired of toning down my personality and who God made me . I am forgiven and I choose and am choosing to enjoy my relationship with Jesus and the people in my life . I am choosing not to punish myself by closing myself off to certain areas of life because I feel like I don 't deserve it . I love the beginning of a new year . I love reflecting on all God did in the previous year and look forward to all the challenges and adventures that await in the coming year . My birthday is January 10th so it seems like everything is new at the beginning of the year . I love it . It truly is a new page . Every year , I pray to God for a Scripture and word that will set my path for growth for the year . I ask Him , " What new thing do you want to do in me this year ? In what area do I need to grow ? " Last July I started working on my Masters in Strategic Leadership . ( I have discussed much of this in a previous blog ) . It is the best decision I have made in a long time . I love learning and I am very impressed with the program I am in . The very first class we took was The Personal Life of a Leader . Basically , the premise is if you want to be a great leader and lead others well , you first need to learn how to lead yourself . This class changed my life . My dear friend and mentor , Harriet Mouer , always tells me that you cannot say something is life changing until six months have passed . It is only then if you can see if the event 's impact went beyond your emotional reaction and led to changed behavior . This class met her criteria for changing your life . At our residency and in our reading there was a lot of talk about finishing well ; ministry and life . We had to identify things that would keep us from finishing well and make a plan with measurable goals for the next two years ( the duration of the program ) on how to grow in these areas . After prayer and contemplation , the two areas I identified were physical and financial fitness . Since I was in middle school , I have struggled with my weight . I have tried every diet known to mankind . Atkins , Southbeach , Cabbage Soup ( what ? ! ? ) , Weight Watchers ( multiple times ) , the apple diet ( made that one up on my own … don 't ask … I was 13 ) , starving myself , and the list goes on and on . I knew if I was going to finish well , I needed to get serious about taking care of my body . I want my body to last as long as my mind . I want to be able to serve Jesus with all of me until my last breath … as much as it depends on me . I also want to be an example to my nieces and youth that watch me . It matters how we treat our bodies . So I made an appointment with my doctor . I just have to say that I have the best doctor in the world . He is compassionate , honest , and firm . I told him everything I wrote in the previous paragraph . I asked him to send me to a nutritionist ( and I have tried this before as well ) . He told me " no " . I was shocked . He went on to explain that I would count calories , get frustrated , and give up . He was right . This was my pattern my whole life . He wrote down a podcast to listen to and asked me to give NSNG ( no sugar , no grain ) a try . He explained the science of it and why he thought it would help me . After much research ( that is still ongoing ) , I changed how I ate beginning August 24 . I have lost 40 pounds , dropped 4 sizes and feel the best I have ever felt in my life , and it seems so easy . Non - restrictive . My schedule is pretty busy and I now have endless energy . I am way more productive and happy . I am working my plan on financial fitness . That is a little harder simply because my profession does not pay as well as others ( but there is no way I would do anything else ) . At the end of December , I led a team of 19 on a missions trip to Jamaica . Before we left , I was praying for the trip and some of the teaching I would be doing . My Scripture for the year came to me one morning in the shower right after a time of studying for the trip . The Scripture was Habakkuk 3 : 17 - 19 which says : Our missions team . This is the third trip I have led there . We live as one with our Jamaican brothers and sisters up in the bush . I will blog more about the trip later . ❤ Love each person in this picture . This was at an infirmary we visited . There is nothing like it in America . Very sad . I felt the Lord speak to me that this coming year would have some challenges and from the beginning , I needed to determine that no matter what comes my way , I will be thankful to God and choose joy . Every day . How I walk and honor God in adversity is important . He will not let me slip and He will give me the leg strength to climb the mountains in my way . A couple weeks before Christmas I had my first mammogram . On Christmas Eve ( after God had given me the Scripture ) I received a letter that they found something suspicious and I needed further diagnostic testing . No phone call , just a letter . On December 27 , nineteen of us from my church left for a missions trip to Jamaica . I was leading the team . The last phone call I made before boarding for Montego Bay and being off the grid for ten days , was to schedule further testing when I got home . I didn 't think much about it while I was gone . The trip was physically challenging and very busy . And healing was a primary focus of the trip . God taught us a lot . It was an amazing time . God did so much in and through the team . The Monday after I got back from Jamaica , I had further testing done . The doctor informed me that what they saw required a biopsy to be scheduled . I have microcalcification in my right breast . More than likely it is not cancerous . Even if it is , it will have been caught so early that all that will need to be done is surgery removing the area affected with no chemo or radiation . I was very surprised . Breast cancer does not run in my family . Diabetes , heart disease , and alcoholism 😉 do , but not breast cancer . My biopsy is next week . I am not afraid or overly worried . I am surprised . And frustrated . I don 't have time for this . It has made me think through some things . I have always loved life . The great poet of our day , Bruce Springsteen , has a line in one of my favorite songs , Badlands , that states , " For those who had a notion , a notion deep inside , that it ain 't no sin to be glad you 're alive " . Earlier in the song he sings , " Poor man wanna be rich , rich man wanna be king , and a king ain 't satisfied until he rules everything " . I think Bruce 's point is to enjoy where you are . Don 't keep wishing for more . You end up wishing your life away . Be glad you 're alive . Enjoy the moment . Enjoy hanging with your kids instead of doing the dishes . Stop and appreciate a sunset . Count the blessings you have , not fixating on what you don 't have . I truly am grateful every day to be alive . I think because I have lost so many family members and have walked through the valley of the shadow of death numerous times and grief has been a constant companion to me that I have learned cherish life . I am not in a hurry to get out of here . I know the purpose for which I was born has not been completely fulfilled . And there are still so many dreams that I believe God has given me . A couple of months ago , Pastor Jim was talking about a picture God had given him during worship . It was a picture of someone wringing out a towel or a sponge . You know when you spill water and you are cleaning it up , you have to wring the water out so you can fill up with more water ? That 's the picture of how God wants us to live our lives . He wants us to wring out every possible purpose , plan , and gift He gives us . Nothing is wasted . He wants to get the most out of our lives . I want to get the most out of my life so I can give it away . So this year I have started telling people what I admire and appreciate about them . ( Some of my family and friends have already received sappy texts or cards or a Facebook message from me ) . When I get good service at a restaurant , I am emailing the manager . I wanted to hug my doctor today when I saw him , but I thought that might be inappropriate ; ) . And you know those thoughts you sometimes have when you notice a kind act ? " Wow , that was sweet " " He 's a good man " " She 's a great mom " but we never say them ? I am choosing to say them . In the moment . I think 2017 may be filled with a lot of kumbaya moments 😉 I am choosing kindness and joy over hate and despair . I am choosing to learn once again what it means to die to myself and live for Jesus and others . I marvel on how back in July how God got my attention to begin to take care of my body . If it were not for that two - year plan , I probably would not have had the physical and mammogram done this year . I marvel at the people He has strategically placed in my life to help me along the way … my doctor , my professors , Vinnie Tortorich ( the NSNG guru ) … and the list goes on . I pray and thank God for them daily . No matter what happens this year , I am thankful for Jesus and this amazing life He has given me , I will daily choose joy and love over despair and hate . I will wring every moment of this life God has so graciously given me . Will you join me ? I have spent a lot of time swimming at the beach and floating on my raft this summer . Any time a couple of hours open up , I grab my swimsuit and head to the beach . I keep a blanket , towel , and raft in my car at all times . It has been so hot and humid this summer that walking and biking have been replaced by swimming . Last Saturday , I had an unexpected few hours free so I thought I would go to the beach and swim and lay out for a couple of hours . I have a routine when I get to the beach . I sit on my blanket for a while and watch the waves crash to shore . I also people watch . After I get hot enough , I take my raft and swim out to the buoy and then hop on my raft and drift back in . This usually takes me about 45 minutes . There are markers I use to see if I am making progress . To my left is a flag pole , to my right is the break wall . There are three buoys straight ahead and I aim for the one on the left . Every other time I have come this summer , there have been white caps on the lake which makes it fun but tiring . I need my markers to see if I am making any progress . And sometimes the waves are so big , I can 't swim that far out . This particular day was perfect ! It was hot with a slight breeze . The sky was blue and white , fluffy clouds dotted the sky . There were lots of boats , jet skis , sailboats , and kayaks out on the water . Lake Erie appeared relatively calm . In fact , I made it out the buoy the quickest I have all summer . Once out there , I hopped on my raft and began to drift like I always do . I watched the clouds rolling across the sky and listened to the jet skis and boats zip around the lake . The breeze was amazing . It was perfect . After a little time had passed , I sat up on my raft to see how close I was to shore . I was surprised to find myself still by the buoy . I realized the current was keeping me out by the buoy . I was in a riptide . I slid off my raft and began to swim to shore . It was not happening . The current had me trapped where I was . I was not panicking . Yet . I had my raft so I hopped back on and floated awhile longer . I began to notice I was drifting closer to the break wall . I realized I would probably end up hitting the break wall or getting sucked out further into the lake so I got serious about getting to shore . I was on my raft kicking and making no progress . After awhile of this , I got a terrible cramp in my right calf . It was a Charlie horse kind of cramp , the type that wakes you up in the middle of the night screaming in utter agony . I had to stop and massage the cramp out . Once I did that , I assessed my situation . I realized I just needed to head towards the break wall and not worry about the rocks or whatever was living among the rocks of the break wall . Eventually , I could touch bottom and walked the rest of the way to shore . I collapsed on my blanket when I got to shore . My arms and legs were tired and sore . I looked at my phone and realized I had been trapped out there for an hour and forty - five minutes ! ! ! ! We get stuck in the riptide of hopelessness . It overwhelms us and makes us want to quit swimming . We have convinced ourselves this is how it will always be . We get stuck in the riptide of anger . We are mad at God , mad at family , mad at friends , and mostly we are mad at ourselves . And we lash out at everyone around us . And we choose to stay stuck instead of forgiving and allowing ourselves to be forgiven . We get stuck in the riptide of pride . We refuse to ask for help because of what others may think . We get stuck in the riptide of fear . We are so afraid of the " what - ifs " that it paralyzes us and makes us stop dreaming and taking risks . Jesus can get us back to shore . He truly is the lifeguard of our souls . He has given us everything we need to break through the riptides of our hopelessness , anger , pride , fear , and sin . We need to let go and trust Him to do it . It took work to get me back to shore on Saturday . My arms and calves were sore for a few days after my time stuck out on the lake . I was also sunburnt . All reminders of the cost of getting out of the riptide . The Cross is our reminder of the cost Jesus paid for us so we can get out of sin . Trust Him to bring you safely to shore . I lost my Aunt Wilma this week . She was my dad 's sister and was 97 . She was the last of 7 . With her passing , I have no parents , aunts , uncles , or grandparents left . It makes me sad . I have lost a lot of family over the past 15 years since I moved back home including my dad and one of my brothers . And I have officiated most of the funerals . These past few weeks , I have missed my brother , Jerry , terribly . His birthday and death anniversary have both been within the past month . When I read through my journals from when I was a kid and teen , he was the one I would always talk to about family stuff . He always listened and made me feel like what I felt mattered . And he let me do some crazy things . I also lost my mom the summer before my Senior year of high school . She was 46 . I just turned 46 this year . I never realized how young 46 was until I was 46 . I faced this year with some angst and trepidation . I knew it was irrational but I was relieved when I passed the mark of having lived longer than my mom . I will fear no evil ; For You are with me ; Your rod and Your staff , they comfort me " . I have walked through the valley of the shadow of death many times . Each time , God walked with me . He never left . Each time , I learned to rely on and trust Him more . And instead of living a life of sadness and depression , it has made me enjoy life to the fullest . It has taught me to be grateful for each day I have because I know how fleeting and precious life is . Living in the shadow of death has pushed me to take risks . Life is too short to wonder " what if ? " . Walking through the valley has also taught me to forgive quickly and let go of offenses right away . You have no idea when someone will no longer be with you . A couple of weeks ago , I stopped to see a man I respect and love deeply in the nursing home . He has only been in a short time . And he knows he is not going home . As I visited with him , he asked me about a certain Scripture in the Bible that talks about Heaven . And he asked what I thought it would be like . And we just talked . And cried . I asked him if he was afraid to die . He said " no but it is not as easy as you think it is when you are younger . When it 's far off , it doesn 't seem real but now … " He didn 't deny he was having a hard time but in the midst of the pain and grief , he honored God . I think that is how we are all supposed to live ! Honoring God and people even when it 's hard . He knows he will be with Jesus when he passes and as I prayed for him and said " Amen " , he just continued on praying Psalm 103 " Bless the Lord , o my soul , and all that is within me , bless His holy name . " Death is real . No one gets out alive . Rich , poor , black , white , brown , male , female … no one . Two weeks ago , there was a Perseid Meteor shower that happens every August . This year was supposed to be exceptionally bright . I probably should have slept but 14 of us laid on the beach until 3 in the morning and saw 150 + meteors ! ! ! It was fantastic ! As we laid on the beach and told jokes and pointed out the constellations and the north star and marveled at God 's creation , I was overwhelmed with joy , contentment , and gratitude . At the funeral dinner yesterday , a family member and I were talking . I was telling her that I started my Masters at the end of July and how difficult it has been with my schedule . I told her I was second guessing myself because of the cost . And there 's my age . She said to me , " In five years from now , you would regret not doing it because it would have been finished . I tell my boys all the time to think 5 years ahead … and see if you would regret not doing it . " You cannot have too much education . Learning is a good thing . Each family member whose funeral I have officiated , I have gotten to know them better and in turn gotten to know myself better . They each left a legacy . Some were ordinary people living quiet , extraordinary lives . I say all of this to say this : Enjoy life . Don 't waste this one life you have been given on things that don 't matter . Love God , love people , take risks , and leave a legacy that adds goodness and kindness to the world . I had a moment Mother 's Day weekend . I went to put flowers on my mom 's grave . After I put the flowers in the vase , I sat on a bench under the dogwood tree which sits close to the family plot . It was a beautiful spring day . The wind was gently blowing and the smell of the dogwood blossoms were heavenly . I could see the ducks swimming in the pond and the covered bridge off in the distance . As I sat there , I thought about my mom passing away so young . She was 46 ( the age I am now ) . I thought of my grandma dying 16 months later . I thought of all the things I had lost represented in the grave stones laying at my feet . I reflected on how tough life really was growing up and all the things I lost at such a young age - security , innocence , confidence , self - esteem ( my childhood was not for the faint of heart ) . I most often view my childhood with rose - colored glasses and forget about how painful parts of it were . I am and always will be an optimistic realist . But as I sat there I could not dwell on all I had lost . I was so full of gratitude for all I have been given . For my life . My amazingly big , beautiful , messy , hard , wonderful , adventure - filled life . I love Jesus and the path He has set for me and the countless ways in which He has blessed me and the many ways in which He has delivered me . I am the sum of all I have been through . The good and the bad and the ugly . I have chosen to not become bitter but better and to allow the adversity and loss to work in my life to produce good ; to produce avenues in which God 's goodness can shine forth . I am reminded of one of my favorite songs by Rich Mullins " Home " : Life is so much more than I ever thought it could be . Are there still areas of my life in need of healing ? Of course . Are there still things I want to see happen ? Prayers to be answered ? Dreams to be fulfilled ? Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! But everything I thought I wanted in the past - He has so done above and beyond . And the things He did not allow , I can now see why and I thank Him for saying " no " . Thank you , Jesus , for this wonderful , full life you have given me . I will always choose to focus on what I have , not on what I don 't have . I have a roof over my head , food to eat , amazing friends and family … I get to share the love and goodness of my God … You Jesus ! Thank you for allowing me to appreciate the smell of lilacs and birds chirping and the sunshine as well as the rain . Thank you that I really can dance in the rain … and embrace all things that come my way … the good and the bad and the ugly . Amen . I started writing this blog back in December . I have hesitated pushing the publishing button because I have not wanted to offend anyone . Witnessing what is going on in our political process in this season has convinced me I need to continue to wrestle with this . And encourage other believers to wrestle with it as well . I hope you hang in there until the last line and choose to join the crusade to be kind . In the midst of our differences , let us err on the side of kindness . Today I am sad . And frustrated . And hopeful . Always hopeful . Anger has gripped our country in ways I have never seen before . It has been percolating for a long time . I believe the anger stems from fear . The terrorist attack in San Bernardino a couple of months ago seems to have been a tipping point . And the fear is manifesting itself in anger . Everyone seems so angry . I see it in our politicians , in our presidential candidates , and on our news shows and social media . The hateful rhetoric being thrown around causes me great alarm . I believe the Bible . I believe it is the inerrant Word of God . I am an ardent student of the Bible . I believe Jesus is the Son of God . I believe Jesus is still calling people to follow Him . In fact , I have given my life to serve His church and to make Him known . I am one of those Christians . Jesus is everything to me . He has completely changed my life . I believe He still changes lives and is relevant to this world we live in . I also believe Jesus is concerned about a lot more than our politics . The primary Christian witness since the late 80s have been a political witness . God help us . No wonder people have a warped view of who Jesus is . We are putting way too much hope in the political process . We are way too invested in it . We are sending people to our State Capitals and Washington D . C . expecting them to solve every issue . And we get mad when it does not happen . And we lash out at each other . We don 't even listen to one another anymore . We just want to be right . And fight . I am not one of those who put their heads in the sand . I vote in every election . I keep up on current events . I have served 8 years on City Council and currently serve on Planning Commission . I have loved politics since I was a kid . In 7th grade , my research paper was on the Great Depression . I wrote about the economic and social factors that led to it . I was 13 . In 8th grade , my research paper was on Watergate and how the events surrounding it led to President Nixon 's resignation . But over the past 5 years , I have been wrestling with what I believe politically . The first mayor ( a mentor ) I served with on City Council asked me " How does Jesus fit into politics ? " I have been asking myself that very question a lot lately . Does what I believe politically line up with what the Bible teaches ? I grew up in a democratic household . I switched in my early 20s to the Republican party . I have gone back and forth since then . I currently am a registered independent . People may say I am wishy - washy . I say I am trying to be authentic and figure out how my political beliefs line up with the Word of God . I am ardently pro - life . Or let me re - phrase that . I believe in fostering a culture of life . I have begun to filter every issue through this lens . This may seem very simplistic or naive to some reading this . I am ok with that . ( One of the conclusions I have come to over the past 5 years is we are all hypocrites in the political realm . No matter what side of the aisle you are on . ) Immigration : I am most appalled at the conversation surrounding this issue . I understand the safety issues . I agree taxes must be paid . But most of " those " people coming over the border are kids and teenagers fleeing drug cartel infested nations which our American drug habit is feeding . We bear some of the responsibility . I also remember reading somewhere instructions to take care of the alien , the widow and the fatherless among us ( tongue in cheek 😉 I 'm referring to the Bible . And when the government comes out and wants to increase the number of LEGAL immigrants by only 10 , 000 this year , we are upset about that as well . I recently read over 10 , 000 migrant children are missing in Europe . The fear is many have been absorbed into the sex trafficking trade . Christians should be leading the efforts to rescue and care for these kids . And our policies as a nation should assist in these efforts . Environment : I am a firm believer in taking care of what God has entrusted to us . If I really believe in a culture of life , I want safeguards to help protect people from getting cancer as much as possible so people can live the best , most fruitful and fulfilling life possible . I have been to several third world countries that do not have the regulations we have here in America . Burning garbage is the norm in most countries . I am grateful for the regulated air we breathe and the water we drink . What is happening in Flint , Michigan affects us all . It can happen to any community . No child should be dying in 21st century America of lead poisoning . Being a follower of Jesus and being green really are compatible . God called us to be caretakers of the planet , not destroy it . I hope someday followers of Jesus would have the best reputation for loving people and taking care of the planet that houses those very same people . ( Pleases recycle 😉 ) Abortion : The right to life is THE fundamental basic right . Every life is valuable and created in the image of God . We wonder why life does not seem to be valued anymore in our country . It starts here . And politicians who change their stance on this issue just to win votes will never get my vote . You respect life or you don 't . All lives matter . Especially life in the womb . How we treat those who cannot help themselves show us the true character of our nation . The elderly , disabled , addicts , the unborn , the poor all deserve our care and concern . That is fostering a culture of life . Welfare , health care , social security : God helps those who helps themselves is not in the Bible . The Bible also does not put conditions on taking care of the poor . If I have to err , I am erring on the side of taking care of the poor . But with that being said , we have to be fiscally responsible and wise stewards of our resources . As a nation , we have to live within our means . But we elect who we are … individually we are not living within in our means , should we be surprised those who represent us are not as well ? Foreign Policy : We have been blessed as a country . We have the obligation to help people who cannot help themselves . If we do not lead , someone else will . And if we cannot defend ourselves , we cannot defend others . Our responsibility does not stop at our borders . Gun control : I believe we have the right to protect our lives and the lives of our loved ones . I grew up in a hunter 's home . I also believe we need to have a common sense approach to gun laws . But saying the right to bear arms is a God - given right is incorrect . It is a Constitutional Right . The Constitution is a very important document and adhering to it as a nation is important . But the Constitution is not the Bible . It seems to me the Church has merged Nationalism and Christianity together . In the Old Testament , this would be called syncretism . And the result is an ugly hybrid of what following Jesus should look like . I love my country . I am grateful to be born in America . I understand in other parts of the world I would not even be able to express my thoughts and opinions . A good friend called me the day after the shooting in San Bernardino . He is a " little " cynical . His response to the shootings was " we are screwed now . There is no hope of things getting better . " I disagreed and still do . The only person I do have control over is me . I choose not to live in fear . I choose to be kind and to make a difference in people 's lives . One person at a time . BUT I WILL CHOOSE TO DWELL ON GOOD THINGS . ALWAYS . What happened in California was horrendous . Two individuals killing 14 people in the name of their ideology and God . So needless and barbaric . My heart grieved for the families who faced the holidays without their loved ones around the table . My heart also grieves for the 6 month old baby girl growing up in the shadow of what her parents did . What I will dwell on is the man who shielded his co - worker and said " I got you " and gave his life protecting her . I will dwell on Dr . Michael Neeki who ran into the unknown to save lives before the area was secured . I will think about the first responders who time after time put others first . At the end of the book Mocking Jay ( the third book of the Hunger Games trilogy ) , Katniss who had and witnessed horrible atrocities and experienced terrible things says fear still grips her . Fear her kids will be ripped away from her and her life she has built will be destroyed . She combats this fear by playing a game . She recounts every good act she ever witnessed . And now , dear brothers and sisters , one final thing . Fix your thoughts on what is true , and honorable , and right , and pure , and lovely , and admirable . Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise . I choose to focus on the good in the world . I will not ignore the evil and put my head in the sand but I will not let it change me or become my focus . I will not cower in fear . When fear and anger dictate how we act , we have already lost . I will live life to the fullest , celebrate the good things I witness , and love people . I will be kind . Even to people who think differently than me . Especially to those who think differently than me . Will you join me ? As many of you know , especially those who follow me on Facebook , I recently got back from a trip to Niger , Africa . This missions trip was twenty years in the making . It has taken me awhile to write about it because life has been crazy since I have been back . I also wanted to read what I wrote at church before I put it on my blog . And a very cool side note is our local newspaper did a feature on my trip . The article in our local paper ! ❤ Niger is in Western Africa . It is consistently ranked 176 out of 177 countries on the UN 's Human Development Index . Life expectancy at birth is 46 years . There is a 15 % literacy rate and has the highest birth rate in the world . To say Niger is poor is an understatement . It is also 96 % Muslim . Niger is a hard country . Nothing glamorous about it . The whole time I was in Niger , I think I cried only once or twice . I honestly believe it was the grace of God . Those who know me , know I tear up . A lot . I say all of this to preface my journal entry from the trip home . This is what I wrote on the plane ride home : We are in the middle of our 32 hour trip home . The flight from Niamey to Istanbul was great . I had no one in my row once we left Mali and I was able to get some sleep . It pays to be short on an airplane 🙂 I am sitting on our 12 hour flight from Istanbul to Dulles . As soon as I sat down in my seat , I started bawling . I have not cried the whole time in Niger - I have no idea why I am crying … are they happy tears ? Sad tears ? A release ? I have no idea but it is so overwhelming , I can barely keep it together . Yesterday before we left , we stopped at a market to get gifts . I hate bartering . I 'm not good at it . We stopped at Zachary 's house on the way back to Cure . Zachary is a young man who converted from Islam to Christianity . Pastor Ali has been discipling him and he was with us for our whole trip , driving and watching over us . His whole family disowned him due to this decision . Last time Scott came , he stopped over Zachary 's Gran Family 's house and helped start the process of reconciliation . This time they brought the whole family together and asked Scott to preach the Gospel to them . They have seen the transformation in Zachary 's life . Each man of the family sat in a chair and received prayer . It was so incredibly powerful . It amazes me that our presence brings influence . Simply showing up changes lives . The same thing happened at David 's house during our first few days here in Niger . We went back to Cure and thanked our Nigerien part of the team . We then went and rode camels on a sand dune in the sub Sahara . I still don 't know where Pastor Ali and Scott found 18 camels . There is nothing touristy about Niger . It was a neat experience though I had never even ridden a horse before . The Camel scared me and the fact I could not communicate with my helper did not help matters . But I survived . When we got back to Cure to shower and get ready to head to the airport , our Nigerien brothers presented us with personalized necklaces of Niger with our names on them . It so touched me , knowing the hardship and poverty they face and they presented us with a gift . And I am headed back to a life of leisure . Even as I write this I am bawling . Crying over all I have seen and how inadequate and ineffective I feel and selfish . I want to see many come to Christ and see lives transformed but haven 't been holding up my end of the bargain with prayer . I want to spend my life for you , Jesus . I just don 't know what that looks like for me . I know I am doing some good things for the Kingdom of God but I want to do more . I need you to speak to me , Lord . I am crying again . We ate dinner just a little bit ago on the plane and I went to sleep afterwards with worship music playing in my ear . When I woke up , the Lord showed me a picture of me sitting at His feet , my head on His lap . And He asked me , " Heidi , tell me what you saw in Niger . " I saw extreme poverty . I saw an oppression so strong you could physically feel it . I saw a hard way of life . I saw a people living in filth . I saw children malnourished . I saw a nation not able to read or write . I saw a nation of women who have no value . I saw a nation with very few older men and women . I saw a land so hard , the people reflect it . I saw very little emotion . I saw how Islam is crushing people , giving them very little choice on how to live . I saw demonic oppression . I saw the reality of Heaven and Hell . But I also saw hope . And Jesus moving in real and powerful ways . I saw a people who are incredibly kind . I saw a neighborhood opened to the Gospel simply because of our presence . I saw a Muslim family ask for the Gospel to be preached . I saw God open the door for Scott to preach the Gospel on national television in Niger . I saw a generosity in a multitude of people giving out of nothing . I saw hope and glimpses of joy . I saw passion and drive . I saw every person 's name being taken for follow - up . I saw demons cast out . I saw the Gospel on the move . I saw a group of 18 people who would have never met in America - from all generations , genders and walks of life come together for the cause of Christ . I saw them putting themselves in hardship and others before themselves - all for the Gospel . I saw people taking smaller portions to ensure everyone had enough to eat . I saw a well fixed and a neighborhood blessed and children ecstatic for clean drinking water . I saw a civility and genuine kindness during a car accident . I saw an incredibly unselfish culture . I saw a man in a tree church healed of a scorpion bite . I saw a blind man receive his sight . What do I do with all of this ? How do I respond , Jesus ? Tell people what you saw , what I am doing and I want to do it in their lives as well . Tell others . Don 't be ashamed or afraid about what I can do . I know I am not done in Niger . The country and people are such a part of my heart . There is a lot of work to be done . Practical ways in which to show the love of Christ . Ways in which we can partner with them to bring a Gospel that is good news to the body , soul , and spirit . A dear friend and mentor of mine says " you cannot say something is life changing until after 6 months have passed . " And she is correct . We say a lot of things in the heat of the moment . But hopefully on May 15th , 2016 my actions will show my life has been forever changed by my time in Niger . I really want to be a part of God 's dream for Niger . A couple of weeks ago I drove over 1600 miles in 8 days … from the shores of Lake Erie , Ohio to the Outer Banks in North Carolina . I meandered through the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains and throughout the state of Virginia . I spent some time on the Blue Ridge Parkway and drove under the bridge in Chesapeake . The mountains were in peak season . The vibrant reds and yellows were absolutely breath - taking . The sunrises and sunsets I witnessed in Duck , NC were equally awe - inspiring . I am a nature girl . I feel closest to God in nature . Listening to the wind blow in the tops of trees or sitting on the beach , listening to waves crash fills me with such wonder . Give me a blanket on a beach staring up at the stars over any other type of entertainment and I 'm a happy girl . The Bible teaches in the book of Romans : Ever since the world was created , people have seen the earth and sky . Through everything God made , they can clearly see his invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature . So they have no excuse for not knowing God . " The heavens declare the glory of God ; the skies proclaim the work of his hands . Day after day they pour forth speech ; night after night they display knowledge . There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard . Their voice goes out into all the earth , their words to the ends of the world . " ( Psalm 19 : 1 - 4 ) These past nine months , I have helped lead a WIML Cohort . ( WIML = Women in Ministry Leadership ) . There were 12 ladies in the cohort from all around the nation . We would have monthly 2 hour conference calls centered around enhancing our personal growth and leadership skills . We read several books together . The ladies were also professionally coached during these nine months . The cohort culminated in a Summit at a beach house in Duck , North Carolina . All together , there were 21 ladies staying at the beach house . The theme was " Worth it " . Some of the sessions were risk is worth , leadership is worth it , healthy rhythms of life are worth it , Holy Spirit empowered ministry is worth it , and going for it is worth it . The times of worship were precious . It was amazing to see 21 women get to know one another . Hearing the laughter around the dinner table and each lady sharing their story made my heart so incredibly happy . We were meant to live life together . We live in an age where we think deep , lasting relationships can be cultivated over social media . It is not enough . Social media can help but it does not replace the dynamic of being together , face to face ; laughing together , crying together , encouraging one another . We must be living in community together . We need each other . Ministry can be hard . Life can be hard . We need each other to celebrate the triumphs and to mourn the losses ; to cheer each other on when we feel like giving up , to remind us that this crazy adventure God has us on is most definitely worth the sacrifice and the pain . And joy really does come in the morning . There is nothing more beautiful than community . No mountain or sunrise or sunset and anything else in creation can compare to the beauty of God 's people . The diversity and creativity displayed in each and every one of us is mind - boggling . And my time away at the beach house with 20 amazing ladies reminded me of this truth . Some of the best youth in all of the land . On my way to NC , I had to take some of our youth to a college preview in VA . They are more beautiful than the mountains behind them . At the college preview , I got to spend time with the 3 of these amazing young adults . I have known them since they were kids and have watched them grow up . I am so proud of their walk with Jesus and where they are in ministry . During college I had class 8 - 12 and worked 1 - 9 , five days a week at a drug store . I had Tuesdays and Sundays off and those days were filled with student ministry and homework . Life was full . I would get up early to pray , eat lunch after class and take a 15 minute power nap . Power naps are how I survived college . We had chapel two times a week during college . There are very few chapels I remember from my four years at school but one in particular impacted me greatly . It was a chapel on missions . Since I first heard what a missionary was in high school I was enthralled with missions . I read books on missionaries ( Bruchko and Peace Child are two I highly recommend ) . I loved hearing the stories of people leaving everything familiar to go overseas and share the love and life of Jesus . And that morning John Amstutz spoke in chapel . He talked about the 10 / 40 window and all the people groups who have not heard or experienced the love and grace of Jesus . He introduced me to one of my favorite authors ( John Piper ) and how to use the Lord 's Prayer to pray . I lost the insert for my Bible many years ago . It makes me sad because I would love to use it when teaching on prayer . It revolutionized my prayer life and is still the model I use to pray . On my way to work , I sensed the Lord speaking to me ( that may sound weird to some of you … heck , it sounds kind of weird to me ) . I felt Him telling me I could have anything I asked of Him . I thought of my work and school schedule and bills and other things but I knew all of that stuff didn 't matter . I can still picture me driving down the highway . It was an audacious prayer of a Bible college student who believed she could change the world . I remember praying , " Lord , help the world see how good and loving You are … reach the people who need it the most and are the hardest to reach . And if at all possible , if it is not asking too much , use me . " And I prayed for a particular region of the world . Fast forward it 20 years . I have the amazing opportunity in November to go to Africa to be a part of this prayer being answered . There are 18 of us from our district going to a work our district started over 5 years ago . We will be in the heart of the 10 / 40 window . I cannot tell you how excited ( and nervous ) I am about going . I have all my shots , my visa application is in , and now we are preparing through studying , fasting and praying . God is slowly but surely providing my way and I am trusting the rest of what I need will come in when I need it . I say all of that to say this : Prayer works . God delights in answering our prayers that our born out of our heart for Him and for people . Don 't give up . Both these answers to prayers have been over 20 years in the making . And both are being answered in ways I could have never ever have imagined . Keep praying . And pray for us as we go to Africa . May God 's love and grace shine through us . 9 / 11 . This day impacts me every year . It impacts all of us . It has been 13 years since the planes were flown into the towers , the pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania . It seems like yesterday that our security was ripped from us and we realized that we were not untouchable on our own soil . It seems like yesterday we lost over 3 , 000 of us in less than an hour . It brings me to tears every year . It is a day of reflection for me . It is the day that began the closing of one chapter of my life , preparing for the next . I was living in Waynesboro , VA at the time on staff at a church . I had just come through a tough season . The battle had been challenging but I had overcome . But not without a cost . I was left with some war wounds … wounds that penetrated the deepest part …
|
You know who you are . You 're special . Admit it . Otherwise so many books , movies , graphic novels , and so much study would never go on about you . You have choices . Mine is to keep showing up . Keep saying ' Hello ! , ' making eye contact , walking , working , trying to make the world a better place . One day at a time . One step at a time . I am not going to avoid you . Nor will I even be able to try . In spite of your minority status , you do some travel , you do manage to spread out . High exposure is your game . Rock on . One day perhaps you 'll be famous , if you are not already . The occasion ? We gathered for a surprise party for my cousins , all staying at the Blue Sky Lodge in Carmel in a small suite . Cita and Traci drove down the coast road from Washington . They took their time , enjoying the trip . There were people at the anniversary party that I hadn 't seen since the days when the cuffs of my jeans would bring home a cup of good dirt from walking the rows between the ranch and ODello 's in my Keds . The days when there were too many blue bellied lizards to catch on the path near the creek side of the house , and everyone ran way too fast . The days of long twilight . Aunty Myrtle would make me either unroll those dungarees or else take them off entirely before coming in off the porch . We were at their wedding . We were really little , but pretty dedicated to being there . Marguerite had a horrible earache from doing too many underwater somersaults in the Blue Sky Lodge pool , and we had to leave the sanctuary with her in agony before the wedding ended - too much sobbing at any wedding is kind of distracting . We held her on our knees but she was inconsolable from the pain . She perked up a bit later , but it was awful to see her in such pain . Thus we missed the big finale . Cita and Traci are like two sisters I never knew I had . I keep trying to figure out how to get all of them ( and Owen ) in the same room together with my two original sisters to see what kind of a party it will be . Lots of talking and laughing is what I imagine . Stay tuned . Relationships in your rear view mirror may actually have been different than they appear . The close relationship you are in now is the one to keep your eye on . My Dad once told me that he thought " Death of a Salesman " was one of the saddest plays ever written . Told me that Grandpa had bad luck like Willy Loman ; Dad said that he 'd cried and left the theater the first time he saw this play ( as a young man ) , that he couldn 't sit through the second act . It reminded him too much of watching his father struggle professionally . I 've certainly had my own struggles with reinvention of a professional nature . I can relate to difficulty in watching the struggles of people I love and admire . While I understand this play is a tragedy , I agree with my cousin Don Luce ; older people have a different take on the arc of this story than young people . To young people , it looks like a life wasted . To older people who have struggled more , seen more , fought harder - it looks like a drama of a different kind . Perhaps the real tragedy is giving up hope , or of not learning from the mistakes of the prior generation , or from your own mistakes . It may be possible for me to sit through the play without bolting the theater in the manner of my ancestors . This script may not have aged as well as some of Arthur Miller 's other works . Perhaps Willy Loman would never have gotten angry or occupied Wall Street . Perhaps he 's lost in a way we no longer understand . But I don 't think watching this will devastate me at this stage of my life , in spite of how raw any ongoing struggle might be for me . Hope dies last . Today is a chance for change , another opportunity to learn and move on from mistakes . If we give that up , what are we left with ? What I understand is that my Grandpa worked hard and wrestled against the odds , much like everyone else did . He wasn 't born with a silver spoon in his mouth . If he ever had one in there , it was because somebody forgot to take it out after the photo opportunity . He had some breaks , and perhaps they didn 't pay off . At some points , the struggle was too overwhelming for one person - and Dad was a witness to some of those times . My Dad had his own struggles . I 've got mine . But in these pages , I read resilience , I read curiosity , I read initiative , and I read some double dealing on the part of Fate or other so - called Managers . I don 't think this makes Grandpa 's life a tragedy . Your life is a tragedy if that is all you define it as . I remember Grandpa as a man who loved to go fishing , and who generously took us along . Kenelm Tracy Winslow was a man who loved buckwheat pancakes ; he loved putting Barbasol ® on his Christmas tree to simulate snow in winter , and who would play with us on the Slip N ' Slide ® in the backyard in summer . Grandpa taught us how to shoot cat food cans off the back fence in his yard until Mom got mad and took the beebee guns away . He taught us how to be on the road on an adventure , since every time he drove us to Paradise we thought we were actually visiting Heaven . He taught us how to skip stones , to have fun , to relax . He held us close while he watched a game on the television . What may be tragic is that he didn 't grow wealthy from his hard work ; but does that take away the fact that he did the work , that he loved us , and that we got to share in his life ? My Grandpa , Kenelm Tracy Winslow , wrote the following piece probably as part of an application for something sometime after 1944 . I 'm not sure what he wrote it for , nor am I sure exactly when . We found the pages of typescript tucked into a scrapbook of my Mom and Dad 's wedding photos . More on that later . Grandpa 's bio / text follows the picture . 1 . Worked as a bank clerk with the Tracy Loan and Trust Company , Salt Lake City , Utah . Mr . R . L . Tracy , President of this company , is my uncle and I entered this bank at the wish of my mother and uncle . My salary was $ 125 . 00 per month . Resigned because of my desire to work independent of relatives . 2 . Worked as clerk in the San Francisco offices of the Reliance Life Insurance Company , where I made $ 100 . 00 per month salary . Left this position in an endeavor to better myself . 3 . ( a ) Worked as distributor of kitchen aluminum in the San Francisco Bay Area for the Dilver Aluminum Company of Pittsburgh . This lasted about six months , when a defaulting partner ruined the business . ( d ) When this dealership folded up , I sold real estate and rented houses for the D . L . Jung Company , Berkeley , California . During this period my salary and earnings ran about $ 1200 . 00 a year . 4 . ( a ) Started working for the Engineering Sales Company ( C . A . Watts ) of San Francisco at a salary of $ 125 . 00 a month . I was a stenographer . This was about 1926 . ( b ) Three months later I was handling the sales of this employer who as a manufacturer 's agent , handled such lines as Waukesha Motor Company , Waukesha , Wisconsin ; Racine Radiator Company ( later the Young Radiator Company and the Perfex Radiator Company ) of Racine , Wisconsin ; Pick Couplings , and Palmer B . Speed Reducers . My salary was increased to $ 150 . 00 per month . At this point I became interested in mechanical engineering , it being necessary to have a good working knowledge of design and performance characteristics of the Waukesha Motor Company 's truck and industrial engines , and to understand proper installation of the Racine Radiator Company 's truck and industrial plant cooling radiators . ( c ) After I had been with company a year my salary was increased to $ 175 . 00 per month , and I was given a 10 % interest in the business . During this period I traveled up and down the Pacific Coast soliciting business and assisting engineering departments in their installations of our products in such concerns as Fageol Motor Company ( truck and bus manufacturers ) of Oakland , California ; the McDonald Truck Manufacturing Company of San Francisco , California ; the DeMartini Truck Manufacturing Company of San Francisco , California ; the Rix ( compressor manufacturing company ) of San Francisco , California ; and other manufacturing companies in Los Angeles , Portland , and Seattle . I also assisted in the installation of 300 horsepower engines in the " Yarders " and " Donkeys " for the logging industry of the Pacific Northwest . At the request of the Waukesha Motor Company , I left this position and took a position with them . 5 . ( a ) I started working for the Waukesha Motor Company as an order and production clerk at a salary of $ 250 . 00 per month . I had under my direction six clerks . With the assistance and direction of Mr . J . B . Fisher , Chief Engineer , of the Waukesha Motor Company , I did home study on engine design and combustion characteristics . ( c ) In 1932 I was one of the five men chosen by the Waukesha Motor Company to assist the Co - operative Fuel research ( C . F . R . ) committee in research work on a method of determining the Octane number of gasoline . During this time I was constantly in the laboratory , or attending scientific lectures and meetings and at the same time , carrying on private research along these lines . During my association with this committee I wrote several papers on the fuel research work and delivered them before the Society of Automotive Engineers in Chicago , Baltimore , at A . S . T . M . meetings and at various universities throughout the country , including Purdue , Notre Dame , Lehigh University , etc . At Lehigh University Mr . H . V . Cummings , Chief Automotive Power Plant Section , U . S . Department of Commerce , and I were on the same program . We also worked together in C . F . R . work . ( d ) At the end of 1932 when the C . F . R . engine design and fuel testing procedure was established , I was placed in charge of this variable compression fuel research unit , which by this time had been adapted to both self ignition ( diesel ) and spark ignition ( gasoline ) units . In promoting the sale of this unit I visited and sold the unit to large fuel distributing Companies , fuel refineries , and at each place demonstrated and explained the principles on which the tests were conducted . When the American Society of Testing Materials adopted the C . F . R . unit as a standard , its sale became automatic . ( e ) In 1933 I was placed in charge of sales for Waukesha truck and bus , as well as industrial engines in the southern states , headquartering in Birmingham , Alabama . In this capacity I called on such manufacturers as used engines in the products they manufactured . This included pump , truck , shovel , and other manufacturers of construction equipment , boat works , etc . In all of these instances I assisted in the engineering of products which were being manufactured in so far as the engineering problems concerned the proper installation of the engine . I made installation of irrigation systems , drainage systems , and pumping plants , also power plants for creameries , ice cream plants , and stand - by units . ( f ) During this time the Waukesha Motor Company developed the Hesselman spark ignition diesel fuel burning engine and I became so familiar with the design of this unit that I was called upon to make installations and to service them , both from a commercial and experimental angle . This gave me a full and detailed knowledge of gasoline , natural gas , and diesel engines . I continued to read and study gasoline and diesel engines under the direction of Mr . J . B . Fisher and Mr . Arthur Pope , Chief and assistant chief engineers of the Waukesha Motor Company . ( g ) In 1935 I was asked to teach the design , the care and operation of the Diesel and Hesselman engines which the Waukesha Motor Company were then building . I was given complete charge of this work and carried on classes which were attended by engineers , mechanics , and executives of the various customers of the Waukesha Motor Company . I resigned in 1935 for a better position . At the time of leaving my salary was $ 250 . 00 per month . ( b ) I was immediately transferred to the Sales Promotion Department . Salary $ 225 . 00 per month . ( A bonus of ½ % went with the Industrial Branch Sales Manager 's position ) . In this capacity I carried on education work on the design and service and operation of the Spark Ignition Diesel Fuel Burning engine this company was using , and also upon the design and service care of the Tractors , Motor Patrols , and other items of road machinery they manufactured . During this time I visited every branch of the Allis Chalmers Manufacturing Company in the United States , sometimes carrying on classes of instruction to as many as 150 people . I also spoke before other organizations such as the Paving Engineer 's Club , Chicago , Illinois , and the Altoona Engineering Society , Altoona , Pennsylvania . My salary was increased to $ 275 . 00 . ( c ) In 1938 I was made Industrial Sales Manager for the Southwest Division at a salary of $ 325 . 00 . In this position I had under my supervision , seven industrial Branch house organizations , totaling 50 people , and indirectly I had working for me the dealer 's organization under these branches . Their total personnel were around 300 people . ( d ) In 1938 I was made Industrial District Manager for the state of Minnesota and North Dakota . In this capacity I worked directly with dealers in the two states who employed about 30 people . I assisted contractors in estimating their work , recommended proper machinery for the work they had to do , and assisted in setting up repair shops for both the contractors and the dealers where needed ; checked parts inventory and service records . I was paid a salary and bonus and earned between $ 4200 . 00 and $ 4400 . 00 a year . In May 1941 , I was discharged , no reason given , and was told I would be given a recommendation and listed as having resigned . Incidentally the company had just come through a severe strike , and their defense orders were such that very little equipment was available to the dealers . 7 . ( a ) In June , 1941 I went to work as an expeditor for the Procurement and Expediting Section of the Zone Construction Quartermaster 's Office , Omaha , Nebraska . I handled construction machinery . I was given this appointment by executive order # 3564 of October 8 , 1940 , and given a rating as Engineer ( p - 4 ) Salary $ 3800 . 00 per annum . 8 . ( a ) On April 21st , 1942 the 8th Civil Service District , St . Paul , Minnesota wired me that the Office of Emergency Management requested my transfer from the U . S . Engineers . I accepted the transfer and took the position of Administrative Officer in the office of the State Rationing Administrator ( Grant McFayden ) Lincoln , Nebraska . My civil service classification in this position is an Administrative classification of CAF - 12 salary $ 4600 . 00 . Day 2 started bright and early , I got up with the birds and did my routine and sort of could move normally . I shambled in to the school at 9 : 40 a . m . There was a lot of activity in the garden . Bubba was also parked in the garden , loaded up to the gills when I arrived . Somehow I missed the memo on getting there at 9 : 30 a . m . I was not alone ! Nobody wore name tags consistently after Day 1 , so it was a bit stumbly asking questions . Everyone was pumped with adrenalin , either from loading Bubba or from just missing the fun . In the land of Mosaic , people you are trying to talk to are frequently hunched over something , loading / unloading something , trying to cut / break / lift / glue / wiggle something , looking for something , or otherwise distracted . They aren 't totally ignoring you , in fact usually at least one of their ears is pointed in your direction , but they aren 't looking at you , either . They are working ! Its that obsessive - compulsive thing at work , or the mastic is gonna dry , or the mortar , or the sun is going down , or something . [ Any hope of eye contact with any of these tile geniuses was futile after Day 1 . Name tags on our backs would have helped me , at least . Its hard to get someone 's attention when you don 't know their name unless you get up in their face . Perhaps the next class requirement should be to name tag each other with tape on the back between the shoulder blades with whatever name you want to be called by that day , first off each morning . ] We all knew Isaiah , Julia , Amber , and Laurel 's names by then . The dog is Jack . We knew Celeste : she 'd registered all of us for class . That was almost it for me for names , and all I drank after class the night before was mint tea ! We had to chill while Laurel got everything else ready for her departure for a few hours , as she needed to do the formalities of getting us started at the work site . We went in the IMA library and the kitchen and drank coffee / tea and hung around and tried not to fret . It was 10 a . m . It was a beautiful day . We were about to make a bodacious mosaic . What could be bad ? Meanwhile , Laurel was getting ready , loading buckets , mortar boards , mastic , more mirror , drop cloths , and other things which were not going to fit in Bubba . She iced her sciatica . We all took deep breaths . Then we all caravan - ed over to 2516 Blanding Avenue : our work site for the next 4 days . [ One of Chuck 's buddies , Gary from Acorn Elevator ( yes ? ) was there helping too . Gary helped us out of a few tight spots in the early mornings over the ensuing days . He 's not experiencing an economic downturn right now , and was working each day at a real , paying job . I wish I knew how to fix elevators ! ] SueAnn and I brought some more bling in a small box and our bags and stashed them under Ed 's Monster Truck , which was parked in front of the building . Its big enough to mosaic , that thing . ( Go get em , Amber ! ) [ Ed is Amber 's sweetheart ( is that his name ? Maybe I don 't have his name ) , and he does seem to be a sweetheart , too . On day 4 we also met her Grandma , who is an artist . The monster truck took Ed off later , to go surfing , I think . ] Isaiah let us look around a few minutes while he and Laurel and Chuck did some choreography / logistics . Then he and Rob went into this furious flamenco dance with the ladders and the power screwdrivers and started attaching blobs everywhere with masonry and sheet rock screws . There was much moving of vehicles parked near the site . Julia helped unload and set up a table . She 'd seen this kind of insanity before . Nancy and Jamie worked on getting most of the stuff out of Bubba , and we put some of it in the roll - up door area . I missed the tour ( where the head was , etc . ) because SueAnn and I had to park a ways away and walk on over . He almost blushed when she told him that they 'd heard one of his tenants ( " that lady ! " ) calling him Chuckie . Client relations … . names are so important . If he wanted to be called Il Padrone , I 'm sure we could have arranged it . ] Stand at an acute angle to the wall to start sticking , not parallel . You need to be able to see where you 're putting tile ( sliding it into place ) , but not stand in right front of it . You 'll get carpal tunnel if you do that , from cocking your wrist and pushing on tile all day . Don 't do that . Assuming you got only a little bit of mastic along one edge , and only on the back side , put the side of the mirror ( the long side , usually ) down onto the wall close to where you want it finally … sort of parallel to the lines in our case , and then push it down , across , and wiggle it into position next to the line . Now the back of the tile with the goop smeared all over it has good sticky contact , and it is pasted in place . You are only trying to hold it there till you grout . Its sort of like tacking it up there . You don 't need a lot of mastic . Wiggling is crucial to positioning . You don 't press down on the mirror and put it in place ; you wiggle it into position so that the mastic gets smeared across the whole block of mirror . If you need to move tiles over a little and fit one more in , you can wiggle them all around while the mastic is still drying . " Now , " he said , " Get busy ! Stick mirror on both sides of all the black lines ! You 're going to have problems ; come and see me . If you need little pieces , or crooked pieces , here are the glass cutters ! " So we did . It was like a spell was suddenly cast on everyone , and they were all sticking tile madly on the wall , and I was standing in deer - in - the - headlights mode , lined up for mastic , wondering what - all I missed . Agh . I went into the vestibule down low and tried to stick mirror in some of the Mermaid 's tail . I had no idea what I was doing . Mastic got all over everything . Everyone who wanted to get in the building for one reason or another ( and that was everyone ) needed to squeeze by . There wasn 't a lot of room on the stairs . But there was no logical other open place to work , so I went in there . It took me about a whole day of trying this technique to master a well - stuck , clean - faced tile , with just the right amount of mastic stuck on the back of it , in the right place . Isaiah had to give me another demo just so I could really figure out what I was doing wrong . Then another . The penny finally dropped on the morning of the next day , Day 3 - I 'd been sticking tile for at least 6 hours by then . I 'm slow to catch on , but once I 've got something , that 's it . Anha worked nearby . I think she was on a ladder already . She was on a ladder in that vestibule for what seemed like over 50 % of the job , working on this section , making it pop . Kristin came in later and buffed some of my messy mirrors . She , Monika , and Anha had all collaborated on a tile mermaid ( a giant black one ) on a Sausalito houseboat earlier this year : they bonded over that Mermaid Queen . She had more experience than I , and knew it would be too much work to get the mastic off once it was dry . I wondered if she was getting fussy on me . [ Actually what he said was more along the lines of : " You know what you 're doing wrong n - o - w ? " Laurel came by right after him , laughing , and repeated it . I was still struggling along on the stairs , moving out of the way every 30 seconds . Apparently you need your thumb on the outward facing bit of tile , or you 're never going to have a clean swipe at it . " Where is your thumb now ? " Remember that , kiddo . ] But by then , I had nothing to buff with , I was entirely covered with mastic ( my apron , some of my jeans , etc . ) . I couldn 't get anyone 's attention , either . They were all obsessed . They all had 4 arms . Jamie , Nancy Cook , and Monika , Sticking Mirror : Day 2 . The blob near Monica 's head is stuck up there with masonry screws , temporarily . Grout will hold it in there later , and you can remove those . Laurel had to go rustle us up some new mirror . We had been cutting recycled mirror before . SueAnn cut mirror for a few hours that afternoon . Julia cut tile and mirror and handed out mastic and tried to remind us not to leave the cover off of the bucket . Isaiah stuck mirror , walked around , told stories , and planned . Amber worked like a demon ; so fast ! I eventually left the stairwell , looking for a less cramped workspace and some help after my first bucket of mirror ran out . Almost like a race : it seemed like they were going to have the whole building covered if I just got a cup of tea and watched . I needed hot tea , though . It was a cold , breezy day . Isaiah stood by , watching it all . We talked some story . We heard the story about Isaiah 's Mom sitting with him in the tideline while the waves on Coney Island were coming in , supporting him so he wouldn 't be scared . This happened when he was so little . ( Somewhere near Mermaid Avenue ? ) He told a story about taking care of his dying Mom … a story which ended with " You were such a beautiful baby ! " I told the dying Mom story to Rufus and Daniel that night . We all grinned . Moms are the same everywhere . Isaiah is still beautiful , but not in the way his Mom wanted to remember , apparently . We heard some more stories from the Book of Isaiah . Never mind the movie , we had the living text ( Julia , Isaiah , Laurel , Amber ) with us . [ My Mom told us soy sauce was bad for us b / c it was made out of bugs , that 's what made it black . She called it bug juice . She loved soy sauce , but thought it was bad for us . Even though she smoked cigarettes at the table , we were not encouraged to have any soy sauce . ] SueAnn remarked that my Dad had a real imagination . Yes he did . I would never have arrived on Earth otherwise . Him having tremendous charm helped , too . SueAnn later told me one or two whoppers she told her kids when they were growing up . One of them sounded handy ; I wish I could remember it now . My parents would have loved Isaiah and Julia . I am sad they can 't be around to see what we made under their guidance . My Father would take one look at the building and say : " Wow ! These are MY PEOPLE ! Ahh ! " Some of the things he and my Mom gave me are now glued / grouted onto that building . He might love that , too . ] I went around the corner where there were appliqués of tile going up , and worked there . I got on okay . Not great . I tried not to listen to Radio KFKD , which is what plays in my head almost any time I 'm trying a new technique but am still way outside the bounds of simple mastery . It was work . " If you are not careful , station KFKD will play in your head twenty - four hours a day , nonstop , in stereo . Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self - aggrandizement , the recitation of one 's specialness , of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is . Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self - loathing , the lists of all the things one doesn 't do well , of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime , the doubt , the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit , that one doesn 't do relationships well , that one is in every way a fraud , incapable of selfless love , that one has no talent or insight , and on and on and on . " - Anne Lamott , Bird by Bird Julia was over there working on the appliqués , sticking tile . She seemed happy . I would see that tile - setting grin on every face at various times in the ensuing 4 days . Karen was over there , also sticking on the appliqués . Besides having my sister 's first name , she also has a great laugh , a great spirit ( like both my sisters ) , a Texas accent , and a durable idea of what is supposed to be really going on . We started to get acquainted with each other and with Judy , who works as an art teacher and is pretty quiet when concentrating , and who concentrates hard a lot of the time . So learning about who she was tended to take longer . She did come out of her concentration - coma a few times to tease Karen about Texas pronunciations , so we knew she was listening to us , though . [ I found out Karen was from the Molly Ivins school of activism in Texas . Cut from the same cloth . How great . Then I found out she 's worked with Redwood action for years . My late - lamented pal David Nadel did a lot of advocacy work with them when Headwaters Forest Action really started to heat up . I tried to explain to Anha later that day which activism school Karen was from , but she didn 't know who Molly Ivins was . I tried to find out if Karen had read Florence King , another Southern Belle / larrikin who originally charmed / inspired Molly . She hasn 't read her ( yet ) . Context is everything . ] I had some fish plates from home , a honeycomb pitcher made in occupied Japan I was dying to smash and add in , and brass keys to the city for Isaiah , but he said that they all needed to go into blobs first . He didn 't seem eager to make more blobs . He 's a straight - line - to - the - future - kind - of - guy , sometimes , it seems . This was that type of day . He was also starting to look a little shocky when we talked , before lunch . I don 't blame him . I can 't eat lunch at 2 or 3 , not when I get up at 6 . He and Julia were still on East Coast time . [ I gave the fish plates to Rob . He 's building a 2 - story mosaic this week . I gave him some small ship 's prisms , too . All on a nautical theme . ] After a very fancy lunch ( They broke sometime after 2 , but Chef DiGuida was running around doing errands for absolutely everyone all morning , and his grill and kitchen are pretty far apart from each other ) , we stuck more mirror and tile . I tried staying away from the vestibule . I gave Kristin and Anha some bling to put in there : sparkly things , a purse , some rocks , abalone bits . All from home . That mermaid 's face had only been painted that morning , when Isaiah and Rob were up in there on ladders , sheet - rock screwing into the wall holding up the blobs which would be her breasts . She had no head when we arrived that morning . Isaiah painted her head and face when they were up there on the ladders . He works remarkably fast . Before lunch , Judy went and got Isaiah and asked him to paint a few more appliqués on the wall ; we had time to do them and it was right . It seemed to take him 5 minutes . He painted everything at least to the right of the man releasing the bird that day . She worked on them . We started to break things down after 4 pm . People went across the street to look at the walls , to get a better view . The ( retired ) owners of the Pitchometer Propeller building stopped by that day . There were a huge number of people in cars slowing down , honking , pulling over , walking up , walking by to see . Several group photos were taken with several cameras . Chuck is a photographer ; he did most of the honors . SueAnn and I poured ourselves back into Stella and drove across the Fruitvale Bridge that afternoon when class ended ; much of the tile was up - covering much of the mural , lots of places still needed to be filled in with smaller bits . We were pretty tired . She drove home to Petaluma from IMA that afternoon ; she was commuting each day , a long ride . [ Rufus called me later that evening after he and Daniel got home from baseball practice . They had gone by Pitchometer Propeller on the way home . He asked how much of the tile we 'd put up that day , and I told him all of it . We tranformed it in a single day . He could hardly believe it . I made some sexist remark , not knowing what else to say … . but there were 14 women on the team … and then corrected myself after he balked at my making it a big deal … and then we finished our conversation and I went to bed at 7 : 30 pm . Honest . I was cooked . ]
|
I am officially a writer now , because I have struggled over a post for 10 days now and just set it aside to begin afresh . " Everything is better when it 's a - fresh , " said the produce man to the melon - squeezer . Just as I will drink no wine before its time , I shall publish no post before it 's fully roas 't . Somebody , please , stop me . Any - hoo , four weeks ago yesterday , I had the worst dental experience of my life . Let me preface this by saying , I have good teeth . Only 2 fillings in my mid - to - late 40 year old mouth . Well , and a little bonding on one of my front teeth from an unfortunate diving incident at the Holidome in Cincinnati , Ohio during a fraternity formal event I attended in 1984 . Never mind about that . We recently got new dental insurance . The pickings were slim for dentists in our area . Basically , we had a choice of DDS in a box ( Aspen Dental ) or the guy I ended up with . I took the two girls to him first . I know , I know , it sounds bad , even canary - in - the - coal - mine - ish , but they did fine . Cleanings , exams , sealants and all was well . Curiously , I don 't think he laid an instrument on them . It was all done by his babe - alicious assistants . All he did was look into their mouths and give me the names of several of his orthodontist cronies to contact , stat . The same day , after a very brief , impromptu exam , he suggested that my 2 existing fillings , now more than 20 years old and causing me no trouble by the way , should be replaced because it appeared they were beginning to crack . " Schedule an appointment and we 'll take care of them . Plus , the bonding on your front tooth is worn and stained . It needs to be replaced . We can do that while we have you in here . " He was all smiles and charm . I arrived at the appointed hour a couple of weeks later . Following her rigorous cleaning , Righteous Babe # 1 applied a topical numbing agent to my upper and lower left gums , in anticipation of the Novocaine shots to come . I 'd only had Novocaine twice before , and my recollection was that the injections were annoying more than painful ; kind of like mosquito bites . " I 've had two babies with no anesthesia , I can handle this " , I thought . I 'd always prided myself on my non - chalance about medical procedures , shots and blood - draws . Dr . De Sade ( to which he shall hereinafter be referred ) strutted into the room with Righteous Babe # 2 at his side . He picked up an enormous metal syringe and with no bedside , rather chair side , chit - chat , plunged the infernal thing into my lower gum line . I felt a vibration run through my body and guttural noises came , unbidden , from my mouth , much as you might have heard emanate from convicts strapped to " Old Sparky " , Ohio 's now - retired electric chair . As he continued to depress the plunger , Dr . De Sade asked with furrowed brow , " Does it feel like an electric charge ? " I nodded . " That 's okay , it takes effect really quickly when that happens . " Abruptly and with no apology , he picked up a second syringe and injected it into my upper jaw , directly above the lower injection . He stood and announced that he 'd be back in a few minutes . Righteous Babe # 2 asked if I was okay . I widened my eyes and shrugged . Truthfully , I did not know . De Sade returned very shortly , picked up the drill and it began to whine . I closed my eyes , imagining myself elsewhere . And then I jumped . " She 's not numb . " I nodded . He picked up a syringe and said , " We 'll give you a little more Novocaine , " and the plunger once again depressed . I felt a cold sensation in my lower jaw and again in my upper . He picked up the syringe . I widened my eyes . De Sade dug it into my lower jaw , sawing it in and out . It was like something from Little Shop of Horrors . I could see the end of the syringe in his hand outside my mouth ; I could see the in - and - out motion although I couldn 't feel it . Then he administered another shot to the upper jaw . He stood up and said , " Let 's give it another couple of minutes . " De Sade announced that Righteous Babe # 3 would remove the bonding from my front tooth , since it required no Novocaine and he would come back to do the rest . Righteous Babe # 3 drilled away at my front tooth , periodically squirting water into my mouth and stabbing me in the tonsils with the spit - sucking probe that hissed like an angry copperhead inside my cranium . I prayed silently for it to all be over soon . Righteous Babes # 2 and # 3 both nodded . I got up and went to the sink . I turned on the tap and filled a cup . I held it to my lips , as is customary , yet it trickled right out of my mouth . I attempted to swish . It was fruitless . Then I looked in the mirror . A good portion of my right front tooth was gone , giving me a jack - o - lantern - like look , but the left side of my face would not move . At all . I could only laugh . Hysterically . He drilled . And drilled . And drilled . Above the whine of the instruments , I felt nothing . I briefly wondered if I was ingesting dangerous amounts of mercury from the amalgam fillings he was pulverizing , but I wasn 't about to stop him and ask . It was obvious that he wanted this over with as much as I did . Plus , I was not at all confident in my ability to make myself understood , which to be honest , is not a concern I have ever had since I acquired the gift of gab well before age 2 . Righteous Babe # 3 reappeared . " She 'll do the fillings , " De Sade announced as he hurried from the room . She packed and poked while I held my mouth open . She sanded and polished . My jaws ached from holding them open for so long . " How do they feel ? " She giggled . " I guess not . Well , you 're all done ! " She handed me a mirror . I examined my lovely , newly bonded front tooth and the paralyzed left side of my face , along with the drool spilling over my lower lip . I got up to leave , feeling distinctly violated . I went to the front desk to " check out " , only to discover how little my insurance actually covered for the expense of the afternoon 's fun . As I wrote my check , De Sade passed by , well beyond the reception desk , in a hurry to somewhere else . He looked at me and smirked . " It 'll probably be closer to 7 by the time it wears off . " Like hell . It 's 4 weeks later and while my face is back to normal , my tongue is still numb . I still can 't tell if the fillings are smooth , or how hot my coffee is until it hits the back of my throat . The numbness alternates with the pins - and - needles feeling you get as blood flow returns to a foot you 've been sitting on . I don 't mean to complain . I know I 'm lucky to even be able to afford regular dental care . I know it could be worse . It 's not life - threatening . Rather , it 's like having a pebble in your shoe . A pebble in your shoe every single hour of every single day . It won 't kill you , but it will drive you stark . raving . mad . This is the theory behind Chinese water torture . We knew over two weeks ago that Mom 's cancer was back . We knew it was in the lymph nodes in her neck . Last week , we learned that it was not in her stomach . Yesterday we found out that it is in lymph nodes not only in her neck , but her sternum , her abdomen and her adrenal glands . There are suspicious nodules in her lung , as well . " Stage 4 metastatic cancer " ; that 's what the doctor called it . He 's a good egg , this oncologist ; a nice Irish boy . As Mom , Dad , my brother and I sat in the tiny exam room , he enthusiastically described a variety of chemotherapy treatments . Taxotere and carboplatin ( what my Dad is getting ) are too harsh for her . But there are other treatment regimens to consider . He talks about studies and a drug called 5FU ( yes , really ) and antibody treatment if the tumors are HER - positive . We ask questions and he answers them . Mom 's system is very sensitive ; she has reactions to lots of medications , including most antibiotics . She takes coumadin . She doesn 't tolerate codeine - based pain medications . He says the good news is that no cancer showed up in the liver . " If it was in her liver , there wouldn 't be much we could do at all and I wouldn 't recommend chemo in that situation . " He almost makes it sound like things could be worse . What he does not talk about is life expectancy . When I ask about " progression " , he carefully skirts the issue . I know there is no crystal ball and if there were , I probably wouldn 't like what I would see in it , anyway . When I finally pin him down , asking if he can give us any sort of timeline ( he seems to like this term better than " life expectancy " ) , he says 6 to 13 months . I ask if that is with or without treatment . He says , " With and without . " Dad , a man of quick decisions and goals and action , is ready to commit to something . For him , a plan is a necessary thing ; inaction and indecision are torture . My brother and I pull him back . " Let 's discuss this , Dad . It 's a big decision . " After hugs all around , we start to separate in the lobby , heading off in our different directions . And then I reconsider . I look at my brother . He meets my gaze and nods . There is an empty room , right off the lobby . Chairs surround a table near a cooler filled with Ensure and there several wigs on stands perched on nearby book shelves . We pass by the magazine rack and Mom stops to look . She chuckles . I don 't know if she actually remembers or not , but she plays along , lingering at the rack . She picks up a magazine and starts flipping the pages . I take her arm . " Mom , let 's leave the magazines . We need to talk about what the doctor told us . Let 's go in here and sit down for a few minutes . " " Have you ever tried that Ensure ? God , it 's awful stuff . I tried it when I was trying to get my strength back after the surgery , but I couldn 't get the stuff down . " " Mom , the decision about whether to have chemo is up to you . For some people , they want to know they tried everything ; for other people , the chance of more time just isn 't worth feeling rotten . We have to balance out what is the up side and what is the down side of treatment . " " I just don 't know . " She pauses , looking down and then back up , at Dad . " I would hate to think I could have done something about it and didn 't , but I have lived a long time . I have had a good , long life . " Mom looks pretty . She recently had her hair permed and it 's short and curly ; mostly silver . Her eyes are the same pale aquamarine they have always been . She is wearing her favorite blue print silk blouse . But for the lump on the side of her neck , which really isn 't very obvious , she looks fine . You would never know she has cancer . I shouldn 't be writing . I have too much to do . Everyday stuff : laundry ; cleaning ; parent - teacher conferences this afternoon ; preparing for my book club hostessing duties tonight . But I can 't ; not until I process this latest twist in the road . I wish she had a strong opinion about what she wanted . I wish she felt one way or another . I don 't feel right steering her . It should be her choice . But what if she can 't make the decision ? Could she ever forgive us if we said , " no chemo " and she went quickly ? Would she forgive us if we said " yes " and she got sicker and felt awful ? And what about Dad ? He is beating the cancer that attacked him and he needs our support , too . Yesterday was a hard day , but it was also a day for celebration . It was Mom and Dad 's 62nd wedding anniversary . A week or so ago , I was at my Mom and Dad 's condo , which is about an hour and a half from home . We had just gotten in the door from Dad 's most recent chemo treatment , when my cell phone rang . It was 2 : 45 , so I knew my 6th grade daughter was calling to let me know she got home and in the house okay . " Mom . I accidentally left my poster in homeroom and then I was getting my bag all packed up at my locker and this kid hit me in the nose with his lunchbox . He said it was an accident but I don 't believe him . I know I had my planner and my supply pouch in my bag but they 're not there ! I don 't know what to do ! " " So , why don 't you start by sending her an email right away and tell her what happened ? " " Mom , she won 't give me extra time . She won 't . She said so today in class . She said the projects have to be turned in tomorrow and there 's no way I can get it done ! " " Don 't ask her for extra time . Just let her know what happened , right away . At least she will know that your project might be late and she will know why and she won 't think you were just goofing off , right ? She knows you ; she knows you are good student and that you always turn your work in on time , right ? " " Mom , I sent the email . I checked my bag three times to make sure the jump drive wasn 't in there and it 's not . I don 't know where it could be ! " " Okay , good . Let 's think . If someone found it , they would take it to the office , right ? Why don 't you call the school office and ask if someone turned it in ? " I look at my watch . She 's right . Even if I left right then , I would not be able to get over to the middle school before it closed . " Let 's try it anyway . What have we got to lose ? When you call , ask how late someone will be there , okay ? Just tell the secretary what happened and ask if someone turned anything in , okay ? Give it a try . " " Finally . No one answered the first two times I called , but the third time the secretary answered . She said no one brought anything in yet , but there is a lost and found box that things are put in and I can check it in the morning . " " Well , it seems to me you have done all you can . Sweetie , we know what a hard worker you are . If one assignment is late , it won 't be because you didn 't do your best work . These things happen . No one is upset with you about this , okay ? " " You may still get an A + . And if you don 't , you don 't . It won 't be the end of the world . I promise . " I told her later how impressed I was that she solved this problem for herself and that she held it together even though I wasn 't there to help . She laughed and said she didn 't ; she said she cried all afternoon but her smile told me she was proud of herself . I think scientists have gotten it all wrong . They shouldn 't be focused on cloning farm animals . They should be cloning mothers , so we can be everywhere at once . When I was a kid , I wanted desperately to be Jewish . I read every one of the All of a Kind Family books multiple times . I knew the characters like they were my own family and I liked them much better . The holidays ! The cooking ! The traditions ! It seemed like such a comforting life compared to mine , which included daily mass , nasty - tempered nuns and catechism that left little open to interpretation , if you know what I mean . The only Jew I knew firsthand back then was my sister - in - law , who was so much nicer to me than my actual sisters were , that I was certain there was something special about Jews . As far as I know , there was only one Jewish family in the little southern Ohio town where I grew up . Since I went to the Catholic schools , we never had much of an opportunity to mix . Once we started having holidays that included my sister - in - law 's family , I discovered wondrous new foods like creamed herring , noodle kugel and lox . This only added to the allure of Judaism . As I worked my way through 12 years of Catholic school , I never lost that fascination . And Catholic school for me was no bed of roses , either . I never really got the " sit down , be quiet and play along " part . Couldn 't keep my big mouth shut . I was busted in 5th grade for trying have a seance under the fire escape on the playground at recess . " But I was trying to summon the ghost of Bloody Mary ! She was Catholic . " Oddly , that argument did not help my case . That may have been the time I was ordered to kneel in the hallway in front of a life size , technicolor replica of the Pieta and hold my hands out at shoulder height , " So you can see how Jesus felt when he was dying for your sins . " The nuns had discovered that writing out lines , over and over , hundreds of times ( " I will not argue with Sister Cecelia . I will not argue with Sister Cecelia . I will not argue with Sister Cecelia . " ) didn 't have much of an effect on me . Then there was the time that Sister Jude found my tarot cards . That didn 't go over particularly well , either , as I recall . Things were a little better in high school , but not much . In 10th grade , we had a unit in our religion class titled " Respecting Ourselves " ( Hah ! ) , taught by a handsome young priest . I will never forget his apoplectic look when I raised my hand and said , " Can we just cut to the chase here ? Exactly how far can you go without it being a sin ? " I knew it was the question on everyone 's minds and I was less afraid of hell than the others , so I had to be the one to ask . I knew they would all thank me later . I think it was in 11th grade that we covered history of the church . They left a few things out in our curriculum , focusing more on martyrs and less on inquistors . I never bought into the whole stigmata thing . In my mind , the poor hygiene of the Middle Ages probably explained it . Still , I remember one exchange with my religion teacher , a priest , quite vividly . Thinking like the salesperson I was later destined to become , I noted , " Father , the church could attract a lot more members if it would just be little more flexible about certain things . " Yes , I said accessorize . For too long , all the good stuff has been reserved for the priests - the chalices , candelabras , vestments - you name it . If you want to generate enthusiasm , get the bling out to the people ! Once again , Jews have gotten it right . Take a look at the The Source for Everything Jewish catalog . I have purchased gift items for friends and family from it ; it 's a great resource . There is so much cool stuff . Catholics need an equivalent . Make being Catholic fun again ! There is a game called " Kosherland " in the catalog . Why couldn 't Catholics have something similar , say , " Martyrland " ? You select a little avatar and make your way through a treacherous , winding path , beset by blood - thirsty monsignors , helpful saints and nuns wielding rulers . Collect rosaries , crucifixes and prayer cards as you go along . Draw cards to see what happens next : The focus always seems to be on the " major " holidays . Christmas is over - commercialized already , but what about the other holy days ? Maybe an " Immaculate Conception " special edition set of champagne flutes ? Pentecost fireworks ? Feast of the Assumption " cloudlike " pavlova dessert mix ? Spread the joy throughout the year . One local Judaic store in Cleveland used to stock " Famous Jew " trading cards . Why not " All Saints " bubblegum cards ? I can see it now : " I 'll trade you a Saint Dymphna for a Saint Anselm ; I 've got 3 of her already . " " Oh , man , I got Saint Francis of Assisi ! The gum is shaped like a lamb ! " I am still fascinated by and respectful of Judaism , with its emphasis on family , tradition , self - reflection and compassion . Although I no longer attend mass and don 't identify myself as Catholic , I still respond to the beauty and mystery of its rituals and value its tradition of outreach to the poor . Plus , there are some pretty fabulous religious educators out there , too , like this one . I don 't know if I need the Catholic Church at this point , but I am pretty sure it needs me .
|
Those are words I thought I 'd never say . I have never been a particularly picky eater . I find lots of foods I like and there are very few that I resoundingly refuse . This week I 've found myself three days in a row , staring down some kimchi . It was by choice and it tasted good . My stomach isn 't always happy about it but it tastes good . One day I had chicken katsu and kimchi . The next was pork katsu and kimchi . One benefit of working at a Korean school is pork . I still get funny looks when I occasionally pass on rice . There 's a saying in Indonesia that you haven 't eaten if there wasn 't any rice . Both days I had what we call Kimchi pizza . It 's not kimchi on a pizza . It 's kimchi that has had a little flour added and is fried flat like a pancake . It 's really yummy . I think I 'll have another one today . Today one of the parents brought in kimchi mandoo . It 's a dumpling filled with kimchi , noodles and tofu . Not too spicy but nice . It was served with a strange " drink " . It was bright pink with slices of white radish , garlic and onion floating in it . It tasted much better than it sounds . I might wash it all down with the grape drink that has real , whole grapes floating about it in . Or a Milkis which is like combining think yogurt with sprite . I do like some Korean food , especially the barbequed pork . That said I 'm glad I don 't have to eat it every day . I 've mention a couple of peculiarities I 've added to my vernacular ( a word I like and feel is highly underused ) over the years . I think the process really began when I left the States but as I think of it , I 'd trace it back to Lawrence , Kansas . I attended one year of university and left with a y ' all that stuck . It doesn 't come out too often . Strangely , improving my Spanish helped reinforce it . There 's a verb form that is for " you all who are not me but who I 'm talking to " therefor distinct from a They or a We . Y ' all fits precisely . As my Spanish vocabulary grew in size and complexity , it began to pervert my English . There are words that are similar but sound slightly different - like information and información . Click on the words for pronunciations . They are very close but the stress is distinct . The patterns of speech and word orders are different in Spanish as well . And let 's not forget that there are more verb tenses for past and present in Spanish . It makes my head start to spin thinking about all the intricacies when now I can usually speak it without much thought . Now as I 've come to Indonesia my language is further corrupted . Indonesian , or bahasa indonesia as it 's called here , is the opposite of Spanish . It contains few grammar rules , most revolving about suffixes and prefixes that change a words meaning or use . When the Republic of Indonesia was founded the government realized the need to have a single uniting language , while not abolishing the local languages . They made it simple enough that anyone could learn it . Instead of having a past tense , anything that happened before now is accompanied by kemarin , or yesterday . My first few months here involved lots of incidents where I 'd say " but it wasn 't yesterday , it was a week ago " or something to that affect . If you want to be specific you say when , such as last month , or two weeks ago , but kemarin is the norm . The same happens with besok or tomorrow for anything in the future . Part of my personal result of all this has been that when something had occurred or been done the Indonesians say sudah or already . Nearly all the bule who live here use that as well . Did you eat lunch ? Already . Are you finished with the paper ? Already . It 's awful English but it 's very pervasive . That gives me a nice segue into the fact that teaching English is more likely to screw up your English than anything . If you hear bad English all day , everyday . You start to subconsciously pick up your students habits and ticks , like the above mentioned already . You also get accustomed to speaking in short broken bits of English knowing that your students won 't follow a more cohesive speech pattern . You go home ? Bring book tomorrow ya ? It 's an effort to change gears when I 'm out with friends and speak like the intelligent adult I am . The last percentage of blame goes to my expat friends . These are folks from the US , England , Australia , Ireland , Canada , New Zealand , Scotland and Wales mostly . Many of them have retained an accent and vocabulary close to what it would be at home , some have not . They 've all affected my speech . I 'd never have said . . . well , wait right there . I " d never have said I 'd never have said before . That 's present perfect and much more common in the UK . That could be my friends or teaching British English for two years . Brilliant , can 't be asked ( with accompanying Liverpudlian accent ) , meant to ( in place of supposed to ) , and reckon ( used as " you think " ) are the most prevalent additions . I 'm trying to compile a list of all my " new " words but we 'll see how that goes . I 'll also start a list of pronunciations as two weeks ago we realized I say to - MAH - to in the British vein , no longer to - MAY - to as most Americans would . Luckily , I 'm still the one translating and interpreting for others ! We had a fight at school last Friday . Let me set the scene . It must have been between 9 : 30 and 10am because that 's when we have break time and it 's the only reason we all would have been in the office . There are 9 bule teachers ( eight guys and me ) , plus four Koreans who teach English and four other grade five teachers in our office . The mood was light as it was Friday and we 'd been told we could leave at 12 : 30 ( except John , Lincoln and I who had extra - curriculars ) . The weather was good , rugby talk in the air . Here 's a map of our office . Blue desks are bule teachers . H . O . D . is the head of department . The red is the " dead zone " from the fight . The left hand side is all windows , the right hand is cabinets and beyond them a wall , then the hall . What would appear above this on the school layout is the Korean teachers room . Here 's a snippet of the chat I was having online with my mom as it started : Me : Hang on , there is something happening here . There is shouting in the office . Me : in English and in KoreanMe : like a reality TV showMom : chick fight ? Me : a parent screaming at a teacher , another teacher screaming and translatingMe : the vice principal just came in . Mom : Built in entertainment at work . Me : Full on screaming for 3 minutes , thrashing about . Left , came back . Then the bule boys started screaming for them to get out . The parent had to be physically restrained . Me : I guess . And I 've got good blog material today . Mom : Could you figure out what the parent was yelling about ? Me : Sort of . The mom , we 'll call her Mary , came in from the door and the top and headed towards Scott sitting at his desk . She started in a speaking voice which quickly elevated . As you can see , there 's not a lot of room between the desks , about a meter and a half in the middle aisle . As she came in another teacher , we 'll call her Jane , made a beline for her . Mary works in the high school and has a daughter in grade four . Jane works here in the elementary and has a son in grade four . I 've taught both kids and they 're good , smart kids . Mary and Jane are good friends , so Jane took Mary out to the hall to try and assess things and cool her off presumably . They exited through the door closer to my desk . A minute or two later the door flung open and my name was thrown out . " blah blah blah Miss Melissa . . . blah blah Melissa . . . blah blah " and of course in this case the blah 's are Korean . Oh crap . I 'd sat through it so far at my desk , literally keeping my head down . What did I do ? Mary then storms back in through the far door at Scott again . She 's even more revved up than before . Scott is seated so she 's taller ( at about five foot ) than he is and she 's right in his face , arms flying , volume crescendoing . Someone finally gets the vice principal , who we so affectionately call Mr . Dim . He 's about six foot six and as big around as a telephone pole - not to mention almost as useful . He arrives looking sufficiently puzzled and stands at the fight site doing nothing . At some point one of the Korean English teachers has gone over and become a human shield in front of Scott , who , before I forget , is about 45 , British and about 210 pounds to my estimate . His shield ? Late 30 's , five - six , 120 - 130 pounds . Chris , one of the bule teachers , eventually starts shouting to get her out . That it was enough . Lincoln , Ben and Stephan all join in . I 'm still head down , busy with emails . John , the mellowest of the bunch , tries to physically restrain Mary . She had worked herself into an absolute tizzy at this point and was screaming at anyone within two feet of her . She flung john off ( he 's over six foot tall too ) and was finally escorted / dragged out . The fifteen second of silence that followed was deafening . And then we realized Scott was in the corner , crying . ( insert surprised face here ) . From what I have gathered here were the precipitating events : Harry , Jane 's son , won the grade four spelling bee the day before . Scott , one of the bule teachers made some joke about it . to two other bule teachers . Mary heard it or was told about it and she 's the one that got upsetShe came in screaming . The bule boys were saying some awful things afterward . Saying she 's crazy , she should be fired immediately , she was molested as a child , and also that it didn 't matter if she was , that someone like that shouldn 't be working with children . I said absolutely nothing . I swear my teaching partner was trying to get me to weigh in and I finally said " I don 't know enough about what happened or her to say anything so I won 't " . BUT WAIT ! THERE ' S MORE ! She left and Scott was calmed just about the time we all had class . I came back after ( 40 minutes ) . Jane asked if I would pay for the pizza her friend ( Mary ) had ordered since she had class . She gave me the cash and left saying that the pizza was for " white faces , not yellow faces " , meaning bules not Koreans . Mary came in , I gave her the money . She said sorry in Indonesian to John and I , as we were the only ones in the office . I opened the food . Two pizzas , two salads , three containers of chicken wings and two liters of coke . I made myself a plate and went to my desk . John did the same . When the bell rang the first six people through the door were Koreans . I sure as hell wasn 't going to be the one to tell them the pizza wasn 't for them . It wasn 't long before the snide comments started , insinuating the pizza was poisoned , that she could 've sprung for nicer pizza than Pizza Hut , etc . Mostly saying that pizza diplomacy wasn 't enough . Its October 12th and that means Halloween is approaching . When living in a tropical country there is no changing of the leaves , there 's no crisp undertones in the air , there 's no need for a scarf . My mom told me she was surprised to be seeing pumpkins in the supermarket . At the local Lotte Mart I can get squash at all times of the year , but never pumpkins . There are places in Indonesia , like on Sumatra , that have pumpkin all the time for soups and local delicacies . If it weren 't for Della , I 'd forget . Della is one of my closest friends here and she 's blessed to have the gene , the costume gene . Here 's a reminder of my opinion from last year . I do miss the change of season . I miss the tables in the markets of apple cider , pumpkins , hot chocolate and bags of mini candy bars . I don 't miss having to figure out something witty to be for Halloween . I liked my costume last year . I was a 1950 's era deadline rushed reporter . See it here . Last week we had a costume going away party . You can tell many of my friends enjoy fancy dress parties ( that 's a costume party for you Americans ) . We have color theme nights for regular Fridays out . The going away party was Mobster Monday . I was able to scrape something together quickly , using bits from the reporter outfit of last year . Not bad huh ? So , I 'm culling you , my imaginative , creative , interesting readers . Throw out anything . I still am not confident enough to wear something like thisNot to mention I wouldn 't know where to find it in Indonesia . But I kinda want something more feminine than last year . Help ! I got a free episode of MTV 's The Real World . I was a teenager in the 90 's in the US so it was obligatory watching . It was a lousy show then but allowed teens and preteens to peek through the keyhole into what " adulthood " might be . I didn 't realize they 'd still be producing it when they were on season 83 and the rest of the TV spectrum is composed of about 90 % reality TV ( statistics based solely on my own impressions ) . I had to watch it to see if it was the same trash it was in ' 95 . It is . I was fully ready to turn it off almost as soon as I 'd turned it on . It opened with a whiny 19 year old who lives in San Diego ( where this particular season was set ) and was lamenting leaving her family . SIGH . It was your choice , you 're driving there ( and hence could go visit home , etc . . . I won 't start a rant . After 8 minutes and 12 seconds I had to fight the urge to delete it and trudged on a little further . I could feel the edges of my brain starting to tingle . Something was forming . At 12 minutes it happened . Epiphany . EF is The Real World . You go to a strange place , you live with other people both men and women who were not your choice . You hope one of them will be hot , hoping they 'll all be nice and interesting and funny . You 're stuck together through the BS that they call work , through the inevitable lies , betrayal , heartbreak and homesickness . The imminent housemate fight is always looming . In most an incestuous situation with at least several housemates sleeping / making out with / dating each other springs up . On the show , the casting directors select people with tempers , people who are emotional basketcases , people who are physically beautiful , and mildly interesting . Most range in age from 19 - 25 . They come from different areas of The States , and can only bring a suitcase or two . They drink , but are less often smokers . They are put up in a gorgeous mansion where the housemates don 't pay rent or utilities or even food and drink from what I can tell . They don 't work , they whine about their situation and are totally self absorbed . At EF the hiring " director " chooses people who they think won 't be runners ( teachers who leave in the dark or night , or on a weekend without a trace within their first several months ) . Most EFs are understaffed enough they aren 't very picky and take most comers . They come from the US , Canada , England , Ireland , South Africa , Poland and Wales . They range in age from 19 to 55 + . They are single , or coupled or divorced . They drink enough to make the Real World cast look like light weights . EF provides a house in various states of disrepair which you pay then to rent you , and you pay for everything else . They don 't care what you think or how miserable you are so long as you show up for work . EF is the REAL version of the Real World . This is true , in shades , for the greater bule population in Jakarta . The social circles are small and it 's only a matter of time before you are seeing the same people again and again . It 's can be incestuous and there is great competition for potential dating options . The biggest catch is we have to pay our way all the way along . Last week a friend here in Jakarta messaged me to help her out . She wanted me to help her meet and entertain someone at the airport between their flights . That person ? Mickey Rourke . My jaw dropped open at this point . I 'm sorry , come again ? She was helping a mutual friend out . He had some three - plus hours in Jakarta before his flight to * * * * * ( city in Indonesia ) where he is filming . My first reaction was " why not send one of the millions ( literally ) of Indonesian girls to entertain him ? " He wants someone to talk to . Hmmmmm . Okaaaay . We showed up at the airport an hour before the appointed time and were plenty ready . Julia wasn 't sure she 'd be able to pick him out . The immigration guy took us all the way out the the gate to meet him and let me say , it is so nice to jump lines . With Julia at my elbow and my heart pounding , I saw him coming down the gateway and walked up to him . " Mickey Rourke ? " " Yea " " I 'm Melissa , we 'll be taking care of you today " and away we went . We caught JP ( best friend ) and Bora ( PA ) as well and then the six of us headed for another terminal . We settled in a private room in a lounge and settled in for the wait . They are genuinely cool guys , all three of them . I got to talk rugby with Mickey . He 's pulling for Wales as he 's doing some research on one of their past players . Oh , an he knows someone who knows Sonny Bill Williams , an All Black and my future husband . I 'm within six degrees of separation . I got to talk MLB playoffs with JP . I saw photos of their chihuahuas , five between the two of them . I answered questions about Indonesia and * * * * * * . I traded money with JP so he had some Rupiah . I saw Mickey in his boxers for a foot reflexi massage . The time flew and we had a blast . In Jakarta , I met Mickey Rourke . It still sounds so cool to say . In other news , I 've got a Syrian who was calling three times a day . The trouble is he only speaks about twelve words of English , and about the same number in Indonesian . I 'm not sure what the real point of calling someone is when that 's the case . He was very sweet , but after three days of having the same conversation I gave up and stopped answering . What was the conversation you ask ? It makes me sigh wearily just recounting it . I think I shook him by not showing up at the club where we met over the weekend . It was nice to have some attention , though there wasn 't any of the competition I complained about in a post last week . I just can 't do needy . I won 't . Is a recommendations which comes in from the elementary parents meeting . 1 . In order for the students to confirm the article of the themselves certainly in low instruction , the map wishes . In compliance with an elementary parents representative is a work last for a few weeks , what kind of schoolgirl ( they are 10 grades ? ) Comes out to this parking lot but the face the article which does not know comes and speaks the name and a grade of the student , your article does not come out today and I does the substitution pickup came , is speaking , the article of the origin student comes and got over a crisis , does . There was like this work even to what kind of elementary student , but in the house confirmation that there is not like that work which transforms said and got over a crisis , does . In the students the face the article which does not know , specially the case where the operation article of oneself is not gives certainly to the parents in order to confirm , map entrusting . 2 . Morning the vehicle which comes in the inside the school at attending school time must take care the students who attend school and also must take care . From before the post exchange the bag of the elementary 1 grade student [ e ] broke by the automobile wheel , does . The above single step will pay attention , proper countermeasure three rights boil under will come and there to be an opinion cotton sending staring will raise and entrusts . If you made it through all that without getting a migraine or shutting your computer off with a shudder , I applaud you . Life here definitely isn 't real . Posted by I 'm 29 and ready for preschool . I 'm not sure it 's regression but I love nap time . Lately I grab a nap at least one day a week , more if I can manage it . Mel 's Quick tips : Don 't sleep sitting up . I know people do , but that 's a sure way to wake up with a crick in your neck . Get comfy . Don 't share nap space . Snack after your nap is a must if you have to go be functional . Find a way to remember it 's night even though its only 6pm but its dark out . I usually leave something on the table that wouldn 't be there for the morning . No more than one beer / drink before or you won 't get up . Specific for naps in tropical countries : pants off , AC on ! My favorite day for napping is Wednesday . I can usually grab an hour between school and my business class . It usually perks me up and keeps me going . I used to nap on Thursdays but lately I hit the pillow about 4 or 5 in the afternoon and either don 't get up at all , or get up just long enough to eat . I hate waking up starving in the morning . Friday is also a great day to nap though I haven 't managed it much lately . If I know I 'm going out drinking and dancing with the girls then a nap from say 4 : 15 - 5 : 30 or 6 will help keep me up and going without the aid of Extra Joss ( think red bull but in a powder that effervesces and tastes better ) . I occasionally get the change to nap at work . The Korean work ethic here seems to be more about quantity of hours at work than the actual work done . I 'm not the only one . Some of the teachers get in a couple naps a week . The Koreans seem to go for the short , daily nap while the bule prefer one a week but a longer nap . This is with the exception of my worthless teaching partner who had three 3 + hour naps last week . I 'll rant about him later . Shortly I 'll be off home to nap today . I can tell if going to be a tough one to get up from . Posted by Jakarta is a city where so many can do so much with so little while few waste much more to accomplish very little . Here 's a clarifying example . I 've seen houses built of little more than cement bricks , cement and corrugated tin . Restaurants can be made entirely of bamboo with a thatched roof . They are often constructed in a matter of days and provide sufficient structure for their purpose . On the other hand , the relatively few politicians and wealthy business owners are able to siphon off money from public works projects , from donations , from their companies to the disadvantage of everyone else . Jakarta was supposed to get a monorail system years ago but the funding , which had come from foreign government investments , disappeared . This year there was talk of trying it again , with money from Japan and now that 's gone as well . I wouldn 't claim that similar scenarios aren 't playing out worldwide , but I have a hard time seeing it on such a stratified , rampant level . An unfortunate reality . For the rich and powerful in Jakarta it is . The amount of buying one can do here is in the upper levels of ludicrous . By Indonesian standards my wage is very good . Compared to other foreigners , my salary is pretty low ( middlin for teachers but teachers are much lower than the oil and gas group , the financial clan or any business men ) . That being said , I rarely have a budget . I pay an ojek driver for daily rides , I take more taxi rides in a week than I 've taken in my lifetime in the US and I have a maid . I go out to eat and drink with my friends without a second thought . I don 't buy many things , but lots of groceries . Salon trips happen at least twice a month most of the time . I travel a lot . The " quality of life " as its often termed here is high . There are lots of things I 'd like to do that I can 't from here , but there is very little here I can 't do . I can buy or do nearly anything . In the US and Spain I had to watch my pennies so to speak . I wouldn 't splurge $ 25 for a pedicure in Seattle , but here when it costs $ 4 - 8 I can 't see a reason not to . Definitely unreality . Other than putting up with lots of irritations , life here is pretty easy . You can pay people to take care of almost anything for you . Every business is over staffed , though the service isn 't usually great . The traffic is enough to make you lose your mind . Sitting two hours in a car to go 30 km is mind - melting . The monotony of the weather is a bore for me , and the torrential afternoon rains that will be starting soon are a huge inconvenience . Bule ( foreign , especially white ) men can get women half their age and hotter than anyone they 'd get at home simply because they are white . Old , fat , hairy , lazy , grumpy , ugly men routinely being chase by young , fit , good looking Indonesian girls . Girls who bend over backwards and put up with lots of shit because these guys buy them things and might provide an better life . If this is reality , I 'll tune out . My wager is that anyone who stays here very long starts to think that all of this , all the insanity that is Jakarta , is normal . It 's not . I haven 't met another soul who things the way things carry on here are in any way similar to back home - wherever home might be ! Australia , Canada , the US , New Zealand , continental Europe and the UK . To those who like / love it here and have been here X years ( any number of 2 will suffice ) , whoopie for you . Don 't not believe for a second that just because you like the inane behavior of the people here , both bule and Indonesian , you can suffer the choking exhaust fumes , you no longer are bothered by the traffic that you will EVER convince me that this is normal and acceptable . The pollution makes for great swimming opportunities As a follow up post to Half - flys and Hookers . There are two versions of the Haka . This is the Haka the All Blacks perform when they are threatened and know their opponent may be formidable . This was two weeks ago before their Rugby World Cup game again the French team . Awesome . I was lucky that it was a Kiwi friend took me under her rugby wing . She was looking for someone to watch the Super 15 tournament games with her . I agreed with the condition that she 'd have to spend the our first game together answering my questions . Tri - Nations and Rugby World Cup have followed in succession . I got the jist of rugby before ; it 's just similar enough to American football that I got the concept of running the ball into the goal area , or kicking it through goal posts . It 's was all the penalties and subtleties that were lost on me . She patiently answered all my " what was that ? " and " what happened there " s over the course of the game . I 'm still seeing something new every game . The scrums are making sense , I can see where a team get a foul on line - outs , and I 'm starting to follow kicking v throwing v running strategies . I get it now . I don 't instinctively plunge headlong into an NFL vs Rugby argument on the side of the Americans any more . Crouch , touch , pause , engage I 'm now a dutiful All Blacks fan . Before you go jumping on me as a fan who 's jumped in on the backs of the most famous , most prodigious team for just those reasons , hold your horses . The friend who taught me about rugby is KIWI , that means she 's an ALL BLACKS fan . Since I learned from her , and watching them , they 're my team . A week or two ago I sent her an sms saying that we were playing and I meant ABS ( All Blacks ) , not the USA , who I didn 't even know had a team until two weeks ago . And incidentally there are over 90 , 000 pro rugby players in the US . Really ? ? I love sport . I grew up watching baseball and football . I feel in love with football ( aka soccer ) when I saw it live for the first time in Guatemala . My team in the FIFA World Cup were the Spaniards . I supported Spain from the beginning and might have been the only one doing so in Jakarta . They won to boot ! I 'm hoping that the same magic will work for the ABS . I almost got my American card revoked for not supporting the US then and I was questioned about it again for RWC . When we get to the Olympics then it 'll be a different story but until then . . . I watched the last three rugby games of open play in the Rugby World Cup . The quarterfinals will start next weekend and I 'm excited about it . I have learned some of the players on other teams and see strengths and weaknesses in them . I was sad to see Scotland knocked out of play , and even sorrier to see how dirty the Italian team played against the Irish ( which made me happier the Irish team moved on ) . Great resource for RWC Plus the All Blacks have the Haka . Wicked cool . I will unabashedly admit that there might be another reason I continue watching rugby . Sonny Bill Williams and Dan Carter may be the reason I like rugby . I like the physicality , the athleticism and the players .
|
Just a little something to get in the spirit for Valentines Day . . . . . . . . . . Roses are red , Violets are blue , these fabric roses could be just for you ! Leave a comment and your name , hope you have fun playing this game ! That 's right , fabric roses just for you ! I 've done this before at a retreat and it was so much fun , I thought , let 's do it again . In February of 2003 , when my friend Sara and I hosted a Valentine Retreat " Sew Many Blessings " , we had a great time gathering fun door prizes with a red , white and pink theme . For our final prize , I made up a dozen long - stemmed fabric roses and Diane was the winner . Oh , she was a wonderful winner because she played it like " Queen for a Day " ! How many of you remember that show ? I do . My mother watched it . I always thought it would be great if she was on there and won a washer / dryer . : - ) Anyway , I " plucked " twelve red fabrics from my stash ( cut into fat quarters ) and wrapped them around wire stems , then bundled them into the half - yard of green , glittery fabric you see in the photo and tied it all up with a gold bow . I could be " sending you a big bouquet of roses " ( as it goes in the Eddy Arnold song ) and here is all you have to do . 1 . Leave a comment and tell me the name of your first true love . Just first names will do . Then , is he still your first true love ? This could get interesting . 2 . Please leave your e - mail address in your comment if it is not linked to your blog . Without it , I will not be able to contact you if you win . This giveaway is open to all bloggers . I will ship international but I will be verifying that you meet the rules . : - ) 3 . You get two chances to enter . Sign up anytime on February 1st . Then , on February 2nd , you may sign up again in celebration of Groundhog Day . It 's like a " repeat " vote , sort of like what poor Bill Murray went through in the movie of the same name where every day is a repeat of the day before . Entries begin at 12 : 00 a . m . February 1st and end at 12 : 00 midnight on February 2nd . My random number man will draw the winner then and I will post thPosted by Here it is . . . . . . the block for February from the original designs I did back in 2003 . Each of these designs if very simple to stitch . All are done in cotton fabrics and all are embellished with embroidery stitches . As you can see in the photo above , I reversed the heart pieces by having the larger heart be plaid and the small one solid . In my sketch , I drew it the opposite way . You take the creative path and do what pleases you ! : - ) Also , the block colors did not scan " true " and the red is more vibrant than the brick red that it appears in the photo . Now about the words that come with each design . . . . . . . . I 'm going to have to ask you to " bear with me " and we will get to that in March . . . . . . . . . . . . and that 's because I am going to need to address a few other items and can 't get to that this month . Hope you will understand ! Now I promised a snowman in addition to the heart design and here is what he will look like . . . . . but this is not the pattern you 'll need . This is one I gave to students a few years ago and I will enlarge it and create the pattern pieces and post it mid - week . I have to finish my business taxes , need to get to the dentist , have to get the details finalized on our crazy quilting exhibit and then there are a few family things that take precedence right now . I have a " full plate " but I am happy to share my BOM and the challenge I took to bring you a new snowman design each month , too . It 's just going to be a little crazy for the next couple of weeks , so , here 's what to watch for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * about 8 : 00 this evening ( CST ) I 'll be posting the photo and info on my " Hearts and Roses Giveaway " . It 's all ready to go and you will have just 48 hours to pop in and add your name for a chance to win ! ! You will be able to begin leaving comments at midnight February 1 . When you come back , there will also be a new quilt in my blog header . : - ) * next item up will be " Tea and Stitches " on Wednesday , February 4th . My plan is to post the pattern for this snowman design that day , too . * following that , I 'll be posting anotherPosted by I 've been a bit busy that last couple of days . Lots of odds and ends to catch up on and I wish I could say that I am " all caught up " . Not ! ! Actually , on Wednesday , I was gone most of the day volunteering at the women 's correctional facility . My friend Barb and I spent the afternoon helping the women make valentines to send to their kids and family members . I just bring in cardstock , lots of that 90 % off fancy red and gold ribbon I bought last week , some lace and trims , lots of fun fabrics to cut and decorate with , some valentine books with quotes and thoughts to add to the cards and then the creative work begins . Some of the valentines the women made were really lovely and very creative . It was a busy and good afternoon ! ! ! When we were finished we headed over to Panera ( sandwich and coffee place ) for some really delicious panini sandwiches and a good visit . Great food , great friend , great evening ! Now , I have to backtrack to Tuesday when I received an e - mail from Joy of Joypatch blog . The stocking she won in my Christmas Joy giveaway had arrived ! She was very pleased with everything I sent . : - ) When I let her know that the package was on it 's way , I told her I could post photos of what was in the stocking or wait until she received it . She wanted to be surprised and asked that I wait til she got the package before I posted about it on my blog . . . . . . so in the photo above you will see the 25 fat quarters I stuffed into the stocking that I made . I put the stocking in a long box and packed valentine fat quarters around it , tucked in some bells for a little jingle and added a kit and pattern for my Spring Bunny penny rug . I enJOYed making this stocking and filling it with goodies from my stash / collection . I still marvel over the fact that the winning name my husband drew was JOY 's name . What do you suppose the odds are for that happening ? My next giveaway was the " Whirl into Winter " giveaway and it would have been really interesting if someone with the first or last name of winter had won . However , the winner was Mary Posted by I was having a blue Monday ( it 's the weather and it 's the same - cold - so I won 't bother talking about it ) and thought , I have got to do something about this . I need tunes ! ! ! A couple of my favorite blogs - CootieBug and PugYoga have tunes from Playlist so I decided if they could figure out how to do this , so could I ! ! And just like doing a blog , the whole process is easy as pie - well , almost - and now I have successfully added a ton of my favorite tunes . I started with thoughts of Buddy Holly and then my high school favorite , Bobby Vinton . Then I thought of music that I plunked out on the piano at my Grandma Goldie 's , songs I 've sung at programs and at church , favorites from the good times and some from the sad times . And one song reminded me of another and is this what it 's like to have an IPod ? Obviously , you can tell I don 't have one ! ! ! What if you don 't like my tunes ? If you don 't want to listen to them , you can go to the bottom of my blog and turn them off ( or turn your volume down ) . KnitWit has already told me that she likes my selection , so hopefully the rest of you don 't mind the tunes too much . I would be curious to know though . . . . . . . . do you preferr that people not add tunes ? or does it matter . I can delete the playlist from my blog if it 's not welcome . Your opinion counts ! ! ! Please let me know . Sandi Posted by It was cold yesterday but I had to go grocery shopping so to make it worth the trip , I , of course , went in search of fabric and bargains . I had no trouble finding either ! ! ! : - ) The evidence is all here in the photos . Well , almost some items weren 't that exciting for a picture but the price was right so . . . . . . . . what did I find ? Well , the good stuff at JoAnn 's at 90 % off actually started when I stopped there on Thursday night after crazy quilting . My big " find " was a 4 foot white pine Christmas tree with lights that only cost me $ 5 . oo ! My mom doesn 't read my blog so I can tell you why I was so excited to find that tree . She loves blue and white and right after Christmas I found some pretty royal blue glass ornaments that I thought she would like . The mind started to click and I thought , aha , next year for the Christmas at the hotel weekend , I 'll decorate a tree with blue and silver . So , you can imagine my excitement when I found the white glittery tree with white lights in place and I could already see it decorated ! ! I picked up ribbon at 90 % off , too . Some there and then some on Friday at the other JoAnn 's I regularly visit . That means I was only paying about . 19 to . 39 cents for ribbon rolls and all those red berry things were only . 09 cents each ! ! They 'll show up in a big wreath next year but the ribbon is actually stuff I want to use for Valentine projects . So , the next stop was the Dollar Tree store where I found these cute little books ( some Valentine ones and the neat little Tea and Friendship one ) , glitter pens for Valentines and then Easter cards and crafts and check out those heart shaped measuring spoons ! Too cute to pass up ! ! Those fabrics in the picture with the spoons are from River City Quilts in Mankato ( MN ) . I was only looking for a snowman themed fat quarter when I went in . . . . . . but my friend , Darlene , was working and she reminded me that it was " Fat Quarter Friday " which means if you " buy 5 you get a 6th one free " . Well , of course , I bought 5 and that 's why you see six . : - ) Don 't you just love that aPosted by The mailman came to the door yesterday afternoon with a large package that I wasn 't expecting . I remembered that my sister said she was going to send along a " little something " but this box was bigger than what I thought she was sending . But , in fact , it was from my sister , Judy . Amazingly , I got a little package off to her before Christmas but we both do a lot of volunteering and family stuff so sometimes don 't get anything mailed to each other til after Christmas . I loved what was in the box . It was stuffed full and when I opened the lid , it was as if the box went " poof " and first a quilt popped up . It 's the one on the rocking chair . Judy said it 's one she no longer wants so she passed it on to me . She knows I am a " good home for orphan quilts " . : - ) It needs a wee bit of repair but I really like it and it looks good with the crocheted dresser scarf that was also in the box . Now this piece is a real treasure because it was made by my Grandma Goldie . Judy thought I might like to have it as she had been using it for church things and it didn 't fit her color scheme at home . I was thrilled because I knew immediately where it would look great ! ! The old sewing machine that belonged to my Aunt Bell really needed something and this is perfect , don 't you think ? I need to change the Christmas teapot to something for Valentines Day but I can 't believe how perfect it was for the top of the sewing machine cabinet . Oh , and the machine still works although I don 't use it , but I could if I wanted to . My Aunt Bell made clothes for my mother on the machine and my mother made baby clothes for me on the machine . Also in the package was a book she found at The Crowded Closet in Iowa City . It 's a great thrift shop ! The book is Christmas in Denmark and she thought it was especially appropriate for us since my husband Steve is a first generation Dane . His dad , Ed , was born in Hals , Denmark . Flipping through the book makes me think I need to do a Danish themed Christmas tree . My list of trees that I want to do is getting mighty long ! The Posted by Yes , the end of a very auspicious day has come . The President and the First Lady have danced their last dance of the Inaugural Ball extravaganza and so it 's time to say goodnight . . . . . . . . almost . The news media has given their thoughts all day long so I am going to add mine before I toddle off to bed . A day like today will never come again in my lifetime , I am sure so I must share my thoughts . I just have to say that I thought today was just about as historic as a day could be . From the time our country was born , when we fought for freedom from the British , who would have thought it would take more than 200 years to see true equality in our country ! Or that it would take more than 100 years to see the vote for women and Native Americans ! And the Voting Rights Act that attempted to make it more clear wasn 't enacted until 1965 ! What a long journey it was . And so , yes , we have come a long way , baby , but there is also a long way to go . President Obama has his work cut out for him but if there is one thing that is obvious about him . . . . it is that he is ready to do the job . Oh , Martin Luther King would surely be proud of what transpired these last few months and culminated in today 's celebration . And whatever your political leanings , you can be proud of the United States today . Hundreds and thousands of people have been given hope and perhaps that alone will give them cause to contribute their own talents and gifts to caring for the future of this country . As a baby boomer , it is good to see that " the torch will pass " to another generation . When I look back , I see myself in the 60 's , a young girl from a small town in central Iowa . It was a good life . I recall the hope that my parents saw in JFK and then the sadness that came with his death . I started high school one month after Martin Luther King delivered his " I have a dream " speech . I always believed that the day would come when the color of one 's skin did not matter . Perhaps I was idealistic . In the spring of 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated and I think that for mPosted by It is a very special day here in the United States - Inauguration Day ! It is a day filled with incredible hope and many , many a heart is bursting with joy at the hope for the future that this day brings . We have inaugurated a new President , Barack Obama . I have spent the day watching this historic moment . In fact , " glued " to the TV would be more appropriate ! ! In between all the events , I have been visiting blogs and I linked to SewingSouthpaw and learned of the One World , One Heart Giveaway . I read all the details and decided I wanted to participate . The concept for this giveaway comes from Lisa and if you go here you can read the message that she shares . The purpose behind the giveaway is to meet and get to know fellow bloggers . I have so enjoyed meeting bloggers all around the country and the world and I would love to meet more ! So , what will I offer for a Giveaway ? Well , when I signed up , I knew what I would make but it wasn 't finished . I promised a photo soon and here it is . . . . . . . a special journal for keeping those thoughts that are near and dear to your heart . The drawing will be on February 12th at 6 : 00 p . m . CST . Rules for the Giveaway and comments . . . . . . . . 1 . This Giveaway is open to all residents of the blogging world . I will ship anywhere . 2 . You must have a blog to participate . In addition , if your e - mail is not included in your blog profile , you must include it in the comment that you post . I will delete comments immediately that do not have contact information . 3 . When the winner is drawn , I will post the name on my blog and then e - mail the winner . You will have 48 hours to reply to claim your prize . Please note . . . . . . . . . If you know that you will be away at the time of the drawing then send me an e - mail to let me know that . I am more than happy to accommodate this if I know it in advance . At the end of 48 hours , if I have not heard from you , another name will be drawn and all claims to the Giveaway for you will end . In the photo above , you can see the Journal Cover that I made for an ordinary notebook . YouSandi A . Good afternoon , all ! ! I am almost finished with packing away all the Christmas decorations and getting the tree stuffed in it 's box . Why is it so hard to get that tree back in the box that it originally came in ? ? : - ) Anyway , just wanted to pop in and give you a little update on the BOM that I am offering . Some of you have received the January block that I sent out a few days ago . Many more of you have signed up since then and tomorrow , Monday , I will be mailing the block to all of you that have signed up in the past week . I am so pleased that you want to do this block - even if it means you just print out the pattern and file it in your " someday " file for I do that , too ! ! So , if you sign up for the block and have not received an e - mail from me by noon , Tuesday , January 20th , please leave a comment on this post or send me an e - mail . I will set up a Flickr account where block photos can be posted . Lots of fun to be had but lots of details to get the snowball rolling , too . Hee hee ! The February blocks will be sent at the end of January since February is such a short month . : - ) Thereafter blocks will be sent on the 1st of each month . Back to packing the Christmas decorations . . . . . . . Sandi This weekend I am taking my Christmas trees down . You already know that I am sad to see them come down as I love the twinkling lights and just enjoy looking at all the ornaments and remembering where they came from and all the memories that are hung on the tree . I am not a clothes hound . I do love fabric . I really love my Christmas ornaments , though and always have room for more ! ! So when I saw a couple of swaps for ornaments , I had to jump in . . . . . . there was one at Indigo Blue and you can see what I received from Janice and then what I made for her here . Then there was the Kate 's Great Ornament Exchange and you just had to send one ornament . I laughed because my partner couldn 't send just one and sent the two on the left . At Christmas , my son 's girlfriend , Stacia , gave me a similar one . I loved the quilting theme of all of them ! ! I couldn 't send of just one ornament for Kate 's exchange so I made three bells and added some fun stuff . Anna in Kansas City mentioned angels and such so I tied some pretty ribbon on these cool bells I found ( you 'll see more below ) that have a snowflake on the bottom of them . Then I glued some pretty angel buttons to the top , tucked in an angel she could paint for next year and a little book of Christmas prayers . My partner in Emily 's Ornament Swap was Rosie from Spain and I made her one of my wool stars and a heart ornament that was sort of three dimensional and cooler on the tree than it looks her on my tablecloth . Rosie really liked that one and could hear it jingle in the package when it arrived . This one also was to be just one ornament but I just had to tuck in some other things . I received the pretty felt ornaments from Lee in Australia that are here . More jingle bell ornaments went off to Monique in The Netherlands for the Honeypot Ornament Swap . She had a white and silver theme so I made up a dozen of those pretty bells and tied on some of my prettiest silver and white ribbons . I found a pretty metal Noel ornament , a bag of snowflake buttons and an ornament she can paint , too . TPosted by Ah , the suspense was rising as I put the final names in the bucket - something like 400 of them - and I am totally , awesomely pleased with all the comments I received ! I did a " collapse comments " that gave me names only and did a copy and paste to Word and then printed out sheets with the names on them . That way no name was missed so everyone 's name made it into the bucket . I called to my husband that the time had come to " lend a hand " for the big drawing . That 's his hands after he dumped the comments on the carpet to give them a good " salad mix " like he has done in past drawings . Kaiser was watching and must have thought it was food because in an instant he ran in and scarfed up one of the names between his teeth and took off . Steve yelled " stop " and I grabbed Kaiser and opened his mouth to remove the name . He was not wanting to let go of it but I wasn 't going to let him eat it . I won and the name went in the bucket to be mixed with all the others . This is how unhappy Kaiser was that he couldn 't eat the paper strip ( that 's not a bag of garbage behind him - it 's the bag for the fake snow ) . SO , the name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . drum roll that can be heard round the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the winner of my " Snowflake Surprise " in the " Whirl into Winter Giveaway " is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . edited . . . . . . . . . looks like we 'll have to contact another winner as I have not heard from the name that my husband drew out of the Snowman bucket . . . . . . . . . . back in an hour with another name . . . . . . . . decided that I will announce the name when I hear from the person I e - mailed and left a comment on her blog . That person has until 2 : 00 CST on Monday to reply . And I have her reply . . . . . . . . . The winner is the " NeedledMom " ! ! ! I have left a comment on her blog and I await a reply as alternate names were drawn in case she does not contact me by midnight Saturday ! ! Sadly , I must report that the first name drawn did not have any way to contact and so I could not declare her a winner . If you do not have a blog or don 't have your e - mail in your profile , there is noPosted by My husband will be drawing the name and is excited to fulfill his duty as the " non - partial official drawer of the winning name " for my giveaways . Don 't ask me why but he is really getting a kick out of doing this for me . So for those of you checking in early this morning , please come back at noon , CST when the winner will be posted ! ! Sandi The last day to enter the " Whirl into Winter " Giveaway is here . I wish I could say it was the last day of winter because right now it is about - 20 here in southwest Minnesota . Numerous schools are closed because the wind chill is even worse and it 's just too cold to have kids standing at the bus stop ! It 's been a long time since I remember a day that is this cold ! You probably aren 't interested in the weather , only what 's in that tin , right ? Well , I forgot to take a picture of them but the tin is filled with six fat quarters of snow - themed fabrics and a packet of woolfelt that can be used for pincushion projects , ornaments , etc . This is the last day to sign up . Leave your name here for one more chance to enter . The winner will be drawn at midnight tonight - Thursday , January 15 ( you may leave a comment up til midnight my time which is Central Standard Time ) and will be announced tomorrow , January 16th . Best of luck to all of you ! ! Thanks for all the comments you shared during this great giveaway . It has been fun and while I haven 't replied to all the comments , I will eventually reply to each and every one of you ! ! And a big THANK YOU goes out to Debi who had the idea for this great way to " Whirl into Winter " ! ! Sandi You know what they say - " Better late than never ! " And that sure fits today 's post . You may remember that a few weeks before Christmas I posted a photo of all the tissue wrapped gifts that I received from Shelley ( Australia ) in Chookyblue 's Secret Santa Swap . I let Shelley know right away that I had received her package . A couple of days after that I let her know that I had peeked in a couple and I was so thrilled . When I opened everything up and layed it all out on the floor on Christmas Day , my daughter was quite taken . We were all impressed with the personalized cookbook that Shelley made and it has my name on it ! ! ! There were so many gifts , I was just amazed . . . . . . . an apron and matching oven mitt and refrigerator magnets , too . I filled the pocket of the apron with the rick rack trims she sent and there were lace trims and buttons , too ( they 'll go into my crazy quilting projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . there was a puffy pincushion and patterns and floss and four beautiful black and white fabrics that will go into my " Black and white challenge " quilt . I felt very pampered at receiving such a generous group of gifts . I e - mailed my thanks to Shelley but thank you again ! ! My partner was Fiona ( England ) and I sent the wrapped packages you see above . To see what was in them you can visit Fiona 's blog here . I am hoping to participate in Chookyblue 's swap this next season and I will definitely up the number of gifts and goodies that I include in my package ! ! There were other gifts that I received that I haven 't mentioned and while the Christmas tree is still up and the lights are on , I 'll tell you about them . The beautiful felted rose pin on the left was a gift from my friend , Deanna . She made two of them and one was for our ornament exchange at our Crazy Quilting Christmas party and the other was just for me . She included a little card that said " thanks for being the glue that holds us together " . I am the instigator of our Crazy Quilt group and keep us stuck together by sending out postcard remPosted by Just a reminder that there are only two days left to enter your name in the drawing for my " Snowflake Surprise " gifties for the " Whirl into Winter Giveaway " . Just click on the photo on the right and leave a post there and you will be entered . You can get a second and third chance to win if you go to my posts on January 5th and 10th and leave a comment . And on Thursday , January 15th , there will be another opportunity to get your name in the drawing so be sure to stop by ! ! If you don 't live in Minnesota , you have probably heard on the news that Minnesota is in the " deep freeze " . It was 16 below zero last night and I don 't think it got above zero all day . We are going to get at least three more days of this before we warm up into the 20 's . Right now , the 20 's is looking so good that it will feel as good as 70 on a sunny day . Really ! ! When it 's been this cold , even a bit of a warm - up feels good . Kaiser hates to go out and tries to do his duty on one leg , constantly lifting a leg all the way around because he 's a house doggie and his tender paws don 't take kindly to the cold . I feel for him but it really is kinda funny to watch . So what am I doing to keep busy since it 's too cold to go out . . . . . well , I am slowly but surely working through the project piles and the chaos that I created in my sewing room these last few months . I know there are a few of you out there in the same situation . I had a great deal of fun with swaps and block projects and volunteer activities and making gifts for friends and family , etc . but , oh , my what a tornado I created in my sewing room ! ! I have taken a " before picture " but won 't post it until I can post the " after " shots ! ! : - ) I am still enjoying the lights and trees of Christmas . Planning to pack it all away this weekend . I really hate to put it all away as I love the sparkle and the soft glow that radiates from a lighted tree in a dark room , like the one on the right that I never got posted prior to Christmas . It is in the dining room and I am going to leave this one up all year long . I havPosted by The Snowman Block of the month is no longer available as a free project in my Yahoo group . The complete pattern series is $ 12 . 00 . If you are interested in the patterns , please contact me at stitchinglegacy ( at ) gmail ( dot ) com . Thanks ! Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in the block of the month that I am offering for 2009 . I have entered almost all of the names and e - mail addresses . However , I am missing e - mails for several of you ( see below ) . It may be that you are planning to download the PDF but if you wish to receive it via e - mail please send me an e - mail with your address so I may add you to the list . Some of you may not realize that even though you are blogging your e - mail link does not come up when you leave a comment . Terri over a " Purple and Paisley " prepared a great post on how to add the e - mail feature so that you may be contacted . I asked if it was okay to post the link and she agreed so go here to learn how to add the e - mail feature to your blog . Those who need to send me their e - mail address are Pam , Lyn , Brenda , Liz , GeeGee , tlBrenda , MalibuCat , Jan , NC Fabric Junkie . I 'll be sending out the PDF files for the snowman block later on this evening . Til then , have a good afternoon ! ! Oh , my , I 'm not paying attention to dates and it is the 10th of January ! I need to let you know what is in Tin # 2 . Well , it 's another kit and this one is for the Snowman quilt you see in the photo . It 's just a small wall quilt and is another one that I designed for a Community Ed class . This one has a whimsical feature added to it - a pointy carrot nose , eyes of coal , raisins for his mouth and all made out of clay ! The quilt is called " Charlie 's Snowman " and was inspired when I looked out one winter night and across the street the neighbor boys had built one lone snowman and all I could see was his silhouette in the dark . You 'll get all the fabrics needed to complete this and the eyes , nose , and " raisin " mouth pieces . All you need to add is thread to stitch it up and a little piece of batting for it . Please add your name to this post for another chance to get your name in the drawing for my " Snowflake Surprise Giveaway " . Now about this tree on the right . I know Christmas is over but I just have a few more things I have to share with you and this is one of them . When I stopped to visit my daughter a few days after Christmas , my grandson , Jacob was showing me some of the things he got for Christmas . We were in his room and there on the shelf was this little tree . And he said " you gave that to me and we put it there every year " . I thought that was so cute . I decorated the little tree in the early 90 's and made it thinking of my son because he loved , loved dinosaurs when he was little . He 's grown now and not much for decorating for Christmas ( one real tiny tree will suffice ) so I passed this on to Jacob . I loved all the little dinosaurs but here 's the funny part . . . . . . . . . . . . . you 're probably thinking they are just plastic dinosaur toys but look closely . . . . . . . . . . . they are in pairs . . . . . . . . . . and that 's because they were earrings ! ! ! I bought them for about a quarter each and no wonder ! ! Who would wear dinosaurs on their ears ! ! ! They look much better on this tree and I even had a piece of dinosaur braid to trim the base of Posted by Remember the part in my last post where I said I would be posting to my " Tea and Stitches " blog the first Wednesday of every month at 4 : 00 CST ? We are going to change that right here and now . I will post at 4 : 00 . Now I 'm not saying if that will be 4 : 00 my time or your time but I will at least post on the first Wednesday of the month ! ! You see , there 's life stuff that sometimes happens and my blogging is fun but it takes a " back seat " when I need to give my mom a call , do the laundry , clean the house , etc . And speaking of cleaning the house , funny thing happened today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I was clicking right along . My cold is almost completely gone , had some laundry going , and I was busy making little Snowball cupcakes for the Tea and Stitches post . I had just finished frosting all the little cakes when the maid popped in . She said it looked like the floors were in a fine state and surely needed a good washing and what about those bathrooms ! ! ! Can 't let those bathroom bowl rings build up . Don 't you know they tell you on TV that you are missing all sorts of germs if you don 't clean your bathroom bowl properly ! ! ! So , I said , " fine , get to the cleaning " . So there she was whizzing from one place to the other and all I wanted to do was sit down for tea and stitch on my little project . No stitching yet , she said . Fold that laundry and put it away . So , I folded the towels and put them away . And as I went upstairs what do you think I saw . . . . . . she was at my computer playing a game of Solitaire . Silly lady , I said , you left the bathroom brush in the bowl . Please go finish the job . And so she did . Pretty soon the bathrooms were done , so it was time to wash the floors . I threw in another load of laundry and then guess where the maid was . . . . . . . she was in front of the TV watching an old Jane Wyman film ! ! Well , I am not paying you to watch TV , I said , so off she went to wash the floors . " Would you care for a cup of tea ? " I offered to which she replied " oh , no time for tea , must get back to my telly so I can watch my show " . And with Posted by Here he is . . . Fluffy the Snowman ! ! I think that 's a very appropriate name for him since he is made from fluffy polyester batting . The new " chapter " in my blog is ready so if you go here , you will find a tutorial so that you can make a Fluffy all your own . I rarely throw anything away . I keep scraps of all sizes , all kinds of odds and ends , shop at garage and clearance sales and buy up all kinds of craft stuff . You know me for sometimes I am you ! ! ! This project uses styrofoam balls which you might have to purchase but the rest is pretty much just scraps . He 's really fun to make and goes together very quickly . This was a kids ornament class project so anyone can make this snowman ! ! Each month throughout 2009 , I will post at least one ornament for you to make for your tree or as gifts for friends . I will feature ornaments made from felt , cotton fabrics , clay , wood , etc . My personal collection of ornaments is over 600 and about 1 / 3 of them are ornaments I made over the past 40 years ! If you make any of the ornaments , I would love to see pictures . : - ) One last thing for today - for all of you who are interested in the block of the month that I am going to be offering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I will be sending out the PDF files for the January Snowman block on January 12th . Thereafter , blocks will be sent to you on the first of each month . I am amazed that there are so many of you that are interested in my project . Thank you so much for visiting my blog and for all your lovely comments . What a great way to start a new year ! ! Oh , and be sure to stop by tomorrow for " Tea and Stitches " . On the first Wednesday of every month at 4 : 00 CST , I will host a little teatime and share a project , a recipe and perhaps a thought for the day or a recommendation for a good book ! Sandi Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and that song " The Twelve Days of Christmas " is running through my head . According to my Reader 's Digest Merry Christmas Songbook , this song is about the gifts given that celebrated each of the days from Christmas Day up to January 6th , the Epiphany . Life was hard then ( I know sometimes it seems hard today but it was physically hard then and remember , there was no deoderant ! ) and the Christmas holiday was a time when there was a wee bit of celebration to forget those hard times . Wealthy landowners often gave there tenants and workers , a gift each day . And as noted in this RD Songbook , even if you didn 't get twelve gifts , well , you could sing about it . Soooooooooo , on that note . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ha ! did you think I was going to sing ? Nope , not today but you never know . One of these days I may pop up on YouTube ! What I am going to do is start another new little chapter on my blog . That 's what I have decided to call each of the blogs that I add to this , my initial blog " A Legacy of Stitches " . I love to craft , sew , create and share what I do . I gather in a lot of friends and fun that way ! ! I 've always talked of writing a book and this is almost a book ( especially if you were to read all the posts I 've made since I started blogging last May ) . So , the new chapter is going to be a blog about Christmas . I 've called it " Christmas is Love - Keeping Christmas All Year Long " . And that 's just what I am going to do . The spirit of Christmas is all about Peace and Love . We need a lot more of that in our world today ! So , about once a month ( maybe more ) I am going to post an ornament and some thoughts that will " keep Christmas all year long " . You 'll find that chapter here . . . . . . . . . . I 'll be posting the photos and instructions for the first ornament about 4 : 00 CST today , January 6th . I hope you enjoy it and that you will keep the spirit of " Christmas in your heart " all year long ! ! Sandi I was almost ready to turn out the lights when I remembered that I needed to post what is in Tin Number 1 , the round tin . And in that tin . . . . . . . . . you will find . . . . . . . . . a complete woolfelt kit to make my " Snowflake Penny Rug " . I have loads of penny rugs that I have designed and only a few in pattern form with completed samples . Many of the designs were drawn during times when I was preoccupied with family health issues . I 'd draw sketches , whole series of things and tuck them away in my notebook . Now I finally have the time and the space to get out my supplies and make those designs real ! ! ! Now , I am almost ready to turn out the lights again , but there 's one more thing I must do . . . . . . . . . . I want to wish my friend , Cindy , a HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! ! Cindy is one of those friends that I treasure even though we don 't see each other that often . We crossed paths at a time when we were both trying to get more involved in the arts and creative activities and get others involved , too . She was an encourager to me and because of her , I probably took chances that I wouldn 't have had I not met her . Because of Cindy , I formed an arts group and at her urging , I taught a couple of quilt classes that I would not have ventured to teach had she not encouraged me . Do you have friends like that ? Someone who brings out in you more than you know is there ? Sometimes we need those kind of friends . I know that my friendship was good for her , too . I 'll be sending her an e - mail later today and I have a little package to send off to her " just because " . If you have someone that was an encourager , I 'd love to hear who that was but it 's not necessary for getting your name in the drawing . All you have to do for another chance for the drawing for the items in my " Snowflake Surprise " package for the " Whirl into Winter Giveaway " is to leave a comment on this post and make sure you leave your e - mail address if you do not have a blog . Night all ! ! Sandi P . S . Don 't miss the info that I posted earlier on the block of the month I 'll be offering in 2009 . Just read on aPosted by The Snowman Block of the month is no longer available as a free project in my Yahoo group . The complete pattern series is $ 12 . 00 . If you are interested in the patterns , please contact me at stitchinglegacy ( at ) gmail ( dot ) com . Thanks ! There are loads of Block of the month projects out there so it occurred to me to wonder if there is a need for another one . But here I am and I am going to share these patterns that I designed for my friends who joined me at my church for Hearthside Quilters . We had so much fun that it would be enjoyable for me to go back through the blocks and recall some of the fun we had as I share the blocks with all of you . This block of the month series is one I offered in 2003 . I cannot tell a lie . . . . . . . . . . . I never finished my blocks . Family health issues kept me hopping that year ( as they did for much of 2000 through 2008 ) but getting together with my friends once a month was an escape from worry . For many in the group it was the same thing - an escape to do something we love - quilting and getting together ! ! For some it was the release of stress from work , kids , husbands , and for some , it relieved the worry of loved ones serving overseas . I would draw the blocks and got many started but it wasn 't until this past year that I finished all the embroidery on the blocks . Now I am ready to sash them and put them into a full - size wall quilt . The block for January is , of course , a snowman . My kids loved to make snowmen . Living in Minnesota there was , and is , almost always an abundance of snow . I got to wondering about who might have invented the snowman and so . . . . . . . I googled it . Lo and behold , someone did " invent " the snowman . A dear man , Mr . Vernon Paul of Eau Claire , Wisconsin ( another state with an abundance of snow ) made a snowman for his daughter , Yetty Paul , that would frighten away the Boxing Day elves . This all took place in 1809 . Believe it or not , the New York Times dispatched a writer to check out the " snow people " being made in the town and so the humble Snowman was born and provides us with an eternal sign of winter fun ! ! At the first of each month , I will post a scanned photo of my block and the two pattern pages . As with other patterns that I post , if you cannot save the pages to your computer , just e - mail me and I will send you a pdf file . I would like to start a list of those that would like to receive the blocks and then each month , I can just send you the appropriate block . I will still post here on my blog but that way you will have the right file from the start . Please leave a comment on this post , with your e - mail address , if you would like to have the patterns e - mailed to you each month . Well , I must close for tonight . I appear to finally be getting over my cold am consuming fewer cough drops , sneezing less , etc . I apologize for being late with posting about this block of the month but the cold just kept me in a fog and I really couldn 't think well enough to put together the thoughts I 've just shared ! ! Time to turn out the lights ! Well , I am just amazed at the " blizzard " of comments that I have received so far . Turns out most of you have seen snow and most of you like it until there 's too much of it ! ! ! I would agree ! ! More snow is expected here tomorrow and I am sure it will be lovely as it falls . And I am just glad I have no where to go ! ! So if you are like me and you 're staying home while it 's snowing outside , here 's a little project you can try . This is a pattern I gave to my friends a couple of years ago when we gathered to stitch in January . I led a group of friends in a block of the month at my church and we had a great time stitching together . The group was called Hearthside Quilters because we met in the Hearthroom at the church . Wow , the quilts the gals made were amazing . Show and tell was a big part of the gathering . And there was often food , too . And laughter . All the things that friends enjoy ! Many times I draw a design and never get it stitched - this is one of them , but I bought some Kona cotton last Friday and I am going to put it to good use . I 'm thinking I will do this design either in Redwork or else I 'll color it and then highlight with embroidery stitches and probably some glitter . I love a little sparkle in my life . ; - ) If you do stitch this up - totebag , pillow , whatever - send me a picture . Have fun ! Tomorrow I 'll be posting the Block of the month project for this year . I had a tutorial I was going to post yesterday and had taken all my photos except the last one when I realized I had made a serious error in my sample . I think it might be because of this cold I have . My brain was just not fully " engaged " . I 'll fix my problem and get it posted as soon as it 's fixed . Have a good day all ! Sandi P . S . To print the pages , just save the file to your computer and then you can print it out . I can also e - mail you the PDF file so just send me a note if you need that . Sorry but blogger does not have an option for loading a PDF . Posted by Oh , fun ! I am thrilled at all the comments and love to read them . I will try to respond but no guarantees here . My cold is better but I am still " not fully engaged " . Example . . . . . . . . I was getting ready to start a little project but my mind is just a bit fuzzy and then I realized Kaiser was missing . I went in search of him and found him by my nightstand . Every once in a while he reverts to puppy behaviors and he managed to chew a pencil and eat my " faux pearl " earring . My pencil must have had traces of cookie on it . Last night , I forgot to take my earrings off and put them away and when I realized it , I just put them on my nightstand . I was too tired to get up and put them away . Not wise on my part . In the rush to get to the pencil , Kaiser must have knocked the earring on the floor and then scarfed it up . There is no trace of it . It 's not the first time he 's eaten one of my earrings . Good thing I don 't wear large hoops or anything or we 'd be off to the vet . Ah , this too shall pass . . . . . . . . . . . Sorry , couldn 't resist . Blame it on my addled brain and the cold , flu thing that has it 's grip on me . : - ) Anyway , just wanted to pop in and say " THANK YOU " to all of you who are leaving comments . Obviously , there are a lot of places with a lot of snow this year ! ! I 'll be back later on with a little something to share . SandiP . S . My " Block of the Month " will begin on Saturday , January 3rd . I had planned to post it on Dec . 30th but this cold " threw me for a loop " and it will take me a couple of days to get " back on track " ! This will be a " two - part " BOM and is one I shared with friends who joined me at " Hearthside Quilters " in 2002 and 2003 to make these blocks . They are tried , true and simple blocks that are " ready to go " so stop back on Saturday for the first block . : - ) I hope the stories and photos that I share will inspire and encourage your creativity and provide a pleasant little memory , too ! Some days I 'll write about quilting , some days about friends , places I 've visited , projects , patterns , and more . I 've spent more than 40 years stitching and creating and am enjoying this blogging journey that allows me to share my story with all of you ! If you have questions or comments on anything you see or read on my blog , please leave a comment or e - mail me at stitchinglegacy ( at ) gmail ( com ) . About Me All items pictured on this blog are designed and / or owned by Sandra E . Andersen © 2000 - 2013 unless otherwise noted . Please do not copy and / or sell items pictured on these pages ; contact me if you are interested in any item you see on my blog for further information . Do not remove any images or text from this blog without written permission of the author . November 5th , 2010 ! The Snowman Block of the month is no longer available as a free project in my Yahoo group . The complete pattern series is $ 12 . 00 . If you are . . . Hi ! and hope you are all enjoying a great evening , the last night of 2009 ! ! I am ready for a new year and a new start . Got my new calendar a . . . has provided threads for many of the projects that I share on my blog . Check them out at www . thegentleart . com ! ! ! I love their hand - dyed / over - dyed floss that is available in so many gorgeous colors and equally beautiful names . They add just the right touch to the pieces that I embroider or embellishments added to wool and applique projects ! Rae Ann over at Cutie * Pinwheel blog shared this quote on her blog last Thanksgiving . I love it and asked her if I might include it here on my blog . Permission granted , so here it is . . . . . . . . . " Gratitude left unexpressed is like living in a dark world . Light up your life by expressing the gratitude you feel in your heart . . . especially for others . " Quote by Rae Ann " I love making happy happen ! " It was inspired by a news report that said Monday , January 17 was the saddest day of the year . I decided to make it happy by sending e - mails to my quilty friends . It was a way to get rid of the sadness and make me some " happy " ! ! I didn 't write this poem . It was posted on the bulletin board at the company I worked at many years ago . I never knew who wrote the poem because it just said " author unknown " . I just recently learned that the poem is by Helen Steiner Rice . I love her poems and greeting card verses . I should have known it was written by her . I 've added the correct title and her name . There is a great deal of truth in the poem . I just like what it says . . . . . . . . Give Lavishly ! Live Abundantly ! The more you give , the more you get . The more you laugh , the less you fret . The more you do unselfishly , the more you live abundantly . The more of everything you share , the more you 'll always have to spare . The more you love , the more you 'll findthat life is good and friends are kind . For only what we give away , enriches us from day to day . copyright Helen Steiner Rice
|
Last Sunday evening , as I was bringing Patti into the house for dinner from her yard , I noticed she wasn 't her usual bouncy , springy self - - she usually bounds through the gate and twirls , happy to be going in for supper . But she almost meekly went through the gate , as if she didn 't have any energy . I had to take her by the collar and guide her up the ramp to the back door . A few minutes later it was clear she wasn 't interested in eating . The next day she seemed better ; her temperature remained normal , there was never any vomiting or diarrhea , and no outward signs of anything wrong . Just not her usual energy . The only other odd thing we noticed on Monday was that she wasn 't lying in her favorite spots in her yard , but was picking some unusual locations . Something wasn 't right . I called our vet clinic in Whitefield for an appointment ; they didn 't have any openings until Wednesday , but we could drop her off on Tuesday morning and our vet , Dr . Chris Plumley , would take a look at her in between other appointments . Only a few hours after Alayne left her at the clinic , Chris called . He had already managed to do an abdominal ultrasound and found a large mass on Patti 's spleen . He could operate to remove her spleen , but he cautioned that he couldn 't tell from his ultrasound whether the mass had spread elsewhere . If it had , we might be putting her through surgery unnecessarily . The mass could be benign and limited to the spleen , or it could be cancer and might have spread throughout her abdomen . I told Chris I wanted to take Patti to our internal medicine specialist in Burlington , Vermont , Dr . Bryan Harnett , for more detailed diagnostic imaging . My hunch was that we weren 't looking at a benign mass limited only to the spleen . I didn 't want to have her opened up , only to get a call while she 's on the operating table , saying they had found other organs were involved and we probably shouldn 't wake her up from anesthesia . ( We 've been in that terrible situation before . ) In the meantime , I asked Chris to go ahead and run a full blood panel on Patti , so I could have it ready for Bryan 's consultation . I called his clinic for an appointment , and Bryan 's first opening was Thursday morning . When Alayne went to pick up Patti and brought home her blood work , I took one look at the results and thought , " uh oh . " Several values were off - the - chart low . I scanned the blood work in on Tuesday evening and emailed it to Bryan . I told him that I had an appointment with him for Thursday but thought he should see the lab results in case he decided we should do anything different before then . At 8 p . m . , he emailed back , asking us to bring in Patti as soon as we could on Wednesday and he 'd fit her into the schedule . With his advanced imaging , Bryan was able to determine that the mass had spread throughout Patti 's abdomen - - to her liver and intestines , including the mesentery , the tissue that connects parts of the small intestine to the back wall of the abdomen . She was , in fact , riddled with multiple masses . He concluded that this was most likely hemangiosarcoma , a cancer that is so aggressive that she could have developed it only within the past two weeks . . . but certainly within the past two months . There was , in short , nothing we could do for her at this point except keep her comfortable with pain meds . The episode of lethargy we saw on Sunday and Monday , Bryan said , was probably from one of the masses rupturing ; as her body reabsorbed the blood and fluids , she began to feel better - - and indeed , the rest of this week she 's almost been her old self . She 's eating , her tail is wagging , and she looks downright happy . . . just as she did right up until last Sunday . For the girl who 's been the picture of pefect health for so many years , we were stunned at the sudden reversal of fortune . Long time blog readers know that she has been one of our " icons " here . She came to us after suffering unimaginable pain and abuse , but through her very sweetness and affectionate nature , she showed us how animals are immensely capable of forgiving - - if not forgetting - - what people have done to them . The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! When we moved here last year we knew there was a septic tank and field out there " somewhere " under the dog yards , but there was no access to the tank - - everything was totally buried , so we had no idea exactly where it was . I know this is fairly common , but given the fact that septic tanks need to be cleaned out every several years , I 've never understood why they aren 't all installed with a visible , easily accessible hatch . The alternative is to grab a shovel and start digging around , hoping to find it a foot or so underground . At the ranch in Montana , we had three septic tanks installed over the years ( because the buildings were too spread out to share a single one ) , and our contractor who put them in always put in an above - ground hatch to make access and cleaning very easy . So when we finally found the one here and dug it up a couple of months ago to be cleaned , I had the septic contractor install a hatch cover so we wouldn 't have to enjoy another treasure hunt a few years from now . The dogs have completely ignored this new object in the yard until a couple of days ago , when I saw blind Allie using it a bed and blind Louie curled up against it . I had worried that Allie , who loves to chew on things - - the harder the better - - might consider the hatch an oversized Kong , but so far this is the only engagement I 've seen . We do try and keep her occupied with real Kongs at all times ! The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! We were taking photos for the " farm letter " for our winter / holiday 2011 edition of the print newsletter yesterday , and as usual , I thought you would enjoy seeing the outtakes . Kate was behind the camera , her usual sweet , patient self , while the subjects ( Alayne and me and blind Cash ) were in front of the camera struggling to maintain control . In all , she took 64 photos before I declared victory - - of those shots , only two were candidates for the final newsletter photo . ( I know , I am par - tic - u - lar . ) The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! Little Irene has been busy making the rounds , checking out potential boyfriends left and right . She may be tiny , but she 's brash and bold , and some fellows prefer the kind of girl who is a little more discrete in her affections . Fuzzy , for instance . Irene just can 't get enough of him , but he 's already had plenty of her , thank you very much . She 's too pushy for his tastes . In this series of photos I took the other day , his body language says it all . The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! You think it wouldn 't be hard to keep your basic , sturdy dog cot in the correct , upright position . Except , well , it is . It seems we are always turning them back over . The dogs ' motto on some days appears to be , " Have cot , will flip . " But until the other morning , I 'd never seen a dog actually using an upside - down cot for the intended purpose - - but there was blind Buddy , curled up and sound asleep on the cot . . . flipped over on the ground . By the time I came back out with the camera , wobbly Soba saw me heading down from the house and began barking excitedly , and that woke up Buddy . When I finally got to his yard and stuck the camera lens through the fence , he was now sitting on his upside - down cot and trying to figure out what Soba had been barking about . ( The green - and - white structure in the background is our portable chicken coop - - it 's built on an old trailer chassis on wheels so we can move it around with the tractor . The hens free - range during the day and return to the coop at night . In the dog house , the nose and paws you see belong to Libby , one of our last two personal dogs from our original " Seattle six - pack " who moved to the ranch in Montana with us in 2000 . Blind Goldie is our other one . ) The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! This double rainbow on Saturday afternoon was so close - - both ends of the inner rainbow were on our property and visible from the house - - that if there had been a pot of gold , we would have seen it . Alas , no gold , but a beautiful sight nonetheless . In the photo above , you see two of our calves grazing between the pond and the start of the inner rainbow . The arc was so high I couldn 't get it all in a single shot , but here 's where it ended up : The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! This is Irene , who was the second dog who arrived on Sunday evening along with blind Owen . She came to us from Kentucky , where she had been turned into a rural shelter on a Friday in early September . The shelter staff saw that this little Shih Tzu / Peke mix was suffering from terrible problems in both eyes and was in a lot of pain , so they took her to a vet clinic for the weekend . A couple of days later I received an email from Suzy C . , a volunteer for the shelter , who had taken the dog to the clinic that Friday . She was writing to ask if we could help . Suzy wrote , " It is a young dog , very sweet , loves to be cuddled , but on pain meds waiting to see its fate . If we take it back to the shelter , it will be put to sleep . It needs surgery . " She ended her note by saying , " We are desperate to give this dog a chance ! " We agreed to take the dog and pay for whatever medical care she needed . The veterinarian ended up having to remove one of her eyes and was trying to save the second eye , which had developed a corneal ulcer . In a subsquent update on the dog 's medical condition , the shelter director emailed me to say , " We are so grateful for your help ! Going back to the shelter would be a death sentence and none of us wanted to see that happen . " As it turned out , this little dog arrived at the vet clinic the same week that Hurricane Irene was working its way up the East Coast , so the clinic staff named her Irene . She weighed all of 8 pounds . We hadn 't even seen what she looked like until the clinic emailed us some photos of her after her surgery . Irene stayed at the clinic for a few weeks until our transport could pick her up ; the shelter was unable to find a foster home for her for that time , but given the medical care and observation required for her remaining eye , it was just as well that she stayed there . She can see from that eye , though the corneal scarring does seem to hinder her vision somewhat . But the minute we let her out of her crate in the transport van Sunday night , we realized a veritable " Hurricane Irene " - - the furry 8 lb variety - - had just arrived . While blind Owen was wrapping his paws around Alayne 's neck and quietly cuddling like a teddy bear , Irene was jumping up and down on me , offering lots of little kisses , and twirling and bouncing as she ran about at the end of a leash . Talk about a ball of energy ! By Monday morning we were already calling her " Pistol , " though " Hurricane " would have been just as appropriate . Apparently she can go for 16 hours without a battery recharge . We call her " motor mouth " because she makes lots of interesting , hard - to - define sounds , mostly with her mouth closed . Many different small motors in there somewhere . The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! We had two wonderful little dogs arrive Sunday night , brought out to us by Gale Lang 's TLC Pet Transport . This is one of them , Owen the Beagle , who came to us from North Carolina . ( Sorry , you 'll have to wait until Friday to find out who No . 2 was ! ) We were first contacted about Owen by a volunteer for Beagle Rescue of Southern Maryland , who had seen him listed in a " Must Be Out By . . . " email from a county animal control shelter in North Carolina . It said : " Owen ( A150080 ) is a 5 yo male Beagle , unaltered . Owen was a confiscation as part of a neglect case . He was found locked inside a trailer with no food or water . He was very thin and pitiful . He came in covered in fleas and urine . He had scaly patches and hair loss from the fleas and poor husbandry . He looks great now and has gained weight . He has been with us for two months while his case went to court . Owen is blind but compensates very well . He walks slowly and deliberately to feel his way around . He listens to your voice and comes when called . He loves to play with other dogs . He loves attention . He must be out by 9 / 10 . " The volunteer said they were unable to help but hoped we could . I emailed the shelter , offering to take Owen , and the shelter then forwarded my email on to a private rescue group in Asheville called Brother Wolf Animal Rescue . In the small world that the animal rescue community often is , it turns out that Brother Wolf 's executive director , Denise Bitz , was involved in rescuing and sending to us a blind and deaf Catahoula named Emmy Lou way back in 2006 . ( Emmy Lou was subsequently adopted by one of our employees in 2008 . ) Denise graciously offered to pull Owen from the shelter for us , get him neutered and vet - checked , and then foster him for a month until we could get the transport scheduled . Thank you , Denise ! The next morning , however , it was like someone had fired a starter 's pistol , because right after we let him out in one of the dog yards , he took off to go zooming around . He eagerly greeted his new friends , blind Louie and blind and deaf Spencer and Katie , and then raced back and forth from one side of the yard to the other . Owen was in constant motion , darting back and forth , so happy to be outside and cruising around . Although the shelter said he was 5 years old , he acts much more like a puppy ! Next up is . . . oh , that 's right , I 'll be holding off on the other new arrival until Friday . But no , it 's not a Dachshund ! ( Owen 's arrival now evens the score at Beagles , 6 , and Dachshunds , 6 . ) However , this yet - to - be - seen arrival is smaller than a Dachshund . . . has as much personality as a Dachshund . . . but is not a Dachshund . The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! Our first task every morning is to put all the dogs out , no small undertaking with thirty of them . To make it as efficient and quick as possible , I " double - up " on my loads with the smaller dogs . Alayne took these photos the other morning as I was carrying my charges outside . In the photo above , I have Dexter and Widget in hand , who are usually the first to go out . That 's because they are the loudest ones , howling and barking from their room on the second floor of the dog wing . That 's where the midnight revelers sleep . . . or not , as the case may be . When we first moved here , there were three doors between our bedroom on the ground floor of the people wing and their room on the second floor of the adjoining wing - - with a bathroom , laundry room , mudroom and flight of stairs in between . Alas , we could still hear them carrying on at 3 a . m . from our bedroom ( Widget is a party Beagle who sleeps all day and likes to rock ' n roll in the middle of the night , and Dexter is her side - kick . ) We finally installed a fourth door at the top of the stairs , and nighttime quiet at last returned . So the first trip in the morning is through all those doors and up to their room to get them , since they resume carnival festivities at dawn . The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you ! I was walking out the back door of the dog wing the other morning and saw a cot in one of the yards tipped up against a dog house . Usually if a dog is going to try to get underneath a cot , he or she will end up flipping it entirely over . But this one was propped up , and I thought I saw something - - someone - - moving underneath it . It was a cool fall morning , about 10 a . m . , when all the other dogs were lying around on the grass , soaking in the sun . I figured it had to be wobbly Soba , and sure enough , it was : The new Shelter Challenge started October 3rd and ends at midnight on December 18th . Grand prize in this round is $ 5 , 000 , plus $ 1 , 000 for weekly winners and $ 1 , 000 for state winners . There are also other categories . . . please see the Shelter Challenge website for details . Because of your votes , we just won $ 1 , 000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge . Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day , and by encouraging your family , friends and colleagues to vote every day , too . Thank you !
|
Posted on January 1 , 2017January 1 , 2017 by kent You can tell a lot about a place , be it a house , hotel , or a restaurant , based on the quality and cleanliness of the bathrooms . Whenever I go to a new house I always , inherently , check out the bathroom . Is it neat and tidy ? Or is it grungy and smelly - does it have a crusty ring around the toilet ? I will make immediate judgements about you , I 'm sorry , I will . Similarly , I will make the same judgements about a restaurant 's washroom . Is it dirty ? Is the caulking around the sinks peeling away ? Did they paint over the light switches - the same colour as the walls even ? Are the fixtures falling off from the walls ? If a washroom is gross , my bet is the kitchen will be gross too . I don 't know that I want to eat here . Don 't get me wrong though . I 'm not a germaphobe by any means . I 'll eat a dirty carrot right out of the ground . If I drop a piece of food on the floor , I 'll eat it , I don 't care . But , I don 't like the thought of pink eye or fecal matter on toothbrushes … Call me old - fashioned . When we were designing the house , there were some considerations we made , first being that we did not want too many bathrooms . Our last house had 4 bathrooms . Too many ! Granted they were very nice looking bathrooms . But , have you tried cleaning 4 bathrooms per week ? It takes forever . Ug . Still , you don 't want too few bathrooms . There 's a balance to be had . I like a half - bathroom for guests . A small sink and toilet , near the main space of the house . Certainly , you can use it too . But , there is no need for your guests to have to use the same bathroom you use daily to wash and clean . And worst case scenario , if you have people coming over , just make sure that guest one is clean ! That way I won 't think you 're super gross . An ensuite is nice and all , but that is typically reserved for off of the master bedroom , thus being just for the adults of the house . If this is only going to be you and your partner , and you 're not going to be having any kids , then go for it . Connect your master bathroom directly to your master bedroom . That way , your guests definitely won 't be tempted to use it . For us , though , we decided to make the main bathroom a separate room , off of the main hallway . It is directly across from our master bedroom , but not connected to it . This way kids can also use this bathroom . We also put in another full bathroom in the basement . I don 't know about you , but I grew up in a house with only one combined bath / shower in the whole house . With two parents and two teenagers trying to get ready with only one shower - well , let 's just say it caused a lot of unnecessary resentment and many arguments . Two showers are necessary . It will result in a 50 % reduction of family strife ( that 's my completely uneducated guess anyway ) . Now let 's bring this back to my original point : Bathrooms are inherently gross . This is where all of the less desirable necessities of life take place . So it is understandable why bathrooms , not properly designed , can be even more gross . And why a clean and tidy bathroom is so impressive . The first picture of this post ( scroll back up quick ) is of the Master Bath as you walk in the door . To the right is the hand - built white oak vanity . To the left is the walk - in shower and behind is a clawfoot tub . In the back right corner , behind the door is the " water closet . " A water closet is the enclosed room for the toilet . That way your mess is contained to that space . When you flush the toilet , the mist stays in there and doesn 't spread to all the other spaces in the bathroom ( like your toothbrush and contact lens ) . I 'd never seen a water closet before , but our old house had one and we loved it . That way , someone can be having a shower and the other person can still use the toilet . No need to poop in front of your spouse ! A double sink was a must - have for us ( trust me , it will save your marriage ) . This hand - built rift sawn white oak vanity was built by our friend , Ryan Unger of Rhine Artisans , who also did our kitchen . We wanted a mid - century credenza - type of vanity and he nailed it with this . When looking at bathrooms ( endless , endless bathrooms ) on Pinterest prior to building our own , I was constantly drawn to wall mounted and black fixtures . These Brizo faucets met both of these desires … though they were a bit of a splurge . The countertop is white Corian with simple under mounted sinks , which are easy to clean . The shower is a walk - in . It 's near the side door so we can come right in and wash off ourselves or dogs or little kids without needing to track through the whole house . I 've never been a fan of the glass enclosed showers . They look nice when they 're clean , but the problem is , they are clean for about a half day between when you clean the bathroom and when someone has the next shower , otherwise , they always look messy . I prefer a simple curtain . The other bonus of the Brizo Odin fixtures , aside from being sexy black , is that they are low flow too . Being an eco - house and on cistern water , we 're very conscious of our water use . This shower uses 2 . 0 gallons per minute ( gpm ) versus the standard 2 . 5 - 3 . 0 gpm . AND ! This has a wand shower . Let 's be frank here for a second , it is impossible to clean your … ahem … nether bits with an overhead shower , a wand hand - shower attachment will keep you … uh … very fresh . Did I mention , that I tiled this whole bathroom too ? This one took about 6 days and 10 hours per day . I tiled a wainscoting around the vanity and bath tub and floor - to - ceiling in the shower and around the entrance . We installed three ultra - low flow toilets from Caroma , called Somerton Smart 270 . These toilets are fantastic and conserve an amazing amount of water . A standard " low flow " toilet uses 1 . 6 gallons per flush ( gpf ) . These dual - flush toilets use 1 . 28 gpf for a full flush and only 0 . 8 gpf for a small flush . One of the keys is a large drainage path . I was worried it may leave some stowaways behind , which I 'd heard was a problem with ultra - low flow toilets , but this toilet is great . I would highly recommend it . Another great part about this toilet , is the smooth sides on the base . If you clean your bathroom , you know that those stupid faux pipes on the side of most toilets are a haven for dust , hair and grim . I hate cleaning those . I was adamant that whatever toilet we bought had to have smooth sides . And , as if it couldn 't get any better , the toilet seat has a slick little button to quickly release it and easily clean . So smart , this Somerton Smart 270 ! It took us almost forever to find a tap that would work for this old - vintage sink . I think we ordered 5 different taps before we finally found this cheap $ 60 one from Home Depot . Works for me . OK , one other thing that is not easy to find is stylish rods , hooks , and toilet paper holders . They are 99 % cheap plastic chrome junk . This , well , I 'd Instagram this : # sexytoiletpaperholder ? The basement bathroom is where my obsession with Japanese bathrooms was most fully expressed . When I read about the fragrant smell and soothing nature of hand - built Hinoki wooden tubs I told my wife - " we have to get one ! " That is until , I found the price … ~ $ 9000 + shipping + taxes + import fees … OK , next best option : We installed this DEEP two - person soaker tub from Produits Neptune , called the " Osaka " . We actually had to put this tub in the basement before framing of the house was done . Being 52 ″ x52 " , there was no way this could be brought in after the fact . Granted , this is not a water - conservation tub , but we don 't use it everyday either , more like one every couple months , but it is glorious . When full , you can sit in chest deep water . Rather then getting a wooden tub , I clad the tub , back wall and ceiling in cedar . The condensation of the hot water of the tub and shower results in a beautiful and fragrant cedar smell . It might not be Hinoki , but it 's pretty darn nice . The shower is completely open to the tub . All of the fixtures in this bathroom are from a Canadian company called Rubi - notice the wand shower * wink wink * . I also tiled this whole bathroom too , three full walls , in these 4 × 4 ″ white tiles . This was probably the most difficult tile job in the whole house . At least with 3 × 6 ″ brick laid subway tile there is some room for error . But these grid laid square tiles , especially with the dark grey grout , show every error or not perfectly square corner and wall . I had some choice words for the framers while I tiled this bathroom … In the floor of the shower I asked the concrete guys to very slightly grade towards the drain . This shower is about 60 × 48 ″ so there is no standard shower base that would fit here . This option worked great . I 'd asked the lumber yard for 6 ′ lengths of cedar that would only have needed to be slightly trimmed for the shower , instead I got 7 - 9 ′ lengths and had to cut every single board . I was a bit annoyed by this waste . But after I finished the shower and walked into this space right next to the tub / shower , it looked terribly boring with just a drywalled wall . I ended up using the scrap pieces on the back wall - a happy error . This sink is from Rubi as well . It was a nightmare to get a sink down here too . We 'd ordered a different sink with a shroud base for the pipes from another place , but they sent the wrong base . Then we sent it back and the new one they sent was the right base , but wrong sink . Then we scraped that sink and bought this one , but forgot to return the taps , so we had to send the taps back and get new taps … sigh … Posted on June 12 , 2016June 12 , 2016 by kent The last of the work on the house was a concrete retaining wall and front step / pad and a side door pad . I can 't tell you how excited I was to be done with contractors ( and spending 1000s of dollars ) . One of my friends , Dan , who had worked for a large concrete contractor in town had recently started his own company , called Old North Concreteworks . When he 'd told me about this over the last winter - I said , " Dude ! Why didn 't you start your company last year ? ! " With all of the headaches we 'd had with the concrete before during the build it would have been so nice to have someone with a such an experienced and trustworthy knowledge of concrete . Nonetheless we , being one of his first contracts , would be able to get the pads poured early as soon as the ground had dried and thawed . Retaining walls are tricky and we 'd had a lot of settling over the wintertime . But around the area of the retaining wall we had watered and backfilled last year to try and expedite the settling . It seemed that we 'd been successful in this regard as the land had really not dropped at all there over the winter . For the retaining wall , Dan first poured a 6 " footing extending 6 ' perpendicular to the house with the retaining wall form built on top . He and I then backfilled to the form with dirt and crushed rock ( tamping down at each bucket load ) to bring this up to the point where they would be able to join an 8 ' x6 ' pad to the top of the retaining wall - essentially creating an upside down ' L ' . " Yup , that 's what I want , no edge , just poured . " If you 've read this blog for anytime , you may realize by now that Darcie and I like things that other people don 't normally do - at least not around here . Dan suggested a " mag finish " in which he lightly brushed the top of the concrete in a swirled , random way to get some grit to the top so it would not be slippery . I messaged Dan to see how the day went . " OK I love the top , " he said . Excellent , I thought , I would like to collect a royalty fee now every time you use this . " But … " he said , it was essentially the worst day of his life otherwise . The concrete truck they 'd ordered broke down on the way out to our house . We are 30 minutes away from the city and it was a very hot day - that 's not a good combination for concrete . The concrete was starting to set as they poured it . Fortunately they were able to get it in place , not being a lot of concrete really - but our very sandy soil didn 't hold the retaining wall forms very well , despite being heavily reinforced , and the wall had bowed . He was not happy about this and insisted that he would fix it , suggesting that he rent a large concrete grinder to take out the bow later . I really wasn 't surprised to hear that they 'd had issues . It always seems to be that way with our place … Murphy 's Law : Anything that can go wrong , will go wrong . For Dan though , the day only got worse . After finishing our place they had to rush over to my neighbor 's house a ½ mile away to pour a sidewalk along his garage and house . The concrete truck broke down again ! And he poured the hardest concrete of his life , he said . He had to use all of his might to smooth and level it . In the process and stress of it all , the concrete had started to stick and cure to his legs . After they 'd gotten it all down and finished - he attempted to pull the concrete off of himself , but with that came a lot of his skin . Yucky . A few days later Dan returned and ground the bowed section out , exposing the aggregate in a very interesting and dramatic fashion , which I was pleasantly surprised with . As has seemed to have been the way with our house too - right to the bitter end - many of the seeming mess - ups or frustrations end up turning out creative and interesting solutions . I would not have asked for the wall to be finished the way it was , but pleasingly , I 'm happier with it then I would have been had it all worked out just as planned . As I 've said before , I do love concrete . Though , recently , my love affair with concrete has been tested and I have started to see a side of concrete that I do not appreciate as much as much . This is , of course , it 's unforgiving nature . I 'd been told this before by a concrete contractor . He said , " I hate working with concrete . It makes me very nervous . You only get one chance with it . " It 's one thing to hear that but I 'd never experienced this myself before . Until now . OK , so let 's start at the beginning , just after we 'd poured the concrete floors . We 'd been told to be VERY CAREFUL with the floors after they had been poured . They take 28 days to cure , so anything done to them in that time and , following this prior to sealing , will effect the outcome . We had simply wanted a troweled and sealed concrete floor , without any fancy finishes . So that meant we had to protect them from the other trades coming in . We were recommended to use a product called Ram Board - a temporary floor protector . So we ordered the product and proceed to lay it out across the whole of our main floor and basement concrete . Now , if you actually look at the link to the Ram Board , it says , " lays out easily . " So you would think ( as I did ) that you simply roll this stuff out , covering the floor , secure it together , secure the sides and you 're done , right ? Wrong ! This stuff was insane to try and secure to the floor and secure it to itself . We were initially told to try masking tape or painter 's tape . Fail . We then tried packing tape ( as the Ram Board seems basically like thin cardboard ) . Nope . Duct tape ? Nope , not at all . Finally , the only stuff that we could find that was sticky enough to hold the board together and secure it to the floors was Tuck Tape ( please learn from my errors ) . Neither the contractor nor the supplier could provide us with any other suggestions . I will say this , and perhaps if you have or are planning to pour a concrete interior floor in a residential house , you will have noticed this , but every time I talked to someone about anything related to an interior concrete floor , it was as if we were the only people in the entire world to ever do such a bizarre thing . Trying to get any information out of anyone , including contractors , suppliers , designers , et cetera , was like beating my head against the wall - I couldn 't find any information . Even online the information and resources were incredibly scarce . So I do hope that this will be helpful to someone in the future , because I wish I knew then what I know now . Ok , so that 's what we did . We tuck taped it down ( NOTE : don 't do as we did ) . And for awhile we said , thank goodness for Ram Board ! It saved us from the leaky chimney , from the muddy boots that the contractors wore into the house , from the incredible mess from the drywall mudders , and from our own sloppy painting . Then about four weeks after we 'd laid the Ram Board out , I went to the concrete wholesaler to pick up our sealant and wax for finishing the floors . He asked how we 'd protected the floors and we told him what how we covered them . " You know that Ram Board can leave cure lines , right ? " He said . Umm , no and I don 't even know what that is ( I 'd never heard of ' cure lines ' as a term before in my life - never in all of my exhaustive research on concrete ) . " Well , hopefully not , " he said . " How do you prevent cure lines , " I asked . " I don 't know . I 've never used Ram Board before . " He replied . ( See what I 've saying re : beating head against wall ? ) Finally , we were ready to expose the floors and see what lay beneath . We started with the basement and to my horror , the board , no , the Tuck Tape , was really fricking hard to remove ! As we started to pull the board away , the tape began to release , but … We got down on our hands and knees and started scraping it frantically with a razor blade and a hair dryer ( seriously ) . The tape started to slowly release . Ok , good ( kind of ) we can fix this , I think . Although there were dozens of areas like that in the photo . Yes , this is red chalk . Deeply pigmented red chalk . Why would we have red chalk on our floors , you may ponder . Well , the framers , had chalked the floors to mark the walls for framing - a typical practice in a basement that will be covered with laminated , hardwood or carpet - but not on a finished concrete floor ! Oh my god . Over the next two days , I spent on my hands and knees , scrapping the red fucking tape with a razor blade and hair dryer ( I believe it was in the range of 20 hours of work ) . How we were going to get the red chalk off was another question . I figured ( naively ) that it was wipe off with soap and water , and so , I futilely attempted this . Desperate , I got my palm sander out and sanded a small area in the closet with 80 grit sand paper . Hmm . It started to come up - ok , this is good . Although my measly 4 ″ palm sander would take a lifetime to try and get the roughly one 1 / 4 of our basement that had red chalk dust clean . Bizarrely , on my day off , sweating and angry in the basement , perhaps by the grace of God ( or whoever ) , a stranger showed up at our door . It was a Tuesday afternoon and we don 't get people just dropping in . We are in the middle of nowhere . It was a guy who we were actually supposed to have a tour of his house some months before , but we 'd gotten busy and never gone . He was coming by to see how things were going and to check out our house ( I think he was just snooping though really , as how would he have known someone would be around on a Tuesday afternoon ) . Naturally the discussion turned to the concrete floors , ( which he also had ! ) and he asked how we we were going to finish the floors . Not sure , I told him . He informed me that he had in fact wanted to grind his floors to expose the aggregate , but when they came to do this , they found the floor too hard to work with . Because they had intended to grind the floors they did not cover it so it was covered with paint and drywall mud and all sorts of other crap . After much of their own stress , they decided to try to sand off that layer of crap . They rented an industrial floor sander , like the ones they use to refinish decks and old hardwood floors . It was a fair bit of work , he told me , but it removed all of that junk and left the natural grey floors . You should come check it out , he told me . I had too much work to do . I needed to get the main floor board up and see what was underneath . I was relieved to find that , for whatever reason , this board and tape came up much better and there were only a couple spots with Tuck Tape residue left behind . Wow , must be my luck day , I thought . But then I stepped back and surveyed the great room . Sonuvabitch . ( By the way , I also researched " cure lines with ram board " in concrete floors . And wouldn 't you know that the only way to " fix " this was to prevent it from happening in the first place ! By using a special vapour permeable floor tape ! A tape that was not available through our supplier nonetheless … Rage . ) Live with it . Gah , concrete is unforgiving . You mess it up and you have to live with the shame of it for the rest of your life . Probably though you will get over it and not notice it eventually . But as a recovering perfectionist , this was a stretch for me . A leap of faith that I wasn 't ready to accept without trying something - anything . Creative acid staining . The suggestion was to stain the area around the cure lines a darker colour then stain the whole floor in another colour . This may or may not work and to be honest , I don 't like the look of acid staining anyways . Grinding and polishing . I like this look , but it is very very expense ~ $ 10 / sq . ft . This is where the top 1 / 8 ″ of the concrete is ground off and polished to expose the aggregate . This was the only option to guarantee removal of the cure lines and chalk in the basement . Sanding . This is an option made only by the stranger that showed up at the house a few days prior . I found no information online about this except for one article that said you could sand the floor to prep it before staining to even out the finish . There was no guarantee that this would work , but it was probably the one with the least risks associated . I called up the rental store and asked if I could rent a floor sander for the weekend . In talking with the stranger about the concrete floors , he told me he had used 60 , 80 and 120 grit sand paper on his floors . Now I needed to go a bit deeper to see if I could get the cure lines slightly reduced , if not eliminated . I elected to start with 24 grit . Again , I will say this was a total experiment and I had no clue what I was about to get myself into . It was a crazy crazy amount of dust - crystalline silica dust to be precise , which interestingly is super cancer causing . But ever so gradually as I went over and over the floors on the second and third passes with 24 grit sandpaper , the red chalk started to disappear . At the same time though , where the Tuck Tape had been stuck to the floor , it showed the residue of the adhesive more clearly . This too had soaked into the floor . The sander was not localized enough to get at this , so it had to be done on hands and knees with the palm sander ( which did remove the adhesive residue ) and some serious elbow grease . We then made passes with 40 grit and 80 grit paper . I had been worried that the sanding might just " grey out " the floors into a bland pattern , but this wasn 't the case at all . Impressively , this actually exposed some interesting tone and variations in the concrete that were not there prior . And in some areas that were gone over a bit more heavily , some aggregate became exposed as well . The industrial sander worked well in that it covered a broad area with out leaving any sort of pattern to its movement . In that way though it was also really hard to control . Weighing about 100 lbs and vibrating across the floor in a seemingly random pattern did end up leaving some unsightly dings in the drywall that will need to be patched later . With some returning sense of optimism , I decided to try it on the main floor . I followed the same process going over with the 24 grit sand paper 2 - 3 times , then the 40 grit and lastly the 80 grit paper , vacuuming with the big shop vac between each pass in each room . It was tough to tell at first , but the lines seemed to be less noticeable . But maybe it was just the dusty residue . We decided to leave it again for another day . Well , I 'll be damned , they looked better . They weren 't perfect , but definitely a bit better . I could still make out the cure lines in places , but they were less continuous overall . So , relatively satisfied with the outcome , and happy that we had at least done our best to fix it , we decided to seal the floors . I had picked up a 20 % solvent acrylic sealer ( totally poisonous stuff ) . They recommended using a nap roller to apply the sealant , but we had used that method for the concrete basement walls and it sucked , so instead we decided to use the ol ' " spray and back roll method . " This is just what it sounds like , spray the stuff and use the roller ( pulling backwards ) to smooth it out . Try not to overlap the rolls too much and just apply the spray lightly in a mist to cover the area . I sprayed and the wife rolled . This method went about three times faster than just the roller method and it gave a nice even finish . It took about 45 minutes to cover 1200 sq . ft . We then proceeded to the main floor . This solvent sealer is very sticky as it starts to try . We 'd taken a short break to breath non - toxic air before returning to the main floor . It started well , but about 1 / 2 way through the sprayer became gummed up with the drying sealant and I could not turn it off ! It was spraying uncontrollably , including onto the freshly painted wall ! Yup , nothing is easy when building and nothing really goes as planned . Again , there were spots that were not perfect and in the second bedroom there was still a very dark line that I was not at all able to reduce . Can anyone say : throw rug ? But nonetheless , I 'm relatively happy with them . We tried and didn 't totally fail . Although I wish I would have known how to prevent the cure lines in the first place ( now I do and so do you ) : Special tape ! Posted on August 11 , 2015August 11 , 2015 by kent We were very happy with how the basement concrete slab turned out . Tyco Concrete had come through for us on short notice and they had done a really nice job . So one week later we had them come back in to do a second pour , this time for the main floor . We had really debated about how we would like to finish the main floor concrete though despite months of reading and looking . Thermal mass - thermal mass is a the ability of a material to absorb and store energy ( heat in particular ) . For passive solar heating in the winter months , the sun shining on the concrete will act like a battery , gaining heat during the day , and allowing it to release the heat in the evening . You could use a tile or brick to similar effect . A large brick or stone wall would also work , but you need the sun shining on it . Conversely , in the summer and " shoulder " ( April and October ) months you really don 't want the sun shining on the thermal mass as this can lead to overheating ( thus the importance of passive shading and overhangs ) . Okay so now that that is cleared up , we had to decide on how we would like to eventually finish the floors . We had already decided that acid staining and dyeing the concrete was really not our thing - much too fancy - pants for us . That basically left us with two options : power trowel ( same as the basement ) or grind and polish . Both looks we really like . The grind and polish look is something I really like . You need a concrete grinder machine with diamond discs starting with very rough grits of 80 and 120 , which grind the top layer of concrete off exposing the pea gravel aggregate that sinks to the bottom and progressing up to finer and finer grits . Eventually getting up to 800 , 1200 , 2000 grit discs that give a highly polished look to the floor . You get a lot of interesting variation and different colors of the pea gravel coming through ( although some people specify all grey or black pea rock if they want something more consistent ) . There is a couple downsides with this for us though . Firstly the concrete topper they were going to pour was only going to be 1 . 5 ″ thick , which is pretty darn thin . Although you are only taking about 1 / 8 ″ or so off the top , we had 1 / 2 ″ PEX in - floor piping and metal concrete mesh overtop - grinding too much off could be a horrible thing . We had seen this first hand - a good friend had built an eco - house in town and wanted a ground and polished concrete floor . Unfortunately the contractor ground off about 1 / 4 ″ too much . It looked great initially , but the layer of concrete over the in - floor heat was so thin that in the next few weeks the concrete started to crack badly following the pattern of the in - floor lines … It looked so bad . On a thicker floor you 'd have nothing to worry about , mind you . But needless to say I was a bit paranoid of that risk . The second consideration is that you need to grind and polish before drywall as it makes a crazy mess . And you can 't grind and polish until it has cured for one month . That would mean that we would have to put the interior on hold for a month which we really did not want to do . The other option was to simply power trowel the main floor , same as the basement . We have seen this look a lot in some more modern homes and I really like the simplicity of it . It is not complicated at all and is in fact the simplest , cheapest and easiest way to go ( pour and trowel is about $ 2 . 50 / sq . ft completed while the the grinding and polishing cost would be an additional $ 5 - 6 / sq . ft above and beyond ) . You pour floor , power trowel the crap out of it and call it a day ( in 28 days you can seal it , buff it , wax it , whatever ) . As I said we liked how the basement floor turned out , particular the very " swirly " areas , as my wife calls them . I hoped that we could make the floors slightly different then the basement floor still though . I looked into the possibility of adding a bit of black pigment to darken the grey slightly - however I abandoned this idea after I was told the pigment dries the concrete faster and can lead to an uneven finish . Eventually the decision came down to , what is the simplest option ? Through this process we have found ourselves periodically down a rabbit hole wondering how we got here and how everything became so complicated . Our answer in those situations , or when we 've debated about two or three different things is - simple is always better . The more complicated , the more things can go wrong . Fortunately we are living very close right now so I threw on some clothes and was out the door . We frantically ( concrete starts to cure as soon as it leaves the plant - being 30 minutes from the city , every extra moment counts ) moved a trailer , two big garbage bins , scrap wood , plywood and all sorts of junk . Meanwhile the rest of the concrete crew was even more frantically throwing down the concrete mesh ( which provides structural support , like rebar , in thinly poured floors like ours ) . This stuff was crazy heavy and looked so cumbersome to work with , but these guys were pros , they had the whole floor laid and secured in about 20 minutes . And so the pour began again . I could not stay and watch and truthfully , I did not want to see it . Seeing that grey / brown sludge of mud being rolled in and dumped on the floor simply made me nervous . I just wanted to see it pretty at the end . Posted on July 25 , 2015July 25 , 2015 by kent I do love concrete . It is one of those rare man - made products that border on being a living thing , like plaster or linen . Those things that have such a rich texture and variation of composition that they seem to beckon you to touch them and get up close for a better look . Of course , not everyone will share my appreciation of concrete , traditionalists have tended to cover up the concrete or at least extensively treat it with stains and dyes making them more palatable to themselves . Not us . When I told an interior designer about our exposed basement concrete walls , his response was , " Now that 's modernism with a capital ' M ' ! " Cool , I said , " What 's modernism with a little 'm ' ? " To which , he sheepishly did not have a response ( I 'm an ass ) . After the walls cured for 28 days , we had to seal the concrete . We wanted to get this done before the slab went in because if we waited to do the floors and walls at the same time , not only would there be framing and drywall in the way , then we ran the risk of the drywallers slopping crap all over the walls and making a mess of our beautiful concrete finish . Like an idiot , I decided not to purchase a $ 25 dollar wand sprayer to apply the sealant and instead decided to use a nap roller . A job that would have taken me 30 minutes ended up being closer to 5 hours rolling every inch of the wall on multiple passes ( lesson learned ) . Next , we had to lift the giant water tank and Japanese soaker tub off of the floor and strap them to the steel beams ( getting the tub in the basement was another adventure in and of itself . I will write about that someday ) . The under slab insulation was then cut and laid . We elected to use 7 . 5 ″ of under slab insulation , which is likely overkill , however this brings the floor insulation to R30 ( our last house had no insulation in the basement at all ) . This EPS insulation was pretty cool . Having a honeycomb pattern as the top layer allowed for incredibly easy installation of the PEX piping for in - floor hydronic heating . Now being that the basement concrete slab was to be our finished floor , it was pretty important to me that it not look like crap . Therefore the quality of the contractor needed to be top notch . Unfortunately for us , that was not how we entered into this venture . I did not meet the contractor before he was actually on site prepping to pour . My wife had driven home early that day and came upon a most peculiar sight . A rather criminal - looking fellow standing beside a broken down early 1990s sedan , holding booster cables . Our place is a bit out of the way , so this was not a sight one would expect . Of course she stopped to see what the problem was ( as the next passerby would probably not be until much later on ) . He proceeded to tell her that he needed a boost , he 'd gotten in a fight with his boss and left from " that house being built down there " , pointing in the direction of our house . My wife , boosted his junk car , and asked if he was going back to work ? Nope , he said , and drove off . My wife drove to the site and found a lone guy working in the basement - no truck , no car , no nothing . She told him she might have just met his worker on the road and asked how he was getting home . Of course , he had no idea . She called our general contractor to come pick him up , however as she was leaving the property his buddy had returned with the car . When I stopped by later to check on the whole situation , they were still there . " Working late , boys ? " I asked . " Yup , " the boss said , " but we gotta get home , we 're losing light and we don 't have any headlights . " ( He wasn 't joking ) . He told me that they were planning to have the concrete poured in two days , but would need to finish laying the rebar and tying everything in beforehand . " I 'll be back at 6am tomorrow , " he said , before driving off headlight - less into the night . I came by the house at 7 : 30am and , not surprisingly , they were not there . Sometime throughout the day however , they were back working away in the basement - this time , they 'd brought a rusted old Honda , apparently this one had headlights and was more reliable . On the Thursday , which was the day of the scheduled pour , they did not show up at all ( what other profession could you simply not show up to work and there be no repercussions ? ) . The bossman called our general contractor later in the day , apologizing and saying that he had to fire the criminal looking guy , but promised to complete the pour the next day . I told the contractor that it was tomorrow , or else he was off of the job . On Friday , I received a phone call from them telling us it was " too hot " to pour the basement slab . Granted it was 34 ° Celsius . He said that the concrete would cure too fast and they would not be able to guarantee a nice finish . I wondered to myself - is this a convenient excuse for them in case the floors didn 't turn out ? What am I to do ? Ask them to pour it anyways ? I called a couple of friends that I have in the concrete business and asked if they were pouring today . They were . I asked if there would be any reason to not pour a basement today and they told me that an insulated basement would be perfect in this weather - being at least 10 degrees cooler in there and not in direct sunlight . That afternoon , we made calls to find a replacement for this retard concrete guy . I couldn 't handle it anymore - how many chances do you give someone ? That being said we needed the floor done immediately . This idiot had already setback three other trades with his 5 day delay . Especially when Taylor and Curtis worked to hard to be ahead of schedule despite some of the challenges they faced with the Nudura One set up . Incredibly we talked to Tyco Concrete Finishing , who said they would be able to squeeze us in early the next week . That Sunday evening we met the owner on site ( I was relieved to see him drive up in new super duty 4 × 4 truck ) . He spent a couple hours with us going through everything , including checking what little work the other guy had done , making sure he knew how we wanted it finished , and confirming all of the dimensions and depths . Posted on June 14 , 2015June 14 , 2015 by kent The day following the pouring of the concrete , we were ready to pull off the plywood forms and see what lay beneath . Leaving the plywood on for more than a day would cause them to adhere too firmly to the concrete and make them extremely difficult to remove . We were a bit nervous . We had been pegging a lot on how these walls would turn out - they would be , after all , our finished interior walls , so I really hoped they wouldn 't look like crap . We spent about two hours removing all of the forms . As we got towards the base of the floor , we crossed our fingers hoping that it had all settled nicely to the bottom without any " honey combing " of the concrete that would need to be parged . Impressively , it looked excellent all the way from top to bottom .
|
I 'm a huge advocate for Adoption . It has been a huge part of my life as I was adopted along with my four other siblings . I met my husband and on our first date he told me that his father was also adopted . We immediately bonded over that and I knew this was the man I was going to marry . After four years of trying to get pregnant and having three miscarriages , I lost all hope in ever having a baby but that 's where our adoption journey begins . All these thoughts ran through my head as I lived my life and everyone else around me was getting pregnant and having babies . And all I could do was fake being happy for them because it was the one thing that I wanted most in my life . I hated going to baby showers and getting those dreaded text messages and phone calls " I 'm pregnant . " You always have to pretend to be happy for them because I mean what else can you say besides " Congratulations ! " Thats when I received a phone call that made my heart skip a beat . A friend that I used to work with called to tell me that one of her friends ( a girl I didn 't even know nor had ever met ) had a co - worker that was pregnant and wanted to place her baby up for adoption . I knew I trusted " D " with all my heart but trusting a girl I didn 't even know to make me a mother was terrifying to say the least ! But I listened to everything she had to say about " L " and waited two hours for my husband to come home from work ( it felt like an eternity ) to tell him all about this . He was very hesitant and it took a couple days of persuading him . At this point she was 26 weeks pregnant , so we only had 14 weeks to find an agency , an attorney , and to get a home study done . In addition to buy everything essential for a baby , to get our house baby proofed and a pool safety net . We also only had a little amount of time to come up with a very significant amount of money ! To say it was a VERY stressful 14 weeks is an understatement ! Tweleve weeks later our home study still wasn 't complete and I got the call " they are delivering the baby tonight … 2 weeks early , due to complications . " I 've never been so nervous and scared in my life . Here we are waiting to have our home study done and our baby is being born across the country . Luckily , she was born and our home study was also done on the SAME DAY ! That night we jumped on a plane and flew to the East Coast to go meet our baby ! One hour of sleep in the waiting room , three hours of sleeping in our car , 30 min drive to our hotel , lunch and a 30 min nap and we were on our way back to the hospital for another try at finally meeting our daughter ! We got to the hospital and didn 't know what to expect because we didn 't have any contact with the birth mom her whole pregnancy but to our surprise we were welcomed into her room with a big hug and a smile . She than handed us our daughter , a 5lb 6oz teeny tiny princess ! To our surprise they had named her , we came thinking that we would give her the name that we had come up with the last 3 months we were planning for her ( we didn 't know the gender so we had a boy name too ) . When our social worker told us that they had named her Grace Marie my husband and I burst into tears because we had been in a disagreement over names for three months . My husband had always loved the name Madyson Grace since he was 15 and had to name a baby for a school project . I wanted Madyson Anne because Anne is a very special to me , as it was my grandmothers middle name and she has since passed away . When we heard that they named her that we knew that we wanted to incorporate Grace into her name ! So after a day or so of talking about it we decided to happily name our daughter Madyson Grace Anne . At four days old we got to take our daughter home . When most people would be so ecstatic to finally take their baby home from the hospital , my husband and I were on edge . We still weren 't sure if we were going to be able to parent this tiny , sweet babe or not . By law the birth mother can 't sign papers if she is sent home with medication , so we had to wait four LONG days until she finished her medication and could sign her parental rights away . On day eight at 11am I got the second most amazing phone call of my life " MADYSON IS YOURS FOREVER ! " I immediately burst into tears and kissed her all over . We hugged and cried into each other arms and couldn 't believe our dreams were coming true . WE WERE FINALLY PARENTS ! After two weeks on the East Coast we were FINALLY cleared to go home . We couldn 't wait to go home and just enjoy being a family . We also couldn 't wait till Thanksgiving to surprise our family with our daughter ! We decided to keep our adoption process a secret from our friends and family because we were scared but most of all we were terrified of getting attached and hurting both sides of our family . All we could do was have faith that this would work out and we could surprise our families with this baby ! As Thanksgiving Day came we were very excited for everyone to meet our newest little member of the family ! Adoption has FOREVER changed my life in a way that I could never truly express . I wouldn 't be where I am today if it wasn 't for adoption and my husband and I wouldn 't be parents if it wasn 't for adoption . Adoption is very exhausting , stressful and emotional but also very rewarding ! I would do it all again to have my daughter because I am FINALLY A MOM ! For as long as I can remember , I 've always pictured myself having a big family . Not just 3 or 4 children , I seriously want 10 kids ! Even though my two " almost twins " can be a lot to handle and completely test my sanity at times ( coffee helps ! ) , I actually still want to have more babies ! Ok , ok … so 10 kids is probably a bit outrageous and mainly because logistics … like who 's gonna do all that laundry and would I ever even wash my hair ? Gabe and I know that while our family is perfect as it is , it doesn 't feel quite complete yet . So it 's time to start thinking about the next babe and how exactly are we gonna " get it . " The options are naturally ( we 've already agreed no more IVF ) , another adoption ( including foster / adoption ) or maybe even both ! First we 're going to try and see if we can 't prove those Doctor 's wrong ( again ) and get pregnant on our own ! That 's why I am so excited about my Ava bracelet . It takes all the guess work out of fertility tracking and will get us on the right course to conception ! All I have to do is wear this bracelet at night while I sleep and then sync it to my phone in the morning . No charting temperatures or using those ovulation predictor kits … which by the way I did religiously for about 4 years when we were trying to conceive ! Ava makes fertility tracking easy and effortless by charting 9 different body signals and detecting my 5 most fertile days of the month . I 've learned that timing is everything and I seriously love my Ava bracelet . Gabe and I are excited and hopeful that we will be able to conceive naturally if that 's God 's plan for us ! I 'd be lying if I didn 't say that I 'm nervous about this next step . For starters , I 'm not even sure that I will be able to get pregnant again and it brings back all those awful infertility feelings . For 4 years we tried everything to start our family and all the loss and disappointment we endured comes flooding back to me . Even though we are technically considered fertile now the scars of infertility are something I will always carry with me . I also struggle with feelings of guilt about even wanting more kids . I mean , look at me now … I have two beautiful , healthy children ! I 'm a mom ! I have everything I 've always wanted . And now I want more ? ? ? How greedy am I ? My heart breaks for the couples who are still waiting on their babes and it just feels wrong to want more kids until they get theirs . Like somehow I 'm taking up more than my fair share of the universe 's baby dust . Although the anxiety and fears I have about starting this process again weigh on my mind , there 's absolutely nothing that 'll stop me from adding to this family . And if I 've learned anything from the journey to my babies it 's that if you REALLY want to be parent you absolutely will . Do not give up , keep pushing forward , be open to all options and stay the course . I 'm guess I better take my own advice … so herrrrrreeeee we go ! My husband is a solid , secure and wonderful guy . And when I say solid , I mean solid - 6 ' 3 , 250 and bench presses almost 400 lbs ( yes , that is a real stat ) . He is funny , sensitive , a serious planner and the most intuitive person I know . We met at a wedding - very cliché , him a groomsman , me a bridesmaid - and started dating soon after . We loved ( and still love ) planning trips , entertaining our friends and family and going to the beach . The only thing we didn 't plan for was infertility … Pat and I were married in August 2012 in Northern California , and while we were excited to start a family , to me there was no rush . I said " let 's be married first " with the idea that being a parent is forever , being a newlywed is temporary . But , after a little convincing from him , we decided to " pull the goalie " the following January . After a couple little bumps , we found out we were pregnant at beginning of August 2013 , a few weeks short of our first anniversary ! We were surprised and excited to say the least . Unfortunately , it only lasted 7 weeks . I was at work one day and I started to bleed , so I rushed to the emergency room . Pat met me at the ER and I will never forget the look on his face and tears in his eyes before we even saw the doctor . After that horrible ER experience ( another story for another time ) , we went home and mourned . But , we also tried to find the silver lining - we got pregnant really fast , I could get pregnant in general and my OBGYN was super optimistic . So we , how you say , got back in the saddle and … We started how everyone does , having sex every other day during the fertile time , taking temps , using ovulation sticks , the works . We would get excited and hopeful , and then … the two week cycle of optimism and then defeat would come and go . Pat has since commented to me that his least favorite words in the English language became " I 'm spotting . " And each time I was disappointed he was there to comfort me and say " next time " or " let 's do this differently " always with a solution and not getting bogged down . We did the rounds of clomid and each time while my hormones were up and down , Pat was there to be supportive and calm - yet a little part of him was dying inside . It was getting harder for him to hide his frustration and sadness and when the last round of clomid prescribed by our Doctor failed , he broke down . Tears and beers in the backyard , this wasn 't happening for us how we thought it would . We were at an impasse - take a break or take it one step further and get help . I wasn 't getting any younger so we decided to get help and researched clinics . After choosing the clinic and having our first round of tests ( beyond blood tests ) in January 2015 , we were resolved that this was going to happen - the clinic will figure out the problem , tell us how to fix it and we 'll be good ! We met with the doctor and the diagnosis didn 't go as planned - unexplained infertility . What ? Oh there 's nothing wrong with you , we ran every ( massively invasive ) test but can 't find anything , your infertility is unexplained . We can 't fix it , because we can 't find the problem . WTF ? ! ( literally people , WTF ) . But our doc was positive , all the signs pointed towards yes - high egg count , sperm is shaped right and motile , we were a layup , easy peasy , IUI would do it . The light and excitement came back into Pat 's eyes - hey , we 'll get there , we just needed a little assistance . IUI time - let 's do this ! IUI , billed as a simple , painless ( turkey baster ) procedure . Not so much . Turns out , my cervix was a trickster and the doctor kept missing . As I went through the pain of the catheter being reinserted multiple times , Pat went through the pain of watching me and being helpless . I squeezed his hand hard , but he squeezed right back . I got through it , we took a deep breath and he bought me a milkshake ( which became a fertility treatment tradition ) . Nothing happened , BFN . Another visit to the clinic , rude receptionists , more tests , another IUI , demanding billing department , another milkshake and no pregnancy . We had one more chance at IUI , so decided to try it and if it didn 't work , IVF it was . Ok , game plan ! Pat was pumped , he loves game plans . We went in for the last IUI and low and behold , BFP ! ! ! Finally ! We had just bought and started remodeling our house , we had resolved to taking the next step if we needed to so we just kind of let it go and there it was ! A positive pregnancy test ! We were excited and cautiously optimistic . Monday I was pregnant and according to the blood tests the levels looked great , Wednesday , number went up , trending in the right direction , then Sunday , while sitting at brunch with my family , I got the call . Numbers had dropped and I was going to miscarry or it was probably a chemical pregnancy . We left before the coffee came . When you hit a wall with something , you hit a wall . Pat was done . Done with the clinic , done with the rude receptionists , done with the financial advisors who had no bedside manner when it came to explaining what it would cost , just done . We were at another impasse - try another clinic or quit . Pat 's gut told him we should switch clinics , I wasn 't so sure . We sat down with our doctor , who he was also starting to lose faith in , but I still loved and trusted , to discuss IVF . Pat brashly decided to ask her about the other local clinics that we were looking into , and she gave the very diplomatic answer that all of the clinics were fine , just went about things differently . When he asked more pointedly about a clinic we were looking into more closely , she seemed uncomfortable and just said " oh they are great people . " Awkward . We went home , and talked a few things out and then tabled the discussion for a few days . When you are battling infertility , tabling something for even a few days feels like a lifetime . I knew what I wanted to do - stick with our doctor and start IVF - but Pat needed to come to the decision on his own . A few more days went by , clock was ticking , and he said he was ready to take the next step and start IVF . Hurray ! We would stay at the clinic , begrudgingly , but with a doctor who all but guaranteed us we would have a baby . At my first appointment to start the IVF process , my doctor came out to the waiting room and asked me to come back to her office , instead of the receptionist leading me back . All I thought was " this can 't be good . " Well , I was wrong , first good news we had in awhile - she was switching clinics , to the clinic we were considering and wanted to let me know personally , so that no more time could be wasted . I didn 't even go to the rest of the appointment , I called Pat immediately . It was a no brainer , leave the rude , expensive clinic and follow her . Finally a sign ! At our first consultation appointment at the new clinic , it was a complete 180 - warm friendly receptionist , a financial advisor who understood the burden of the cost and nurses who brought us snacks into our meeting ( snacks ! ) - and we knew we were in the right place . Pat 's intuition once again was right . Once we charted a course for meds , and shots and egg retrieval we felt , in a way , like ourselves again . There was a plan with set steps to the desired outcome . We made it as fun as we could , played the song " Shots , shots , shots " every time he would have to stick me with the needle in my stomach ( yes , I made him do it ) , and then do a little celebration after , we were on our way . The first ultrasound showed that all of the follicles looked great ! I went in for the egg retrieval on October 23 , 2015 . I was nervous , but ready . I guess I was so excited as I was going under , I was talking about what kind of Halloween themed dishes and drinks I was going to serve at our annual party ( Halloween is my favorite holiday ) , cracking up the nurses . Pat was there for me when I woke up - funny story , as folks know the dad has to make his " deposit " during the retrieval so that the eggs can be fertilized in a timely manner . Well when he went to the designated room , it was occupied , and for a LONG TIME . He panicked and found a nurse and let her know my procedure should be done momentarily , what should he do ? ! She led him to a regular bathroom and told him to lock the door . Yikes . And like I said , he was there for me when I woke up , sample safely with the doctor , guy can perform ( winky face emoji ? ) . All of this related to me as I was coming off the anesthesia , I chuckled and thought the hard part was over ! The doctor came in and let us know they didn 't get as many eggs as they thought they would , but they got 8 which was still really promising . We felt good about it , they would let us know in 3 days how many fertilized , and then in 5 days which eggs became blastocysts and ready to implant . When we came in on day 5 , it was a good news / bad news situation - good news , my uterine lining looked great , we should transfer right away instead of freezing the embryos , bad news , only 3 made it to 5 day blastocyst stage - 2 that looked perfect , had super high " grades " and 1 that was about a B + . She recommended transferring 2 , hedge our bets , place all ( well almost ) our eggs in one basket ( overused fertility pun ? ) so we did it ! Watching the transfer I cried , we were so happy , this is the moment where our baby ( ies ) were starting their journey . We went home on cloud nine , celebrated at our Halloween party ( me sneaking mocktails and non alcoholic wine without people catching on ) and started talking about babies . I went in for my blood test 10 days later , but didn 't feel the same high . For some reason , I knew . When we got the call later that day , instead of breaking down , I had to stay strong for Pat . It is pretty hard to get some of the worst news of your life and not be able to melt into a puddle . But , we pick our partners based on what we need and in that moment he needed me to be the solid one , so I was . And for awhile , that was my role . I stayed positive and Pat broke down . As I got more injections , I stayed optimistic and he went blank and numb . After the wrong hormone dosage by a nurse that delayed us another month , sending him into a little spiral , we came to our final chance - my uterus was ready for our final transfer . Going in to the transfer this time was a bit different . It was our last gamble , back to square one if this didn 't take . We transferred the final embryo , our little B + fighter , and took a deep breath . At this point , it was no expectations . We had even booked a trip to Belize and Mexico ( hello Zika ) because we would need a getaway if and when we got the bad news . Our embryo transfer was February 4th , blood test scheduled for February 15th . The weekend of February 12th and 13th I was traveling to San Francisco for work and Sacramento for a friend 's baby shower . I still drank the mocktails and blamed not being able to drink with friends on " hormones " but this time I meant it , I felt different . I told Pat , and now him being the skeptic , he just told me to wait to get the blood test . When I got home Sunday night , I bought a test . Monday morning , I took it and there it was BFP . POSITIVE . This felt different . I went in to get the blood test and when my doctor called , she said " Could you hear me screaming in excitement all the way from the office ? " Numbers were great , 2 days later they more than doubled , 2 days after that , they were off the charts . And we knew it wasn 't twins , one embryo and all , so this was happening ! They say a mom can forget the pain of childbirth after a while , so that they can have more kids . But what about dad ? I have forgotten the pain - of childbirth , of failed tries , of IVF . True , it was a struggle and I know that , but I would do it again . Pat has not forgotten . The pain has stayed with him , and is something we take into consideration when discuss adding to our family . Could he go through it again ? I hope that we won 't have to and things will happen naturally , but we will cross that bridge if / when we come to it . Every day I am thankful for my husband and my teammate in this process and parenting our son together has been a dream , messy but I wouldn 't change it for the world . People always talk about the toll infertility takes on moms , and it does , but let 's not forget about dad . Ohhhh the ugly world of infertility . From the start we knew IVF was our only shot at ever having a biological child . My husband has Cystic Fibrosis . As if that weren 't bad enough , 98 % of men with CF are born without a vas deferens ( basically it 's like having a vasectomy to begin with ! ) We had little hope we would be in that 2 % as John doesn 't present as a typical CF patient . And we weren 't . So the first step to making Baby Van Happen was to undergo genetic testing . When the results came back that I didn 't carry the gene for CF , I took it as a sign that we were on the right path . I 'm Nicole , wife to Tyler and new mama to Campbell and Crawford . My two babes born 10 weeks apart . Campbell joined our family by adoption and Crawford grew in my belly . There isn 't a day that goes by that I 'm not immensely grateful to be a mama to not one … but TWO incredible tiny humans ! I 'm so excited to share a little of our story today . It 's my deepest desire that you will walk away encouraged no matter your season of life . In the summer of 2014 we started talking about getting pregnant . ( Side note : I try to never say " start a family " because that 's something that always hurt for me to hear . We were already a family ! Having babies wouldn 't make us a family … the day we got married we became a family . I hope that encourages any of you who are waiting ! ) Over the next couple of months we started actively trying to conceive . Early on we had the talk about what we would do if we couldn 't get pregnant . Honestly , this thought was completely foreign to me . I really didn 't know anyone personally who struggled to conceive so it seemed so far fetched that we would even discuss it . But , I feel as though this was God 's way of giving us complete peace over our journey very early on and I 'm so thankful for that . We decided together that we would pursue very minimal fertility treatments and we would definitely pursue adoption . Fast forward a little over a year and we had a few rounds of testing . Because of a previous surgery of mine my abdominal area is absolutely covered in scar tissue . We were told that it wasn 't impossible for us to conceive naturally , but it would be a lot harder because of my scar tissue . The next several months after that we decided to go on Clomid for a few cycles . During this time I felt God call us to adoption . I felt the call so strongly and knew that it was something that would be in our near future . My husband wasn 't quite to this point yet so we continued on Clomid and we kept praying about adoption separately . My body and mind did not respond well to Clomid and one month we decided that if we didn 't get pregnant we would quit all treatments . That next month , my period came . It was probably one of the hardest and best months for me . I took some time away from social media for 6 weeks and dug deep into prayer . It was during this time that I felt the Lord confirming adoption . Within those weeks God was working in my husband 's heart as well and on February 16 , 2016 we sent the first email to our adoption consultant ! Over the next few months we dove head first into the adoption process . We quickly started fundraising , did our home study , and worked to get all our ducks in a row so that our profile could be active as soon as possible ! Pregnancy was no longer something we were pursuing and the Lord gave us both such closure as we moved into adoption . On May 18 , 2016 we got quite the surprise . One line quickly turned to two on a pregnancy test . We were pregnant ! We were both surprised but excited and our first conversation was about our adoption . We both we 're 100 % certain that we were to continue pursuing adoption . We also knew that it was very likely that we would match by the end of 2016 and with a due date in January , it was incredibly likely our babies would be only a few months apart . Fast forward to September when we matched with a little boy ! He was born on September 18th and we hopped on a plane with all our baby gear anxious to meet our son . I 'll never forget sitting in a hotel lobby in south Florida as our adoption agency worker sat across from us and told us how our son 's first mom had changed her mind and decided not to place . We were going to leave that hotel without a baby . We were both absolutely crushed . I 've never in my life hurt so deeply . We were confused and grieving and unsure of what the next few months would hold for us . Within the next few weeks we got a call about another baby . We were hesitant to say yes , but ultimately both felt like we needed to put our yes on the table despite being afraid of another failed match . That was the sweetest " yes " we 've ever said . On October 23rd , 2016 I became a mama to a tiny 4 pound 11 ounce Hispanic boy who has completely captured our hearts in every single way . And then 10 weeks later , his sister came . Our sweet Crawford Elaine ! And just like that , we are parents to two tiny humans . I can 't imagine our lives without either of our babies . Our story isn 't one that I anticipated in any way , but oh how sweet it is ! There are two phrases I 've heard a thousand times as people have heard our story , " See , you relaxed and it happened ! " and " Whenever someone adopts they end up getting pregnant ! " Both of these phrases couldn 't be further from the truth and it came incredibly hurtful to hear . The month we conceived was probably the most stressful month we had personally , professionally , and in our adoption . But even if we had the best month of our lives … it still doesn 't change the fact that " relaxing " doesn 't make a baby . It hurts me to know that this comment puts blame on the parents and usually , the mama who so desperately wants to get pregnant . Without realizing it , someone making this comment has just said , " If you would do something differently , you could get pregnant … it 's your fault this isn 't happening . " If you 've said these words before , I want to compassionately urge you never to say them again . So many times friends and family members mean well but their words still sting . If you know someone struggling to conceive or someone who has conceived after a hard road of infertility , please speak words of encouragement and love over them ! It 's truly the best thing that you can do . If you 're someone who is struggling to conceive , I urge you to respond in grace as you educate ! Something that has been so important to me in our journey is to use every single situation to educate others . Instead of always being offended , I can use my words to educate those who might say hurtful words unintentionally . Use your situation to teach others about the language they use and what is helpful and harmful to you as you struggle ! Adoption is also not the cure to infertility . There are many , many families who will adopt and never conceive . Saying " this happens to everyone " is not only false but incredibly hurtful . Adoption should never be viewed as a " fix " for infertility . Adoption has been an incredible blessing in our lives and we cannot imagine life without our sweet son ! He is our son . Period . He is not our " adopted son , " even though , yes , he is adopted . He is our son just like our daughter is our daughter . His story just looks differently than hers and we will always , always celebrate their uniqueness in our family ! Adoption is hard but it 's been such a treasure in our lives and in our family . Friend who is struggling , I hope that you read this story and see God 's plan unfolding . If we would have conceived naturally right away we wouldn 't have our sweet Campbell . Every single day we struggled was worth it the day he made me a mama . If we would have conceived right away , we wouldn 't have the exact baby that is our biological daughter . She was worth the struggle . Mama who is waiting , God is writing a story for your family that you cannot comprehend . It 's my prayer that you would know that you 're loved by a God who doesn 't make mistakes . By a God who is never late . By a God who understands your pain deeply and who wants to use your waiting for good . Our story is not our story apart from the redemptive work of Jesus and the cross . Because of Jesus we have hope beyond babies and our family . I have hope of a perfect eternity . I really haven 't shared this story with many people . Fertility problems are so hard , and I don 't wish them on anyone . I can see how marriages can break up over such devastating news especially if the other partner isn 't supportive . I also think about the people that struggle that don 't have the means to pay for IVF . I still have drugs sitting in my fridge because I just can 't motivate myself to throw them away . I bought them after a morning appointment when they told me it was probably going to be another day but then later that day they decided to trigger me that evening . The drugs expired in 2012 but it 's painful to think about throwing out that kind of money . So I keep it in my fridge , because if it 's in there it 's still worth the $ 900 or so that I paid for them , right ? ! For those who struggle with infertility every baby shower , birth announcement , and pregnant person you see is a constant reminder that it 's not you . If I had a dollar for every person who asked when we were going to have a baby , or asks us when we are going to have baby # 2 I would be able to pay off all of our fertility loans and maybe afford to have baby # 2 ! We were married the fall of 2007 at the time we were one of the last couples of our group of friends to get married and of course most everyone already had kids . The year we were married Matt was 37 and I was 32 and we were so excited to finally be married and planned on starting a family right away . After a year of thinking we were going to be pregnant almost every month we had had a conversation with another couple that were married the year before us and were also trying to have a baby . They mentioned that they were going to see a fertility doctor . I remember being surprised that they thought that they needed to seek help . I mentioned it to my husband and I was shocked when he agreed it was time we talk to someone about why we haven 't gotten pregnant . I quickly made a doctors appointment and we went the next week . I really didn 't think anything was wrong I just thought we might get a little " help " to make things happen quicker . When we heard the news I remember thinking : " this doctor isn 't telling us the truth , he just wants us to spend thousands of dollars with him to do this procedure called IVF because he will make a lot of money " . Basically what I took home from that conversation was if you give me $ 28 , 000 I can get you pregnant tomorrow . Without IVF you will never have a baby . I thought this doctor was crazy . Our issue was a low sperm count , but a low sperm count is still in the millions . So in my mind , since it only takes one sperm then there could be one lucky one out of the millions . Well we tried that theory for about a year without a positive pregnancy test . I guess that doctor did know what he was talking about . We also finally told our parents the news . That was one of the hardest conversations I 've ever had with them . I cried when I told my Mom that I wasn 't sure if we were ever going to have a baby . My parents have always been supportive but they became even more supportive when it came to having a baby . They told me that we needed to do everything that we can do to try and have a baby . They said we weren 't getting any younger and they would do anything they could to help us . With that news from my parents I decided that maybe we did need to investigate the option of IVF even if it did mean taking out loans . We figured since we had paid off both of our cars and if we could just drive our cars long enough to pay off the IVF loan it would be the same as a car payment . So we tried out a new doctor and loved her right away . We decided to go with an IVF " package " that allowed us a couple of cycles if it didn 't work out the first time . What many people don 't understand about IVF is the cost of the drugs , they are so expensive ! ! There are a few states that IVF is covered by insurance ( Illinois & Massachusetts are two of them ) and Matt is from IL and my Mom 's family is from MA and I seriously considered trying to get a job in both states ! But we didn 't have time for that so we picked a package that allowed us 1 live retrieval followed by 2 frozen retrievals and then another live retrieval and 2 frozen if needed . We started in June of 2011 with an retrieval and transferred two live embryos . We went in for the blood test and anxiously awaited the results . When the doctor finally called us she told us it was definite " maybe " . WHAT ? ! ! I thought that it was a positive or negative not a maybe . I had NEVER heard of that before ! ! Well , I had a positive HCG count but it was a 21 and they like to see it much higher than that at the first blood test . So they made me come in two days later to see if my counts had doubled . When I went in for my second blood test my counts had doubled , so I was pregnant but they only doubled in the 40 's so they weren 't as high as they would like to see them . So I had to go in two days later and my count had gone down which means miscarriage . At this point devastation set in , but I also just wanted to be done . I wanted to get everything out of my system so we can start over . Finally , we are able to try another transfer in November of 2010 . This time we will try to transfer two frozen embryo 's ( this clinic has a great success record for frozen transfers ) . We are so excited to transfer and are told by the doctor that they are such good quality that he wouldn 't be surprised if they are twins ! Of course we are stoked with that news at the transfer and tell our parents how excited we are to hear the results . We are all on pins and needles the day of the blood test and await the call from the doctor . When I finally get the call , we find out that the test is negative . I remember thinking … . . " WHAT ? YOU ARE KIDDING ME ? " What do we do now ? The doctor told me that many couples that have been through what we have been through give it a couple of months to relax . Other say : " I signed up for this " and keep going . I remember thinking , " I totally signed up for this " . We told our parents the news and they took it really bad this time . I think this was worse than the miscarriage because they told us the quality of the embryo 's allowed us such a good chance . So now we are at decision time … . we have 1 frozen embryo left to transfer and the doctor tells us that because of the quality that we have to transfer before we do another live cycle . Which makes sense to us financially too because then we don 't have to pay for the drugs to go through another retrieval . But I remember thinking in my head " if this transfer of one embryo is successful it means we will have an only child " . I never in a million years thought I would have an only child . I don 't want my child to be alone ; I want him / her to have a sibling so many things run through your head . But you want to have a miracle baby so bad . We transfer one embryo the first week of December 2010 we do things totally different this time , my husband made me eat Mexican instead of Paradise Bakery while on bed rest , we didn 't tell our parents or anyone we did a transfer this time , and our favorite doctor performed the transfer . We didn 't want to jinx ourselves . When our doctor called us , our HCG count was definite and she was so excited to tell us that we were FINALLY pregnant . So yes , we have a beautiful miracle baby . We decided not to find out what we were having because I can seriously tell you to the date and minute that we conceived . I have pictures of that beautiful embryo . A beautiful amazing girl : Ainsley Marie was born to us on August 30 , 2011 . But no , we probably won 't be having # 2 . We are still paying off loans from # 1 and needed to buy a bigger house and wanted to have a pool for that sweet girl as she grows up in the heat of Arizona . We couldn 't have another baby in the other house so it was either buy a new house or pay for another baby … . but we needed to get a bigger house so bad that there really wasn 't a choice . We have our miracle baby ( who is 5 ! ) . We have good friends who have children she will be close with , so hopefully she won 't mind being an only child . We are just lucky we have our girl ! ! ! Infertility really puts life into perspective … . I have friends that freaked out when they couldn 't get pregnant after a couple of months or didn 't get pregnant when they wanted to … . but they didn 't go though this journey and couples that survive this journey know the gift they received You steal dreams . You break hearts . You bring grief . You consume lives . You are the reason I couldn 't get pregnant on my own . You drowned my heart in deep misery from the inability to become a Mother how most women do . You told me that my body wasn 't good enough . You may have been a huge part of my story , but you never defined me . And on this day , two years ago , I kicked your ass . I defeated you . I showed you that there is victory in infertility and God finally planted life in my womb . Infertility , there are so many things you brought with you when you entered my life . It wasn 't just that I couldn 't get pregnant . You brought me more tears than I ever thought I could shed . Because of you I laid on my bathroom floor in complete emptiness after countless negative pregnancy tests time and time again . I had to endure shots , bruises , and all kinds of meds because when you are infertile and you seek fertility treatment for help , that is what you are in for . You are expensive and exhausting physically , emotionally , and mentally . Infertility , you drowned my heart in disappointment and agony . And truthfully , it was pretty painful every time I heard the words " I 'm pregnant " from someone other than myself . And yet , in the midst of all of that - you brought me hope . As much as I hated you , Infertility , I am also so thankful that you were my story . You made me strong . Even before I got pregnant , my strength was rising . Not only did I feel like Superwoman after all of those injections , meds , blood draws , doctor visits , etc . but I found strength emotionally , as well . I learned how to be brave and walk our story with faith trusting that God knew every single detail better than I did . I learned how to be courageous as my husband gave me a progesterone shot that hurt like you wouldn 't believe every single night for 2 months so I could get and stay pregnant . Infertility , you taught me that I am never alone in my darkest days . Never did I imagine I would be labeled as infertile . Nor did I imagine that we would seek fertility treatment . However , infertility , it is because of you that I get to be a Mom to Charlize , Sawyer , and Jax . This love that I get to experience with them is absolutely undeniable . It is the greatest feeling in the world and if you weren 't apart of my story , I would be missing out on a truly honorable role as their Mommy . It is because of you that two years ago I found myself lying on a Doctors bed waiting for two precious and perfectly made embryos to be transferred to my womb . Infertility , God used you in in my life to make a platform for my story and reach the hearts of people walking the same pain I was in . And it is because of you that I have a greater understanding of what hope really is . Infertility , I don 't hate you , not anymore . God makes beauty out of ashes . You were my ashes , but God made you beautiful . If it wasn 't for you - for the extreme heartache you caused me , the lies you told me , the grief you brought my heart over and over again - not only would I not be a Mom to my darling hope triplets , but I can now truly grasp on to how powerful and remarkable it means to have hope in Jesus Christ . Hope anchors the soul . Hope does not disappoint . Hope is having faith for what seems impossible . It is trusting God when it feels hopeless . My journey to parenthood was nothing short of hope . God had every single detail orchestrated from the second He planted the seed of Motherhood in my heart . Infertility , today , when I really reflect on those years when you were apart of my life , I can only say , Thank you . " I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now . " Seems like it was just yesterday that I would have done ANYTHING to hold my babies on Mother 's Day . I will never forget how painful it felt to have empty arms when I just knew I was meant to be a Mama . But ya know what ? As crazy as it seems , now I am thankful for those days because they shaped me into the Mom ( and person ) I was always intended to be . Even when I 've got two babies who are sick and fussy , I am grateful . When I wake up every hour through the night , I am grateful . When there 's a double meltdown at the grocery store , I am grateful . When my arms are tired and my back is sore from holding a baby all day , I am grateful . When I can 't remember the last time I showered or brushed my teeth , I am grateful . ( Yeah … I know , I really gotta do something to keep my hygiene in check ! ) I will always be grateful because I know that not having a baby is so much more difficult that having one . I know that infertility is so much more exhausting than a baby . And I know that being a mom is one of life 's greatest privileges that some woman are still waiting on . If you are in the middle of a struggle , continue to have faith and don 't give up . Your day will come , I promise , and when it does it 'll be even more extraordinary than you can imagine . For reasons I 'll never quite know , I just had to walk that difficult road to find my babies . And for reasons I 'll never question , I 'd do it all again . In a heartbeat . And someday you 'll say the exact same thing . Being an aesthetician , I 've always been hyper focused on reading and dissecting ingredient labels but I understand this is not a natural behavior for everyone . When it comes to buying products to use on our babies , we can get so caught up with cute packaging , attractive claims and product scent we don 't think about what is actually IN the bottle . I know this may seem daunting , but it really is important to spend some time reading and getting to know labels because unfortunately - under the Food , Drug and Cosmetic Act from 1938 - the FDA only regulates 11 ingredients in cosmetics yet there are THOUSANDS in use and being formulated into products we use every day . We need to ask questions and vet the products we choose to purchase for our families as there is very little regulation in cosmetics and it is up to us - parents - to make healthy , informed choices for our family . I know this is all kind of scary and overwhelming if you are new to this ! I consider myself an informed person but believe me , I am still learning about toxic chemicals every day ! To help break it down and make this a little less overwhelming , I am going to give some suggestions on where to start with vetting skin care and what ingredients should be avoided in your children 's products . Avoid Fragrance / Parfum - One of the biggest offenders is one of the ingredients parents want most in their baby 's skincare - fragrance ! Why ? Because everybody loves a sweet smelling baby ! However , it 's not worth it for the health of your child . Fragrance is actually highly toxic and a single fragrance can contain hundreds of nasty chemicals . So if you read " fragrance " or " parfum " on an ingredient list , put the product back on the shelf ! Instead , look for products that only use pure essential oils to create a natural fragrance . This is a much safer option plus pure essential oils contain therapeutic benefits . Avoid Mineral Oil - Mineral oil is a byproduct of petroleum and there are so many safer , more wholesome options today to moisturize the skin . Look for products that use skin - loving vegetable oils such as coconut oil , olive oil , grapeseed oil and avocado oil . Even better are baby moisturizers that contain fruit and vegetable oils with a high concentration of omega - 3 essential fatty acids such as red raspberry seed oil , cranberry seed oil , flax seed oil and chia seed oil . Oils rich in omega - 3 essential fatty acids help build up baby 's delicate skin and protect it from daily environmental assault . Avoid Chemical Sunscreens - Pediatricians typically recommend to avoid sunscreen before 6 months of age and after that , make sure to stick to mineral sunscreens that contain zinc oxide as the " active ingredient " that is located at the top of the ingredient label . This is the safest option . Second best is a combination of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as the active ingredients . Completely avoid sunscreens with ingredients that contain chemical sun filters such as avobenzone , oxybenzone and octisalate . Also , look further down the label to the " inactive ingredients " section and make sure you can understand most of the items listed . If there are a bunch of strange , hard to read ingredients it 's probably not the safest option for your baby . Avoid Products Containing Water - This is a hard one but the reality is , if a product contains water it needs to be preserved . Period . And the preservative has to be strong enough to fight off bacteria , yeast , fungus and mold . If you do chose to purchase a product with " water " in it , make sure to avoid products containing synthetic harmful preservatives such as parabens and phenoxyethanol . Chose products that contain natural , more gentle preservatives instead . Some popular ones right now are radish root ferment , lactobacillus and herb blends . Something to keep in mind is that you need to use the product up faster if it contains a natural preservative because they don 't hold up as long as their synthetic counterparts do . That should be ok because a product with a three year shelf life is actually kind of gross if you really think about it . Luckily , baby balms and baby oils do not contain water and do not need to be preserved . Just make sure to avoid the ones with mineral oil and petrolatum ! Last Tip : Do not get caught up with product claims . Just because a label says it 's " natural " or " fragrance free " doesn 't mean the product is safe . It really is important to flip the bottle over and read the ingredient list and make sure you only see words you recognize and can pronounce . If the label is confusing to read , there is most likely questionable - and potentially toxic - chemicals you will want to avoid applying on your baby . And don 't worry ; if all of this is just too confusing and overwhelming , there are third party organizations out there that do the vetting for us like Made Safe . Check out their website as every product listed is certified non - toxic ! When you 're stuck in the trenches of infertility , your RE basically becomes your bestie . Am I right ? You stalk them to get follicle updates , you know the type of car they drive ( LOL , but seriously ) and they 're a shoulder to cry on when times are tough . It 's pretty much the most important relationship in your life next to your semi - serious romance with The Bachelor on Monday nights . ( Oh yeah and the hubs too ! ) Your Doc knows everything about you ( seriously like ev - ery - thing ) but what do you really know about them ? Meet Dr . Natalie Crawford . She 's one of the newest RE 's in the industry , making babies in Austin , Texas since 2016 , but this Doc is going places ! Dr . C is quite possibly the coolest Doc we know , I mean have you seen her Instagram page ? She 's as smart as she is gorgeous and as down to earth as she is passionate about her job ! Dr . C even struggled with infertility herself so she totally GETS IT ! This is definitely the type of Doc you want on your baby making squad and we 're pretty much obsessed ! So we sat down with Dr . C to find out what 's new in IF treatments and how to know when it 's time to see a specialist and how to optimize our chances for success ! Dr . Crawford : I loved women 's health and was drawn to the complexity of the endocrine system and the technology with infertility care . In addition , I love knowing a patient 's story - and becoming a part of their life . To me , this relationship with patients is part of why I became a physician . Dr . C : I think optimizing your health before you get pregnant is always important , as this is the last time to just focus on you . Lose weight that may be nagging - work on improving dietary habits . I encourage my patients to drink plenty of water , no soda , limit sugar , whole grain breads over white breads , and a mostly plant based diet ( limiting meat and focusing on lean meats ) . I also recommend 30 minutes of exercise five times a week . Women need to take a daily prenatal vitamin with at least 400 mcg folic acid and 600 IU vitamin D3 . Stop smoking ( both partners ) . Other recommended preconception evaluations include : knowing your blood type , proving immunity to rubella and varicella ( chicken pox ) , thyroid screening , and genetic carrier screening . Your OB / GYN or a fertility doctor should be able to talk to you about all of these before you get pregnant . Dr . C : In general , if you have no known issues with fertility , it is recommended to see a specialist after 12 months of unprotected intercourse if you are under 35 years old , and six months if you are over 35 years . However , in some situations it is best to see an REI early . For example , if you have : irregular periods , difficulty having intercourse , a male partner who has used testosterone or other steroids , known history of gonorrhea / chlamydia , prior ectopic pregnancy , or multiple pregnancy losses then an earlier evaluation is needed . I also always say that it is never too early . If you are concerned about your fertility , you will only feel better after talking to a specialist and understanding where you stand . The truth is , many couples with no risk factors have difficulty conceiving . Being proactive is never a bad thing . Dr . C : I think the most important first step is to talk to your partner and make sure you are both on the same page about how you want to proceed . Is the goal to become pregnant the fastest ? To do the least invasive treatment ? How many children ( in an ideal world ) do you envision for your family . Having clear " goals " will help your physician navigate you through the most appropriate treatment . Dr . C : I think the most important question to ask is " why ? " Why are we doing that test ? Why do you recommend that treatment ? As a patient , make sure you understand the process , the next steps , and why things are being done . I think it is important to trust your infertility physician - and often , trust comes with understanding . Dr . C : I struggled with infertility myself , and I know how difficult the process can be . I was afraid that being pregnant would make it hard for my patients with infertility to relate to me . However , I have been fortunate to have the most gracious , supporting , and encouraging patients . The grace exhibited by those suffering with infertility while I was pregnant was inspiring . I love my kids endlessly and I love ( love love ) being a mom . Becoming a mother has been the greatest gift , and I leave home each day to try and help others experience this same joy . I understand how hard it can be for those dealing with infertility - and I try to make sure my patients know that I understand their struggle . For me , being a mom makes this job even more satisfying , because I know the true gift my patients are getting when we are able to help them grow their family . Timing is everything . WTF 's creator @ alexisdelchiaro opens up about trying for Baby # 3 after infertility and why the @ avawomen bracelet may just be the key to conception ! Ava makes fertility tracking easy and effortless by charting 9 different body signals and detecting the 5 most fertile days of the month . " All I have to do is wear this bracelet at night while I sleep and then sync it to my phone in the morning . No charting temperatures or using those ovulation predictor kits . . . which by the way I did religiously for about 4 years when we were trying to conceive ! " Read … Happy Father 's Day to all the amazing dads in our lives ! We wouldn 't be here without them ! We have a special blog post today by @ ziebronjohnson . She and her husband struggled with unexplained infertility for years . They recently welcomed an adorable little guy after much patience and planning . Read about dad 's especially poignant experience navigating the waters of infertility . Link in bio . And to those of you continuing to struggle , we 're sending you prayers and hope . Don 't give up ! It 'll happen ! # fathersday 1 week ago Our guest blogger today , Tamara Van Happen , knew from the start of her marriage that IVF was her only shot at ever having a biological child . Her husband has Cystic Fibrosis . As if that weren 't bad enough , 98 % of men with CF are born without a vas deferens ( basically it 's like having a vasectomy to begin with ! ) . Tamara is sharing her fertility journey on the blog today . Link in bio . Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying ! After four years of trying to get pregnant and having three miscarriages , @ sarahh __ l and her husband knew adoption was the next step since it 's a part of their family history . Their adoption journey moved quickly , and now they have a beautiful baby girl in their arms . Link in bio . # adoption # adoptionrocks 7 days ago ☀️️ GIVEAWAY CLOSED ☀️ It may be all about Dad this weekend , but the ladies need some love too ! @ erbaviva is giving away a set of three products to one lucky winner ! Includes Belly Butter , Stretch Mark Oil , and Stretch Mark Cream ! To enter , follow @ whatthefertility and @ erbaviva . And comment below with where you live ! # giveaway Twitter Tweets by @ WTFertility
|
When you turn on the tv now , all you hear about are the upcoming primaries and New Year 's resolutions . It 's no wonder why I like to watch HGTV . Making a resolution to me is a set up for failure . It 's the same every year , lose weight , be more careful with money , have more patience . All it really means though is worrying about Bryan . Any small milestone triggers a reaction . What will happen to our beautiful , sweet , loving , smart boy ? I read these articles about children with autism who grow up and have relationships or " come out of it " and it doesn 't make me hopeful . It makes me depressed . I know that is not the norm for these kids . I try so hard to be optimistic but I know we won 't be here forever and that makes me nervous too . Will he have a good life ? Will he meet someone and have a relationship ? Go to college , live on his own , drive a car , have a child ? I can 't even mention this in front of Jason he gets so indignant about it . " I will take care of Bryan , he will live with me . " Oh the guilt , love , admiration and pride that declaration provokes . The floodgates are open and the rush of fears washes over me like a tidle wave . " there 's got to be a morning after … " I keep picturing myself hanging on to roof tiles while floating on the river of debris . Clearly I 've watched too many documentaries of Japan . When I think about Bryan 's future I feel panic set in . I need to remember that everything with him is slow motion . When I talked to Earl about this he said " weren 't you just blogging about his progress ? " Yes , but but but . The overprotective mommy instinct and the rational person thought process sometimes collide . One more thing about New Year 's Eve before I move on to all my regular emotional stuff . I know this is random , but can someone please have Dick Clark stay home this year ? It 's painful to watch him and he needs to just pass that damn baton and get over it . I am happy that he is doing well and recovering from a stroke or strokes but it just is not dignified , ok , got that out . Last night I loaded HBO Go on my ipad . Wow that really rocks . The picture on the ipad is unreal , so clear . Jason decided he wanted to watch " The Tale of Despereaux . " I did not watch the whole thing but watched a part where Despereaux , a tiny little mouse with big ears , was having trouble in school . He does not cower and does not scurry like the other mice and the parents are very worried . Well that just pushed me over the edge . Every parent just wants their child to do what it is typical . When I teared up Jason , who really gets me , said , " Mommy why are you sad ? " I told him that Despereaux reminds me of Bryan a little bit and he just said " come here and give me a hug . " I am sure when Jason grows up he will be telling someone , a shrink , friend , spouse that his mom was a nutcase . I guess that 's a Jewish boy 's legacy ! ! Not sure what will happen in 2012 , will the world as we know it end as predicted ? Will Bryan have a successful transition to middle school ? Will I lose weight ? Only time will tell . Happy New Year . Ok , time to come clean . I like to go to my nice quiet office . I am not cut out to be a stay at home mom . I was home for a few days and although it was nice to have extra time with the boys , Bryan 's perseveration and anxiety can be tough to handle in large doses . He craves structure and these days were unstructured . So , I guess what I 'm trying to say is , it 's not his fault that he is perseverating , he doesn 't know what 's coming next because we don 't either . Nevertheless , the days can be a challenge . He knows what is and isn 't happening , but has trouble reeling himself in . It pains us and him and overall it makes for a stressful experience . You would think then that we would have plans all the time for him , but let 's face it , that 's neither practical nor realistic . Some days you need to just have nothing to do or nothing scheduled . Sometimes you need to clean up around the house , or organize your things , or just do laundry and watch movies . Yesterday was particularly rough in the morning , but I am trying to remind myself to focus on how far along he 's come , rather than the bad things that have occurred . In the morning , he really wanted to go to Target to get a Wii game . The boys each got two Target gift cards and wanted to go shopping . Every other Monday the greatest thing happens , we get our house cleaned , and I wanted to keep the boys out of the house at the time the cleaning ladies were coming , so timing was key . Bryan was struggling with the way I was putting him off . He started asking at 7am ( which is very late for him ) , " what time do we go to Target ? " but I kept stalling until I was fairly sure what time the cleaning ladies would arrive . At one point he was so frustrated that he pinched Jason and me and broke the skin on both of us . ( this morning when I was showering I felt something burning my left hand only to realize i had these two cuts in my hand from where he pinched me . ) Ok , so back to the progress . In past years if he got to the point where he was hurting us , this would 've gone on for an hour or more , no exaggeration . He would hit , pinch , maybe bite , destroy things and scream . But , he is a more mature boy now and understands so much more . He has more control , he is more aware . He did hurt us , did carry on , but it was short - lived . I told him on several occasions that if he didn 't stop , we would not go to Target . For the most part , we do not make idle threats and he knows it . He lost it for a little while , but then , remarkably pulled it together . He took a few deep breaths with the assistance of his loving and empathetic little bro , and we went to Target . I think he is learning that we are trustworthy and always keep our promises . I think he has always known this in his heart , but the fact that he could convert the knowledge into practice was the accomplishment . We also had to wait a long time for the salesperson to unlock the Wii games at Target , but he was patient and calm . I am going to keep my glass half full for the day . BFollow Me on BloglovinTweetPrintEmailLike this : Like Loading . . . Autism , Frustration , Life , Mommy stuff , Parent journal , special needs , Uncategorized Autism , faith , family , love , parenting , special needs 2 Comments I joined a whole bunch of Jewish people today at the Festival Flea Market in Pompano . It is really the only shopping open on Xmas Day and you can seriously tell that these folks are " members of the tribe " . It is the epitome of shit shopping and is fun if you don 't really need anything . What is special there ? Tye dyes , pickles , old make up , hair products , scarves , hair toys and crappy handbags . Gotta love it . Of course there is a food court , stocked with knishes and kosher dogs . I met my Mom there this morning for the ritual . The only thing I really needed was shampoo and conditioner , the kind you can use when you have your hair chemically straightened , which I do . We walked up and down , with no purpose but to have a laugh . We stopped at the scarf lady and she had some cute stuff and we each picked out 2 scarves . Then my Mom treated me . Now if you know my folks , this is not a big surprise , they are beyond generous , but it was the fun of it . Everyone loves to be a kid and be treated . I really didn 't get Hanukkah presents this year so it was nice and fun . We also stopped at a place that sold Sugar Lips tanks , which are great , and again , my Mom treated me . It sounds silly but it really made my day . I know how much the boys love when they get a treat , and I swear it never gets old . It 's not the item , but the gesture . For me , at this point in my life , it 's the time . It is tough for me to get time alone with either of my folks and just have a laugh or relax . On Thursday I got out of work early and went to their house for an hour before I had to pick up the boys at speech therapy . My Dad is interested in getting an iphone and we spent about 30 mins going over mine and then my Mom showed me some jewelry and shoes she was going to wear to an upcoming wedding . Then I had this morning with my Mom at the Flea . These times create memories like little precious jewels you tuck away in a drawer and bring out when you need them . We are now going to my Aunt 's house for a Hanukkah party . Seems funny to pack bathing suits for the kids , but hey , it 's Florida , and that 's what is appropriate . Bryan has a lot of anxiety about going . I made him an index card , ( this is something we do to lessen anxiety , we write down what we are doing for the next 4 or 5 hours , including coming home ) and he can take it out of his pocket as needed . We will be saying " look at your card " all day . Merry Christmas to all ! So driving to work this morning , I have off tomorrow and Monday , I am listening to the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius / XM . Love it . They were playing a concert from San Francisco , 12 / 30 / 83 . When I turned it on , Bobby was rocking " the Women are Smarter " and man that is a great song if you are a woman . It 's righteous and raw , and I dig it . They segued ( an unusual segue for the Dead ) into Terrapin . Jerry , so soulful , and he knew the words ! That 's big for an 80s Jerry song . I just love how that song morphs from one soft ballad to a true musical treat . The song is a journey and just forces reflection . Today is a day of reflection . A friend of mine who was ill her whole life died on Tuesday and will be buried today . Her favorite Dead song was Scarlet Begonias . Listening to Terrapin and hearing " The story - teller makes no choice . Soon you will not hear his voice . His job is to shed light , and not to master . " So powerful and makes you feel like some stuff you are told , the rest you have to figure it out . Last night our former sitter , Mara , came over and we had Hanukkah with her . The boys were so excited to see her and she generously brought them gifts she knew they would love , and they did . She is just a love ! We had such a nice talk and although I didn 't want to sound preachy or old , I just wanted to emphasize to her that when you are young you need to really enjoy yourself . Go out , have fun , date , party , etc . We never know where life will bring us and although you can plan for the future , you need to live in the moment . Although I had a lot of fun as young person , I was always distracted by my future , would I find someone I love who will love me back , will I have a family . I was not good at watching things unfold . Ahh if I only listened to Terrapin more often . So recently Earl and I went on an evening cruise on one of my company 's unbelievably over the top yachts . There is a new attorney in our office who just moved here from the NE . He was planning to go but his wife had to work so we invited him to drive down to the harbor with us . Well he got way more than he bargained for ! He is young and they are only married a few years with no kids . Since I am the poster child for autism awareness at work , he asked about Bryan and could we give him an example of some of the behaviors he has that can be difficult or illustrative of his disability . Well I can assure after he got out of our car he will not be trying to have a kid any time soon . I joked that he was going to buy condoms on his way home . In reality it must be strange to hear what we talk about , like speaking Swedish or something . Autism is mysterious and scary and we really put it out there . One of the best things about writing this blog for me has been people telling me that I am giving them a glimpse of what it is like to have a child with autism and what Earl and I go through . Sometimes things that seem very mixed up can make you see what isn 't . What the heck is going on this year ? I know I live in Florida and it doesn 't snow or get cold , but we haven 't even had the traditional dip down to 50 . It 's hot as hell and it makes the holidays just seem weird . Last night we watched and listened to the Adam Sandler Hanukkah song ; both the Neil Diamond cartoon version and the original Adam Sandler version . Great stuff ! ! When I got to work today , I had to do what I do every year as the token Hebrew in my department , tell the story of Hanukkah and explain that my kids are not traumatized that they do not have Santa or a tree in their life . Every year , what do you eat , what do you do with the menorah , come on people , get a clue . I saw a bunch of postings on Facebook about Jackie Mason criticizing President Obama on his acknowledgment of Hanukkah . I have to admit , while I was happy that the President acknowledged the holiday , it did seem silly to me that they would have a Menorah on Dec 8 when the holiday hasn 't even started yet . I guess we should be grateful to be acknowledged . The messages were brutal against Jackie Mason , I 'm always surprised how venomous people can get over such small stuff . In any event , the boys are so pumped for Hanukkah . We are having some family over to celebrate tonight because our niece and two nephews will be going up to NY to see their Dad and celebrate the holidays with him . The only real damper on things has been winter break camp . It is so hard to be a working mom during the holidays . You want the kids to have a break and just chill out , but I have to work and they have no school . I am lucky that Earl works for himself and has flexibility to pick up the slack but it 's still tough . Each year is a challenge . A few years ago we were able to send them to our local town camp , and Bryan can hack it there . He usually will cling to a counselor and he loves their day trips . They don 't offer that camp any more for winter , just summer . Last year they went to separate places ( Bryan went to a JCC camp for special needs kids ) but that camp has a schedule that doesn 't coincide with our break , ugh ugh ugh . And the expense , Winter break can cost $ 800 , happy holidays . So they are now going to the Parkland YMCA camp , very close by and should be fairly ok . Yesterday Jason told me the kids were laughing at Bryan and I felt like I might puke . I have tried to minimize their camp attendance , they only go until 2pm when my sitter picks them up and they are only going for 4 days . Oh how I hate to hear that he is being laughed at or teased ; and Jason must feel so awkward too , you want to protect your brother but you want to fit in . Earl dropped them off and spoke to the counselor who was very nice and told him she had experience with kids with autism and would take care to make sure the kids were not laughing at him . Clearly a double xanax day for me , topped by an Earltini tonight . Earltini = citron vodka , pomegranate juice , chilled and served straight up in a martini glass with a squeeze of lemon . woo hoo . This scrumptious cocktail is named for the best bartender around who created them for me ! ! I definitely subscribe to that statement , no news is good news . I believe human nature is to call and tell you something has happened , but if everything is going smoothly , you may just forget to let someone know . Why am I thinking about this today ? Because I have not had any real blogging in me for the last week and I was wondering why . Writer 's block ? I don 't think so because I 'm not really a writer . I just write stuff when I feel it and I usually need some serious event , happy or sad to cause me to write . So here 's the thing , in my case , no news is good news . Bryan , while still yelling from time to time , etc . has been really great . His language is improving so much and for this brief time seems fairly calm . He and Jason have worked together twice , once at a speech therapy session and once at an Occupational therapy session . Both times the therapists remarked at how loving their relationship is and that Jason is a " special " child . Funny how when you say the typical child is special that connotation is positive , upbeat , a compliment . With respect to a " special needs " child , it seems negative , cautionary and mysterious . In any event , I am proud that they have such a bond . Hanukah starts tomorrow night . The boys are excited to get presents . I get it but I really love lighting the candles . I love a Menorah and I must say I do love latkes too . I love that Bryan keeps asking for a Robots Playstation Game and a Fat Albert DVD and we 've had those puppies wrapped for weeks . He doesn 't ask for much so to get him what he really wants is very satisfying . Bryan and I spent a lot of time alone yesterday . We went to speech together and Jason spent the day at my sister - in - law 's house . She and our nephew taught Jason how to ride a bike and when he got home he was over the moon . Bryan and I hold hands in the car sometimes . I love to touch his soft skin and give him lots of kisses . I like to put my hand through the back of his thick hair and just feel how bushy it is . He lets me hold his hand in the car , our fingers intertwined , it makes me feel connected to him and I believe it lets him know I love him . Around 5 Earl went to Publix , this can be a 2 hour event , he is careful and tries to get us great deals . Bryan and I went on the trampoline together . We jumped , we laughed and we had great eye contact . That was my Hanukah present . Happy Holidays . Payback 's a bitch ; I suffered with horrible anxiety as a child . I was always having diarrhea because of some test , some social situation , some self - induced pressure . I have worked very very hard to shed a lot of that . When I feel anxiety creeping up I remind myself of very tough situations I have been in over the years and that I was able to survive them , and succeed . I am also very grateful to Earl because he really doesn 't experience anxiety , or not openly as I have , and can be very calming . I always felt like the world was going to end for me . He always reminds me that nothing that can be fixed is catastrophic . Clearly , dealing with Bryan and his issues has also grounded me and given me perspective . On Sunday my cousin called to see if Jason wanted to go to the Miami Dolphins game with him and his wife and two kids . Such a warm and loving invitation . All I could think of was " of course " , I 'll spring him out of Hebrew School and take him over there . This cousin , my oldest , is extremely family oriented and loving . He was truly excited to spend the day with Jason and get to know him better . I think with all of my cousins we feel this great desire to get to know each other 's kids . I love having any one of their kids alone and feel such a connection to them . We all love to tell each other 's kids good stories about their parents growing up and the kids are like little sponges for these small bites of history . So I go and pick up Jason from Hebrew School . He was excited to get called to the office to get out early . ( if this were me as a kid I would be worried , but he 's half Earl 's kid and he was great ) . So I told him the plans . He was thrilled , excited , like any young boy invited to a great day of fun . Then the mini me crept in … " Mommy , how long is the car ride ? Mommy , what time will I be home ? Mommy , I don 't want to go … ) Ugh , anxiety , he really does not know these kids as well as some of the others and he is only 9 . If this were me at his age I would 've been at a gas station in the bathroom already and had a complete anxiety attack . But , since he is my mini me , I think I was equipped to help him . I reminded him he had his phone and could call me as much as he wanted , I gave him some cash to buy a souvenir ( I knew that would do it ) and let him know that he can trust me . I would never send him anywhere that I thought wouldn 't be fun or that he couldn 't handle . When we got there he was greeted with such enthusiasm and pure joy he seemed to melt a little . Then he went on their computer and started to calm down . He had a great time . He bought a foam finger and a key chain for his brother . Ok some of my genes are good .
|
Hi , I 'll have a story to post on your blog soon about my wife Dawn and I . We recently found a new partner , David . He 's been through our " approval process " , and he and Dawn have done a little making out at a club last Saturday night while I sat and watched gleefully . But tonight after she gets off of work ( 2 1 / 2 hours and counting ! ! ) is our first , full , everything goes play session together . I 'm hoping things work out with him ( it seems they will ) as Dawn thinks he 's hot , and the thought of seeing the two of them entwined together has been rambling around in my mind ALL week . Well , gotta start getting things ready . I hope not to get much sleep tonight . Here 's a picture of her . I 'll send another when we 're done . - Mike * * Thanks Mike . Is it your first time ? I look forward to it ! - WebmasterNext Email from Mike : It turned out to be a fun and interesting night . And sure , we 've had a number of MFMs before . We always involve a single guy with us for an ongoing cuckold ' relationship ' , which can last for several months or more . But back to last night . I had already taken a shower before they got home . David seemed a bit nervous and / or anxious , but hey , he 's only 22 and my wife is in her mid 30 's . While I got snacks and drinks together , I suggested they take a shower . After I had gotten the food and drink laid out , I noticed the shower wasn 't running yet . I walked into the bathroom to see both of them naked , and Dawn on her knees giving him head . I stood there and watched for a minute , with my boner completely obvious through my shorts . Then they got into the shower . As I left the bathroom , it was obvious they were going to wash each other , so I took the snacks into the bedroom and laid on the bed waiting for them to meet me there . After about 10 minutes , a naked Dawn and still still rock hard David came into the room , hand in hand . She had a huge smile on her face , but he still seemed a tad bit nervous . I asked them if they had fun , but Dawn didn 't comment , just kept smiling . David simply said , " Uh , yeah ! " I told them I wante # posted by Webmaster @ 6 : 39 AM Friday , May 25 , 2007 Hello all , I posted a pic of my wife awhile ago and the rresponse to her was so great I thought I would post a couple more . She has been cucking me with my best friend for about 3 yrs nows . Please let me know how much you like her at kurt5675 @ aol . comMy wife Tina and I have been married for 12 yrs now and like most men who frequent this site I have always fantasized about watching her with another man and had told her this many times . unfortunately the answer was always " no ! " Tina does like to flirt however especially with my best friend Matt . One night while we were drinking at our house and Tina was being extremely playful I decided to take the opportunity to see how far I could take things . I began rubbing her breast in front of him and soon had her top off . My friend could not believe his eyes and just stood admiring her . After a few minutes of this Tina turned to and said , " O . k . if this is what you really want Let 's see if you can handle it " . With that she walked over to Matt and started kissing him . He seemed a little nervous at first but once she unbuckled his pants it was obvious he was more than happy . As Tina released his cock she smiled and told me to notice how much bigger he was than me . Then looking me in the eyes she started to slowly lick around the head before taking him into her mouth . That night I watched my best friend fuck my beautiful wife . once he finally rolled off her she grabbed my head and pushed me down between her legs . Not realising he had cum in her I happily began licking for all I was worth . It didnt take long to notice the difference in taste and Tina laugh as she held my head in place . She asked if I like the taste of his cum and by that point I was so turned on all I could do was answer yes and keep licking . That was 3 yrs ago and we have repeated that scene many times . My wife has a lover that she 's had sex with for 8 years . They get together 6 or 7 times a year for a few hours of fucking and sucking . He has no idea that I know about him and my wife and their longstanding liaisons . I never get to watch obviously and never see pictures although she does show me ' vacation ' pictures at times . This picture is of her having her picture taken by him while they were cruising on a boat . She looks so happy and I can only imagine how he must have taken her on it . I just love the tension of waiting for her to return home after a session or weekend get - a - way . It 's like a whole body vibration on an atomic level . When she gets home she shows me her soaking wet panties , we go to the bedroom and I slide my cock into her cummy pussy and shiver with delight as I stroke her while hearing about her adventure of the evening . After a good long stroking I climax in her and hold her close . I 'm always so contented and relaxed the next day . I 'm good for a while now until she tells me that she 's going over there again when the tension begins anew . - DariusDARK CAVERN Here is a picture of my wife in our room masterbating and telling me how much she wants me . It was when we first met . My wife is from Danmark and a year ago , I saw her from my bedroom window kissing a guy in car who used to bring her home from work . I was so upset but did not say a thing . I set up a video cam in my living room the next night because I was going to be away for the night and I suspected she was going to bring him in . Well on the cam it was a wide view of my living room I could see him and her kissing in the doorway and his hand in her shirt . Next thing I know they are laying on the floor and she is spread eagled and he is eating her out ! I couldn 't take this ! She then gave him a bj and they screwed HARD ! I asked her the next day if she ever cheated on me . She said ' of course not ' and I then put on the tape for her . Her jaw dropped and she became hysterical . She cried and said she was sorry . We worked it out and everything is fine now . By the way I still have the tape and at the time I was so mad yet I wasn 't too mad and didn 't know why . But now I do and I really enjoy the hell out of the tape at least once a week . - AllanCUCKOLD ARCHIVES - 3 YEARS WORTH We have been married for over 10 years . I know my wife has been unfaithful on several occasions . I can make a good guess as to who 3 or 4 of her lovers have been . The problem is she simply denies it . I would love to know who , when , where , what it was like on so on . I frequently fantasize about her affairs and it really turns me on . How can I persuade her to tell me all and even maybe let me watch her next time ? Please help a frustrated cuckold ! ! ! ( * * Responses can be posted HERE . ) I mean there is even alot much evidence that my wife had an affair with her boss including having sex in our bed but she denies anything has ever happened ( even though they acutally went out on a date - dinner & movie but she claims it was for work ) . Although I had / have confessed how much this sort of thing turns me on she denies it and I believed her till another woman told me that she really doubted my wife would ever admit to it but I was kind of dense to think she didn 't sleep with him when I told her all the clues . Also , I found out that my wife went out with the girls one night to a strip show { for the ladies } . I was insane with curiousity , and bugged her for weeks to tell me about it . Finally , she began to admit little bits out , { which was a turn on in itself } little by little , until she admitted that the girls at the table , including her , licked whipped cream off the cocks of the strippers ! Now I know the ladies that she went with , and I bugged her to admit it if they all did it too . They did ! As you might guess , I was in bed with her while we talked , and I couldn 't help but pop a nut . There 's much more these naughty ladies did that night , but won 't go on except to say that it has become the center of my sex life . Just so you know what she looks like I have sent a picture of her . This is the best I could do as she 'd kill me if she found a picture of her nude with her face showing online . This at least gives you an idea of what she looks like and how sexy she can be . - DortmanCUCKOLD MEETING PLACE # posted by Webmaster @ 5 : 46 AM ThursdAlan 's Wife Cuckolds Him Im Alan , my wife is JoAnne . We have been married for 22 years . Recently my performance in the bedroom had been lacking due to blood pressure medication , prostrate problems , and a few other interfering factors . I knew that I was not giving . . . READ THE REST HERE . $ 1 FOR WEEKS OF CUCKOLD CLIPS Hi all , My girlfriend is a fine looking blonde , 26 years old . We 've been together for about 4 years now . I 've been open about my fantasies from the start . Then she thought I wanted her to be unfaithful just so I could be it myself . . . but the last year or so she started to understand I was being serious about it . . . Her sexual record is quite thin since she had a really long relationship before me . And this makes it even more arousing for me . . . She has a super body & I enjoy watching other men watch her . . . But she 's not the kind of girl who sleeps around . There 's been one guy so far . . . they 've never fucked but . . . slept in the same bed three times after parties . . . he were touching her ass , she was kind of shy about it so she told me she pretended to sleep . . . cute ! I asked her if she liked it & she smiled and said of course . . . I was encouraging her to have some contact with this guy & the last time they were out partying they slept at a friends house , sharing a bed & they kissed & he felt her ass & breasts , but she didn 't want to go all the way . . . Then at a party after that I was there too and with them and we all crashed in the same room . We had gotten my wife naked and I was showing her off to him knowing that he 'd seen her before but he didn 't know I knew . That was hot and this picture you see is of my wife and my finger touching her in the same way I showed her off to him . But , nothing happened that night either . Now he has a girlfriend and so it is not on anymore . More interesting a new guy has entered the scene and she really likes his looks . . . He 's ok and is really good looking . . . Anyway the only thing that has happened is that he spent one night beside her in our bed . . . nothing happened but we started to talk about this and I said it was ok for her to fuck him . . . So now I figured I 'd try some dirty talk where I tell stories where him & her fuck and she really seems to enjoy it . . . Once I also told her to pretend I was him & she came very fast ( me too . . . ) , now I know that lately she 's been thinking about him when She Cuckolded Me From the Backseat ! My wife and I were at a BBQ one afternoon and a good friend of ours was having relationship problems and was arguing with his girlfriend on his cell while he was in his car . It was really getting him down and so after an hour , my wife went over to talk to him . The property was pretty big so they were away from everyone else at the BBQ . It was quiet out but I was still able to catch a glimpse of them as she was stand next to him , while he 's in the back seat . Then she looked around and went inside the backseat with him ! I 'd never would have suspected her to do anything like this . I noticed that she would look around alot and his head was back on the ledge . I went into the house we were at and looked though a dining room window looking down on the side of his car . I couldn 't believe my eyes ! My wife was stroking him with his pants open and his cock standing straight up . She continued to look around . His eyes were closed . That 's when I decided to get a picture with my cell as evidence if ever I accuse her . I was mad and yet wanted to watch so much . I snuck around outside to the back of his car and waited until I was sure they wouldn 't see me . My heart was racing at 200 bps ! I got one picture ( see attatched ) that wasn 't great but it was enough . But then instead of leaving I stayed to watch a bit more . After about 2 mins , she would bend over and lick the head of his dick a couple of times . Then the lick turned into a little sucking . After about a minute of this , he shot his load all over her hand ( and back of the driver 's seat ) . She then walked away licking her hand . She never mentioned this to me ( it 's been 2 years ) and he never acted any differently towards me . I kept saying to myself that I 'd confront her but I enjoy the fantasies I have re - living that moment in my head every night . I 'm afraid if I expose it then it will ruin my fun and thrill . He has since moved . But you always gotta wonder was there anything else between them . - Jeffrey WHERE THE CUCKOLD COMMUNITY MEETS # posted by Webmaster @ 6 : 00 AM HotWife JaniI spend alot of time online chatting with and then meeting other men
|
I use the word pilgrims advisedly , for the refurbished house , its windows newly sealed against dust and weather , its air climate - controlled for the sake of the artifacts , the sanctioned path past its relics marked out by a narrow gray carpet and bound by wooden railings , seems more shrine than home . It is hard to believe that a prairie lawyer and politician , his wife , four sons , and a perpetually shifting cast of cooks and hired girls , cats and dogs , all ever really lived in these chaste rooms . No small boy ever tracked black Illinois mud across these bright Belgium carpets ; no dirt ever sullied the broom that leans against the kitchen wall ; no visiting pol ever missed the brown - and - white ceramic spittoon in the corner of the sitting room . The site 's curious sterility is not really the fault of the Park Service , which has labored hard to make this old house a home again . The structure 's modest size and the long lines of people who wait in front of it each day to take the twenty minute tour demand that severe limitations be placed on visitors ; much of the period furniture that fills the rooms has no genuine link with the Lincolns ; and a good deal of educated guesswork has inevitably gone into the restoration . No one is even entirely certain anymore just where everyone slept . And it should not surprise us that Lincoln 's house remains a shrine . He himself sympathized with the impulse to revere heroes . " Let us believe as in the days of our youth , " he once said , " that Washington was spotless . It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect - that human perfection is possible . " From the moment of his assassination - and despite the hard work of a host of scrupulous biographers - Lincoln has remained a martyred saint to most of us : unfailingly modest and loving , candid and forbearing , selfless and self - depreciating . Reconstructing the daily lives of the Lincolns is a tricky business . Precisely one letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to her husband written during the Springfield years has survived , and while a handful of Lincoln letters home do still exist , he was always reticent about his private life - " the most shutmouthed man that ever lived , " a close friend said - and routinely left the details of daily living to his wife . Most of his letters mirror little more than his genuine affection for Mary and for the boys he called " the codgers . " The result is that much of what we think we know about the Lincolns ' domestic lives is distinctly second - and third - hand , drawn from the memories of friends and neighbors and family members , some unwilling to be anything but worshipful , a few with old scores to settle . Opinions differ even on the quality of the meals prepared in the Lincolns ' small kitchen . One frequent Springfield visitor remembered that they were " famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes and , in season , . . . venison , wild turkey , prairie chickens , quail and other game " ; another guest remembered " an old - fashioned mess of indigestion , composed mainly of cake , pies and chickens . " But two discoveries were of wider interest . The first of them has permanently altered one of the oldest legends about the Lincolns . The dwelling to which the Lincolns brought their year - old son , Robert , in 1844 was a story - and - a - half Greek Revival cottage , built by Dr . Charles Dresser , the Episcopal minister who had married the couple two years earlier . Tradition has always held that although the family steadily grew - Edward Baker Lincoln was born here in 1846 , William Wallace in 1850 , Thomas , known as Tad , in 1853 - Lincoln earned too little money to make any improvements on their increasingly crowded cottage until 1856 , when Mary sold off eighty acres of land inherited from her father and took it upon herself to order up a second story . Lincoln was said to have been away circuit - riding while the work went on and to have claimed not to recognize his old house when he got back , asking a neighbor , " Stranger , do you know where Lincoln lives ? " This record of constantly growing affluence and comfort is further proof that Abraham Lincoln 's celebrated penury was always relative . Lincoln himself did little to dispel the myth of his poverty . Illinois was traditionally a Democratic state , and the Whigs , with whom he identified from boyhood until their party went out of existence , were widely denounced as " aristocratical " ; it was not merely good politics , it was probably essential politics , that Lincoln appear always a little more threadbare than he really was . In fact , as the comparative spaciousness and affluent furnishings of his home attest , he had come a very long way from the dark one - room cabins of his boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a considerable distance from the log houses of New Salem . He knew his rail - splitting youth was a political asset , but he did not like to dwell upon it ; his whole boyhood , he told a campaign biographer , could be " condensed into one line and that one line you can find in Gray 's Elegy : ' The short and simple annals of the poor . ' " His marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky merchant - banker had helped make the " flourishing about in carriages " of Springfield 's most fashionable citizens seem less intimidating than it had seemed when he first arrived in 1837 , and the house he and his wife occupied and steadily improved together nicely symbolizes the great and growing distance his will to succeed had put between the circumstances of his own life and those of his father , a gulf so wide he finally did not try to bridge it . No member of Lincoln 's family was asked to attend his wedding ; neither his father nor his stepmother ever met his wife or saw their grandchildren . Lincoln revered the memory of his mother , Nancy Hanks Lincoln , dead when he was nine , but was frankly scornful of his father , Thomas , who , he said , " never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name . " He visited Thomas Lincoln from time to time but never invited him to his home in Springfield , did not go to see him on his deathbed in 1851 , never even ordered a headstone for his grave . In fact , only one member of Lincoln 's family is known to have stayed with the Lincolns , a cousin named Harriet Hanks , who lived at Eighth and Jackson for a time while attending a local seminary for young ladies ; she later said she had been treated as a servant by Mary Lincoln . The aggregate of Lincoln 's own schooling , he once said , was less than a year - asked in 1858 to summarize his education , he answered simply " Defective " - but when it came time to educate his eldest son , he sent him to Phillips Exeter and Harvard , evidently intending to make of him an Eastern gentleman . He may have succeeded too well . On the centennial of his father 's birth in 1909 , Robert refused to attend the dedication of the big Greek temple near Hodgenville , Kentucky , that now harbors the small cabin in which Lincoln is alleged to have been born . Archie Butt , military aide to the main speaker , President Theodore Roosevelt , thought he knew why : " If it be true , as I hear , that Bob Lincoln . . . does not relish the perpetuation of this cabin , " he wrote , " I cannot blame him . The very thought of it . . . would make any member of his family shudder with horror . It does not bear the stamp of poverty alone , but degradation and uncleanliness . " If we are made a little nervous by the notion of a resolutely aspiring Abraham Lincoln , apparently willing to put behind him the people from whom he sprang in the course of bettering himself , we are still more wary when asked to consider him as a vote - seeking politician . Yet " politics were his life , newspapers his food , and his great ambition his motive force , " as his law partner , William Herndon , remembered . " He delighted [ in politics ] , he revelled in it , as a fish does in water , as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air . " In 1849 , Park Service experts now speculate , someone - probably six - year - old Robert or one of his playmates - fed some of his father 's old papers into a crack above the baseboard in the kitchen 's north wall . They were soon obliterated by a shower of plaster shaken down upon them by further alterations to the house . A field mouse then constructed its nest atop the plaster . ( When what was left of the papers was uncovered in 1987 , the delicate skeleton of the nest 's builder still lay cuddled up inside it . ) One letter , from David Dickinson , a political backer from Lacon , Illinois , was written in early 1846 , while Lincoln was maneuvering to assure his own nomination for the state 's single safe Whig congressional seat . Lincoln believed that he had an agreement with the two other leading party hopefuls - Edward D . Baker ( for whom his second son was named ) and John J . Hardin - that they would rotate the nomination among themselves , and that 1846 was his turn . But Hardin , a former incumbent ( and Mary 's distant cousin ) , had other ideas and schemed to seize the nomination for himself . Lincoln finally forced him to withdraw , but he was evidently still wary of a last - minute betrayal , for Dickinson wrote to reassure him that he had been scouting Putnam County , on the lookout for Hardin 's " moccasin tracks , " and that all was well . During his single term in Congress , Lincoln was besieged by letters from constituents demanding services . Two of these survived beneath the mouse nest . One voter asked him to register a patent for a " compound vegetable " elixir that cured " dyspepsia . . . weakness . . . or a bad cold . . . " ; the other hoped the congressman could arrange for him a commission in the Army , then fighting the Mexican War . " I hope to obtain your interference in my behalf , " the aspiring officer wrote , " and if I succeed rest assured sir that it will never be forgotten by me . . . . " It is unlikely that the young congressman 's interference did his eager constituent much good with the Democratic administration ; Lincoln was a freshman and a Whig who believed the current struggle in the Southwest " a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes . " But it is likely that he did his best ; he could not afford to be forgotten by any voter . Lincoln 's first love may have been politics , but he made his money as a lawyer , at least five thousand dollars annually by the 1850s , and the result was that he wasn 't home much ; for up to six months a year he was away politicking and trying cases on the Eighth Circuit , a vast shifting area that once encompassed fourteen counties , one - fifth of the state . " During my childhood and early youth , " Robert Lincoln once recalled , trying to explain why his father had never found the time to tell him much about his own boyhood , " [ my father ] was almost constantly away . . . attending courts or making political speeches . " During all that time , year after year , Mary was left to run her household and raise her children largely on her own , and it is understandably her impress rather than her husband 's that is most evident in their house . It was Mary who studied Miss Leslie 's House Book , or Manual of Domestic Economy for Town and Country ; who saw to it that the ceilings were freshly whitewashed and the oil lamps were filled and their wicks trimmed ; who arranged the seashells on the what - not shelves in the parlor . ( Lincoln 's own mussed , intensely masculine world was epitomized by the law office , five blocks away , where he spent most daylight hours when he was in Springfield . It was so disheveled , a clerk recalled , that government seeds brought back with him from Washington actually sprouted in one unswept corner . ) A reporter from upstate New York , ushered through the Springfield house shortly after Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency , reassured his Republican readers that they need not fear that they were being asked to vote for an untamed frontiersman . The candidate 's " house was neatly without being extravagantly furnished , " he wrote . " An air of quiet refinement pervaded the place . You would have known instantly that she who presided over the modest household was a true type of the American lady . There were flowers upon the tables . . . pictures upon the walls . . . . The thought that involuntarily blossomed into speech was - ' What a pleasant home Abe Lincoln has . ' " Making that home pleasant was a demanding task , especially for a woman who came to her marriage speaking fluent French but unable to prepare the simplest dish . But the newly restored house barely hints at the difficulties she faced every morning . The Lincolns ' backyard today is as well groomed as a putting green ; the freshly painted back porch is kept bare of everything but an empty woodbox whose purpose has to be explained to visitors , most of whom have never seen one . But a photograph of the same scene , made while the Lincolns ' wartime tenants still occupied the house , suggests something of the shabbier reality of daily life in their time : the grass is ragged ; the paint is peeling ; logs overflow the woodbox , and bark litters the porch , which is crowded with fire - blackened pots and battered washtubs . And even the old photograph cannot convey the perpetual buzz of flies in summer or the reek produced by the milk cow kept tethered behind the house , the two horses in the barn , the privy at the back of the garden , the hogs rooting along the unplanked streets just beyond the fence . In 1849 and 1850 her worst fears seemed confirmed as first her father died , then the grandmother who had done all she could to fill in for her dead mother , then her own Eddie , not yet four , who succumbed to diphtheria despite his parents ' desperate nursing . She was inconsolable for months and increasingly fearful thereafter , especially when her husband was away , certain one of the other boys would fall ill and die , that the house would catch fire or be hit by lightning . When a bearded umbrella mender knocked unexpectedly at the front door one day , she screamed , " Murder ! Murder ! " so loudly that a neighbor ran over and escorted the astonished man away . Mary herself once called Lincoln " my Sainted Idol . . . . A sainted man who had a holy smile . " Her own tumultuous personality had a good deal to do with the myth of his saintliness , for if , as some of her husband 's closest associates said , she was a " she - devil " and " Hell - Catical , " was Lincoln not all the more wonderful for having put up with her for so long ? In fact , his home was not a " hell on earth , " as William Herndon claimed , and many of the stories that seem to suggest it was and that Lincoln was " woman - whipped and woman - carved " were amassed by his junior partner , whose loathing for Mary Lincoln was surpassed only by hers for him . Although a photograph of the two partners hung on her parlor wall , she would not have Herndon in her home . " Mr . Herndon had always been an utter stranger to me , " Mary wrote many years later ; " he was not considered an habitué , at our house . The office was more , in his line . " There is no reason to suppose that Lincoln ever regretted having had " Love Is Eternal " engraved on Mary 's wedding ring . Mary Todd Lincoln may not have been easy to live with , but neither was her husband , and some of his wife 's eccentricities were certainly exacerbated by his own . Mary Owens , to whom Lincoln had once been engaged , gently recalled that he had been " deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman 's happiness , " and even Herndon believed he " ought never to have married anyone . He had no quality of a husband . " Despite Mary 's best efforts , an early writer said , Lincoln was inherently " unparlorable . " His company manners had improved a good deal since he first moved to Springfield , when he was still capable of stalking into a fashionable ball with friends wearing muddy boots and shouting , " Oh , boys - how clean those girls look ! " But despite her exhortations to " dress up and look like somebody , " his clothes remained rumpled , his hair unbrushed ; the stovepipe hat he hung on the arched hat tree in the front hall every evening usually looked " as if a calf had licked it . " He was perpetually - and unapologetically - late for meals , used the wrong knife to spread his butter , and persisted in answering the door himself instead of allowing the serving girl to do it , sometimes in his shirt sleeves and without his boots . Once , to Mary 's acute embarrassment , he told some visiting ladies his wife would be down " as soon as she gets her trotting harness on . " Lincoln could be solicitous , insisting that Mary not try to do everything herself , and genuinely concerned when she fell victim to one of her headaches : " he was never himself - when I was not perfectly well , " Mary remembered . But he was also laconic and undemonstrative ; no one who knew him well ever slapped his back or called him Abe . At the best of times he spoke and thought and moved so slowly , a friend remembered , it seemed as if he needed oiling , and he dealt with Mary 's tantrums by stalking from the house until she calmed down , his forbearing silence only adding further to her frustration . At his worst he was given to spells of severe and morbid depression , which must have frightened his wife and from which even she could sometimes not rouse him . The closing stanza of " Mortality , " his favorite poem , hints at the sort of lugubriousness that sometimes gripped him : ' Tis the wink of an eye , ' tis the draught of a breath , From the blossoms of health , to the paleness of death . From the gilded saloon , to the bier and the shroud . Oh , why should the spirit of mortal be proud ! The last letter fragments found in the kitchen wall came from a Whig editor to whom Lincoln had sent the poem in 1846 ; the newspaperman wanted to know whether Lincoln himself had written it . " Beyond all question , I am not the author , " he replied ( the Scottish poet William Knox was ) . " I would give all I am worth , and go in debt , to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is . " Her husband 's frequent absences were difficult enough for Mary to bear , but even when at home , he often seemed to disappear within himself . She dealt with his strange , brooding withdrawals as lightly as she could when guests were present . Her half - sister Emilie Helm remembered an evening in the sitting room when Lincoln and Robert were playing checkers and someone asked her brother - in - law a question . There was no answer . " Your silence is remarkably soothing , Mr . Lincoln , " Mary finally said , " but we are not quite ready for sleep just yet . " Everyone , including Lincoln , laughed . But when the Lincolns were alone together , Mary was evidently less forgiving . After suggesting three times that he poke up the dying fire without spurring him to the slightest action , she once went at him with a stick of wood . Another time a neighbor woman had just reached the back door when Lincoln burst through it with his wife close behind , hurling potatoes . The Park Service has done its best to evoke the lively presence of the Lincoln sons throughout the restored house . Their original stereoscope rests on a table in the sitting room , and wooden hoops , alphabet blocks , and a little book called The Passionate Child lie scattered about the room the curators believe the two younger boys occupied just across the hall from their mother 's bedroom , where a child 's table and chairs are clustered at the end of the bed in which they often slept . Inevitably , these period artifacts convey nothing of their individual personalities . Robert was high - spirited as a small boy but increasingly reserved as he got older , evidence perhaps of the impact of his younger brother 's death when he was only six and the responsibility he felt for keeping his anxious mother calm while his father was away . Willie and Tad were uniformly boisterous ; even their mother called them her " noisy boys . " Willie was his father 's favorite , perhaps the brightest of his sons and fond of poetry as well as mischief . Tad suffered from a speech impediment so severe that outsiders found it hard to understand him , and he may also have suffered from what we now call hyperactivity , unable to sit still for long , unable to read until he was twelve . Lincoln 's bedroom remains the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . No one found the boys more tiresome than Herndon , who often had to clean up after them . " Sometimes , " he recalled , " Lincoln would , when his wife had gone to church , to show off her new bonnet , or when she had kicked him out of the house , bring to the office Willie and Tad - these little devils . . . would take down the books , empty ash buckets , coal ashes , inkstands , papers , gold pens , letters , etc . , etc . , in a pile and then dance on the pile . Lincoln would say nothing , so abstracted was he , and so blinded to his children 's faults . Had they s - - t in Lincoln 's hat and rubbed it on his boots , he would have laughed and thought it smart . " " Mr . Lincoln . . . was very exceedingly indulgent to his children , " Mary later wrote , trying to explain the boys ' behavior . " He always said : ' It is my pleasure that my children are free , happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny . Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents . ' " Some have taken this at face value , seeing in it further evidence of Lincoln 's patient wisdom , his foresightedness in understanding the advantages of the more permissive style of child raising familiar in our own day . It seems at least as likely that Lincoln was a fond but preoccupied and often absent father who , when he did make it home , wished to enjoy his children , not to discipline them . Child raising , he believed , was woman 's work . " Since I began this letter , " he wrote to a friend when Robert was small , " a messenger came to tell me , Bob was lost ; but by the time I reached the house , his mother had found him , and had him whip [ p ] ed - and , by now , very likely he is run away again . " The boys ' chronic obstreperousness may simply have been the only way they knew to attract their oblivious father 's sustained attention . According to Herndon , they rarely held it long . " On a winter 's morning , " he remembered , " [ Lincoln ] might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market house , basket on his arm , his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck , his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels , asking a thousand little quick questions , which his father heard not , not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there fast running after him , so abstracted was he . When he thus met a friend on the road , he said that something he had just seen , heard , or left put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or Egypt [ southern Illinois ] or elsewhere , and tell it he would and there was no alternative . . . but to patiently stand and hear it . " The stories his friends stood to hear were often strong stuff . After Lincoln 's death an old woman who had known him as a youth began to recite for an interviewer a piece of doggerel she believed he had written , then stopped , blushing furiously , and explained that since the " poem is smutty . . . I can 't tell it to you , will tell it to my daughter - in - law , she will tell her husband ; and he will tell it to you . " When a friend asked Lincoln why he didn 't publish his stories , he wrinkled his nose . " Such a book , " he said , " would stink like a thousand privies . " Such redolent tales would not have been spun out in Mary Lincoln 's parlor , but they were surely told in the upstairs bedroom , where her husband often retreated with his political friends , and that room remains , it seems to me , the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . There oval portraits of his Whig heroes , Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , hang above the black parlor stove ; on a baize - covered table rests the battered mahogany lap desk he carried in his saddlebags while riding the circuit ; his original shaving mirror is nailed to the west wall , startlingly high . Bargains were struck in this room , campaigns were planned , political news was received , and tactics were altered to fit new circumstances . Lincoln wondered at the skill with which she served as his hostess in the Springfield house , sometimes presiding over gatherings attended by three hundred guests - and once , if the local newspaper is to be believed , " thronged by thousands " inching their way through the downstairs rooms . But he also reserved the right to be a little bemused by it all . At one reception the guests were expected to serve themselves from pyramidal shelves piled high with sandwiches , fruit , and frosted cakes . " Do they give you anything to eat here ? " Lincoln murmured to the man ahead of him in line . Mary 's ambition was every bit as consuming as Herndon said her husband 's was , and while the evidence offered by some of her admiring biographers that she greatly influenced his political thinking seems thin , at least to me , she was certainly his most effective and persistent booster . " Mr . [ Stephen A . ] Douglas is a very little , little giant by the side of my tall Kentuckian , " she told a relative , " and intellectually my husband towers above Douglas just as he does physically . " When the Whigs won the White House in 1848 , it was she who wrote more than forty letters to Washington applying for a federal post and signed his name to each - and she who helped talk him out of taking the dead - end ones offered in response . He was destined for greater things , and so , she thought , was she . During the 1858 Senate race against Douglas , a sudden downpour forced Lincoln and a reporter to take shelter together in an empty boxcar . " My friends got me into this business , " he told his companion as the rain splattered through the open door . " I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate , and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was . . . . Mary insists , however , that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States , too . " He clasped his long arms around his knees and laughed . " Just think of such a sucker as me as President ! " Lincoln 's subsequent loss to Douglas was disappointing but not devastating . " I believe . . . you are ' feeling like hell yet , ' " Lincoln told one supporter a few days after the votes were counted . " Quit that ; You will soon feel better . Another ' blow - up ' is coming ; and we shall have fun again . " A national figure at last , he was flooded with invitations to speak , and in September he packed his bag , said good - bye to the boys , as he had so many times before , and set forth on a political swing through Ohio . This time his wife went with him . In Cincinnati , on September 17 , a large crowd turned out at the Fifth Street Market to hear him . Mary sat proudly near the platform . " There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us , " she heard him tell his audience . " Twenty - five years ago , I was a hired laborer . The hired laborer of yesterday , labors on his own account today , and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow . Advancement - improvement in condition - is the order of things in a society of equals . "
|
I use the word pilgrims advisedly , for the refurbished house , its windows newly sealed against dust and weather , its air climate - controlled for the sake of the artifacts , the sanctioned path past its relics marked out by a narrow gray carpet and bound by wooden railings , seems more shrine than home . It is hard to believe that a prairie lawyer and politician , his wife , four sons , and a perpetually shifting cast of cooks and hired girls , cats and dogs , all ever really lived in these chaste rooms . No small boy ever tracked black Illinois mud across these bright Belgium carpets ; no dirt ever sullied the broom that leans against the kitchen wall ; no visiting pol ever missed the brown - and - white ceramic spittoon in the corner of the sitting room . The site 's curious sterility is not really the fault of the Park Service , which has labored hard to make this old house a home again . The structure 's modest size and the long lines of people who wait in front of it each day to take the twenty minute tour demand that severe limitations be placed on visitors ; much of the period furniture that fills the rooms has no genuine link with the Lincolns ; and a good deal of educated guesswork has inevitably gone into the restoration . No one is even entirely certain anymore just where everyone slept . And it should not surprise us that Lincoln 's house remains a shrine . He himself sympathized with the impulse to revere heroes . " Let us believe as in the days of our youth , " he once said , " that Washington was spotless . It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect - that human perfection is possible . " From the moment of his assassination - and despite the hard work of a host of scrupulous biographers - Lincoln has remained a martyred saint to most of us : unfailingly modest and loving , candid and forbearing , selfless and self - depreciating . Reconstructing the daily lives of the Lincolns is a tricky business . Precisely one letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to her husband written during the Springfield years has survived , and while a handful of Lincoln letters home do still exist , he was always reticent about his private life - " the most shutmouthed man that ever lived , " a close friend said - and routinely left the details of daily living to his wife . Most of his letters mirror little more than his genuine affection for Mary and for the boys he called " the codgers . " The result is that much of what we think we know about the Lincolns ' domestic lives is distinctly second - and third - hand , drawn from the memories of friends and neighbors and family members , some unwilling to be anything but worshipful , a few with old scores to settle . Opinions differ even on the quality of the meals prepared in the Lincolns ' small kitchen . One frequent Springfield visitor remembered that they were " famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes and , in season , . . . venison , wild turkey , prairie chickens , quail and other game " ; another guest remembered " an old - fashioned mess of indigestion , composed mainly of cake , pies and chickens . " But two discoveries were of wider interest . The first of them has permanently altered one of the oldest legends about the Lincolns . The dwelling to which the Lincolns brought their year - old son , Robert , in 1844 was a story - and - a - half Greek Revival cottage , built by Dr . Charles Dresser , the Episcopal minister who had married the couple two years earlier . Tradition has always held that although the family steadily grew - Edward Baker Lincoln was born here in 1846 , William Wallace in 1850 , Thomas , known as Tad , in 1853 - Lincoln earned too little money to make any improvements on their increasingly crowded cottage until 1856 , when Mary sold off eighty acres of land inherited from her father and took it upon herself to order up a second story . Lincoln was said to have been away circuit - riding while the work went on and to have claimed not to recognize his old house when he got back , asking a neighbor , " Stranger , do you know where Lincoln lives ? " This record of constantly growing affluence and comfort is further proof that Abraham Lincoln 's celebrated penury was always relative . Lincoln himself did little to dispel the myth of his poverty . Illinois was traditionally a Democratic state , and the Whigs , with whom he identified from boyhood until their party went out of existence , were widely denounced as " aristocratical " ; it was not merely good politics , it was probably essential politics , that Lincoln appear always a little more threadbare than he really was . In fact , as the comparative spaciousness and affluent furnishings of his home attest , he had come a very long way from the dark one - room cabins of his boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a considerable distance from the log houses of New Salem . He knew his rail - splitting youth was a political asset , but he did not like to dwell upon it ; his whole boyhood , he told a campaign biographer , could be " condensed into one line and that one line you can find in Gray 's Elegy : ' The short and simple annals of the poor . ' " His marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky merchant - banker had helped make the " flourishing about in carriages " of Springfield 's most fashionable citizens seem less intimidating than it had seemed when he first arrived in 1837 , and the house he and his wife occupied and steadily improved together nicely symbolizes the great and growing distance his will to succeed had put between the circumstances of his own life and those of his father , a gulf so wide he finally did not try to bridge it . No member of Lincoln 's family was asked to attend his wedding ; neither his father nor his stepmother ever met his wife or saw their grandchildren . Lincoln revered the memory of his mother , Nancy Hanks Lincoln , dead when he was nine , but was frankly scornful of his father , Thomas , who , he said , " never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name . " He visited Thomas Lincoln from time to time but never invited him to his home in Springfield , did not go to see him on his deathbed in 1851 , never even ordered a headstone for his grave . In fact , only one member of Lincoln 's family is known to have stayed with the Lincolns , a cousin named Harriet Hanks , who lived at Eighth and Jackson for a time while attending a local seminary for young ladies ; she later said she had been treated as a servant by Mary Lincoln . The aggregate of Lincoln 's own schooling , he once said , was less than a year - asked in 1858 to summarize his education , he answered simply " Defective " - but when it came time to educate his eldest son , he sent him to Phillips Exeter and Harvard , evidently intending to make of him an Eastern gentleman . He may have succeeded too well . On the centennial of his father 's birth in 1909 , Robert refused to attend the dedication of the big Greek temple near Hodgenville , Kentucky , that now harbors the small cabin in which Lincoln is alleged to have been born . Archie Butt , military aide to the main speaker , President Theodore Roosevelt , thought he knew why : " If it be true , as I hear , that Bob Lincoln . . . does not relish the perpetuation of this cabin , " he wrote , " I cannot blame him . The very thought of it . . . would make any member of his family shudder with horror . It does not bear the stamp of poverty alone , but degradation and uncleanliness . " If we are made a little nervous by the notion of a resolutely aspiring Abraham Lincoln , apparently willing to put behind him the people from whom he sprang in the course of bettering himself , we are still more wary when asked to consider him as a vote - seeking politician . Yet " politics were his life , newspapers his food , and his great ambition his motive force , " as his law partner , William Herndon , remembered . " He delighted [ in politics ] , he revelled in it , as a fish does in water , as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air . " In 1849 , Park Service experts now speculate , someone - probably six - year - old Robert or one of his playmates - fed some of his father 's old papers into a crack above the baseboard in the kitchen 's north wall . They were soon obliterated by a shower of plaster shaken down upon them by further alterations to the house . A field mouse then constructed its nest atop the plaster . ( When what was left of the papers was uncovered in 1987 , the delicate skeleton of the nest 's builder still lay cuddled up inside it . ) One letter , from David Dickinson , a political backer from Lacon , Illinois , was written in early 1846 , while Lincoln was maneuvering to assure his own nomination for the state 's single safe Whig congressional seat . Lincoln believed that he had an agreement with the two other leading party hopefuls - Edward D . Baker ( for whom his second son was named ) and John J . Hardin - that they would rotate the nomination among themselves , and that 1846 was his turn . But Hardin , a former incumbent ( and Mary 's distant cousin ) , had other ideas and schemed to seize the nomination for himself . Lincoln finally forced him to withdraw , but he was evidently still wary of a last - minute betrayal , for Dickinson wrote to reassure him that he had been scouting Putnam County , on the lookout for Hardin 's " moccasin tracks , " and that all was well . During his single term in Congress , Lincoln was besieged by letters from constituents demanding services . Two of these survived beneath the mouse nest . One voter asked him to register a patent for a " compound vegetable " elixir that cured " dyspepsia . . . weakness . . . or a bad cold . . . " ; the other hoped the congressman could arrange for him a commission in the Army , then fighting the Mexican War . " I hope to obtain your interference in my behalf , " the aspiring officer wrote , " and if I succeed rest assured sir that it will never be forgotten by me . . . . " It is unlikely that the young congressman 's interference did his eager constituent much good with the Democratic administration ; Lincoln was a freshman and a Whig who believed the current struggle in the Southwest " a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes . " But it is likely that he did his best ; he could not afford to be forgotten by any voter . Lincoln 's first love may have been politics , but he made his money as a lawyer , at least five thousand dollars annually by the 1850s , and the result was that he wasn 't home much ; for up to six months a year he was away politicking and trying cases on the Eighth Circuit , a vast shifting area that once encompassed fourteen counties , one - fifth of the state . " During my childhood and early youth , " Robert Lincoln once recalled , trying to explain why his father had never found the time to tell him much about his own boyhood , " [ my father ] was almost constantly away . . . attending courts or making political speeches . " During all that time , year after year , Mary was left to run her household and raise her children largely on her own , and it is understandably her impress rather than her husband 's that is most evident in their house . It was Mary who studied Miss Leslie 's House Book , or Manual of Domestic Economy for Town and Country ; who saw to it that the ceilings were freshly whitewashed and the oil lamps were filled and their wicks trimmed ; who arranged the seashells on the what - not shelves in the parlor . ( Lincoln 's own mussed , intensely masculine world was epitomized by the law office , five blocks away , where he spent most daylight hours when he was in Springfield . It was so disheveled , a clerk recalled , that government seeds brought back with him from Washington actually sprouted in one unswept corner . ) A reporter from upstate New York , ushered through the Springfield house shortly after Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency , reassured his Republican readers that they need not fear that they were being asked to vote for an untamed frontiersman . The candidate 's " house was neatly without being extravagantly furnished , " he wrote . " An air of quiet refinement pervaded the place . You would have known instantly that she who presided over the modest household was a true type of the American lady . There were flowers upon the tables . . . pictures upon the walls . . . . The thought that involuntarily blossomed into speech was - ' What a pleasant home Abe Lincoln has . ' " Making that home pleasant was a demanding task , especially for a woman who came to her marriage speaking fluent French but unable to prepare the simplest dish . But the newly restored house barely hints at the difficulties she faced every morning . The Lincolns ' backyard today is as well groomed as a putting green ; the freshly painted back porch is kept bare of everything but an empty woodbox whose purpose has to be explained to visitors , most of whom have never seen one . But a photograph of the same scene , made while the Lincolns ' wartime tenants still occupied the house , suggests something of the shabbier reality of daily life in their time : the grass is ragged ; the paint is peeling ; logs overflow the woodbox , and bark litters the porch , which is crowded with fire - blackened pots and battered washtubs . And even the old photograph cannot convey the perpetual buzz of flies in summer or the reek produced by the milk cow kept tethered behind the house , the two horses in the barn , the privy at the back of the garden , the hogs rooting along the unplanked streets just beyond the fence . In 1849 and 1850 her worst fears seemed confirmed as first her father died , then the grandmother who had done all she could to fill in for her dead mother , then her own Eddie , not yet four , who succumbed to diphtheria despite his parents ' desperate nursing . She was inconsolable for months and increasingly fearful thereafter , especially when her husband was away , certain one of the other boys would fall ill and die , that the house would catch fire or be hit by lightning . When a bearded umbrella mender knocked unexpectedly at the front door one day , she screamed , " Murder ! Murder ! " so loudly that a neighbor ran over and escorted the astonished man away . Mary herself once called Lincoln " my Sainted Idol . . . . A sainted man who had a holy smile . " Her own tumultuous personality had a good deal to do with the myth of his saintliness , for if , as some of her husband 's closest associates said , she was a " she - devil " and " Hell - Catical , " was Lincoln not all the more wonderful for having put up with her for so long ? In fact , his home was not a " hell on earth , " as William Herndon claimed , and many of the stories that seem to suggest it was and that Lincoln was " woman - whipped and woman - carved " were amassed by his junior partner , whose loathing for Mary Lincoln was surpassed only by hers for him . Although a photograph of the two partners hung on her parlor wall , she would not have Herndon in her home . " Mr . Herndon had always been an utter stranger to me , " Mary wrote many years later ; " he was not considered an habitué , at our house . The office was more , in his line . " There is no reason to suppose that Lincoln ever regretted having had " Love Is Eternal " engraved on Mary 's wedding ring . Mary Todd Lincoln may not have been easy to live with , but neither was her husband , and some of his wife 's eccentricities were certainly exacerbated by his own . Mary Owens , to whom Lincoln had once been engaged , gently recalled that he had been " deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman 's happiness , " and even Herndon believed he " ought never to have married anyone . He had no quality of a husband . " Despite Mary 's best efforts , an early writer said , Lincoln was inherently " unparlorable . " His company manners had improved a good deal since he first moved to Springfield , when he was still capable of stalking into a fashionable ball with friends wearing muddy boots and shouting , " Oh , boys - how clean those girls look ! " But despite her exhortations to " dress up and look like somebody , " his clothes remained rumpled , his hair unbrushed ; the stovepipe hat he hung on the arched hat tree in the front hall every evening usually looked " as if a calf had licked it . " He was perpetually - and unapologetically - late for meals , used the wrong knife to spread his butter , and persisted in answering the door himself instead of allowing the serving girl to do it , sometimes in his shirt sleeves and without his boots . Once , to Mary 's acute embarrassment , he told some visiting ladies his wife would be down " as soon as she gets her trotting harness on . " Lincoln could be solicitous , insisting that Mary not try to do everything herself , and genuinely concerned when she fell victim to one of her headaches : " he was never himself - when I was not perfectly well , " Mary remembered . But he was also laconic and undemonstrative ; no one who knew him well ever slapped his back or called him Abe . At the best of times he spoke and thought and moved so slowly , a friend remembered , it seemed as if he needed oiling , and he dealt with Mary 's tantrums by stalking from the house until she calmed down , his forbearing silence only adding further to her frustration . At his worst he was given to spells of severe and morbid depression , which must have frightened his wife and from which even she could sometimes not rouse him . The closing stanza of " Mortality , " his favorite poem , hints at the sort of lugubriousness that sometimes gripped him : ' Tis the wink of an eye , ' tis the draught of a breath , From the blossoms of health , to the paleness of death . From the gilded saloon , to the bier and the shroud . Oh , why should the spirit of mortal be proud ! The last letter fragments found in the kitchen wall came from a Whig editor to whom Lincoln had sent the poem in 1846 ; the newspaperman wanted to know whether Lincoln himself had written it . " Beyond all question , I am not the author , " he replied ( the Scottish poet William Knox was ) . " I would give all I am worth , and go in debt , to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is . " Her husband 's frequent absences were difficult enough for Mary to bear , but even when at home , he often seemed to disappear within himself . She dealt with his strange , brooding withdrawals as lightly as she could when guests were present . Her half - sister Emilie Helm remembered an evening in the sitting room when Lincoln and Robert were playing checkers and someone asked her brother - in - law a question . There was no answer . " Your silence is remarkably soothing , Mr . Lincoln , " Mary finally said , " but we are not quite ready for sleep just yet . " Everyone , including Lincoln , laughed . But when the Lincolns were alone together , Mary was evidently less forgiving . After suggesting three times that he poke up the dying fire without spurring him to the slightest action , she once went at him with a stick of wood . Another time a neighbor woman had just reached the back door when Lincoln burst through it with his wife close behind , hurling potatoes . The Park Service has done its best to evoke the lively presence of the Lincoln sons throughout the restored house . Their original stereoscope rests on a table in the sitting room , and wooden hoops , alphabet blocks , and a little book called The Passionate Child lie scattered about the room the curators believe the two younger boys occupied just across the hall from their mother 's bedroom , where a child 's table and chairs are clustered at the end of the bed in which they often slept . Inevitably , these period artifacts convey nothing of their individual personalities . Robert was high - spirited as a small boy but increasingly reserved as he got older , evidence perhaps of the impact of his younger brother 's death when he was only six and the responsibility he felt for keeping his anxious mother calm while his father was away . Willie and Tad were uniformly boisterous ; even their mother called them her " noisy boys . " Willie was his father 's favorite , perhaps the brightest of his sons and fond of poetry as well as mischief . Tad suffered from a speech impediment so severe that outsiders found it hard to understand him , and he may also have suffered from what we now call hyperactivity , unable to sit still for long , unable to read until he was twelve . Lincoln 's bedroom remains the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . No one found the boys more tiresome than Herndon , who often had to clean up after them . " Sometimes , " he recalled , " Lincoln would , when his wife had gone to church , to show off her new bonnet , or when she had kicked him out of the house , bring to the office Willie and Tad - these little devils . . . would take down the books , empty ash buckets , coal ashes , inkstands , papers , gold pens , letters , etc . , etc . , in a pile and then dance on the pile . Lincoln would say nothing , so abstracted was he , and so blinded to his children 's faults . Had they s - - t in Lincoln 's hat and rubbed it on his boots , he would have laughed and thought it smart . " " Mr . Lincoln . . . was very exceedingly indulgent to his children , " Mary later wrote , trying to explain the boys ' behavior . " He always said : ' It is my pleasure that my children are free , happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny . Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents . ' " Some have taken this at face value , seeing in it further evidence of Lincoln 's patient wisdom , his foresightedness in understanding the advantages of the more permissive style of child raising familiar in our own day . It seems at least as likely that Lincoln was a fond but preoccupied and often absent father who , when he did make it home , wished to enjoy his children , not to discipline them . Child raising , he believed , was woman 's work . " Since I began this letter , " he wrote to a friend when Robert was small , " a messenger came to tell me , Bob was lost ; but by the time I reached the house , his mother had found him , and had him whip [ p ] ed - and , by now , very likely he is run away again . " The boys ' chronic obstreperousness may simply have been the only way they knew to attract their oblivious father 's sustained attention . According to Herndon , they rarely held it long . " On a winter 's morning , " he remembered , " [ Lincoln ] might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market house , basket on his arm , his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck , his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels , asking a thousand little quick questions , which his father heard not , not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there fast running after him , so abstracted was he . When he thus met a friend on the road , he said that something he had just seen , heard , or left put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or Egypt [ southern Illinois ] or elsewhere , and tell it he would and there was no alternative . . . but to patiently stand and hear it . " The stories his friends stood to hear were often strong stuff . After Lincoln 's death an old woman who had known him as a youth began to recite for an interviewer a piece of doggerel she believed he had written , then stopped , blushing furiously , and explained that since the " poem is smutty . . . I can 't tell it to you , will tell it to my daughter - in - law , she will tell her husband ; and he will tell it to you . " When a friend asked Lincoln why he didn 't publish his stories , he wrinkled his nose . " Such a book , " he said , " would stink like a thousand privies . " Such redolent tales would not have been spun out in Mary Lincoln 's parlor , but they were surely told in the upstairs bedroom , where her husband often retreated with his political friends , and that room remains , it seems to me , the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . There oval portraits of his Whig heroes , Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , hang above the black parlor stove ; on a baize - covered table rests the battered mahogany lap desk he carried in his saddlebags while riding the circuit ; his original shaving mirror is nailed to the west wall , startlingly high . Bargains were struck in this room , campaigns were planned , political news was received , and tactics were altered to fit new circumstances . Lincoln wondered at the skill with which she served as his hostess in the Springfield house , sometimes presiding over gatherings attended by three hundred guests - and once , if the local newspaper is to be believed , " thronged by thousands " inching their way through the downstairs rooms . But he also reserved the right to be a little bemused by it all . At one reception the guests were expected to serve themselves from pyramidal shelves piled high with sandwiches , fruit , and frosted cakes . " Do they give you anything to eat here ? " Lincoln murmured to the man ahead of him in line . Mary 's ambition was every bit as consuming as Herndon said her husband 's was , and while the evidence offered by some of her admiring biographers that she greatly influenced his political thinking seems thin , at least to me , she was certainly his most effective and persistent booster . " Mr . [ Stephen A . ] Douglas is a very little , little giant by the side of my tall Kentuckian , " she told a relative , " and intellectually my husband towers above Douglas just as he does physically . " When the Whigs won the White House in 1848 , it was she who wrote more than forty letters to Washington applying for a federal post and signed his name to each - and she who helped talk him out of taking the dead - end ones offered in response . He was destined for greater things , and so , she thought , was she . During the 1858 Senate race against Douglas , a sudden downpour forced Lincoln and a reporter to take shelter together in an empty boxcar . " My friends got me into this business , " he told his companion as the rain splattered through the open door . " I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate , and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was . . . . Mary insists , however , that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States , too . " He clasped his long arms around his knees and laughed . " Just think of such a sucker as me as President ! " Lincoln 's subsequent loss to Douglas was disappointing but not devastating . " I believe . . . you are ' feeling like hell yet , ' " Lincoln told one supporter a few days after the votes were counted . " Quit that ; You will soon feel better . Another ' blow - up ' is coming ; and we shall have fun again . " A national figure at last , he was flooded with invitations to speak , and in September he packed his bag , said good - bye to the boys , as he had so many times before , and set forth on a political swing through Ohio . This time his wife went with him . In Cincinnati , on September 17 , a large crowd turned out at the Fifth Street Market to hear him . Mary sat proudly near the platform . " There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us , " she heard him tell his audience . " Twenty - five years ago , I was a hired laborer . The hired laborer of yesterday , labors on his own account today , and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow . Advancement - improvement in condition - is the order of things in a society of equals . "
|
I use the word pilgrims advisedly , for the refurbished house , its windows newly sealed against dust and weather , its air climate - controlled for the sake of the artifacts , the sanctioned path past its relics marked out by a narrow gray carpet and bound by wooden railings , seems more shrine than home . It is hard to believe that a prairie lawyer and politician , his wife , four sons , and a perpetually shifting cast of cooks and hired girls , cats and dogs , all ever really lived in these chaste rooms . No small boy ever tracked black Illinois mud across these bright Belgium carpets ; no dirt ever sullied the broom that leans against the kitchen wall ; no visiting pol ever missed the brown - and - white ceramic spittoon in the corner of the sitting room . The site 's curious sterility is not really the fault of the Park Service , which has labored hard to make this old house a home again . The structure 's modest size and the long lines of people who wait in front of it each day to take the twenty minute tour demand that severe limitations be placed on visitors ; much of the period furniture that fills the rooms has no genuine link with the Lincolns ; and a good deal of educated guesswork has inevitably gone into the restoration . No one is even entirely certain anymore just where everyone slept . And it should not surprise us that Lincoln 's house remains a shrine . He himself sympathized with the impulse to revere heroes . " Let us believe as in the days of our youth , " he once said , " that Washington was spotless . It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect - that human perfection is possible . " From the moment of his assassination - and despite the hard work of a host of scrupulous biographers - Lincoln has remained a martyred saint to most of us : unfailingly modest and loving , candid and forbearing , selfless and self - depreciating . Reconstructing the daily lives of the Lincolns is a tricky business . Precisely one letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to her husband written during the Springfield years has survived , and while a handful of Lincoln letters home do still exist , he was always reticent about his private life - " the most shutmouthed man that ever lived , " a close friend said - and routinely left the details of daily living to his wife . Most of his letters mirror little more than his genuine affection for Mary and for the boys he called " the codgers . " The result is that much of what we think we know about the Lincolns ' domestic lives is distinctly second - and third - hand , drawn from the memories of friends and neighbors and family members , some unwilling to be anything but worshipful , a few with old scores to settle . Opinions differ even on the quality of the meals prepared in the Lincolns ' small kitchen . One frequent Springfield visitor remembered that they were " famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes and , in season , . . . venison , wild turkey , prairie chickens , quail and other game " ; another guest remembered " an old - fashioned mess of indigestion , composed mainly of cake , pies and chickens . " But two discoveries were of wider interest . The first of them has permanently altered one of the oldest legends about the Lincolns . The dwelling to which the Lincolns brought their year - old son , Robert , in 1844 was a story - and - a - half Greek Revival cottage , built by Dr . Charles Dresser , the Episcopal minister who had married the couple two years earlier . Tradition has always held that although the family steadily grew - Edward Baker Lincoln was born here in 1846 , William Wallace in 1850 , Thomas , known as Tad , in 1853 - Lincoln earned too little money to make any improvements on their increasingly crowded cottage until 1856 , when Mary sold off eighty acres of land inherited from her father and took it upon herself to order up a second story . Lincoln was said to have been away circuit - riding while the work went on and to have claimed not to recognize his old house when he got back , asking a neighbor , " Stranger , do you know where Lincoln lives ? " This record of constantly growing affluence and comfort is further proof that Abraham Lincoln 's celebrated penury was always relative . Lincoln himself did little to dispel the myth of his poverty . Illinois was traditionally a Democratic state , and the Whigs , with whom he identified from boyhood until their party went out of existence , were widely denounced as " aristocratical " ; it was not merely good politics , it was probably essential politics , that Lincoln appear always a little more threadbare than he really was . In fact , as the comparative spaciousness and affluent furnishings of his home attest , he had come a very long way from the dark one - room cabins of his boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a considerable distance from the log houses of New Salem . He knew his rail - splitting youth was a political asset , but he did not like to dwell upon it ; his whole boyhood , he told a campaign biographer , could be " condensed into one line and that one line you can find in Gray 's Elegy : ' The short and simple annals of the poor . ' " His marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky merchant - banker had helped make the " flourishing about in carriages " of Springfield 's most fashionable citizens seem less intimidating than it had seemed when he first arrived in 1837 , and the house he and his wife occupied and steadily improved together nicely symbolizes the great and growing distance his will to succeed had put between the circumstances of his own life and those of his father , a gulf so wide he finally did not try to bridge it . No member of Lincoln 's family was asked to attend his wedding ; neither his father nor his stepmother ever met his wife or saw their grandchildren . Lincoln revered the memory of his mother , Nancy Hanks Lincoln , dead when he was nine , but was frankly scornful of his father , Thomas , who , he said , " never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name . " He visited Thomas Lincoln from time to time but never invited him to his home in Springfield , did not go to see him on his deathbed in 1851 , never even ordered a headstone for his grave . In fact , only one member of Lincoln 's family is known to have stayed with the Lincolns , a cousin named Harriet Hanks , who lived at Eighth and Jackson for a time while attending a local seminary for young ladies ; she later said she had been treated as a servant by Mary Lincoln . The aggregate of Lincoln 's own schooling , he once said , was less than a year - asked in 1858 to summarize his education , he answered simply " Defective " - but when it came time to educate his eldest son , he sent him to Phillips Exeter and Harvard , evidently intending to make of him an Eastern gentleman . He may have succeeded too well . On the centennial of his father 's birth in 1909 , Robert refused to attend the dedication of the big Greek temple near Hodgenville , Kentucky , that now harbors the small cabin in which Lincoln is alleged to have been born . Archie Butt , military aide to the main speaker , President Theodore Roosevelt , thought he knew why : " If it be true , as I hear , that Bob Lincoln . . . does not relish the perpetuation of this cabin , " he wrote , " I cannot blame him . The very thought of it . . . would make any member of his family shudder with horror . It does not bear the stamp of poverty alone , but degradation and uncleanliness . " If we are made a little nervous by the notion of a resolutely aspiring Abraham Lincoln , apparently willing to put behind him the people from whom he sprang in the course of bettering himself , we are still more wary when asked to consider him as a vote - seeking politician . Yet " politics were his life , newspapers his food , and his great ambition his motive force , " as his law partner , William Herndon , remembered . " He delighted [ in politics ] , he revelled in it , as a fish does in water , as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air . " In 1849 , Park Service experts now speculate , someone - probably six - year - old Robert or one of his playmates - fed some of his father 's old papers into a crack above the baseboard in the kitchen 's north wall . They were soon obliterated by a shower of plaster shaken down upon them by further alterations to the house . A field mouse then constructed its nest atop the plaster . ( When what was left of the papers was uncovered in 1987 , the delicate skeleton of the nest 's builder still lay cuddled up inside it . ) One letter , from David Dickinson , a political backer from Lacon , Illinois , was written in early 1846 , while Lincoln was maneuvering to assure his own nomination for the state 's single safe Whig congressional seat . Lincoln believed that he had an agreement with the two other leading party hopefuls - Edward D . Baker ( for whom his second son was named ) and John J . Hardin - that they would rotate the nomination among themselves , and that 1846 was his turn . But Hardin , a former incumbent ( and Mary 's distant cousin ) , had other ideas and schemed to seize the nomination for himself . Lincoln finally forced him to withdraw , but he was evidently still wary of a last - minute betrayal , for Dickinson wrote to reassure him that he had been scouting Putnam County , on the lookout for Hardin 's " moccasin tracks , " and that all was well . During his single term in Congress , Lincoln was besieged by letters from constituents demanding services . Two of these survived beneath the mouse nest . One voter asked him to register a patent for a " compound vegetable " elixir that cured " dyspepsia . . . weakness . . . or a bad cold . . . " ; the other hoped the congressman could arrange for him a commission in the Army , then fighting the Mexican War . " I hope to obtain your interference in my behalf , " the aspiring officer wrote , " and if I succeed rest assured sir that it will never be forgotten by me . . . . " It is unlikely that the young congressman 's interference did his eager constituent much good with the Democratic administration ; Lincoln was a freshman and a Whig who believed the current struggle in the Southwest " a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes . " But it is likely that he did his best ; he could not afford to be forgotten by any voter . Lincoln 's first love may have been politics , but he made his money as a lawyer , at least five thousand dollars annually by the 1850s , and the result was that he wasn 't home much ; for up to six months a year he was away politicking and trying cases on the Eighth Circuit , a vast shifting area that once encompassed fourteen counties , one - fifth of the state . " During my childhood and early youth , " Robert Lincoln once recalled , trying to explain why his father had never found the time to tell him much about his own boyhood , " [ my father ] was almost constantly away . . . attending courts or making political speeches . " During all that time , year after year , Mary was left to run her household and raise her children largely on her own , and it is understandably her impress rather than her husband 's that is most evident in their house . It was Mary who studied Miss Leslie 's House Book , or Manual of Domestic Economy for Town and Country ; who saw to it that the ceilings were freshly whitewashed and the oil lamps were filled and their wicks trimmed ; who arranged the seashells on the what - not shelves in the parlor . ( Lincoln 's own mussed , intensely masculine world was epitomized by the law office , five blocks away , where he spent most daylight hours when he was in Springfield . It was so disheveled , a clerk recalled , that government seeds brought back with him from Washington actually sprouted in one unswept corner . ) A reporter from upstate New York , ushered through the Springfield house shortly after Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency , reassured his Republican readers that they need not fear that they were being asked to vote for an untamed frontiersman . The candidate 's " house was neatly without being extravagantly furnished , " he wrote . " An air of quiet refinement pervaded the place . You would have known instantly that she who presided over the modest household was a true type of the American lady . There were flowers upon the tables . . . pictures upon the walls . . . . The thought that involuntarily blossomed into speech was - ' What a pleasant home Abe Lincoln has . ' " Making that home pleasant was a demanding task , especially for a woman who came to her marriage speaking fluent French but unable to prepare the simplest dish . But the newly restored house barely hints at the difficulties she faced every morning . The Lincolns ' backyard today is as well groomed as a putting green ; the freshly painted back porch is kept bare of everything but an empty woodbox whose purpose has to be explained to visitors , most of whom have never seen one . But a photograph of the same scene , made while the Lincolns ' wartime tenants still occupied the house , suggests something of the shabbier reality of daily life in their time : the grass is ragged ; the paint is peeling ; logs overflow the woodbox , and bark litters the porch , which is crowded with fire - blackened pots and battered washtubs . And even the old photograph cannot convey the perpetual buzz of flies in summer or the reek produced by the milk cow kept tethered behind the house , the two horses in the barn , the privy at the back of the garden , the hogs rooting along the unplanked streets just beyond the fence . In 1849 and 1850 her worst fears seemed confirmed as first her father died , then the grandmother who had done all she could to fill in for her dead mother , then her own Eddie , not yet four , who succumbed to diphtheria despite his parents ' desperate nursing . She was inconsolable for months and increasingly fearful thereafter , especially when her husband was away , certain one of the other boys would fall ill and die , that the house would catch fire or be hit by lightning . When a bearded umbrella mender knocked unexpectedly at the front door one day , she screamed , " Murder ! Murder ! " so loudly that a neighbor ran over and escorted the astonished man away . Mary herself once called Lincoln " my Sainted Idol . . . . A sainted man who had a holy smile . " Her own tumultuous personality had a good deal to do with the myth of his saintliness , for if , as some of her husband 's closest associates said , she was a " she - devil " and " Hell - Catical , " was Lincoln not all the more wonderful for having put up with her for so long ? In fact , his home was not a " hell on earth , " as William Herndon claimed , and many of the stories that seem to suggest it was and that Lincoln was " woman - whipped and woman - carved " were amassed by his junior partner , whose loathing for Mary Lincoln was surpassed only by hers for him . Although a photograph of the two partners hung on her parlor wall , she would not have Herndon in her home . " Mr . Herndon had always been an utter stranger to me , " Mary wrote many years later ; " he was not considered an habitué , at our house . The office was more , in his line . " There is no reason to suppose that Lincoln ever regretted having had " Love Is Eternal " engraved on Mary 's wedding ring . Mary Todd Lincoln may not have been easy to live with , but neither was her husband , and some of his wife 's eccentricities were certainly exacerbated by his own . Mary Owens , to whom Lincoln had once been engaged , gently recalled that he had been " deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman 's happiness , " and even Herndon believed he " ought never to have married anyone . He had no quality of a husband . " Despite Mary 's best efforts , an early writer said , Lincoln was inherently " unparlorable . " His company manners had improved a good deal since he first moved to Springfield , when he was still capable of stalking into a fashionable ball with friends wearing muddy boots and shouting , " Oh , boys - how clean those girls look ! " But despite her exhortations to " dress up and look like somebody , " his clothes remained rumpled , his hair unbrushed ; the stovepipe hat he hung on the arched hat tree in the front hall every evening usually looked " as if a calf had licked it . " He was perpetually - and unapologetically - late for meals , used the wrong knife to spread his butter , and persisted in answering the door himself instead of allowing the serving girl to do it , sometimes in his shirt sleeves and without his boots . Once , to Mary 's acute embarrassment , he told some visiting ladies his wife would be down " as soon as she gets her trotting harness on . " Lincoln could be solicitous , insisting that Mary not try to do everything herself , and genuinely concerned when she fell victim to one of her headaches : " he was never himself - when I was not perfectly well , " Mary remembered . But he was also laconic and undemonstrative ; no one who knew him well ever slapped his back or called him Abe . At the best of times he spoke and thought and moved so slowly , a friend remembered , it seemed as if he needed oiling , and he dealt with Mary 's tantrums by stalking from the house until she calmed down , his forbearing silence only adding further to her frustration . At his worst he was given to spells of severe and morbid depression , which must have frightened his wife and from which even she could sometimes not rouse him . The closing stanza of " Mortality , " his favorite poem , hints at the sort of lugubriousness that sometimes gripped him : ' Tis the wink of an eye , ' tis the draught of a breath , From the blossoms of health , to the paleness of death . From the gilded saloon , to the bier and the shroud . Oh , why should the spirit of mortal be proud ! The last letter fragments found in the kitchen wall came from a Whig editor to whom Lincoln had sent the poem in 1846 ; the newspaperman wanted to know whether Lincoln himself had written it . " Beyond all question , I am not the author , " he replied ( the Scottish poet William Knox was ) . " I would give all I am worth , and go in debt , to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is . " Her husband 's frequent absences were difficult enough for Mary to bear , but even when at home , he often seemed to disappear within himself . She dealt with his strange , brooding withdrawals as lightly as she could when guests were present . Her half - sister Emilie Helm remembered an evening in the sitting room when Lincoln and Robert were playing checkers and someone asked her brother - in - law a question . There was no answer . " Your silence is remarkably soothing , Mr . Lincoln , " Mary finally said , " but we are not quite ready for sleep just yet . " Everyone , including Lincoln , laughed . But when the Lincolns were alone together , Mary was evidently less forgiving . After suggesting three times that he poke up the dying fire without spurring him to the slightest action , she once went at him with a stick of wood . Another time a neighbor woman had just reached the back door when Lincoln burst through it with his wife close behind , hurling potatoes . The Park Service has done its best to evoke the lively presence of the Lincoln sons throughout the restored house . Their original stereoscope rests on a table in the sitting room , and wooden hoops , alphabet blocks , and a little book called The Passionate Child lie scattered about the room the curators believe the two younger boys occupied just across the hall from their mother 's bedroom , where a child 's table and chairs are clustered at the end of the bed in which they often slept . Inevitably , these period artifacts convey nothing of their individual personalities . Robert was high - spirited as a small boy but increasingly reserved as he got older , evidence perhaps of the impact of his younger brother 's death when he was only six and the responsibility he felt for keeping his anxious mother calm while his father was away . Willie and Tad were uniformly boisterous ; even their mother called them her " noisy boys . " Willie was his father 's favorite , perhaps the brightest of his sons and fond of poetry as well as mischief . Tad suffered from a speech impediment so severe that outsiders found it hard to understand him , and he may also have suffered from what we now call hyperactivity , unable to sit still for long , unable to read until he was twelve . Lincoln 's bedroom remains the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . No one found the boys more tiresome than Herndon , who often had to clean up after them . " Sometimes , " he recalled , " Lincoln would , when his wife had gone to church , to show off her new bonnet , or when she had kicked him out of the house , bring to the office Willie and Tad - these little devils . . . would take down the books , empty ash buckets , coal ashes , inkstands , papers , gold pens , letters , etc . , etc . , in a pile and then dance on the pile . Lincoln would say nothing , so abstracted was he , and so blinded to his children 's faults . Had they s - - t in Lincoln 's hat and rubbed it on his boots , he would have laughed and thought it smart . " " Mr . Lincoln . . . was very exceedingly indulgent to his children , " Mary later wrote , trying to explain the boys ' behavior . " He always said : ' It is my pleasure that my children are free , happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny . Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents . ' " Some have taken this at face value , seeing in it further evidence of Lincoln 's patient wisdom , his foresightedness in understanding the advantages of the more permissive style of child raising familiar in our own day . It seems at least as likely that Lincoln was a fond but preoccupied and often absent father who , when he did make it home , wished to enjoy his children , not to discipline them . Child raising , he believed , was woman 's work . " Since I began this letter , " he wrote to a friend when Robert was small , " a messenger came to tell me , Bob was lost ; but by the time I reached the house , his mother had found him , and had him whip [ p ] ed - and , by now , very likely he is run away again . " The boys ' chronic obstreperousness may simply have been the only way they knew to attract their oblivious father 's sustained attention . According to Herndon , they rarely held it long . " On a winter 's morning , " he remembered , " [ Lincoln ] might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market house , basket on his arm , his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck , his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels , asking a thousand little quick questions , which his father heard not , not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there fast running after him , so abstracted was he . When he thus met a friend on the road , he said that something he had just seen , heard , or left put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or Egypt [ southern Illinois ] or elsewhere , and tell it he would and there was no alternative . . . but to patiently stand and hear it . " The stories his friends stood to hear were often strong stuff . After Lincoln 's death an old woman who had known him as a youth began to recite for an interviewer a piece of doggerel she believed he had written , then stopped , blushing furiously , and explained that since the " poem is smutty . . . I can 't tell it to you , will tell it to my daughter - in - law , she will tell her husband ; and he will tell it to you . " When a friend asked Lincoln why he didn 't publish his stories , he wrinkled his nose . " Such a book , " he said , " would stink like a thousand privies . " Such redolent tales would not have been spun out in Mary Lincoln 's parlor , but they were surely told in the upstairs bedroom , where her husband often retreated with his political friends , and that room remains , it seems to me , the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . There oval portraits of his Whig heroes , Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , hang above the black parlor stove ; on a baize - covered table rests the battered mahogany lap desk he carried in his saddlebags while riding the circuit ; his original shaving mirror is nailed to the west wall , startlingly high . Bargains were struck in this room , campaigns were planned , political news was received , and tactics were altered to fit new circumstances . Lincoln wondered at the skill with which she served as his hostess in the Springfield house , sometimes presiding over gatherings attended by three hundred guests - and once , if the local newspaper is to be believed , " thronged by thousands " inching their way through the downstairs rooms . But he also reserved the right to be a little bemused by it all . At one reception the guests were expected to serve themselves from pyramidal shelves piled high with sandwiches , fruit , and frosted cakes . " Do they give you anything to eat here ? " Lincoln murmured to the man ahead of him in line . Mary 's ambition was every bit as consuming as Herndon said her husband 's was , and while the evidence offered by some of her admiring biographers that she greatly influenced his political thinking seems thin , at least to me , she was certainly his most effective and persistent booster . " Mr . [ Stephen A . ] Douglas is a very little , little giant by the side of my tall Kentuckian , " she told a relative , " and intellectually my husband towers above Douglas just as he does physically . " When the Whigs won the White House in 1848 , it was she who wrote more than forty letters to Washington applying for a federal post and signed his name to each - and she who helped talk him out of taking the dead - end ones offered in response . He was destined for greater things , and so , she thought , was she . During the 1858 Senate race against Douglas , a sudden downpour forced Lincoln and a reporter to take shelter together in an empty boxcar . " My friends got me into this business , " he told his companion as the rain splattered through the open door . " I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate , and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was . . . . Mary insists , however , that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States , too . " He clasped his long arms around his knees and laughed . " Just think of such a sucker as me as President ! " Lincoln 's subsequent loss to Douglas was disappointing but not devastating . " I believe . . . you are ' feeling like hell yet , ' " Lincoln told one supporter a few days after the votes were counted . " Quit that ; You will soon feel better . Another ' blow - up ' is coming ; and we shall have fun again . " A national figure at last , he was flooded with invitations to speak , and in September he packed his bag , said good - bye to the boys , as he had so many times before , and set forth on a political swing through Ohio . This time his wife went with him . In Cincinnati , on September 17 , a large crowd turned out at the Fifth Street Market to hear him . Mary sat proudly near the platform . " There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us , " she heard him tell his audience . " Twenty - five years ago , I was a hired laborer . The hired laborer of yesterday , labors on his own account today , and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow . Advancement - improvement in condition - is the order of things in a society of equals . "
|
I use the word pilgrims advisedly , for the refurbished house , its windows newly sealed against dust and weather , its air climate - controlled for the sake of the artifacts , the sanctioned path past its relics marked out by a narrow gray carpet and bound by wooden railings , seems more shrine than home . It is hard to believe that a prairie lawyer and politician , his wife , four sons , and a perpetually shifting cast of cooks and hired girls , cats and dogs , all ever really lived in these chaste rooms . No small boy ever tracked black Illinois mud across these bright Belgium carpets ; no dirt ever sullied the broom that leans against the kitchen wall ; no visiting pol ever missed the brown - and - white ceramic spittoon in the corner of the sitting room . The site 's curious sterility is not really the fault of the Park Service , which has labored hard to make this old house a home again . The structure 's modest size and the long lines of people who wait in front of it each day to take the twenty minute tour demand that severe limitations be placed on visitors ; much of the period furniture that fills the rooms has no genuine link with the Lincolns ; and a good deal of educated guesswork has inevitably gone into the restoration . No one is even entirely certain anymore just where everyone slept . And it should not surprise us that Lincoln 's house remains a shrine . He himself sympathized with the impulse to revere heroes . " Let us believe as in the days of our youth , " he once said , " that Washington was spotless . It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect - that human perfection is possible . " From the moment of his assassination - and despite the hard work of a host of scrupulous biographers - Lincoln has remained a martyred saint to most of us : unfailingly modest and loving , candid and forbearing , selfless and self - depreciating . Reconstructing the daily lives of the Lincolns is a tricky business . Precisely one letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to her husband written during the Springfield years has survived , and while a handful of Lincoln letters home do still exist , he was always reticent about his private life - " the most shutmouthed man that ever lived , " a close friend said - and routinely left the details of daily living to his wife . Most of his letters mirror little more than his genuine affection for Mary and for the boys he called " the codgers . " The result is that much of what we think we know about the Lincolns ' domestic lives is distinctly second - and third - hand , drawn from the memories of friends and neighbors and family members , some unwilling to be anything but worshipful , a few with old scores to settle . Opinions differ even on the quality of the meals prepared in the Lincolns ' small kitchen . One frequent Springfield visitor remembered that they were " famed for the excellence of many rare Kentucky dishes and , in season , . . . venison , wild turkey , prairie chickens , quail and other game " ; another guest remembered " an old - fashioned mess of indigestion , composed mainly of cake , pies and chickens . " But two discoveries were of wider interest . The first of them has permanently altered one of the oldest legends about the Lincolns . The dwelling to which the Lincolns brought their year - old son , Robert , in 1844 was a story - and - a - half Greek Revival cottage , built by Dr . Charles Dresser , the Episcopal minister who had married the couple two years earlier . Tradition has always held that although the family steadily grew - Edward Baker Lincoln was born here in 1846 , William Wallace in 1850 , Thomas , known as Tad , in 1853 - Lincoln earned too little money to make any improvements on their increasingly crowded cottage until 1856 , when Mary sold off eighty acres of land inherited from her father and took it upon herself to order up a second story . Lincoln was said to have been away circuit - riding while the work went on and to have claimed not to recognize his old house when he got back , asking a neighbor , " Stranger , do you know where Lincoln lives ? " This record of constantly growing affluence and comfort is further proof that Abraham Lincoln 's celebrated penury was always relative . Lincoln himself did little to dispel the myth of his poverty . Illinois was traditionally a Democratic state , and the Whigs , with whom he identified from boyhood until their party went out of existence , were widely denounced as " aristocratical " ; it was not merely good politics , it was probably essential politics , that Lincoln appear always a little more threadbare than he really was . In fact , as the comparative spaciousness and affluent furnishings of his home attest , he had come a very long way from the dark one - room cabins of his boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a considerable distance from the log houses of New Salem . He knew his rail - splitting youth was a political asset , but he did not like to dwell upon it ; his whole boyhood , he told a campaign biographer , could be " condensed into one line and that one line you can find in Gray 's Elegy : ' The short and simple annals of the poor . ' " His marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Kentucky merchant - banker had helped make the " flourishing about in carriages " of Springfield 's most fashionable citizens seem less intimidating than it had seemed when he first arrived in 1837 , and the house he and his wife occupied and steadily improved together nicely symbolizes the great and growing distance his will to succeed had put between the circumstances of his own life and those of his father , a gulf so wide he finally did not try to bridge it . No member of Lincoln 's family was asked to attend his wedding ; neither his father nor his stepmother ever met his wife or saw their grandchildren . Lincoln revered the memory of his mother , Nancy Hanks Lincoln , dead when he was nine , but was frankly scornful of his father , Thomas , who , he said , " never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name . " He visited Thomas Lincoln from time to time but never invited him to his home in Springfield , did not go to see him on his deathbed in 1851 , never even ordered a headstone for his grave . In fact , only one member of Lincoln 's family is known to have stayed with the Lincolns , a cousin named Harriet Hanks , who lived at Eighth and Jackson for a time while attending a local seminary for young ladies ; she later said she had been treated as a servant by Mary Lincoln . The aggregate of Lincoln 's own schooling , he once said , was less than a year - asked in 1858 to summarize his education , he answered simply " Defective " - but when it came time to educate his eldest son , he sent him to Phillips Exeter and Harvard , evidently intending to make of him an Eastern gentleman . He may have succeeded too well . On the centennial of his father 's birth in 1909 , Robert refused to attend the dedication of the big Greek temple near Hodgenville , Kentucky , that now harbors the small cabin in which Lincoln is alleged to have been born . Archie Butt , military aide to the main speaker , President Theodore Roosevelt , thought he knew why : " If it be true , as I hear , that Bob Lincoln . . . does not relish the perpetuation of this cabin , " he wrote , " I cannot blame him . The very thought of it . . . would make any member of his family shudder with horror . It does not bear the stamp of poverty alone , but degradation and uncleanliness . " If we are made a little nervous by the notion of a resolutely aspiring Abraham Lincoln , apparently willing to put behind him the people from whom he sprang in the course of bettering himself , we are still more wary when asked to consider him as a vote - seeking politician . Yet " politics were his life , newspapers his food , and his great ambition his motive force , " as his law partner , William Herndon , remembered . " He delighted [ in politics ] , he revelled in it , as a fish does in water , as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air . " In 1849 , Park Service experts now speculate , someone - probably six - year - old Robert or one of his playmates - fed some of his father 's old papers into a crack above the baseboard in the kitchen 's north wall . They were soon obliterated by a shower of plaster shaken down upon them by further alterations to the house . A field mouse then constructed its nest atop the plaster . ( When what was left of the papers was uncovered in 1987 , the delicate skeleton of the nest 's builder still lay cuddled up inside it . ) One letter , from David Dickinson , a political backer from Lacon , Illinois , was written in early 1846 , while Lincoln was maneuvering to assure his own nomination for the state 's single safe Whig congressional seat . Lincoln believed that he had an agreement with the two other leading party hopefuls - Edward D . Baker ( for whom his second son was named ) and John J . Hardin - that they would rotate the nomination among themselves , and that 1846 was his turn . But Hardin , a former incumbent ( and Mary 's distant cousin ) , had other ideas and schemed to seize the nomination for himself . Lincoln finally forced him to withdraw , but he was evidently still wary of a last - minute betrayal , for Dickinson wrote to reassure him that he had been scouting Putnam County , on the lookout for Hardin 's " moccasin tracks , " and that all was well . During his single term in Congress , Lincoln was besieged by letters from constituents demanding services . Two of these survived beneath the mouse nest . One voter asked him to register a patent for a " compound vegetable " elixir that cured " dyspepsia . . . weakness . . . or a bad cold . . . " ; the other hoped the congressman could arrange for him a commission in the Army , then fighting the Mexican War . " I hope to obtain your interference in my behalf , " the aspiring officer wrote , " and if I succeed rest assured sir that it will never be forgotten by me . . . . " It is unlikely that the young congressman 's interference did his eager constituent much good with the Democratic administration ; Lincoln was a freshman and a Whig who believed the current struggle in the Southwest " a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes . " But it is likely that he did his best ; he could not afford to be forgotten by any voter . Lincoln 's first love may have been politics , but he made his money as a lawyer , at least five thousand dollars annually by the 1850s , and the result was that he wasn 't home much ; for up to six months a year he was away politicking and trying cases on the Eighth Circuit , a vast shifting area that once encompassed fourteen counties , one - fifth of the state . " During my childhood and early youth , " Robert Lincoln once recalled , trying to explain why his father had never found the time to tell him much about his own boyhood , " [ my father ] was almost constantly away . . . attending courts or making political speeches . " During all that time , year after year , Mary was left to run her household and raise her children largely on her own , and it is understandably her impress rather than her husband 's that is most evident in their house . It was Mary who studied Miss Leslie 's House Book , or Manual of Domestic Economy for Town and Country ; who saw to it that the ceilings were freshly whitewashed and the oil lamps were filled and their wicks trimmed ; who arranged the seashells on the what - not shelves in the parlor . ( Lincoln 's own mussed , intensely masculine world was epitomized by the law office , five blocks away , where he spent most daylight hours when he was in Springfield . It was so disheveled , a clerk recalled , that government seeds brought back with him from Washington actually sprouted in one unswept corner . ) A reporter from upstate New York , ushered through the Springfield house shortly after Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency , reassured his Republican readers that they need not fear that they were being asked to vote for an untamed frontiersman . The candidate 's " house was neatly without being extravagantly furnished , " he wrote . " An air of quiet refinement pervaded the place . You would have known instantly that she who presided over the modest household was a true type of the American lady . There were flowers upon the tables . . . pictures upon the walls . . . . The thought that involuntarily blossomed into speech was - ' What a pleasant home Abe Lincoln has . ' " Making that home pleasant was a demanding task , especially for a woman who came to her marriage speaking fluent French but unable to prepare the simplest dish . But the newly restored house barely hints at the difficulties she faced every morning . The Lincolns ' backyard today is as well groomed as a putting green ; the freshly painted back porch is kept bare of everything but an empty woodbox whose purpose has to be explained to visitors , most of whom have never seen one . But a photograph of the same scene , made while the Lincolns ' wartime tenants still occupied the house , suggests something of the shabbier reality of daily life in their time : the grass is ragged ; the paint is peeling ; logs overflow the woodbox , and bark litters the porch , which is crowded with fire - blackened pots and battered washtubs . And even the old photograph cannot convey the perpetual buzz of flies in summer or the reek produced by the milk cow kept tethered behind the house , the two horses in the barn , the privy at the back of the garden , the hogs rooting along the unplanked streets just beyond the fence . In 1849 and 1850 her worst fears seemed confirmed as first her father died , then the grandmother who had done all she could to fill in for her dead mother , then her own Eddie , not yet four , who succumbed to diphtheria despite his parents ' desperate nursing . She was inconsolable for months and increasingly fearful thereafter , especially when her husband was away , certain one of the other boys would fall ill and die , that the house would catch fire or be hit by lightning . When a bearded umbrella mender knocked unexpectedly at the front door one day , she screamed , " Murder ! Murder ! " so loudly that a neighbor ran over and escorted the astonished man away . Mary herself once called Lincoln " my Sainted Idol . . . . A sainted man who had a holy smile . " Her own tumultuous personality had a good deal to do with the myth of his saintliness , for if , as some of her husband 's closest associates said , she was a " she - devil " and " Hell - Catical , " was Lincoln not all the more wonderful for having put up with her for so long ? In fact , his home was not a " hell on earth , " as William Herndon claimed , and many of the stories that seem to suggest it was and that Lincoln was " woman - whipped and woman - carved " were amassed by his junior partner , whose loathing for Mary Lincoln was surpassed only by hers for him . Although a photograph of the two partners hung on her parlor wall , she would not have Herndon in her home . " Mr . Herndon had always been an utter stranger to me , " Mary wrote many years later ; " he was not considered an habitué , at our house . The office was more , in his line . " There is no reason to suppose that Lincoln ever regretted having had " Love Is Eternal " engraved on Mary 's wedding ring . Mary Todd Lincoln may not have been easy to live with , but neither was her husband , and some of his wife 's eccentricities were certainly exacerbated by his own . Mary Owens , to whom Lincoln had once been engaged , gently recalled that he had been " deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman 's happiness , " and even Herndon believed he " ought never to have married anyone . He had no quality of a husband . " Despite Mary 's best efforts , an early writer said , Lincoln was inherently " unparlorable . " His company manners had improved a good deal since he first moved to Springfield , when he was still capable of stalking into a fashionable ball with friends wearing muddy boots and shouting , " Oh , boys - how clean those girls look ! " But despite her exhortations to " dress up and look like somebody , " his clothes remained rumpled , his hair unbrushed ; the stovepipe hat he hung on the arched hat tree in the front hall every evening usually looked " as if a calf had licked it . " He was perpetually - and unapologetically - late for meals , used the wrong knife to spread his butter , and persisted in answering the door himself instead of allowing the serving girl to do it , sometimes in his shirt sleeves and without his boots . Once , to Mary 's acute embarrassment , he told some visiting ladies his wife would be down " as soon as she gets her trotting harness on . " Lincoln could be solicitous , insisting that Mary not try to do everything herself , and genuinely concerned when she fell victim to one of her headaches : " he was never himself - when I was not perfectly well , " Mary remembered . But he was also laconic and undemonstrative ; no one who knew him well ever slapped his back or called him Abe . At the best of times he spoke and thought and moved so slowly , a friend remembered , it seemed as if he needed oiling , and he dealt with Mary 's tantrums by stalking from the house until she calmed down , his forbearing silence only adding further to her frustration . At his worst he was given to spells of severe and morbid depression , which must have frightened his wife and from which even she could sometimes not rouse him . The closing stanza of " Mortality , " his favorite poem , hints at the sort of lugubriousness that sometimes gripped him : ' Tis the wink of an eye , ' tis the draught of a breath , From the blossoms of health , to the paleness of death . From the gilded saloon , to the bier and the shroud . Oh , why should the spirit of mortal be proud ! The last letter fragments found in the kitchen wall came from a Whig editor to whom Lincoln had sent the poem in 1846 ; the newspaperman wanted to know whether Lincoln himself had written it . " Beyond all question , I am not the author , " he replied ( the Scottish poet William Knox was ) . " I would give all I am worth , and go in debt , to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is . " Her husband 's frequent absences were difficult enough for Mary to bear , but even when at home , he often seemed to disappear within himself . She dealt with his strange , brooding withdrawals as lightly as she could when guests were present . Her half - sister Emilie Helm remembered an evening in the sitting room when Lincoln and Robert were playing checkers and someone asked her brother - in - law a question . There was no answer . " Your silence is remarkably soothing , Mr . Lincoln , " Mary finally said , " but we are not quite ready for sleep just yet . " Everyone , including Lincoln , laughed . But when the Lincolns were alone together , Mary was evidently less forgiving . After suggesting three times that he poke up the dying fire without spurring him to the slightest action , she once went at him with a stick of wood . Another time a neighbor woman had just reached the back door when Lincoln burst through it with his wife close behind , hurling potatoes . The Park Service has done its best to evoke the lively presence of the Lincoln sons throughout the restored house . Their original stereoscope rests on a table in the sitting room , and wooden hoops , alphabet blocks , and a little book called The Passionate Child lie scattered about the room the curators believe the two younger boys occupied just across the hall from their mother 's bedroom , where a child 's table and chairs are clustered at the end of the bed in which they often slept . Inevitably , these period artifacts convey nothing of their individual personalities . Robert was high - spirited as a small boy but increasingly reserved as he got older , evidence perhaps of the impact of his younger brother 's death when he was only six and the responsibility he felt for keeping his anxious mother calm while his father was away . Willie and Tad were uniformly boisterous ; even their mother called them her " noisy boys . " Willie was his father 's favorite , perhaps the brightest of his sons and fond of poetry as well as mischief . Tad suffered from a speech impediment so severe that outsiders found it hard to understand him , and he may also have suffered from what we now call hyperactivity , unable to sit still for long , unable to read until he was twelve . Lincoln 's bedroom remains the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . No one found the boys more tiresome than Herndon , who often had to clean up after them . " Sometimes , " he recalled , " Lincoln would , when his wife had gone to church , to show off her new bonnet , or when she had kicked him out of the house , bring to the office Willie and Tad - these little devils . . . would take down the books , empty ash buckets , coal ashes , inkstands , papers , gold pens , letters , etc . , etc . , in a pile and then dance on the pile . Lincoln would say nothing , so abstracted was he , and so blinded to his children 's faults . Had they s - - t in Lincoln 's hat and rubbed it on his boots , he would have laughed and thought it smart . " " Mr . Lincoln . . . was very exceedingly indulgent to his children , " Mary later wrote , trying to explain the boys ' behavior . " He always said : ' It is my pleasure that my children are free , happy and unrestrained by parental tyranny . Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents . ' " Some have taken this at face value , seeing in it further evidence of Lincoln 's patient wisdom , his foresightedness in understanding the advantages of the more permissive style of child raising familiar in our own day . It seems at least as likely that Lincoln was a fond but preoccupied and often absent father who , when he did make it home , wished to enjoy his children , not to discipline them . Child raising , he believed , was woman 's work . " Since I began this letter , " he wrote to a friend when Robert was small , " a messenger came to tell me , Bob was lost ; but by the time I reached the house , his mother had found him , and had him whip [ p ] ed - and , by now , very likely he is run away again . " The boys ' chronic obstreperousness may simply have been the only way they knew to attract their oblivious father 's sustained attention . According to Herndon , they rarely held it long . " On a winter 's morning , " he remembered , " [ Lincoln ] might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market house , basket on his arm , his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck , his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels , asking a thousand little quick questions , which his father heard not , not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there fast running after him , so abstracted was he . When he thus met a friend on the road , he said that something he had just seen , heard , or left put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or Egypt [ southern Illinois ] or elsewhere , and tell it he would and there was no alternative . . . but to patiently stand and hear it . " The stories his friends stood to hear were often strong stuff . After Lincoln 's death an old woman who had known him as a youth began to recite for an interviewer a piece of doggerel she believed he had written , then stopped , blushing furiously , and explained that since the " poem is smutty . . . I can 't tell it to you , will tell it to my daughter - in - law , she will tell her husband ; and he will tell it to you . " When a friend asked Lincoln why he didn 't publish his stories , he wrinkled his nose . " Such a book , " he said , " would stink like a thousand privies . " Such redolent tales would not have been spun out in Mary Lincoln 's parlor , but they were surely told in the upstairs bedroom , where her husband often retreated with his political friends , and that room remains , it seems to me , the place in the restored house most successfully evocative of its owner . There oval portraits of his Whig heroes , Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , hang above the black parlor stove ; on a baize - covered table rests the battered mahogany lap desk he carried in his saddlebags while riding the circuit ; his original shaving mirror is nailed to the west wall , startlingly high . Bargains were struck in this room , campaigns were planned , political news was received , and tactics were altered to fit new circumstances . Lincoln wondered at the skill with which she served as his hostess in the Springfield house , sometimes presiding over gatherings attended by three hundred guests - and once , if the local newspaper is to be believed , " thronged by thousands " inching their way through the downstairs rooms . But he also reserved the right to be a little bemused by it all . At one reception the guests were expected to serve themselves from pyramidal shelves piled high with sandwiches , fruit , and frosted cakes . " Do they give you anything to eat here ? " Lincoln murmured to the man ahead of him in line . Mary 's ambition was every bit as consuming as Herndon said her husband 's was , and while the evidence offered by some of her admiring biographers that she greatly influenced his political thinking seems thin , at least to me , she was certainly his most effective and persistent booster . " Mr . [ Stephen A . ] Douglas is a very little , little giant by the side of my tall Kentuckian , " she told a relative , " and intellectually my husband towers above Douglas just as he does physically . " When the Whigs won the White House in 1848 , it was she who wrote more than forty letters to Washington applying for a federal post and signed his name to each - and she who helped talk him out of taking the dead - end ones offered in response . He was destined for greater things , and so , she thought , was she . During the 1858 Senate race against Douglas , a sudden downpour forced Lincoln and a reporter to take shelter together in an empty boxcar . " My friends got me into this business , " he told his companion as the rain splattered through the open door . " I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate , and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was . . . . Mary insists , however , that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States , too . " He clasped his long arms around his knees and laughed . " Just think of such a sucker as me as President ! " Lincoln 's subsequent loss to Douglas was disappointing but not devastating . " I believe . . . you are ' feeling like hell yet , ' " Lincoln told one supporter a few days after the votes were counted . " Quit that ; You will soon feel better . Another ' blow - up ' is coming ; and we shall have fun again . " A national figure at last , he was flooded with invitations to speak , and in September he packed his bag , said good - bye to the boys , as he had so many times before , and set forth on a political swing through Ohio . This time his wife went with him . In Cincinnati , on September 17 , a large crowd turned out at the Fifth Street Market to hear him . Mary sat proudly near the platform . " There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us , " she heard him tell his audience . " Twenty - five years ago , I was a hired laborer . The hired laborer of yesterday , labors on his own account today , and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow . Advancement - improvement in condition - is the order of things in a society of equals . "
|
Well , I should have posted this yesterday , but I was a bit preoccupied . So , better late than never . In honor of Pearl Harbor Day ( yesterday ) , this is a picture of one of my relatives who served in WWII . This picture was labeled " Corsica , March 3 , 1944 , Frank Samsel , 3rd from left " . Francis I . Samsel was my Granny 's brother , My mom 's uncle . I don 't know a whole lot about him , but that he was the son of immigrant parents . His mother and father came to the United States from Poland at the turn of the century . Frank was the 2nd youngest of 9 children . Although , if memory serves me correctly , my Granny mentioned that she had several siblings that died at a very young age . The WWII record that I found for him states that he was Enlisted in the Army on 27 August 1942 in Philadelphia to the Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers , USA . It also states that he was only educated to grammar school . He was single without dependants . For occuption it just states : " Unskilled public service occupations , n . e . c . " . He was 5 ' 5 " and 117 pounds . I 'm unsure how long he was enlisted , but I 'm proud of him , nonetheless ! Me and Pop ( and Jake and Emma and Ivan ) made our rounds of the cemeteries today , with my new addition , Greenwood Cemetery . I got a pretty detailed map from a member of the organization that volunteers to help maintain the grounds . With that , I felt pretty confidant that we could find him ( and the other 5 people buried with him ) . We drove in past the newly remodeled main building and drove up to a " Receiving Vault " . . . that 's something I 've never seen before . But it was clear that they are making changes to that . We thought we drove up to about the right spot and got out to start wandering . However , none of the section markers matched the map . . . at all ! So , I assume they are reassigning the sections , somehow . We tried to work out roughly where his section should be and started hunting . From afar , the cemetery looked well kept , but as we walked , we came across toppled over head stones , others so sunken into the ground that all that was visible was the very top . Robinson , Robinson , where is Robinson ? There it was . And that 's all that is says , " Robinson " . No names , no dates . A bit of a letdown . I did wander around a bit more , but no other Robinsons to be found . I guess I 'll have to wait to confirm . There are plans to reset all of the stones in the future . You can see the top of at least one headstone in this picture . I wonder if this is just the top the stone ? Maybe they will reopen the office soon and someone can help me locate it for sure . Jonas Robinson was my 3rd Great Grandfather . Jonas was the father of John Raynor Robinson . John was the father of Thomas Crossley Robinson . Thomas was the father of Samuel Raynor Robinson . Sam was the father of Raynor Elmer Robinson . And Raynor is my dad . Jonas was born in England and died in Philadelphia . He moved his family to the US in 1868 . So , anyway . . . I wanted to find his grave back at Easter time when I went to the cemeteries with my Dad . We were going to Oakland Cemetery , which is right across the street from Greenwood . So , I thought I 'd look him up and go find his grave while we were out that way . I searched for the cemetery and found that it was under renovations . This is something I 've never heard of , but it sounds like a great thing . The downside is that : a . There was no office to contact to find out where he is and b . They were not allowing visitations . So , we made the rounds and I could see the work being done on the cemetery . They were remodeling the main house on the property . And I could see that the property really needed some cleaning up . Here 's a photo of what it looked like : Well , me and Dad are getting ready to make the rounds again . Hopefully , this Christmas he doesn 't just go do it without me . We don 't call him Quick Carl for nothing ! Based on what I read on the cemetery 's website , it seems they are allowing visits , but there is still no office on the premises . I did , however , find an email address for lookups . I 'm hopeful that they will get back to me and tell me where he is so that we can go find him . Maybe my next post will be a picture of his grave . Wish me luck ! John H . Dingler was my 2nd Great Grandfather . He was the father of my Dad 's Grandmother , Lettie Mae Dingler , AKA Mom Black , mother of Lettie Mae Black Robinson , my Dad 's Mom . This obituary halped me find Matilda ( Tillie ) 's family . I didn 't have her maiden name before I found this . Well , today is the second anniversary of my Mom 's passing . I still have a hard time believing that she 's gone . But , she is . So , I thought that it would be nice and therapeutic for me to share some pictures and memories . This is her high school graduation picture . She graduated from Nazareth Academy in 1957 with High Honors . This was often pointed out when my report card came home ! ! This one is a favorite picture of mine . She is getting ready for her wedding , at my Granny 's house and the lovely ladies assisting her are her Mother ( my Granny ) and my Dad 's Mom ( Grandmom Robinson ) . This was a little over a year after her graduation , November 1st , 1958 . This one was quite a few years later ! We traveled out west . That 's my Mom holding me up and my brother , Scott standing on the wagon . And a few years later , here she is cracking up at Julia ! Jul had a great time smashing up her first birthday cake and my Mom truly enjoyed her grandchildren ! ! I 'm so glad to have so many pictures to share ! This is me and my Mom at my bridal shower . We are both cracking up at my wedding cake topper ! ! Another fav ! Here she 's picking crabs apart with Jake . He just wanted to play with the claws and she was OK with that ; ) This was also in Ocean City . Donna Rae , Mom and Me at my Mom and Dad 's 50th anniversary party . She was actually quite angry with us for having it . She did not like to be the center of attention ! TOO BAD ! ! ! On the beach in that damned wig ! I am amazed at what she still managed to do while having those chemo treatments ! She was a hell of a roll model ! This is the Delaware Birth Record for Edward Aubrey Lee , Jr . He is the Grandfather of my brother - in - law , Rick Lee . I was recently adding some information to the tree from his uncle 's obituary and it led me to this record on Ancestry . com . It has a great deal of good information on it . Edward was born on March 30 , 1904 at 1212 Dupont in Delaware . His father was Edward Augustus Lee , who was 33 years and a Master Carpenter born in New Jersey . His mother was Jeannette ( not sure of the middle name ) Wallace , who was 28 years and born in New Jersey as well . James Benjamin Robinson . I grew up calling him Uncle Pete . He was my Dad 's Paternal Uncle . I got to thinking about him the other day , while Jake was playing his harmonica at my Dad 's house . My Dad grabbed it and played a song for them . I thought of Uncle Pete . He always had his harmonica . I can picture him sitting on the couch in my parents living room at Christmas time , jamming on the harmonica ( if that 's possible ) . He was really into it ! I 've been told for years that he was raised by Ida 's sister , Mabel . My dad and mom had told me years ago that Uncle Pete was raised by an Aunt . Never any mention of the father having passed away . My Dad didn 't know how young the brothers were when their father passed , so he just thought they didn 't have the money to keep him . Which is likely true , except that it was due to the fact that Thomas died . The family consisted of Ida Alice Mason , AKA Mom Kuster ( she later remarried ) , Thomas Crossley Robinson were the parents . They had my grandfather , Samuel Raynor Robinson in 1898 and his brother James Benjamin Robinson in 1901 . They lived in the Kensington section of Philadelphia on G Street . Hopefully it was a better place to be back then ! Thomas passed away in 1911 , the death certificate says it was from Epilepsy with mental derangement as a contributing factor , when Samuel was 14 and James was 10 . I 've been told that at this point James had to live with Ida 's sister , Mabel . Ida couldn 't afford to keep both children . It is my guess that Samuel was probably working already at the age of 14 , so he was contributing some income . I can 't find any evidence of the split of the brothers , however , due to the time frame . It all falls right smack in the middle of 2 censuses . In 1910 , They all lived with Thomas ' mother , Mary , at 3439 G Street ( I suspect Thomas was sick at the time ) . In February of 1911 , based on the Death Certificate they lived at 807 Schiller Street . By 1920 , the next census year , Ida was remarried to Henry Benhart ( unsure of spelling ) Kuster , AKA Ben Kuster and both children were living with them at 3546 G Street . So , this leaves me with my mystery . . . did Uncle Jim live with his Aunt Mabel ? My Dad and his brother Sam both recall this , however , Aunt Grace does not . She tends to have the best memory about all of the Robinson family stories . So , my Dad asked me to see if I could figure out if this is true or not ! So far , I cannot come up with a way to verify this . Uncle Jim never married . He was sent to Denver , Colorado by General Electric or Westinghouse to do electrical work there . As far as we know , he worked for them until he retired . While living out west , he developed a love of the rodeo . I am unsure whether he just liked to watch or if he participated . This is a great picture of my Granny Smyczynski , taken well before she was my granny and even before she was a Smyczynski . Her name is written on the back , looks like her writing to me . " Helen Samsel " . This dates it before 1932 , which is when she married my grandfather . I with I knew where it was taken , such a cool spot ! I would assume it was taken in Philadelphia , somewhere . . . but of that I can 't be sure . Talk about Spring Cleaning ! This is my Grandmom , Lettie Mae ( Black ) Robinson , washing her beautiful marble steps at their house on Cedar Street in Port Richmond , Philadelphia , PA ! She was a wonderful woman and I miss her . For some reason I thought about this picture today and thought I 'd share it . Not sure if it will motivate me , but it made me smile ! I am so jealous ! My brother - in - law , Rick Lee , has this great family wheel . It traces his family back to the 1500 's in England . His 12th great grandfather , Sir James Prescott , was a Knight in Standish , England . He lived from about 1510 to 1583 . It 's pretty well detailed , some are mising dates , but the mother 's maiden names are there , it 's pretty complete . He had it copied a few months back so that I could add his family to our tree , but I just got around to really looking at it . I don 't have a diary , but I do have scrapbooks from both of my grandmothers . They just collected some special newspaper clippings and things like that . My Granny Smyczynski had a lot of cards and cute little notes from Grandpop . Also some clippings from my mom 's school papers and her brother , Lenny 's military and work achievements . Then later stuff from and about my siblings and I . Grandmom Robinson had a lot of girl scout items , some work papers and military papers for my Grandfather and my Uncles . Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother 's kitchen . Why is this dish your favorite ? If you don 't have one that 's been passed down , describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family . This is a tough one to share , but I 'll do it . My mother made , by far , THE BEST Potato Salad . . . EVER ! My mother taught me how to make it . There are no precise measurements . There is a lot of " feeling " and taste to it . But it 's worth the work ! It was originally my Grandmom Robinson 's recipe and my Mom learned how to make it from her . Ingredients : Boil the potatoes until a fork easily pierces them , but doesn 't break them apart . Usually at least 20 minutes . Remove them from the pot one at a time as they are done . I have inherited many beautiful things from my mother . When she and my father moved , right after I got married , she passed along quite a few pieces of her furniture . I have her very old china cabinet and buffet in my dining room . I believe she acquired them when they had their vacation home in Ventnor , NJ . I also have a lovely set of Amber Patrician Depression glass that she collected over the years . I have enough to serve about 20 people ! However , when I first read this prompt , I immediately thought of my Granny 's beautiful sapphire and diamond ring that my mother gave to me on my wedding day . I knew that it was going to be mine . My sister got Granny 's engagement ring on her wedding day and my mom told me I would get the anniversary ring . I absolutely love it . I was 30 when I was married and I remember having asked her , years before , " What if I never get married , then when do I get the ring ? " It 's a good thing Chris wanted to marry me , because the answer was that I wouldn 't get it ! The photo doesn 't do it justice , but that 's it . My grandfather , Zigmunt , gave it to my Granny , Helen , on their first anniversary . I get the impression that he was a very sweet and sentimental man . My Mother had a framed hanky in her bedroom that on which he had written a cute poem for my Granny . Plus , I 've come across many other sweet little notes and cards from him . So , this ring was purchased in about 1933 . I really need to take it to the jewelers to have the shank strengthened , it 's very thin . So , I don 't wear it a whole lot , just on special occasions . But , I absolutely adore it ! How did they meet ? You 've documented marriages , now , go back a bit . Do you know the story of how your parents met ? Your grandparents ? I will never forget a conversation that I had with my father shortly after my mother passed away . We were going through old photo albums as I was putting together a slideshow to play at the viewing . He and my mother met in the mid 50s . He said he walked into my grandparents ( mom 's parents ) candy store . There was a girl playing pinball . She was pretty and she could play pinball better than most guys . He said " She was the girl for me . " That girl was my mother . Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great - grandparents ? Write a post about where they were married and when . Any family stories about the wedding day ? Post a photo too if you have one . For the marriage installment , I 'll be featuring my Great Grandmother , Antonina Nowak Smyczynski , 1878 - 1965 . In the pictures that I 've seen of her , she seems like a happy woman . My dad would have known her , I 'll have to ask him about her . This is the Marriage Certificate of Peter ( Piotr ) Smyczynski and Anna ( Antonina or Antoinette ) Nowak . These were my mother 's grandparents on her father 's side . They were married in Philadelphia , PA on August 4th , 1895 . She had only been in this country for 5 years when she married Peter . They went on to have 6 children , one of whom was my grandfather , Zigmunt , or James , or Sigmund , or Sonny Boy . These people went by many names . I had always been under the impression that my Polish family would be easy to research , since their names were pretty unique as compared to the Robinsons . Boy was I wrong , their names got butchered over and over . In the end , the Smyczynskis used the name Smith to fit in and get work . I am lucky that my Mom had saved a lot of this stuff . The original is falling apart , since it 's been folded for about 115 years . Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors ? Perhaps you were named for your great - grandmother , or your name follows a particular naming pattern . If not , then list the most unique or unusual female first name you 've come across in your family tree . I was not named for any of my ancestors . I was named after Rebecca in Vanity Fair . Yes , Becky Sharp , the slightly evil one ! My mom was reading it while she was pregnant and just decided she liked it . My siblings didn 't make fun of it , so it worked . Her first pick was Priscilla , but my brother began referring to me as Prissy . Then she liked Melissa , but he morphed Prissy into Pissy Missy , so Rebecca it was ! The worst that I ever got from my brother was Reba Reba , ondole . . . and I was OK with that ! So that 's the story with my name . As far as interesting female names , there are a few . Our family has a little tradition of female naming . It 's the Maes and Raes . My sister is Donna Rae , that is her first name , Rae is not her middle name . My nieces are Samantha Rae and Julia Mae . My grandmother was Lettie Mae as was her mother . One of my favorite names is Julianna , she was my Mom 's grandmom . And on my husband 's side there are some beautiful Italian names , like Splendora , Angelina , Maria Christina and Michelina . This is " Mom Kuster " along with my Aunt Norma and Uncle Sam . Her name was Ida Alice Mason Robinson Kuster . She was my Great Grandmother . My Father 's Father 's Mother . This was taken at the house that my Grandfather , Samuel Raynor Robinson built in Fox Chase . She is one of my favorites ! PS - The names were written on by my late Mommy ! Once again , in honor of National Women 's History Month , Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog presents Fearless Females : 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women 's History Month . March 1 - Do you have a favorite female ancestor ? I think it 's safe to say that I have several favorites . But , for today , I 'll mention the one I 've been researching this week . ( She 's actually my husband 's ancestor . ) Angelina Marrone Parlante was my hubby 's Great Grandmother . She was his Mom 's Mom 's Mom ! I am actually working on a mini - bio for her already . From what I 've been told , she was a lovely woman . Here are a few quick facts : She was the daughter of Italian immigrant parents . She lived in South Philadelphia . She was the oldest of 7 siblings . She married Rocco Parlante , who was born in Italy . They had six children . She lived from about 1888 until July 27th , 1961 I tend to be a pretty music oriented person , so I 'm going to go with a song ( or a couple ) . As I was deciding what to write about , I got to thinking about my childhood . I am the youngest of 4 children . My closest sibling , Scott , is 7 years older . Then , my sister , Donna Rae , is 13 years older and my other brother , no , not Darrell , Raynor , is 14 years older . I grew up in a couple hundred year old farmhouse in Trevose , PA and my siblings all took their turn living on the third floor ( the converted attic ) . While , I , AKA Pretty Pretty Princess , lived in the one real bedroom , other than my parents . When it was my turn to get the attic room , Pretty Pretty Princess got an air conditioner installed ! Anywho , what popped into my mind was the sound of my brother Raynor 's stereo coming down the 3rd floor stairs . . . specifically , Lynyrd Skynyrd ! I have a love of classic rock , that stems from hearing all 3 of my siblings ' music . But , I can clearly hear That Smell , in my mind , playing ! I was under the age of 12 . He then married , so I know it was before then . This then made me recall another fond memory of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song , Gimme Three Steps . I am pretty sure that is my brother , Scott 's favorite song . This memory is from when I was a bit older , but still , everytime I hear that song I think of him singing it karaoke or even dancing when we were both out at the bars together . I thank all three of them for leaving their vinyl home when they left . I added it to my collection , part of which is decorating our music room and bar ! Have You Seen My Roots ? is my favorite blog ! ( Besides my own , of course ! ) The author , Cherie , and I attended College together at Millersville University and knew each other through a mutual friend . I always enjoyed her company . That was quite a few years ago , I won 't mention how many . Cherie and I have reconnected , thanks to fabulous Facebook . She is the reason that I started my blog recently . I had seen her great posts , like this one , Wordless Wednesday - Hellooooooooooo Nurse ! , and they are always great ! So , I would chat with her about her posts and she encouraged me to start my blog when she saw some of my family discoveries that I had posted on Facebook . So , thank you to Cherie ! This is the grave for my Great Grandparents , Peter and Anna . They were both from Poland . They were my Mom 's Paternal Grandparents . I first saw this tombstone last year . My Dad , Emma and I went on a little tour of all the graves that he and my Mom would hit on their Christmas and Easter rounds . He wanted to make sure that one of us knew where everyone was to continue the tradition . It was very important to my Mother that each grave be visitied and have a grave blanket for Christmas and some flowers for Easter and Mother 's Day . This was our first stop . This is Holy Redeemer Cemetery in the Bridesburg section of Philly . It 's a very cool cemetery , if you are into that sort of thing . It has a big fancy entrance and it spans several city blocks , but the streeets continue through it . So to get to this grave , we drove into the entrance off of Richmond Street , then through a portion on the cemetery and then crossed a street , drove through another section of cemetery and then crossed a street . I think it 's pretty neat . We went there first because it is right near the Betsy Ross Bridge , quickest for me to get to ! My Dad had to remember how he could tell where the grave was and told me that years ago my Mom couldn 't remember where it was . Her parents took her when she was young , but she couldn 't place the plot . She found out that she had a cousin that worked for an affiliated cemetery and she looked it up for her . Peter and Anna have been on the rounds ever since . Peter died in 1948 , my Mom sort of remembered him . Anna passed away in 1965 , so she knew my 2 eldest siblings . I 've seen her in pictures , she looked like a happy gal ! My husband and his family had told me about this letter that they had received years back , but I had forgotten about it until recently . Well , Chris was able to dig it up today when I asked him and here it is . It 's a shame no one replied to him , however , I plan to respond and see if we can work some connection out . Dear Mr . Rueblinger , My name is Rueblinger too , and this also the reason why I am writing . I obtained your address from an American name register . Altogether there are 15 to 18 American families carrying this name . In Germany there are 18 holders of this name , mainly resident in Rhineland - Palatinate . After World War II , I found , after thorough research , the name Rueblinger twice in Southern Germany : There is a town called Rublingen in Baden - Wurttemberg ( ca . 5 , 000 to 6 , 000 inhabitants ) , and near Heidenheim - Gerstetten there is a Rublinger Farm , consisting of two farms that run the Rueblingen area . Our name Rueblinger originates traceably as a proper name from an Allamanic ( West - Germanic ) group of people . This group established itself , during the European Migration of Nations , mainly in Southern Germany by breaking through the Roman fortification mound Limes and settling south of this line down to the Alpes area . The name Rueblinger consists of two parts : First of the Allamanic proper name Ribol or Riebell , and , second , of the clan marking - inga = Ribolinga , in the spoken language Rueblinger . The above mentioned names of towns are pronounced Rueblinger / Rueblinga . I know from family deliveries that members of my family emigrated during the time after the plague and also after the Thirty Years ' War ( around 1648 ) , because a lot of misery had been caused by these influences , plundering and seizures of estates . However , I have not been able to find closer details through deeds or written documents , because church books had been lost through the disorders of war , fires , or wrong storage . I would be interested in what you know about your family from family deliveries . Maybe we could find out early common family history . Everything will , of course , be treated confidentially . I would be very pleased to hear from you and I am also willing to provide further information . Sincerely , Hermann RueblingerI assume by family deliveries he means births , but I could be wrong . I am unsure when Chris received this letter , but I wouPosted by So , today I am working on my photo correction skills . I have so many old photos , I can 't continue to ask my friend to correct them all for me ! So here it goes . I just downloaded a free photo editing program , called gimp . It 's produced by a company called GNU . In my previous life as a software engineer , my workplace used several products from this company . My Dad ( Raynor E Robinson ) at my Mom 's Bridal Shower in 1958 ( isn 't he cute ? ) First , I must select a photo . This one just needs a little bit of help . There 's a little bit of a crease on the trim of the doorway behind him . I also see a mark of some sort near his left eye . It also looks a bit washed out , but I 'm not sure if I will be able to fix that , I 've never been terribly good at that ! I guess we shall see ! Well , here it is . I think it looks better . A very subtle change , but it 's a start . At least I didn 't mangle it ! When I zoomed in really closely , I saw a , for lack of a better word , bubble in his hair that I removed . I think I 'm happy with this , I have some really old ones that need much more help ! ( Baby Steps ) I am a family history junkie ! I am finally working on organizing all of the data and pictures that I have gathered over the years . I started on this when I was in high school . I would sit with my mom and look at old pictures and she would tell me who everyone was . I started building a tree shortly after that . I would say that was about 1993ish . I became more serious in 2009 after my mother passed away . It made me realize how important it is to get the details from our family members before it 's too late . I also think it 's been quite therapeutic !
|
Uncomfortable silences . How is it that something as simple as silence can make us feel uncomfortable ? Over the years , I 've actually come to really enjoy silence . There is something pure and simple and beautiful about it . It also reminds me that sometimes in our lives , we overlook and try to avoid the uncomfortable silences , uncomfortable conversations , or uncomfortable situations . It is in the uncomfortable states of life though that I personally have learned and grown the most . If you have been on social media at all in the past year , you may have noticed the same trend that I have . 24 reasons why blah blah blah , or 16 signs you are yada yada yah . There are all these numbered lists . So reflecting back on my life I made my own list : 11 Uncomfortable Things That Were Completely Worth It . When I was in junior high I attended JYF at Wayland Mennonite with a group of my close girlfriends . When the time came to move on to MYF though , many of those friends either chose different groups to attend or went in a different direction altogether . I remember my mom giving me a choice of going to a youth group with my friends , or staying at Wayland Mennonite . I wasn 't sure why at the time , but I decided to stay here . After one of the first nights of MYF , I was a bit uneasy . Besides two or three other girls , the whole group was made up of boys . Growing up with just two sisters and being made fun of by boys in my past , I wasn 't thrilled . It didn 't take long though for those boys to become more than just boys to me . They became brothers . During those four years , I discovered God in a whole new way , thanks to that amazing group . I discovered God as not just this distant being we recited prayers to , but as an amazing force that works through people . With those crazy boys , and a couple of great girls , I was able to travel to two Mennonite Youth Conventions , in San Jose and Columbus , where I really felt God for the first time . It felt like falling in love . My heart was heavy , I felt a little sick , but I didn 't want to feel any other way . I was also able to travel to Atlanta and Denver on mission trips through the organization , DOOR . These two trips pushed me in ways I had never been pushed before . I heard stories of people coming back from situations I could hardly wrap my mind around . My heart broke for people who were struggling to get by on a daily basis . Most of all though , I caught a glimpse of the crazy urban world that I had never been part of , and it fascinated me . I attended Wartburg College after high school . I went in to college with an undecided major , and really no ideas for where I wanted to go with life . With my experiences with MYF still on my mind though , I decided to apply to be a DOOR summer staffer , or Discerner in DOOR lingo . I was out of my mind excited when I got the phone call that they wanted me to work in Denver . I don 't think I ever told my parents this , but I cried as the plane took off for Denver that summer . What in the world was I doing ! ? I just got on a plane to go to an unfamiliar city , where I knew practically no one . I didn 't really know what I was going to be doing there , I didn 't know who I would be working with , I didn 't know hardly anything about urban life or urban issues . When I got to the Mile High city though a buff Latino man , Antonio , the Denver city director found me and welcomed me with open arms saying , " Welcome to Denver . We are so excited that you 're here . " That first week I was so nervous the whole time . I met a ton of people , couldn 't remember my roommate , Lakewell 's name for the life of me , and I had four less than tidy male housemates for the first time . Before I knew it though , it became home , and I fell in love with it . An important part of our Discern training and becoming more connected as a staff came through sharing testimonials . Before that summer in Denver , I had never told anyone " my story " before . When my time around the circle came though , my voice shook and I felt a little sick , but I told them everything . I was in tears when I was done , but I was surrounded by comforting arms . Not only had I just spilled my guts to all my coworkers , but I had opened my door of vulnerability . I 've shared my testimony a few times since then with small groups , and as life continues on , I am working up the courage to tell more people . Not because I like getting sappy , but because it 's important for me personally , and for other people to hear . That day , I knocked down a huge wall and realized that I didn 't have to be tough all the time , I didn 't have to be right all the time , and it was ok to be vulnerable with other people . I learned that to truly love and be loved , I had to let other people in and see me for me . Growing up outside of Wayland , my experience with the public transportation system was pretty limited . So , when I moved to Denver , I had a lot to learn . Part of my job was finding the right bus route to get to the service agency my group had to go to , and getting everyone there safely and sanely . I spent a lot of time in the beginning studying the bus and light rail routes to get me different places around the city , but eventually I got the hang of it . With no car in either Denver or Hollywood , my discern locations , this newfound knowledge gave me incredible freedom . On my days off , I would hop on the bus , and go anywhere I wanted to in the city . I would ride to Sloan 's Lake , Cherry Creek , and Downtown in Denver and Beverly Hills , Chinatown , and the ocean in LA . I had many interesting , sometimes weird , and sometimes hilarious conversations with people on the bus . I also witnessed some drama , but more often than that , courtesy and kindness as people worked together to make the ride as easy going as they could for everyone involved . Something as simple as figuring out how to ride the bus gave me a release , and an escape . It really shows how trying something that is unfamiliar , even if you don 't get the hang of it right away , can be incredibly rewarding . I was very shy growing up , so talking to acquaintances was difficult for me , much less people I didn 't know . I realized that summer in Denver though that I had to get over that , and I had to do it fast . My whole job revolved around talking to strangers . Every week , a new group of people from all corners of the nation would come to the city . Part of my job was just connecting with those groups of people and building trust . I found out that the best way to learn about someone was to be quiet and listen to them . Everyone , rich , poor , small town folks , big city urbanites , regardless of race , gender , ethnicity , or anything else , everyone has a story to tell . Everyone has something about them that will blow your mind . Everyone has something to teach someone else , and everyone has something to learn from someone else . The key though was not just to hear what they were saying , but to listen . I met some of the most amazing people working for DOOR by doing this . I 've had the opportunity to have many in - depth conversations with people experiencing homelessness . Although somewhat uncomfortable at first due to the stigma that is attached to homelessness , I was able to gain a whole new perspective and understanding of the situation . Much like the groups that came to volunteer , I had to open myself up to simply listen and be with the people I spoke with . Although not a master in any of the subjects , I 've discussed theology , politics , and social issues as well as swapping travel stories and debating the best doughnut frostings with individuals that many people overlook due to their current situation . When I was living in Denver for my Discern summer , my sister and now brother - in - law came to visit . As we were taking a walk near 16th Street Mall , we passed a scruffy looking man with a large white husky and a shopping cart . My sister and brother - in - law continued on , speeding up their step a little bit as we passed him , but I slowed and said , " Good morning , Ted . " To them , he was just another homeless man on the street , but I knew that Ted was a regular at Network Café , a place for people in homeless situations to congregate and talk about G * d . He was a quiet man who absolutely loved his dog , Lucile , and was very kind and respectful . That moment was a reminder that we all need to be intentional about community , and not to overlook anyone because of appearance or social stigma . Also in Denver , one of my favorite places to take groups to volunteer was Sunshine Academy , a daycare for kids who come from low - income families . The daycare was run by two spirited , Muslim women from Jerusalem . Not only did I fall in love with the kids who came , but also I learned so much from the women about their religion and cultural traditions . They taught me about their food , how to dance in their traditional style , and how differences in religion or culture should not stand in the way of community . On a walk one day in LA , I approached a piano shop on Larchmont , not too far from my Hollywood house . I entered just to look around and admire the beautifully made pianos when a stout elderly woman walked out from the back . She spoke in broken English , asking if I played the piano . I told her I did a little , but was no Mozart . She insisted that I sit down at the nicest piano in the shop and play something . After I finished a little piece from memory , she clapped and smiled . We began talking about the pianos and how they were made . She asked where I was from , and what I was doing in Hollywood . When she heard I went to Wartburg , a light bulb lit up in her mind , and she began telling me all about how she knew about Wartburg as she was a German immigrant and had lived very close to the Wartburg Castle in Germany for some time . I left that little piano shop that day with the reminder that we are all more connected than we remember all the time . It is so easy to get caught up in our own little worlds , but we are more interconnected the strangers around us than we probably know , and it 's worth it to discover those connections . From opening myself up to talking to strangers , and having conversations with people who I would not have before , I discovered the message that DOOR introduces to all of the groups that come for a week to volunteer . That message is to remember that everyone has a story . Everyone has something to say and something we can learn from them . We just need to be open to listen . As a complete foodie , one of my favorite parts of traveling and discovering new places has been the food . Food has this unique power to bring people together in ways that nothing else can . People from all different backgrounds can come together and enjoy the same meal and that 's a really beautiful thing . When I lived in Hollywood , the cook for DOOR was a middle - aged Latina woman who spoke just about no English . Despite the language barrier , we cooked together every week . She showed me how to make chipotle chicken , how to properly peel garlic , and how the leftover scraps of avocado from the guacamole make smooth hands when you squish it between your fingers . Most of the food I ate in both Denver and Hollywood was way spicier than I had eaten before . Despite the trickle of sweat that would run down my face and the many glasses of milk I drank to wash it all down , I learned how powerful sharing food could be . Since then , I 've found joy in not only making food to share with others , but teaching others how to make some of the things I learned to make . So no matter who you are , where you come from , what you look like , or how you act , you are invited to the table to share not only a meal , but community and life . With most of my childhood as far as church goes spent in the Catholic Church , I prided myself on knowing my prayers . I learned the Our Father , Hail Mary 's , and many other beautifully written , poetic prayers that were given for me to recite . I would practice saying the Nicene Creed in my room , so that at church I wouldn 't mess it up . I prayed these beautiful prayers in church and Sunday school , but my prayers before bed were much more personal . Silently I would pray to God about things that had happened that day , what I was thankful for , and what I wanted him to take a special watch over . When I started attending things with the Mennonite church , I was a little taken back . They were freestyle praying . The prayers that were said were not written down , were not rehearsed , and were amazingly personal and honest . They were the same type of prayers I prayed alone at night , but this time they were being said out in the open in front of everyone . It was beautiful . I found it really hard though to speak up and say something though when the prayer circle came around to me , and honestly , I 'm still working on it . I have started doing this more and more over the years though and I see what an amazing thing it can be to pray straight from the heart . One Discover group we hosted in Hollywood had a girl in it named Anna . She was awkward , and got on the nerves of her group mates , but she was so passionate and had had such a beautiful soul . The last day the group was there , we all got in a circle and prayed for the person on our left . Anna was on mine , and I prayed that she would keep her beautiful spirit , and grow from within to continue serving G * d in the way that She intended her to do it . She was in tears after we were done , and she hugged me , saying that was exactly what she needed . Prayer is something that is important to share , because we are more powerful together than silently alone . I 've always been somewhat of a drama queen , as my family knows . As a kid I was always singing , dancing , acting , drawing pictures , making games , and just being creative . As I got older , I didn 't lose a love for all of that , but I felt as if I needed to suppress it for some reason . I joined choir in junior high , but purposefully sang really quietly so no one would hear me . I was in every play and musical , but usually just served as an extra . I wanted to fly as low below the radar as I could , because when I had stood out before , it wasn 't usually for good reasons . The confidence I gained though through being part of MYF and being more connected to G * d , got me through high school , and by the end of that I was finally starting to show people the gifts G * d had given me . I went from a shy girl to the lead in the school musical by my senior year . Since then , I have played the piano , guitar , and sang to lead worship , while hanging out with friends , and for some events . While in Hollywood , at Blessed Sacrament , a day shelter for people living homelessly , I wrote and shared poems alongside modern day Shakespeares who were living on the street . In Atlanta , I played the piano for women in homeless situations while they were served meals by my group members . I drew a rose in an art class for the homeless that sparked a conversation between me and a man named Ray . He said the rose reminded him of the natural beauty of life . We became friends and every week he would ask me to draw him another rose . Going into my senior year of college , with two majors already declared , I decided to add an art major . I couldn 't shake the love I had for getting my hands dirty and creating something beautiful and meaningful . In Miami , I was told I will be placed in a program where I will be working with art . I hope that I can help other people find a way to express their passions , work through their issues , and discover new meaning for their lives through art . Speaking in public used to be terrifying to me . I would do anything to avoid a presentation . I uncontrollably shake when I speak in public . For the longest time I spoke as little as possible for just that reason . My shaky voice made me sound scared , weak , and not very credible . I still shake when I speak in public , but I do it anyways now . I have learned through DOOR and my other experiences with community that speaking in front of people is so important to share news , stories , opinions , philosophies , and love . It serves as a way to promote common understanding , as well as a source of self - empowerment . As a shy , quiet girl growing up , I rarely had a chance to say what I thought about something , leaving many people to think I didn 't have an opinion about anything . Last summer I received an email saying that I was nominated by my DOOR city director to attend the Forum for Theological Exploration ( FTE ) Leaders in Ministry conference . At first I thought it was a mistake . Me ? At a ministry conference ? I decided to go though , and give it a shot . I was surrounded by some of the most amazing people I 'd ever met at that conference . Many people there were either in seminary , going to seminary , or pursuing ministry already through another outlet . I felt a little out of place . The individuals there encouraged me though to share out loud about where I was from , where I had been , and where I was going with G * d . I began that week scared to share my personal spiritual views with all of these people who were so much more accomplished and educated than me on the subject matter . As I began to speak though , and voice my opinion , I found that our views on many issues were very similar . What I had to say was valuable , relevant , and worth listening to by people who were so enthusiastic and passionate about the subject . I felt not only heard , but listened to that week . Through that , I created incredible bonds with people faster than I ever had before . It was an inspiring experience and I left the conference that week spiritually fed10 ) Applying to be a Dweller As many of my other classmates in college started scoring jobs and acceptances to grad school , I just knew I didn 't want that , or not yet anyways . So , with my FTE family behind me , I started looking into volunteer programs . Of course I knew about Dwell , and a little about YAV , but I also explored some others , just to keep my options open . When I finally was accepted and made the decision to go to Miami , I was thrilled and out of my mind excited . Then came the , sometimes not as fun part : telling everyone else . I 've told all of my family at this point . The most common response I get is a smiling look of concern followed by questions about how I 'm going to get by financially . It 's hard to explain to people why I would want to move to Miami where I 've never been , make almost no money , and to live in poverty for a year . Honestly , I 'm not sure if I can really explain why I 'm doing it either . I 'm going to let you all in on a secret . I am terrified to get on that plane in a month to fly to my new home for a year where I know no one , I don 't know the city , and I don 't know where I 'll be working . So why am I doing this ? Well , this is what God wants . It 's hard to explain or express that in any other way . When I was applying to jobs for next year , I knew I wasn 't going to be doing any of them . As I looked through the placement options for my year , I knew immediately where I was supposed to go , although I still interviewed with 3 sites . Before I was even accepted , I started telling people I was moving to Miami , because I knew it was going to happen . As scary as it is , this is what I am supposed to do this coming year . I have to trust that G * d is leading me to Miami for a reason . As I tell people what I am moving to Miami for , I am trying to avoid the word service . The best definition I have heard for service came from Father Gregory Boyle , the founder of Homeboy Industries in LA , which is the largest gang intervention center in the nation , and maybe the world . He said something like this : Service is good . It is a good thing to serve others , but service is just a hallway . It 's a nice hallway , but essentially , it 's just a hallway . This hallway of service though leads to a beautiful , elegant ballroom called compassion . In this ballroom of compassion individuals not only coexist , but they embrace each other , celebrate diversity , and genuinely love each other . When one person struggles , they all struggle , and when one person succeeds , they all succeed . I think this is an important thing to remember when it comes to life this next year . I am not going down to Miami with my superman suit on to save the people there , but instead to live in community , to learn from others , to listen to stories and to share my own . Growing as a kingdom of God and striving for compassion . Hey folks , I 'm Kelli A lover of people , adventures , and life in general , I am taking a chance this year and moving to Miami to learn to love in a whole new way . As part of YAV / DOOR I 'll be using my love for art to contribute to a community in a way I 've never been able to before . Come with me on my journey as I seek the uncomfortable , embrace diversity , and strive to live more purposefully . Let 's get mad in Miami ! Recent Posts 36
|
And when I speak of you , I do not talk of one single person whom passed beyond this life , but of the several I last spoke to , or seen , if only in a dream , and now remember as if still awake in that dream . I try to think of poetry , to form my words into something divine so my memories of you can float up into a heaven we can all recognize you in , someday , yes , that dreadful word someday I speak it like it will be tomorrow . When I type it a bit of thunder rumbled outside my window . Imagine that , thunder on Samhain ! What solace can be had this midnight with a thunderstorm ? You know how I am with storms . My heart trembles and my skin goose pimples as the rain falls as if it were made of pure electricity . Outside tonight the Halloween revelers are all a scream , running for shelter , their individual bonfires flooded out with the down pour as one more thunder strike silences everyone indoors . A peace falls again , darkness swells as the rain tumbles with the thunder , thunder growing more gentle now even as it swells in intensity all along the clouds . The rush of the wind makes me feel like I can hear your voice better now , telling me to call it a night , " go to bed , find a pillow , cry into it , or watch a scary movie , maybe take a shower , wash it all away like old make - up " and the rush becomes a fever . There is heat all over my face . I can 't help it . I carry you with me everywhere I go . I always will . But you are not a burden . You weigh nothing , yet only the sorrow is heavy , that is why I have to cry it out in doses , dump all these tears as much as I can and pray , at this moment especially , the Thunderers take it as my offering tonight . May my salt leave my eyes , stop stinging my sight so I can finish writing these words , release my sorrow - burden and go on pretending everything has not left a mark , and all will be as if you did not die . I know some of us say we do not die but we change from one life to the next and in this , yes , we must acknowledge death ! Accept death for what it is ! Do not hide sweet death and shy not from darkness … but why , why take you so suddenly ? ! What cause has your death sweetened for this life ? Those who say there is a plan for everything and that this is the work of God are mistaken . No master plan is behind this . Nature is random . Only people put a riddle , rhyme , and reason to it all . Poetry . Yes , forever the poetry . If only life were poetry ! In this end , the poetry still leaks , strays away from me , repeats , even when I am at my loss for words I am poem - ing - perhaps that is how I carry you all - I poem you with me , always . Like starting from a trail of tears to leaving a tiny , dry , dusty trail of glitter behind me as I reach the end of my lines , reaching for my solace . On Samhain , forty minutes before midnight , my only strength in lighting candles , petting cats , about to watch an old scary movie , a black - and - white one I never got to watch with you , but one of you would appreciate the most . I feel a smile somewhere in the darkness like an embrace . It lifts me up a little at my waist . Blood rushes back to my feet . My finger tips tingle back to life after a numbing - stabbing of pain when I was at my bursting of tears . I 'm not alone in carrying you with me . You can be with so many different people now . You need for no cell phone or internet . Travel isn 't a bitch anymore . Your body is only emotion , imagination , perfectly mobile in every meaning of invisible , impossible , and beyond understanding . You can fit into anything , can take the shape of everything , and be the talk of everyone like you never were as a person . No one need measure you by scientific means , or record you on video , or track you with any devices . You 're gone in the sense that no one need touch or see you if they don 't need to , or want to , and even if they do , you 're there in the sense you never could be when you were . As a story , more than fiction , but in this I can back that up with my poetry reference . But in my times of solitude , where I am in my place of believing experiencing you out of your old body , it is another burden to sleep in the closet . Sometimes , however , it is nice in the darkness . It can protect me from the garish light , stop a migraine cold in its tracks , and heal me during times when a crowd is an assault to my senses . When all I want to do is curl up with you , it would be nice to share what you have to say , yet the worry of the words … When I heard about his death , I knew it wasn 't a joke . Yet , like the song , it seemed like he " started a joke that sent the whole world crying … " Oh , Robin , sweet Mr . Williams , I wish that one smile of my own could have kept you alive . But no matter now that I 'm not laughing , I will smile for you . There is always hope . Eighty percent of us who seek treatment for our depression don 't kill ourselves , yet the strongest risk factor of depression is suicide . Yet we can 't ignore that fifteen percent of the clinically depressed end their lives . Many of those also suffer from substance abuse problems . I 'm not writing this as if this were some book report . Feel I need to provide some bright facts . * grumbles * I know too many people who have died at their own hands . The first death I ever witnessed was a suicide . He promised me and other friends that he 'd be everyone 's worst nightmare . Robin Williams disappeared just as violently as that boy I used to know . Those blue eyes of his sparkled with tears as much as laughter . Robin always reminded me of the kind of guy that 's the life of the party , but parties end , and he , like so many who suffer from depression , I can see turned to drink to keep that feeling of euphoria flowing … self medication they call it . I think all addicts are mentally ill . I 'm no addict , yet I can understand the despair that drags someone to the bottom of existence . I suffer from manic depression . In fact it is something that keeps me from writing , but sometimes it really gets me obsessively writing ! I have not updated my blog since I was critiqued harshly for writing too many posts that were my purest expressions of grief . I felt obligated to be of great cheer to write , yet as William S . Burroughs wrote , " A writer lives the sad truth like anyone else . The only difference is , he files a report on it " and that is very much like me . Like many , many other people . Oh , I 'm not unhappy all the time . At other times I 'm a pure joy jumping with glee and I can barely contain it ! Over the last few years I 've written a lot about my emotional pain , the scars of my personal grieving process over the loss of my mother and friends I boldly display whether or not anyone is reading , and not all poetry I produce is about one person or that thing that made me sad . However … All one can do is keep going , which makes things all the more difficult because even though everyone likes to say " help is available " or even we like to tell someone glum the bland statement " You need help " and the ever so useless " things will get better " , they don 't have a clue how to go about helping anyone , or themselves . Not unless you open up . AND even then not unless someone is there to listen . To just be there to listen ! I 've often been asked , " How can I help you ? " whenever I 've felt so down I might as well be crawling . Playing a supportive role takes doing nothing and comes with a lot of " don 't do this " rules . Like don 't judge . As well as one very important " be " and that is : be gentle . Being gentle to someone in pain takes a special kindness , far better even than attempting to understand . When someone is in physical pain , or suffering from a bleeding wound , would you be tough with them ? Soothing the illness helps ease . We want to transform " disease " to " ease " - the depression can 't go away , no one can make it disappear , but we can make the ways we endure it easier by simply helping each other reach peace . The path to emotional wellness is also a physical health issue fraught with so many ups and downs , I 'm surprised anyone survives it . Few folks truly feel inclined to believe a person who eventually turns to suicide to end their constant suffering ( not that I 'm condoning it , mind you ! ) justifiably did it to truly end their true suffering . What many don 't realize is that depression is long term suffering , especially since any kind of depression isn 't just simply explained away as a case of the blues . I believe when suicides happen , individuals are in deep pain as serious as with any disease . Robin Williams was an actor whose struggles to keep sober and to combat his constant manic ups and downs wore him out . Even though he loved his family and friends , I am thinking that most likely he just wanted that constant pain to end . I 'm sad that he died and lost the fight , just like I am broken - hearted over anyone who finally succumbs to any other fatal disease . Because , believe it or not , depression kills . Depression , more so than experimenting with recreational drugs or what - not , leads people to numb their pain with alcohol and other substances . Whether or not you stay alive , it kills you , eats you up . You can have every luxury in the world and still have that unreasonable , unexplained black emptiness erasing you inside . I don 't need to list suicide statistics to tell you how much of a problem this violent way to end life is in this country , especially among men , impacts so many families and friends . It 's a kind of death that continues to cause far more pain than any other passing , mainly because it is unnatural for a living being to turn against one 's own need for self - preservation . A person may decide to act on their need to end their pain , but the body itself will still fight on instinct to survive everything you put it through . I 'm no stranger to suicide attempts myself , but it 's never the longing to die , only to end pain that was at the heart of every attempt I ever made . Just so we 're clear , I am not telling you I 'm suicidal now ! But Robin 's death brings up all those dark memories , and makes me think of people who are suffering as I write these words , and I weep many nights just thinking how helpless I am to fight against my own depression , let alone help anyone else with theirs . Yet it is because I 've suffered , I know there is a need to lend a shoulder to cry on for someone else , even if they may not actually be crying out loud . Most times I am outside of myself , aware that there are lives all around me not in pain who are simply alive , and it is that life I am grateful for being there . Animals especially surround me everywhere I go . This summer 's filled with life in my neck of the woods . Much has changed since last New Year 's Eve . I 've been unable to bring myself to write much . Perhaps because I 've been more active outside than on the inside these past months since the death of my closest companion . 2013 seemed to be a year of many transformations , actual death being just one of them . The numerology for the year equals 13 , the number of Death in the Tarot ( and all kinds of bad luck if you believe in that sort of thing ) . Death has crossed my path before , yet this last time was my most intense experience so far because my cat was so emotionally close to me . He wrapped his body around my face every night . That kind of intimacy … the loss of it … it changes you . And yet I could not have a home without a cat . 2013 will mark the year I lost and found cats . On October 11th , I invited a new kitten into my life , Velvet , so full of fierceness , spirit , and glee , it 's impossible to be depressed around her . She keeps me on my toes , yet she doesn 't sleep with me like my boy did . He was the lover . She 's the fighter . Both of them teach me how to champion on . But Death visited me in other ways as well . I changed the way I behave online , mostly . I had to give up so many ways I used to operate for fear and sorrow at causing others distress and my own , sort of . I gave up on a lot of anger , grew obsessed with everything I said , drew myself up in knots . My body took a toll . I 'm still healing myself . The loss of old relationships still smarts , always will , the heart never forgets . I re - thought about the way I communicate , realized that much of the way I am is really who I am , and that problems some people have with me is really their problem ! My mistake is apologizing for myself for being myself . I learned that if you go on doing that too often , it gives people the impression that if I don 't believe in myself , how can I be authentic if I 'm unbelievable ? Well … I am unusual , but I think you know what I mean . I still blame myself for old friends cutting contact with me , and it took a great deal of trial and error to avoid the temptation to write publicly about it , but I managed to slow down talking about my personal life too much . No amount of anyone shunning me will ever shame me . The Sun was my Tarot card for 2013 and it shined through me in the way that I was successful creatively . I completed the playing card project , yet my agent and I are not on speaking terms . Even though I cannot sell my work outside the reservation , I learned a valuable lesson professionally . The sun 's light reveals everything , and it also sent many new friends my way . To make up for the loss of the old , I experienced renewal with people all around me . I continue to experience a spiritual and psychic resurgence in friends . My circle is wider , and thicker and I am thankful . Every year I write down a wish that is more like a goal : an intention . 2013 's intention was to secure true and better friendships . Putting that intention out there and meditating upon it attracted to me all types of new and exciting personalities , including spirit guides . I have yet to write about it at length , but this year marked a new venture : I have started to incorporate my art with my spirit medium abilities . It all started with a dream I had on October 2011 of a woman I had not met and felt compelled to draw her portrait , when I later saw her face online and learned she was the friend of a friend , it was such an exciting revelation , I had to expand on the portrait and paint it . When I decided to paint her and the spirits all around her , the more of them appeared to me . So after the portrait , I bought I new sketchbook and decided to keep a visual diary of visions I would have . The practice of this " paranormal portraiture " grew and grew … I now participate in paranormal investigations where I can sketch what I " see " within my mind 's eye . The results have been exciting , with me often capturing personalities from the previous centuries , leading me ( no matter what ) to study local history and discover our ancestors , leading also to a renewed respect and awe at how they survived . Mostly I 've been investigating at The Cottage Cafe in Plover , WI , a historical landmark known as one of the most haunted places , but also a quite most wonderful place to be . I 've made a lot of friends there ! My Tarot card for 2014 is The Chariot : I am moving forward with a better sense of direction and utilization of my abilities . I feel more balanced , ready to get going . There is so much more for me to do . Much love from me to you ! I promise to catch up with all the subjects I left unfinished . There is so much I haven 't yet said . So many words I 've only thought . In one half hour the new year 's here . Oshun told me once : " It doesn 't matter if we didn 't mean as much to those we loved , what matters is that we loved , and what mattered is your love had meaning for you . You have to really love with everything you are , don 't let that be forsaken , especially by your self , because if somebody else didn 't think you meant anything , and you now think you don 't mean anything because what they think matters more - that 's two people 's worth of power overcoming the love you could have helping you survive . You gotta live on your love . " " When will you be done with all this blubbering ? We 've given you a new day , time has come to wash away , a new skin has grown , can you not feel the underneath , the twitchering - feeling - slickery - flickering ? Lick at it . Roll on it . Dance with it . Take your beauty back . Heal . " " It 's also in your painting . Look closer at what you do . You don 't do anything without a reason . And you were never nothing . " This song especially speaks to me of the losses of life and friendship I 've endured this year . I understand the pain and the death , but don 't know why we have to lose people we love in this world . I wonder at the magic of the other world … at what may be waiting beyond my wondering . * Coming up soon : So much to talk about ! So much has happened ! Exciting news , strange paranormal happenings , new friends , renewed vigor , and finally getting my act together as pieces of my puzzle come together . Wish I had all the time in the world to write it all down . Samhain 2013 marks a little milestone for me as I finish a playing card deck and start a new venture as a spirit medium and paranormal illustrator . Yes , you heard that right . Plus , something adorable has brought joy into my life . I have a baby girl ! Um , kitten . Her name is Miss Velvet Rose the Lady Monster . That story I have to save for next time . I cannot wrap my head , or heart , around it , and so perhaps that is why it stings my consciousness - how can anyone stand the pain of a love not meant to last , or dare go into a relationship only meant to last for a short while ? Some say ' better to have loved or not at all ' and all the better for the loss of it , because at least there was a love to it , eh ? But isn 't that all bullshit when there really is no reason for the loss to begin with ? ! Why plan to put an expiration date on love at all when there is no reason for forcing an end , especially right as love is going well , especially when love is already leading to so many other shared experiences between lovers who are still alive , young , happy , and so well off together ? No death is wedging an eternal distance between them . Nor illness severing their bodies apart . There no need to cease sexual concourse for lack of interest and energy . The blessings of the Gods be upon those whom togetherness has been bestowed , for there are those of us who suffer day upon night for years in the Kingdom of Severance . What know They - the ones who cheer frequent one night lays - of true romance , the kind that brings comfort to the heart and soul after the long day 's hurt spent in heaviest loneliness ? Who more deserves love - the rake on the move seeking a woman in every town , or the woman lost in the woods seeking family and home ? I do not care for men with their petty excuses for romance when offered to women they seem to respect for a short while , or for only as long as they give of their bodies . Friendship with those men only seems to last as long as the sexual interest , too . The moment ends when love 's erection is nothing but that - the erection - and the expiration date on that is only as good as a woman 's looks , worth as much as she gives , and revived as often as she can please him . Am I bitter ? No , angry . Because men lie . Some tell you they love you only as long as you keep giving them blow jobs ( only for one example ) , and then they stop when you want friendship in return , turning any once joyful sexual encounter into ' turning you into their whore encounter ' and that writes a coupon for ten times the disrespect for one ounce of love . And before you can say " why did you go there in the first place if you didn 't want to be considered a ' ho ? " I 'll tell you I was promised quite often in many a relationship a much more respectful relationship ( not to mention reciprocation ) . Not all men commit such crimes , and many more who do try to make up for their sins against women , and yet foul up when it comes to friendship when they suspect we love them , not for who they want us to think they are , but for when we care about them despite their flaws and know them for who they really are . Suddenly , the closeness ends . A guy friend turns me away . Oh , no , she no longer worships me … or , no , she does worship me ! Don 't love me ! No one love me ! Only * do * me ! Don 't discover the man behind the penis ! Runaway or I 'll run you through ! Or at least that 's what I 'd imagine him screaming as he does flee . It has happened several times in my friendships with men , especially ones who like to keep their friends at a distance and their ex - girlfriends closest . Why do I get the break - up the ex - girlfriends should get , not the other way around ? I suppose there is no room for other kinds of love in one man 's life . Cop outs like there 's not enough time really mean he 's not interested because I 'm not fuckable . I 'm not stupid . Men lie in many different ways , especially the ones who vow the hardest not to . And if this lady doth protest , cry , panic , and get depressed ? His other women pals protect him and call me enemy , but all of us come to the same delusion , all of us fall at the edge of the hero 's blade , the one we blindly believed in and still wish I could . He was my hero . But what they don 't tell you in the epic stories is that heroes are certain death for those who love them and stay true . Eventually they will be as short - lived as their love , yet who 's to stay that is the way it is meant to be ? Who are you or I to write the rules ? It feels a whole lot unfair . Am I bumming you out ? Think I 'm too harsh ? You bet I am . But you know what ? The fire of it heals . It 's like Kali . It has me picking up my own sword . Got me cutting the air , cutting off what hurts , dancing with swords . Feeling like my own woman again . Proving to myself my love matters . That no man will ever again try to destroy me like this , oh , no , not without a fight . ~ Just a touch of winter chill for the second day of August , because I am already anticipating fall . Already there is a chance for snow in my heart . Today I am feeling angry . I did not get the chance to " pal around " online like I hoped with someone tonight . So , off the top of my head , I wrote this poem about two dueling swordsmen who are two former friends - like in a classic story - forced to face each other , a fight to the death , but instead of pleasing their masters , they kill each other instead . The last one alive is not nearly as dead as the other . He has used his own heart as scabbard for his sword and walks into the western sunset . His companion is beginning his death rattle . Both are angry that all came to this . Metaphorically , nothing really to do with any of my friends , just over my love for swords and sorcery fantasy . And simply wishing I could have talked with my friend tonight about adventure and heroism like I so long to all the time , rarely getting that chance to . Heart - broken , but only for the moment , I end this blog post to go back to my studio to draw , weep , draw some more , get to bed early … It won 't always be like this , I hope . ~ Dear Mom , I do not remember what you looked like the first day of my life , but I will always remember what you looked like on the last day of your life . It still bothers me that you left on that sunny day , March 23rd 2010 ( a day that would have been your favorite kind of day ) without me being there to hold your hand one last time . I am so sorry that the last night you were alive proved too overwhelming for me . I did , however , kept stepping back into and out of the room , taking breaks like deep breaths , and stretching out on the gaudy floral print couch in the waiting area . I wanted to spend the entire night , stay all day , be as vigilant as a knight on a mission beside you … I do not like that I was weak while you were there struggling to be so strong . My body just could not keep up with my sense of duty . Or was I just lazy ? Was I selfish ? These questions come up after years of me working on forgiving myself . I hope you can forgive me . I 'm writing about you on my blog . Some people who know you , and strangers , too , will read this . While you were in a home , you never got to explore what being on the internet was like and blogging was a complete unknown thing for you , but you loved writing prayers , hymns , and children 's stories . If you had the control of your hands , and your eyesight revived , I believe you would have loved blog writing because it is so instantly accessible to readers and other writers . You had a lot of stories , Mom , and I never got to tell you how grateful I was to learn the value and healing power of storytelling from you . You always taught me to write out my feelings and thoughts . You were a writer yourself and you loved to sing . I 've been carrying on your tradition of singing everyday at home , making up impromptu love songs about friends and my cat , and writing an essay each week to record my reflections . By your example , I learned how to properly leave evidence of my existence behind so I won 't disappear and that I would never have lived for nothing . Yes , Mom , you were always right . I have a life purpose . I won 't give up . You didn 't give birth to a loser . You gave birth to a daughter of God . And that is the other thing I want to address . I never again want any member of our family to be rejected over what they believe . I 'm sorry you and I didn 't always see spirit to spirit , yet , wasn 't it interesting how strong we were / I am when it comes to our love of the Divine ? It is never about religion . It was about our personal relationship with the Gods . Even though you never saw them as multiple , I respected , and still respect , the many ways in which humanity sees God . I promise that when I pass that I will not disallow any member of our family , and none of my friends , the opportunity to publicly turn and relate to the Gods via the religion of their choice . I want my funeral interfaith . I want my life to be interfaith . I will still be a stalwart Witch , but I will refuse to be anyone 's enemy based on differences of faith and spirituality . We had our differences , Mom , and many misunderstandings , yet I feel your spirit is at peace , that you know , now , that all is love . After you left your body , and the last of your breath escaped your lips , where did you go next ? Do you remember how angry I was at your church pastor ? I was , in two words , jealous and paranoid . He got to be there when you died . I didn 't . Sure , I was happy you had clergy with you , but I needed to be there at that moment . I could have been there , if only … ! That day my brother met with your pastor to work out the best way to honor your memory . I was told to stay in the car or hang out in the church while these men had their meeting . You know that my brother was only trying to spare me the gory details and emotional pain , but he was wrong to leave me out of the memorial planning . When they locked themselves in that office down the hall , I felt shunned . I sat in what felt like a place miles away , isolated in a chilly office with glass walls that went all the way up to the ceiling , alone on a sticky , plastic , green chair , waiting too long alone . Alone , surrounded by strangers alone , alone and made uncomfortable by people who were using the event of your death as a means to convince me to join your church . Torture . So I stomped into that hallway and pounded on the door . Foolish me ! I almost screamed murder . I needed to know every detail of your death . Like I needed to know all the details I didn 't know about your life , all the things you never shared with me . I realized after you died that there was a lot you left out in the stories you told me . So many moments , traces of you to uncover … What happened to you ? ! It hurt me to desire to know ! " It was a beautiful , peaceful passing , " the pastor said in a tone that made me wince . He mentioned the Biblical scripture DVD that had been playing for your comfort non - stop in your room had come to a pause when you took your last exhale . It was at the tail end of a passage from the book of Romans that went : " It is Done " and the pastor gushed about how moving , godly , amazing it was . It was as if he had scripted it for a movie . It stung my last nerve . You know I 've got a poison tongue , Mom , and I let it lash . " I want to know EVERYTHING ! Don 't give me some story to comfort me . I NEED to know what happened to my mother , mister . Don 't spare me because , for all I know , you put a pillow over her face and took her out of her misery ! " I could not hold back . I may have said more than a few rude words . My voice may have carried beyond the office . When my brother spoke calmly to me , I talked over him , told him to back off , told him how unfair it was to leave me waiting for so long in the office lobby . I accused him and the pastor of talking about me , how are we going to handle Coreene 's pagan daughter ? Will the Witch disrupt the church service ? Shame on her for being a Witch and causing her mother so much heartbreak ! but worse yet I was paranoid about everyone at that church thinking that 's the woman who broke her mother 's heart so bad that she weakened and died and maybe , did you , Mom , did you spend many days and nights crying over me ? As brother half - hugged me , apologizing for not including me in the meeting with your pastor , I sank into the leather couch … Why am I remembering all the couches I sat on while you were dying ? Strange . Anyway , where was I ? The pastor fulfilled my request and told me the uglier details about your death . Every morbid detail was a relief . I think it strange how people thought hiding the details would make me better . I find it fascinating , Mom , how being told the details of what happened to your body helped me to relax . It was the same numbing comfort I felt when I last touched your body and kissed your cooled cheek . Brother and I requested , and I hope you didn 't mind , that we got to spend some time with you in the hour after you died before they would take you away . You were still in your little cotton nightgown with that green shamrock pillow you made under your right wrist . The night and days before , brother and I took turns holding your hands , sometimes he took the left , me the right , and so on , so forth . I enjoyed swabbing your lips with water and touching your baby soft hair . In those final times , you seemed like you were becoming a baby again . Your face was a little bloated , but smooth and silky . In death , with all the blood drained , you seemed carved out of alabaster . You weren 't yet like ice . My lips carefully kissed your left forehead and noticed it was clammy - how it feels when someone has a cold sweat due to a fever . As I looked at your face , there was no question you were gone . Even with eyes still open , the spark that was there was gone . I sometimes go to bed afraid of waking up in your dead body . My body is so much like yours was . The last time I saw your face was a preview of how I will look like when I die . They call it shock , the zombie - like - numbing - comfort - daze where you understand that someone is really dead yet not really gone and you walk around feeling like a lost child or orphan , but more like a senile elder who completely forgets how to get back home . I wanted to stay with your body , hold your hand some more . Did you see that , the time I attempted to entwine my fingers around yours , but then , as if shocked by static electricity at the stiff - clay sensation of your joints when I tried to open your hand , I jumped . Then I really felt bad for noticing how your blood , a deep blue - almost - purple , pooled underneath you . I looked back at your face . Your mouth was the open part of an empty seashell . Your chest was still slightly moving as air continued to escape from you . It was a whisper - gurgle that nearly gave me hope , but , no … " Tina ! " You 'd scold me and make that tsk ! noise that , to this day , can drive my brother crazy , " Why dwell on something like that ? Tell your friends better stories about me . I wasn 't just this corpse . I was your mother , so make me nice . " I can imagine us like we were back in the mid - 80 's drinking a diet Pepsi , nibbling on chips and dip . " But , Mom , that was a seriously strange moment , one that is deeply dented in my memory and worth reporting because it really happened . Some people will never see the bodies of their loved ones moments after they die . They may just see the made - up , dressed - up body after the morticians display them nicely in a coffin . Others still will never get to see them at all because the body has badly decomposed , horribly damaged , or just immediately cremated which is often requested by some patients who refuse to let their dead bodies be seen . " I 'd then pause to drink my Pepsi and Mom would make her mouth go all crooked like my mine does while thinking of what next to say . Oh , Momma , I know how much you loved keeping things proper , respectful , and pretty . I must have been embarrassing at times . You wore bright yellows and pinks , while I wore blacks and deep plum and wines . Your lipstick was bright orange rose , mine was cranberry red . My eye liner was thick when I was a teen . As an adult I would , and still do , streak my hair with colors you 'd rather see me wear on a blouse than coming out of my head . Your hair was always slightly retro . I still fondly remember your carefully sculpted beehive structured hair - dos from the early 70 's graduate into the puffy perms you sported in the 80 's and 90 's . I so loved it when your hair went completely white , not grey , just this baby seal white so fine , it was like the angel dust we used as Christmas decoration . How 's that , Mom ? Did I paint you prettier with my description now ? I sometimes forget to stray away from the morbid and hold back and use the softer , more pastel and Easter - sweet tones you love . Do you know now that Spring reminds me of you forever ? When I celebrate the Vernal Equinox , I start to mourn like I do at Samhain . Mother , you are my Kore , my Persephone , and my Demeter . The two weeks after you died , visions of you as a girl dressed in Greco - Roman attire singing all sorts of songs , ones you wrote , Hymns you sang in church , and ones more ancient I did not recognize , interrupted my sleep each night around 4 in the morning . Most people would be freaked out by this and think , OH . M . GEE . MY HOUSE IS HAUNTED . But your daughter is a Witch , spirits aren 't always giving me a scare , and there is no way I am going to be frightened by the after - death presence of my mother who is cheerfully sharing with me the joy of being freed from a body that broke down . I am immediately anxious now . Now , Mom , you know how I hate it when anyone puts any kind of pressure on me like that , and you know how I like to take on challenges I really cannot meet . So , come on , hurry up and get it over with ! " Promise me that , no matter what , do not let anyone get away with making you feel sorry for yourself . Remember I love you . You have to take care of yourself . I did not raise a bad person . So , come on , Tina , stop crying and give yourself a break . Keep singing . Don 't stop dancing . Because within you the beauty of all our mothers shines out of you ! You 'll see . " I 'm back to myself alright . I never feel like I 've " lost " you , Mom . But it gets lonely sometimes . I still have dreams of the days we gathered at Aunt Madge 's . I often visit Aunt Sandy 's apartment as if it were 1986 again , but she 's not sick , no one is , all bad memories fade away . Everything 's forgiven . It is the fantasy that motivates me - the candle I hold even in the wind and carry in the rain - a love that despite any dispute is too stubborn to burn out . Mom , tell our family , show them all , how much I love everyone . This is no lie . It flows out of me like a prayer . May it be carried to heaven , answered and dropped down to earth with the rain that fell today , and soak into the ground , bringing peace , popping out the green and flowers . Blessings be and wishes true , I have to say it one more time for good measure : I LOVE YOU ! " One thing that has been constant in my life : black cats . I am their familiar . From the first kitty I remember from childhood , Midnight , to my gentleman tom , Nightshade , to my beloved Mr . Snuggles , the Midnight Angel ( may they all rest in peace ) . " Today I have two new cats in my life who fill my days with great joy : my little dark chocolate queen , Miss Velvet Rose , the Lady Monster , and a white calico lady , Calie Flora , the Rising Phoenix ! " " One thing I can never stop talking about : my cats ! They are my little daughters . The three of us are a merry coven and we all love to cuddle . " This was the way Mr . Snuggles and I used to cuddle every night from Midsummer 's Eve 2008 , til the end of his days , August 30th 2013 . I miss him dearly . But because he lived , I live for him . Post was not sent - check your email addresses ! Email check failed , please try again Sorry , your blog cannot share posts by email . % d bloggers like this :
|
15Feb2017 & baby makes 5 by Jessica Hey Everyone , can 't believe it 's been about a year since my last post and ironically this post is somewhat the same . A lot has happened in a year . For starters we had another baby yup baby number 3 and I 'm writing this because many of my friends and followers on social media are convinced that we will have another baby soon , but unfortunately that is not the case this last time around . Our second son Jace was only 6 months old when we found out that I was expecting again . Total shocker since we thought we were done having babies . I was getting ready to go on a road trip with my two boys to Miami to visit family and of course a couple weeks back I still had not gotten my monthly friend , lol so that morning my husband was like just take it to have a piece of mind while you 're gone . Well sure enough I took the test and bam written nice and clear POSITIVE my mouth dropped , I came out the bathroom and once again Bill knew it was positive ( my face always gives it away , lol ) We both knew that moment we were having another baby there was never a doubt in that . { Our announcement } When we found out that our second baby was another boy we were over the moon . We were so happy that we were giving our oldest a brother to grow with and bond with , but in the back of my mind I didn 't feel like our family was " complete " as people say when they know their family is a whole . I felt more fulfilled and even though I knew ( well I thought I did until I got pregnant ) that Jace was going to be our last baby I just didn 't feel complete . I felt like something or someone was missing in our family to actually complete us ( if that makes sense to you ) I just felt in my heart that maybe we were meant to have another baby , a girl to make our family whole , but just didn 't think that would really happen . well now that I knew baby number 3 was coming I was convinced I was going to have another boy and honestly I was OK with that . I was ready to take that role of boy mom . I was ready and learning to accept the fact that I was going to be the only girl in my family . Fast forward to 17 weeks pregnant and about to find out if we were having a boy or a girl . We did a gender reveal photo shoot with the talented and friend of mine Rachel owner of RachelVPhotography . com here in Orlando , Florida . Anxious , excited , nervous for what our gender reveal was about to be … Then boom PINK powder EVERYWHERE . I was so confused and I couldn 't see the actual color that was surrounding all over us . All I saw was Bill 's face with a huge smile and the kids covered in powder . Still unsure Bill threw the remaining powder at me to and then it hit me WE ' RE HAVING A GIRL and the tears started to come down and I loved that at that moment our emotions were being photographed and I was always have these moments forever . As all pregnancies this one was just as different as the last one . I experienced almost everything the opposite as my last one . With our girl I got really bad skin from red spots to dry skin ( Not cute at all , lol ) I also had a bad stuffy nose and not just for a few days this went on for weeks and weeks definitely not fun at all , but I knew it would all go away and the best reward would come out of all this … our baby girl . We were scheduled for December 13 , 2016 at 9am to have our girl . That morning came and we were up and out of our house by 6am . Thank god for my family that came from Miami to help . They stayed with the boys while we were in surgery , they came later on that day . We were then called in and they start to prepare me , put my name tags on , change my clothes into those gorgeous gowns , lol then the best part . Needles . I 'm then connected to the monitor to keep track of baby girl and make sure everything is going good on her end . Epidural comes next and last . We wait till I 'm numb which for the first time took forever . About 20 minutes later and I was ready to go . 8 : 58am . It is now go time . Bill and I are ready and heading to the OR . Oxygen tube is in place and we 're ready to bring baby girl into the world . As I laid there I felt some pressure not much . Some time in between them starting and before she came my two doctors that were working on me asked to call in one of my other doctors . Not knowing what was happening I heard them say " We need Dr . Ortiz in here now we need another pair of hands " I started to get nervous , but kept myself calm because I saw Bill 's face he looked worried , but was trying to keep his cool for me . We fed off each other and somehow managed to calm each other done . Dr . Ortiz then came in she jumped right in and started to help . I kept hearing all 3 doctors talking but couldn 't clearly make out what they were saying all I know was that Dr . Ortiz kept looking over the curtain that they put up when you have a C - section and said to us " No more babies mommy , that 's it you are done you cant / shouldn 't have more babies " not knowing what she meant with that Bill and I were jut like no we 're done we got our girl we 're happy and DONE ! This was when I knew something was up and not with the baby but with me . . She kept coming over the curtain and kept repeating herself that this was it I was to not have anymore babies . . At that point I looked at Bill and he looked pale . I came to realize reason he was getting pale was because he was smelling burn skin , my skin ! At 9 : 39am we welcomed a beautiful baby girl named Joyana pronounced Joy - Ana Catherine weighing 8lbs 6oz 21ins of pure love . It was the happiest moment to know she was out and OK . Bill kept going back an forth between the both of us until they brought her to me and put her on my chest for some skin to skin time while they basically put me back together . 10 : 51am and they were finally done . Now if you ask me that 's a LONG time in the OR for a C - section . I 've had 2 before this one and they both had lasted no more than 45 minutes or so . SO you do the math in how long I was in there . Recovery went well and I was out of the hospital 2 days later . Fast forward to my one week postpartum appointment and I see one of the doctors that delivered Joyana . She walks in and says " how you doing " and shakes her head like wow cant believe what we went through with you . I say I 'm fine just very sore as if I did a million sit - ups , lol . She then went on to tell me how they do not understand how my baby was able to stay in my uterus the whole pregnancy . My mouth then dropped and I asked her to explain to me what the hell happened in there . She then told me my uterus is done and that I can 't get pregnant again . I have a hole in my uterus on one side and on the other side I have a small window where the wall of my uterus is very thin which means it could also rip there if I was to get pregnant again and on top of that I had a lot of scarred tissue which makes sense why I felt like I had done a million sit - ups . I had so much scar tissue that when they went in to get her they had to burn ( hence the smell of burn skin ) a lot of that skin and on top of that I kept bleeding in different areas in there which they also had to burn to shut it close reason why they needed another set of hands . I was bleeding in different areas at the same time . My doctors did not understand how she was not hanging outside of my uterus . . They said it was a miracle she stayed in my uterus the whole pregnancy because she could have easily been in my abdomen . I was in total shock hearing all this . Bill and I just kept looking at each other . I wanted to cry at that moment . This was the reason why they kept telling me NO MORE BABIES during surgery ! My uterus might not be able to handle another pregnancy . It 's not safe for me or the baby . Nothing is wrong with me getting pregnant it 's my uterus that might not be able to handle it and it could not end up well for either me or the baby . So on that note for those asking if we will have more the answer is unfortunately nope , but I must say as much as I love pregnancy I 'm very happy , content , and feel like my family is now completed thanks to our Until next post . Love you all . 3Feb2016 My life these days . . by Jessica Wow I can 't believe it will be a year since my last blog post and boy SO much has happened since ! ! For starters we had our second baby BOY ! Yes another boy . I am now as people say on Instagram a # boymom It is truly the best . I think my purpose in life was to be a mother to our 2 amazing little boys and give them the best childhood ever ! Well that 's my plan . . On that note for those of you that don 't follow me on Instagram his name is Jace and he 's 5 months old ( boy does time fly . Right ? ! ) He is so loved not only by us , his mommy & daddy of course , but his big brother Billy ! ! Billy can not get enough of him ! He wants to spend every minute of everyday with him . Every night as I put him to bed he tells me " mommy I 'm mad " and I say why Billy ? What happened ? He says " I 'm mad because I don 't think I spent enough time with my baby brother " I 'm like Billy you spent the WHOLE day with him . He then goes off to tell me " why do the days go by so fast ? " Wow its crazy how a 4 year old absorbs and listens to everything you say on a daily basis . . He is such a smart young boy and I still cant believe this fall our first baby will be starting Kindergarten , but that 's another blog post . Billy has been the best with Jace and it warms my heart so much . I 'm so proud of the little boy he 's becoming . Yet sucks how fast he 's growing . . This blog was supposed to go a totally different direction , but instead I 'm catching myself writing about our boys . . I mean it has been almost a year right and I 'm pretty sure you want to know what has actually been happening in my life , beside the random pictures on Instagram . It sure has been life changing getting used to two kids and trying to figure everything out . I do thank God everyday that I have a spouse who is home with me everyday to help me out with the boys . I 'm sure I would have figured it out if he did have a job , but I must say I am pretty much spoiled in every sense . He helps me out so much its crazy . I ask myself everyday how did I get so lucky to have someone who not only puts up with me everyday , but who still through it all loves me unconditional . He 's the best daddy and I thank God he gave me the best partner to walk through this crazy life with . I did want to start off this blog about my / our love for Disney and how much it 's become a part of our everyday living , but I figured I would first let you in on a BIG piece of my life and where I 've been this past year . For now I 'll leave you with a few more pictures that I never shared with you all on Instagram , well for all those that do follow me and for those that don 't and just happen to come across my blog . . I hope you enjoy my pictures . I hope you enjoyed these personal , beautiful ( to me , lol ) , I cherish with all my heart pictures . Until next blog post , which will be VERY soon and will be more fun with new and exciting plans I have . Remember it has to do with Disney 🙂 26Feb2015 Valentine 's Big Brother Announcement by Jessica Wow where do I begin . . I 've been MIA since I started my blog a few months back . So much has happened since . For starters Christmas & New Years came and went and now we 're here ending of Feb and Valentine 's just passed about 2 weeks and I shared some exciting new with social media this past weekend . It all started on New Years Day when I knew something was up with my body . For us women ( some not all ) are very in tuned with our bodies ( I know I am since having our son ) and I was telling my hub something is up I still have not gotten my womanly monthly thing so hub suggest I take a home pregnancy test . Nervous as I was and I KNEW what the test would say I said ok I 'll take one tomorrow which will be Friday . I knew if I didn 't I would have a weekend of drinking beers with hub and I KNEW I couldn 't do that to myself because of course I KNOW my intuition was right . . Well the next day came and we had people coming over to do some work on our home that morning . So Bill woke up first went downstairs and greeted the worker that was coming to work on our oven as I stayed upstairs in bed knowing I had to get up and go to the bathroom . Little Billy was still sleeping . So I got up went to the bathroom did my thing and waited and waited what seemed like a lifetime which was only in reality 2 mins , lol then BAM I looked down and the words " PREGNANT " read across the test . My eyes swelled with tears as I read it over and over and over . . I was SO happy I looked at myself in the mirror as I gather my thoughts as to how or what I was going to say to Bill . Billy then woke up I put myself together and went into his room . Said good morning my love and started to cry again . He looked at me and said " mommy why are you crying ? ! I 'm here to protect you " ( he always tells me that when I cry , happy tears of course . I 'm a big sucker for sad movies , sad commercials etc . ) any who I right away told him Billy you 're going to be a big brother and he said yes mommy you have a baby in the tummy ( It 's as if he 's known or been wishing for this day since he started asking me for a brother or sis ) . I said yes honey mommy now has a baby in there and since then he always kisses my belly , almost every single day . So now we get ready to go downstairs and it 's time to tell daddy . I know I know I told lil Billy first , but I couldn 't help it he was the first one I saw right after and just looking at him I couldn 't hold back my tears of joy . As I go down the stairs I hear Bill with the repair guy and I 'm like damn I can 't tell him yet not with workers in our home , lol . I 'm trying to hide my happiness as soon as I turn the corner into the kitchen he looks at me and said " you took it huh " lol I guess my permanent smile sold me and he said " I knew it " lol we hugged and I cried again , lol the repair man at the point had no clue and he was almost done . He left we all hugged and I cried again then it began … Morning , noon and night sickness has begun ! Wow let me just say that my first pregnancy was not I repeat was not nowhere near what I 've gone through this pregnancy . I wouldn 't change it for the WORLD , but oh lord it 's been horrible . Again I wouldn 't change it for anything . Being pregnant is a blessing on its own and I know it will pass and it 's just the first trimester . I can get through it and I will . Having the most amazing man in the world also helps A LOT ! I can not thank him enough for all that he 's done and still doing since I 'm still in my first trimester . I have not done ANYTHING in our home and I 'm not lying when I say I haven 't ! I 've had NO energy to do anything even be with my boy which kills me since we went from doing something each and every day to NOTHING at all ! He 's the best little boy I tell you . If it was up to him he would sit / / lay right next to me and take care of me and being a homebody helps a lot . He LOVES his house and that makes us happy to know how much he loves it and it also makes us crazy sometimes cause it takes us FOREVER sometimes to get him out the house . So we discussed when to announce this pregnancy . I thought about what holiday was coming next and of course it was Valentine 's after that it 's St . Patrick 's and I felt kind of silly doing it on a drinking holiday , lol . So we opted for Valentine 's even tho I would be almost 3 months by Valentine 's ( about a week and 1 / 2 early ) and still kind of undeceive if I should or shouldn 't . Well between my mom and my hub I went along with it and decided to go to Etsy and buy a " Big Brother " announcement image and get started on our DIY project and of course off to my favorite Bow Tie site ( www . littlermr . net ) I went and purchase Billy a Valentine 's bow tie . Billy was so happy as he 's been since the day we found out , to make this sign with us . Well it turned out great and we fell in love even MORE with the sign and the thought of a new baby coming into our lives . February 14th came and it was picture time . We got Billy dressed , got my Canon got the dog and off to our backyard we went to do a mini photo shoot and then to the front of the house to take some more pictures of our handsome boy and his big brother sign and lets just say out of 100 we got about a hand full of good ones , but that 's all it takes right ? Just to get that one good shot , lol . Here are a few photos from that day . Hope you enjoy them . The weeks are flying and I 'm starting to feel better ( Thank God ) I 'm just feeling nauseous in the evening more now . I feel good during the day but around 4 it starts to go down hill again . Still very much tired and want to sleep all day , but now it sucks cause if I take a nap I wake up extremely sick and nauseous and my naps consist of 3 + hours , lol so that means I 'm waking up right before dinner and I 'm so sick I can hardly eat but know I have to to make myself feel better . It 's been difficult , but once again I know well worth EVERY pain and never taking all these little bumps on the road for granted . I 'm now 12 weeks and 3 day and can 't believe how fast I 'm showing this time around . I know most of it is bloat but still the thought of how faster I 'm showing the second time around amazes me and the most fascinating part is little Billy and the love he has for my belly . For example last night before bedtime he looked at my belly and got the giggles at how " big " it looked . All he did was hug it , rub it and talk to it and tell him or her ( which he says it 's a her ) was how much he loves it and all the fun they 're going to have together . Melts my heart . On that note I will leave you all with that thought . Until next blog post ❤️ 22Nov2014 Christmas Trees for dayssss by Jessica Hey guys happy weekend ! Funny what my weekends have become since becoming a mom and for starters I LOVE IT : ) I seriously wouldn 't change this for the world ! I feel that there is a time and place for everything in this beautiful life and I feel that my timing in becoming a mommy couldn 't have been more prefect . Anyway enough about that and lets get to the fun part ! ! ! Yesterday was a good day . We went to the Orlando Museum of Art for the Festival of Trees : ' Tis the Season and it was BEAUTIFUL ! Billy was in Christmas tree HEAVEN and not to throw this in there , but ahhh motherhood is such a joy ( Insert sarcasm here ) lol , but no really it is . . to a certain extend . LOL ! I don 't know how many times I told Billy yesterday " DO NOT TOUCH " oh my , but I mean who am I kidding right ? Taking a 3 ( THREE ) year old to a Museum ! For the most part , heck majority of the time he was a good boy . Just like any 3 year old they want to explore and I mean we cant blame them . Any who after a dozen times he got it ! ! LOL ! ! We were smooth sailing after that . Lets get to the fun part . . The Festival of TREESSS . Yes they even have a Frozen tree ! How could they not ? ! Right ? ! LOL ! ! Back to our day at the Museum . The day was prefect here in # Orlando yesterday . Weather was low 70 's so you know that 's good weather for the sunshine state , lol . Billy had a great time , even though he couldn 't touch much he still had a great time . They had these weird statue men outside the Museum standing in different position and it was hilarious Billy trying to mimic them . BTW The status had scarfs on when we left the Museum 😕 They get cold at night … 🙂 They have a whole room showcase of Gingerbread houses … Super cute . Small ones , medium ones , big ones and I mean BIG ! I was amazed with how BIG and pretty they were . OMG I can 't even do one for those kits from Target lmao ! ! I can 't image how long each of these took and not to mention the PATIENCE ! ! Once again Billy was in love with them and wanted to eat them . ( Lord NOT getting into that ! ) Lets just say thank god for the ladies in the craft room who gave Billy candy and he was happy ! I found out he likes Twizzle & Candy Canes ( which he didn 't like last Christmas , lol ) He was happy and that 's ALL I cared about ! He got to color holiday pictures , play with the Building Blocks , and even did an " Eye Spy Tree " activity which consisted of looking for hidden objects given to us on a list . Over all it was a success We had lunch at their café and boy was it fancy in there , lol . I loved it ! It was a beautiful room with amazing small details . I 'm all about details . The tables were decorated very nice and Christmassy ( if that 's a word , lol ) We had the yummiest Tomato Basil Bisque soup and a large cookie and very affordable for those on a budget . Not to mention the entrance is $ 10 and kids 3 and up are $ 6If you are in Orlando weather its visiting or live here and haven 't gone to the Orlando Museum of Art do so ! The festival of the Trees is only a short event during the holiday season but so worth visiting . They also had the AMAZING display from Ethan Allen and OMG I wanted EVERYTHING in there for our living room ! ! And of course the gift shop . You cant go places and NOT visit the shops 😛 lol . Lets not talk about the wall / / narrow room of wreaths ! ! They were beautiful and a million different designs to say the least ! Well I hope you all enjoyed my post about our day at the Museum and if you have ANY questions please feel free to leave me a comment . I will leave you all with a few more pictures from our day at the museum . See y ' all on the next blog . 17Nov2014 And then the preppy came outta her … in him ! by Jessica So I would say about almost 2 years ago I found this little shop on IG called Little Mr . Ties @ littleMrties is the IG account shop & her site is www . littlemr . net This bow tie company is AH - MAZ - ING ! I have nothing but great things to say about this shop ! The bow ties themselves are the cutest and not to mention they do not I repeat DO NOT go around the neck ( and in my opinion SAFE for kids ) which is why I praise this shop . Her bow ties are a unique design that are so easy to wear especially with babies since it doesn 't go around the neck and it actually doesn 't bother them . It 's a button on bow tie . Yup you read right . They are very comfortable because they don 't have a metal clip and stay on well ! Now you see why these bow ties are amazing ( I will post some pictures so you can visualize what I 'm talking about ) They attach to basically any shirt that has a button . There are so many different patterns you simply just want them ALL , lol and not the mention she even does organic bow ties now { HEAVEN } and for the price even more it makes you want them . Under $ 20 and that 's with S & H included . I 'm telling you its a win win situation . The best part about these bow ties are that you don 't have to put them on your kids / / grandsons / / nephews on only " special occasion " they are so comfortable you could put them on just to show your kids everyday fashion . My son Billy LOVES all his bow ties so much that if it were up to him he would wear one with his pajamas , lol ! Again they are so simple yet amazing ! I have yet had my son ever want to take his off wherever we go . I think he sometimes even forgets he has one on , but isn 't that the best part for us adults , a baby / / toddler / / or kid who doesn 't want to rip his bow tie off right before pictures with the Easter Bunny or Santa right ? ! Right ! Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed talking / / writing about it and helped out in any way for future occasions / / photo shoots or just everyday fashion . 11Nov2014 What Better way to start my FIRST post than with " Famous on Instagram " shirt . . by Jessica Hello World . So being that this is my very first post and I am kind of nervous , but I mean it 's just a blog post right ? ! Wrong ! This isn 't your regular post well maybe it is , lol but I figured since my blog will be mainly about promoting / / advertise / / support shops on ( and of course off ) instagram and also a peek into our everyday life . So I figure why not make my first post about one of the many favorite outfits I styled my son in recently . " Famous on Instagram " shirt was purchased from an IG ( Instagram ) shop @ fitspirationcouture ( www . fitspirationcouture . com ) this shop is a really cool fun modern designs and not to mention fun bright colors . It is owned by two friends who are fit moms who help / / motivate others to love the meaning of working out and feel better about themselves ! Now ladies don 't worry they even make tanks / / tee / / bottoms / / headbands and lots more for us as well . This is Billy he is my little model also known as my son , my world , but you all will figure that out as the time passes and you start to see more and more of him , lol ! Billy is 3 years old and a little too advanced for his age ( in my opinion ) and everyone else 🙂 Anyhow back to his # ootd ( Outfit Of The Day ) you will notice throughout my blogs I LOVE hash tags ! ! I use them a lot and I mean A LOT ! # lol ! Back to my little model as for his shorts they are from Osh Kosh B ' Gosh along with the socks from Ralph Lauren and sneakers from Adidas This was about a couple weeks ago . I call Billy my little partner in crime . He does everything with me and I truly enjoy each and every minute with him . These pictures were taken by me of course with my iPhone 5S . Most of the pictures I will be posting here on my blog will mainly be from my Canon EOS Rebel T3i with the occasional iPhone picture . I became a " photographer " the day our son was born , lol ! ! These pictures were taken in our community by our mail room . Billy loves all the roses on the walkway to the pool / mail room area , but knows that they are filled with many thorns so he knows not touch them but loves them so much and always wishes he could grab one for me . Blessed with such a sweet boy !
|
15Feb2017 & baby makes 5 by Jessica Hey Everyone , can 't believe it 's been about a year since my last post and ironically this post is somewhat the same . A lot has happened in a year . For starters we had another baby yup baby number 3 and I 'm writing this because many of my friends and followers on social media are convinced that we will have another baby soon , but unfortunately that is not the case this last time around . Our second son Jace was only 6 months old when we found out that I was expecting again . Total shocker since we thought we were done having babies . I was getting ready to go on a road trip with my two boys to Miami to visit family and of course a couple weeks back I still had not gotten my monthly friend , lol so that morning my husband was like just take it to have a piece of mind while you 're gone . Well sure enough I took the test and bam written nice and clear POSITIVE my mouth dropped , I came out the bathroom and once again Bill knew it was positive ( my face always gives it away , lol ) We both knew that moment we were having another baby there was never a doubt in that . { Our announcement } When we found out that our second baby was another boy we were over the moon . We were so happy that we were giving our oldest a brother to grow with and bond with , but in the back of my mind I didn 't feel like our family was " complete " as people say when they know their family is a whole . I felt more fulfilled and even though I knew ( well I thought I did until I got pregnant ) that Jace was going to be our last baby I just didn 't feel complete . I felt like something or someone was missing in our family to actually complete us ( if that makes sense to you ) I just felt in my heart that maybe we were meant to have another baby , a girl to make our family whole , but just didn 't think that would really happen . well now that I knew baby number 3 was coming I was convinced I was going to have another boy and honestly I was OK with that . I was ready to take that role of boy mom . I was ready and learning to accept the fact that I was going to be the only girl in my family . Fast forward to 17 weeks pregnant and about to find out if we were having a boy or a girl . We did a gender reveal photo shoot with the talented and friend of mine Rachel owner of RachelVPhotography . com here in Orlando , Florida . Anxious , excited , nervous for what our gender reveal was about to be … Then boom PINK powder EVERYWHERE . I was so confused and I couldn 't see the actual color that was surrounding all over us . All I saw was Bill 's face with a huge smile and the kids covered in powder . Still unsure Bill threw the remaining powder at me to and then it hit me WE ' RE HAVING A GIRL and the tears started to come down and I loved that at that moment our emotions were being photographed and I was always have these moments forever . As all pregnancies this one was just as different as the last one . I experienced almost everything the opposite as my last one . With our girl I got really bad skin from red spots to dry skin ( Not cute at all , lol ) I also had a bad stuffy nose and not just for a few days this went on for weeks and weeks definitely not fun at all , but I knew it would all go away and the best reward would come out of all this … our baby girl . We were scheduled for December 13 , 2016 at 9am to have our girl . That morning came and we were up and out of our house by 6am . Thank god for my family that came from Miami to help . They stayed with the boys while we were in surgery , they came later on that day . We were then called in and they start to prepare me , put my name tags on , change my clothes into those gorgeous gowns , lol then the best part . Needles . I 'm then connected to the monitor to keep track of baby girl and make sure everything is going good on her end . Epidural comes next and last . We wait till I 'm numb which for the first time took forever . About 20 minutes later and I was ready to go . 8 : 58am . It is now go time . Bill and I are ready and heading to the OR . Oxygen tube is in place and we 're ready to bring baby girl into the world . As I laid there I felt some pressure not much . Some time in between them starting and before she came my two doctors that were working on me asked to call in one of my other doctors . Not knowing what was happening I heard them say " We need Dr . Ortiz in here now we need another pair of hands " I started to get nervous , but kept myself calm because I saw Bill 's face he looked worried , but was trying to keep his cool for me . We fed off each other and somehow managed to calm each other done . Dr . Ortiz then came in she jumped right in and started to help . I kept hearing all 3 doctors talking but couldn 't clearly make out what they were saying all I know was that Dr . Ortiz kept looking over the curtain that they put up when you have a C - section and said to us " No more babies mommy , that 's it you are done you cant / shouldn 't have more babies " not knowing what she meant with that Bill and I were jut like no we 're done we got our girl we 're happy and DONE ! This was when I knew something was up and not with the baby but with me . . She kept coming over the curtain and kept repeating herself that this was it I was to not have anymore babies . . At that point I looked at Bill and he looked pale . I came to realize reason he was getting pale was because he was smelling burn skin , my skin ! At 9 : 39am we welcomed a beautiful baby girl named Joyana pronounced Joy - Ana Catherine weighing 8lbs 6oz 21ins of pure love . It was the happiest moment to know she was out and OK . Bill kept going back an forth between the both of us until they brought her to me and put her on my chest for some skin to skin time while they basically put me back together . 10 : 51am and they were finally done . Now if you ask me that 's a LONG time in the OR for a C - section . I 've had 2 before this one and they both had lasted no more than 45 minutes or so . SO you do the math in how long I was in there . Recovery went well and I was out of the hospital 2 days later . Fast forward to my one week postpartum appointment and I see one of the doctors that delivered Joyana . She walks in and says " how you doing " and shakes her head like wow cant believe what we went through with you . I say I 'm fine just very sore as if I did a million sit - ups , lol . She then went on to tell me how they do not understand how my baby was able to stay in my uterus the whole pregnancy . My mouth then dropped and I asked her to explain to me what the hell happened in there . She then told me my uterus is done and that I can 't get pregnant again . I have a hole in my uterus on one side and on the other side I have a small window where the wall of my uterus is very thin which means it could also rip there if I was to get pregnant again and on top of that I had a lot of scarred tissue which makes sense why I felt like I had done a million sit - ups . I had so much scar tissue that when they went in to get her they had to burn ( hence the smell of burn skin ) a lot of that skin and on top of that I kept bleeding in different areas in there which they also had to burn to shut it close reason why they needed another set of hands . I was bleeding in different areas at the same time . My doctors did not understand how she was not hanging outside of my uterus . . They said it was a miracle she stayed in my uterus the whole pregnancy because she could have easily been in my abdomen . I was in total shock hearing all this . Bill and I just kept looking at each other . I wanted to cry at that moment . This was the reason why they kept telling me NO MORE BABIES during surgery ! My uterus might not be able to handle another pregnancy . It 's not safe for me or the baby . Nothing is wrong with me getting pregnant it 's my uterus that might not be able to handle it and it could not end up well for either me or the baby . So on that note for those asking if we will have more the answer is unfortunately nope , but I must say as much as I love pregnancy I 'm very happy , content , and feel like my family is now completed thanks to our Until next post . Love you all . 3Feb2016 My life these days . . by Jessica Wow I can 't believe it will be a year since my last blog post and boy SO much has happened since ! ! For starters we had our second baby BOY ! Yes another boy . I am now as people say on Instagram a # boymom It is truly the best . I think my purpose in life was to be a mother to our 2 amazing little boys and give them the best childhood ever ! Well that 's my plan . . On that note for those of you that don 't follow me on Instagram his name is Jace and he 's 5 months old ( boy does time fly . Right ? ! ) He is so loved not only by us , his mommy & daddy of course , but his big brother Billy ! ! Billy can not get enough of him ! He wants to spend every minute of everyday with him . Every night as I put him to bed he tells me " mommy I 'm mad " and I say why Billy ? What happened ? He says " I 'm mad because I don 't think I spent enough time with my baby brother " I 'm like Billy you spent the WHOLE day with him . He then goes off to tell me " why do the days go by so fast ? " Wow its crazy how a 4 year old absorbs and listens to everything you say on a daily basis . . He is such a smart young boy and I still cant believe this fall our first baby will be starting Kindergarten , but that 's another blog post . Billy has been the best with Jace and it warms my heart so much . I 'm so proud of the little boy he 's becoming . Yet sucks how fast he 's growing . . This blog was supposed to go a totally different direction , but instead I 'm catching myself writing about our boys . . I mean it has been almost a year right and I 'm pretty sure you want to know what has actually been happening in my life , beside the random pictures on Instagram . It sure has been life changing getting used to two kids and trying to figure everything out . I do thank God everyday that I have a spouse who is home with me everyday to help me out with the boys . I 'm sure I would have figured it out if he did have a job , but I must say I am pretty much spoiled in every sense . He helps me out so much its crazy . I ask myself everyday how did I get so lucky to have someone who not only puts up with me everyday , but who still through it all loves me unconditional . He 's the best daddy and I thank God he gave me the best partner to walk through this crazy life with . I did want to start off this blog about my / our love for Disney and how much it 's become a part of our everyday living , but I figured I would first let you in on a BIG piece of my life and where I 've been this past year . For now I 'll leave you with a few more pictures that I never shared with you all on Instagram , well for all those that do follow me and for those that don 't and just happen to come across my blog . . I hope you enjoy my pictures . I hope you enjoyed these personal , beautiful ( to me , lol ) , I cherish with all my heart pictures . Until next blog post , which will be VERY soon and will be more fun with new and exciting plans I have . Remember it has to do with Disney 🙂 26Feb2015 Valentine 's Big Brother Announcement by Jessica Wow where do I begin . . I 've been MIA since I started my blog a few months back . So much has happened since . For starters Christmas & New Years came and went and now we 're here ending of Feb and Valentine 's just passed about 2 weeks and I shared some exciting new with social media this past weekend . It all started on New Years Day when I knew something was up with my body . For us women ( some not all ) are very in tuned with our bodies ( I know I am since having our son ) and I was telling my hub something is up I still have not gotten my womanly monthly thing so hub suggest I take a home pregnancy test . Nervous as I was and I KNEW what the test would say I said ok I 'll take one tomorrow which will be Friday . I knew if I didn 't I would have a weekend of drinking beers with hub and I KNEW I couldn 't do that to myself because of course I KNOW my intuition was right . . Well the next day came and we had people coming over to do some work on our home that morning . So Bill woke up first went downstairs and greeted the worker that was coming to work on our oven as I stayed upstairs in bed knowing I had to get up and go to the bathroom . Little Billy was still sleeping . So I got up went to the bathroom did my thing and waited and waited what seemed like a lifetime which was only in reality 2 mins , lol then BAM I looked down and the words " PREGNANT " read across the test . My eyes swelled with tears as I read it over and over and over . . I was SO happy I looked at myself in the mirror as I gather my thoughts as to how or what I was going to say to Bill . Billy then woke up I put myself together and went into his room . Said good morning my love and started to cry again . He looked at me and said " mommy why are you crying ? ! I 'm here to protect you " ( he always tells me that when I cry , happy tears of course . I 'm a big sucker for sad movies , sad commercials etc . ) any who I right away told him Billy you 're going to be a big brother and he said yes mommy you have a baby in the tummy ( It 's as if he 's known or been wishing for this day since he started asking me for a brother or sis ) . I said yes honey mommy now has a baby in there and since then he always kisses my belly , almost every single day . So now we get ready to go downstairs and it 's time to tell daddy . I know I know I told lil Billy first , but I couldn 't help it he was the first one I saw right after and just looking at him I couldn 't hold back my tears of joy . As I go down the stairs I hear Bill with the repair guy and I 'm like damn I can 't tell him yet not with workers in our home , lol . I 'm trying to hide my happiness as soon as I turn the corner into the kitchen he looks at me and said " you took it huh " lol I guess my permanent smile sold me and he said " I knew it " lol we hugged and I cried again , lol the repair man at the point had no clue and he was almost done . He left we all hugged and I cried again then it began … Morning , noon and night sickness has begun ! Wow let me just say that my first pregnancy was not I repeat was not nowhere near what I 've gone through this pregnancy . I wouldn 't change it for the WORLD , but oh lord it 's been horrible . Again I wouldn 't change it for anything . Being pregnant is a blessing on its own and I know it will pass and it 's just the first trimester . I can get through it and I will . Having the most amazing man in the world also helps A LOT ! I can not thank him enough for all that he 's done and still doing since I 'm still in my first trimester . I have not done ANYTHING in our home and I 'm not lying when I say I haven 't ! I 've had NO energy to do anything even be with my boy which kills me since we went from doing something each and every day to NOTHING at all ! He 's the best little boy I tell you . If it was up to him he would sit / / lay right next to me and take care of me and being a homebody helps a lot . He LOVES his house and that makes us happy to know how much he loves it and it also makes us crazy sometimes cause it takes us FOREVER sometimes to get him out the house . So we discussed when to announce this pregnancy . I thought about what holiday was coming next and of course it was Valentine 's after that it 's St . Patrick 's and I felt kind of silly doing it on a drinking holiday , lol . So we opted for Valentine 's even tho I would be almost 3 months by Valentine 's ( about a week and 1 / 2 early ) and still kind of undeceive if I should or shouldn 't . Well between my mom and my hub I went along with it and decided to go to Etsy and buy a " Big Brother " announcement image and get started on our DIY project and of course off to my favorite Bow Tie site ( www . littlermr . net ) I went and purchase Billy a Valentine 's bow tie . Billy was so happy as he 's been since the day we found out , to make this sign with us . Well it turned out great and we fell in love even MORE with the sign and the thought of a new baby coming into our lives . February 14th came and it was picture time . We got Billy dressed , got my Canon got the dog and off to our backyard we went to do a mini photo shoot and then to the front of the house to take some more pictures of our handsome boy and his big brother sign and lets just say out of 100 we got about a hand full of good ones , but that 's all it takes right ? Just to get that one good shot , lol . Here are a few photos from that day . Hope you enjoy them . The weeks are flying and I 'm starting to feel better ( Thank God ) I 'm just feeling nauseous in the evening more now . I feel good during the day but around 4 it starts to go down hill again . Still very much tired and want to sleep all day , but now it sucks cause if I take a nap I wake up extremely sick and nauseous and my naps consist of 3 + hours , lol so that means I 'm waking up right before dinner and I 'm so sick I can hardly eat but know I have to to make myself feel better . It 's been difficult , but once again I know well worth EVERY pain and never taking all these little bumps on the road for granted . I 'm now 12 weeks and 3 day and can 't believe how fast I 'm showing this time around . I know most of it is bloat but still the thought of how faster I 'm showing the second time around amazes me and the most fascinating part is little Billy and the love he has for my belly . For example last night before bedtime he looked at my belly and got the giggles at how " big " it looked . All he did was hug it , rub it and talk to it and tell him or her ( which he says it 's a her ) was how much he loves it and all the fun they 're going to have together . Melts my heart . On that note I will leave you all with that thought . Until next blog post ❤️ 22Nov2014 Christmas Trees for dayssss by Jessica Hey guys happy weekend ! Funny what my weekends have become since becoming a mom and for starters I LOVE IT : ) I seriously wouldn 't change this for the world ! I feel that there is a time and place for everything in this beautiful life and I feel that my timing in becoming a mommy couldn 't have been more prefect . Anyway enough about that and lets get to the fun part ! ! ! Yesterday was a good day . We went to the Orlando Museum of Art for the Festival of Trees : ' Tis the Season and it was BEAUTIFUL ! Billy was in Christmas tree HEAVEN and not to throw this in there , but ahhh motherhood is such a joy ( Insert sarcasm here ) lol , but no really it is . . to a certain extend . LOL ! I don 't know how many times I told Billy yesterday " DO NOT TOUCH " oh my , but I mean who am I kidding right ? Taking a 3 ( THREE ) year old to a Museum ! For the most part , heck majority of the time he was a good boy . Just like any 3 year old they want to explore and I mean we cant blame them . Any who after a dozen times he got it ! ! LOL ! ! We were smooth sailing after that . Lets get to the fun part . . The Festival of TREESSS . Yes they even have a Frozen tree ! How could they not ? ! Right ? ! LOL ! ! Back to our day at the Museum . The day was prefect here in # Orlando yesterday . Weather was low 70 's so you know that 's good weather for the sunshine state , lol . Billy had a great time , even though he couldn 't touch much he still had a great time . They had these weird statue men outside the Museum standing in different position and it was hilarious Billy trying to mimic them . BTW The status had scarfs on when we left the Museum 😕 They get cold at night … 🙂 They have a whole room showcase of Gingerbread houses … Super cute . Small ones , medium ones , big ones and I mean BIG ! I was amazed with how BIG and pretty they were . OMG I can 't even do one for those kits from Target lmao ! ! I can 't image how long each of these took and not to mention the PATIENCE ! ! Once again Billy was in love with them and wanted to eat them . ( Lord NOT getting into that ! ) Lets just say thank god for the ladies in the craft room who gave Billy candy and he was happy ! I found out he likes Twizzle & Candy Canes ( which he didn 't like last Christmas , lol ) He was happy and that 's ALL I cared about ! He got to color holiday pictures , play with the Building Blocks , and even did an " Eye Spy Tree " activity which consisted of looking for hidden objects given to us on a list . Over all it was a success We had lunch at their café and boy was it fancy in there , lol . I loved it ! It was a beautiful room with amazing small details . I 'm all about details . The tables were decorated very nice and Christmassy ( if that 's a word , lol ) We had the yummiest Tomato Basil Bisque soup and a large cookie and very affordable for those on a budget . Not to mention the entrance is $ 10 and kids 3 and up are $ 6If you are in Orlando weather its visiting or live here and haven 't gone to the Orlando Museum of Art do so ! The festival of the Trees is only a short event during the holiday season but so worth visiting . They also had the AMAZING display from Ethan Allen and OMG I wanted EVERYTHING in there for our living room ! ! And of course the gift shop . You cant go places and NOT visit the shops 😛 lol . Lets not talk about the wall / / narrow room of wreaths ! ! They were beautiful and a million different designs to say the least ! Well I hope you all enjoyed my post about our day at the Museum and if you have ANY questions please feel free to leave me a comment . I will leave you all with a few more pictures from our day at the museum . See y ' all on the next blog . 17Nov2014 And then the preppy came outta her … in him ! by Jessica So I would say about almost 2 years ago I found this little shop on IG called Little Mr . Ties @ littleMrties is the IG account shop & her site is www . littlemr . net This bow tie company is AH - MAZ - ING ! I have nothing but great things to say about this shop ! The bow ties themselves are the cutest and not to mention they do not I repeat DO NOT go around the neck ( and in my opinion SAFE for kids ) which is why I praise this shop . Her bow ties are a unique design that are so easy to wear especially with babies since it doesn 't go around the neck and it actually doesn 't bother them . It 's a button on bow tie . Yup you read right . They are very comfortable because they don 't have a metal clip and stay on well ! Now you see why these bow ties are amazing ( I will post some pictures so you can visualize what I 'm talking about ) They attach to basically any shirt that has a button . There are so many different patterns you simply just want them ALL , lol and not the mention she even does organic bow ties now { HEAVEN } and for the price even more it makes you want them . Under $ 20 and that 's with S & H included . I 'm telling you its a win win situation . The best part about these bow ties are that you don 't have to put them on your kids / / grandsons / / nephews on only " special occasion " they are so comfortable you could put them on just to show your kids everyday fashion . My son Billy LOVES all his bow ties so much that if it were up to him he would wear one with his pajamas , lol ! Again they are so simple yet amazing ! I have yet had my son ever want to take his off wherever we go . I think he sometimes even forgets he has one on , but isn 't that the best part for us adults , a baby / / toddler / / or kid who doesn 't want to rip his bow tie off right before pictures with the Easter Bunny or Santa right ? ! Right ! Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed talking / / writing about it and helped out in any way for future occasions / / photo shoots or just everyday fashion . 11Nov2014 What Better way to start my FIRST post than with " Famous on Instagram " shirt . . by Jessica Hello World . So being that this is my very first post and I am kind of nervous , but I mean it 's just a blog post right ? ! Wrong ! This isn 't your regular post well maybe it is , lol but I figured since my blog will be mainly about promoting / / advertise / / support shops on ( and of course off ) instagram and also a peek into our everyday life . So I figure why not make my first post about one of the many favorite outfits I styled my son in recently . " Famous on Instagram " shirt was purchased from an IG ( Instagram ) shop @ fitspirationcouture ( www . fitspirationcouture . com ) this shop is a really cool fun modern designs and not to mention fun bright colors . It is owned by two friends who are fit moms who help / / motivate others to love the meaning of working out and feel better about themselves ! Now ladies don 't worry they even make tanks / / tee / / bottoms / / headbands and lots more for us as well . This is Billy he is my little model also known as my son , my world , but you all will figure that out as the time passes and you start to see more and more of him , lol ! Billy is 3 years old and a little too advanced for his age ( in my opinion ) and everyone else 🙂 Anyhow back to his # ootd ( Outfit Of The Day ) you will notice throughout my blogs I LOVE hash tags ! ! I use them a lot and I mean A LOT ! # lol ! Back to my little model as for his shorts they are from Osh Kosh B ' Gosh along with the socks from Ralph Lauren and sneakers from Adidas This was about a couple weeks ago . I call Billy my little partner in crime . He does everything with me and I truly enjoy each and every minute with him . These pictures were taken by me of course with my iPhone 5S . Most of the pictures I will be posting here on my blog will mainly be from my Canon EOS Rebel T3i with the occasional iPhone picture . I became a " photographer " the day our son was born , lol ! ! These pictures were taken in our community by our mail room . Billy loves all the roses on the walkway to the pool / mail room area , but knows that they are filled with many thorns so he knows not touch them but loves them so much and always wishes he could grab one for me . Blessed with such a sweet boy !
|
15Feb2017 & baby makes 5 by Jessica Hey Everyone , can 't believe it 's been about a year since my last post and ironically this post is somewhat the same . A lot has happened in a year . For starters we had another baby yup baby number 3 and I 'm writing this because many of my friends and followers on social media are convinced that we will have another baby soon , but unfortunately that is not the case this last time around . Our second son Jace was only 6 months old when we found out that I was expecting again . Total shocker since we thought we were done having babies . I was getting ready to go on a road trip with my two boys to Miami to visit family and of course a couple weeks back I still had not gotten my monthly friend , lol so that morning my husband was like just take it to have a piece of mind while you 're gone . Well sure enough I took the test and bam written nice and clear POSITIVE my mouth dropped , I came out the bathroom and once again Bill knew it was positive ( my face always gives it away , lol ) We both knew that moment we were having another baby there was never a doubt in that . { Our announcement } When we found out that our second baby was another boy we were over the moon . We were so happy that we were giving our oldest a brother to grow with and bond with , but in the back of my mind I didn 't feel like our family was " complete " as people say when they know their family is a whole . I felt more fulfilled and even though I knew ( well I thought I did until I got pregnant ) that Jace was going to be our last baby I just didn 't feel complete . I felt like something or someone was missing in our family to actually complete us ( if that makes sense to you ) I just felt in my heart that maybe we were meant to have another baby , a girl to make our family whole , but just didn 't think that would really happen . well now that I knew baby number 3 was coming I was convinced I was going to have another boy and honestly I was OK with that . I was ready to take that role of boy mom . I was ready and learning to accept the fact that I was going to be the only girl in my family . Fast forward to 17 weeks pregnant and about to find out if we were having a boy or a girl . We did a gender reveal photo shoot with the talented and friend of mine Rachel owner of RachelVPhotography . com here in Orlando , Florida . Anxious , excited , nervous for what our gender reveal was about to be … Then boom PINK powder EVERYWHERE . I was so confused and I couldn 't see the actual color that was surrounding all over us . All I saw was Bill 's face with a huge smile and the kids covered in powder . Still unsure Bill threw the remaining powder at me to and then it hit me WE ' RE HAVING A GIRL and the tears started to come down and I loved that at that moment our emotions were being photographed and I was always have these moments forever . As all pregnancies this one was just as different as the last one . I experienced almost everything the opposite as my last one . With our girl I got really bad skin from red spots to dry skin ( Not cute at all , lol ) I also had a bad stuffy nose and not just for a few days this went on for weeks and weeks definitely not fun at all , but I knew it would all go away and the best reward would come out of all this … our baby girl . We were scheduled for December 13 , 2016 at 9am to have our girl . That morning came and we were up and out of our house by 6am . Thank god for my family that came from Miami to help . They stayed with the boys while we were in surgery , they came later on that day . We were then called in and they start to prepare me , put my name tags on , change my clothes into those gorgeous gowns , lol then the best part . Needles . I 'm then connected to the monitor to keep track of baby girl and make sure everything is going good on her end . Epidural comes next and last . We wait till I 'm numb which for the first time took forever . About 20 minutes later and I was ready to go . 8 : 58am . It is now go time . Bill and I are ready and heading to the OR . Oxygen tube is in place and we 're ready to bring baby girl into the world . As I laid there I felt some pressure not much . Some time in between them starting and before she came my two doctors that were working on me asked to call in one of my other doctors . Not knowing what was happening I heard them say " We need Dr . Ortiz in here now we need another pair of hands " I started to get nervous , but kept myself calm because I saw Bill 's face he looked worried , but was trying to keep his cool for me . We fed off each other and somehow managed to calm each other done . Dr . Ortiz then came in she jumped right in and started to help . I kept hearing all 3 doctors talking but couldn 't clearly make out what they were saying all I know was that Dr . Ortiz kept looking over the curtain that they put up when you have a C - section and said to us " No more babies mommy , that 's it you are done you cant / shouldn 't have more babies " not knowing what she meant with that Bill and I were jut like no we 're done we got our girl we 're happy and DONE ! This was when I knew something was up and not with the baby but with me . . She kept coming over the curtain and kept repeating herself that this was it I was to not have anymore babies . . At that point I looked at Bill and he looked pale . I came to realize reason he was getting pale was because he was smelling burn skin , my skin ! At 9 : 39am we welcomed a beautiful baby girl named Joyana pronounced Joy - Ana Catherine weighing 8lbs 6oz 21ins of pure love . It was the happiest moment to know she was out and OK . Bill kept going back an forth between the both of us until they brought her to me and put her on my chest for some skin to skin time while they basically put me back together . 10 : 51am and they were finally done . Now if you ask me that 's a LONG time in the OR for a C - section . I 've had 2 before this one and they both had lasted no more than 45 minutes or so . SO you do the math in how long I was in there . Recovery went well and I was out of the hospital 2 days later . Fast forward to my one week postpartum appointment and I see one of the doctors that delivered Joyana . She walks in and says " how you doing " and shakes her head like wow cant believe what we went through with you . I say I 'm fine just very sore as if I did a million sit - ups , lol . She then went on to tell me how they do not understand how my baby was able to stay in my uterus the whole pregnancy . My mouth then dropped and I asked her to explain to me what the hell happened in there . She then told me my uterus is done and that I can 't get pregnant again . I have a hole in my uterus on one side and on the other side I have a small window where the wall of my uterus is very thin which means it could also rip there if I was to get pregnant again and on top of that I had a lot of scarred tissue which makes sense why I felt like I had done a million sit - ups . I had so much scar tissue that when they went in to get her they had to burn ( hence the smell of burn skin ) a lot of that skin and on top of that I kept bleeding in different areas in there which they also had to burn to shut it close reason why they needed another set of hands . I was bleeding in different areas at the same time . My doctors did not understand how she was not hanging outside of my uterus . . They said it was a miracle she stayed in my uterus the whole pregnancy because she could have easily been in my abdomen . I was in total shock hearing all this . Bill and I just kept looking at each other . I wanted to cry at that moment . This was the reason why they kept telling me NO MORE BABIES during surgery ! My uterus might not be able to handle another pregnancy . It 's not safe for me or the baby . Nothing is wrong with me getting pregnant it 's my uterus that might not be able to handle it and it could not end up well for either me or the baby . So on that note for those asking if we will have more the answer is unfortunately nope , but I must say as much as I love pregnancy I 'm very happy , content , and feel like my family is now completed thanks to our Until next post . Love you all . 3Feb2016 My life these days . . by Jessica Wow I can 't believe it will be a year since my last blog post and boy SO much has happened since ! ! For starters we had our second baby BOY ! Yes another boy . I am now as people say on Instagram a # boymom It is truly the best . I think my purpose in life was to be a mother to our 2 amazing little boys and give them the best childhood ever ! Well that 's my plan . . On that note for those of you that don 't follow me on Instagram his name is Jace and he 's 5 months old ( boy does time fly . Right ? ! ) He is so loved not only by us , his mommy & daddy of course , but his big brother Billy ! ! Billy can not get enough of him ! He wants to spend every minute of everyday with him . Every night as I put him to bed he tells me " mommy I 'm mad " and I say why Billy ? What happened ? He says " I 'm mad because I don 't think I spent enough time with my baby brother " I 'm like Billy you spent the WHOLE day with him . He then goes off to tell me " why do the days go by so fast ? " Wow its crazy how a 4 year old absorbs and listens to everything you say on a daily basis . . He is such a smart young boy and I still cant believe this fall our first baby will be starting Kindergarten , but that 's another blog post . Billy has been the best with Jace and it warms my heart so much . I 'm so proud of the little boy he 's becoming . Yet sucks how fast he 's growing . . This blog was supposed to go a totally different direction , but instead I 'm catching myself writing about our boys . . I mean it has been almost a year right and I 'm pretty sure you want to know what has actually been happening in my life , beside the random pictures on Instagram . It sure has been life changing getting used to two kids and trying to figure everything out . I do thank God everyday that I have a spouse who is home with me everyday to help me out with the boys . I 'm sure I would have figured it out if he did have a job , but I must say I am pretty much spoiled in every sense . He helps me out so much its crazy . I ask myself everyday how did I get so lucky to have someone who not only puts up with me everyday , but who still through it all loves me unconditional . He 's the best daddy and I thank God he gave me the best partner to walk through this crazy life with . I did want to start off this blog about my / our love for Disney and how much it 's become a part of our everyday living , but I figured I would first let you in on a BIG piece of my life and where I 've been this past year . For now I 'll leave you with a few more pictures that I never shared with you all on Instagram , well for all those that do follow me and for those that don 't and just happen to come across my blog . . I hope you enjoy my pictures . I hope you enjoyed these personal , beautiful ( to me , lol ) , I cherish with all my heart pictures . Until next blog post , which will be VERY soon and will be more fun with new and exciting plans I have . Remember it has to do with Disney 🙂 26Feb2015 Valentine 's Big Brother Announcement by Jessica Wow where do I begin . . I 've been MIA since I started my blog a few months back . So much has happened since . For starters Christmas & New Years came and went and now we 're here ending of Feb and Valentine 's just passed about 2 weeks and I shared some exciting new with social media this past weekend . It all started on New Years Day when I knew something was up with my body . For us women ( some not all ) are very in tuned with our bodies ( I know I am since having our son ) and I was telling my hub something is up I still have not gotten my womanly monthly thing so hub suggest I take a home pregnancy test . Nervous as I was and I KNEW what the test would say I said ok I 'll take one tomorrow which will be Friday . I knew if I didn 't I would have a weekend of drinking beers with hub and I KNEW I couldn 't do that to myself because of course I KNOW my intuition was right . . Well the next day came and we had people coming over to do some work on our home that morning . So Bill woke up first went downstairs and greeted the worker that was coming to work on our oven as I stayed upstairs in bed knowing I had to get up and go to the bathroom . Little Billy was still sleeping . So I got up went to the bathroom did my thing and waited and waited what seemed like a lifetime which was only in reality 2 mins , lol then BAM I looked down and the words " PREGNANT " read across the test . My eyes swelled with tears as I read it over and over and over . . I was SO happy I looked at myself in the mirror as I gather my thoughts as to how or what I was going to say to Bill . Billy then woke up I put myself together and went into his room . Said good morning my love and started to cry again . He looked at me and said " mommy why are you crying ? ! I 'm here to protect you " ( he always tells me that when I cry , happy tears of course . I 'm a big sucker for sad movies , sad commercials etc . ) any who I right away told him Billy you 're going to be a big brother and he said yes mommy you have a baby in the tummy ( It 's as if he 's known or been wishing for this day since he started asking me for a brother or sis ) . I said yes honey mommy now has a baby in there and since then he always kisses my belly , almost every single day . So now we get ready to go downstairs and it 's time to tell daddy . I know I know I told lil Billy first , but I couldn 't help it he was the first one I saw right after and just looking at him I couldn 't hold back my tears of joy . As I go down the stairs I hear Bill with the repair guy and I 'm like damn I can 't tell him yet not with workers in our home , lol . I 'm trying to hide my happiness as soon as I turn the corner into the kitchen he looks at me and said " you took it huh " lol I guess my permanent smile sold me and he said " I knew it " lol we hugged and I cried again , lol the repair man at the point had no clue and he was almost done . He left we all hugged and I cried again then it began … Morning , noon and night sickness has begun ! Wow let me just say that my first pregnancy was not I repeat was not nowhere near what I 've gone through this pregnancy . I wouldn 't change it for the WORLD , but oh lord it 's been horrible . Again I wouldn 't change it for anything . Being pregnant is a blessing on its own and I know it will pass and it 's just the first trimester . I can get through it and I will . Having the most amazing man in the world also helps A LOT ! I can not thank him enough for all that he 's done and still doing since I 'm still in my first trimester . I have not done ANYTHING in our home and I 'm not lying when I say I haven 't ! I 've had NO energy to do anything even be with my boy which kills me since we went from doing something each and every day to NOTHING at all ! He 's the best little boy I tell you . If it was up to him he would sit / / lay right next to me and take care of me and being a homebody helps a lot . He LOVES his house and that makes us happy to know how much he loves it and it also makes us crazy sometimes cause it takes us FOREVER sometimes to get him out the house . So we discussed when to announce this pregnancy . I thought about what holiday was coming next and of course it was Valentine 's after that it 's St . Patrick 's and I felt kind of silly doing it on a drinking holiday , lol . So we opted for Valentine 's even tho I would be almost 3 months by Valentine 's ( about a week and 1 / 2 early ) and still kind of undeceive if I should or shouldn 't . Well between my mom and my hub I went along with it and decided to go to Etsy and buy a " Big Brother " announcement image and get started on our DIY project and of course off to my favorite Bow Tie site ( www . littlermr . net ) I went and purchase Billy a Valentine 's bow tie . Billy was so happy as he 's been since the day we found out , to make this sign with us . Well it turned out great and we fell in love even MORE with the sign and the thought of a new baby coming into our lives . February 14th came and it was picture time . We got Billy dressed , got my Canon got the dog and off to our backyard we went to do a mini photo shoot and then to the front of the house to take some more pictures of our handsome boy and his big brother sign and lets just say out of 100 we got about a hand full of good ones , but that 's all it takes right ? Just to get that one good shot , lol . Here are a few photos from that day . Hope you enjoy them . The weeks are flying and I 'm starting to feel better ( Thank God ) I 'm just feeling nauseous in the evening more now . I feel good during the day but around 4 it starts to go down hill again . Still very much tired and want to sleep all day , but now it sucks cause if I take a nap I wake up extremely sick and nauseous and my naps consist of 3 + hours , lol so that means I 'm waking up right before dinner and I 'm so sick I can hardly eat but know I have to to make myself feel better . It 's been difficult , but once again I know well worth EVERY pain and never taking all these little bumps on the road for granted . I 'm now 12 weeks and 3 day and can 't believe how fast I 'm showing this time around . I know most of it is bloat but still the thought of how faster I 'm showing the second time around amazes me and the most fascinating part is little Billy and the love he has for my belly . For example last night before bedtime he looked at my belly and got the giggles at how " big " it looked . All he did was hug it , rub it and talk to it and tell him or her ( which he says it 's a her ) was how much he loves it and all the fun they 're going to have together . Melts my heart . On that note I will leave you all with that thought . Until next blog post ❤️ 22Nov2014 Christmas Trees for dayssss by Jessica Hey guys happy weekend ! Funny what my weekends have become since becoming a mom and for starters I LOVE IT : ) I seriously wouldn 't change this for the world ! I feel that there is a time and place for everything in this beautiful life and I feel that my timing in becoming a mommy couldn 't have been more prefect . Anyway enough about that and lets get to the fun part ! ! ! Yesterday was a good day . We went to the Orlando Museum of Art for the Festival of Trees : ' Tis the Season and it was BEAUTIFUL ! Billy was in Christmas tree HEAVEN and not to throw this in there , but ahhh motherhood is such a joy ( Insert sarcasm here ) lol , but no really it is . . to a certain extend . LOL ! I don 't know how many times I told Billy yesterday " DO NOT TOUCH " oh my , but I mean who am I kidding right ? Taking a 3 ( THREE ) year old to a Museum ! For the most part , heck majority of the time he was a good boy . Just like any 3 year old they want to explore and I mean we cant blame them . Any who after a dozen times he got it ! ! LOL ! ! We were smooth sailing after that . Lets get to the fun part . . The Festival of TREESSS . Yes they even have a Frozen tree ! How could they not ? ! Right ? ! LOL ! ! Back to our day at the Museum . The day was prefect here in # Orlando yesterday . Weather was low 70 's so you know that 's good weather for the sunshine state , lol . Billy had a great time , even though he couldn 't touch much he still had a great time . They had these weird statue men outside the Museum standing in different position and it was hilarious Billy trying to mimic them . BTW The status had scarfs on when we left the Museum 😕 They get cold at night … 🙂 They have a whole room showcase of Gingerbread houses … Super cute . Small ones , medium ones , big ones and I mean BIG ! I was amazed with how BIG and pretty they were . OMG I can 't even do one for those kits from Target lmao ! ! I can 't image how long each of these took and not to mention the PATIENCE ! ! Once again Billy was in love with them and wanted to eat them . ( Lord NOT getting into that ! ) Lets just say thank god for the ladies in the craft room who gave Billy candy and he was happy ! I found out he likes Twizzle & Candy Canes ( which he didn 't like last Christmas , lol ) He was happy and that 's ALL I cared about ! He got to color holiday pictures , play with the Building Blocks , and even did an " Eye Spy Tree " activity which consisted of looking for hidden objects given to us on a list . Over all it was a success We had lunch at their café and boy was it fancy in there , lol . I loved it ! It was a beautiful room with amazing small details . I 'm all about details . The tables were decorated very nice and Christmassy ( if that 's a word , lol ) We had the yummiest Tomato Basil Bisque soup and a large cookie and very affordable for those on a budget . Not to mention the entrance is $ 10 and kids 3 and up are $ 6If you are in Orlando weather its visiting or live here and haven 't gone to the Orlando Museum of Art do so ! The festival of the Trees is only a short event during the holiday season but so worth visiting . They also had the AMAZING display from Ethan Allen and OMG I wanted EVERYTHING in there for our living room ! ! And of course the gift shop . You cant go places and NOT visit the shops 😛 lol . Lets not talk about the wall / / narrow room of wreaths ! ! They were beautiful and a million different designs to say the least ! Well I hope you all enjoyed my post about our day at the Museum and if you have ANY questions please feel free to leave me a comment . I will leave you all with a few more pictures from our day at the museum . See y ' all on the next blog . 17Nov2014 And then the preppy came outta her … in him ! by Jessica So I would say about almost 2 years ago I found this little shop on IG called Little Mr . Ties @ littleMrties is the IG account shop & her site is www . littlemr . net This bow tie company is AH - MAZ - ING ! I have nothing but great things to say about this shop ! The bow ties themselves are the cutest and not to mention they do not I repeat DO NOT go around the neck ( and in my opinion SAFE for kids ) which is why I praise this shop . Her bow ties are a unique design that are so easy to wear especially with babies since it doesn 't go around the neck and it actually doesn 't bother them . It 's a button on bow tie . Yup you read right . They are very comfortable because they don 't have a metal clip and stay on well ! Now you see why these bow ties are amazing ( I will post some pictures so you can visualize what I 'm talking about ) They attach to basically any shirt that has a button . There are so many different patterns you simply just want them ALL , lol and not the mention she even does organic bow ties now { HEAVEN } and for the price even more it makes you want them . Under $ 20 and that 's with S & H included . I 'm telling you its a win win situation . The best part about these bow ties are that you don 't have to put them on your kids / / grandsons / / nephews on only " special occasion " they are so comfortable you could put them on just to show your kids everyday fashion . My son Billy LOVES all his bow ties so much that if it were up to him he would wear one with his pajamas , lol ! Again they are so simple yet amazing ! I have yet had my son ever want to take his off wherever we go . I think he sometimes even forgets he has one on , but isn 't that the best part for us adults , a baby / / toddler / / or kid who doesn 't want to rip his bow tie off right before pictures with the Easter Bunny or Santa right ? ! Right ! Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed talking / / writing about it and helped out in any way for future occasions / / photo shoots or just everyday fashion . 11Nov2014 What Better way to start my FIRST post than with " Famous on Instagram " shirt . . by Jessica Hello World . So being that this is my very first post and I am kind of nervous , but I mean it 's just a blog post right ? ! Wrong ! This isn 't your regular post well maybe it is , lol but I figured since my blog will be mainly about promoting / / advertise / / support shops on ( and of course off ) instagram and also a peek into our everyday life . So I figure why not make my first post about one of the many favorite outfits I styled my son in recently . " Famous on Instagram " shirt was purchased from an IG ( Instagram ) shop @ fitspirationcouture ( www . fitspirationcouture . com ) this shop is a really cool fun modern designs and not to mention fun bright colors . It is owned by two friends who are fit moms who help / / motivate others to love the meaning of working out and feel better about themselves ! Now ladies don 't worry they even make tanks / / tee / / bottoms / / headbands and lots more for us as well . This is Billy he is my little model also known as my son , my world , but you all will figure that out as the time passes and you start to see more and more of him , lol ! Billy is 3 years old and a little too advanced for his age ( in my opinion ) and everyone else 🙂 Anyhow back to his # ootd ( Outfit Of The Day ) you will notice throughout my blogs I LOVE hash tags ! ! I use them a lot and I mean A LOT ! # lol ! Back to my little model as for his shorts they are from Osh Kosh B ' Gosh along with the socks from Ralph Lauren and sneakers from Adidas This was about a couple weeks ago . I call Billy my little partner in crime . He does everything with me and I truly enjoy each and every minute with him . These pictures were taken by me of course with my iPhone 5S . Most of the pictures I will be posting here on my blog will mainly be from my Canon EOS Rebel T3i with the occasional iPhone picture . I became a " photographer " the day our son was born , lol ! ! These pictures were taken in our community by our mail room . Billy loves all the roses on the walkway to the pool / mail room area , but knows that they are filled with many thorns so he knows not touch them but loves them so much and always wishes he could grab one for me . Blessed with such a sweet boy !
|
Random things I found the day after Christmas while trolling a mall in Maryland . Before you judge me , you should know that there 's nothing really to do in Maryland but troll malls and drink . Fact . Singing pigs . Much creepier in person , but here 's the gist of it : I don 't know what the manufacturer was thinking with this monkey : But I know that the folks in charge of making this turtle dance to " Mister Roboto " were thinking " awesome " : Fat babies ! Come get your fat babies ! They 're gonna grow up just like you , fat and angry and stupid ! Why , you might ask ? Well , here 's a thought : My sister took me to some huge grocery store to , apparently , agree with her that it was a huge grocery store . They had truffles there at the bargain price of $ 999 . 99 per pound . No , I 'm not kidding : And last but not least , some miscellany : It was always just the two of us , Mr . Binky and I . A girl and her monkey against the whole wide world . We devised a delightful plan , and dreamed of the days that lay beyond the fences and walls of this hellish hovel . He left first , and when he made it out he was going to come back for me . His plane flew far and true , over the horizon , his tattered scarf waving in the wind . I waited for years for his return . I finally escaped on my own one day , out of the blue and much to my own surprise . If I ever catch Mr . Binky in a dark alley , it 'll be curtains for him for sure . Damn dirty ape . I love getting gift cards . I fucking love them . Unless it 's to someplace shitty , like the Hallmark store or something . I 'd rather get a $ 15 gift certificate to Borders than have you spend $ 15 on some shitty wall decoration that I 'll hate but have to display because it 's manners . Gift cards are awesome because you 're giving people want they really want - a shopping spree . Sometimes food gift cards are a great idea , such as cards for Starbucks or Dunkin ' Donuts , if you happen to know that the recipient likes those places . But here is where you cross the line between " Something you might find useful and fun to treat yourself with " to " I have completely given up " : That 's kind of trashy , FYI . And even if you 're giving it to someone who LOVES Burger King , you 're doing more harm than good . " Yes , tubby , go eat a big juicy burger . Have some greasy fries , too , that 's right . Ask for extra mayo on that burger , because it 's a gift card and what better gift can I give you than a fucking coronary ? " Do both of you a favor and just give a Wal - Mart gift card . Same level of trashy , but you 're not responsible when the recipient ( after having spent the card on donuts and soda ) has a myocardial infarction . So last night I 'm toddling around the apartment about to go to bed and suddenly there is a mess of lights and sirens flying by out side . Cops mostly , but also two ambulances . They were heading south , and the fire station is south of me , so I don 't know if there were fire trucks . It was quite a ruckus at any rate . So today I went to see what happened . I checked both of our weekly , local ( Oak Park centric ) papers ' web sites , and I couldn 't find anything . So I wrote to one of them : " I live on Oak Park Avenue , and last night there were about six squad cars blaring by , alarms and lights going . It sounded like there were more coming from a block or more west of OP Ave , too , but that might have just been a Doppler thing . I also heard two ambulances . What happened ? Why isn 't this newsworthy ? I 'm not trying to be a smart ass here , I just don 't understand why all the news on oakleaves . com is old news , not new news . I understand that you publish every Wednesday , but does that necessitate a completely block on current events throughout the week ? Meg " And this lady writes back , " Meg , Who said it 's not newsworthy ? I heard the sirens too , around 10 p . m . We don 't work overnight . When we find out what happened , we 'll get it on the web . Cheri " What the fuck ? She 's the editor of this paper and she hears all these sirens and can 't be bothered to put her damn coat on and go get the haps ? Yes , it was cold last night , but if I had a press pass I 'd be running down there like a hooker to a ho convention , half because I 'm nosy and half because it 's my damn job . This shit is why she 's always going to be the editor of some shitty local weekly rag instead of working at a real newspaper . Black Monday ! Time for shopping ! I went to the Toys R Us site yesterday and I was greeted with this : What the fuck ? So I went to see what kind of games need a girls - only version . And here we go : Monopoly : Pink Boutique Edition " This is Monopoly like you have never seen it - dressed up in pink and all about things girls love ! Buy boutiques and malls , go on a shopping spree , pay your cell phone bill , and get text and instant messages . You and your friends will adore the funky tokens , cool buildings , and cute illustrations . Best of all , the game is stored in a beautiful keepsake box which doubles as a jewelry box . Cool game features include : 8 collectible tokens just for girls , keepsake storage box with removable tray and mirrored insert , pink gameboard with fun properties , pink and purple translucent boutiques and malls instead of houses and hotels , Instant Message and Text Message cards instead of Chance and Community Chest , pink Title Deed cards , redesigned Monopoly money , flocked banker 's tray , 2 pink dice , and instructions . Paint the town pink with Toys R Us Exclusive ! " ( Because girls only ever want shopping sprees and funky tokens . By the by , any girl who wants to be this game 's idea of a woman probably never actually has to pay her own cell phone bill . ) Jenga Girl Talk " Gather your girlfriends and get ready for a twist on this classic wood block game . Jenga GirlTalk has a cool new look and a fun new element - pull out a block , then answer a question , such as : If you had one wish , what would you wish for ? or Who is your closest friend ? It will have you and your friends stackin ' , askin ' and laughin ' , but remember - don 't let ' em topple ! Includes 54 precision - crafted solid wood blocks , each with a different question , an ultracool , stylish microfiber stacking sleeve , and instructions . " ( This is actually a great way to start a bitch fight . I can see it now , 11 - year - olds all throwing their Capri - Sun pouches at each other , shrieking about " Suzie is MY best friend , you fucking cunt ! " and " What do you mean , you 'd wish Steveat In the past year , I 've had to call 911 three times . The first time , last December , some lady followed me into my apartment building and tried to fight with me . She thought my neighbor had stolen her coat and wanted me to move so she could go , I don 't know , fight with my neighbor or something . She was drunk and wouldn 't leave , so I called the cops . The second time was a few months ago , I was at a friend 's house . His neighbors were fighting , which wasn 't a big deal , but I heard the lady scream ( in answer to her live - in boyfriend 's question , which I couldn 't hear ) , " Because you fucking BEAT ME . THAT ' S WHY . " Then there were a series of thuds and bangs that basically sounded like someone was getting their ass kicked . My friend didn 't want to call the cops , I never really understood why , but he asked me to , so I did . Just now , I was turning from Madison onto Oak Park Avenue behind a big white van . I was in the middle of turning when the van stopped and the driver opened the door to puke . Or something like puke . I could only see his head and then see something splat on the ground . He started driving again , weaving all over the road , going 17 - 25 in a 30 MPH zone , and when we pulled up to a red light he leaned out to puke again . The he started to drive but stopped because nobody else was going ( the light was still red ) . When the light changed , he didn 't go . Then he swerved his way another half block before I just pulled over to call 911 to report him as a drunk driver . A few years ago , I thought some girl was dead behind the wheel of an older mini van . She wasn 't responding , her van looked fucked up , I called 911 after asking her repeatedly if she was okay . It wasn 't until after I was giving the operator our location that I hear , " I 'm fine . Jesus Christ ! " And I looked up and she 's staring at me with eyes that certain shade of blue that look creepy no matter where you see them . Earlier that year , I called 911 because a semi had run over a minivan in its blind spot and kept going . A few years before that because I got mugged . I at It 's late . Such is life . AppetizerWhat was your first " real " job ? I worked at a camp for people with disabilities when I was 15 . I learned all about working with people in wheel chairs , on crutches , deaf people , blind people , people who were playing quite a few cards short of a full deck . I took the job because it was an overnight camp and it meant I wouldn 't have to spend endless , agonizing hours stuck at my dad 's place with my step sister . Everyone says what a great first job that is , and how I 'm a wonderful person for doing that for three summers , but basically it was just because I wanted to get the hell out of the house . SoupWhere would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity ? I get on the el . Go downtown or just ride around . SaladComplete this sentence : I am embarrassed when … I realize I 've zoned out in public and I have no idea what I 've been doing for the past few minutes . For all I know , I was scratching inappropriate places while standing in line at the grocery store . Main CourseWhat values did your parents instill in you ? Don 't be an asshole . Don 't beg . DessertName 3 fads from your teenage years . Big , big bangs on girls . Tall more than big , I guess . The " grunge " look ( AKA the " Look ! Maggie 's finally in style ! " era ) . Salt n Peppa . And now I have " What a Man " stuck in my head . I saw this yesterday with a friend , and I didn 't like it as much as I liked " Life Aquatic " and " Royal Tenenbaums . " Two of the metaphors they used were handed so heavily that I nearly dislocated my eyes from rolling them so hard , and I think they took out pieces of the movie after Owen Wilson 's fiasco a few months ago . Things that I read that were going to be parts of the movie before that mess weren 't there in the version I saw yesterday . Maybe they 'll have them in the bonus features on the DVD . The friend I saw it with hadn 't seen " Royal Tenenbaums , " but I 'd watched " Life Aquatic " with her and she liked " Darjeeling Limited " better . I 've heard other people say that Bill Murray was in there basically because he 's always in Anderson 's movies , and that certainly seemed the case here . The few minutes he 's in the film it 's like he 's trying to be extra funny because that 's his job , but he 's obviously not trying very hard . I still love Bill Murray , though , and those four fleeting moments of film won 't tarnish that . He only had one line , two if you count screaming , so it 's not like he had a lot to work with . I hope this is the last time Anderson makes this movie ( let 's face it , it 's so far along the same lines as the other two that it borders on insulting the audience 's intelligence ) , but I know I 'll go see it again if he gives it another go . All in all , I 'd recommend it if you liked " Life Aquatic " and " Royal Tenenbaums . " If you hated those , though , don 't bother . Oh , and I took some pictures and video while I was downtown : at I found an old CD I put together years ago . It was like a little time capsule , and I was listening to it while I made the beef stew & cornbread , so there was a lot of dancing and singing . Not so much with the picture taking , though . I digress . Beef stew , in the beginning : The instructions said " put the flower in a plastic bag and use it to coat the meat , " and honestly my first thought was the grocery bag I brought the ingredients home in . It had been a long day , I wasn 't thinking clearly . Anyhow , flour in a bag , in case you needed a visual : Coated meat : And this is right about the time I realized I forgot to cut up the bigger pieces into smaller pieces : I let that cook with all the spices for an hour , during which time I did dishes and danced . Don 't be jealous , it 's no way to live your life . Then it was time to make the corn bread . I think we all know how this goes . Dry ingredients , wet ingredients , pan : Meanwhile , I cut up some veggies for the stew . I know that sounds like a bit too much excitement for some of you , so I 'm going to skip posting those pics . * So anyway , finished cornbread : And finished stew : Looks pretty good , right ? Wrong . The potatoes and carrots in the stew weren 't done , and the cornbread was kind of grainy , like the corn meal hadn 't , I don 't know , mixed right . Instead of melt - in - your - mouth good , the whole thing was kind of crunchy . I put the cornbread in the bottom of the bowl of stew ( like normal people do ) so it wasn 't as noticeable , but the crunchy potatoes and carrots were still kind of shitty . So , next time I 'll add those much earlier , and then the frozen stuff for the last half hour . Meanwhile , I need a better cornbread recipe . Friday 's feast ( via VH ) AppetizerWhich snack do you like to get when you go to the movies ? Reese 's Pieces and a Diet Coke . Sounds redundant , right ? I just like how Diet Coke tastes , so fuck off . SoupWhat year did you start using the internet ? Um , maybe 1990 . My brother put Norton Commander and Prodigy on Mom 's computer and viola , suddenly the computer wasn 't just for video games any more . SaladWhat is your first name in Pig Latin ? EgmayMain CourseName something you are picky about . Ketchup . When I got arrested last November ( didn 't have my insurance card on me ) I was a little irritated that my big - ass bottle of ketchup was going to freeze while the car sat in impound . Dammit . DessertFill in the blanks : I _____ ______ yesterday and I ____ ____ today . Made stew , got paid . I was getting ready for work today and I noticed the throw rug by my bed was kind of folded . No big deal , it slides around a lot . I went to straighten it out and I see something odd on it . I reach down to see wtf is on my rug , and it moves . It was a mouse . A fucking mouse snoozing in the folds of the rug by my bed . I yelped and ran into the kitchen , emptied out a Pringles can and put it over the mouse . He wasn 't moving much , but he was moving , and I was freaking out . I slid a DVD case under the rug and wrestled with the problem of throwing him off the balcony . The problem wasn 't throwing the mouse - the further the better - the problem was that I wasn 't fully dressed yet . I had on my blouse and skirt , but the skirt wasn 't zipped up or anything . I was looking down to zip up the skirt when I noticed the rug / mouse situation . I didn 't want to take my hand off the Pringles can because the mouse could easily knock it over and run . I finally decided , fuck it - it was 5 : 50 in the morning , anybody on the street at that hour can 't focus their eyes well enough to even notice me on the balcony , so I went for it . I threw the thing off the balcony and heard it land one story down on the sidewalk . I didn 't stop to see if it scampered off , I just ran back inside and into the kitchen . I pulled things off the shelves of the pantry at random , seeing what had been chewed into , looking for signs of droppings or a nest . There was nothing . Cereal , pasta , sugar , cake and bread mixes - all that stuff was completely intact . I think it ran in the door when the door was open last night - my hands were full and I was standing in the open doorway for a bit while I tried to put down the stuff I was carrying . Really , the only sign I could find that a mouse was in my apartment was the mouse in my apartment . So anyway , I initially touched the mouse with the index and middle finger of my right hand . I washed my hands after I threw the mouse out , and again after I checked the pantry . And again at work . I can see now what Lady Macbeth was going on aboutat So , unofficially , the holiday season has begun . Christmas music in stores , Christmas decorations , Christmas commercials , Christmas , Christmas , Christmas . I ducked into a Wal - Mart yesterday to use their facilities . When I was there , I remembered I needed yarn , and decided to save myself a trip . I wandered through the store and found the most ridiculous things that , I fear , will be significant pieces of the holiday game this year . Among them was the creepy mechanical horse : The reason it caught my eye was that as I was coming around a corner , I saw its tail swish . I thought " Oh , a big stuffed horse . Some kid must have brushed past its tail in passing . " Then it turned its head and looked right the fuck at me . I actually took a step back , it was so creepy . I could only take a quick , 15 - second video with my camera . Wal - Mart ( like all national chains ) frowns upon in - store photography , so I had to be covert . I can see the " neat - o " factor in the toy , but really - what does it do ? I saw no evidence of it walking or doing anything remotely interesting , besides going through its pre - programmed twitching and whinnying . Turns out it 's called the Fur Real Butterscotch Pony , and apparently it 's been around for years . They have a whole line : Cuddling Chimp , some kittens , and even a polar bear . All of which is a parent 's way of saying , " I can 't be bothered to give you unconditional love or to even hug you when you need it , so here is some fake fur and a bunch of batteries . I am giving you this in exchange for your love . " Not a new sentiment by any means , but this mechanical doll crap certainly adds an element of creepy that wasn 't there before . Suntimes headline : Man wins $ 2 mil . for false arrest ' THEY RUINED MY WHOLE LIFE ' | Chicago Police allegedly framed suspect in caseFormer Marine disarmed a drunken , belligerent , off - duty Chicago cop . Suddenly , he 's up on attempted kidnapping charges . The court says he was framed by the cops , so he gets $ 2 million in Chicago tax dollars . The part of this article that needs a little more explanation is this : " Tuesday 's verdict comes a week after another jury found other Chicago Police officers guilty of assaulting a teen with a screwdriver , resulting in a $ 4 million settlement against the Chicago Police Department . The teen was represented by the same firm . " Sounds kind of scary , eh ? Like they were smacking this kid with a screwdriver , or maybe even stabbing him . Yeah . . . no . That was sodomy . $ 4 , 000 , 000 worth of sodomy , courtesy of Chicago 's finest . So $ 6 million just this week has gone to cleaning up the messes made by our boys in blue . While one of my favorite blogs certainly makes a good point about people filing false complaints against the CPD , the fact is that there are probably more than a few completely power - crazed , insane , violent people on the force . By " more than a few " I mean more than you would find in your average group of non - cops . Every group of people has a population percent that includes power - hungry , crazy jackasses . The CPD seems to just have more than its fair share . If Daley is really going to turn this mess around , the discipline has to start now . And yes , bring in someone from the outside . Don 't put someone who already owes favors all over town in the top spot of a corrupt system . Relax , Daley - I meant the new chief , not you . One of the many Chicago - centric blogs that I persue on a regular basis has spilled the beans on a little CTA - related scandal . This is from Second City Cop : " From the comments - shouldn 't this be front page news ? * OFF TOPIC : On Thursday a CTA employee was in Area 4 under arrest for identity theft . She was charged Friday with felony identity theft for stealing the credit card numbers of riders paying for their monthly fare card with credit cards . Gave the numbers to her boyfriend and they then went and bought all kinds of nice things for themselves . While she was up in Area 4 , we had a " reverend " arrive and demand to speak to her . The bosses told him no , so he then pulls out his CTA identification . He 's a CTA board member , and he got her the job . The best part , Huberman himself called Area 4 and asked that this be handled quietly . Did not want any bad publicity since he 's now asking for more money for the CTA from riders and taxpayers . After the holy man / CTA board member started making more waves about talking with his wayward subject phone calls were made to the CTA bigshots by Area 4 bosses . They told the CTA to get this guy out of Area 4 or this arrest was going on the 24 log and there would be a press conference . He walked out shortly after that and it was not put on the 24 log which is for ' newsworthy events " . A CTA employee stealing from riders gets charged with a felony while the CTA is asking for more tax money and that 's not newsworthy ? Hey media ? We could use a break from our scandals . How about picking on CTA for a bit ? Of course , if this is true , we 'd have another scandal on our hands for not putting noteworthy news on the 24 hour report and covering for the west side reverend association . Seems like the reverends are at the forefront of a number of scandals . Hmmmm . " - - - Basically , this is why I don 't sign up to give the CTA my credit card number . Why give information like that to a company that 's basically about to have to file bankruptcy ? Sheesh . Or Look ! Something Worked ! Maybe This Cooking Stuff isn 't Bullshit After All ! I love lemon desserts . Cookies , cake , lemon bars , lemon , I don 't know , pudding , whatever . Damn , that is tasty stuff ! So , lemon bars . Make some dough - butter , flour , sugar . Done . Mash it into the bottom of an 8x8 pan . I only have one shitty disposable one , but it 's better than none , so . . . . done . Lemon sauce mix : gotta get some finely grated lemon peel and some lemon juice . Got a lemon . This is where it got fun . I don 't have a zester or a fine grater . I have one grater and it 's basically standard size . But it grated that peel up pretty well . I was making this while the oven was heating and while the squash was burning , so I was a little distracted and didn 't get a shot of the grated peel . Cry me a river . I needed three table spoons of lemon juice . Oops ! I don 't own a juicer thingy . Like the rolling pin thing , I improvised . I took the top from my pepper shaker : Cleaned it really , really well , and used it as a juicer thingy : And it was full of pulp and seeds , so I grabbed a coffee filter and filtered that stuff out . The trick is when you 're draining it , you press it ( don 't squeeze it ) very gingerly with your fingertips so the filter doesn 't break . Then you have some fine lemon juice : It doesn 't look like much , and I don 't know what you 're supposed to get from a lemon , but I got the three table spoons I needed with about half a table spoon left over . I drank it in victory , and regretted it immediately . I couldn 't cook this with the squash because it needed a 325 oven and currently my possessed , crazy ass oven was at about 425 . . . ish . So I put the lemon mix in the fridge ( it had eggs in it and I didn 't know how long that squash was going to screw around in the oven before I could get the lemon bars in , and I didn 't want it to go bad . ) I put the dough in to cook , it came out fine . I 'm setting the timer for half what 's recommended , then checking on it to see if my oven has vetoed my food . I poured the lemon mix on the decent dough bottom , and it came outat Or , It Turns Out My Oven is Possessed by the Ghost of Julia Childs 's Jealous Sister , Melba Childs , Who Could Never Get Her Creme to Properly Brulee , and is Taking Her Sister 's Taunts of " Mebla Can 't Toast " Out on My Fucking OvenI got an oven thermometer because obviously , given the nut bread fiasco , the knob on the oven doesn 't really know what goes on in my oven . So I set it for 425 . Took about 45 minutes to get there . I put the damn squash in , 15 minutes later , the oven was at 510 . I 'm going to just throw some pictures up here because I know you 're smart enough to figure out how this went down , and I 'm pretty excited about the lemon bars that I still want to post before I get to bed . I wasn 't at all surprised to discover that the squash wasn 't cooked all the way through and the brown sugar hadn 't quite dissolved . It was way too sweet . It was okay , though . I guess . Maybe I just can 't take sugar like I used to . Maybe that 's what being 30 and feeling 45 means . I love acorn squash , though , so I 'll try a different recipe in the future . Also , I had to quadruple the stuffing mix ( walnuts , raisins , brown sugar , butter ) to get enough to fill all four squash halves .
|
On Friday Ram had a funeral in the late afternoon so he couldn 't come home early to help me . I hurried to feed the Lambs supper because we had guests arriving at 6 : 30pm . We had a church member family over to play for a little while with the Lambs and then we served homemade ice cream . Their children are younger than the Lambs so they left pretty early . It was nice to get to know another family a little better . Saturday Ram had a circuit forum at our church and he found out that he is not going to the 2013 Synodical convention as either pastoral delegate or alternate . I would have liked a trip to Saint Louis ! Now we can begin 2013 vacation plans knowing that this is not a possibility to plan with or around . Then we invited some of the nearby pastors and their families over to our house for a late BBB ( Beer , Brats , Princess Bride Movie ) . We watched the first half of the movie , ate , and then most of the pastors had to go - for some reason pastors don 't like to be out late on Saturday night . We plan to watch the second half of the movie next year . It was nice to get to know a few pastors and their wives . I was glad they left relatively early so we could give baths and get the Lambs to bed on time . Lamb 1 has been especially grouchy the last week and needed the sleep . Then about 4 am Lamb 2 began throwing up . Between 4 - 6 am he was either throwing up or coming to my room panicking about being sick . I finally woke Ram about 6 : 15 and sent him for some 7 - Up for Lamb 2 . About 5am Lamb 1 woke up and begged to leave the room where the sick Lamb was . So he went to the guest room . Lamb 3 and Ram slept through all of that ! Ram had a busy morning of 2 services , Bible class , and Voter 's Meeting . I slept as much as I could while Lamb 2 laid on the couch and watched his brothers play . Lamb 1 was very upset that I told him he couldn 't play with his neighborhood friends - I didn 't want to pass germs to them . Lamb 1 was upset about missing Sunday School and finding out where our offerings are going to go this year . Lamb 1 voted to send money for mosquito nets for children in Africa with malaria . Lamb 2 and 3 voted to send money to buy ducks and geese for families in Africa . Lamb 1 wants his to win because he knows how bad mosquitoes are in MN . We still don 't know which one the Sunday School voted for and won . Since I wasn 't at church , no one took a photo of the quilts and backpacks filled with school supplies that the church collected to donate . I decided after supper that the Lambs should watch some classic Disney movies before our trip to Disneyland . I don 't think this has anything to do with Disneyland but the Lambs chose Bambi . It was a good activity to get Lamb 2 's mind off of being sick , but the movie was a little scary for Lamb 2 and 3 . This is why we haven 't watched very many Disney movies . I have a few more on my list that they should see before we go to Disneyland - Cinderella , Peter Pan , and Dumbo . They have already seen Winnie the Pooh and Finding Nemo . After all that perhaps we will watch a few more . After the movie Ram and Lamb 1 went to Walmart to get some children 's Tylenol for Lamb 2 's fever . After moving and no one being sick in our house for so long , all we had left was some expired children 's Motrin . When they got back Lamb 2 began throwing up again . Our Lambs rarely get sick so this is quite an experience for all of us . Lamb 1 began crying when Lamb 2 began throwing up again tonight because he knows it means another day that he can 't play with his friends . Lamb 2 is miserable . Lamb 3 doesn 't understand . Ram is running around trying to help all of us and Ewe is trying to keep up with all the laundry . As I wrote this blog post I had to go help Lamb 2 . I pray that the rest of us are spared from this round of the flu . It may be a long night . . . I am not attending my high school reunion this weekend , but I did find it interesting to look online at my classmates that responded , of where they ended up twenty years later . I did go to my 5 year high school reunion and was shocked that so many of my classmates were parenting toddlers at that time . I know they just give a few sentences describing their lives now , but it is good to see so many of them married and with children . I have not kept in contact with any of my classmates , most of my high school friends were either a few years ahead or behind me in school , not the ones that graduated with me . It is amazing to me what has happened to me the last 20 years . I 'm sure each classmate has a lot that happened to them too . Wow , where did those 20 years go though ? Add the thought that in just 10 more years Lamb 1 will be graduating from high school . Yikes ! 3 miscarriages meant being sent to an OB / GYN for a whole bunch of tests . 6 miscarriages meant being sent to a Reproductive Endocrinologist . I didn 't expect the RE to do a whole lot because I already had a whole bunch of tests done a few years ago when they discovered I had Factor II . My appointment began with sitting down with a nurse practitioner and going through my whole history . I had a headache after talking about the details of 9 pregnancies . ( Note to others : EVERY time you are pregnant whether a birth or miscarriage - make notes to yourself of length of pregnancy , any complications , if a miscarriage then how long the pregnancy , if you ever saw a heartbeat , if you had bleeding was it before or after ultrasound , etc . You never know when this will be helpful . It is much easier to write down right after the birth / miscarriage than try to remember a few years later . ) I did the best I could do to remember . Between my memory and my records that I had sent from several doctors I think we pieced the history together pretty accurately . There are about 5 days a month in your cycle where they will do a special ultrasound to check for abnormalities like polyps or fibroids . I praised God that it was one of those days in my cycle so I was able to have this done today . When I went to check out the billing lady said it saved me $ 450 to do that today instead of making another appointment . Plus I was able to get it done today and not have to make time to go back again . I praised God that nothing abnormal showed up so no surgery is required . The bill today was almost $ 400 and I don 't know if insurance will cover it . It was worth every penny and the two hours at the doctor 's office for the peace of mind to know that I have done what I could do . I don 't know what the future holds for our family size , but I do know that God is the one holding our family in His hands . It gives me great peace to know that God determined our family size , not something that Ram and I did . I haven 't gone through menopause yet nor have we ruled out adoption , so we may end up with more than 3 Lambs . No matter what , I have a lot to be thankful for - Ram and 3 healthy Lambs . I thought about this post all day and wondered if it was TMI to post this on my blog . I finally decided to post it because something I say may be helpful to others with recurrent miscarriages or Factor II . Plus I have several friends that knew about my appointment and it is easier to post here to update them . My friend , Joelle , gave me some collard greens because she couldn 't find anyone else that was willing to prepare and eat them . Our supper was homemade mac and cheese , collard greens with bacon , and watermelon . Lamb 1 doesn 't like dairy so he tried the mac and cheese and actually ate a little without the top layer of cheese . He ate lots of collard greens and watermelon too . Lamb 2 ate everything . Lamb 3 had a few spoonfuls of mac and cheese and lots of watermelon . Of course Ram and Ewe had everything and seconds too . Our family ate all the collard greens , all the watermelon , and had one helping of mac and cheese leftover . Only my family would finish the collard greens but have leftover mac and cheese ! 1 . I ordered a new math book for Lamb 2 and some other " treats " for school from Rainbow Resource and spent some of our Amazon money from the Be Well Serve Well program . It has been fun watching them come in a few at a time . These are not what I would consider required for homeschooling a first and third grader , but they will be fun extras this year . 2 . I have been hard at work unpacking boxes from the garage . I am determined to find a place for what I unpack or give it away . These boxes contain nothing important for daily living , just things Ram and I collected , lots of it was from one of our grandparents . The recycling and trash were full and we 'll have a big load to take to Goodwill again . We are especially dealing with all the old computer parts and programs - we only have Macs now , we don 't need a lot of that . Also we have so much kitchen stuff - I have a pretty big kitchen and pantry so if it doesn 't fit in there I don 't need it . 3 . We have nothing on the calendar for this whole weekend except for church and Sunday School ! Next week is very busy with doctor appointments , piano tuning , Lamb 1 begins piano lessons , and a field trip to the zoo so it will be good to have a break this weekend . I hope to invite some friends over for Sunday afternoon . 4 . Lamb 1 finished the first half of his math book so he is looking forward to going with Ram to the hardware store to pick out a wrench for his toolbox . The last few months were a struggle to get him to just DO his math - I wonder if it is too easy for him . The past few days he did several lessons each day in order to finish so he could go get a wrench . I figure he has a whole school year to finish the other half now . So much for being so far ahead ! I don 't know when he finishes Saxon math 3 what I am going to have him do for fourth grade . I plan on having him complete Saxon math 3 and then just take a break from a math book until fourth grade - just work on math facts etc . We 'll see how long it takes him to complete Saxon 3 though . 5 . We were back to a regular school day this week . For all - Poem , Bible story , hymn , catechism , Latin , Geography Songs , math fact song , then math for Lamb 1 and 2 , and handwriting for Lamb 2 and Lamb 3 when he doesn 't have preschool . I still have a little more to add in for Lamb 1 and 2 . It has been good to get back into this routine and they won 't admit it , but I think the Lambs missed some of the school subjects we didn 't do last year . It has been difficult for me to get school done and get lunch prepared before Ram gets home for his lunch break . I must work on that next week - either prepare lunch the night before or begin school a little earlier . Adjustments like that are difficult after moving . Before we moved I didn 't have to work school around a preschool schedule , Ram was home almost every day until after lunch , and Lamb 2 was just in preschool so I really only had Lamb 1 to homeschool . I also need to do a little more organizing in the schoolroom to make the school day easier . But overall I 'm pleased with how homeschool is going now . Lamb 1 got me going on emptying boxes in the garage because he wanted to set up his " shop " area in the garage . Grandma signed him up to join the young woodworkers club and every month he gets a new project to make in the mail . I was surprised how much an 8 year old can build with just a little help from Ram . When there was room cleared out he set up a little table in there . I caught the Lambs today all sitting around the table talking and watching Lamb 1 putter around with scraps of wood . When I was single my sister worked for Lowes for a short time in her history of jobs to pay for college . She used her discount to buy a couple of plastic toolboxes for me to organize my craft supplies . After Lamb 1 was born we gave one of those toolboxes to him for his plastic pretend hammer , wrench , saw , etc . A few weeks ago we purchased a toolbox and a few tools for Lamb 1 . He is trying to finish the first part of his math book so he can earn another tool to put in it . Lamb 2 and 3 looked wishfully at Lamb 1 's toolbox but knew they had to wait until they were older . In the past few days of cleaning out boxes I discovered another one of those toolboxes from Lowes . I also discovered screwdrivers that we had bought all the Lambs a few years ago when they were free with a rebate . This is what we did . Lamb 1 kept his toolbox and tools . Lamb 2 began filling the toolbox I found . Lamb 3 emptied all the " baby " tools out of the toolbox in the play room and started to fill it with big tools . We labeled all their tools and toolboxes with their names . ( I think this will be important in a few years since Ram and 3 Lambs all will have similar tools . ) I had to be a good Mama and keep quiet about Lamb 3 even though it stabbed my heart that none of the Lambs are young enough for " baby " tools any more . Those tools have been played with and copied Ram and Grandpa as handymen for the past 8 years . Just a few weeks ago Lamb 3 stuck his play screwdriver inside the stuffing of a chair and we can 't get it out - all while he was " helping " me by " fixing " my chair . Lamb 2 ended up taking some of the " baby " tools in his toolbox - of course he said it 's just until he 's old enough for a real hammer etc . , but I bet they will be played with by both Lamb 2 and 3 for a little longer . All those years ago when I got those toolboxes , I never would have guessed that I would have 3 boys that would love to get them and start filling them . Much of what I 'm going through is ending up in the trash or giveaway pile - it hasn 't been missed since it was packed last year . But a few items like the toolboxes are being given a new purpose and really appreciated then . That is my ultimate goal with organizing - to have everything in our home used or appreciated . We have far too much stuff for only being married for 10 years . When we moved I really cleaned out things as I unpacked . Those items that weren 't favorites of the Lambs or my favorites went into a giveaway pile . Then I went through that pile and tried to decide where a better home for those items would be . I have a friend that I have never met that collects Raggedy Ann and Andy items . So this is what I sent to her . The last few weeks in my " spare time " I did resume going through boxes from the garage . I made good headway on some boxes that hadn 't been opened since they were packed a year ago . My give away pile grew again after just finding a new home for everything on Labor Day . The whole process is one box at a time , continually trying to empty boxes to make more room in the garage for a chest freezer and a bike for Lamb 3 in addition to just having more room in the garage . The Lambs were thrilled to see some of their toys again . Some of their toys went in the giveaway pile since no Lambs asked me about them or missed them while they were packed this last year . Also our church preschool is getting some nice items from when I taught in the classroom and some of the toys the Lambs outgrew for the two year old class . I worked all afternoon on Friday to can 6 quarts of applesauce from apples we picked at the orchard . There was one bowl of applesauce left over that I served for supper on Saturday . Here is some of the supper conversation . Nothing could convince Lamb 3 to even try the homemade applesauce . This is the same boy that the only apples he ever eats are the ones from McDonalds . I 'm just thankful that Costco applesauce is organic , no sugar added ! We had a nice church service remembering the 10th anniversary of the 9 - 11 attacks at our regular Sunday service . We came home for a regular Sunday afternoon of naps for everyone . We realized it was supper time and there wasn 't much in the house to cook . Ram went into town and picked up a pizza , something we rarely did when we lived in MN . After pizza we were running late to put the boys to bed . While we were doing the bedtime routine the phone rang . It was the president of this church in ID saying that they extended a Call to Ram . The paperwork would be in the mail soon . We were very excited , especially with the possibility of moving to the same state as Ram 's parents , but I tried to remember that this was the first Call Ram received after his original Call out of Seminary , and Ram might not take the first Call offered to him . Then it took a couple of weeks for the paperwork to arrive . During that time Ram made some phone calls to other pastors in the area and he had pretty much made his decision by the time the paperwork arrived . He announced that he accepted the Call the first Sunday of October and we moved into a rental house here on Halloween and he was installed as pastor here the first Sunday of November . We moved in our new house in March . There were a few times that we used our front porch light . We looked everywhere we could think of and couldn 't find the light switch for the lights on the garage . We noticed that our neighbors usually put their garage lights on when it became dark . At first I thought maybe we had boxes in front of the light switch . As we continued to unpack boxes , that wasn 't the problem . I thought maybe they would come on automatically as you approached them , but that didn 't work either . Finally a few days ago Ram called our house builders and asked where the light switch was at for the garage lights . They responded that the lights were photo cell and should work automatically . Ben decided to try replacing the light bulbs . If that didn 't work then he would put in an order to the house builders to replace the lights . We have a one year warranty so there would be no charge . On Friday Ram replaced the light bulbs . It was near dusk time . Amazingly they worked right away ! They come on at dusk and go off at dawn . 3 . We did some major furniture rearranging when we got the piano . I really like my new arrangement in the living room . Ram thought we would need to call a friend to help with the rearranging , but Ram and I took the sofa upstairs by ourselves . 4 . I completed the summer scrapbook challenge and met the goal of 75 pages so I got some nice treats from my Creative Memories consultant . It is so nice to have one year of each of the Lamb 's albums complete . 5 . Lamb 3 begins preschool on Tuesday . He is the first one to bring snacks . I have snacks for Tuesday and have to think about healthy , peanut free snacks for the other two days . He is not excited about preschool at all , but I love that Lamb 1 and 2 will have 3 mornings a week to do school without him . Our church is talking about adding kindergarten next year - not sure what we will do with Lamb 3 if they do . 6 . We got a States and Capitals DVD from the library and all 3 Lambs have been learning this . 7 . My friend Elizabeth comes on Wednesday for a week ! 8 . The September calendar is getting full . We have some fun events planned at church , preschool , and I want to do some things with the family . 9 . Our church had a kickball game last Sunday . It was so much fun ! They had it at a park that we can walk to which made Sunday afternoon even more fun . 10 . My camera is in the shop for at least a week so hopefully I can use this time without my camera to get caught up on posting photos to my blog and send my photos to Snapfish . There have already been a few times where I really wished I had my camera ! 11 . We listened to most of the RNC on the radio , so glad that was an option for those of us without TV . It 's so interesting to me to be in this time zone and most of the speeches were done by 9pm . I 've never lived in this part of the country , I can 't even imagine living on the West Coast or in Hawaii . 12 . Lamb 2 has gone to speech therapy twice . So far it has been " testing " and evaluation and review of letter " v " from what he worked on in MN . I 'm anxious for him to really begin speech . We went the route through our doctor 's recommendation and not the school . I 'm hoping insurance covers part of it , but he needed to get back in speech so I 'm willing to pay if we need to . He will go one hour every week for at least six months . Next will be to get Lamb 3 's speech evaluated and we may go the same route with him . I have been married to my beloved for 15 years . We have 3 boys . We also have 11 miscarried children in heaven . My favorite part of the day is reading to my boys . I taught at a classical Lutheran school for 6 1 / 2 years and now I am a homeworker . I like aprons , books , scrapbooking , and tea . View my complete profile This was the first of a series I wrote while we lived in rural MN . Read this post first and then read newer posts . There are 30 posts in this series .
|
This blog is dedicated to anyone who has ever been afraid to talk about what matters to them . No one should tell you that what you have to say is unimportant . If it matters to you , it matters period . I recently took this political compass test to see where I 'd end up : http : / / www . politicalcompass . org / Basically , there are four sides , and the test places you somewhere in the square . Taking this test and thinking about where I am in relation to my closest friends , my social circle , and the general population made me realize something important . Something about the problem with places like Colby . I 've said this a million times already , but my priority is being someplace where it 's okay to be yourself and you don 't have to live up to anyone else 's standards . Colby was a politically liberal place . I didn 't think I 'd mind this when I applied to the school , but I soon realized that the lack of political diversity put a lot of pressure on you to uphold certain beliefs , and I had a huge problem with the fact that so many points of view were taboo subjects at Colby . And when I look at that square grid on the political compass site , it 's clear what 's going on . I know that this grid doesn 't cover everything , and that there are probably some people who don 't belong on the grid at all . But let 's assume that this grid does cover all beliefs , that everyone has to fall somewhere within this square . So , when you look at the whole square , the general population , you have some people who are really close to you and some people who are far away from you . Now let 's look at this more realistically : most of the time , you * aren 't * surrounded by people all over that square . Some geographic regions are more liberal / conservative , and the same goes for schools and workplaces . So let 's say that , like me , you live in a liberal area . If just the people who live in my state all took this political survey , the results wouldn 't cover the whole square evenly - they 'd be more clustered in a certain area . Now , let 's go a step further and say that you 're a small liberal arts college ( less than 2 , 000 students ) where people assume that you 're politically liberal simply because you go there . Most people 's scores would be clustered in a particular area of the square . Now , when you 're out in the real world , surrounded by people all over the spectrum , it 's kind of cool when you find someone who 's really close to you . You can have a special bond with that person . But when you 're not in the real world , when you 're in a world where everyone is clustered in the same space , people stop seeing the rest of the spectrum . Rather than bonding over how alikThat 's why I like it better when we aren 't trapped in that cluster , when we are part of a world where people can exist anywhere on the chart . It 's easier to bond that way . It 's easier to find friends who share your beliefs when the standards of those beliefs aren 't so exact . On the political compass scale , I came out really extreme on one spectrum and more in the middle on the other . In my college group of friends , I wouldn 't have been close enough to most people to actually bond over shared beliefs . But in the real world , I 'm plenty close enough . And funnily enough , the distance is about the same . If you know something that I don 't know about - a new place in town , a new singer , book , movie , etc . that you want to recommend , I 'm totally down with that . More importantly , if I 'm in the midst of a really bad situation and can 't see a way out , and you can see a solution to the problem ( Note : accepting reality is NOT a solution . Solution example : I recently moved and couldn 't have quiet in my room late at night because I could hear my neighbor snoring . My mom suggested closing my vent and getting a white noise maker . Closing the vent has dramatically improved the problem , and I 'm sure my white noise maker , when I get one , will solve the issue entirely ) you are more than welcome to recommend that solution . I am not interested in handling problems in a way that involves writing less about them on Facebook . I 've been wracking my brain for a long time , and I just can 't come up with one single time that I 've expressed a desire to share less . I 'm really not coming up with anything . Ever since I left Colby , my goal has been to share MORE . I avoided sharing lots of things in the past because I was worried what other people thought of me , and that was a serious problem , and my goal has always been to share whatever I want to share freely . I used to feel like I was being a good little girl by not sharing negative stuff that I felt like saying , but trying to maintain a positive Facebook image so people would like me more . But when I recently started posting more stuff , I realized that I was NOT any happier when I posted less stuff . I was just holding back to please other people . And I don 't want to please other people because I want to know upfront who my real friends are . Anyone who thinks less of me because of what I 've written , or who sees my writing as a problem that needs to be fixed , is not someone I want to be friends with at all . There 's that saying , " Always remember to be happy because you never know who 's falling in love with your smile . " I don 't want someone to fall in love with my smile . Anyone can fall in love with a smile . I want someone to fall in love with me when I 'm NOT smiling , someone who likes me all the time and isn 't going to ditch me in times of trouble . I want someone who will really , truly accept how bad a situation is for me , not see a wilted flower when I 'm describing a burning building . It felt good to have my BF wrap his arms around me when I was upset about Colby and tell me , " You 're not there anymore . " It felt good , but there was something lacking there . It wasn 't just about Colby - it was about the general issue of validation . He acted like Colby was just this one isolated incident and now that I was done , everything was gonna be all bright and sunny . That 's not true . And that 's why I need assurance that if you were there when I was going through Colby , you would have accepted that it was every bit as bad as I said it was and support me dropping out . I need to know that , because it could happen again . Not college specifically , but there will always be times when I 'm in a situation that 's a problem for me , that other people are okay with or willing to accept , and I need to know that I will have your support , that you won 't tell me to suck it up and deal , because that 's not something I 'm planning to do . Colby taught me a lot about people . A lot of my relationships with people are damaged now because of how they treated me while I was going through college . Most people didn 't accept how bad it was . When I posted on Facebook that I was upset about job rejection , I wanted to see what would happen . And sure enough , I got support . But the truth is , I wasn 't that upset about the job rejection . I was more upset that a recruiter had lied to me and was pressuring me to lie in order to get the job . Honestly , when I didn 't get into the plays and singing groups I tried out for in college , I was more disappointed about that than about not getting a job . Honestly , the job thing is NOTHING compared to what went on at Colby , and it 's clear to me that " support " often has more to do with what other people / society value than what you value , not matter how clearly you express what matters to you , what 's okay and not okay with you . And if you 're going to just step back when I post that kind of stuff on Facebook , like when you step back and let a child have their temper tantrum and figure they 'll eventually get tired of screaming , it 's not gonna work . I will NEVER run out of words . I support people who have a personal goal to be happy or positive . I don 't support forcing this goal on others because it puts too much responsibility on the individual . I don 't support telling people that they are responsible for their own happiness . A lot of things in this world are really horrible , and we need to be working to solve these problems and to help people get out of bad situations . If I were going to give a talk about happiness to a group of people , it wouldn 't be about positive thinking or attitude . It would be about two things : 1 . Doing what 's right for you , even when other people pressure you to just accept your current situation , and 2 . Treating other people ( of all ages ) with respect , validating other people 's feelings , respecting personal choices , being supportive , and helping them feel good about themselves . It is NOT your responsibility to deal with people hurting you - it is THEIR responsibility to not hurt you . I once saw a clever cartoon where all different shapes - a square , rectangle , and triangle - were standing near a door that was shaped like a circle , that none of them could fit through . A circle was standing outside the door telling the other shapes that all they had to do was be themselves . Being yourself doesn 't fix everything ! It might be good advice in some situations , but honestly , be someone other people can be themselves around ! ! ! Expressing yourself doesn 't mean it 's always gonna be a pretty fireworks show . Sometimes it 's gonna look more like blood smeared all over the walls . Honestly , the most heartfelt , passionate things I 've written are quite the opposite of a happy fireworks show . I have friends who like me better because of who I really am , because of all the things I 've expressed here and on Facebook , and really , these are the only kind of friends I want to keep . I 'm working on starting a validation service , where people can write to me at a special email address and I 'll validate whatever is going on in their lives . I 'm gonna post videos where I explain this service and discuss validation issues . The videos will also have transcripts , and I 'll probably start by keeping those transcripts on this blog . If this turns into something huge , I 'll get another blog specifically for this project , where I 'll double - post things from this blog that are focused on validation . My project isn 't just about giving people validation , it 's about teaching people what validation is and how they can be more validating to others in their own lives . Teaching validation is important . It 's my life 's work . Seriously , I feel like it 's at the core of almost everything I 'm working on . It 's in my fictional stories . My first novel was all about the negative effects of peer pressure and suppressing the gut feeling that tells you to run . I think one of the reasons I 'm so passionate about my sex blog is that it automatically promotes the message , " It 's okay to feel this way . " This is definitely something I 'm fighting for . But I don 't always want to be fighting . I don 't want to spend lots of time around invalidators so that I can educate them . I try to surround myself with people who are validating and supportive and make me feel good about myself . It 's because of that support that I 'm willing to fight for this . I used to feel so lonely writing about validation issues , but now I know I 've got people on my side , I know that " likes " from certain people are almost guaranteed , and I never had that feeling before . When I was in a relationship with my boyfriend , I started off in a bad place . Coming right out of Colby College , I had gotten so accustomed to being invalidated and having my choices not respected that anyone who didn 't do those things in a major way was awesome . I knew he wasn 't an absolute validator deep down , but the fact that he didn 't say anything that made me feel really bad was good enough . All I had to do was explain to him what was okay and not okay , and everything would be fine . But there is a huge difference between explaining your specific needs to someone who is sensitive of other people 's needs in general vs . explaining to someone who isn 't . Being with my boyfriend made me feel like he was normal and I was weird . When we first broke up , I felt like I 'd never find anyone else because I 'd have to find someone who was willing to do a ton of extra work to be validating , since that didn 't seem to be a " normal " instinct . But then I spent more time with my close friends and realized that it IS an instinct . I 've said before that when someone tells me that their friend complained the whole time on a trip and ruined it for everyone , I automatically take the side of the complainer . I have logical reasons for that , but the biggest reason is that I 've been the complainer way more often than I 've had my day ruined by someone else complaining , so it 's just instinctive to me . And it 's instinctive to other people too . Even if they wouldn 't necessarily take the side of the complainer like I would , they would at least consider that the person complaining was probably having a really bad time . Most people I get along with wouldn 't automatically agree that the person shouldn 't have been complaining . I 've been posting a lot of my personal feelings on Facebook , and I had someone tell me that no wanted to hear it and that I sounded " crazy as fuck . " This was on a thread on my boyfriend 's Facebook page . He didn 't react to it at all . I had to keep pestering him to respond and when he finally did , it was a neutral response . A response that sounded like a class discussion post about how people use social media for different things . He really didn 't care that someone hurt me . Now , he 's not the kind of person who would have written something really bad to me , or even talked much about me behind my back , but he 's also not the type who has the instinct to defend me . He 's just neutral . When I talked to a close friend about the message after , she told me that regardless of who the people were , her instinct would have always been to defend the person who wanted to share . That 's my instinct too . It 's not something I 'm working especially hard at . It 's not something I 've worked to change about myself in order to satisfy the needs of someone I want to be with . It is literally just an instinct . I 'm not saying that people can 't change , or that instincts can 't be learned . You can definitely develop good habits to the point that you don 't think about them anymore , to the point that they become instinctive . But I can 't be with someone who I 'd have to ask to develop those habits for me - I need someone who already has them . If someone is working on becoming more validating and consent - conscious , that 's fine . Those are things I 'm working on as well . But they need to be interested in these things on their own . I can 't be asking them to start thinking about stuff that they 've never thought about before . I want to teach validation to the world . But I don 't want it to be a full - time job . I don 't want to be a teacher in my personal life . I need to be with someone who already has the validation instinct . A lot of people were up in arms about Miley Cyrus ' music video , The Wrecking Ball . This brought up an issue that I 've seen for a while now . This issue that when someone used to do something nonsexual or " innocent " and then starts doing something sexual , it 's like this fall from grace where they 've been corrupted and everyone 's disappointed in them . And I 'm not talking about celebrities - you see this often when someone 's been out drinking and having sex and getting into trouble and everyone wants them to stop . The person will go on a talk show and they 'll show a picture of them when they were five years old and so cute and sweet and innocent , and then compare it to a present - day picture of the person partying in a skimpy outfit , and everyone gasps and wonders what went wrong . But I don 't see what 's wrong . Most teenagers and adults don 't look the way they did when they were kids . Not just in terms of our bodies , but in the way we dress and act , and in the context of our pictures - most of us are just going to be in very different places doing very different things than we did when we were younger . Most adults are not going to look as " innocent " as they did in their childhood pictures . That 's not necessarily a problem - this can be good , bad , or neutral , depending on the individual 's life . But my point here is , whenever someone starts doing something we don 't want them to do , something we think is scandalous or inappropriate , we start claiming that it 's so horrible that they aren 't in the same place they were when they were younger , when the reality is that most of us aren 't ! Picture a child pretending to be an astronaut . Now picture that same person as an adult , wearing a store uniform or a business suit , doing nothing remotely related to astronomy . Now , if that person still wants to be an astronaut , then I do think it 's really sad that they 're not able to do it . But no one would blink at this story . Everyone expects us to accept that that 's life . Even if you do feel bad that someone isn 't doing what they always wanted to do , you probably aren 't going to treat them like someone who fell off the path . Of course , there 's also the possibility that this person doesn 't want to be an astronaut anymore . If they were very young when they had this desire , they 've had lots of time to explore different options and decide that they 'd rather do something else . But when it comes to these sexual fallen - from - grace stories , we never give anyone the option to change their mind . We can 't accept that someone decided they 'd rather be drunk - dancing in a revealing outfit than trying to win the school spelling bee . We insist on holding onto the " innocent " pursuits that the person once had . If we held everyone to that standard - that you have to be doing the same things you were doing when you were younger and nothing new or else you 're a failure - almost everyone would have a fall - from - grace story . When I was younger , I bought into this idea about all these people falling from their paths and doing " bad " things . And then I went to Colby College . And graduated . With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach . This was my fall from grace . I was incredibly happy with my life before college and with the person I was back then , and now , with that prestigious college diploma in my hands , I was so farther away from where I wanted to be than I had ever been in my life . So far away that I didn 't see a way back . I saw my story played out in other people 's fall - from - grace stories . There were these anti - drug PSAs on TV a long time ago where a teenager would say , " They told me heroin would give me the best high of my life , " then we 'd see a bunch of horrible things happening as a result of them doing heroin , and they 'd come back and repeat , " They told me heroin would give me the best high of my life . They lied . Find out the truth about heroin . " I honestly thought I could make the exact same kind of video about college . . . " They told me college would be the best four years of my life . They lied . Find out the truth about college . " The absolute worst part about my own fall - from - grace story was that no one saw it that way . When I look closely at my college graduation picture , I can see that something is very wrong . I look ill and worn down , like the life that shone through in my high school senior portrait has been sucked out . I don 't expect friends to be able to see that just from looking at the picture . I DO expect friends to accept it at face value when I tell them that it was a fall from grace . And now , I have amazing friends who will do that . But at the time , no one could see past the cap and gown and diploma . No one could really , truly , on a gut level , accept that my college graduation picture deserved to be treated like a fall - from - grace picture , like a " What happened to the REAL Nikki ? " picture . And that 's when I saw the problem with all these other fall - from - grace stories - they 're all about what other people are expecting of someone and don 't have much correlation to what the person actually wants to be doing . I get that sex sells . I get that there might be pressure to be more sexual in your media / art than you want to be , and I do think that 's a problem . But let me ask you this : if I got a job writing a sales blog for a company I had no personal interest in , would you be upset that I was selling myself short by writing things I 'm not super - passionate about in order to support myself , or would you be happy for me because I got a job doing something that I love to do ? Let me tell you something - when I was a kid , I loved performing in front of people . I used the couch as a stage and put on shows for my family all the time . I always posed when someone was taking pictures , and I loved being the center of attention . So picture me at seven years old wearing sparkly dress up clothes , dancing and singing on my makeshift stage , and striking fancy poses for the camera . Now I want you to imagine me dancing in a sexual MTV music video wearing a really skimpy outfit . When you compare those two pictures , I may not look as young or innocent now as I did when I was a kid ( who does ? ) , but a lot of elements of the " now " picture are actually very similar to who I was when I was younger , and the person that I wanted to be . I 'm not actually in a music video . I wear business clothes and have an office job . If you compare my real " now " picture to the diva I was as a kid , that is sad . That is a true fall from grace . I wasn 't overly sexual when I was a kid ( I say " overtly " because I kept most of my sexual thoughts private , but I did have sexual thoughts as young as five years old ) , but I also never expressed an overt desire to work in an office , or to do anything not - fun for that matter . A picture of me starring in some super - sexual music video would be WAY closer to the person I want to be than a picture of me going to work in my professional business clothes . If my child wanted to bite the heads off of gummy bears and stick them to the wall , and they spent days on this project , making sure all the color patterns were just right and that every single space was covered , I would think that was awesome . And I would assume that whatever qualities or skills that it took my child to complete this project - determination , persistence , attention to detail - were tied specifically to this project that my child is so passionate about . I would not assume that these are stand - alone traits , that I can go around bragging that my child has these positive qualities that they can go out and apply to bigger , more important tasks that my child has never even expressed interest in . Maybe they don 't want to pay that much attention to detail when they 're cleaning their room . Maybe they don 't want to persevere at their homework the same way . Maybe they are only showing these traits because they happen to be extremely passionate about gummy bears . That 's fine . That 's wonderful if they 've found something to feel that way about . They 're going to have quite a colorful wall when they 're done . I 'm really not doing okay . I went through a breakup and it sucks and I 'm not gonna go around acting like I 'm okay . I was very serious when I said that you 'd see the biggest drop in writing quality that you 've ever seen from me . Out of principle , because I 'm NOT a suck it up and deal kind of person , and if something 's wrong , you 're gonna see that reflected in everything I do . My productivity level at work has dropped by at least 25 % and I don 't intend to do anything to fix that . I 'm flashing back really really hard to Colby . Really hard . Like I 'm four years out , graduation was four whole years ago but now suddenly it 's all flashing back to me really hard because my boyfriend isn 't here anymore . He saved me from Colby . I felt like I hopped into his orange car and he started driving faster and faster and the next thing I knew we were far far far away from Colby . I hung out with his friends and social circle and it was so not Colby . Not that it was perfect because I did have some issues with some people . Okay I honestly didn 't fit in with them all that well because it was all about iphones and computer games that I don 't play , but it was so not Colby and that in itself is one of the biggest accomplishments ever . I had this big logical epiphany a couple weeks ago and was thinking about all the reasons we weren 't compatible , how I let that stuff slide and how we ended up where we are now . I realized how messed up my standards were after getting out of Colby and how a lot of the qualities I valued were things that weren 't as hard to find as I thought . I remember telling my friend when my boyfriend and I first started dating that he didn 't assume I knew anything that the average person doesn 't know and he didn 't hold me to any kind of higher intellectual standards because of where I went to school . He didn 't have a cause he was gonna pressure me about . We could enjoy curly fries together without him questioning whether it was wasting a lot of the potato to make curly fries ( like my college friends would say ) . And for a while last week I was thinking that even though these qualities are important to me , they 're not all that hard to find . But now I 'm really starting to question that again . Because the fact is - he was a non - pressurer for a lot of things . Okay , in the end there was pressure about getting a job and traditional values and work ethic and I did feel like he wanted me to be someone I wasn 't , but he didn 't pressure me about a lot of stuff in general . And is that really an easy quality to find ? Is that level of not caring what someone else is doing something I 'm ever gonna come across again ? Sure , I wished we could have talked more . A part of me thinks I might be more compatible with someone who likes to talk more because I like to talk a lot , but another part of me is like , would someone who wants to have lots of deep conversations be as equally non - pressuring ? I mean that - do these things even coexist ? Because if they don 't , then non - pressuring is my top priority and I 'd take that over anything else . ANYTHING else . I really felt that I 'd rather be with someone who has opposite beliefs but doesn 't push them than someone who has the same beliefs as me but pressures me to do more about stuff than I want to . The problem is that we 're not as separate from out beliefs as I thought we could be . Our beliefs aren 't just about who we vote for or what causes we care about - they 're in everything we do , and they were just too opposite . That 's what I said last week . But then I had a dose of Colby and was like , wait a sec - okay , maybe our beliefs were too opposite , I 'll buy that , but I honestly still feel like I 'd rather be with someone who has opposite beliefs but is more neutral / uninvolved with them than someone who has the exact same beliefs as me and is gonna pressure me to do a bunch of stuff . Non - pressuring is still at the top and he did mostly have that quality and it only takes one drop of Colby , one ounce of those memories , to start feeling trapped like Colby is the fucking world and start to think that maybe non - pressuring is a rare hard to find quality and I never should have let him go . Never . What no one seems to accept about me and about the Colby situation was that I had MORE of an issue with the socially - aware subculture of Colby than I did with the mainstream culture . That 's honestly where most of the pressure came from . It came from the people I was told to go to when I had problems with the Colby culture . I don 't think the mainstream culture was any better , and I 'm pretty sure I would have faced other equally bad things if I 'd been part of that , but the two cultures were equally bad for me - it 's like the whole school drinks a lemonade that most people like the way it is , and there 's a subculture of students who don 't like the way it is and are working to make it less sweet . And I want it MORE sweet . I think it 's not sweet enough to drink and I fucking hate it and I 'm always told to go and bond with the other students who hate the lemonade even thought they 're all working to make it worse for me . Seriously , that 's where all the pressure to go to events and have dialogue and being told what to care about came from - the socially aware subculture not the mainstream culture . Everyone tries to steal your resources at Colby - not physical resources like money or things , and I 'm not even talking about time , although time is a big one . People see that you 're passionate and try to direct that passion to what THEY think you should be thinking about . They tell you what to fucking CARE about and what to talk about on your own free time ! ! ! ! ! ! Everyone told me that I 'd have so much freedom in college but that was a fucking lie . I couldn 't do anything that actually mattered to me at college and I couldn 't be me . So many people tried to reach out to me when they saw I was angry but then they just ignored my issues and started trying to direct me toward their causes that had nothing to do with what I was saying at best and at worst went entirely AGAINST what I was saying because I 'd be talking about the pressure to go to events and have intelligent conversations and being told what to care about , and they 'd be I don 't know why it 's all coming back now . My friend said something about how Colby kids would feel like they 'd done their share of good , they 'd be like , well , I recycled so now I 'm entitled to do something bad or to not do something else good . You know what ? My problem with that is not the justification , but the fact that we even need justifications . Because where I come from , we could do all the bad stuff we wanted and we didn 't feel guilty about any of it and we didn 't have to do anything good to earn it . That became a problem for my boyfriend and me in the end because he was okay with society deciding that school and work are important and you have to earn stuff from those things , and I really need to be with someone who feels entitled to just go out and have fun and do lots of things WITHOUT earning them , whether by having a job or by attending a discussion group about an issue . I once read an article in the school newspaper about students complaining about small things and it mentioned that students do get really involved and care about issues and stuff , and it honestly made me sick to my stomach that there was any need for that justification . I will complain about whatever I want to complain about and I would have NEVER chosen Colby if I had seen this article and felt like I 'd have to earn my right to complain by first proving that I care about bigger issues . I can care about whatever I want to . My boyfriend made it feel okay to do this from the beginning . I could FINALLY listen to whatever kind of music I liked and not feel like I had critique it or dislike because of social issue problems . I absolutely love this song called " Suds in the Bucket " by Sara Evans but it 's so anti - socially - aware Colby that I would have never felt safe mentioning that I liked it at college . I love mainstream pop and Disney Channel and teen movies and I could finally enjoy that stuff in a guilt - free pressure - free environment with my boyfriend . But then trouble started because there were lots of other things we didn 't agree on , and " That 's Nikki ! " turned into an annoyance instead of a cute thing . But back when it was a cute thing , I felt so valued . Our poetry professor was trying to make a point one time about being original and she asked us how we 'd feel if someone wrote us a generic " Roses are red , Violets are blue " love poem , and students said that they 'd be unimpressed because the person obviously didn 't put much time into it . But I disagreed completely because I 'd just thing it was so sweet that someone wrote me a love poem no matter how good or original it was . I hated the way everyone valued being smart so much . I never care if someone 's smart or not . I 'm just looking to be with people who make me feel good and who I can have fun with , and any love poem would make me feel good . I loved all the sweet lines that my boyfriend later felt embarrassed about - when I asked him which superpower he 'd pick and he said " Does being with you count ? " Or the cute fights we 'd get into like , " No boots in bed ! " " Yes boots in bed ! " " No boots in bed ! " " Yes boots in bed ! " and on and on like that . You just can 't do that kind of stuff with smart Colby kids . I hadn 't had that kind of fun for years . I really hated the whole " They have to be smart and mature " thing about dating . I 'm not mature and don 't want someone who 's mature , I want someone who 's young and wild and free and wants to run around and celebrate it . And it scares me because I don 't have that safe nowhere - near - Colby feeling anymore . What scares me is that the things that weren 't compatible about us seem incompatible with all the things that were . Like , if I find someone who shares more of my interests and likes to talk about lots of different things , someone who will enjoy discussing things on a deeper level . . . will we still get to do all the cute silly stuff that my boyfriend and I did ? One of the things I enjoyed best in our relationship was that I felt free to be silly and I never had to act smart . Are beAnd it 's hard to talk about because a lot of people don 't respect my values on this . My mom in particular has never really accepted just how important the non - pressuring thing is to me . But the fact is , I 'm willing to give up a lot for it . I would give up all deep conversation if it means I won 't be told what to care about like I was at Colby . Okay , that would suck because I love talking , but still . I feel like some of these traits just don 't coexist in most people . And if that 's true , then non - pressuring is still at the top for me , and he had that trait , and I pushed him away by demanding that he had all these other qualities too . I started needing someone who believed in some of the same things I believe in rather than just tolerating my beliefs , but maybe I shouldn 't have needed that . Maybe that isn 't compatible with non - pressuring . The thing I 'm most grateful for right now is that I don 't get the Colby digest emailed to me anymore . I never wanted fucking dialogue . I HATE dialogue . I don 't know why I 'm flashing back to all that right now , but basically I want to go back to the time before chem - free - subculture Colby where you could do whatever the fuck you wanted and didn 't have to justify it by recycling or having dialogue or doing some other good thing - you could just do it ! ! ! !
|
I 've never posted a video on this blog before , but this one made me feel so happy and hopeful I just had to share the good feeling . It 's like Scrubs in real life , and it 's wonderful ! ! ( To be fair , I totally stole this video from RA Warrior 's awesome Bulletin Board , which just provided me with a good hour of fun procrastination ! ) Today my right knee is hurting a lot , but this doesn 't bother me so much . There 's plenty of reasons why my knee might hurt . And I 'm obviously used to a little joint pain . What does worry me a little bit is that my left toes are hurting more than ordinary today . A lot more than ordinary . And my left toes are exactly where my RA started . It 's not that I don 't have friends . I have plenty of friends . It 's just that my friends are spread out all over the country : Seattle , Scranton , Los Angeles , San Francisco , Durham , New York . . . In fact , it seems like they 're everywhere but Boulder ! I don 't mean to undervalue the loving support of these friends through phone , email , and by commenting on this blog . I can 't even explain how much it means to know that they are there for me . I am also happy that I am starting to gain support from a growing circle of " blog friends , " people who I have never met in person but who share my diagnosis and comment on this blog or email me . Some days , it 's the small comments from my faraway friends and blog buddies that keep me from jumping out the window . But there 's no denying that friendship and support via phone or computer wires just isn 't the same as having lunch with someone in real life . Or watching a movie together . Or just talking in person . And since APL left on Saturday morning I 've been completely alone except for a few small interactions with some guy at the park who 's dog played with my dog , a grocery store employee , and doctors . ( By the way , the orthopedist had good news and bad news . Good : my knee is looking good and healing well . Bad : she said it 's very likely that the kneecap will pop out again someday , so that 's fun . ) Other than APL , I just don 't have support in Boulder anymore . All the people APL and I currently hang out with started out as APL 's co - workers . I know that they 're my friends now too , but I 've never hung out with any of them without APL , and though I love them they aren 't really the kind of friends that will check in on you when you 're feeling low . What I really need is some girlfriends . But RK moved to Pennsylvania and the other girls I started law school with have graduated and moved on . Another friend stopped talking to me completely shortly after my diagnosis - I guess she couldn 't handle having a sick friend or something . What makes this situation especially difficult is that it isn 't really very easy for me to try to make new friends right now . I don 't have the energy that an ordinary 27 - year - old would have , and that can be difficult to explain to people you 've just met . Not to mention feeling tired often keeps me from doing things where I might have the chance to meet new people . Also , feeling icky so often and gaining weight from the meds doesn 't exactly help my self confidence or make me feel outgoing . However , rather than wallowing in this loneliness , I set out this week to try to improve my social life ! Unfortunately , I haven 't had much luck so far . Too bad my social life doesn 't improve with points for effort ! ! I offered to take a friend I don 't get to hang out with much anymore to dinner , but I haven 't heard back from her yet . I invited eight ( yes , eight ) law students to have a ladies lunch on Friday afternoon . I basically invited all the law students I know . But two are out of town , one has to work , one has other plans already , and the rest didn 't respond at all . In the end , I did manage to basically invite myself to dinner at a friend 's house on Saturday , which I am really excited about . It may seem like a small thing and perhaps silly , but I think it will be really good for me not to spend the whole weekend alone . Even though one out of ten tries isn 't exactly an excellent percentage , at least it 's a start . But , of course , I had to request that we have a low sodium dinner . While my friend was super nice about it and said she was totally willing to accommodate my needs , it still made me feel like a major pain in the ass . No wonder no one wants to hang out with me ! ! This semester started off with a problem : one of my professors , a professor I 've never had before , does not allow laptops in his classroom . I actually understand the reasoning behind this rule , as I have certainly been guilty of checking my email or Facebook during class myself . However , this rule presented more of a challenge to me than it did to my classmates : how will I take notes by hand for an hour and a half when I can hardly get through handwriting a thank you note ? I 've been lucky enough ( so far ! ) to have had really good experiences with being honest with my professors about my RA . They have all been very understanding and accommodating once I explained to them what I was going through . ( Including one professor who , I am ashamed to admit , I actually broke down crying in front of during the semester right after my diagnosis . I am now in my third class with this professor and he has become my favorite professor ! ) So , based on these experiences , I decided to talk to my professor and tell him that taking notes by hand would be a particular problem for me . I was not disappointed - this professor was just as understanding as the rest have been . He was completely willing to let me use my laptop in class to keep up with my note - taking . However , I wasn 't sure that was what I wanted , because it would single me out as someone getting special privileges in that class . This would mean either ( 1 ) I would have to explain why I needed the laptop , telling the whole class about my disability , or ( 2 ) we could say nothing and I 've have a bunch of law students annoyed at me for getting an unfair advantage . Neither of these options were appealing . So I spoke to University Disability Services to see if they could offer me any advice . Registering with Disability Services was not easy for me , but I 'm so glad that I did because they have actually given me some great help and advice . And heaven knows I can use all the help I can get having RA and being in law school and grad school all at the same time ! ! Disability Services recommended the livescribe SmartPen . I bought mine at Target . It was a little expensive ( almost $ 200 ) but it was 300 % worth it ! ! This is the COOLEST PEN EVER ! ! Using special paper ( which you can buy for about $ 20 / notebook or print pages yourself ) you turn the pen on , press record , and take notes like a regular pen . The awesome thing is that the pen links what you are hearing with what you are writing . So if your professor is listing things and you can 't keep up , you can just write " one , two , three " as he says them . Later , you can go back and tap on " two " to hear the second thing your professor talked about ! ! It is the coolest thing ever ! ! If my description doesn 't make sense , watch this video . The SmartPen also has a tiny little camera and a USB connection , so you can download the notes you took on paper to your computer with the audio . It is perfect for those days when my hands can 't quite keep up with my note - taking or for when my hands get tired after about an hour of class . I still have access to information I might otherwise have missed , information that most of my classmates have probably written down , which can make all the difference in the world in law school . If you are a student and you have RA ( or any other disability that makes it difficult for you to write by hand or keep up in class , for that matter ! ) I highly recommend the SmartPen . ( Just make sure you have your professor 's permission to record the lecture and make sure you recharge the battery after every class ! ) And , of course , the drug I was put on for my blood pressure last time is causing some unwanted side effect . ACE inhibitors ? Made me cough . Hydrochlorothizaide ? ( Now there 's a mouthful ! ) Made my calcium too high . So we 've moved on to blood pressure medication # 897 . Ok , ok , really it 's only been five or six different medications . But it feels like a million . As has been true for the past nine months , I 'll get some more blood tests done and meet with my doctor again in two weeks to see how my blood pressure is doing . Honestly ? I 'm starting to get pretty discouraged about this whole blood pressure thing , seeing as I 'm doing everything in my power to fix it and it doesn 't seem to be helping at all . But , I also booked a follow - up appointment with the nutritionist today , so maybe that will help . I also ( beware : TMI ) booked my annual exam at the Women 's Clinic . They had a cancellation this Friday so I took it , just to get it over with . Doctors appointments 4 out of 5 days this week ? Don 't mind if I do ! [ Insert sarcasm here . ] Of course , this brings my total number of medical appointments for this month to ELEVEN . Which means I 've been to the doctor on almost 40 % of the days in February . I should totally get a raise . ( 6 ) My first appointment with the nutritionist . ( Did you know that there is sodium in everything ? ? So turns out I 've been doing a crummy job at being low - sodium . So , hopefully with the nutritionist 's help I 'll be doing better at that soon . ) ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) ( 5 ) For the time being , I 'm still going to physical therapy every week . Between my knee and other RA issues , will I have to keep going ? Probably . But . . . at the same time . . . . multiple doctors appointments every week is completely exhausting . Even without the fatigue from RA and law school I think it would be totally exhausting . As is , sometimes I just feel totally overwhelmed at the thought of just one more doctor 's appointment . Going to the doctor has become a damn full time job . And this job doesn 't seem to come with any vacation . And that sucks . Last weekend my little sister and her boyfriend came to visit and it was like a fantastic mini - vacation for us ! We picked them up from the airport on Saturday and drove straight to the mountains , through a snowstorm , to the little mountain town of Buena Vista . ( Which , I 'm sure all you Californians / anyone who speaks Spanish will be appalled to know , the locals insist on calling : B - yuu - na Vista ! ) We had dinner at a fantastic little restaurant ( that used to be a gas station ) called Global Garage . Then we were happy to discover that it had stopped snowing , so we were able to gaze at a billionty stars while we soaked in some seriously hippie outdoor hot springs . Aside from being a liability nightmare ( due to pipes and rocks sticking out everywhere - I think we all stubbed a toe at least ) we had a great time in the hot springs . The next day we played a bit in the snow and then drove back to our place in Boulder . My sister made an amazing curry for dinner . Then , since none of us were interested in celebrating Valentine 's Day , we decided to play a board game . This led to the unintentional discovery that the most Anti - Valentines ' Day thing you can possibly do is play Risk with your significant other . My sister and her boyfriend nearly killed each other ! But it the end it came down to a battle between my sister and APL , and luck was with APL so he took over the world . On Monday evening , my sister and her boyfriend wanted to go to Casa Bonita . So we went . If you haven 't heard of it , it is famous from this episode of South Park . ( Skip to - 02 : 51 to see the part where they actually go to Casa Bonita . ) No joke - the restaurant is exactly like it is in South Park . I also just found this hilarious " Survivor 's Guide " ( which maybe we should have read before going there ! ) that describes Casa Bonita by saying " it 's like Disney had sex with Tijuana and left the goofy - looking bastard to fend for itself in a random strip mall on Colfax . " Needless to say , the food was awful but we really enjoyed ourselves anyhow ! They left on Tuesday eveningPosted by I was only 25 when I was diagnosed , it 's been a year and a half since then , and sometimes I still feel overwhelmed about figuring out how to live the rest of my life with RA . Sometimes I wish I had gotten a chance to live more of my life without having to deal with this . I can only imagine it being even more difficult to be diagnosed four years younger , but Skye has shown a lot of courage in dealing with the changes life is throwing at her . Now all I have to do is keep my fingers crossed ( if I can ! ) that the ENBREL and methotrexate can stand alone in keeping my RA pain under control . Otherwise its back to the drawing board . Wish me luck ! I probably shouldn 't be writing this post . I 've been having quite a bit of pain in my wrists and I have a lot of computer work I need to do for my externship , not to mention for my classes , so I probably ought to spare my limited abilities for that . But I can 't seem to get this post from Kelly at RA Warrior out of my mind , and I don 't think I 'll really be productive until I do . So here I am , typing . Kelly 's post is about several medical studies that attempt to define the difference between " actual pain " and " perceived pain " experienced by RA patients . I must admit upfront that I haven 't had time to read all of these studies myself . But Kelly has been through 66 footnotes and includes links to many of theses studies and it 's her conclusions that have got me thinking . She concludes that the overarching theme of these studies is that RA patients actually have low pain thresholds and thus perceive pain to be worse than it actually is . This perception of pain is then worsened by RA patients through catastrophizing . To start with , I have to admit that I feel wary about any overarching claims about RA patients as a whole , or even as a majority . I only know a few people personally who have RA , but I have met quite a few more through blogging . And if there 's one thing we all have in common its that we have all experienced RA differently ! While we often have similar experiences or can relate to each other because of RA , I have not had the same RA journey as anyone else , and no one has had the same RA journey as me . The only RA I can hope to truly understand is my own . And , even though this is my 168th blog post , I 'm still struggling to figure my own RA out ! Kelly 's post made me think about my own RA . My first thought was : wait . . . I thought I had a high pain threshold , not a low one . That was quickly followed by an overwhelming desire to analyze this issue , which , I guess , is why I 'm a law student ! ! For the past four years I 've been professionally trained to analyze the best points of both sides of an argument . So it got me thinking about the doctors and researchers ' side of the story . For the sake of argument , let 's just assume that these studies are right . Let 's assume that I actually have a low pain threshold and that most of my " pain " is in my head . Let 's assume that I am actually making my own pain worse by catastrophizing my situation . But after making this argument in favor of the studies , I ran into three sets of questions that I was unable to answer : First , if most of my RA pain is in my head and I am making it worse by catastrophizing my situation , how do you explain the sudden onset of this way of thinking ? A year and a half ago I was an overachieving dual degree graduate student who also worked two jobs and played on a water polo team . I knew I could achieve anything I wanted to and I was convinced I was going to change and / or save the world . Suddenly , a doctor utters the diagnosis " RA " and my entire mode of thinking changes ? Suddenly I think everything is going wrong for me and giving everything an negative spin ? Suddenly my brain decides that exercise and every day tasks are just way more painful than they used to be ? How do you explain this sudden onset of low pain threshold and irrational negative thinking ? Secondly , if most of my RA pain is in my head , how does this affect my RA treatment ? Why am I being given cancer drugs and extremely expensive biologics if I could lessen my pain just by changing my thinking ? Why does my rheumatologist encourage me to ask for vicodin if I think I need it ? And why have not one but two of my doctors encouraged me to see a therapist , not to deal with my perceived pain , but to accept my diagnosis and properly grieve over what I have lost ? What am I grieving for if it 's all in my head ? Lastly , I wonder how the studies take into account the effects of chronic pain ? Let 's say RA and non - RA both have the " same amount " of pain in their wrists . Non - RA 's wrist pain is from an injury ( too much tennis ? ) and it lessens and goes away after a couple of days . RA 's pain is from RA , and it doesn 't change in intensity or go away . For weeks . Maybe for months . And there doesn 't seem to be anything RA can do to help with the pain - the meds aren 't working . Isn 't it reasonable for the " same amount " of wrist pain to hurt more when it 's chronic ? Isn 't it reasonable for chronic pain to wear you down a little bit ? In the end , I simply don 't buy the conclusion that my pain is mostly perceived , rather than actual . And I don 't buy the conclusion that I am making my situation look worse than it actually is . I will certainly admit to having some negative days in the past year and a half . But , overall , I think I 've been pretty optimistic about adjusting to my life with RA . After all , if you look in my " Topics " sidebar you 'll see that I have 54 posts labeled " Discouraged Days " and 48 posts where I complain about different kinds of pain . But I have 94 posts labeled " Optimism , " 17 posts about laughter , 17 posts about hope I 've gained from strangers , and 46 points about my amazing family . And the title of this blog is " From This Point . Forward . " As I claimed in my first blog post ever , I 'm looking forward . I 'm adapting to RA and living my life . I can still achieve anything I set my mind to . As a law student , I have hundreds upon hundreds of pages of reading to get through every week . And it 's nothing like reading hundreds of pages of a novel . Law casebooks are difficult to slog through - full of Supreme Court cases and treatises and things you 'd never read for pleasure unless you 're insane . That 's why I 'm pretty much in love with my dictation software - MacSpeech Dictate . While I read , I wear a little headset and just speak the notes I want to take out loud . Then the software types the notes for me . It is awesome . I actually wish I had used dictation software in law school before I got RA - it would have saved me so much time ! ! But while the dictation software is awesome , it is not , however , perfect . Sometimes it doesn 't quite hear you or it misunderstands what you said . This can be pretty amusing . Yesterday , while I was reading for Environmental Law & Regulation , I was working through a section on toxics regulation and de minimis risk , which basically means risk too small to be worth spending limited regulatory funds on . Not too exciting . So I was pretty amused when I went back through my reading notes for this section and found this gem : After an extremely long week , I 'm finally getting around to writing about the rest of my " Day of Doctors " on Tuesday . I had a pretty rough morning , followed by an appointment with my primary care physician where we attempted to deal with the problem of my high blood pressure - which has been a consistent problem for nine months and is still not under control . So , needless to say , I was pretty exhausted by the time APL and I even made it to my rheumatologist 's office on Tuesday afternoon . Note to self : while it seems like a good idea to get it all over with at once , maybe two doctor 's appointments on the same day is not the best idea ? Just a thought . I feel like my appointment with my rheumatologist resulted in good news and not so good news . To start with , I have to say that I am really lucky that I like that I like my rheumatologist . I trust him and I feel like he gives it to me straight . He is honest , he doesn 't sugar coat it , but always he listens to my concerns and takes his time with me . And , after seeing him for a year and a half , I feel like he has a pretty good idea of what I 'm going through . The good news is that he thinks my RA is under " fair control . " After examining my joints he said he thought they looked pretty good - certainly in better shape than when he first started seeing me . So I guess that 's a good thing that the expert thinks my joints are looking pretty good . Also , since I trust him and feel like he understands me pretty well , I asked him for some advice for getting other doctors to understand my pain threshold and better evaluate the amount of pain I am in so that my positive attitude doesn 't backfire on me anymore . He gave me what I think is some very good advice - to describe my pain in terms of the amount of pain killers I have to take and the things that are difficult to do . For example , I can say that I am prescribed vicodin for pain on a regular basis , and while it helps sometimes it isn 't enough . And I can say that the pain sometimes distracts me from paying attention in class or keeps me from going out to dinner . In my rheumatologist 's experience , this is an effective way of making pain more understandable . So that was really helpful . He also totally understood how much I dislike the side effects of prednisone and we agreed that we should wean me off of it . So I 'll be taking 2 . 5 mg of prednisone for the next 10 days and then I 'll discontinue it completely . He warned me that it will be the true test of whether or not the ENBREL is actually the complete solution for me . If it is , I 'll probably feel fine without the prednisone . But if it isn 't , I 'll probably start swelling and being in a lot more pain than usual . And if my symptoms worsen dramatically over the next few weeks , he said to give him a call and he would fit me in even if his receptionist tells me he has no time , which was pretty awesome . In that case , we 'll move on to another biologic - he says he thinks the new RA drug , Actemra , has had really good results . So as far as that goes , I guess we 'll just have to wait and see what happens when I stop taking the prednisone every day . While I 'm not looking forward to potential pain from discontinuing the prednisone , I 'll certainly be happy to ( hopefully ! ) say goodbye to the fat face . However , the rheumatologist also gave me what felt like less than good news . Unfortunately , he doesn 't quite understand why I 've been having so much pain in my hips . He said itThe other sort of icky news was that my rheumatologist also told me he was a little worried about how I was mentally dealing with all the adjustments I 've had to make . Granted , after the argument I had with APL in the morning , my first doctor 's appointment that day , and the rough physical therapy appointment I had on Monday , I was not in particularly good shape by the time I made it to my rheumatologist 's office on Tuesday afternoon . Not going to lie - I was basically crying while we talked to him . So , just as my primary care physician recommended , my rheumatologsit said maybe I should pursue some therapy . And maybe they are right . I mean , if two doctors separately tell you the same thing on the same day , I guess you have to give some credit to that opinion . But , at the same time , I do think I 've come a really long way in the past year and a half . For the most part , I think I 've done a really good job of accepting these changes into my life and embracing my new path . At least I feel that way most of the time . So it was sort of discouraging to hear both of my doctor 's say they were worried that I hadn 't accepted the RA . Not going to lie , this did cause some good crying at the end of that day over how frustrated I feel about everything I have been through not being obvious to the rest of the world . But APL was there to hold my hand as I cried while he drove me home . And when we got home , we spent a good half hour just laying on the floor , snuggling with River , which brought a smile to my face despite the tears . And , even though I know I have come a long way , I guess there 's nothing wrong with asking for a little more help . Today has been a very long and very difficult day . I 'm beyond exhausted but I just can 't seem to settle down . So I thought I 'd try writing a bit . This morning started off crummy when I woke up in a lot of pain and proceeded to get straight into an argument with APL . Luckily , APL and I found some time to share some coffee and talk things over after class . And then APL drove me to all of my doctors appointments today , picked up my new prescriptions from the pharmacy , and helped me talk to my rheumatologist even though he isn 't feeling well today either . I am marrying a wonderful man who loves me and takes care of me even when he isn 't feeling well himself . So I 'm going to have to try to remind myself how wonderful he is whenever I start feeling frustrated for unfair reasons . My first appointment today was with my primary care physician about my blood pressure . A lot of related things contribute to my high blood pressure problem . For one thing , I 've gained weight just from being a lot less active than I used to be . And it is hard to exercise when my everything hurts , and it is hard to get motivated in the first place when you are fatigued . It 's also been particularly difficult to exercise since I dislocated my kneecap . But on top of that is the prednisone , which I am on as part of my RA treatment . Prednisone raises my blood pressure by itself and makes me gain even more weight which raises my blood pressure even more ! But I 'm on the prednisone to help with the joint pain to help me feel well enough to exercise ! This whole situation is some sort of horrific negative feedback cycle that I feel like there is no way for me to win . By going back through my blog archives I just realized that I have been seeing my doctor once or twice a month for my blood pressure since JUNE . That means we 've been trying to get my blood pressure under control for NINE months . Since then I 've been on at least four different blood pressure medications - including the one that gave me a hacking cough . I 've diligently gone and had my blood drawn by Favorite Lab Man whenever ordered to do so . I 've tried to limit my salt intake , I 've done my best to exercise despite general joint and more recent knee pain . In fact , I 've been really proud of myself this week for riding the stationary bike for thirty minutes every day , despite the knee pain . But none of this seems to be helping my blood pressure . So today my doctor added yet another blood pressure medication to my cocktail . She says this one might make me pee a lot ( great ) and that I now have to get my potassium tested weekly to make sure it isn 't being negatively affected . So lets just add another needle to my weekly needle count . At least I 'll get to visit with Favorite Lab Man again next week . He was super sweet to me today , especially since he just drew blood for me last Friday for my rheumatologist . What can I say ? I 'm a regular . I guess the doctors and I are doing everything we can to try to fix my blood pressure problem . And I guess it just takes patience and time to figure out how to make all these conflicting factors point in the right direction . But I have to admit that it is a little bit frustrating to keep going to see the doctor and still having high blood pressure over and over and over again . We 've made basically no progress in nine months of trying to fix this . And that is more than a little discouraging . However , while I would ordinarily do my best to stay positive and act patient about this process , today I discovered that acting discouraged and upset and showing my frustration with my body and this process actually got me more help from the doctor . It got me a referral to the see nutritionist , which I think will probably be a good thing . Maybe the nutritionist will be able to help me do a better job at avoiding salt , which would help with my blood pressure , and figuring out how to eat to help me loose weight since my exercising options are a bit limited , particularly with my knee right now . And loosing some weight should , in turn , also help with the blood pressure . So I think this is a good step forward . Acting discouraged and frustrated was also met by the doctor with some concern as to how I was coping with everything . She said it must be particularly hard for someone as young as me to cope with this many changes and she knew it was a difficult process of adapting to the changes . She told me I ought to consider seeing a therapist to have someone to talk to about adapting to a chronic illness and dealing with chronic pain . I have already tried therapy about a year ago and didn 't feel I gained much from it . But , considering I 'm still dealing with a lot of the same issues , maybe I 'll try it again . And in any event , at least to doctor recognized that I 'm going through a lot and dealing with all of this is difficult for me and offered me a source of help . There 's no getting around the truth of what happened today : acting miserable got me better options for care and help . Which is good to know . The only problem was that acting miserable actually made me feel miserable . So it 's an interesting dilemma that I 'll have to spend some time figuring out how to deal with someday . : : sigh : : After getting through all of that , I think I feel sufficiently exhausted and settled to go to bed . But stay tuned tomorrow for the exciting conclusion ! ! ! Or something . Doctor # 2 : Good News and Not So Good News . As Usual . I woke up this morning with another rotten headache and lots of pain in my knee . Needless to say : grumpy . And I showed up to class trying not to cry after APL and I had an argument in the car on the way to school . I know APL probably won 't be pleased that I 'm totally airing our argument on the interwebs , but I hope he - and anyone else reading this - understands that I 'm not doing this to vindicate " my side . " I 'm doing this to try to understand my own feelings , which are very confusing . And if they are confusing to me , I don 't see how I can expect APL to understand them unless I figure out how to explain them . So here goes : The argument started when APL told me he had just gotten off the phone with a client who was annoyed with him for canceling their consulting appointment this afternoon . I asked him why he canceled . He said he didn 't feel it was appropriate to show up to an appointment looking and sounding so sick and that he didn 't want to get anyone else sick . I said that I didn 't think he really looked or sounded sick and that he obviously didn 't think he was contagious as he 's been sleeping next to his fiance with the compromised immune system every night . I pretty much said that he could suck it up and go to the appointment . Thirty seconds later I regretted this comment and tried to apologize . I said I was sorry and that I really didn 't mean to belittle him not feeling well . He said I was actually trying to belittle his pain . This is how the argument started . The background here is that APL is very rarely sick . He feels good most of the time . So when he feels bad , he feels really bad . The smallest sickness affects him like a ton of bricks . He feels icky and grumpy and it makes it really hard for him to get on with his day . But part of the confusion is that I think that APL has every right to act this way . When you feel sick , you feel sick . When you feel icky , you have every right to be grumpy . And I just hate the thought of him not feeling well . I love APL with all my heart and I just want to be able to take care of him when he doesn 't feel well ; cover him in blankets and bring him soup until he feels better . It sucks to feel sick . But . . . but at the same time , when APL is sick I can 't seem to smother a growing feeling of frustration at the unfairness of the cards I 've been dealt . While it is perfectly acceptable for APL to skip work and stay home watching cartoons because of a sore throat , I regularly wake up with 12 kinds of pain but I have no choice other than to continue functioning on a daily basis as if nothing is wrong . Because if I stayed in bed every time I felt a little bit " icky " I would literally never get out of bed . If I let myself be miserable every time my body hurt I would always be miserable . And that 's really no way to live . But even though it 's my choice to function normally when I actually feel icky , sometimes I just get overwhelmed about how unfair this seems and how little credit I get for all the effort I put into just getting through a normal day . I realize that it is particularly unfair for me to feel frustrated when APL feels sick , as he is probably the only person in the world who truly understands the struggle I 've had since my diagnosis . He is one of the few people who helps me get by when I have no choice but to function . But . . . but even though it makes no sense and it 's unfair , I still can 't smother the frustration I feel when he allows himself to succumb to feeling icky . He 's in the unfortunate position of being with me all the time . He 's the one I see every day when I get out of bed , no matter how we both feel . And I can 't seem to stop myself from feeling the frustration when he continues to feel icky , no matter how much I want to help him feel better . I tried to explain that this really has nothing to do with him at all . That its really about me and my own frustration with sometimes being unable to accept the position that I am in . He 's just the unlucky person in the opposite seat . But he just kept saying that it wasn 't a competition and that there is no reason for me to compare my experience to his . Which is what we were arguing about on the way to school this morning . The thing is , he 's completely right . It isn 't a competition . And I 'm not trying to compare my experience to his , or to anyone else 's for that matter . I realize that my experience is fundamentally different from the vast majority of other people . And I love APL and I hate to see him not feeling well and I do want to take care of him and make him feel better . But that still doesn 't make it any easier for me to deal with the frustration I am feeling . I realize that I make no sense . And I 'm not sure what to do about it . But I know I don 't want to take it out on APL . After a long day of class and trying to get around through the snow and slush without slipping and injuring myself still more , I returned to the creepy Oz this afternoon at my physical therapy appointment : more electricity sent through to stimulate the muscles in my knee . The therapist also used two other machines this time : the ultrasound and the infrared . I 'm not sure I understand the difference in what all these machines are supposed to do . All I know is they are supposed to help my knee feel better . Though I have to admit that my knee actually felt worse after PT this afternoon . And I 'm starting to get a lot more pain in my right hip , which I assume must be related to whatever is going on in my knee . When I expressed to the therapist that I was experiencing more pain in my knee than I really feel comfortable dealing with ( on top of the rest of the pain I deal with on a regular basis ) she told me that it would be ok for me to use a cane while walking . I know she only meant temporarily and I know she was just trying to help me . But here 's the thing : Sorry for the shouting . It 's just that adjusting to all of the changes in my body since my diagnosis has been really difficult for me - both physically and mentally . And to keep myself sane , I 've had to figure out how to laugh at situations that just aren 't funny . At all . But recently I sort of feel like my ability to stay positive is backfiring on me . I 've been feeling like my doctors aren 't really taking me seriously about the amount of pain I 'm in . Or how upset I am about being 27 years old and having RA and being too exhausted to do anything fun and dislocating my knee on top of all of that . Just because I come into the doctor 's office trying to smile and stay positive doesn 't mean I 'm ok . It doesn 't mean I 'm exaggerating when I say I 'm in pain . A study was recently completed about RA and computer usage . Patients with longstanding rheumatoid arthritis had their computer skills measured using the Keitel Hand Function Index , which assesses active range of motion . The study sought to discover which variables - impairments in range of motion , impairments in hand function , general activity limitations , or task - specific training - explain the most variance in keyboard and mouse speeds in computer users with rheumatoid arthritis . Here is one article about the study entitled " RA Patients Maintain Computer Skills . " Here is another entitled " Rheumatoid arthritis doesn 't hinder computing skills . " The title of that second article does not please me . I 'd like to invite whoever wrote that title to try typing for three hours straight on a law exam , upon which their whole grade depends , with my RA hands and see if it " doesn 't hinder " their computing skills ! ! ( Grrr . . . ) In any event , here is what the study found : First , I want to make it clear that I am not quite disputing the study itself . In fact , I would like to do everything in my power to encourage studies about RA and how it affects us . And I realize that there are limitations to medical studies . This study utilized 45 computer users with RA from an Arthritis Network Research Registry and tested specific keyboard and mouse tasks , measuring on a known index . If I were a medical researcher trying to figure out the effect RA had on computer use , I would probably start at about the same place . ( 1 ) There doesn 't seem to be much acknowledgment in the study that RA affects different people in different ways . The study doesn 't seem to recognize that some people with RA don 't have hand pain at all . And some people still have RA but go into periods of remission without any pain . So , while I 'm glad that those RA patients may not have diminished computer skills , I don 't think you can extrapolate to say we all do . Any study about RA ought to recognize that the disease affects different patients in different ways . I think it would have been useful to know ( a ) how many of the study participants usually experienced hand or wrist pain from their RA and ( b ) how many of them were experiencing pain in their hands at the time they took the tests . Just because you can type fine with RA one day doesn 't mean you can type fine with RA every day . And what if your bad day is the day that important report is due to your boss ? How competitive are you then ? ( 2 ) The average duration of RA among study participants was 16 . 7 years . This seems like a high average to me . Not to discount the pain of someone who has had RA longer , but it seems to me that if you have had RA for more than 10 years , there 's a fair chance ( hopefully ! ) that you 've found the right meds / treatment for you and you are dealing with a lot less pain . Even if you still have pain , you 've still had at least a decade ( and for some study participants , two decades ) to figure out how to deal with the pain - both physically and emotionally . But what about the people who were recently diagnosed and / or haven 't found the right treatment yet ? Maybe I 'm biased because I 'm still in this category , but it seems to me that these are the people who are most at risk from loosing competitiveness in the workplace . If you 've just been diagnosed , haven 't found the right meds , are still in a pain , and still trying to adjust to living with RA , it seems to me that you might have more trouble using a computer than someone who has had RA for 16 . 7 years . But the study doesn 't appear to address this issue at all . And sweeping conclusions like " RA doesn 't hinder computing skills " makes it difficult for people adjusting to RA to get compassion in the workplace . ( 3 ) My last big complaint is that the study doesn 't seem to take pain into account at all . Just because you can type at a certain speed doesn 't mean it doesn 't hurt to do so ! ! ! People with RA deal with pain all the time and as a result they are very tough . When you have RA , you can 't just stop doing something you need to do just because it hurts - otherwise people with RA would never be able to do anything ! ! For example , I am wearing a brace on my right wrist right now because of pretty severe pain . But I 've still spent half an hour typing this post because I 'm skilled at ignoring pain . And , if your livelihood depends on it , you may just struggle through the pain a little bit more to keep up . But I don 't think that means you should have to . Employers should be more understanding in the case that it hurts to do something , even if you can still do it . But , again , conclusions like " RA doesn 't hinder computing skills " doesn 't give anyone any incentive to be understanding towards people suffering from RA pain . But we 're not . We are tough . We deal with pain every single day . We work really hard to keep up . And we deserve some credit for that . Living Life With RA is a blog that provides information and resources for , well , living life with RA . But its more than health info : she also provides personal stories and anecdotes about her own experiences with RA . For example , she recently got back on the ski slopes , something I 'm hoping to be able to do again someday ! So you 're almost certain to find some hope in the blog as well . Despite my recent ranting and complaining , I was really pleased this morning to get a note from my cousin that she had given me the Sunshine Award on her blog . Guess I am maintaining my goal to be ( more or less ) optimistic on this blog ! Everyone deserves a rant once and a while , right ? ~ ; o ) So thank you , KF , for adding some sunshine to my life today ! It 's been a bit gray in Boulder and the past two weeks or so have been a bit rough , so it was a nice surprise for me . The Sunshine Award is one of those blog awards that is perpetuated by its winners . So below is my list of blogs that add a little sunshine to my day . As you can see , my cousin and I have more in common than RA - namely the insane desire to be ridiculously organized . So , as my cousin did , my favorite blogs are broken into categories . I also thought I 'd give a shout - out to a fellow blogger who contacted me recently to tell me that she has enjoyed reading my blog . I have just started reading hers and I like her outlook on RA already ! Second , since getting engaged I have been shamelessly enjoying the gorgeous pictures on the following wedding blogs . I don 't usually actually read these blogs , but scrolling through the pictures always adds a little sunshine to my day : For those of you who received the Sunshine Award from me , passing along the award is obviously optional . Mostly , I just wanted to give you all a shout out for the sunshine , hope , and help you bring to my life . If you do decide to pass the sunshine along , here 's the general idea : Yesterday I had my first physical therapy appointment to work on my confused kneecap , which thought it might be fun to do its own thing and totally dislocate itself from the rest of my leg last week . Bad kneecap ! My dad 's theory on my knee 's misbehavior is that my muscles are now weak because I 've been less active in the past year and a half than ever before in my life . He is probably right , though that is not exactly a happy thought . After examining my knee and showing me some exercises I should do to work on strengthening the muscles that will keep my bad kneecap in line , it was time for the creepy part . The physical therapist hooked me up to a machine that sent an electrical current through my knee to stimulate the muscle . While I understand the theory behind this ( stimulate and strengthen the muscle without me having to distress my already distressed knee joint ) let me just say this : And , after the treatment was over , I still had to wait in the pharmacy for 45 minutes for them to refill and process the payment assistance on my Enbrel , even though I had called the refill in that morning . Needless to say I didn 't get home as early as I wanted to and was up later doing homework than I should of been . On top of the physical and emotional exhaustion from traveling to the funeral this weekend , I am now adding the exhaustion of too much work and not enough sleep this week . Plus I got all mad and riled up over that ABC Article instead of doing homework this afternoon , so I have to admit that I am less than a happy camper this evening . Of course new developments and medications are exciting and bring us hope . Of course people suffered a lot more from RA in the past without these developments . But does that mean that RA patients today , particularly the ones still searching for the best treatment regimen ( like me ) , are suffering any less from the pain and fatigue of RA ? I don 't think so . To be fair , the article doesn 't say new treatments will cure RA patients . It says we will be " much older when joint surgery becomes [ our ] best option . " ( Awesome . Now I feel better ! ) But the article says " today , although disease flares and progression can 't be prevented entirely , doctors can now tell patients to expect long periods of remission . " Expect ? Though I like to hope , I 'm actually grateful my rheumatologist never said that to me . He said I might experience remission - that it was possible , not necessarily probable . And I think this is the mindset that you need to really deal with accepting RA into your life . What if you can 't find the right treatment or it takes a long time to find it ? You need to be able to get on with your life rather than being miserable until then . I think it is a little bit misleading to tell patients to expect periods of remission - and long ones at that . RA is a disease that never goes away completely , and that 's something people with RA simply need to deal with . The article also talks about a rheumatologist who " tells new patients that they can live normal lives . " While it is true that someone with RA can certainly live a " normal " life , the important point to make is that it won 't necessarily be the same life they were living before the diagnosis . Changes will certainly be necessary . Likely a lot of changes and probably some that you didn 't want to make but don 't have any other choice . Leading a patient to believe they can get back to whatever life they had before RA just isn 't fair . Frustratingly , the article also quotes a doctor saying " RA back then was a terrible disease . " While I realize that the consequences of the disease were certainly worse " back then , " is it really fair to say that the disease itself is any less terrible today ? If I haven 't found a treatment that takes away my pain and fatigue , am I suffering any less than someone " back then " ? I feel like the tone of the article suggests that RA today just isn 't that bad , that you just take the medicine and that makes it easy to deal with , which I feel is misleading . Adjusting to a life with RA is a lot of work , and RA patients need support from their families , friends , the medical community , and from society as a whole . Articles that make RA look like its not that bad make those of us with RA look like a bunch of whiners , which I think can sometimes make people reluctant to offer help . But in reality , most people I know ( in life or online ) with RA are strong and can deal with a lot - probably more than they should - before they ask for help . Myself included . Unfortunately , my frustration with ABC and this article grew even more when I saw that the author of one of my favorite RA blogs , RA Warrior , had not one but two of her comments removed from the article by ABC . I have seen Kelly 's comments on other articles and she is always respectful , so I thought that was particularly frustrating . Why would they remove the comment of a polite dissenter ? Without explanation ? That 's just disrespectful . This blog is a record of my personal experiences after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis ( RA ) in June 2008 . It is not intended for use as a source of health advice . You are more than welcome to link to this blog from your website . However , materials from this blog may not be re - used without my permission . Thanks !
|
I have a friend , his name is Evin , and he really , really likes mermaids and sirens and the ilk . Which got me thinking - I 'll create a recommendation list of books that feature these creatures . And since it 's ( finally ! ) summer and these books all make me think of summer , it 's doubly perfect . Years ago , Kahlen was rescued from drowning by the Ocean . To repay her debt , she has served as a Siren ever since , using her voice to lure countless strangers to their deaths . Though a single word from Kahlen can kill , she can 't resist spending her days on land , watching ordinary people and longing for the day when she will be able to speak and laugh and live freely among them again . Kahlen is resigned to finishing her sentence in solitude … until she meets Akinli . Handsome , caring , and kind , Akinli is everything Kahlen ever dreamed of . And though she can 't talk to him , they soon forge a connection neither of them can deny … and Kahlen doesn 't want to . Up first is The Siren by Kiera Cass . I bought this book right when it came out because I adore the Selection series . I haven 't read this yet , but I 've heard really good things . This one features sirens ( as the title might make it seem ) . Galen is the prince of the Syrena , sent to land to find a girl he 's heard can communicate with fish . Emma is on vacation at the beach . When she runs into Galen - literally , ouch ! - both teens sense a connection . But it will take several encounters , including a deadly one with a shark , for Galen to be convinced of Emma 's gifts . Now , if he can only convince Emma that she holds the key to his kingdom . . . I never got around to reading this one , even though I picked it up from the library once . I haven 't seen that many reviews for it , either . The covers are really nice and I adore the titles . It 's a whole trilogy , so if you 're interested in seeing the rest of the books click here . Fierce , seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra , a young naturalist . When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land , she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences . Almost one hundred forty years later , seventeen - year - old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly , inexplicably drawn to him . For generations , love has resulted in death for the women in her family . Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse ? With Ezra 's help , Hester investigates her family 's strange , sad history . The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard , the crypt , and at the bottom of the ocean - but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago . This has been on my TBR list forever ! I actually really want to read anything by this author because all of her things sound really interesting . Judging from the cover alone , this is a darker mermaid book and I 'm all for that ! Gorgeous . Fearless . Dangerous . They 're the kind of girls you envy ; the kind of girls you want to hate . Strangers in town for the summer , Penn , Lexi and Thea have caught everyone 's attention - but it 's Gemma who 's attracted theirs . She 's the one they 've chosen to be part of their group . Gemma seems to have it all - she 's carefree , pretty , and falling in love with Alex , the boy next door . He 's always been just a friend , but this summer they 've taken their relationship to the next level , and now there 's no going back . Then one night , Gemma 's ordinary life changes forever . She 's taking a late night swim under the stars when she finds Penn , Lexi and Thea partying on the cove . They invite her to join them , and the next morning she wakes up on the beach feeling groggy and sick , knowing something is different . Suddenly Gemma is stronger , faster , and more beautiful than ever . But her new powers come with a terrifying price . And as she uncovers the truth , she 's is forced to choose between staying with those she loves - or entering a new world brimming with dark hungers and unimaginable secrets . I have had this series ( along with a few other series ' my Amanda Hocking ) sitting on my shelf for ages . It 's a gorgeous hardcover book and it 's something that sounds really interesting to me . Why I haven 't picked them up , I don 't know . Serafina , daughter of Isabella , Queen of Miromara , has been raised with the expectation - and burden - that she will someday become ruler of the oldest civilization of the merfolk . On the eve of the Dokimí ceremony , which will determine if she is worthy of the crown , Sera is haunted by a strange dream that foretells the return of an ancient evil . But her nightmare is forgotten the next day as she diligently practices her songspell ; eagerly anticipates a reunion with her best friend , Neela ; and anxiously worries about Mahdi , the crown prince of Matali , and whether his feelings toward her and their future betrothal have changed . Most of all , she worries about not living up to her mother 's hopes . The Dokimí proceeds , a dazzling display of majesty and might , until a shocking turn of events interrupts it : an assassin 's arrow wounds Isabella . The realm falls into chaos , and Serafina 's darkest premonitions are confirmed . Now she and Neela must embark on a quest to find the assassin 's master and prevent a war between the mer nations . Their search will lead them to other mermaid heriones scattered across the six seas . Together they will form an unbreakable bond of sisterhood as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens their world 's very existence . For as long as she can remember , twelve - year - old Emily Windsnap has lived on a boat . And , oddly enough , for just as long , her mother has seemed anxious to keep her away from the water . But when Mom finally agrees to let her take swimming lessons , Emily makes a startling discovery - about her own identity , the mysterious father she 's never met , and the thrilling possibilities and perils shimmering deep below the water 's surface . With a sure sense of suspense and richly imaginative details , first - time author Liz Kessler lures us into a glorious undersea world where mermaids study shipwrecks at school and Neptune rules with an iron trident - an enchanting fantasy about family secrets , loyal friendship , and the convention - defying power of love . I remember when this series was insanely popular in early middle school ! I never picked them up ( even though I wanted to ) but I had a friend who adored them . I know they 're mostly about mermaids , but if I remember what she told me , book four delves into sirens and they 're all pretty quick and fun reads . At the age of ten , Gwen Cooke had a strange encounter with a boy with dark , slightly tilted eyes . He came to her on the beach , whispered strange words in her ear , and then disappeared . Shortly thereafter , her family moved away from their seaside home and Gwen never saw the boy again . Now seventeen , Gwen is returning to her childhood home . Her nana asked her to come . But Gwen knows it 's time to go back for another reason : She yearns for the sea . Perhaps the sea itself is calling to her . Perhaps the memory of the boy and his haunting words are drawing her back to the place they met . Perhaps it 's time for her to face her destiny . This is another that I 've wanted to read since I was little but never picked up . It 's about Selkies I think . Which is freaking awesome ! I read Terri Farley 's Phantom Stallion series when I was a wee thing , but I think this is aimed at an older audience . Vacationing in Winter Harbor , Maine , is a tradition for Vanessa and Justine Sands , and that means spending time with the Carmichael boys . This summer , Vanessa is determined to channel some of her older sister 's boldness , get over her fear of the ocean , and maybe turn her friendship with Simon Carmichael into something much more . But when Justine goes cliff - diving after a big family argument , and her body washes ashore the next day , Vanessa is sure that it was more than an accident . She is more certain of this , when she discovers that her sister was keeping some big secrets and Caleb Carmichael 's gone missing . Suddenly , the entire oceanfront town is abuzz when a series of grim , water - related accidents occur , with the male victims washed ashore grinning from ear to ear . Vanessa and Simon team up to figure out if these creepy deaths have anything to do with Justine and Caleb , but what Vanessa discovers might mean the end of her summer romance , and life as she knows it . A chilling , gripping paranormal romance , Siren will make you think twice before your next trip to the beach . My same friend who loved The Tail of Emily Windsnap loved this series , though I never got around to reading it . She did tell me about it in depth , because she had absolutely fallen in love with the world that was built in this trilogy . From what I remember her telling me , it 's a fantastic ride and just a bunch of fun , all together . Daughters of the Sea tells the story of 3 mermaid sisters who are separated at birth by a storm and go on to lead three very different lives . Book 1 is about Hannah , who spent her early days in an orphanage and is now a scullery maid in the house of rich , powerful family . She is irresistibly drawn to the sea and through a series of accidents and encounters discovers her true identity . Hannah realizes that she must keep the truth a secret but she also knows that soon she will have to make the choice - to be a creature of the land or the sea . This is another one I wanted to read whenI was younger but never picked up . I think it 's for an older audience , but I 've read some of Kathryn Lasky 's books for younger kids . I adore the cover of this one , too ! Calder White lives in the cold , clear waters of Lake Superior , the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids . To survive , Calder and his sisters prey on humans and absorb their positive energy . Usually , they select their victims at random , but this time around , the underwater clan chooses its target for a reason : revenge . They want to kill Jason Hancock , the man they blame for their mother 's death . It 's going to take a concerted effort to lure the aquaphobic Hancock onto the water . Calder 's job is to gain Hancock 's trust by getting close to his family . Relying on his irresistible good looks and charm , Calder sets out to seduce Hancock 's daughter Lily . Easy enough , but Calder screws everything up by falling in love - - just as Lily starts to suspect there 's more to the monster - in - the - lake legends than she ever imagined , and just as the mermaids threaten to take matters into their own hands , forcing Calder to choose between them and the girl he loves . One thing 's for sure : whatever Calder decides , the outcome won 't be pretty . I read this book however many years ago , not long after it had come out . The first time through , I really , really enjoyed it , and I read the second one as soon as it came out . But something happened around book three and I didn 't pick it up until recently . Well , I decided to reread the first two and read the last two as quickly as I could , and I am so glad I made this decision ! It was so much better than I remember it being ! The Raven Boys is about four boys and a girl . The girl - Blue - is the daughter of a psychic and lives in a home full of psychics , but is not psychic herself . She was told that she would kill her true love with a kiss . The four boys are the titular Raven Boys - Gansey , Adam , Ronan , and Noah . They 're on a quest to discover a sleeping king who was moved from Wales to Virginia - Glendower . When Blue 's path crosses with that of her Raven Boys , their quest really and truly begins and they discover that magic is indeed real . The best part of the book is the writing . It 's mind - blowing amazing ! Have you ever read a classic book ? Something they teach in school where the writing melts off the page and dances through your soul ? That 's how these books are written . If one day I 'm ever able to write half as well as Miss Stiefvater I 'll be a damned good writer . I mean , I can 't convince you how well this is written with my own words ! If you want to just sit back and enjoy her craft , pick this up because someday , I believe this will be taught in classes around the country . The other best part of this book is the characters . I mean , I don 't think I could tell you who my favorite is because they 're all my favorite ! I love them all for different reasons and they 're all unique and separate characters . I don 't think I 've ever read another version of these characters in all the books I 've read , either . I 'm not a super visual reader ( details are hard for me to picture ) but I can just about picture these characters , even when I 'm not reading . And it 's so wonderful . Rarely do characters leak into my dreams as awesome as these ones do ! I love , love , love these books ! You can 't tear me away from the page when I 'm in the midst of one . And I 'm pretty sure there 's a rather hardcore fanbase here , seeing as there are several RPG games and a new card game coming out . But the first two books ? Absolutely awful ! I mean , maybe that 's a little bit of an overstatement , but had book three not been as good as it was , I would have given it up right then and there . My dad would read this series to me before I went to bed each night and I still have warm feelings for this one . I still have all the books and even have a copy of the Field Guide ( with which I would spend time in the forest looking for fairies ) . And the movie isn 't half bad , either , if you want my honest opinion . It 's not really any surprise , but every time I find myself on Tumblr or Instagram this book immediately pops up . It was a fantastic read , so no complaining from me ! Another really popular one right now is The Raven King and the rest of The Raven Cycle . I 'm going to go with two different series , here , because I couldn 't pick just one . The Red Rising trilogy finished up this year and it was such a good series ! It was an experience to read and I don 't think it will ever be replicated . This is another one I don 't talk about too often , which is such a shame because it 's an amazing book . It 's a good summer read and is equal parts sad , happy , and completely honest in the way it tells its story . I strongly recommend reading this if you haven 't already . This is a middle grade fantasy novel that takes place in Japan and is steeped with the mythology of that country . Another I would really recommend picking up , especially since I haven 't seen this one tossed around that often and thought it was absolutely fantastic . When I was reading this I was wishing I could go visit Japan . I don 't read that many classics , but I remember absolutely adoring this one . I think because I loved the humor and parody of America within the pages . I honestly need to read more Mark Twain , because this the only thing of his that I 've actually read . Summer is right around the corner for me and I cannot wait ! The only reason I 'm staying at school is because I have a final on the 31st , but it 's not really one I can study for , so it 's been a lie extended weekend for me to pack and read . And packing is surprisingly easy ! As for the surprise party I threw , it was for a friend 's birthday ( even though his birthday isn 't for another few weeks ) . Another one of my friend 's and I have been planning this party for about five weeks , and yesterday , when it was finally going to happen , I was bursting with so much energy I couldn 't even sit down for more than half an hour ! We also managed to surprise the rest of our friends , who we had convinced that the party was actually tonight and didn 't tell them about the grandest surprise - the 30 inch pizza ! Would you like to see such a mega - pizza ? We took the remaining slices back home and put them in the fridge for our friend who didn 't come . The whole thing was so much fun , though I don 't think I 'll be able to eat pizza again for a while . The first thing the waitress said when she brought us our food was " Good luck " which we seriously needed . Also , did you see that Cassandra Clare is co - writing a series about Magnus Bane aimed at an adult audience ? This is the last thing I expected , but something I 'm actually pretty excited for ! Now another book I have to wait for * sigh * but that 's okay . My goal this year has been to spotlight 2017 Debut authors , and earlier this week I posted an interview with Gwen Cole , and now I have another interview for you all ! It 's with the fantastic Mary Taranta , whose book , Shimmer and Burn ( previously titled Until Our Blood Runs Clean ) is a dark fantasy about a world where magic is dangerously addictive ; the book is set to release next summer ( is the wait really that long ? ? ! ) . Thank you so much , Mary , for doing this interview ! Mary : Elevator pitch ! After her sister is enslaved by the king , Faris Locke is coerced by an ambitious princess into smuggling stolen magic out of their hidden kingdom in order to bribe an alliance with a neighboring prince . Sam : What does it mean that your book is dark fantasy ? Mary : I don 't shy away from bloodshed or body counts , and characters often make difficult ( and unpleasant ) choices . No happy endings guaranteed ! Sam : According to your website you have a BA in history ; how does this affect what you write about ? Did you take classes in college ( or outside of college ) to help with your writing craft ? Mary : History is a huge source of inspiration in terms of worldbuilding and character motivation , but I tend to only use little details , or a general time period / event to set my books against . Some of my ideas borrow more heavily from specifics than others , but overall , I definitely write fantasy novels , not historical . I took one creative writing class in college , but it was taught by a former state Poet Laureate who heavily skewed the class towards poetry , which wasn 't my area of interest . Other than that , I just wrote a lot of practice words before I felt I had something worthy of querying . Mary : It 's half and half ! I might have an idea for a plot or a specific dynamic between two characters , and as I start drawing them , details fill in . SHIMMER AND BURN began as a concept which turned into a sketch which led to the pitch that my agent approved . A rather important character in the novel didn 't exist until I was doodling faces and he showed up and introduced himself . Now the novel can 't work without him ! Mary : Actually . . . no ! I 'm on deadline for edits on Book 1 , and the first draft of Book 2 is due soon , so having a year to go makes it a little less stressful for me - there 's still plenty of time to make changes ! ; ) That being said , I 'm dying to see my cover . The cover will feel more real than a word document I email back and forth to my editor , if that makes sense . Since both books are keeping me busy and I work full - time during the day , I don 't have any side projects going at the moment , although ideas are simmering in my head . Mary : Patience ! When you 're actively involved in the writing community , you get real time updates of other people 's successes , and it makes you hungry - which is good ! - but don 't let it make you impatient . There 's no time limit on success , nor is there only a finite amount to go around . Rushing to catch up will not get you there any faster , and it will probably even set you back - a lesson I learned the hard way . Sam : Time for two truths and a lie ! The rules of the game : give three facts about yourself , two that are true and one that is a lie . Readers will guess which is which in the comments and I 'll reveal the answer in a later post ! Born the youngest save one in a family of ten , I grew up notoriously quiet but secretly wild , playacting my favorite stories and writing some of my own in the woods behind my family 's farmhouse . Originally from a small ( very small ) town in Ohio , I moved to the larger ( much larger ) Orlando suburbs kicking and screaming at the age of fifteen . It turned out all right in the end and I 'm still here , now with an adorable husband , two useless cats , and an unhealthy reliance on air conditioning . While I 'm not old enough to be President , I am too old to sit on the floor without cracking joints when I stand . As a Midwestern Southerner , I 've attained Level 9 Politeness and prefer my iced tea sweet . Still notoriously quiet , though . Not nearly so wild . I did a non - spoiler review of this book , which you can check out HERE if you 're interested . The rest of this review will be hidden underneath the break because , understandably , it 's full of SPOILERS for both this book and the previous one . If you have not read A Court of Mist and Fury STOP READING . If you have , please continue . I 've been spending a lot of time on Bloglovin ' and I 've wondered why there isn 't a tag specific to the platform . This tag isn 't really book blog specific , so feel free to tag all sorts of interesting blogs ! It 's a way to encourage people to follow others on Bloglovin ' and to discover new blogs . This book was everything ! I don 't even think I can formulate how much I adore this one - it 's just amazing ! There may be SPOILERS FOR BOOK ONE below , but there won 't be any spoilers for this book ( though I will be posting a spoiler discussion later this week , for those who are curious ) . A Court of Mist and Fury picks up not long after A Court of Thorns and Roses and follows Feyre as she is adjusting to life with Tamlin in the Spring Court . . . and she 's not adjusting well . She is , more or less , suffering from PTSD thanks to what Amarantha did Under the Mountain , and then , moments before she 's married to Tamlin , Rhysand appears again and sweeps her away according to their deal . But things with Rhysand may not be as they seem . . . and with a war brewing across the sea that will affect them all , she has to choose sides . This book is a whopper coming in at over 600 pages . It took me ages to read , but I really , really enjoyed it . In fact , I think I can safely say that this has been my favorite book all year ( though it seriously contested Lady Midnight in that regard ) . As always , Sarah J Maas ' writing is amazing ! My one problem with her last book ( Queen of Shadows ) was the poor pace of character development , something she easily fixes in this book . While there was a little bit of a problem wrapping my head around Tamlin and Lucian 's developments , the rest of the characters ( even the new ones ) grew on me and slowly changed over the course of the novel . I can easily say the Night Court is my favorite court ( though I cannot tell you why , as spoilers ) . The world building in this one was very , very cool . Besides the Night Court , the Summer Court was explored a bit ( and while I wish all the Courts were visited , I can pace myself ) and so was , more importantly , the magic of the courts and the history of the world . Both play an important part in the story ( and will continue to play an important part in the story ) and I look forward to learning more about each . What got me the most in this book was the sheer amount and level of emotions . The relationships between characters change dramatically ( and I think for the better , so some will be very angry when they read it ) and the central relationship is just too important for words . It 's got its highs and its got its lows , but it 's the best thing I 've read in a long time and it actually means a lot to me , personally . Also , a bit of a disclaimer , this is New Adult ( and really shouldn 't be shelved with the rest of Young Adult ) which means the sex scenes can get more graphic than they do for the regular run of the mill YA . And boy , do they get graphic ( in a good way , really ) . If you 're not a fan of these sorts of scenes . . . maybe skip past them ? There are a lot , and if you need to know what pages to skip , DM me on Twitter and I can let you know . If you 're all for these scenes , well , you 're really going to enjoy yourself ( * smiles wickedly * ) . I 've been hoping to spotlight several authors that will be debuting next year , and I 'm super thankful to Gwen Cole , who so kindly agreed to do an interview ! Gwen 's debut novel , Cold Summer , is about a boy suffering PTSD after he 's hurtled back and forth through time . It 's set to be released in May of next year ( according to Goodreads ) and I already have a countdown running . Thanks again , Gwen , for doing this interview ! Gwen : This book actually started out as a summer book - no WWII or time - traveling . But after about five chapters and me becoming very bored with it , I decided to stop re - think it . At the time I was binging on Band of Brothers and one day my summer book became something much different . And I couldn 't write a war book without PTSD . So many people forget the side effects of war , even after the soldiers come home and try to have normal lives . One is never without the other . Gwen : Sometimes they form themselves and sometimes I 'm watching a TV show and this random side character comes in and something about them grabs me . A quirk they have or how they hold themselves - then a character is born through that . But honestly , it usually takes me a whole rough draft to really figure each of my characters out , sometimes more depending on how difficult they are . Sam : On your website you said you can play many instruments - which are your favorite ( either to play or in general ) and does music inspire your writing ? Gwen : I 've been playing music almost my whole life . I started piano young and picked up bass guitar when I was 12 , and then a little later on I taught myself guitar . Bass guitar will probably always be my favorite . I 've been playing it so long I barely have to think about it anymore . But music and writing don 't go together for me . Sometimes I 'll play a Hans Zimmer song for a certain scene if I need it , but I tend to write and edit in silence or have the TV on in the background . Gwen : Unlike most authors who start writing at a young age , I didn 't start writing until I was about 20 . I did it for fun back then and didn 't pursue a writing career until a few years ago . But the first thing I did was find myself an agent . I knew that was the first step for me and I couldn 't have gotten where I am now without her . Their knowledge about the publishing world is invaluable . Gwen : Be yourself ! It does no good to compare yourself to others because you 're not them . You are unique and your words are unique , so hold onto that and let yourself grow . Sam : Time for two truths and a lie ! The rules of the game : give three facts about yourself , two that are true and one that is a lie . Readers will guess which is which in the comments and I 'll reveal the answer in a later post ! Gwen Cole writes Young Adult books and her debut novel , COLD SUMMER , will be released in the spring of 2017 with Sky Pony Press , an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing . She grew up in upstate New York , moved to Virginia where she did not graduate college , and worked a various number of jobs including pharmacy technician , meat clerk , ranch hand , and a receiving specialist at Target . She may or may not have written a number of books while working at certain jobs . At the age of eighteen , Gwen played bass in a hardcore band and later married the lead guitarist . She can also play piano , guitar , and wishes she could play the cello . Her favorite place to vacation is Wyoming , where she gets to wear a cowboy hat and pretend she actually is one . Gwen now lives in Richmond , Virginia with her husband , daughter , and very large dog , where she longs to live in the country again . And by finally understand twitter I mean that it 's not crazy overwhelming anymore and has become just another part of my day . Which is actually a pretty big relief ! I 've been using Twitter for over a year ( about as long as I 've been blogging ) and while it was always nice , it wasn 't really a place to connect with people until recently . I can 't say what triggered the shift , but it 's pretty great ! Other than that , my week has been pretty boring . I managed to get a lot of reading done ( which was unbelievably nice ) and I only have 11 days of school left ( and summer can 't come soon enough ) . I 'm planning to apply for a job at my local Barnes and Noble , so fingers crossed . If that doesn 't work out , theres a pizza place that 's always hiring . That 's it for me this week ! Next week is pretty filled with stuff , but stuff I am so , so , so excited for ! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend ; let me know what you 're currently reading in the comments ! You may remember the last Writing Corner post I did where I talked about one of my current WIPs . Today I 'm actually going to talk about another one that I 've been working on . Quick summary : It 's an original fairy tale based that came from the thought process " What is Pokemon existed in real life ? " and the story of a dying girl . It follows Jocelyn and Wylan , who are both plagued by curses cast on them ( or their families ) by a witch . They must fulfill the quest of the Kings Ransom in order to finally break their curses . I call it an original fairy tale because it plays on fairy tale tropes and is set in a world where these things are possible and taken to be fact . It 's a shorter novel , perhaps even a novella , and I 'm trying to make it as tight as possible . As I was writing the first chapter , I stumbled across a little gem of an idea that I didn 't even know I was missing . It was only a line of dialogue , but I realized as I was writing , that it fixed the major problem in the plot . Not only does it give the King motive to have this quest in the first place , but it makes the ending practically perfect . I love when this happens naturally as I write . I 'm somewhere between a planner and a pantser , normally sketching out the big ideas and then expanding on them as I go and stumbling into new things . It 's not so rare that characters will change on the page ( for the better ) but I don 't always have this spontaneity with the plot . When it does happen , it 's never been as drastic as this . But I 'm rather pleased with how this changes and betters the story ! The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius . Loyalties have been broken and bought , friends have been lost and gained , and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those don 't . As the kingdoms of Erilea fracture around her , enemies must become allies if Aelin is to keep those she loves from falling to the dark forces poised to claim her world . With war looming on all horizons , the only chance for salvation lies in a desperate quest that may mark the end of everything Aelin holds dear . Aelin 's journey from assassin to queen has entranced millions across the globe , and this fifth installment will leave fans breathless . Will Aelin succeed in keeping her world from splintering , or will it all come crashing down ? Does this really need to be explained ? It 's the fifth book in the Throne of Glass series ! And my god , that cover is amazing ! I can 't wait to meet back up with the whole gang and just return to this world . While I was somewhat disappointed by Queen of Shadows , it wasn 't enough disappointment to turn me off this one . Also , Dorian is just my favorite and now he 's King so that will be exciting ! I actually really like all the characters in this book . For you Mal haters out there , I don 't hate him , but he 's very " meh " to me ( I know how the series ends relationship - wise but will refrain my thoughts until the final book ) . Other than that I adore everyone . Alina is one of those rare narrators who is absolutely absorbing in every sense of the word and the world around me falls away when I 'm looking through her eyes . I credit this magic to Leigh Bardugo 's own magic , which still seeps off the page as I was reading . Like with Shadow and Bone , the world of Ravka is fantastic . I wish I lived there , honestly ! And the myth building in this one was fantastic . I loved how she explored the legends of the world and how realistic they all felt . Sometimes I forget , too , how bloody her writing can be and how dangerous this world is , but the climax of this book was mind blowing and amazing ! I spent so many hours traveling this weekend ! I took a three hour train ride ( that was delayed by two and a half hours so it ended up being somewhere near six hours of being in a train station or on a train ) where I met up with my family to celebrate my dad 's birthday . I also managed to sneak in a Sarah J Maas signing . . . . Which was awesome ! I didn 't take pictures , I 'm sorry , but I was exhausted by the time I got home ( which is an hour away from where the train took me ) . I did get an page from the Throne of Glass coloring book and I cannot wait to color it ! Then , today , my dad drove me back to school ( which is a three and a half hour ride but we ended up going out of our way an hour to visit a really nice city in the area and it was nice to spend more time with him ) and now I 'm trying to catch up on both homework and blogging . On a planet where violence and vengeance rule , in a galaxy where some are favored by fate , everyone develops a currentgift , a unique power meant to shape the future . While most benefit from their currentgifts , Akos and Cyra do not - their gifts make them vulnerable to others ' control . Can they reclaim their gifts , their fates , and their lives , and reset the balance of power in this world ? Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people . Cyra 's currentgift gives her pain and power - something her brother exploits , using her to torture his enemies . But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother 's hand : she is resilient , quick on her feet , and smarter than he knows . Akos is from the peace - loving nation of Thuve , and his loyalty to his family is limitless . Though protected by his unusual currentgift , once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers , Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive - no matter what the cost . When Akos is thrust into Cyra 's world , the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable . They must decide to help each other to survive - or to destroy one another . Maybe excited isn 't the best word for this book . I 'm curious , though , very curious . I liked Divergent when I read it the first time , but after Allegiant , and after struggling to reread the trilogy , I decided I just wasn 't a fan . Yes , this book might be better than those were ( I 'm certainly in love with the cover ) , but I 'm going to wait for the early reviews to come rolling in . 1 . I love to bullet journal ! I 've always loved planners , and indulged in a personalized one last summer , but over winter break discovered the magic that is bullet journaling and have to taken to it with a passion . 2 . I 've always wanted to learn calligraphy , but can handwrite , surprisingly well , many different fonts and fancy letters . My own handwriting has changes dramatically several times over the course of a year , though recently I 've been really fond of writing in cursive . I never thought I would use it as a skill , but now I 've found it 's just quicker and it looks nicer in my notes . 3 . I used to take horse back riding lessons . I stopped because the commitment was too much and I wasn 't very fond of the people who taught me . While learning I had several incidents that make for interesting stories . . . like the time I fell off of a horse and it ran away and was running through the stable and people had to catch it . . . or the time the horse I was riding had decided to jump ( before I had learned how to handle that ) and I rode it out like a pro so well that my mom thought it was just part of the lesson and was shocked to find out it was an accident . 4 . I also used to learn how to play the trumpet . I had originally wanted to learn to play the violin but the instructor told me I was a natural with the trumpet . I was in fifth grade , so that was all it took to assure me I was a prodigy . I hated the instructor , though , and lessons were during the time we had silent reading in class ( my favorite part of the day ! ) and it only took about a month for me to quit . 5 . Also in fifth grade : I used to play marbles all the time ! And , actually , I was really good . I got a few friends really interested and soon we had the whole class playing . At the end of the school year we had a competitive marbles competition in class and the teacher was all for it ! Unfortunately I haven 't played in years . I might just dig up all my marbles when I go home this summer , though . . . 6 . When I was in seventh and eighth grade I loved playing Magic : the Gathering . I taught myself how to play and collected so many cards ! ( I mean , I had like 700 cards and was really in love with the game . ) I didn 't have anyone to play with , though , and so would just sit in my room and design decks and then play against myself for hours . A few weeks ago a friend expressed an interest in the game , so I bought a deck and relearned how to play ( wasn 't so hard to , either ; just like riding a bike , really ! ) and it 's been so much fun . 7 . I 've always wanted to be a published author , and that 's till my plan ( always working on some WIP or another ) , but I also want to work in Hollywood and be a screenwriter and director . I still plan to minor in film ( as that 's all that my school offers in that department ) and I still want to work in movies , but my plans have changed a bit . Lately , I 've been considering , after graduation ( which is still several years away ) , to pursue a degree in library sciences or a job in editing . I think I 'd be good at both of those things , but I , luckily , still have plenty of time to decide on my future . 8 . I pretty much can 't see anything in the dark . It has a lot to do with my depth perception ( which is really , really bad ) . I try not to drive at night at all ( though I can and I 'm not a hazard , I just drive slower than I normally would ) and keep a light turned on in my room until I 'm tucked into bed and know I won 't get up again . 9 . This is actually my third book blog ! Does that surprise you ? I had a blog when I was in eighth grade , but it was really poor , and after a year , retired it . I had made no connections and hadn 't really tried to , either . Then , in sophomore year of high school I decided to try my hand at it again , but I hadn 't learned my lesson , and made no connections . When no one visits your blog it 's really depressing . This time around , though , I knew I was dedicated for the long run , and I had learned from past mistakes , and here I am today ! This is , by far , my favorite of the three blogs , and I 'm so glad I came back to it . 10 . I have been reading and writing for as long as I can remember . The first book I remember reading on my own was a book in the Droon series . My dad had read them to me at night , but then the most recent one came out and he wasn 't home , so I sat down and didn 't get back up until I had finished . I was really a small child , maybe third grade . 11 . I 've only completed two " novels " that I 've worked on . One I wrote in fourth or fifth grade when I was mad at a friend . I made all of my friends super heroes and super villains and I , of course , was a super hero , and the friend I was mad at was a super villain . I wrote it in a thin spiral bound notebook and it 's still probably in my room somewhere . The second novel was one I co - wrote with a friend about a parallel world where everyone has powers . She wrote the chapters from the perspective of Ebony " Eb " , the female lead , and I wrote the chapters from Zander , the male lead . It 's not a horrible book , but we started it Freshman year of high school and ended in the middle of Junior year , so it 's really not the best work , either . 2 . Do you have any tattoos ? Do you want one ? No , I don 't , but yes I want one . For a long time I 've wanted a really , really small one behind my right ear that 's just the little copyright symbol to represent that I 'm an original . I 've also played with the idea of a melting price tag ( the scanner type one ) on one of my shoulders which would mean something like you can 't put a price on a person . 4 . If you had a daughter , what would her name be ? Kahlan ( KAY - LAN ) . Yes , it 's a name from Sword of Truth , but I 've always loved the name and I don 't think it 's way out there as some names go . 6 . Name a place or a few places at the top of your travel bucket list . Iceland is pretty much the one place I dream of going right now . 9 . What was your latest five star read ? Siege and Storm ( no review yet ) , though I am in the middle of A Court of Mist and Fury and that for sure will end up with five stars , I love it so much ! 10 . With what word would you most like people to describe you with ? Nostalgic ? Important . Yeah , important , even if it 's only to them . 11 . Tell us about a book that has changed your life ! There are always books that will always mean something important to me . American Gods , Percy Jackson , and , most recently , A Court of Mist and Fury ( even though I haven 't finished , there are parts of this book that just mean so much to me and will always be with me ) .
|
I have a friend , his name is Evin , and he really , really likes mermaids and sirens and the ilk . Which got me thinking - I 'll create a recommendation list of books that feature these creatures . And since it 's ( finally ! ) summer and these books all make me think of summer , it 's doubly perfect . Years ago , Kahlen was rescued from drowning by the Ocean . To repay her debt , she has served as a Siren ever since , using her voice to lure countless strangers to their deaths . Though a single word from Kahlen can kill , she can 't resist spending her days on land , watching ordinary people and longing for the day when she will be able to speak and laugh and live freely among them again . Kahlen is resigned to finishing her sentence in solitude … until she meets Akinli . Handsome , caring , and kind , Akinli is everything Kahlen ever dreamed of . And though she can 't talk to him , they soon forge a connection neither of them can deny … and Kahlen doesn 't want to . Up first is The Siren by Kiera Cass . I bought this book right when it came out because I adore the Selection series . I haven 't read this yet , but I 've heard really good things . This one features sirens ( as the title might make it seem ) . Galen is the prince of the Syrena , sent to land to find a girl he 's heard can communicate with fish . Emma is on vacation at the beach . When she runs into Galen - literally , ouch ! - both teens sense a connection . But it will take several encounters , including a deadly one with a shark , for Galen to be convinced of Emma 's gifts . Now , if he can only convince Emma that she holds the key to his kingdom . . . I never got around to reading this one , even though I picked it up from the library once . I haven 't seen that many reviews for it , either . The covers are really nice and I adore the titles . It 's a whole trilogy , so if you 're interested in seeing the rest of the books click here . Fierce , seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra , a young naturalist . When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land , she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences . Almost one hundred forty years later , seventeen - year - old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly , inexplicably drawn to him . For generations , love has resulted in death for the women in her family . Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse ? With Ezra 's help , Hester investigates her family 's strange , sad history . The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard , the crypt , and at the bottom of the ocean - but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago . This has been on my TBR list forever ! I actually really want to read anything by this author because all of her things sound really interesting . Judging from the cover alone , this is a darker mermaid book and I 'm all for that ! Gorgeous . Fearless . Dangerous . They 're the kind of girls you envy ; the kind of girls you want to hate . Strangers in town for the summer , Penn , Lexi and Thea have caught everyone 's attention - but it 's Gemma who 's attracted theirs . She 's the one they 've chosen to be part of their group . Gemma seems to have it all - she 's carefree , pretty , and falling in love with Alex , the boy next door . He 's always been just a friend , but this summer they 've taken their relationship to the next level , and now there 's no going back . Then one night , Gemma 's ordinary life changes forever . She 's taking a late night swim under the stars when she finds Penn , Lexi and Thea partying on the cove . They invite her to join them , and the next morning she wakes up on the beach feeling groggy and sick , knowing something is different . Suddenly Gemma is stronger , faster , and more beautiful than ever . But her new powers come with a terrifying price . And as she uncovers the truth , she 's is forced to choose between staying with those she loves - or entering a new world brimming with dark hungers and unimaginable secrets . I have had this series ( along with a few other series ' my Amanda Hocking ) sitting on my shelf for ages . It 's a gorgeous hardcover book and it 's something that sounds really interesting to me . Why I haven 't picked them up , I don 't know . Serafina , daughter of Isabella , Queen of Miromara , has been raised with the expectation - and burden - that she will someday become ruler of the oldest civilization of the merfolk . On the eve of the Dokimí ceremony , which will determine if she is worthy of the crown , Sera is haunted by a strange dream that foretells the return of an ancient evil . But her nightmare is forgotten the next day as she diligently practices her songspell ; eagerly anticipates a reunion with her best friend , Neela ; and anxiously worries about Mahdi , the crown prince of Matali , and whether his feelings toward her and their future betrothal have changed . Most of all , she worries about not living up to her mother 's hopes . The Dokimí proceeds , a dazzling display of majesty and might , until a shocking turn of events interrupts it : an assassin 's arrow wounds Isabella . The realm falls into chaos , and Serafina 's darkest premonitions are confirmed . Now she and Neela must embark on a quest to find the assassin 's master and prevent a war between the mer nations . Their search will lead them to other mermaid heriones scattered across the six seas . Together they will form an unbreakable bond of sisterhood as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens their world 's very existence . For as long as she can remember , twelve - year - old Emily Windsnap has lived on a boat . And , oddly enough , for just as long , her mother has seemed anxious to keep her away from the water . But when Mom finally agrees to let her take swimming lessons , Emily makes a startling discovery - about her own identity , the mysterious father she 's never met , and the thrilling possibilities and perils shimmering deep below the water 's surface . With a sure sense of suspense and richly imaginative details , first - time author Liz Kessler lures us into a glorious undersea world where mermaids study shipwrecks at school and Neptune rules with an iron trident - an enchanting fantasy about family secrets , loyal friendship , and the convention - defying power of love . I remember when this series was insanely popular in early middle school ! I never picked them up ( even though I wanted to ) but I had a friend who adored them . I know they 're mostly about mermaids , but if I remember what she told me , book four delves into sirens and they 're all pretty quick and fun reads . At the age of ten , Gwen Cooke had a strange encounter with a boy with dark , slightly tilted eyes . He came to her on the beach , whispered strange words in her ear , and then disappeared . Shortly thereafter , her family moved away from their seaside home and Gwen never saw the boy again . Now seventeen , Gwen is returning to her childhood home . Her nana asked her to come . But Gwen knows it 's time to go back for another reason : She yearns for the sea . Perhaps the sea itself is calling to her . Perhaps the memory of the boy and his haunting words are drawing her back to the place they met . Perhaps it 's time for her to face her destiny . This is another that I 've wanted to read since I was little but never picked up . It 's about Selkies I think . Which is freaking awesome ! I read Terri Farley 's Phantom Stallion series when I was a wee thing , but I think this is aimed at an older audience . Vacationing in Winter Harbor , Maine , is a tradition for Vanessa and Justine Sands , and that means spending time with the Carmichael boys . This summer , Vanessa is determined to channel some of her older sister 's boldness , get over her fear of the ocean , and maybe turn her friendship with Simon Carmichael into something much more . But when Justine goes cliff - diving after a big family argument , and her body washes ashore the next day , Vanessa is sure that it was more than an accident . She is more certain of this , when she discovers that her sister was keeping some big secrets and Caleb Carmichael 's gone missing . Suddenly , the entire oceanfront town is abuzz when a series of grim , water - related accidents occur , with the male victims washed ashore grinning from ear to ear . Vanessa and Simon team up to figure out if these creepy deaths have anything to do with Justine and Caleb , but what Vanessa discovers might mean the end of her summer romance , and life as she knows it . A chilling , gripping paranormal romance , Siren will make you think twice before your next trip to the beach . My same friend who loved The Tail of Emily Windsnap loved this series , though I never got around to reading it . She did tell me about it in depth , because she had absolutely fallen in love with the world that was built in this trilogy . From what I remember her telling me , it 's a fantastic ride and just a bunch of fun , all together . Daughters of the Sea tells the story of 3 mermaid sisters who are separated at birth by a storm and go on to lead three very different lives . Book 1 is about Hannah , who spent her early days in an orphanage and is now a scullery maid in the house of rich , powerful family . She is irresistibly drawn to the sea and through a series of accidents and encounters discovers her true identity . Hannah realizes that she must keep the truth a secret but she also knows that soon she will have to make the choice - to be a creature of the land or the sea . This is another one I wanted to read whenI was younger but never picked up . I think it 's for an older audience , but I 've read some of Kathryn Lasky 's books for younger kids . I adore the cover of this one , too ! Calder White lives in the cold , clear waters of Lake Superior , the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids . To survive , Calder and his sisters prey on humans and absorb their positive energy . Usually , they select their victims at random , but this time around , the underwater clan chooses its target for a reason : revenge . They want to kill Jason Hancock , the man they blame for their mother 's death . It 's going to take a concerted effort to lure the aquaphobic Hancock onto the water . Calder 's job is to gain Hancock 's trust by getting close to his family . Relying on his irresistible good looks and charm , Calder sets out to seduce Hancock 's daughter Lily . Easy enough , but Calder screws everything up by falling in love - - just as Lily starts to suspect there 's more to the monster - in - the - lake legends than she ever imagined , and just as the mermaids threaten to take matters into their own hands , forcing Calder to choose between them and the girl he loves . One thing 's for sure : whatever Calder decides , the outcome won 't be pretty . I read this book however many years ago , not long after it had come out . The first time through , I really , really enjoyed it , and I read the second one as soon as it came out . But something happened around book three and I didn 't pick it up until recently . Well , I decided to reread the first two and read the last two as quickly as I could , and I am so glad I made this decision ! It was so much better than I remember it being ! The Raven Boys is about four boys and a girl . The girl - Blue - is the daughter of a psychic and lives in a home full of psychics , but is not psychic herself . She was told that she would kill her true love with a kiss . The four boys are the titular Raven Boys - Gansey , Adam , Ronan , and Noah . They 're on a quest to discover a sleeping king who was moved from Wales to Virginia - Glendower . When Blue 's path crosses with that of her Raven Boys , their quest really and truly begins and they discover that magic is indeed real . The best part of the book is the writing . It 's mind - blowing amazing ! Have you ever read a classic book ? Something they teach in school where the writing melts off the page and dances through your soul ? That 's how these books are written . If one day I 'm ever able to write half as well as Miss Stiefvater I 'll be a damned good writer . I mean , I can 't convince you how well this is written with my own words ! If you want to just sit back and enjoy her craft , pick this up because someday , I believe this will be taught in classes around the country . The other best part of this book is the characters . I mean , I don 't think I could tell you who my favorite is because they 're all my favorite ! I love them all for different reasons and they 're all unique and separate characters . I don 't think I 've ever read another version of these characters in all the books I 've read , either . I 'm not a super visual reader ( details are hard for me to picture ) but I can just about picture these characters , even when I 'm not reading . And it 's so wonderful . Rarely do characters leak into my dreams as awesome as these ones do ! I love , love , love these books ! You can 't tear me away from the page when I 'm in the midst of one . And I 'm pretty sure there 's a rather hardcore fanbase here , seeing as there are several RPG games and a new card game coming out . But the first two books ? Absolutely awful ! I mean , maybe that 's a little bit of an overstatement , but had book three not been as good as it was , I would have given it up right then and there . My dad would read this series to me before I went to bed each night and I still have warm feelings for this one . I still have all the books and even have a copy of the Field Guide ( with which I would spend time in the forest looking for fairies ) . And the movie isn 't half bad , either , if you want my honest opinion . It 's not really any surprise , but every time I find myself on Tumblr or Instagram this book immediately pops up . It was a fantastic read , so no complaining from me ! Another really popular one right now is The Raven King and the rest of The Raven Cycle . I 'm going to go with two different series , here , because I couldn 't pick just one . The Red Rising trilogy finished up this year and it was such a good series ! It was an experience to read and I don 't think it will ever be replicated . This is another one I don 't talk about too often , which is such a shame because it 's an amazing book . It 's a good summer read and is equal parts sad , happy , and completely honest in the way it tells its story . I strongly recommend reading this if you haven 't already . This is a middle grade fantasy novel that takes place in Japan and is steeped with the mythology of that country . Another I would really recommend picking up , especially since I haven 't seen this one tossed around that often and thought it was absolutely fantastic . When I was reading this I was wishing I could go visit Japan . I don 't read that many classics , but I remember absolutely adoring this one . I think because I loved the humor and parody of America within the pages . I honestly need to read more Mark Twain , because this the only thing of his that I 've actually read . Summer is right around the corner for me and I cannot wait ! The only reason I 'm staying at school is because I have a final on the 31st , but it 's not really one I can study for , so it 's been a lie extended weekend for me to pack and read . And packing is surprisingly easy ! As for the surprise party I threw , it was for a friend 's birthday ( even though his birthday isn 't for another few weeks ) . Another one of my friend 's and I have been planning this party for about five weeks , and yesterday , when it was finally going to happen , I was bursting with so much energy I couldn 't even sit down for more than half an hour ! We also managed to surprise the rest of our friends , who we had convinced that the party was actually tonight and didn 't tell them about the grandest surprise - the 30 inch pizza ! Would you like to see such a mega - pizza ? We took the remaining slices back home and put them in the fridge for our friend who didn 't come . The whole thing was so much fun , though I don 't think I 'll be able to eat pizza again for a while . The first thing the waitress said when she brought us our food was " Good luck " which we seriously needed . Also , did you see that Cassandra Clare is co - writing a series about Magnus Bane aimed at an adult audience ? This is the last thing I expected , but something I 'm actually pretty excited for ! Now another book I have to wait for * sigh * but that 's okay . My goal this year has been to spotlight 2017 Debut authors , and earlier this week I posted an interview with Gwen Cole , and now I have another interview for you all ! It 's with the fantastic Mary Taranta , whose book , Shimmer and Burn ( previously titled Until Our Blood Runs Clean ) is a dark fantasy about a world where magic is dangerously addictive ; the book is set to release next summer ( is the wait really that long ? ? ! ) . Thank you so much , Mary , for doing this interview ! Mary : Elevator pitch ! After her sister is enslaved by the king , Faris Locke is coerced by an ambitious princess into smuggling stolen magic out of their hidden kingdom in order to bribe an alliance with a neighboring prince . Sam : What does it mean that your book is dark fantasy ? Mary : I don 't shy away from bloodshed or body counts , and characters often make difficult ( and unpleasant ) choices . No happy endings guaranteed ! Sam : According to your website you have a BA in history ; how does this affect what you write about ? Did you take classes in college ( or outside of college ) to help with your writing craft ? Mary : History is a huge source of inspiration in terms of worldbuilding and character motivation , but I tend to only use little details , or a general time period / event to set my books against . Some of my ideas borrow more heavily from specifics than others , but overall , I definitely write fantasy novels , not historical . I took one creative writing class in college , but it was taught by a former state Poet Laureate who heavily skewed the class towards poetry , which wasn 't my area of interest . Other than that , I just wrote a lot of practice words before I felt I had something worthy of querying . Mary : It 's half and half ! I might have an idea for a plot or a specific dynamic between two characters , and as I start drawing them , details fill in . SHIMMER AND BURN began as a concept which turned into a sketch which led to the pitch that my agent approved . A rather important character in the novel didn 't exist until I was doodling faces and he showed up and introduced himself . Now the novel can 't work without him ! Mary : Actually . . . no ! I 'm on deadline for edits on Book 1 , and the first draft of Book 2 is due soon , so having a year to go makes it a little less stressful for me - there 's still plenty of time to make changes ! ; ) That being said , I 'm dying to see my cover . The cover will feel more real than a word document I email back and forth to my editor , if that makes sense . Since both books are keeping me busy and I work full - time during the day , I don 't have any side projects going at the moment , although ideas are simmering in my head . Mary : Patience ! When you 're actively involved in the writing community , you get real time updates of other people 's successes , and it makes you hungry - which is good ! - but don 't let it make you impatient . There 's no time limit on success , nor is there only a finite amount to go around . Rushing to catch up will not get you there any faster , and it will probably even set you back - a lesson I learned the hard way . Sam : Time for two truths and a lie ! The rules of the game : give three facts about yourself , two that are true and one that is a lie . Readers will guess which is which in the comments and I 'll reveal the answer in a later post ! Born the youngest save one in a family of ten , I grew up notoriously quiet but secretly wild , playacting my favorite stories and writing some of my own in the woods behind my family 's farmhouse . Originally from a small ( very small ) town in Ohio , I moved to the larger ( much larger ) Orlando suburbs kicking and screaming at the age of fifteen . It turned out all right in the end and I 'm still here , now with an adorable husband , two useless cats , and an unhealthy reliance on air conditioning . While I 'm not old enough to be President , I am too old to sit on the floor without cracking joints when I stand . As a Midwestern Southerner , I 've attained Level 9 Politeness and prefer my iced tea sweet . Still notoriously quiet , though . Not nearly so wild . I did a non - spoiler review of this book , which you can check out HERE if you 're interested . The rest of this review will be hidden underneath the break because , understandably , it 's full of SPOILERS for both this book and the previous one . If you have not read A Court of Mist and Fury STOP READING . If you have , please continue . I 've been spending a lot of time on Bloglovin ' and I 've wondered why there isn 't a tag specific to the platform . This tag isn 't really book blog specific , so feel free to tag all sorts of interesting blogs ! It 's a way to encourage people to follow others on Bloglovin ' and to discover new blogs . This book was everything ! I don 't even think I can formulate how much I adore this one - it 's just amazing ! There may be SPOILERS FOR BOOK ONE below , but there won 't be any spoilers for this book ( though I will be posting a spoiler discussion later this week , for those who are curious ) . A Court of Mist and Fury picks up not long after A Court of Thorns and Roses and follows Feyre as she is adjusting to life with Tamlin in the Spring Court . . . and she 's not adjusting well . She is , more or less , suffering from PTSD thanks to what Amarantha did Under the Mountain , and then , moments before she 's married to Tamlin , Rhysand appears again and sweeps her away according to their deal . But things with Rhysand may not be as they seem . . . and with a war brewing across the sea that will affect them all , she has to choose sides . This book is a whopper coming in at over 600 pages . It took me ages to read , but I really , really enjoyed it . In fact , I think I can safely say that this has been my favorite book all year ( though it seriously contested Lady Midnight in that regard ) . As always , Sarah J Maas ' writing is amazing ! My one problem with her last book ( Queen of Shadows ) was the poor pace of character development , something she easily fixes in this book . While there was a little bit of a problem wrapping my head around Tamlin and Lucian 's developments , the rest of the characters ( even the new ones ) grew on me and slowly changed over the course of the novel . I can easily say the Night Court is my favorite court ( though I cannot tell you why , as spoilers ) . The world building in this one was very , very cool . Besides the Night Court , the Summer Court was explored a bit ( and while I wish all the Courts were visited , I can pace myself ) and so was , more importantly , the magic of the courts and the history of the world . Both play an important part in the story ( and will continue to play an important part in the story ) and I look forward to learning more about each . What got me the most in this book was the sheer amount and level of emotions . The relationships between characters change dramatically ( and I think for the better , so some will be very angry when they read it ) and the central relationship is just too important for words . It 's got its highs and its got its lows , but it 's the best thing I 've read in a long time and it actually means a lot to me , personally . Also , a bit of a disclaimer , this is New Adult ( and really shouldn 't be shelved with the rest of Young Adult ) which means the sex scenes can get more graphic than they do for the regular run of the mill YA . And boy , do they get graphic ( in a good way , really ) . If you 're not a fan of these sorts of scenes . . . maybe skip past them ? There are a lot , and if you need to know what pages to skip , DM me on Twitter and I can let you know . If you 're all for these scenes , well , you 're really going to enjoy yourself ( * smiles wickedly * ) . I 've been hoping to spotlight several authors that will be debuting next year , and I 'm super thankful to Gwen Cole , who so kindly agreed to do an interview ! Gwen 's debut novel , Cold Summer , is about a boy suffering PTSD after he 's hurtled back and forth through time . It 's set to be released in May of next year ( according to Goodreads ) and I already have a countdown running . Thanks again , Gwen , for doing this interview ! Gwen : This book actually started out as a summer book - no WWII or time - traveling . But after about five chapters and me becoming very bored with it , I decided to stop re - think it . At the time I was binging on Band of Brothers and one day my summer book became something much different . And I couldn 't write a war book without PTSD . So many people forget the side effects of war , even after the soldiers come home and try to have normal lives . One is never without the other . Gwen : Sometimes they form themselves and sometimes I 'm watching a TV show and this random side character comes in and something about them grabs me . A quirk they have or how they hold themselves - then a character is born through that . But honestly , it usually takes me a whole rough draft to really figure each of my characters out , sometimes more depending on how difficult they are . Sam : On your website you said you can play many instruments - which are your favorite ( either to play or in general ) and does music inspire your writing ? Gwen : I 've been playing music almost my whole life . I started piano young and picked up bass guitar when I was 12 , and then a little later on I taught myself guitar . Bass guitar will probably always be my favorite . I 've been playing it so long I barely have to think about it anymore . But music and writing don 't go together for me . Sometimes I 'll play a Hans Zimmer song for a certain scene if I need it , but I tend to write and edit in silence or have the TV on in the background . Gwen : Unlike most authors who start writing at a young age , I didn 't start writing until I was about 20 . I did it for fun back then and didn 't pursue a writing career until a few years ago . But the first thing I did was find myself an agent . I knew that was the first step for me and I couldn 't have gotten where I am now without her . Their knowledge about the publishing world is invaluable . Gwen : Be yourself ! It does no good to compare yourself to others because you 're not them . You are unique and your words are unique , so hold onto that and let yourself grow . Sam : Time for two truths and a lie ! The rules of the game : give three facts about yourself , two that are true and one that is a lie . Readers will guess which is which in the comments and I 'll reveal the answer in a later post ! Gwen Cole writes Young Adult books and her debut novel , COLD SUMMER , will be released in the spring of 2017 with Sky Pony Press , an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing . She grew up in upstate New York , moved to Virginia where she did not graduate college , and worked a various number of jobs including pharmacy technician , meat clerk , ranch hand , and a receiving specialist at Target . She may or may not have written a number of books while working at certain jobs . At the age of eighteen , Gwen played bass in a hardcore band and later married the lead guitarist . She can also play piano , guitar , and wishes she could play the cello . Her favorite place to vacation is Wyoming , where she gets to wear a cowboy hat and pretend she actually is one . Gwen now lives in Richmond , Virginia with her husband , daughter , and very large dog , where she longs to live in the country again . And by finally understand twitter I mean that it 's not crazy overwhelming anymore and has become just another part of my day . Which is actually a pretty big relief ! I 've been using Twitter for over a year ( about as long as I 've been blogging ) and while it was always nice , it wasn 't really a place to connect with people until recently . I can 't say what triggered the shift , but it 's pretty great ! Other than that , my week has been pretty boring . I managed to get a lot of reading done ( which was unbelievably nice ) and I only have 11 days of school left ( and summer can 't come soon enough ) . I 'm planning to apply for a job at my local Barnes and Noble , so fingers crossed . If that doesn 't work out , theres a pizza place that 's always hiring . That 's it for me this week ! Next week is pretty filled with stuff , but stuff I am so , so , so excited for ! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend ; let me know what you 're currently reading in the comments ! You may remember the last Writing Corner post I did where I talked about one of my current WIPs . Today I 'm actually going to talk about another one that I 've been working on . Quick summary : It 's an original fairy tale based that came from the thought process " What is Pokemon existed in real life ? " and the story of a dying girl . It follows Jocelyn and Wylan , who are both plagued by curses cast on them ( or their families ) by a witch . They must fulfill the quest of the Kings Ransom in order to finally break their curses . I call it an original fairy tale because it plays on fairy tale tropes and is set in a world where these things are possible and taken to be fact . It 's a shorter novel , perhaps even a novella , and I 'm trying to make it as tight as possible . As I was writing the first chapter , I stumbled across a little gem of an idea that I didn 't even know I was missing . It was only a line of dialogue , but I realized as I was writing , that it fixed the major problem in the plot . Not only does it give the King motive to have this quest in the first place , but it makes the ending practically perfect . I love when this happens naturally as I write . I 'm somewhere between a planner and a pantser , normally sketching out the big ideas and then expanding on them as I go and stumbling into new things . It 's not so rare that characters will change on the page ( for the better ) but I don 't always have this spontaneity with the plot . When it does happen , it 's never been as drastic as this . But I 'm rather pleased with how this changes and betters the story ! The long path to the throne has only just begun for Aelin Galathynius . Loyalties have been broken and bought , friends have been lost and gained , and those who possess magic find themselves at odds with those don 't . As the kingdoms of Erilea fracture around her , enemies must become allies if Aelin is to keep those she loves from falling to the dark forces poised to claim her world . With war looming on all horizons , the only chance for salvation lies in a desperate quest that may mark the end of everything Aelin holds dear . Aelin 's journey from assassin to queen has entranced millions across the globe , and this fifth installment will leave fans breathless . Will Aelin succeed in keeping her world from splintering , or will it all come crashing down ? Does this really need to be explained ? It 's the fifth book in the Throne of Glass series ! And my god , that cover is amazing ! I can 't wait to meet back up with the whole gang and just return to this world . While I was somewhat disappointed by Queen of Shadows , it wasn 't enough disappointment to turn me off this one . Also , Dorian is just my favorite and now he 's King so that will be exciting ! I actually really like all the characters in this book . For you Mal haters out there , I don 't hate him , but he 's very " meh " to me ( I know how the series ends relationship - wise but will refrain my thoughts until the final book ) . Other than that I adore everyone . Alina is one of those rare narrators who is absolutely absorbing in every sense of the word and the world around me falls away when I 'm looking through her eyes . I credit this magic to Leigh Bardugo 's own magic , which still seeps off the page as I was reading . Like with Shadow and Bone , the world of Ravka is fantastic . I wish I lived there , honestly ! And the myth building in this one was fantastic . I loved how she explored the legends of the world and how realistic they all felt . Sometimes I forget , too , how bloody her writing can be and how dangerous this world is , but the climax of this book was mind blowing and amazing ! I spent so many hours traveling this weekend ! I took a three hour train ride ( that was delayed by two and a half hours so it ended up being somewhere near six hours of being in a train station or on a train ) where I met up with my family to celebrate my dad 's birthday . I also managed to sneak in a Sarah J Maas signing . . . . Which was awesome ! I didn 't take pictures , I 'm sorry , but I was exhausted by the time I got home ( which is an hour away from where the train took me ) . I did get an page from the Throne of Glass coloring book and I cannot wait to color it ! Then , today , my dad drove me back to school ( which is a three and a half hour ride but we ended up going out of our way an hour to visit a really nice city in the area and it was nice to spend more time with him ) and now I 'm trying to catch up on both homework and blogging . On a planet where violence and vengeance rule , in a galaxy where some are favored by fate , everyone develops a currentgift , a unique power meant to shape the future . While most benefit from their currentgifts , Akos and Cyra do not - their gifts make them vulnerable to others ' control . Can they reclaim their gifts , their fates , and their lives , and reset the balance of power in this world ? Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people . Cyra 's currentgift gives her pain and power - something her brother exploits , using her to torture his enemies . But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother 's hand : she is resilient , quick on her feet , and smarter than he knows . Akos is from the peace - loving nation of Thuve , and his loyalty to his family is limitless . Though protected by his unusual currentgift , once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers , Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive - no matter what the cost . When Akos is thrust into Cyra 's world , the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable . They must decide to help each other to survive - or to destroy one another . Maybe excited isn 't the best word for this book . I 'm curious , though , very curious . I liked Divergent when I read it the first time , but after Allegiant , and after struggling to reread the trilogy , I decided I just wasn 't a fan . Yes , this book might be better than those were ( I 'm certainly in love with the cover ) , but I 'm going to wait for the early reviews to come rolling in . 1 . I love to bullet journal ! I 've always loved planners , and indulged in a personalized one last summer , but over winter break discovered the magic that is bullet journaling and have to taken to it with a passion . 2 . I 've always wanted to learn calligraphy , but can handwrite , surprisingly well , many different fonts and fancy letters . My own handwriting has changes dramatically several times over the course of a year , though recently I 've been really fond of writing in cursive . I never thought I would use it as a skill , but now I 've found it 's just quicker and it looks nicer in my notes . 3 . I used to take horse back riding lessons . I stopped because the commitment was too much and I wasn 't very fond of the people who taught me . While learning I had several incidents that make for interesting stories . . . like the time I fell off of a horse and it ran away and was running through the stable and people had to catch it . . . or the time the horse I was riding had decided to jump ( before I had learned how to handle that ) and I rode it out like a pro so well that my mom thought it was just part of the lesson and was shocked to find out it was an accident . 4 . I also used to learn how to play the trumpet . I had originally wanted to learn to play the violin but the instructor told me I was a natural with the trumpet . I was in fifth grade , so that was all it took to assure me I was a prodigy . I hated the instructor , though , and lessons were during the time we had silent reading in class ( my favorite part of the day ! ) and it only took about a month for me to quit . 5 . Also in fifth grade : I used to play marbles all the time ! And , actually , I was really good . I got a few friends really interested and soon we had the whole class playing . At the end of the school year we had a competitive marbles competition in class and the teacher was all for it ! Unfortunately I haven 't played in years . I might just dig up all my marbles when I go home this summer , though . . . 6 . When I was in seventh and eighth grade I loved playing Magic : the Gathering . I taught myself how to play and collected so many cards ! ( I mean , I had like 700 cards and was really in love with the game . ) I didn 't have anyone to play with , though , and so would just sit in my room and design decks and then play against myself for hours . A few weeks ago a friend expressed an interest in the game , so I bought a deck and relearned how to play ( wasn 't so hard to , either ; just like riding a bike , really ! ) and it 's been so much fun . 7 . I 've always wanted to be a published author , and that 's till my plan ( always working on some WIP or another ) , but I also want to work in Hollywood and be a screenwriter and director . I still plan to minor in film ( as that 's all that my school offers in that department ) and I still want to work in movies , but my plans have changed a bit . Lately , I 've been considering , after graduation ( which is still several years away ) , to pursue a degree in library sciences or a job in editing . I think I 'd be good at both of those things , but I , luckily , still have plenty of time to decide on my future . 8 . I pretty much can 't see anything in the dark . It has a lot to do with my depth perception ( which is really , really bad ) . I try not to drive at night at all ( though I can and I 'm not a hazard , I just drive slower than I normally would ) and keep a light turned on in my room until I 'm tucked into bed and know I won 't get up again . 9 . This is actually my third book blog ! Does that surprise you ? I had a blog when I was in eighth grade , but it was really poor , and after a year , retired it . I had made no connections and hadn 't really tried to , either . Then , in sophomore year of high school I decided to try my hand at it again , but I hadn 't learned my lesson , and made no connections . When no one visits your blog it 's really depressing . This time around , though , I knew I was dedicated for the long run , and I had learned from past mistakes , and here I am today ! This is , by far , my favorite of the three blogs , and I 'm so glad I came back to it . 10 . I have been reading and writing for as long as I can remember . The first book I remember reading on my own was a book in the Droon series . My dad had read them to me at night , but then the most recent one came out and he wasn 't home , so I sat down and didn 't get back up until I had finished . I was really a small child , maybe third grade . 11 . I 've only completed two " novels " that I 've worked on . One I wrote in fourth or fifth grade when I was mad at a friend . I made all of my friends super heroes and super villains and I , of course , was a super hero , and the friend I was mad at was a super villain . I wrote it in a thin spiral bound notebook and it 's still probably in my room somewhere . The second novel was one I co - wrote with a friend about a parallel world where everyone has powers . She wrote the chapters from the perspective of Ebony " Eb " , the female lead , and I wrote the chapters from Zander , the male lead . It 's not a horrible book , but we started it Freshman year of high school and ended in the middle of Junior year , so it 's really not the best work , either . 2 . Do you have any tattoos ? Do you want one ? No , I don 't , but yes I want one . For a long time I 've wanted a really , really small one behind my right ear that 's just the little copyright symbol to represent that I 'm an original . I 've also played with the idea of a melting price tag ( the scanner type one ) on one of my shoulders which would mean something like you can 't put a price on a person . 4 . If you had a daughter , what would her name be ? Kahlan ( KAY - LAN ) . Yes , it 's a name from Sword of Truth , but I 've always loved the name and I don 't think it 's way out there as some names go . 6 . Name a place or a few places at the top of your travel bucket list . Iceland is pretty much the one place I dream of going right now . 9 . What was your latest five star read ? Siege and Storm ( no review yet ) , though I am in the middle of A Court of Mist and Fury and that for sure will end up with five stars , I love it so much ! 10 . With what word would you most like people to describe you with ? Nostalgic ? Important . Yeah , important , even if it 's only to them . 11 . Tell us about a book that has changed your life ! There are always books that will always mean something important to me . American Gods , Percy Jackson , and , most recently , A Court of Mist and Fury ( even though I haven 't finished , there are parts of this book that just mean so much to me and will always be with me ) .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
My old friend Amity and her hubby John came by yesterdaywith their new baby . That made my day ! Little missWillow is a prefect little human , looks a lot like Amity - except when she cries , she looks like her dad ! ! ! : ) I was well and happy to hold a sweet little baby again . Amity and I talked a lot about the birth experience , andI think I 'm very excited for that when the time comes . Fornow , I 'm so glad that I didn 't get married all those timesmy step dad pushed me too . I know if it had gone accordingto plans , I would have 2 or 3 little ones by now and be stuck inthe Quirverfull system for good . I 'm very happy for my friends and their little one , though ! Makes me happy thinking that like them , I canpull out of the childhood I grew up in , and start freshwhen I bring my first little daughter or son intothis world . Okay , so I 've been increasingly more open minded as I recover from a past of judgmental , cult - like families , but I 'm going to take a stand here and now on one subject . I came across an old 60 minute transcript reviewing Laura Doyle 's book ' The Surrendered Wife ' . In the transcript , they discuss a passage taken from the book . Laura explains how she teaches her daughter regarding her husband , Jesse : " We talk a lot about Jesse 's , ' He 's your daddy and you 're supposed to obey your daddy and we want to honour him and we want to respect him ' . And just talking about why we are cleaning . We want to have a clean house so that we can honor Daddy because Daddy likes the house to be clean . Put it right there . Do you know why we 're making the fruit pizza ? We 're making it for Daddy . We want to please him . We want to do special things for him . Daddy 's the king of our home , isn 't he ? . . . " According to the reporter , this 2 year old daughter is ' in training ' to follow in her mother 's footsteps as a surrendered wife . Instantly alarm bells went off and everything in me went No , no , no . Absolutely wanted to vomit . I DO have an opinion on this one subject , and it is a very strong one . It is NOT right to teach girls from the time they are toddlers that someone deserves respect simply because they have a penis . That child 's father should get his fruit pizza because Daddy works hard to take care of her , or because Daddy loves her very much and they do things for him because they love him , too , or because it feels good inside to make Daddy happy . And his daughter should respect him because he has integrity , or because he treats her respectfully , or because he sacrifices for them . Teaching her that a man - even a father - deserves respect because Mama chooses to make Daddy the ultimate center of her world is absolutely not right . If Mom wants to be a surrendered wife , so be it and I hope she is happy with that choice , of course . She can let Dad make the parenting decisions and she can help enforce them . But it is not okay to teach her children Posted by I wish that there were a huge celebration for all the family - less people in the world . Not only the ones who physically have families , but also for those who just have been displaced . This time of year used to be my absolute favorite . My mom made sure to go all out with decor , singing , and general merry - making . We would never make less than 6 dozen cookies . Christmas spirit had a huge influence on me . Once my aunt came 3 hours to stay with us after getting in a huge fight with her husband . That Christmas , my step dad was stressed , and he and my aunt screamed all the way through the holiday . And I still loved it . Even the year I was 10 , when my mom was hugely fat and pregnant , and Warren was intolerable , I remember making cookies with the midwife 's daughter and having a blast , almost ignoring his mood . As the one good memory from my childhood , this holiday stubbornly holds a special spot in my heart . Which is why now , despite everything I 've done to protect myself , my heart feels like a hole was punched into the middle of it . Because this year , there is no Christmas . The kids put up a tree , but well over half the decorations we always put up are gone . Christmas cards were not sent , and there are no cookies . The children are all gone to Lincoln . Two nights ago , my sister and I went shopping for the little ones and each other . It was the most Christmas spirit I 've shared this winter . We put aside our differences and watched a movie , made the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey 's kiss in the middle , and wrapped presents . I think between the 2 of us , we could keep Christmas alive in our family , if we really tried . My boyfriend called to tell me how many gifts he got for Christmas . Now he 's at his grandparent 's , getting ready for some really amazing food and ' quality family time ' . Our new housemate told me that his parents give him ' some $ 500 ' to buy his own gifts . My friends from long ago are at their house right now , playing with the one present each that they let the kids open early . I 'm sure if they knew what that did tPosted by You can tell I 'm bored if I resort to snapping photos ofmyself . I don 't like to generally . Today flew byreally fast . I spent a lot of it cleaning the house up . ThenI got online and instantly got bored . hahaAt least I have Ember to keep me company . She smellsSO good today ! Yesterday my sis was here too . I don ' thang out with her much , it was nice . If I could be alone on an island for 20 years , I would . Aslong as I had a sandbox full of words . I 'd just writeall day , meaningless nothings . It would be more interestingthan trying to communicate with some people , anyway . Here are five random things you didn 't need to know : 1 . If you have 3 quarters , 4 dimes , and 4 pennies , you have $ 1 . 19 . You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar . 2 . President Kennedy was the fastest random speaker in the world with upwards of 350 words per minute . 3 . According to suicide statistics , Monday is the favored day for self - destruction . 4 . The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung , used by Egyptians in 2000 B . C . Ew ! 5 . The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache . That 's it . I 'm too bored to concentrate on this anymore . I love being out of town ; there is a certain peace about knowing I 'll waste gas if I just run out , so I get to justify hanging out all day doing nothing . I didn 't even wake up until 11 am . When I did get up , I read books , moved Aaron 's stuff , Hung up stuff , posted pictures , and did nothing until 6 : 30 . Then I had to go to my little sister 's concert . About that . . . I learned something tonight . Our 3rd grade homeschool choir was impressionably better than Norfolk 's Junior High choir . Not only did we know how to harmonize , but we were using sign language to emphasize our songs . I was in LOVE with my choir teacher . Memories of her are my favorite from my childhood . She used to have long , beautiful hair , and if I whispered in her ear , it would fall all over my upturned face . Kind of weird that I remember it so clearly , but I was in love with her voice , and everything else about her . So . . . yeah . A few friends and I also watched the Princess and the Frog tonight , and it was beyond amazing . I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a super movie . I loved every second of it . Half the time , I was comparing characters in the movie to people in past Disney animations ( " look , it 's Edgar from Aristocats ! ! ! " ) , and the other half I was wishing they would remake all the old movies to look as great as this one . Want to hear some really deep thoughts I 've been having . . . since it is so close to Christmas , I had to think about what I would do this holiday . I kind of thought about going to church , but besides that , I had no ideas . My mom is probably doing nothing , she is having Christmas burnout , apparently , and the kids went to their dad 's . So I 'm out a family for Christmas . Not like I had to be , I suppose . Because Aaron 's family invited me to theirs . Problem is , I felt something towards his family that scared me away big time . A few months ago , Aaron 's dad was filling up my car tire , and he said that since I was one of his kids now , he was going to do car upkeep for me . And that , coupled with an amazing summer with his mom and dadPosted by 1 . It 's a bit chilly , I 'm still recovering from the weather outside my dorm room . Wish I lived in Tennessee , where it was freezing at 42 degrees ! 2 . I have the most beautiful kitten in the world . Her name is Ember , and she is adorable ! She 's a tiny girl for now , but I think she 's going to be pretty big . She decided she loved me today - she curled up in my lap and passed out . Sweet baby . . . ( thank you , Cassie ! ! ! ) 3 . We are moving into our new house by Friday . Lots of work , moving is . At least we have a beautiful house to move into . I 'll put up pictures soon . Short post , cause I 'm really tired . . . and full of chili , which makes me tireder . . . 2 state emergencies in one week ! We are having a great run before finals . Emergency # 1 was a snow crisis . We had feet of snow complicatedby 40 mph winds . Schools were closed down , roads closed off , anda general mess . Emergency # 2 was a propane tank explosion . Happened this morning . As I type the city is being evacuated . We 'll see how everything goes , thisis not much fun though ! ! ! I know a million people who have already been forced to leave . And next week is finals . Disastrous combonation . Yup . We went there . Aaron and AlexisAaron + Hat = RussianI snagged a good one . Yup yup . Core Strengthening . I don 't really know . . . At each other 's throatsAwesome memories of the snow day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Probably won 't have another one till 2036 . So . . . I think I got a concussion last night . The main reason I think this is that this kidand I slammed heads so hard I heard a crack . And then I felt a throbbing pain on the OTHER side of my head ! Not to mention that I slept last night like I had taken sleeping pills , and I couldn 't remember my roommate 's name when I woke up . Ouch . We have a lot of snow here . Actually , more than I have seen all year . That 's why school is cancelled ! I 'm very excited about that . Our school NEVER closes , so this is a fun occasion . I should be doing laundry today . I will get around to that eventually . I also want to make brownies . It would be fun to smell like a coconut in this weather . There was an awesome Australian film crew at our house yesterday . I had more fun with these guys than I have any of the previous crews . Aaron and I got to bring friends and eat out with them . They had never experienced snow like ours ! It was pretty interesting . Apparently They went to talk to the Campbells , the people I stayed with in Tennessee . The Campbells weren 't aware of the subject of the interview . So they were very surprised when they heard it was about me . They then tried to lie and say they didn 't know who I was , which obviously wasn 't true , since they had also sad I had more problems then then could fix . So I guess in a way I got my revenge on them , or will in this documentery . Not like I was looking to . Part of me is scared that I 'm going to lose my friends forever . The other part knows I never really had those friends to begin with . I have a friend I haven 't talked about before . . . I don 't really know why . He 's a really sweet guy . Oh , and he likes Josh Groban ! I love that because he picked someone that I know . Like Celtic Thunder . Josh reminded me of a super sweet shy guy . I wish I could go back to Nashville . . . specially with this weather . I got my Christmas shopping done ! ! lots of cool things . I can 't wait to talk about what I got , but I can 't yet . Heart ATTACK ! ! ! I thought I just lost everything I typed so far . But I found it again . Hooray ! ! ! TAngel Renee It 's been a long weekend . Promised to be a good one , but I guess promises get broken a lot . Hopefully it gets better . I 've been feeling really down this past 24 hours , it 's sucked . I hate when I make plans and they are messed up . But it 's worse when someone else messes them up and then could care less that they did so . Not that I should complain . I wonder if I 'm controlling ? I should keep track of what I do and see if I really am . Today should get better because I 'm getting a birthday present from a coworker , and that makes me happy . Plus tonight , if plans work out for once , I 'm going to watch Blind Side at the theater . And then school comes again . Ugh . Two more weeks . I 'm up earlier than I really wanted to be . It is usually nice to be the first one up , but today I 'm just plain tired . Last night the choir groups at school had an away concert , and we were gone for that from 4 - 10 . Really good time , though . I had a duet which went off well . It 's so fun to watch the Men 's Ensemble , mostly . All the little things that they do . . . Joe with his lips barely moving . Josh with a grin at all times . Dane and Cameron sport matching red faces in the top left . My favorite is Grady , though . He looks like he just got put in the middle of a group of people he doesn 't know , and he stares around , petrified , as he sings . I LOVE it ! Sometimes I wish I could see what people really thought . Then I changed my mind cause I probably don 't want to know . I 'd rather know what I think people think of me . It might be more flattering . Or not . If I had coconut smelling stuff , I 'd wear it a lot . I love it . All I want for Christmas is as follows : A vest from Shopko , I think . Converse Shoes . Boots , like the slipper / really soft kind everyone is wearing . Soft blanket ? A PUPPY . Long sleeve shirts are cool . Gift cards are always awesome , to wherever . The Buckle would be a good place to get a gift card cause I love the jeans but they cost SO much . I used to be a huge fan of Jesus . Then I became indifferent but respectful of him . Now I 've decided I 'm not a fan . He makes for a good excuse for a lot of people to do a lot of things they shouldn 't . Like hating homosexuals . Which is to me the same thing as Southerners wanting slaves . It 's discrimination . I used to be judgemental in the name of Jesus . So did my step dad . And he used Jesus to molest me , too . So I don 't like Jesus that much anymore . When I do talk about my real feelings these days , I get bashed . I used to hate that , but now I guess I 'm used to it . I know how I feel , and I can 't change it to make people happy . I still respect those people who love Jesus . But he is not my kind of myth . I would rather go with a flying spaghetti monster , or better yet , nothing at all . TodayPosted by # 1 : I 'm thankful for life moving on . See , life 20 years ago was bad , but it moved on . And life 15 years ago was questionable , but not unlivable . 3 years ago , yeah , life was unbearable . But thanks to life and moving on , this year was my best ever and it seems to keep getting that way . Thanks to life moving on I have a reason to keep living and watching what happens next . # 2 : I 'm thankful for the man who stands by me faithfully and loves me more than anyone I know . Who is not perfect , but is perfect to me . Who allows me to find myself and waits for me . I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having him . I won 't say who he is though , cause he tends to have a big head about it : P Love you babe . # 3 : I 'm thankful to be who I am . Not too short , not too tall , smart , somewhat attractive , and free spirited . Free to love who I will , to shun what I hate , and in control of my life . Free to listen to what music I want , to wear what I 'd like , and to be a true friend to ALL people , not just ' my type ' . Yup , I love what I 'm becoming . # 4 : The Fantastic 4 ! ! ! Yeah , I never plan my groups of friends , but I 'm awfully glad to be in this one . Cassie , Liz and Chelsey , some of the most kick ass friends ever , know how to do James Bond things , and definitely the group I 'm free to be me in . To make it sound all sentimental , cue the music for Jon & Kate Plus 8 : " It may be a CRAZY life . But it 's OUR life . " # 5 : Mom , this one 's for you . . . but I don 't really have words to describe what drives my thankfulness for you . You just have a lot of strength , and I love watching you go through the freeing process that I did . Spending time with you is much better now that I know you are going to speak your mind and not god 's . . . Thank you . # 6 : My Sanders . A friend who I can go without seeing for weeks , and when we see each other it 's like we never left . One of those friends you dream about , a best friend , someone you want to invest in . Out of all my friends , this is the one who covers pretty much all areas of friendship : we ALWAYS have fun , real fun . We canPosted by The following conversation may or may not be fictional . . . Angel : I think Hugh Jackman is the hottest hunk EVER ! Liz : Oh my gosh , YES ! ! ! He 's so good looking . . . Angel : Especially in ' Australia ' . Cass : I don 't really like him that much . . . Angel and Liz : How COULD you ! ? ! Cass : He 's okay . . . I think Matthew McCaunaghey isWAY better looking . . . Angel : Really ? I don 't think he 's that impressive at all . Liz : Yeah . . . no . . . I don 't know . . . Angel : Now Owen Wilson , he is HOTT . Liz : Oh , totally . Angel : Especially his voice . . . Liz : Oh , his voice makes me melt ! Angel : definitely . . . Liz : ( slamming hand on the table ) Cassie , you justDON ' T EVEN KNOW ! ! ! Cass : ( jumping about 2 feet high ) Know what ? ? ? Angel : Haha , you didn 't hear us at allCass : I just agreed with you ! Liz : ( laughing hysterically ) I scared you . . . Cass : Yeah , well I 'm going to throw a PACIFIER at you ! Liz : OH NO ! ! ! Angel : And then I 'll give an encyclopedia to Cassie ! ! ! ( Deathly Silence ) Liz and Cass : What ? These random events can be found happening somewhere far , far fromNorfolk , NE , Northeast Community College . 1 . I was a Can Can Dancer for Halloween . Obama thought it was funny . 2 . Aaron and I took a little break , but it didn 't do so good . We arejust made for each other , no question about it . 3 . We are moving into a lovely house starting in December ! It ' sgoing to be a - freakin - mazing . 4 . My job lets me and one guest get into movies for free . I didnot , however , go with Aaron to see this : 5 . On December 5th , I will be testing for my orange - andhopefully green - belt in Taekwondo . 6 . I will take an average of 28 , 000 showers in my lifetime . Go Biology . . . 7 . The whole Husker pride thing is starting to make sense to me . 8 . I have really missed sending letters to my friends . And somy penpal side is making a comeback . Want a letter ? Let me know ! 9 . I was on tv . . . http : / / www . wetv . com / secret - lives - of - women / episodes / born - to - breed . . . and I 'll be back on soon ! 10 . Oh yeah . . . I colored my hair . It 's pretty now . ( ignore the blackeye , I dropped a book on my face . ) Thanks Cassie ! ! ! Got a lovely new dress . . . My childhood friends Liz got married . . . to an Aaron ! We are gonna have the samename for our guys . : ) My mom away from home . : ) Mother of the bride . The little kids I used to babysit . I miss them . Aren 't they adorable ? Liz looked gorgeous . . . Congratulations and have the best time inPuerto Rico ! ! ! Dance . Deep into the shadows of the night , you pull the melodyfrom my heart , reunite it with my feet . We twirl andspin on the dance floor , keeping time with the beat . Withyour head thrown back , singing at the top of your voice , I feel as content as I will be . You start the spark thatlights a fierce , joyous fire within me , and I rememberhow to love as easily as breathing air . And we dance . Listen . No one sees me but only you , watching even whentwilight fades to a starry black . I build a wall aroundto protect myself , but you reach in gently , pull meout before my tears of loneliness fall . As my worldcrumbles into a desolate wasteland , you hold meand remind me that I am not abandoned . WhenI 'm finally ready to talk , you listen . Stand . I stand strong in the darkness , encased in an armor ofpretense . I declare to the world my capability to remainstaunch in battle . I fear no one , I am proud and undefeated . And yet beneath the confidence I wear , a child is crying infear . I cannot expect to keep my pose of strength , andeventually my knees buckle . But somehow you are there , supporting me . You lift me up almost imperceptibly , so noone else sees my weakness , no one but you . With your help shake itoff , the trembling ceases , and I stand . Live . You tell me , " This would be my heartbeat if I ever lostyou . And I understand . To diewould be to lose all the beautiful memories , to eraseevery Kodak moment we have created . Within youand me lie the ingredients to hope , strength , and family . I may be fatherless , I may lack a mother , but I have you . For as long as I can dance in the arms of my sensitive , strongbrother , I will live . My beautiful friend Katie got married . My friend Amity is already married . I always figured I 'd be the first one married and I 'd have the biggest family . I 'm sure glad my priorities changed before I got a bunch of kids thrown into the mix . I mourn for all the innocent children ( myself included ) who became victims of a Quiverfull family without being asked first . I 'd rather be ready , like Katie is , than to marry the guy my dad picks and have 20 kids and counting , without knowing who I really am . Thanks God ! I live in a world full of fantastic color . My name is baby blue and feels like cotton candy . I have synesthesia , which is a rare sensory condition .
|
I went to a special before Christmas crafting showcase last year and this is a sample of one of the things they made . These were the boots that my sister - in - law made and I think they turned out really neat . At the showcase we were taught how to take old thrift - store boots and repaint them into these and use them for gift giving . They had a bottle of wine in the one they showed at the showcase along with some tissue paper as an accent . My sister - in - law 's boss wanted her to make a pair for her to wear this christmas but I don 't think she ever got them made . I painted mine in blue and grey and they looked like a Dallas Cowboy boot . I also participated in an embroidery tea towel swap with one of my other online yahoo groups and this is the towel I made for my partner . I still have not figured out hot to make the pictures go with each paragraph so the tea towil is above with the boots . Finally I made a nativity wall hanging and it is also pictured in this post . We woke up yesterday to grey skys and before we even had time to take my grandson to school the snow had started to fall . I love snow , I just don 't like the results which are usually slick streets and cars stuck on the side of the road . By the end of the day we had only had about 1 " in our area so it wasn 't too bad . We got out in the garage and pulled out the box with the christmas tree and set it up . I will have to go out tomorrow and try to find the lights , my christmas village and my sisters handmade Nativity set which is my special treasure . I don 't think I have ever shared what happened between my siblings and I . We were 5 kids in all . There were 4 girls and 1 boy ranging in ages from 16 mo - 6 yrs . My 2 sisters were adopted togather , my brother and the other sister were each adopted by 2 different families and I was never adopted due to health problems I think . I grew up in a Childrens Home in Seattle , Washington and I always remembered my brother and sisters . It was at Christmas time that I thought about them the most . All my life there was an empty space that I knew one day God would fill . I never doubted that he wouldn 't let me meet them . About 15 yrs ago I sent a letter to my father thru the Social Security department , mind you I am here in TX . Way across the country my sister had placed an ad in the newspaper looking for him on her end . It took almost a year and a half but out of the blue right after my husband and I were married I recieved a late nite call and the man on the other end told me he thought he was my father . It was wonderful to finally be in touch with him again and he filled me in some on my past . We were able to talk and get to know each other several times a week . About a month after we had found each other I got a call from him and he wanted to know if I would like to get to know my sisters . I was soooooooooooooooooooo excited . YES , YES , YES , I yelled . The next day I got a call from Charlotte and she arranged a 3 - way call so I could talk to her and Amy . How cool was this , 3 people , one Posted by Boy , I have been bad with my posting . It has been a month to the day since my last post . I get on and go straight to my emails and from one of the emails I usually go off on a tangent and start surfing , staying up till the wee hours of the morning . I will than go to bed with not a post on here . I am involved in two different Handmade Christmas ornament swaps , and have been busy making these little rosy cheeked ladies . They are supposed to be the Little Russian nesting dolls . I thought they turned out pretty cute . Well , with election day 2 days behind me I am sitting here having a chance to reflect on the process . I am ashamed to admit that this was the first election I have voted in for about the last 4 Presidency 's . In the past I did not take the time to read up and know the candidates and because of that felt that I had no place in the voting process . In essence I would be going in and voting blindfolded , so I remained out of the voting process . This election was a different matter . I took the time to read up and know the candidates and I knew that this would be one for the history books . Important for the blacks and women alike . This time I went to the voting booth with trepidation and left with a feeling of pride in the process that we as American 's are blessed with . I love this system that allows candidates to compete vigorously and disagree vehemently and than asks US to decide . Yes , we as American citizens choose who we want in that Big White House on Pennsylvania avenue . No matter what our backgrounds , each of us have one vote . The CEO of the big corporation has one vote . The single mom with her humble little house has one vote . The cashier at McDonalds has one vote . The President of the bank has one vote , and THEY ALL COUNT ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! How wonderful is that ? And after it 's all over , our nation has an awe - inspiring tradition of good sportsmanship , where the losing candidate swallows hard and yields graciously . This kind of system is not to be taken for granted and needs to be protected . I am a very , very bad MORTAL ! ! ! I recieved these lovely gifts a week ago and never posted them on my blog . My angel was a very sweet lady from Norway named Marit . Thank you , Thank you , Thank you Marit ! ! I loved all my gifts and even though I did not want to share I broke the chocolate into pieces and shared with my husband and grandchildren . They said that that was the best chocolate ever . This swap has really been alot of fun and I hope that you and I can keep in touch . I will have a special friend now in Belgium , Australia , and the United Kingdom . I can 't resist a good garage sale and 2 fridays ago I came across a wonderful big sale and acquired several goodies including a Gone with the Wind type of costume for a little girl . It was only $ 3 and I couldn 't believe what a find it was . I was sure that my granddaughter Savannah would want to wear it for Halloween . Unfortunately the lure of that little " Twit " Hannah Montanna is to strong . The only good thing about her choice is she wants to go as a DEAD Hannah Montanna . I at least got her to try the dress on and do a little modeling for me . I think she is sooooooooo pretty in it . I have been busy trying to organize my material into bins where I can see everything that I have . I have 8 of the large plastic tubs full plus at least 5 cardboard boxes . I am trying to find a carpenter who can build me some open ended boxes to stack on top of each other on one wall . Man , I have so much material I could open a fabric store . I also finished a baby quilt with some jelly roll strips I bought for half price at the quilt shop . It wasn 't a full set but it came out pretty good I think . I plan to do a small inner border with the lime green and than do a white border and put some embroidered flowers on it . If any one has any other ideas please let me know . Have a great week to all of you . I spent the day whipping up this little beauty for my grand - daughter Savannah . It was in the Christmas print fabric and I had a hard time finding anything to go with it but I finally found a Debby Mum in a cranberry background with little bells on it and the ribbons are the same color of green . I plan to make the top over the weekend . I have set myself a goal of making at least 1 outfit a week for Savannah and myself . I have so much material and really do need to reduce some of it before I bring in any more , but its kind of like this outfit . I had everything I needed to make the skirt but had to go looking for something to match to make the top . The Wal - Mart by me has all their fabric 50 % off so I had to buy some of that , I mean " It was on Sale ! " I did have to wait till hubby went to work to bring it in . I got some pinks to make another of these skirts . This pattern is on the Grand Revival blog . I added the second picture to the blog so you could see how cute the two materials go togather . That is all for tonite . I will post the blouse and skirt togather I hope by Sunday . Have a great weekend . I found a pattern for a childs french market apron at , ( ihavetosay . typepad . com ) and yesterday I whipped up this little beauty for my granddaughter . I love the way these colors turned out . I have not had a chance to put it on her yet but will post a pic of her in it as soon as she gets home from school . I have had so many projects going on but I think I finally have them finished up . I got word from my partner in the " Fall Apron Swap " over at My Byrd House . She got the apron and she says she ' Loves " it . I am really glad . This was my first swap with them and I wanted my apron to be up to their standards . Glad that you like it Nicki . We went to the zoo after school this last week and here is a picture of the 2 grandkids on the giant turtle . I would like to be able to take them to a big zoo , this one in Amarillo is not very big . They enjoy it anyway . That is all for this post but will get some pics of the kids to add to my next post . Jill Miller is the winner of my Patriotic Quilt and I am proud to say that with her help we were able to raise $ 100 towards the Stephanie and Christian Niellson recovery fund . I say " WE " because without her I could not have raised that . Jill if you will contact me at ryork6 @ suddenlink . net I will give you instructions how to pay at paypal and than once I have a receipt that they have recieved it I will get your quilt in the mail . Once again , thanks again for that bid you made . Barbara Over a week ago a young couple was in a private plane flying home . Their plane crashed killing their pilot and the young man , Christian , recieved burns over 30 % of his body . His wife Stephanie is burned over 80 % of her body . She is a fellow blogger and many in the blogging community have come togather to all do auctions to help raise money for the families medical care and childrens daily care . The couple has 3 young children that are now living with Stephanies sister . I am proud to say that I too will be Auctioning something off . I have made a nice Turning Twelve Patriotic lap quilt . My auction will begin at 9am and run thru the following tuesday Sept 2 . The quilt is above . All bids should be in whole dollar amounts . I hope I will get lots of visitors to this site so I can have a good auction for them . Barbara Fancy Field Frock Silent Auction for NieNie this is a silent auction for some other blogger who with her husband was in a plane crash and is in critical condition in a burn unit . Her sister and some other Australian bloggers are encouraging other bloggers to create silent auctions of their own and send the money to be used for their medical bills . I will start tonite on something and hope to be able to auction it off by next week . My prayers go with this couple as they begin the fight of their life . Well I have been busy trying to get several UFO 's finished the last few days . I got online during the weekend and found another lovely blog doing a GIVEAWAY ! She has opened a new shop and is giving something away all week . One is a very lovely pattern for " Dancing Flowers . " I hope that anyone reading my blog will mosy her way and check it out . syverkkstan - helena . blogspot . comGrandkids started school today and were very excited to be back . The preemie is finally at home with her mama but she is not eating well so had to have a feeding tube put in her stomach . Doctors are saying that there is a good chance she will either have cerabel palsey or mental retardation . I am keeping her in my nightly prayers that our Heavenly Father will watch out for her and she will grow up without the disability but either was she will be thorougly loved by all of her family . I have not seen her since leaving the hospital but will try to post a picture as soon as I do . I need to get to work on a quilt for her now . This last weekend we were busy getting our bikes ready to ride and with PaPa 's help we finally got on the road . Here is a picture of my first family bike ride with the grandkids . PaPa is to lazy to go . The compulsion to knit has caught me in it 's grasp . It started with scarves , I think I have made a fuzzy one of those for everyone in my family . I am now working on a T - Shirt type sweater for myself . It 's going pretty good so far but I can 't believe I have forgotten so much . I used to knit alot when I was younger but I have really lost alot of what I knew . One of my goals is that before the end of the year I want to learn how to knit socks . I found this picture of the two kitties on the internet , I call it " Best Friends " . I love cats , I don 't know what I would do If I came home and there wasn 't a soft furry thing here to greet me . As soon as I come in the door she jumps in my lap , she is my Calico and here name is Miss Kitty . I also have Bonnie that is a grey tabby and she is my quilt inspector as you can see in my photo . She will lay on every quilt I make and if there is one in the hoop she sits in the hoop as she is doing in the picture . I will have to get a pictue of Miss Kitty so there is one of her on here also or she will feel left out . We have had off and on rain for the last three days and I think we will get another round tonite . It definately cools it off some after but makes it very humid before we get it . School will be starting soon and I am looking forward to having my days to myself again . I may leave the 12 - hr shifts to go to work at a Drs office . The work will be easier on my knees and a lot less stressful . Guess that is all for now . Hope everyone has a great day . I can 't believe it is over a month and a half since my last post . I thought I had best try to post a little something even though I know no one reads this but me . I 've had a pretty busy summer so far , what with working and watching the grandkids . I have been busy with my quilting also . My sister and her husband have their 6th anniversry this weekend and I have had signed quilt squares for 6 years now that I was supposed to put into a quilt . Well I was on vacation the last two weeks and have worked daily on this and finally have one row and two borders left to go . I think is turning out very nicely , I sure hope they like it . I want to add a little embroidery to it since I am late now anyway . I am going to add a picture here so I have it to show off . I am about to go to bed so will close for now . Bob and Char , if you happen to check my blog you will see that it is no longer quilt squares in a box . It is actually shapeing up to something very pretty . Wish you both a very happy Anniversery . Barbara Well the heat of summer is officially here and the kids are out of school , at least Jake is . Savannah has to take 6 wks of summer school in order to pass the 1st grade . I got a good picture of them on Jakes bike the other day . They left last friday to head to California with their dad . They called the other night and were all excited about seeing Knotts Berry Farm and wednsday they went to Disneyland . When we called last nite they were headed to Las Vegas and taking a slow trip home . I take care of them pretty much every day so when they are gone they are sure missed . I am also including a picture of what the place I work at sits next to . We can walk down the end of the halls and look out the windows and the lake is what we see . If I haven 't had to bad a day I will stop and walk around it . I think it is my favorite place in Amarillo . It has been so windy here , yesterday it was up to 60 mi an hr . My husband was the pallberer at a funeral yesterday . When we went to the gravesite after the service , there was one man on each of the poles holding up the tent covering the site . Hubby said that Morris was getting a good panhandle send off . After the funeral we went and saw Raiders of the Lost Ark . It was a very good movie . I am busy cleaning my sewing corner this afternoon and trying to pull out some fabric for a couple of dresses . I am so disgusted with my weight and the fact that most of my clothes are to small . Well I took the big leap and joined weight watchers today . My goal for this next week is to lose at least 3 lbs . Lets see how good I do . Babs Well yesterday Amarillo borke a record with a new temperature of 106 degrees . I was inside all day working but I did notice how hot it was in the building . I was completely shocked when I came out at 7pm and heard at that time it was 97 degrees . I am really worried about the type of summer we are going to have when already temps are getting up that high . We use a water cooler and it doesnt cool well if the humidity is high , thankfully yesterday there was no humidity . Good news on our premie . She still has the central line but no longer being fed thru it . They allow her mom to hold her once a day and feed her . She is now up to 4 lbs and things are looking good . She will probablly be in the NICU at least 3 - 4 more weeks but I am glad that she has made a turn on her progress . I have been buying up premie clothes but she may be too big for them when she comes out . I have been busy sewing and finished another baby quilt for a co - worker . This one is the split 9 - patch and I am really liking how these turn out . I used my favorite material which are the reproduction fabrics . The lady holding the quilt is the new grandma . I am now using all my scraps to make a chinese coin for my bed so it will be colorful this weekend . Take care to everyone and hope I post again sooner . Babs in Amarillo I just wanted to post a quick note about my latest grandchild . She was born a week ago wednsday and mom was about 6 1 / 2 months . She weighed in a 2 . 9 lbs and is now in the Pedi ICU . She is not doing very well . They were tube feeding her untill tuesday when they tried to up her feedings by an oz . She had blood in her diaper the next morning . They shut off the feedings and did some X - rays and discovered she had an infection in her stomach . She is now on TPN for feeding , that is a high concentrated IV feeding . Her veins kept blowing so last night they put in a central line IV that is going into one of the main arteries of the heart . She has become listless and we are waiting patiently for her to pull through this . In the last 3 days she has had 2 blood transfusions . I would like for anyone who reads my blog to please say prayers for her . She is so tiny and is fighting so hard to live . Barbara Well this week started out with a bang . Lots of wind and some rain on Mon , than tuesday rolls in with some more wind and rain . Finally on wed , the day of our big BBQ at work in comes the really nasty black clouds and lots of rain . Here are a few shots I took of the weather . These were some pretty nasty black clouds and out of these come tornados , I have posted a pic of one of those also . This was taken by one of the news storm chasers last year . When you get up close and personal with one of these it does get pretty scarey . Spent the day with the grandkids today , I sure do have fun with them . We took them to the local dollar store and gave them each $ 5 . Savannah bought a package of the tiny snickers bars , a red model wig that had a comb with a bow attached , a bunch of flowers to give her mom on mothers day and I can 't remember the other . I am proud of her that she remembered her mom with that money . Jakob got a circus clown on a Unicycle that he promptly stepped on and broke , a little parachute guy , ball to knock over bottles with , a puzzle that he spilled water on and a water gun . Unfortunately he did not think of his mama . I took them both to my friend who cuts my hair and she cut all of our hair . We all look quite nice in our new hairdos . Oh , I almost forgot . I gave the cowboy quilt to my friend at work who is really into cowboy stuff . Well one of the other therapists made her a little pair of crocheted cowboy boots . I think these are the cutest things I have ever seen and I had to post a pic on here . REMEMBER , I DID NOT MAKE THESE . SHE DID ! ! ! ! Well that is all for now . There may not be any posts in the next three days . I am working sat , sun and mon on my 12 - hr shifts . Hope all the mothers out there have a wonderful Mothers Day ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Barbara Well I spent the day vegging out . I ordered the movie PS I Love You on pay per view and sat and sewed and cried . This is such a good movie for anyone who hasn 't seen it . One of the neat things about sewing is that when you are doing it sometimes those around you want to get into the act . Who am I to deny my beautiful granddaughter a lesson at my favorite sewing machine . We used a bandanna and made a pillow for her great - grandma . I love my children and I never thought I would be able to love another child as much as I had loved them , but becoming a grandmother changed that . The love I have for these 2 children is so much different and so much more precious . It is a chance to try again at changing a part of their lives for the better . My grandson is a special needs child and I think his kisses and hugs are so much sweeter than others . He is a joy to be around as is my granddaughter . I have always had a problem with spelling and I think I spelled wednsday wrong , but oh well I tried . I was off yesterday but because I had a positive TB test at work I had to spend about 3 hrs at the place they use for chest X - rays . It turned out OK as I knew it would but it definately put a crimp in my sewing time . Today I have devoted to clearing off my sewing space and getting down to work . I have collected a bunch of green and pinks and I think I will put them togather into a turning 20 but I do it with 25 and it fits much better on our water bed . I am finishing up another baby quilt , this one is the split nine patch done in Repos . My cats are my official quilt testers and Bonnie is the worst , geeze , you 'd think she wanted to do the quilting herself . No matter what I am working on , if I lay it around she sits on it as soon as I do . I left my quilt hoop unattended and you see what happens . It 's funny cause I always have to warn the people who get my quilts that they need to wash them before using . I like to give a nice pretty quilt before it is washed . I came across a picture on the web of our famous bluebonnets and wanted to add them to a post so I will add it here . I wish I knew how to add it to the top under my title . I love bluebonnets . Guess that is all for now . Hope everyone has a great day ! Barbara One of the occupational therapists at work is pregnant and they had her baby shower today . She is a real Texas Cowgirl and I wanted her little boy to have a cowboy quilt when he gets her so I put this little cowboy quilt togather for him . I have been making so many quilts lately that I didnot have the money to have it quilted so I tied it and made him a nice warm comforter . I made sure that all the prints were cowboy related . I tried to include a close up so you could see all the cute materials I chose . I think this is one of the cutest I have made so far . I currently have two others I am working on and than I hope to be able to start some summer clothes for the grandkids and myself . Here is the other picture I took of the quilt . I guess I had best close out and go to bed . Hope everyone reading this has a great weekend . I don 't know about the rest of you , but I love to cook . I love the feel of dirty fingers when I am breading chicken , flour on my hands when I am making bread and best of licking the beaters or the spoon when making cookies or cakes . The one thing I wish I had was an apron . I remember my Grandma in the kitchen when she cooked and she always wore an apron . Now mind you , I don 't want an ugly apron . I want to look good in that kitchen and that is why I am going to tell you about this website I just found . Her name is Jan Carrell ( I am pretty sure I have spelled that wrong ) I she makes the prettiest aprons I have ever seen . She is having a Mothers Day Giveaway and she is giving away one of her beautiful aprons , along with a teapot and teacosy and some cookie cutters . Her is the link but you had best hurry over because she is going to draw the name tomorrow around noon . I really hope I have posted this in time to be in the name generator . If I don 't win , I am going to have to break down and buy one . The ones I liked were Taffy or Sweety but they are out of stock at the moment . Here is the website maplelane - jan . blogspot . com / 2008 / 04 / mothers - day - giveaway . htmlGood luck ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Well I have been busy in my little corner of the living room the last few weeks . Working the 12 - hr shifts that I do , I am blessed to have my 4 day stretches off and I have been busy this week . The weather has been pretty hot already so wednsday night hubby came home and togather we got the water cooler up and running . It was such a nice evening compared to the several warm days before . Well , wouldn 't you know it , I guess we jinxed it because yesterday came in cold and raining most of the day . Had to tape the cover back up over the front of the cooler to keep the cold wind out . It is warming up today so off the cover comes again . It has been seen that some days you can see all 4 seasons in one day and I believe it . I have been working on a patriotic turning 12 and got it all finished . Here are a few pictures of I haven 't posted on here since early Febuary and it is almost the end of March . Guess I had better start doing better . I have been busy at work but than I go home and sew , sew , and sew . I have finished 2 baby quilts , 1 soldier quilt and a string quilt . As soon as I find my digital camera I will put them up and post the pictures . I am also busy trying to sew up alot of my fabric into tops for the summer . The weather here in the panhandle has been cold , warm , cold and warm . It really doesn 't know what it wants to do . I for one am tired of the cold . The daffodils are up and the blooms are on all the trees so I hope theat winter is finally over . I will finish my post here and do another tomorrow or in a few days . Barbara in Amarillo I just went and visited Garden Goose 's blog and she has a Valentines give away going on . It is a very pretty pink vintage looking pillow . One of the requirements for me to be included in the give away is to post a like to her give away so here it is : gardengoose . blogspot . com / 2008 / 02 / victorian - valentineI want to win but I wish anyone who goes there from here good luck . Barbara , Amarillo / TX Today I woke up to a totally white wonderland and as quick as it came it was gone . We have had such wierd wheather here in the Texas panhandle this year . This makes our 3rd snowfall that has come and been gone in 24 hrs . The morning was 19 degrees with wind chill of - 1 degrees and by this afternoon we were at 59 and most of snow had melted off . I meant to take a picture of the snow this morning and this afternoon but forgot . I had to go in and work for 7 hrs today , sure was nice to be leaving early . Not sure if I have any blogging friends yet but if you are out there hope you have a great day . Well this is my first visit into the blog world and hopefully this will be the first of many posts . I am a 56 years young Nurse who loves to quilt and sew . I also like to do scrapbooking but at the moment everything is crammed into one room due to my daughter and her family living with me . I have been to several of the quilting blogs on this blogging site and decided I had to make me one . My blog is still in the process of being completed so please bear with me . I live in the Panhandle of Texas , and I love and collect everything I can find having to do with Sunbonnet Sue , hence my title . I will have alot of quilts to post once I figure out how to do this . to my little corner of the Texas panhandle where the wind always blows and the sun shines hot . I love to share my love of quilting , sewing and my wonderful grandchildren . I have recently taken up knitting so I may be posting some of my projects from there to .
|
It was a chance for Frank Kresen , my partner in the Coalition , Gil Asakawa , my partner in the Soldiers of Love , both which have done many Stewart songs over the years , and I to talk with Stewart about his career and how his music affected us . I never finished the Goldmine article , and reading it this week , I thought it appropriate to post it here . We tried to cover his career up to the mid - 1990s . As you will see , Stewart could be funny and opinionated , and , as you start to make the connections , you realize what an extraordinary career he had . Early musical memories : " Actually , Tex Ritter and the Sons of the Pioneers . Hank Williams . There were some Burl Ives records around , and the Weavers , who started the first folk - music scare . I tried to play a ukulele to no avail . " Music wasn 't an obsession until Elvis . I just drew all day long . When I was in high school , I was in a band , three guitars and drums , no bass , and we recorded a song called ' Rockin ' Anna . ' Some rich lady in Pasadena wrote it , wanted someone to record it , and she paid for the session . I put one of my songs on the back , under the name Johnny Stewart . I went from wanting to be Elvis to wanting to be Dave ( Guard ) . I never got to be Elvis , but I got to be Dave . " When Elvis went into the Army and rock ' n ' roll became Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell , it had just lost its zip , turning into crap . And the Trio came along , and folk music took the place of rock ' n ' roll . So I was signed to Arwin Records . That was Marty Melcher , Doris Day 's husband . Jan and Arnie were on that label before they were Jan and Dean . And I was signed as a rock ' n ' roller , but I had these folk songs . And they said , ' No , do a folk album . ' " So I wrote a letter to Dave Guard and said , ' Would you do the liner notes ? , ' and he wrote back and said , ' Yes , I would . Meet me at the Shrine Auditorium and bring me an acetate . So at that time , the record company thought , ' well , we have the publishing , ' - nothing has changed - and that it would be worth more money to sell my songs to the Kingston Trio . So when I saw Dave , I told him what was going on , and he said , ' Well , jeez , do you want to do that ? ' And I said , ' Well , they 're not going to put it out , so if you like them , then great . ' Then he heard the songs - ' Johnny Reb ' was one of them - and he said , ' It 's close , but it 's not it . ' " But it opened the door . So every time they came to town , I would come , and they would say , ' do you have any songs ? ' and I would play them songs . At age 18 , I met the Trio at a big concert at the Pomona County Fair , with Richie Valens and Johnny Cash , the Teddy Bears , the Champs , Jan & Arnie and the Trio . Everyone did one or two songs . " The Cumberland Three : " That was in 1960 . Frank Werber , the Trio 's manager , said that Roulette Records wanted a folk group , and could I put one together . I was already singing with John Montgomery . " His first gig with the Trio : " September 16 , 1961 , Santa Rosa fundraiser . Second was the Hollywood Bowl . We did the Boy 's Club to see if it would fly . Excited ? It was the biggest deal imaginable . I missed Dave not being there , because I wanted to sing with him . " John Phillips : " I was absolute best friends with the future wolfking of L . A . We met in New York just before I joined the Trio . He was in the Journeymen , and he came out to San Francisco when I was just joining the Trio . He had just met Michelle , and we were all palling around . " " Where Have All the Flowers Gone " : " We all heard Peter , Paul & Mary do it in a club in Boston . This is just before they had their first album out . And we said , ' Jeez , we gotta do that song . Recorded it three days later . The Trio did for folk music what Presley did for R & B : made it white and collegiate and palatable for the middle class and middle America . " Something Special : " I got creamed on ' Portland Town . ' ' Portland Town ' was a verse that John Phillips had heard and said it was a public domain song . It sounded very public domain . And then after the Trio and Joan Baez recorded it , I got sued for triple damages . There was a writer , who was in a mental hospital in Holland , and his attorney was saying that he wrote it , and he really did . I said , ' Look , I 'll just give up the royalties . ' He said , ' we 're going to sue for triple damages . ' I fought it in court and won because he never copyrighted it . So I deducted my legal fees and sent him the rest . It was brutal . " New Frontier : " That was our best one . I heard Kennedy 's inauguration speech and I bought it hook , line and sinker . We worked hard on that album , and it showed , too . " Recording with the Trio : " Maybe four days for an album . All done live . We had to sing it , we had to rehearse before we came in . " Signals Through the Glass : " When Buffy and I sang the songs , we had colored slides behind us , Wyeth prints . It was like a visual thing , an album based on Steinbeck and Wyeth . I wrote ' Daydream Believer ' at this time . Chip Douglas was up for the job when Dave left the Trio . So I got to know Chip , and he started to produce the Monkees . And he said , ' Do you have a song for the Monkees ? ' I played it for him , and he said , ' Yeah . ' I wrote ' July ' a little bit after that , but they both came in the same roll of the dice . " Pat Boone : " I remember going to the ' July , You 're a Woman ' session . Pat Boone was smoking a pipe in a sweater singing these songs . He had no clue what they were about . I said , ' This is not happening , this can 't be true . ' It 's amazing . " Robert Kennedy : " I met Bobby when he was attorney general , and I was in the Trio and I used to send him Trio albums and go see him when the Trio was in town . Then , when he ran for Senate in New York , he asked me if I would campaign with him , which I did . And there were a lot of people trying to get him to run for president . He didn 't want to do it because he thought it would splinter the Democratic Party . There were two camps , and I was in the camp that said , ' You gotta run . ' When he decided to run , Buffy and I got a call at the studio . Kennedy says , ' Will you come out on the campaign ? ' We played the Corn Palace in South Dakota the next night . I had a song where we could put any city in there . Then " Omaha Rainbow " and stuff . Some Dylan songs . Whatever would get them going . " California Bloodlines : " It felt good to be writing my own songs and going to Nashville for the first time . Nobody was going there . Nik Venet had the idea to go to Nashville . I 'd never played with musicians of that caliber . I had no idea what it was going to be . It could have gone anywhere . Venet heard that that was the place to go . " Midwest images in his songs : " There 's something about the Midwest . I was playing at the Troubadour , the legendary club in Los Angeles , for Doug Weston , the legendary club owner . After my first night there with Buffy , he took me aside and said . " John , you 've really captured the Midwest . Boring and flat . " The Pirates of Stone County Road " : " It was taken from some Wyeth print with a front porch . I was really into Wyeth and ' Spoon River Anthology ' and ' Our Town . ' Dave and I will be on the road , and we 'll pass a house and say , ' there 's a ' Pirates of Stone County Road ' house . Porch , swings , rocking chairs . Looks so peaceful . " " Mother Country " : " One part was about the article in the Chronicle , the other about E . A . Stuart . He owned Carnation Farms , and my dad worked for him . My dad was there the day he drove it . The horse 's name was really Melancthon . Sweetheart on Parade was a five - gaited saddle horse that my dad also trained . " The character Ernesto Juarez in the song " Omaha Rainbow " : " Standing in the press box in San Francisco downtown in a motorcade , the streets are packed with people . Buffy and I are sitting there , just wasted . Little Hispanic kid about ten or eleven years old jumped up on his friend 's shoulders and put his head on our window and said , ' remember my name , Ernesto Juarez , ' like right out of Zapata . " Willard : " After Bloodlines , I did an album with Chip Douglas . It was just an abomination . Capitol refused to put it out , which I was grateful for . They sent me to Nashville with the same guys . Then Peter Asher came along - he had done " Sweet Baby James " - and said he wanted to produce me . And Capitol said , ' How would you like to do this again , and I said , ' Yeah . ' Two other albums in there , sitting in the can where they belong . " " Oldest Living Son " : " That was about driving through Nebraska with Kennedy . We passed these two kids , one about sixteen , one about ten , obviously brothers , and that was the story that emerged - that he 's stuck here . I wrote " Clack , Clack " on the back of the San Joaquin Daylight , standing right next to Kennedy . I wrote the chorus . He said , ' I don 't know how you do that . ' So I had these songs , and when you do an album , you go with what songs you have . " Lonesome Picker Rides Again and Sunstorm : " I hate those albums . They 're not very good . Sorry . It was a very unhappy time in my life . Maybe that has a lot to do with it . Warner Brothers were nice , but they weren 't good times . " " Halley 's Comet " : " I asked my dad if he had any more stories , and he told me the story of Halley 's Comet . I started doing it like ' Mother Country , ' but it just didn 't have the same essence as that Kentucky twang of his . I went over to the house , recorded him with a two - track and went back in , edited it down and played it to him . Took a long time . " Cannons in the Rain : " Fred Carter gets credit for bringing all the people back together again . He was the guy who played with Simon and Garfunkel , the one who played the opening to ' The Boxer , ' and he used what he learned from Paul Simon . He 'd come back with stories about what they were doing . " " Durango " : " There 's a movie called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that I had a part in . I had gone to see the producer four times , and I was ready to go . I talked with Kristofferson , and I was getting ready to leave . I got a call from Gordon Carroll , the producer , and he said , ' I got bad news . We 're giving the part to Dylan . ' On signing with RSO Records : " I was trying to get a deal , and Al Coury wasn 't convinced he wanted to sign me . So at the Palomino one night , I asked people to write Al Coury . He got two hundred letters . He says , ' John , what 's going on here ? I said , ' Well , sign me . ' " The Last Hurrah " : " There was a lot of pressure to get a top ten record . It was the last hurrah because at that time the thought of starting my own label had not been considered . I had run out of labels and knew if I didn 't come up with something , I was off the label . " " Gold " : " I was under orders . Either get a hit or get off the label . Al said it couldn 't be a hit because it 's about that . You can 't write a song about the music business . It 's too inside . " Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks : " He was a fan of the Trio . Stevie said that Lindsey forced her to listen to Trio albums when they were first singing together . She used to come to this place called Chuck 's Cellar in Los Altos . She pretended she wasn 't interested . " Bombs Away , Dream Babies : " The pressure was on to come up with another hit . I thought it was a funny album , part of the wolfking of L . A . myth : ' Well , he got a hit , is he going to go Hollywood ? You bet , let me push this in your face . ' Nobody got the joke . Sold 100 , 000 copies after Dream Babies did 500 , 000 . Nothing personal . Just business . " Blondes : " A new low - I spent three years looking for labels . I liked the American version of that one a lot . One of my favorites . The girl on the cover was my next - door neighbor . I like them all from Blondes on . " For someone like me , who had seen Stewart 's powerful acoustic act , it was kind of ludicrous . He had a band , played screaming electric lead guitar , and though he sounded fine , he looked kinda ridiculous . His hair , which he always wore high and wavy , looked blown dry like any other ' 70s rock star . Despite the alien - sounding , synthesized production , Bombs Away , Dream Babies had some fine songs , but most loyal Stewart fans would consider this his worst period . The follow - up Dream Babies Go Hollywood , was his last major - label album , and there were no records for three years . I bought his 1982 Blondes , but there wasn 't much Stewart news . In 1985 , upon hearing he was to perform in Boulder , I arranged for a phone interview before the show for a column I was writing for Audience , a local entertainment weekly . I was determined , during our conversation , to ask Stewart to have dinner with me while he was here . ( By this time I had interviewed hundreds of musicians , and never did I have as a purpose to buy dinner except this time . About halfway through our phoner , Stewart asked , " Why don 't we have dinner while I 'm in town ? " To say I was humbly delighted would be an extreme understatement . Dinner turned out to be sandwiches that we ate sitting on the grass behind Chautauqua Auditorium before the show , but we had a fine time , and Stewart was exceedingly gracious even as I peppered him with the questions I had wanted to ask him for 15 years . As a poster child for the term " cult artist , " Stewart was used to this kind of fan behavior . There were enclaves of Stewart followers in England , fan publications from people as smitten as me . It happened to him everywhere , and it is the lot of many immensely talented musicians who don 't become household names . I learned early on that , for most performers , doing interviews was just a weary part of the job . Stewart actually conversed , even asked me what was going on in my life . We had continuing conversations about " the Boomers , " a topic in which he was always immensely interested . Those talks would ultimately lead me in the direction of The Toy Book , for which he got a credit . One time in the 90s he waxed excitedly about AOR radio , the format known at the time as " adult rock , " and how he could find a place there . He came through Denver often in the next 15 years . When the Fairmont Hotel opened its Denver branch in the 1980s , it included a large performing space which routed acts to each of its outlets for weeklong stays . The Fairmont folks treated the rock press like kings , plying us with steak dinners , bottles of wine and copious drinks , but the Fairmont room never really caught on . More than once , the rockcritters were the only audience members . Why not ? Roger McGuinn came through , and so did the Johnny Otis Band , with Shuggie playing guitar . The week Stewart was there , he enlisted me to run a video camera one night to see how he looked onstage . I was thrilled . I didn 't like the live shows as much beginning in the ' 80s . He traded in the acoustic for a hollow - body electric and the band for a synthesized sound . When I complained to him about it , he looked at me , exasperated but gracious , and carefully explained the economics of traveling with a band and the choices he had to make to make a living . At this time he began his long relationship with Dave Batti , his manager / bassist best friend . Batti , as friendly a guy as you 'll meet in the music business , was the perfect Stewart foil , able to head off in any direction Stewart would go . Stewart would look at him sometimes onstage and shrug , ' Got any ideas , Dave ? ' They always seemed to be having a good time together . One time they played a glorious set at Lannie Garrett 's little club over on East 17th Street . They played the Boulder Theatre and Stewart did a pilot as host of a television variety show there . He returned to Chautauqua several times . Another time I had gotten an assignment from Goldmine , an oldies collector 's magazine , to do a piece on Stewart . He acquiesced to an afternoon interview before the show that night . Frank Kresen was in town from Kansas City , and he had written up a page of questions . Gil was along , and I had even more questions . ( Obsessive that I am , these lists are still in my files . ) At one point , Stewart asked me if I was going to inquire about every song he 'd written or were we going to get the interview done this afternoon ? " This could take three years , " he said . It is one of my favorite memories . We laughed a lot that afternoon . I never completed the Goldmine story . The news of the death of John Stewart came Saturday with the numbing swiftness of the Internet : a couple of emails with RIP John Stewart in the title . Shocked , I posted an attempt at a obituary Sunday morning . Reading it , it didn 't seem enough . Stewart 's music has been a constant back to my childhood , and somehow writing about how much his music meant to me is the only way I can think coherently about his passing . I first became aware of Stewart when I saw him perform on a television program in 1961 as a member of the Cumberland Three . I had become a Kingston Trio fan at age 13 , when a classmate taught me Trio songs and harmonies a cappella from the albums . ( We peformed the Trio 's " New York Gals " at a church dinner . ) I don 't think I made the connection that it was him I had seen on television until later that year when he replaced Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio . ( There is a nice two - page summary of Stewart 's early rock days in Joe Smith 's fascinating book , On the Record . ) This was a tough assignment . The Trio was vastly popular , and many felt that Guard , the mouthpiece of the group 's live shows , was the heart of the group . Stewart talked many years later about his feelings of inadequacy replacing him and his belief that Guard was the Trio 's soul . One night , at Chautauqua in the 1980s , he played Guard 's " Fast Freight " after talking about that very thing onstage , and he mentions it in a song called " Always Young . " He penned " New Frontier " after hearing the inauguration address of John F . Kennedy , and he once told me that the album named for the song was the best Trio album produced during his tenure . I agreed . I was a Kennedy kid . In 1960 I gave a speech for him to our school assembly - my Lutheran classroom voted 14 - 2 for Nixon - so the song seriously resonated with me . The album also included the hit " Greenback Dollar . " The album still rings absolutely true 39 years after its release , and I have listened to it hundreds of times . I wore out three vinyl copies , more than any other title beside the Byrds ' Mr . Tambourine Man . Stewart included songs that were set in his home state . The title track explained that it was his lineage that determined his basic beliefs . But more important to this Midwesterner , other songs referenced Plains states like Nebraska and Missouri . Stewart told me years later that he kept a notebook as they crossed the country . Using that , he said he locked himself up that fall with a bunch of pot and wrote most of the songs on Bloodlines and some others that he planned for an album reflecting on the Kennedys . ( This finally came to fruition with The Last Campaign . ) But I didn 't need to know that . The songs spoke for themselves . " The Pirates of Stone County Road , " for instance , set in some small Midwestern town , is a two - verse memory of kids playing buccaneers with the back porch as their frigate . The verses end with the voice of an old woman calling them to supper , while the song 's gentle motion leads to a powerful crescendo as the chorus kicks in : " And we 'd sail , pulling for China , the pirates of Stone County Road weathered and blown , and we 'd sail , ever in glory , ' til hungry and tired , the pirates of Stone County Road were turning for home . " I 'm still humbled by the simple complexity of this lyric and its gentle , powerful melody . I can 't remember the circumstances , but Frank and I sang this at a teacher 's convention in Independence , Mo . , and you could have heard a pin drop . It 's that powerful . I first heard " July , You 're a Woman " on a single by Pat Boone . The Boone version was fine , but I fell much harder for Stewart 's earthier take on Bloodlines . It would remain a favorite over the years . " Mother Country " was actually two lyrics mashed together , one about the Johnstown Flood , the other about an old California horseman who , just before he died , rode his horse , the Old Campaigner , stone blind in front of a large crowd . I loved the line about forgetting to clip the newspaper , and the lyrics had a strange symmetry ; the blending of these two subjects was , to me , as brilliant as the compelling way he sang / talked the lyrics . " Omaha Rainbow " was another favorite . Shit , I 've driven along the curve of I - 80 as turns south and west out of Omaha with a thunderstorm passing through . I knew what he was writing about . I bought the record whilst locked in mortal combat with my commitment to Christianity and the Lutheran Church - Mo . Synod . I had left home my junior year in high school to begin study for the ministry . The deeper I waded into church doctrine , the more questions I had about my dedication . The tension first broke in 1969 , when I decided to forego Concordia Seminary in St . Louis that fall and instead entered the teaching program . The protagonist watches the flocks flying south along one of the great Midwest flyways and hears " that song they 're singing to me : go into the world while you 're young . " In the second verse he is reminded of the preacher 's words that echo from the old church steeple , " stay here with the decent people , settle down and marry while you 're young . " Going out into the world and leaving the relative security of the church was one of the most difficult decisions I ever made , and it was good to have Stewart 's comforting words as I finally made the transition . My brother Vincent and I saw Stewart for the first time in December 1970 at the old Vanguard coffee house on Main Street north of the Plaza . He had Chris Darrow in his three - piece band , and the opening act was the comedian Pat Paulson . The show included all my favorite songs , some new ones I hadn 't heard , and it just blew me away . At one point , he played " Daydream Believer " and mentioned that it was the last hit for the Monkees . " Maybe I should write one for Nixon and Agnew , " he quipped . We went home and tried to work out " California Bloodlines , " a song we still play when we get together . It was an exciting time . I caught a Byrds / Burrito Brothers bill at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in September of 1970 , Van Morrison for the first time at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit the first week in December , during my student - teaching stint , and Stewart in KC over Christmas break . My interest in music was starting to head into an even more obsessive phase , and Stewart became part of the growing awareness . Frank came to Ft . Wayne to make up a couple of classes in the fall of 1968 , and we became fast friends through our mutual status as music - trivia buffs . We got drunk the night we met and discovered that we both thought that Bob Seger 's " Ramblin ' Gamblin ' Man " was a perfect single , and that the moment at the end of the Zombie 's " Tell Her No , " when the song stops for a breath , is the greatest moment in rock music . Every weekend that semester we got together and played music for each other and talked shit about it . After Frank returned to Chicago , we kept in touch , writing each other long letters about our growing music tastes , which we found wonderfully compatible , and you can see today in those letters how it was becoming part of our ethos . We were beginning to speak a special language that was only understood by a small circle of friends . But we were finding a growing community around the country who , like us , read Rolling Stone and Creem . We dubbed ourselves a karass , loosely interpreting a piece of Kurt Vonnegut 's hilarious religion in the novel Cat 's Cradle . In one of those letters , written April 1970 , I list some albums I had just bought , a Lightnin ' Hopkins Vanguard collection , Rick Nelson 's In Concert , John B . Sebastian , Brewer and Shipley 's Weeds , I write for the first time about California Bloodlines : " The old Kingston Trio and Cumberland Three man is really into country , and this album is superb in all respects . He gets all the Nashville boys together for some pickin ' and singin ' , like Charlie McCoy , Kenneth Buttrey , Hargus Robbins . Includes " July , You 're a Woman , " his classic ( recorded on a single by Pat Boone , which I liked until I heard Stewart 's on The New Spirit of Capitol collection . " In August 1971 , I moved to Chicago for a teaching position as a seventh - and eighth - grade teacher at St . John 's Lutheran Church , a small congregation in the far - western suburb of Roselle . Frank and I moved into a rambling old farmhouse on Lake Street , took a lot of acid , and began playing music together . Stewart became an increasingly major influence on us as we took things a step further and tried to make it professionally as the Coalition . ( It didn 't seem that delusional at the time ! ) It 's safe to say that I tried my damndest to BE John Stewart during this period , which lasted at least through Crayon Angel , a band I formed with Vincent and two friends from college . We found much to love in Stewart 's seventies albums , all created from the same cloth as California Bloodlines . The songs on Sunstorm were mostly set on the Great Plains , and songs like " Cheyenne , " " Wheatfield Lady , " " Kansas Rain " and " You Can 't Go Back to Kansas " spoke deeply to my Midwestern sensibilities . " All American Girl , " from Willard , spoofed accurately the " parochial girls " I dated through college . We could find something to appreciate in almost all his songs . I loved it , for instance , when " All the Brave Horses , " from the Lonesome Picker album , a song which Frank and I always felt had political overtones , was later wrapped into the very political " The Last Campaign Trilogy " on the Phoenix Concerts live set . Frank and I caught Stewart at a short - lived , fancy Chicago folk club called Smile in April 1972 . We sat close enough to watch what fret he put his capo on for certain songs , and even knicked that cool lick for " California Bloodlines , " the first time I learned a song by watching the performer himself play it . There were few people there , and he complied with my request for " The Pirates of Stone County Road . " But when I hollered out for " Baby , You 've Been on My Mind , " the Dylan song I remembered from the live Kingston Trio record , he scowled over at me and said gruffly , " I don 't do covers . " I didn 't think his response was as funny at the time as I do now . Born into a California horse family in 1939 , Stewart , after playing in rock bands during the 1950s , gravitated into the folk scene . I first noticed him on a television variety program in 1961 as a member of the Cumberland Three , a Kingston Trio knock - off . He replaced Dave Guard in the Trio in 1961 and stayed until the original group broke up in 1966 . His 1967 debut , California Bloodlines , laid the foundation for a career that lasted until his death . I never saw a Stewart show that didn 't include some favorites , often from Bloodlines , and some new material he was working on . Working from the enthusiasm of the Kennedy years - with the Trio , he wrote " New Frontier " for John F . Kennedy , and the songs he composed while traveling with the 1968 Robert Kennedy presidential campaign were a continuing thread through his later work - Stewart wrote with an unabashed love of humanity and country . He sang with good humor and compassion in a deep , resonant voice that seemed older than its years . His only chart hit was the strangely ironic " Gold , " recorded for RSO - a label that marketed him alongside the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever . Many of his songs were recorded by others , the most famous being the Monkees ' 1967 No . 1 " Daydream Believer . " Stewart would joke onstage that he wrote the LAST hit for the Monkees and the Lovin ' Spoonful , which recorded his " Never Goin ' Back " before disbanding . Stewart 's later albums , on small labels and for his own Homecoming imprint , continued in the same vein , and he stayed busy throughout his life making albums and playing live . Though his optimism was shaken and his images turned darker and more impressionistic over the decades , Stewart remained a durable and formidable songwriter and performer . Nobody , save perhaps Bob Dylan , was more influential to me in terms of songwriting or performance . Billie , who has been along for much of the Stewart saga , called the set " pensive " as we drove home . I wrote down " slow " and " deliberate " in my notes . The topical humor and rapier wit were absent . There was one quick reference to our president , but no other political barbs , generally a staple of his live performances and some of his songs . It wasn 't until about three songs from the end that he asked our indulgence in allowing him to sit down . In all the nights I have seen him perform , this was the first time I ever saw him sit down . He said his back had gone out a couple nights before , and it was acting up again . Which explained his lack of physical movement and perhaps his lack of political eloquence - he was in obvious pain . His voice , which was fairly ragged the last time we saw him in up in Loveland about three years ago , was in and out . I have always thought that Stewart possessed an old man 's voice , even when he was in his twenties . But the old man 's version is less in the front , more whisper than voice . Still very effective . I was glad to see him playing an acoustic guitar again - I used to chide him in the eighties about using a hollow body and drum machines instead of that pure acoustic sound . Stewart is still an exquisite guitar player . Though I have performed many of his songs , I am continually amazed at how I can use the same chords but never come close to his unique finger - picking style . The arrangements tonight were almost always different , and he more often than not rephrased or otherwise changed the melodies to familiar songs . When you have songs that date back almost half a century old , it 's hard not to do the oldies . Stewart , who still writes songs and releases albums of new material , did more than his share this time , leading us through a body of work that remains unique to itself . And given his pain , I kept wondering how many times I would see him play live again . 2 ) " Hung on the Heart " He only did two verses of a song that has mesmerized the Soldiers of Love and has always been one of my favorites . You could tell he didn 't do it often . Perhaps tonight it was chosen because of the Colorado reference . 3 ) " Denver Again " Told a great story about Ebbet 's Field , said he played there a lot . One night he played this song , nobody clapped , and he said he played it a couple months ago for the first time since then . There 's a reason it wasn 't sung for thirty years . 7 ) " July You 're a Woman " He looked at Dave . " Got any ideas ? " Completely deadpan . And did this song with a funny intro about how Elvis sang this song backstage every night before going onstage - and how he never recorded it , either , which is par for Stewart 's career , I guess . The song , from California Bloodlines , is a major touchstone of his career . I have a 45 of Pat Boone singing this song that I like . 9 ) " Fire in the Wind " First of many very stark arrangements of songs I was used to hearing with a band . He laughed one time when I told him that he seemed to be moving into an " elements " phase in his songwriting , citing this one , " Seven Times the Wind , " " Lost Her in the Sun , " " Fire in the Wind , " " Chasin ' Down the Rain , " " Spirit in the Light , " " On You Like the Wind , " " Promise the Wind " and " Midnight Wind . " He said I was thinking too much . 15 ) " Runaway Train " His rhythm on this and a few others consisted of him strumming down with his index finger . Nice trick with the microphone . This one was recorded by Rosanne Cash , who also did Stewart 's haunting " Eye of the Tiger . " 19 ) " Cannons in the Rain " He asked for requests . A guy in the row ahead was saying " Missouri Birds , " but not loud enough . He caught " Cannons in the Rain " and did a really slow take on it . Whew . 20 ) " Dreamers on the Rise " Dave suggested this one . He asked if anybody knew that song , heard scattered yeahs , one of them mine . " Do you want to hear it ? " Dave sang quiet harmonies , and John got the numbers in the third verse out of kilter . This is the Soldiers of Love 's favorite Stewart song , and he always does it a bit different onstage . 21 ) " Mazatlan " Here is the sleeper . Deep Tex - Mex sound . From Wingless Angels . Does Stewart do this one often , I wonder ? He should .
|
It was a chance for Frank Kresen , my partner in the Coalition , Gil Asakawa , my partner in the Soldiers of Love , both which have done many Stewart songs over the years , and I to talk with Stewart about his career and how his music affected us . I never finished the Goldmine article , and reading it this week , I thought it appropriate to post it here . We tried to cover his career up to the mid - 1990s . As you will see , Stewart could be funny and opinionated , and , as you start to make the connections , you realize what an extraordinary career he had . Early musical memories : " Actually , Tex Ritter and the Sons of the Pioneers . Hank Williams . There were some Burl Ives records around , and the Weavers , who started the first folk - music scare . I tried to play a ukulele to no avail . " Music wasn 't an obsession until Elvis . I just drew all day long . When I was in high school , I was in a band , three guitars and drums , no bass , and we recorded a song called ' Rockin ' Anna . ' Some rich lady in Pasadena wrote it , wanted someone to record it , and she paid for the session . I put one of my songs on the back , under the name Johnny Stewart . I went from wanting to be Elvis to wanting to be Dave ( Guard ) . I never got to be Elvis , but I got to be Dave . " When Elvis went into the Army and rock ' n ' roll became Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell , it had just lost its zip , turning into crap . And the Trio came along , and folk music took the place of rock ' n ' roll . So I was signed to Arwin Records . That was Marty Melcher , Doris Day 's husband . Jan and Arnie were on that label before they were Jan and Dean . And I was signed as a rock ' n ' roller , but I had these folk songs . And they said , ' No , do a folk album . ' " So I wrote a letter to Dave Guard and said , ' Would you do the liner notes ? , ' and he wrote back and said , ' Yes , I would . Meet me at the Shrine Auditorium and bring me an acetate . So at that time , the record company thought , ' well , we have the publishing , ' - nothing has changed - and that it would be worth more money to sell my songs to the Kingston Trio . So when I saw Dave , I told him what was going on , and he said , ' Well , jeez , do you want to do that ? ' And I said , ' Well , they 're not going to put it out , so if you like them , then great . ' Then he heard the songs - ' Johnny Reb ' was one of them - and he said , ' It 's close , but it 's not it . ' " But it opened the door . So every time they came to town , I would come , and they would say , ' do you have any songs ? ' and I would play them songs . At age 18 , I met the Trio at a big concert at the Pomona County Fair , with Richie Valens and Johnny Cash , the Teddy Bears , the Champs , Jan & Arnie and the Trio . Everyone did one or two songs . " The Cumberland Three : " That was in 1960 . Frank Werber , the Trio 's manager , said that Roulette Records wanted a folk group , and could I put one together . I was already singing with John Montgomery . " His first gig with the Trio : " September 16 , 1961 , Santa Rosa fundraiser . Second was the Hollywood Bowl . We did the Boy 's Club to see if it would fly . Excited ? It was the biggest deal imaginable . I missed Dave not being there , because I wanted to sing with him . " John Phillips : " I was absolute best friends with the future wolfking of L . A . We met in New York just before I joined the Trio . He was in the Journeymen , and he came out to San Francisco when I was just joining the Trio . He had just met Michelle , and we were all palling around . " " Where Have All the Flowers Gone " : " We all heard Peter , Paul & Mary do it in a club in Boston . This is just before they had their first album out . And we said , ' Jeez , we gotta do that song . Recorded it three days later . The Trio did for folk music what Presley did for R & B : made it white and collegiate and palatable for the middle class and middle America . " Something Special : " I got creamed on ' Portland Town . ' ' Portland Town ' was a verse that John Phillips had heard and said it was a public domain song . It sounded very public domain . And then after the Trio and Joan Baez recorded it , I got sued for triple damages . There was a writer , who was in a mental hospital in Holland , and his attorney was saying that he wrote it , and he really did . I said , ' Look , I 'll just give up the royalties . ' He said , ' we 're going to sue for triple damages . ' I fought it in court and won because he never copyrighted it . So I deducted my legal fees and sent him the rest . It was brutal . " New Frontier : " That was our best one . I heard Kennedy 's inauguration speech and I bought it hook , line and sinker . We worked hard on that album , and it showed , too . " Recording with the Trio : " Maybe four days for an album . All done live . We had to sing it , we had to rehearse before we came in . " Signals Through the Glass : " When Buffy and I sang the songs , we had colored slides behind us , Wyeth prints . It was like a visual thing , an album based on Steinbeck and Wyeth . I wrote ' Daydream Believer ' at this time . Chip Douglas was up for the job when Dave left the Trio . So I got to know Chip , and he started to produce the Monkees . And he said , ' Do you have a song for the Monkees ? ' I played it for him , and he said , ' Yeah . ' I wrote ' July ' a little bit after that , but they both came in the same roll of the dice . " Pat Boone : " I remember going to the ' July , You 're a Woman ' session . Pat Boone was smoking a pipe in a sweater singing these songs . He had no clue what they were about . I said , ' This is not happening , this can 't be true . ' It 's amazing . " Robert Kennedy : " I met Bobby when he was attorney general , and I was in the Trio and I used to send him Trio albums and go see him when the Trio was in town . Then , when he ran for Senate in New York , he asked me if I would campaign with him , which I did . And there were a lot of people trying to get him to run for president . He didn 't want to do it because he thought it would splinter the Democratic Party . There were two camps , and I was in the camp that said , ' You gotta run . ' When he decided to run , Buffy and I got a call at the studio . Kennedy says , ' Will you come out on the campaign ? ' We played the Corn Palace in South Dakota the next night . I had a song where we could put any city in there . Then " Omaha Rainbow " and stuff . Some Dylan songs . Whatever would get them going . " California Bloodlines : " It felt good to be writing my own songs and going to Nashville for the first time . Nobody was going there . Nik Venet had the idea to go to Nashville . I 'd never played with musicians of that caliber . I had no idea what it was going to be . It could have gone anywhere . Venet heard that that was the place to go . " Midwest images in his songs : " There 's something about the Midwest . I was playing at the Troubadour , the legendary club in Los Angeles , for Doug Weston , the legendary club owner . After my first night there with Buffy , he took me aside and said . " John , you 've really captured the Midwest . Boring and flat . " The Pirates of Stone County Road " : " It was taken from some Wyeth print with a front porch . I was really into Wyeth and ' Spoon River Anthology ' and ' Our Town . ' Dave and I will be on the road , and we 'll pass a house and say , ' there 's a ' Pirates of Stone County Road ' house . Porch , swings , rocking chairs . Looks so peaceful . " " Mother Country " : " One part was about the article in the Chronicle , the other about E . A . Stuart . He owned Carnation Farms , and my dad worked for him . My dad was there the day he drove it . The horse 's name was really Melancthon . Sweetheart on Parade was a five - gaited saddle horse that my dad also trained . " The character Ernesto Juarez in the song " Omaha Rainbow " : " Standing in the press box in San Francisco downtown in a motorcade , the streets are packed with people . Buffy and I are sitting there , just wasted . Little Hispanic kid about ten or eleven years old jumped up on his friend 's shoulders and put his head on our window and said , ' remember my name , Ernesto Juarez , ' like right out of Zapata . " Willard : " After Bloodlines , I did an album with Chip Douglas . It was just an abomination . Capitol refused to put it out , which I was grateful for . They sent me to Nashville with the same guys . Then Peter Asher came along - he had done " Sweet Baby James " - and said he wanted to produce me . And Capitol said , ' How would you like to do this again , and I said , ' Yeah . ' Two other albums in there , sitting in the can where they belong . " " Oldest Living Son " : " That was about driving through Nebraska with Kennedy . We passed these two kids , one about sixteen , one about ten , obviously brothers , and that was the story that emerged - that he 's stuck here . I wrote " Clack , Clack " on the back of the San Joaquin Daylight , standing right next to Kennedy . I wrote the chorus . He said , ' I don 't know how you do that . ' So I had these songs , and when you do an album , you go with what songs you have . " Lonesome Picker Rides Again and Sunstorm : " I hate those albums . They 're not very good . Sorry . It was a very unhappy time in my life . Maybe that has a lot to do with it . Warner Brothers were nice , but they weren 't good times . " " Halley 's Comet " : " I asked my dad if he had any more stories , and he told me the story of Halley 's Comet . I started doing it like ' Mother Country , ' but it just didn 't have the same essence as that Kentucky twang of his . I went over to the house , recorded him with a two - track and went back in , edited it down and played it to him . Took a long time . " Cannons in the Rain : " Fred Carter gets credit for bringing all the people back together again . He was the guy who played with Simon and Garfunkel , the one who played the opening to ' The Boxer , ' and he used what he learned from Paul Simon . He 'd come back with stories about what they were doing . " " Durango " : " There 's a movie called Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that I had a part in . I had gone to see the producer four times , and I was ready to go . I talked with Kristofferson , and I was getting ready to leave . I got a call from Gordon Carroll , the producer , and he said , ' I got bad news . We 're giving the part to Dylan . ' On signing with RSO Records : " I was trying to get a deal , and Al Coury wasn 't convinced he wanted to sign me . So at the Palomino one night , I asked people to write Al Coury . He got two hundred letters . He says , ' John , what 's going on here ? I said , ' Well , sign me . ' " The Last Hurrah " : " There was a lot of pressure to get a top ten record . It was the last hurrah because at that time the thought of starting my own label had not been considered . I had run out of labels and knew if I didn 't come up with something , I was off the label . " " Gold " : " I was under orders . Either get a hit or get off the label . Al said it couldn 't be a hit because it 's about that . You can 't write a song about the music business . It 's too inside . " Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks : " He was a fan of the Trio . Stevie said that Lindsey forced her to listen to Trio albums when they were first singing together . She used to come to this place called Chuck 's Cellar in Los Altos . She pretended she wasn 't interested . " Bombs Away , Dream Babies : " The pressure was on to come up with another hit . I thought it was a funny album , part of the wolfking of L . A . myth : ' Well , he got a hit , is he going to go Hollywood ? You bet , let me push this in your face . ' Nobody got the joke . Sold 100 , 000 copies after Dream Babies did 500 , 000 . Nothing personal . Just business . " Blondes : " A new low - I spent three years looking for labels . I liked the American version of that one a lot . One of my favorites . The girl on the cover was my next - door neighbor . I like them all from Blondes on . " For someone like me , who had seen Stewart 's powerful acoustic act , it was kind of ludicrous . He had a band , played screaming electric lead guitar , and though he sounded fine , he looked kinda ridiculous . His hair , which he always wore high and wavy , looked blown dry like any other ' 70s rock star . Despite the alien - sounding , synthesized production , Bombs Away , Dream Babies had some fine songs , but most loyal Stewart fans would consider this his worst period . The follow - up Dream Babies Go Hollywood , was his last major - label album , and there were no records for three years . I bought his 1982 Blondes , but there wasn 't much Stewart news . In 1985 , upon hearing he was to perform in Boulder , I arranged for a phone interview before the show for a column I was writing for Audience , a local entertainment weekly . I was determined , during our conversation , to ask Stewart to have dinner with me while he was here . ( By this time I had interviewed hundreds of musicians , and never did I have as a purpose to buy dinner except this time . About halfway through our phoner , Stewart asked , " Why don 't we have dinner while I 'm in town ? " To say I was humbly delighted would be an extreme understatement . Dinner turned out to be sandwiches that we ate sitting on the grass behind Chautauqua Auditorium before the show , but we had a fine time , and Stewart was exceedingly gracious even as I peppered him with the questions I had wanted to ask him for 15 years . As a poster child for the term " cult artist , " Stewart was used to this kind of fan behavior . There were enclaves of Stewart followers in England , fan publications from people as smitten as me . It happened to him everywhere , and it is the lot of many immensely talented musicians who don 't become household names . I learned early on that , for most performers , doing interviews was just a weary part of the job . Stewart actually conversed , even asked me what was going on in my life . We had continuing conversations about " the Boomers , " a topic in which he was always immensely interested . Those talks would ultimately lead me in the direction of The Toy Book , for which he got a credit . One time in the 90s he waxed excitedly about AOR radio , the format known at the time as " adult rock , " and how he could find a place there . He came through Denver often in the next 15 years . When the Fairmont Hotel opened its Denver branch in the 1980s , it included a large performing space which routed acts to each of its outlets for weeklong stays . The Fairmont folks treated the rock press like kings , plying us with steak dinners , bottles of wine and copious drinks , but the Fairmont room never really caught on . More than once , the rockcritters were the only audience members . Why not ? Roger McGuinn came through , and so did the Johnny Otis Band , with Shuggie playing guitar . The week Stewart was there , he enlisted me to run a video camera one night to see how he looked onstage . I was thrilled . I didn 't like the live shows as much beginning in the ' 80s . He traded in the acoustic for a hollow - body electric and the band for a synthesized sound . When I complained to him about it , he looked at me , exasperated but gracious , and carefully explained the economics of traveling with a band and the choices he had to make to make a living . At this time he began his long relationship with Dave Batti , his manager / bassist best friend . Batti , as friendly a guy as you 'll meet in the music business , was the perfect Stewart foil , able to head off in any direction Stewart would go . Stewart would look at him sometimes onstage and shrug , ' Got any ideas , Dave ? ' They always seemed to be having a good time together . One time they played a glorious set at Lannie Garrett 's little club over on East 17th Street . They played the Boulder Theatre and Stewart did a pilot as host of a television variety show there . He returned to Chautauqua several times . Another time I had gotten an assignment from Goldmine , an oldies collector 's magazine , to do a piece on Stewart . He acquiesced to an afternoon interview before the show that night . Frank Kresen was in town from Kansas City , and he had written up a page of questions . Gil was along , and I had even more questions . ( Obsessive that I am , these lists are still in my files . ) At one point , Stewart asked me if I was going to inquire about every song he 'd written or were we going to get the interview done this afternoon ? " This could take three years , " he said . It is one of my favorite memories . We laughed a lot that afternoon . I never completed the Goldmine story . The news of the death of John Stewart came Saturday with the numbing swiftness of the Internet : a couple of emails with RIP John Stewart in the title . Shocked , I posted an attempt at a obituary Sunday morning . Reading it , it didn 't seem enough . Stewart 's music has been a constant back to my childhood , and somehow writing about how much his music meant to me is the only way I can think coherently about his passing . I first became aware of Stewart when I saw him perform on a television program in 1961 as a member of the Cumberland Three . I had become a Kingston Trio fan at age 13 , when a classmate taught me Trio songs and harmonies a cappella from the albums . ( We peformed the Trio 's " New York Gals " at a church dinner . ) I don 't think I made the connection that it was him I had seen on television until later that year when he replaced Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio . ( There is a nice two - page summary of Stewart 's early rock days in Joe Smith 's fascinating book , On the Record . ) This was a tough assignment . The Trio was vastly popular , and many felt that Guard , the mouthpiece of the group 's live shows , was the heart of the group . Stewart talked many years later about his feelings of inadequacy replacing him and his belief that Guard was the Trio 's soul . One night , at Chautauqua in the 1980s , he played Guard 's " Fast Freight " after talking about that very thing onstage , and he mentions it in a song called " Always Young . " He penned " New Frontier " after hearing the inauguration address of John F . Kennedy , and he once told me that the album named for the song was the best Trio album produced during his tenure . I agreed . I was a Kennedy kid . In 1960 I gave a speech for him to our school assembly - my Lutheran classroom voted 14 - 2 for Nixon - so the song seriously resonated with me . The album also included the hit " Greenback Dollar . " The album still rings absolutely true 39 years after its release , and I have listened to it hundreds of times . I wore out three vinyl copies , more than any other title beside the Byrds ' Mr . Tambourine Man . Stewart included songs that were set in his home state . The title track explained that it was his lineage that determined his basic beliefs . But more important to this Midwesterner , other songs referenced Plains states like Nebraska and Missouri . Stewart told me years later that he kept a notebook as they crossed the country . Using that , he said he locked himself up that fall with a bunch of pot and wrote most of the songs on Bloodlines and some others that he planned for an album reflecting on the Kennedys . ( This finally came to fruition with The Last Campaign . ) But I didn 't need to know that . The songs spoke for themselves . " The Pirates of Stone County Road , " for instance , set in some small Midwestern town , is a two - verse memory of kids playing buccaneers with the back porch as their frigate . The verses end with the voice of an old woman calling them to supper , while the song 's gentle motion leads to a powerful crescendo as the chorus kicks in : " And we 'd sail , pulling for China , the pirates of Stone County Road weathered and blown , and we 'd sail , ever in glory , ' til hungry and tired , the pirates of Stone County Road were turning for home . " I 'm still humbled by the simple complexity of this lyric and its gentle , powerful melody . I can 't remember the circumstances , but Frank and I sang this at a teacher 's convention in Independence , Mo . , and you could have heard a pin drop . It 's that powerful . I first heard " July , You 're a Woman " on a single by Pat Boone . The Boone version was fine , but I fell much harder for Stewart 's earthier take on Bloodlines . It would remain a favorite over the years . " Mother Country " was actually two lyrics mashed together , one about the Johnstown Flood , the other about an old California horseman who , just before he died , rode his horse , the Old Campaigner , stone blind in front of a large crowd . I loved the line about forgetting to clip the newspaper , and the lyrics had a strange symmetry ; the blending of these two subjects was , to me , as brilliant as the compelling way he sang / talked the lyrics . " Omaha Rainbow " was another favorite . Shit , I 've driven along the curve of I - 80 as turns south and west out of Omaha with a thunderstorm passing through . I knew what he was writing about . I bought the record whilst locked in mortal combat with my commitment to Christianity and the Lutheran Church - Mo . Synod . I had left home my junior year in high school to begin study for the ministry . The deeper I waded into church doctrine , the more questions I had about my dedication . The tension first broke in 1969 , when I decided to forego Concordia Seminary in St . Louis that fall and instead entered the teaching program . The protagonist watches the flocks flying south along one of the great Midwest flyways and hears " that song they 're singing to me : go into the world while you 're young . " In the second verse he is reminded of the preacher 's words that echo from the old church steeple , " stay here with the decent people , settle down and marry while you 're young . " Going out into the world and leaving the relative security of the church was one of the most difficult decisions I ever made , and it was good to have Stewart 's comforting words as I finally made the transition . My brother Vincent and I saw Stewart for the first time in December 1970 at the old Vanguard coffee house on Main Street north of the Plaza . He had Chris Darrow in his three - piece band , and the opening act was the comedian Pat Paulson . The show included all my favorite songs , some new ones I hadn 't heard , and it just blew me away . At one point , he played " Daydream Believer " and mentioned that it was the last hit for the Monkees . " Maybe I should write one for Nixon and Agnew , " he quipped . We went home and tried to work out " California Bloodlines , " a song we still play when we get together . It was an exciting time . I caught a Byrds / Burrito Brothers bill at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in September of 1970 , Van Morrison for the first time at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit the first week in December , during my student - teaching stint , and Stewart in KC over Christmas break . My interest in music was starting to head into an even more obsessive phase , and Stewart became part of the growing awareness . Frank came to Ft . Wayne to make up a couple of classes in the fall of 1968 , and we became fast friends through our mutual status as music - trivia buffs . We got drunk the night we met and discovered that we both thought that Bob Seger 's " Ramblin ' Gamblin ' Man " was a perfect single , and that the moment at the end of the Zombie 's " Tell Her No , " when the song stops for a breath , is the greatest moment in rock music . Every weekend that semester we got together and played music for each other and talked shit about it . After Frank returned to Chicago , we kept in touch , writing each other long letters about our growing music tastes , which we found wonderfully compatible , and you can see today in those letters how it was becoming part of our ethos . We were beginning to speak a special language that was only understood by a small circle of friends . But we were finding a growing community around the country who , like us , read Rolling Stone and Creem . We dubbed ourselves a karass , loosely interpreting a piece of Kurt Vonnegut 's hilarious religion in the novel Cat 's Cradle . In one of those letters , written April 1970 , I list some albums I had just bought , a Lightnin ' Hopkins Vanguard collection , Rick Nelson 's In Concert , John B . Sebastian , Brewer and Shipley 's Weeds , I write for the first time about California Bloodlines : " The old Kingston Trio and Cumberland Three man is really into country , and this album is superb in all respects . He gets all the Nashville boys together for some pickin ' and singin ' , like Charlie McCoy , Kenneth Buttrey , Hargus Robbins . Includes " July , You 're a Woman , " his classic ( recorded on a single by Pat Boone , which I liked until I heard Stewart 's on The New Spirit of Capitol collection . " In August 1971 , I moved to Chicago for a teaching position as a seventh - and eighth - grade teacher at St . John 's Lutheran Church , a small congregation in the far - western suburb of Roselle . Frank and I moved into a rambling old farmhouse on Lake Street , took a lot of acid , and began playing music together . Stewart became an increasingly major influence on us as we took things a step further and tried to make it professionally as the Coalition . ( It didn 't seem that delusional at the time ! ) It 's safe to say that I tried my damndest to BE John Stewart during this period , which lasted at least through Crayon Angel , a band I formed with Vincent and two friends from college . We found much to love in Stewart 's seventies albums , all created from the same cloth as California Bloodlines . The songs on Sunstorm were mostly set on the Great Plains , and songs like " Cheyenne , " " Wheatfield Lady , " " Kansas Rain " and " You Can 't Go Back to Kansas " spoke deeply to my Midwestern sensibilities . " All American Girl , " from Willard , spoofed accurately the " parochial girls " I dated through college . We could find something to appreciate in almost all his songs . I loved it , for instance , when " All the Brave Horses , " from the Lonesome Picker album , a song which Frank and I always felt had political overtones , was later wrapped into the very political " The Last Campaign Trilogy " on the Phoenix Concerts live set . Frank and I caught Stewart at a short - lived , fancy Chicago folk club called Smile in April 1972 . We sat close enough to watch what fret he put his capo on for certain songs , and even knicked that cool lick for " California Bloodlines , " the first time I learned a song by watching the performer himself play it . There were few people there , and he complied with my request for " The Pirates of Stone County Road . " But when I hollered out for " Baby , You 've Been on My Mind , " the Dylan song I remembered from the live Kingston Trio record , he scowled over at me and said gruffly , " I don 't do covers . " I didn 't think his response was as funny at the time as I do now . Born into a California horse family in 1939 , Stewart , after playing in rock bands during the 1950s , gravitated into the folk scene . I first noticed him on a television variety program in 1961 as a member of the Cumberland Three , a Kingston Trio knock - off . He replaced Dave Guard in the Trio in 1961 and stayed until the original group broke up in 1966 . His 1967 debut , California Bloodlines , laid the foundation for a career that lasted until his death . I never saw a Stewart show that didn 't include some favorites , often from Bloodlines , and some new material he was working on . Working from the enthusiasm of the Kennedy years - with the Trio , he wrote " New Frontier " for John F . Kennedy , and the songs he composed while traveling with the 1968 Robert Kennedy presidential campaign were a continuing thread through his later work - Stewart wrote with an unabashed love of humanity and country . He sang with good humor and compassion in a deep , resonant voice that seemed older than its years . His only chart hit was the strangely ironic " Gold , " recorded for RSO - a label that marketed him alongside the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever . Many of his songs were recorded by others , the most famous being the Monkees ' 1967 No . 1 " Daydream Believer . " Stewart would joke onstage that he wrote the LAST hit for the Monkees and the Lovin ' Spoonful , which recorded his " Never Goin ' Back " before disbanding . Stewart 's later albums , on small labels and for his own Homecoming imprint , continued in the same vein , and he stayed busy throughout his life making albums and playing live . Though his optimism was shaken and his images turned darker and more impressionistic over the decades , Stewart remained a durable and formidable songwriter and performer . Nobody , save perhaps Bob Dylan , was more influential to me in terms of songwriting or performance . Billie , who has been along for much of the Stewart saga , called the set " pensive " as we drove home . I wrote down " slow " and " deliberate " in my notes . The topical humor and rapier wit were absent . There was one quick reference to our president , but no other political barbs , generally a staple of his live performances and some of his songs . It wasn 't until about three songs from the end that he asked our indulgence in allowing him to sit down . In all the nights I have seen him perform , this was the first time I ever saw him sit down . He said his back had gone out a couple nights before , and it was acting up again . Which explained his lack of physical movement and perhaps his lack of political eloquence - he was in obvious pain . His voice , which was fairly ragged the last time we saw him in up in Loveland about three years ago , was in and out . I have always thought that Stewart possessed an old man 's voice , even when he was in his twenties . But the old man 's version is less in the front , more whisper than voice . Still very effective . I was glad to see him playing an acoustic guitar again - I used to chide him in the eighties about using a hollow body and drum machines instead of that pure acoustic sound . Stewart is still an exquisite guitar player . Though I have performed many of his songs , I am continually amazed at how I can use the same chords but never come close to his unique finger - picking style . The arrangements tonight were almost always different , and he more often than not rephrased or otherwise changed the melodies to familiar songs . When you have songs that date back almost half a century old , it 's hard not to do the oldies . Stewart , who still writes songs and releases albums of new material , did more than his share this time , leading us through a body of work that remains unique to itself . And given his pain , I kept wondering how many times I would see him play live again . 2 ) " Hung on the Heart " He only did two verses of a song that has mesmerized the Soldiers of Love and has always been one of my favorites . You could tell he didn 't do it often . Perhaps tonight it was chosen because of the Colorado reference . 3 ) " Denver Again " Told a great story about Ebbet 's Field , said he played there a lot . One night he played this song , nobody clapped , and he said he played it a couple months ago for the first time since then . There 's a reason it wasn 't sung for thirty years . 7 ) " July You 're a Woman " He looked at Dave . " Got any ideas ? " Completely deadpan . And did this song with a funny intro about how Elvis sang this song backstage every night before going onstage - and how he never recorded it , either , which is par for Stewart 's career , I guess . The song , from California Bloodlines , is a major touchstone of his career . I have a 45 of Pat Boone singing this song that I like . 9 ) " Fire in the Wind " First of many very stark arrangements of songs I was used to hearing with a band . He laughed one time when I told him that he seemed to be moving into an " elements " phase in his songwriting , citing this one , " Seven Times the Wind , " " Lost Her in the Sun , " " Fire in the Wind , " " Chasin ' Down the Rain , " " Spirit in the Light , " " On You Like the Wind , " " Promise the Wind " and " Midnight Wind . " He said I was thinking too much . 15 ) " Runaway Train " His rhythm on this and a few others consisted of him strumming down with his index finger . Nice trick with the microphone . This one was recorded by Rosanne Cash , who also did Stewart 's haunting " Eye of the Tiger . " 19 ) " Cannons in the Rain " He asked for requests . A guy in the row ahead was saying " Missouri Birds , " but not loud enough . He caught " Cannons in the Rain " and did a really slow take on it . Whew . 20 ) " Dreamers on the Rise " Dave suggested this one . He asked if anybody knew that song , heard scattered yeahs , one of them mine . " Do you want to hear it ? " Dave sang quiet harmonies , and John got the numbers in the third verse out of kilter . This is the Soldiers of Love 's favorite Stewart song , and he always does it a bit different onstage . 21 ) " Mazatlan " Here is the sleeper . Deep Tex - Mex sound . From Wingless Angels . Does Stewart do this one often , I wonder ? He should .
|
Woodland Park is a weird town . I 'll admit it . Super conservative and full of a lot of oddball people . There really isn 't shit to eat in this town either . Although , we do have a Denny 's that serves alcohol and that 's weird all by itself . You can get a whiskey shooter with your pancakes . Seriously . Heather and I were both feeling lazy tonight and decided to go check out a restaurant that recently opened up . It 's in a lovely building that a place called the Martini Hut used to be in . That place was cool in terms of atmosphere but the quality of the food depended upon how much alcohol the owner had consumed that night . He drank a lot . After he left , another place went in and lasted a few months . I 've heard that some people got food poisoning there . The building sat there derelict for quite a while and now this place is in there . We went in , sat down and . . . waited . We waited about 10 minutes before someone came over to wait on us . There was a piece of paper on the table that had some food items listed on it but I didn 't think it was really the menu . Heather got water and I ordered a beer and then asked the gal if this was really the menu . It was . Now I know a lot of places have grilled cheese on the menu but there was only like 5 other things on the menu . 4 of those other things were Paninis . Those are just sandwiches that have been toasted on a George Forman grill . One of those Paninis had 3 different kinds of cheese on it . Like a fancy grilled cheese . Who the hell needs all that cheese backing up your plumbing ? You couldn 't even get any damn fries either . Just potato chips . What the hell is that ? We left . Starved . There was also someone dining in the restaurant that I don 't care for and , in fact , I had just told Heather the night before that it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed in town somewhere . We decided to go to Divide and try McGinty 's one more time . We 've not had good luck there . Things haven 't changed . Most places don 't use the big ass pieces from the center of the head of lettuce in their salads . Occasionally , you might find one but those pieces should not be the main theme in the salad . It 's almost like they are making salads from the throw away lettuce of other restaurants . I decided to play it safe and get a Reuben . You can 't screw up a Reuben . I was wrong . Dry ass corn beef . Not enough 1000 island dressing . Those that know me will attest to the fact that I am not one to complain at restaurants AT ALL . I never ask for anything to be taken off the bill . It really takes a lot for me to be disappointed at a restaurant . I was . Right before we went out , my buddy Scott texted me to tell me where his family was camping and what they were having for dinner . Hot dogs on damn tortillas with Mac and Cheese . I made fun of him for eating a hot dog on a tortilla . I would never make fun of Mac and Cheese because it 's the shit . I would have loved a cold hot dog on half a tortilla that fell in the dirt . Screw you McGinty 's . Screw you new place in the old Martini Hut building . On the way back through Woodland we recounted the shitty things that had happened to us at each restaurant . Bad Mexican food . Just not authentic . Boring . At all 3 Mexican places . The new sushi place in the strip mall next to City Market ? Not a chance . The 2 Chinese joints ? Negative . Pretty sure the one was closed for so long because they were selling dope in the drive through . We went to Casa Grande after they opened ( one of the Mexican restaurants ) and I ordered an amber Dos Equis . True story . . . floating in the foam was a hair . All I 'm gonna say is that the hair was short , curly , and appeared extremely coarse . I 'll let you come to your own conclusions . How about the Biergarten ? I was so psyched when this place opened . First time in I order a good beer . I go to take a sip and there 's multiple hairs around the rim of the mug . WTF ? I go back to the attractive young lady who served it to me and tell her to try again . She apologizes and gives me a different mug . It had less hair . I was looking for NO hair . I think the gals wear those short skirts in the hopes that you 're looking at their legs and ass and don 't notice the hairs . A lot of people in Woodland rave about Joanies . They serve Boreshead meat which is good but they are sandwiches for cripes sake . Hard to get psyched over a sandwich and a damn dill slice . The best thing we have going is the Swiss Chalet . Nice people . Excellent food . But . . . it is very pricey . I 'm not saying it 's not worth it . We 've gone there a few times and it 's always impeccable . I just don 't make that much money . All I 'm saying is that there 's gotta be a middle ground between the Swiss Chalet and . . . shit with a high likelihood of hair . The Ute ? ? No . Them and Bucks ( which is now closed ) are both a serious gamble . Now I 've had a few drinks at both places but even then I 'm calculated about what I drink . Tap beer ? Not likely . Those lines are filthy . Bottled beer only and only if I can watch it being opened and see it for the Posted by This morning I found my way to the garage at 8 : 30 with the hopes of getting the Honda to fire up for the first time in 2 years . First I had to install what remained of the left side exhaust . It was essentially straight pipes . They went on quickly and then I re - checked all my previous work . I grabbed the tank which was still on the bike but not bolted down and the fuel line right after the petcock valve ripped . So I grabbed a dog and walked over to the auto parts store to get more fuel line . I repaired the line and mounted the tank . I put the key in and hit the starter button . It turned over but that 's all it did . I did this dance for a few more minutes and then went back to basics . The first thing I did was pull a plug . It was wet with gas . I checked for spark and it was great . I knew I had fuel at the petcock and at the carbs but I didn 't know if it was getting through to all the carbs . So I checked the drains in the bottom of the bowls . All four had fuel but it looked like shit . It smelled worse . Bad fuel . I took the tank back off and drained all 4 bowls . I emptied as much from the tank as I could . I put in fresh gas and washed out as much of what was left in the tank as possible before reinstalling it . I hooked up the fuel line and cranked it a few times to get fresh gas running through the carbs . I drained the bowls until I finally had fresh gas coming out . After several hours of fooling with things it still would not start . Frustrated , I went inside to sit with the dogs and have a coffee . After an hour , I went back in the garage and tried a few more times . Same thing . Then I looked at the top of the triple tree and saw a knob . I didn 't even know there was a choke . I pulled the choke out , hit the starter and the thing fired right up . I didn 't let it run for long but I started it 4 more times and each time it started right away . I know the compression is totally screwed up so I ordered the exhaust and it should be here in a few days . This is what the shitty varnish in the tank looked like . I don 't have much exPosted by Today I had to clean the garage up . I can only tolerate so much disarray . After putting all the tools back in their respective spots , moving the bike out and cleaning the floor , I wheeled it back inside and went back to work . I went through all the nuts and bolts to make sure they were tight . This thing was a death trap . The triple trees were loose . The throttle and handlebar controls were all loose . It was terrifying . I think things are relatively safe now . I added some sort of additive to the oil that is supposed to help seal internal leaks because there looks to be a leak starting under the heads and that 's a bit more than I 'm comfortable with getting into at this stage of the game . I finished swapping out the swapping out the spark plugs ( despite all the horror stories I had read online , I didn 't think plug # 3 was any more difficult than the rest ) . I still have not swapped the wires yet . On these old CB 's the wire at the coil simply gets screwed on ( almost like some hydraulic mountain bike brakes ) . At the plug end there 's just a boot . So as long as the boot is ok , you can really just swap the wires . I 'm going to hold off on that for now but I have 5 feet of wire sitting on the bench . I threw in a new battery , turned the key on and the lights came on for the first time in 2 years . I 'm not gonna lie . It was kind of exciting . I still need to re - install the left side exhaust . At this point , the entire exhaust really consists of just straight pipes . So I called it a night . I expect this thing to be incredibly loud and don 't need to piss off my neighbors . So in the morning we 'll see if it comes to life . If it does , I fully expect it to run like total shit . After placing the order for the exhaust , I should have them in my hot little hands within 7 days . Then I 'll know how things are gonna be . I won 't lie again . I 'm beginning to like this motorcycle . I think it would be cool to ditch a lot of the extra crap on the bike like the fenders , 80 's style lights , crash bars , luggage racks , and the ugly ass front windshield aChris I love to tinker on things and I 've always been fascinated with motorcycles but I don 't have all that much experience with them . As a kid , I had a little Honda dirt bike but not for long . I crashed while learning to ride it and that was the end of that . When I moved out here , I bought a pristine XR250 and had it for a while before selling it and then upgrading to an XR400 which . . . I crashed and got hurt on . I ended up selling it not long after that but I always look at them when I see them . What 's odd is that I 've had some pretty bad crashes while racing bicycles but I never stopped doing that and I have never been afraid of riding them . Why I get scared on something with a motor is a mystery to me . Truth be told , I never approached the motorcycle thing in the right way . Never did a rider safety course and the last crash was entirely because I was riding way beyond my ability level . There are still times where I think something like a BMW F800 or a KTM Adventure would be so nice out here to explore the fire roads on and go camping in a very similar style to what I do on the mountain bike . None of my dirt bikes were ever as dirty as this CB650 is . I hate dirt . If it were mine , I 'd strip a lot of stuff off it and power wash it . But . . . it 's not mine so I 'll just fix what needs fixing and try my best to ignore the rest . Always baffles my people don 't take better care of their things . I think it was my friend Ethan that once commented about how all my bicycles always look like they just rolled off the showroom floor . Generally , they functioned that way too . I think that goes back to as a kid and growing up , I didn 't have a lot of " things " so I took very good care of the ones I did have . Anyways . This is the left side of the motor with the cover removed along with the sprocket and chain . There are really 2 seals here . One is on the shifter shaft where it enters the motor and the other is on the counter shaft . I am pretty sure that all of the oil was coming out of that shifter shaft seal . It 's so loose that I could start I did remove the foot pegs and kick stand to give them a good cleaning . So far this has been a fun project to start the summer off with . I 've always thought about getting an older bike to fool around with and Heather and I have always liked the early CB 's . We would like to make one into a cafe racer but I honestly don 't think I could ride it that way with my neck issues getting worse as I get older and I don 't care for the stock styling of the bike . So it sits like this until my friend gets me the parts I need to continue on . He actually has them but he lives up in Keystone so I just have to wait for him to run them over which may happen tonight . My plan now is to replace that shifter shaft seal and then change the oil and filter , put it back together , install new plugs , clean the air filter , install a new battery and see if it fires up . If it does fire up , I expect it to run like total shit because of those rotted out pipes . As long as it does start , then he can order new exhaust and ship it my way . Heather and I went to a graduation party last night for about an hour . We drank a beer and chatted a while . This guy was seated at the table near us . I took his picture because just his face and his voice were spot on with Danny from the show King of Queens . I was amazed and kept staring at him . Honda This morning I brought this home on a trailer . My original plan was to bring it home and then tell Heather that I had just decided on my own to buy it but the cat was let out of the bag a few nights ago so she already knew . It 's a 1981 CB 650 . It belongs to a friend of mine . He lives a ways away from here and it 's been in storage . He doesn 't have a place to work on it and he 's not very mechanically inclined so he asked if I would go get it and see if I could get it running . I don 't know much about motorcycles but it seems to be in fairly decent shape . The tall windscreen is kinda dorky looking but I 'm sure it helps a lot . It for sure needs a new exhaust . All 4 pipes are rotted out . I 'm going to start by putting in a new battery and new plugs . It also HAD an oil leak . I say had only because it appears to have leaked out all of the oil . So I need to find the source , fix it , and then throw on a new filter and fill it with fresh oil . The oil leak is where I started today . I pulled the exhaust , crash bars , and the sides of the motors off so that I could see more . This looks to be the biggest issue . On the left of the picture and behind that shaft is the oil pump . The shaft is actually the shifter shaft . Right where it enters the motor , there 's a seal under all that sludge . I believe it is puking out oil . So I 'm gonna put a new seal in . Also just above that is the counter shaft sprocket . Behind that is another seal . I 'll probably go ahead and do that too because they 're cheap and appear to be pretty easy to replace . Then I suppose I 'll fill it with oil and see if it leaks . I 'll post more photos of the process . I 've only worked on it for a few hours now but it 's fun . I 've always wanted to have a manageable project and wondered if a motorcycle would be one . On the way to Moab last week , I had some trouble from the green car . I never have trouble with the green car . It 's a Japanese car that runs like a damn Swiss watch . Or . . . usually does . I was having weird over heating issues . The stock gauge is kind of an idiot gauge in that it doesn 't show true temperature values . It just lets you know when there is an issue on either extreme end . The needle on the gauge was indicating an overheating issue but the needle moved very quickly . Too quickly , I think , to actually be indicative of an issue . It would be odd for the motor to heat up 40 - 50 degrees in 5 seconds and then come back down to normal temp . My first thought was to either the gauge itself flaking out , the wiring , or the sending unit . After a bit of research , I found out that the sending unit for the gauge on this motor is actually the same one that communicates with the ECU and lets it know how much fuel to tell the injectors to spray based on the motor temp . This is really odd because I know I have seen a 2002 RS ( same motor ) that had a separate sending unit ( single spade connector ) for the gauge . Mine does not . I also replaced that sending unit several months back because of a weird start up issue that I was having on cold mornings so I was pretty sure it wasn 't that . Every time I had the over heat issue on my trip , there was no pattern to it ( sometimes it would show higher temps while coasting down a pass ) and each time it did it , I could pull over and turn the motor off for 5 minutes and all was fine . I find it hard to believe that the motor would cool that quickly if it truly was overly hot to begin with . Certainly , this could be a water pump , thermostat , or radiator issue but I wanted to rule out the electrical gremlin first . So I decided to install another water temp gauge . I considered just getting a cheap ass gauge from Autozone and wiring it up and simply setting it somewhere in the car but I can 't do that . So I ended up buying a gauge from Prosport along with a gauge pod for the A - pillar . The next issue wOddly enough , while running wire to the engine bay , I happened to notice this vacuum line was disconnected from the idle air control valve . It was a bitch to get back ( super tight space ) so I don 't know how this just popped off . It couldn 't have . Not sure what to think . Also not sure why my car hasn 't thrown a code either . I was hoping to reconnect it and have like 50 more horsepower but that didn 't happen . The Prosport gauge is interesting . It has 5 wires . One to ground , one to the sending unit ( an additional ground coming off the sending unit ) , 2 for 12 volt power , and 1 for 12 volt power with the headlight switch . All said and done , the gauge reads white like the first picture but switches to red when you turn the lights on . Pretty cool . Normally , having a different color gauge than my cluster would drive me crazy but the next car I think I 'll be getting has a red cluster and that 's why I did it . Now I just drive and wait for the motor to show hot again so I can see if I 'm looking for something bigger . I should also mention that these motors are prone to over heat issues when they get an air bubble in the cooling system so I burped the system after opening it up to install the splice . Now we wait . For about a week now , my neck issue has flared up again in a big way . Two nights ago I thought I was going to puke from the pain . I finally got in to see my doctor today . He thinks the degenerative issues with the discs continues to get worse in my old age . Like Raylan Givens says , " Gettin ' old aint for pussies . " So I go back to see the spinal folks again soon here to talk about getting another Cortisone injection but I don 't know that I wanna do that every nine months . In the meantime , I am on some pain killers and muscle relaxers so I can sleep . Surgery really can 't fix this issue so . . . it may be time for me to consider what bike riding looks like from now on . Not exactly sure how I feel about this . We 'll see . I have 2 more days at my current teaching job and then it 's summer break . After 8 years with this current district , I will now call Academy 20 School District home from now on . I am very excited about this move . I simply no longer agree with the direction in which Woodland Park is heading in with regard to my students and I can no longer support it . I got a very good impression from the new administration during the interview and , since then , have heard amazing things about them . I have a half day tomorrow at Woodland but the principals at the new school I will be at ( Timberview ) asked me to come down for a tour . They also asked if I would come down on their last day next week ( my vacation ) and be introduced to their staff and join them for lunch so that on the first day , I would feel more a part of the team . Can 't wait . And finally . . . I don 't know that I have ever blogged about an issue with the green Subaru . She is Ole Reliable . 274 , 000 and going strong . She recently started giving me trouble in the way of overheating . I do not know yet if it 's truly overheating or if I am dealing with a gauge , sending unit , or wiring issue ( which is the way I 'm leaning right now based upon the symptoms ) . I have some stuff on order and will be working on it this weekend and will post more about that . At this point , I feelChris
|
Common Sense has to win sometime ! We saw the doctor today , basically to have prescriptions refilled . We always book our appointments together , and the clinic we attend is specifically for people who have complex medical issues , which we both have . So instead of the standard 10 minute run through the office we each get a full 30 minutes with the doctor . As usual our BPs were in the excellent category , both within two or three points of 120 / 80 , she ran through some lab work Tony had done a month ago , which was fine , and we worked out what needed filling . I remarked that we are in great shape for the shape we 're in , while both of us have genetic muscle disorders which cause a slow and progressive loss of strength and stamina , we live with constant fatigue and pain , and my joints are very unstable , we have none of the diseases many people in our age group ( late 60s - mid 70s ) have . No heart problems , no emphysema , no rheumatoid arthritis or history of cancer . We are , aside from the dratted muscle problems , healthy . Knock wood . She remarked on how even healthy people , can go from health to profound disability in a moment 's time from a heart attack or stroke , and that we are generally deluded about how " strong " our bodies are . But the main topic of conversation was how unprepared boomers , and even 80 and 90 year - olds are for death . We have as a culture a delusion that we are going to live forever , and even 95 - year - olds whose quality of life is absolutely terrible fight for painful and debilitating treatments out of the fear of death . I think there are two issues , no one wants to die . It 's a difficult process for most , painful and exhausting . The body does not give up its grip on life easily . But death itself is different . Whether you believe you return to that deep and dreamless sleep that you existed in before birth or that you wake up in a heavenly paradise Christians and Muslims teach , you 'd think believers would not fear moving to this better , higher plain of existence once their earthly bodies have become fraught with so pain and extreme frailty as to be a constant burden . But our doctor said emphatically that this is not so , saying the most fearful of dying are the Chinese . Ah , this one I understand . Most Asian religions believe in reincarnation , so if you have lived a life of selfishness or spitefulness you may very well fear your next life will be spent as a goDeb The Halloween Fair was a PTA fund raiser . Being nine years old Tommy and I could have cared less about fund raising The 20 nickels our fathers had given us were burning a hole in our pockets and we were eager to begin having the fun those nickels would afford us . The kids and the adults had different ideas of what fun was . We had no interest in winning a crocheted bedspread , or a casserole dish and we agreed that the cake walk our fathers headed for immediately was boring , except we 'd like to have a cake . The table where you bought your nickel ticket was full of cakes , from elaborate to plates of cupcakes . Each had a number by it . The cake walk itself consisted of a series of numbered squares marked out on the grass in powdered chalk to create a large square . Music was played and as long as the music continued the players moved forward by one square in time with the music . When the music stopped the a number was called and the person standing on that number won the cake on the table corresponding to the number . We were more interested in the pony rides , as we both held fantasies that we were cowboys . The ponies were hitched to a central mechanism by long poles which led them in an unending circle . When the riders were all mounted the motor was turned on and the ponies began their never - ending trudge around an endless track . Today the idea is horrifying , but then all we felt was excitement , to be in the creaking saddle , with the reins in hand , the sharp smells of leather and horse sweat in our nostrils . Though I knew very well that the " eighth wonder of the world " , the " Amazing Toothless Wonder " in the booth run by my mother was one of our Rhode Island Red hens in a tiny apron and bonnet pecking at a pan of cracked corn , I talked it up to my friends , urging them to spend their nickel in my mother 's booth . Prizes for winning a game were mostly penny candies , whistles , yo - yos or cheap celluoloid Cupie dolls . We threw baseballs at bowling pins , shot bb guns at silhouettes of birds in flight and leaping squirrels and Deb I had to go to the Wicked Emporium of the West yesterday , aka , my Mt . McKinley WalMart , which has been in a state of perpetual renovation for the past year . Every month they promise a grand re - opening the next month , and every month they postpone it by a month . I fully expect to be negotiating one cart wide aisles flanked by tarped - off areas for the rest of my shopping career . Nonetheless I had to go since Smokey the fuzzy - fuss will only eat one brand and flavour of canned cat food which is sold only at WalMart and he was down to one day 's supply . And while I 'm there their supplements are less expensive than at the pharmacy , plus they have some items I can 't buy at Sobey 's , and yada yadas which add up to a half a cart load . When I made the decision to go I called my neighbour " C " , who has no car , and asked if she wanted to go . It means she doesn 't have to take the bus , cross a very busy six - lane street and walk across a huge parking lot , and if I have enough energy to deal with someone else I enjoy her company . She said yes , but said she was having trouble downloading some pictures from her camera that she needed to e - mail to someone . Her sister and another neighbour ( " B " ) had already been over trying to help , but had no success . So , once I was ready to go I went to her place to see if I could figure it out . I 'm not sure why it hadn 't worked before , because it was pretty straightforward . I downloaded the two photos , wrote the e - mail for her , attached the pictures and sent the mail . Then , off we went to shop . On the way home " C " said , " If " B " asks me if I got those pictures downloaded and sent , I 'm going to lie and tell her no . " " Why would you do that ? " " Because , I want to make her feel bad . " " Why would you want to make her feel bad when she tried to help you ? " " I just feel like being mean to her . " " Do you know what Karma is ? The idea that what goes around comes around ? If you 're mean to other people Karma 's gonna come around and bite you in the butt someday . " Now I have this on my mind . Working on becoming more compassionate means that I have to go out of * my * comfort zone . It 's not just a theory and saying Awwww about puppies and kittens in an animal shelter . Compassion is dealing with reality . For me at the moment it means spending time with a neighbour who is sometimes hard to cope with . She doesn 't understand boundaries and she 's obsessive , the ranting about " B " is a constant undercurrent in every conversation . What is bothering me is , is it compassionate to comment on her ranting ? Maybe I 'm just tired of hearing about the same spat for the 100th time ? There is more to compassion than meets the eye , sometimes you don 't even know what to call it , sort of the elephant overhead you 're afraid to look up and see . Posted by The members of the group are all married women , who are an average age of 35 years and have an average of eight children each . All live in the culturally predominant polygamous families in Bandiagara , Mali . The women are working with the microfinance institution Soro Yiriwaso , which is part of the international group " Save the Children " . They are on their second loan with the institution . The first loan was paid back in full and on time . The women are farmers , and are eager to begin planting their market gardens as the rainy seasons ends . The crop they grow is primarily onions , as is the case with Ms . Ourgatou , who is first from the left in the photo . With her loan , she intends to purchase seeds and fertilizer . After the harvest , the produce is sold to a customers in their home village and in the larger centres of Bandiagara and Mopti . At the end of the planting season , Ourgatou hopes to make a profit equivalent to about $ 90 USF . Some of this profit will help cover family expenses . The rest will be reinvested in the business . We are happy to be able to lend our bit , which will be combined with the loans of other KIVA lenders , to help give Ourgatou access to a small loan which will allow her to work more efficiently and improve her family 's life . If you 'd like to try out a KIVA loan for free , follow this link . Posted by Failing at the Facebook Zen There was an teacher of Zen who when asked where enlightenment could be found would point with his finger into the air . A student saw his teacher 's behaviour and began to imitate him . This went on for many months . Each time the student was asked where enlightenment could be found he would point his finger into the air in imitation of his teacher . The teacher came into town one day and saw this . He went up to his student and asked him where enlightenment could be found . The student pointed his finger into the air . The teacher responded by pulling out his sword and chopping the student 's finger off in one clean cut . It was immediately apparent the student had a great attachment to his finger . But the goal of Zen is to loosen yourself from attachments , to possessions , to fixed ideas , even to your own body . If it is a choice between enlightenment and the loss of a finger or any body part for that matter , then enlightenment is more important than attachment . Our failing , my failing , is that I still have all these attachments . I 'm still attached to my possessions , though not so much as most people . I 'm definitely attached to my body , more 's the pity . Its " genetic quirks " and the pain it inflicts on me daily require a tedious amount of daily tending . But surprisingly I am most strongly attached to my compassion . ( I am not bragging , this ain 't a good thing . ) Most of us want to hear only feel good messages which encourage self - importance and allow us to ignore the imperative to abandon selfishness and share with others , even when it means personal sacrifice . This is not where I have a problem , since selfishness has roots in the attachment to possessions . Where I get in trouble is when I can 't understand why others don 't care ( we 're talking politics here , not individuals ) about sick children or hungry elders , how they can despise people who have to sleep in cardboard boxes or on park benches and eat at soup kitchens . There are many who believe in the political philosophy that only the privileged deserve a full stomach and a life of dignity . This attitude terrifies me , because I identify with ( and can 't disengage from ) the vulnerability poor people live in . And also because though we 've worked to our full capacities and beyond , the life - threatening health issues we were born with have meant that at times not only the table but the cupboards were bare , there was no money for desperately needed medication , and the four of us lived in a 12 x 16 shack without plumbing , electricity or running water . I have walked that mile , and my compassion is hard - won but all the more sharp for the experience . This is compassion , the ability not just toDeb Give him a donut and tell him to chill ! Are you as sick of this spectacle of sedition south of the border as I am ? The interesting thing is , though I am loathe to admit it , Ted Cruz is a Canadian . He was born in Canada of a Cuban father and a mother who was born in Delaware . Cruz has thus far released only his Canadian birth certificate , which confirms that he was born in Calgary , Alberta , in 1970 , and additionally states that his mother was born in Wilmington , Delaware . The second part is crucial - Cruz 's only claim to U . S . citizenship is through his mother - but it is also hearsay . The birth certificate is primary evidence of Cruz 's own birth , but the entry about his mother merely records her assertion to the Alberta Division of Vital Statistics . Even though I don 't personally dispute what he says , " My mother said so , " is not what is usually meant by " proof . " How , then , can Ted Cruz prove his U . S . citizenship ? The only sure - fire evidence , would be his mother 's birth certificate , presumably issued when she was born in Delaware . But even that presents a problem . Only one of Ted 's parents was a US citizen when he was born ( his father is a Cuban émigré who did not become a U . S . citizen until 2005 ) , and he therefore falls under a special section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that applies to " Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent . " Under that provision , Cruz only qualifies for American citizenship if his mother was " physically present " in the United States for 10 years prior to his birth , five of which had to be after she reached the age of 14 . The only definitive way to prove Eleanor Cruz 's 10 years of physical presence would be with documents such as leases , school registration , utility bills or tax records . So here you go America , your least likely enemy is leading the charge to take you down . Canucks are not a warlike people , but arm us with a hockey stick and an unlimited supply of latte and donuts from Tim Horton 's and Washington DC could easily be in our sighSeveral of the world 's top rated cities to live in are in Canada ; Vancouver , Calgary and Toronto . They 'd have Universal Health Care , face 95 % less violence in the streets , be able to marry their gay partner ( if that 's their thing ) , be underpinned by a reasonably robust social system and there 's always Lake Louise ! They 'd learn Canadians say " I 'm sorry " when we don 't actually need to , but it 's a phrase that serves as social lubricant and it 's far less dangerous than exchanging gunfire . They 'd also learn we live in peace and harmony with our neighbours , despite the fact that they may be from almost anywhere in the world and may be a different colour , religion , and speak a different language . A Hindu family lives in two of the units on our floor . The grandparents live with a granddaughter just around the corner , their daughter , her husband and their teenaged daughter live just down the hall . Last week another neighbour came to my door , and I had e - mail from several others , all upset that the doorway of the Hindu couple had been defaced with Nazi graffiti overnight . One sent a photo . Some were so upset they wanted me to call the police and report it as a hate crime . On the top doorjamb was a small statue of the Hindu God Ganesh flanked by a pair of good fortune swastiks and a Hindu blessing , written in red ink . Knowing that grandmother and grandfather had just celebrated their 60th anniversary days before I suspected it was a part of the celebration . So I went down and talked to them , and as expected , that was precisely what it was . I explained how their neighbours had misinterpreted the swastiks and they said they would remove them immediately . It was good , people were upset that anyone would do such a thing . And even though there had been a misunderstanding of the sign , they felt good that their neighbours felt protective of them . I 'm not naive enough to believe that all Canadians are free of prejudice , but as a nation we certainly wouldn 't tolerate a politician , or a political campaign , built on racism , hatred and fear . Ted better find his proof of American citizenship because he wouldn 't last five minutes in Canadian politics . Posted by Local Teen Dies After Accidental Shooting To understand we go back over 50 years to a classroom of 11th grade history students and a small , intense teacher with a moustache and an outrageous sense of humour . During class one day while passing my desk he bent down and whispered , " Stay after class , I need to talk to you about something . " The " something " turned out to be a weekend job , babysitting he and his wife 's four children , 12 y - o Margaret , 10 y - o Jeff , 8 , y - o Kate and 6 y - o Jo . I was 17 and the five of us slid into a relationship as as easily as if I belonged there . Before long I was spending more time with We camped and hiked and climbed together , took road trips , painted , swam . When I finally graduated and left home to go away to school it was much more my " second " family that I missed than my own . We kept in touch through letters , no internet back then . Margaret married , and was widowed when her husband was killed in a road accident . Jeff finished college and moved to Alaska , where he married . He and his young wife called out of the blue one evening , having driven well out of their way on the way from Alaska to Arizona . They were a few blocks away , I rushed to meet them , and they spent the evening with us , along with their beautiful baby boy , who was just at the crawling stage . The letters came and went , and in the early 90s the " second mother " I loved so dearly wrote to tell me of some disturbing symptoms she was having , and of diagnostic tests . The news , when it came , was devastating . She had ALS , Lou Gehrig 's disease , and it was rapidly progressing . They refitted the house to accommodate her wheelchair , hospital bed , roll - in shower , Jo moved in to care for her , Kate and Margaret serving as backup . She lived 13 months after her diagnosis . I still have her final letter , asking me not to grieve , as she 'd had a wonderful life and was not afraid of death . She thanked me for my love and friendship , and for being such a good " big sister " to her children . Margaret wrote a few times after her mother 's death . While struggling with her own family problems she had let her mother take over the role of correspondent . It was a difficult period in our lives too , with Tony so ill , and the loss of both my father and Tony 's mother . Contact dwindled away . A few nights ago I decided to see if I could locate Margaret or Jeff as I feel a longing to know how they are . I found a reference to Jeff pretty quickly , in a 20 year old newspaper but from headline to end of story it was like being kicked in the heart by a mule . The lovely baby boy Jeff brought to meet us was killed at age 17 , shortly after his grandmother 's death , shot by accPosted by Two of us worked dispatch , kept in radio contact with the pilots and answered the phone . I don 't remember exactly how many we had but the workhorses of the fleet were a bunch of 30 year old de Haviland DHC - 2 Beavers , equipped with floats . Each carried the pilot and three passengers . Riding in a Beaver was like putting a metal bucket over your head and sticking it in a rock tumbler . You could scream bloody murder at your seat companion , but there was no chance of them hearing you . The only plane we had of any size was a Grumman Goose , an " amphibian " plane which landed on its belly in the water . It had 12 seats , but we often packed it to the gills with 16 - 18 passengers . We 'd had a second Goose , until the bosses ' son had misjudged his elevation in a white - out and hit the mountainside behind the office the year before . Killed everyone on board , and though we could clearly see the wreckage from the office , it took three days for a crew to reach the site . That 's rugged country . Our office sat right on the cove , open water to your right , which served as the runway , and sweeping in a wide circle to the left a low jumble of fish sheds , boats pulled out of the water and turned belly - up to have the barnacles scraped off , and at the far edge of the circle , and directly across from us , the Coast Guard Station and docks . Big heavy coast guard cutters , even battleships , came and went daily in and out of those docks . Our pilots ranged from old - timers who 'd flown in WWII to flash young guys who didn 't have the sense God gave a goose . Any fool who does acrobatics in a 30 - year - old airplane is asking for trouble , and Bill found it . In the middle of a barrel roll he tore a wing off one of our Beavers and died aged 23 . But a few months earlier than that I climbed into the cockpit with him one day for a run to Massett when there were no passengers , just a package to deliver . We skimmed the crystal Pacific so closely I could have laid on the float and run my hands through it . You could see schooling fish in the transparent water . We flew over and around a rocky outcropping so covered with sea lions you could hear them barking their displeasure over the roar of the engine , and the stench ! Pig farms smell pleasant in comparison ! When I started gagging Bill laughed and pulled away . Skimming along at a couple of hundred feet , Bill saw a Native fishing boat , and sat the Beaver down beside it . He hopped out onto the float , bought a couple of salmon wrapped in brown paper , and we roared off toward Massett again . There ' Deb I 've had nose t ' grindstone this last week , preparing to present a talk at a conference , based on a paper I published ( with a couple of co - authors ) . It was an unexpected invitation , and very short notice , as one of my co - authors was scheduled to do it , but had to cancel at the last minute . And as any writer knows , the minute you start trying to put thought to word processor your door becomes a people magnet . I 'm on the condo board and people regularly come to the door , two or three a day sometimes , but never a dozen or more in a day before . However the minute I set to work the place became a madhouse of lost keys , leaking pipes which required inspection , requests for bike room security forms and visitor parking passes . People moving in and out did things they are not supposed to do , like jamming elevator doors and backing their truck up the sidewalk , completely blocking pedestrian access to the front door . The phone started ringing off the wall , the cats become absolutely desperate for lap - time , I was suddenly the most popular ( or at least needed ) person in the building . I 'm to the stage of script prepared , power point presentation built . Now I must polish and make sure what I have fits into the time allotted me . Tomorrow evening I do a run - through with a conference organizer to familiarize myself with the software , and Saturday I present , via webinar . The conference is in Orlando and I am not a traveler . I could say , " not a traveler on such short notice " , but that would be prevaricating as I am not a traveler - period . While my mind would love to gallop about the globe , my body dictates a radius of a few miles . Where I do travel is to the grocer 's , as we are looking at barren shelves , and I do so want to eat dinner tonight . Breakfast was a frozen bean burrito , to give you an idea of the state of my stores . ( I thawed it in the microwave first , I didn 't eat it frozen , but you know what I mean . ) So , off to Mount Shasta or Hood , or McKinley ( no , that 's wrong , McKinley 's the WalMart and today I 'm only going so far as Sobey 's . ) Anyway , off to climb the mountain whereupon the fruit and veg aisle is , aka my motivator , for woman cannot live on frozen bean burrito alone . Posted by There is a misconception that Buddhism is a religion and that you worship Buddha . Buddhism is a practice , like yoga . You can be a Christian and practice Buddhism . I met a Catholic priest who lives in a Buddhist monastery in France . He told me that Buddhism makes him a better Christian . I love that . ~ Thích Nhất HạnhToday is a gift , that 's why it is called " The Present " . May I meet this moment fully . May I meet it as a friend . ~ Sylvia BoorsteinLewis Richmond explains a Buddhist approach to aging ; Every breath , new chances ~ If you 're scientifically literate the world looks very different to you and that understanding empowers you ~ Neil deGrasse TysonThe mind is everything . What you think you become . ~ The Buddha TRAIN IN THE THREE DIFFICULT PRACTICES : The three difficult practices ) are : 1 . to recognize your neurosis as neurosis , 2 . then not to do the habitual thing , but to do something different to interrupt the neurotic habit , and 3 . to make this practice a way of life . ~ Pema ChodronI am of the nature to grow old . There is no way to escape growing old . I am of the nature to have ill health . There is no way to escape ill health . I am of the nature to die . There is no way to escape death . All that is dear to me and everyone I loveAre of the nature to change . There is no way to escape being separated from them . My actions are my only true belongings . I cannot escape the consequences of my actions . My actions are the ground upon which I stand . ~ The Plum Village Chanting , by Thích Nhất Hạnh Everything will be all right in the end . If it is not yet all right , it is not yet the end . ~ Indian Proverb " We do not have to create a world where differences are resolved by war . It is not our destiny to live in a world of destruction , tedium , and tragedy . We will create a world of peace . " ~ James Moore Self discipline is remembering what you really want . ~ Anon The corner stone of our non - violent revolution will be : Living within our needs . ~ William " Papa " Meloney I am trying to wake up , in the Buddhist sense , in other words , to be open and curious , not to recoil from discomfort and challenge but to embrace it and learn what it has to teach me . As Peace Pilgrim said : " Inner peace is not found by staying on the surface of life , or by attempting to escape from life through any means . Inner peace is found by facing life squarely , solving its problems , and delving as far beneath its surface as possible to discover its verities and realities . "
|
My husband is a contractor - Namely on helicopters . So I get a phone call today , and due to the grace of one of the branches of the military , the production line is through 2021 . It was supposed to end here in the next two years or something with the Army helicopters they were doing . Now , I do realize that in the current economic climate , I probably shouldn 't be complaining that he 's got a job for the next 10 years , unless he kills someone . Right ? I know I 've said that I imagined staying in Ohio . . . But being a military wife changed my fabric . It made me crave the nomadic life style we had . Now , shut up those of you who know that we never really left Clarksville , because when he left , I came and went as I pleased - Because up until he actually came home in September , I never really thought he was getting out . I thought he was going to be a lifer . I thought that we 'd move every few years and I 'd see a bit of the world . I thought he 'd get out after his 20 , at 39 , and we 'd then settle someplace that I may or may not hate and get G and L ( Because that 's all we had at the time ) , into college . Instead , we settled someplace that I fucking hate . A place I don 't understand . A place that , in all honesty , is to close to my parents . A place that my children are picking up a southern accent . A place that seems to have sucked me in and gives me such cabin fever every Spring and Fall that my skin feels like it is going to crawl off my body . A place that has such HUGE problems and absolute refuses to address them . . . Sometimes I wonder why the hell I ever had another kid . Two wasn 't enough ? I needed another screaming asshole to complete my life ? Someone to throw orange slices at me , screaming , " That 's MY NA - NA ( His pacifier ) " , while using me as his own personalTreadClimber - That is until he reaches the top and can 't figure out how to get down . That 's when I get a fist / foot / knee in the eye . BUTTTTT , make the mistake of taking him down and we will repeat the cycle again and again and again until I need a shot of Vodka . Having two that were already potty trained , could make their own lunch , could read wasn 't enough . . . No , I had to have another snuggly bundle of hell that refuses to sleep through the night at 14 months . Allah forbid we with hold that bottle at 2am - Cause if S ain 't happy , no one is fucking sleeping . There are days I wish there was a store that babies actually came from , so I could return him . Mainly , these are the days that start off cute - With him waking me up by screaming , " HEY ! ! ! ! " from his crib , and end with mommy in tears , S laughing , G and L locked in their bedroom because they had no idea that this little terror could wreak so much havoc on their lives . . . And somewhere in the middle of that day there are events like poop in my hair , 30 minutes of playing " Goddamn it , quit hitting print screen ! No one needs to see that ! " , " It 's great that you finally learned to pull up , but could you not pull the baby gate down on your head again " , " Yummies ? You want yummies ? " and then Yummies end up everywhere but his mouth , " That 's my phone . Not your ball . Let me give you a ball . S , stop pocket dialing Jessica . Seriously child . " . And I know I 'm not the only one who feels this way at least once a week . I know I 'm not the only one who has days like this with your children . . . Especially if you have more than one . Once you 've gotten one past the milestones that drove you fucking nuts , there comes the next ankle biter to annoy the crap out of you with shit his sibling has never done . It 's amazing that we 're all not a bunch of bitter alcoholics , honestly . Recently , I attended a funeral back in Dayton for my Great Aunt . There was some family there that I 'd not seen in probably 15 years . Not exactly sure how they are related to me , but close in age and related close enough that it would NOT be socially acceptable to sleep with them unless we were in an Arab country . Everyone was interested in S and my niece P , as well as G and L ( But they are older and not as cute ) . . . And we got around to talking about how generally well behaved my kids are . Now as a mother to a childless couple , there seems to be some need to try to convince them to procreate - Because it 's the greatest thing you 'll ever do with your life or trying to validate your choices through other people . Look at me . I don 't work . I 'm a stay home mom . My boys should be the end all be all of my life . Here 's the real secret . My life does not revolve around my children . I take care of them . I indulge them . I teach them the things they need to know to be compassionate accepting adults in today 's society . I make sure they know they are loved and I would do anything for them , up to and including maim / murder someone for them . But they are not my reason for being . Often I wonder how things for me / me and Dave would have turned out differently if I 'd not had G at 19 and L at 21 . . . ( Not that I 'd give them up for anything , except that little one . I 'd like to furlough him at the baby store from time to time . ) But I still found it VERY hard to keep my fucking Collective Mom Mouth ( Forever known as the CMM ) from saying , " Oh , having kids is the greatest thing I 've ever done . It 's so fulfilling . " What the fuck is wrong with me ? ? ? Dude , after the two weeks I 've had , tonight 's episode of So You Think You Can Dance was the most fulfilling thing in my life . A couple of things actually . 1 ) The extreme NEED to get the hell out of Kentucky and move to someplace with a beach . 2 ) The goal of NOT killing my children on a daily basis . 3 ) Avoiding sunburn at all costs . It 's not that I don 't like Kentucky . It 's that I hate Kentucky . I really do . I hate it more than I hate peas and creamed corn combined . I hate it more than I hate the word moist . I hate it more than hearing S grind his little chompers together . I hate it . Would I hate it anywhere ? I really don 't know . I 've lived in a few cities in my life - Dayton , Toledo , the Ft . Campbell , Ky area , and then here in Lexington . I 've spent excessive amounts of time in southern Arizona . I would never move back to Dayton - As we covered in the last post , it 's to close to my family . Toledo was just a bump in the road , Clarksville TN was a military town , but a place we might end up again because of Dave 's career . . . And after living here , I don 't think I 'd mind it so much . . . Or as much as I did . There 's something about Lexington that just makes me want to vomit on a daily basis . It might be the constant smell of horse ass . It might be UK 's need to let EVERYONE know how great they are when really it 's just Shut The Fuck Up , No You Don 't Need A New Arena To Keep Up With Louisville , World Leader In Cancer Researcher My Ass . It might be the entitlement that almost everyone around here seems to have because this place is Oh . So . Great . It might be the fact that no matter how hard I try , I keep ending up with bat shit crazy " Friends " and I want to be a recluse . ( I love you guys ! LOL ) And that might be the basis of it all . . . I have no issues with being 28 , married for 10 years with 3 kids , some college , 9 / 10ths of a high school diploma , no career , few marketable skills other than teaching a 6 year old " That 's what she said " jokes or finding awesome ass deals on diapers . ( 2 weeks ago - 4 packs of Huggies for 3 bucks each after rewards and coupons . WHAT . ) It might just be the broken dream of not living where I imagined living . Thinking back , I probably imagined that I 'd be living in the same town I went to school , near my parents and maybe my parents would have changed once I had kids - Which I 've just now realized that it 's never going to happen . But why , when I see commercials for ' The Glades ' or reruns of ' The Golden Girls ' does it make me want to jump out of my skin ? Why did leaving Clearwater Beach after only 2 days feel like I was leaving a child behind ? Why do I get like this every summer - Until October rolls around and I realize I might miss that changing season and the snow ? Well , first , let me explain something to you - Dave hates my parents . Not with an all consuming seething passion - We just spent 10 days with them in Florida . . . But he hates them with this under - bubbling wrath that makes him lash out internally or at me when they surface those feelings he has towards them . He 's tired of my father 's advice - " Why should I take your advice when you couldn 't stop your wife from abusing your daughter " . . . And he 's strait up tired of my mother 's bullshit , emotional roller coaster drama she tries to put me on . I didn 't have it great growing up . I was the oldest of 4 , with an undiagnosed bipolar mother , a disconnected father , and I took the brunt of my mother because I was the one who was there - Emotionally and physically . I was kicked out at 18 , didn 't graduate high school because of it , and that 's how my life with Dave began . The entire time that I was dating Dave under her roof , my mother swore that Dave would never make anything of himself , never be able to support a family a family , tried to get him arrested , in trouble with the military and fired from a job . ( Yeah . I know . ) But , honestly , if you met my mother on the street , or at say one of my kid 's birthday parties , you 'd like her . She 's not socially inappropriate in an obvious way . So - We 're in Florida , a trip that Dave and I didn 't want to go on due to all the drama with my family leading up to it . ( Call me about 100 bucks I borrowed two years ago while you 're in the process of buying a house for one of my brothers ? Seriously ? ) But the kids wouldn 't go without us , and they really wanted to go - And while we 're down there , the advice from my father starts , and the didacticness of my mother 's personality comes out - And she 's constantly swinging from my brother 's girlfriend to me with who 's her new BFF that day . . . As my mother doesn 't see me as a daughter or a family member anymore , and hasn 't for 10 years . She sees me as someone that she has to have in her life because my spawn are her grandkids , and I swear to DEITY that sometimes she forgets WHY my spawn are her grandkids . But I digress . And the comments about how we 're overspending our money begin and how they ( She ) isn 't paying for anything extra for us and we 're on our own if we run out of money ( Mainly because she felt we were eating out to much because we didn 't want to eat out of a cooler in the Universal Studios parking lot with them ) . . . And the financial planning advice starts from my father - Again , the man who just bought one of my brothers a home because he couldn 't afford his rent . And then the " We 'll meet you at X in Y minutes " , and 2 hours later no one has shown up - Or the " You have to be out of the hotel room at 11 , sorry , we know you wanted to go swimming with the kids again " but what I 'm not going to walk down the hotel room hallway to tell you is that I paid 30 bucks for a late check out for one room that you could have taken a shower in and played with them on the beach for a bit longer . Dave 's seething at various points of the vacation . And , with all my issues with my family and my brother 's whore , I felt that I handled most things very well - There wasn 't much that was going to interfere with my children 's enjoyment of Shamu or their 10th time riding Spiderman . . . Or their first time on a real beach and S just being S . But after all the hell that we went through - Most of it I can 't remember now that I 've run it down with my therapist , all the fighting Dave and I did over my parents , and the agreement that we came to about the next when it comes to my family , after my 84 year old Grandparents leave in July . . . We decided we 're done with my family . We 're done with the judgement about how we live our lives . We 're done with the assumption that because Dave makes above the 50k mark ( Barely ) that we should be better off financially than we are . ( Have you ever been a gov 't contractor , Dad ? No ? Shut the fuck up , then . ) We 're tired of the comments that we 're to hard on our kids because we expect certain behaviors out of them and don 't tolerate others , vacation or not . ( At least I don 't back hand mine every time one of them says something that I don 't like , Mom . ) I 'm tired of S being thrown into the Olympics against his cousin that is 10 months older than him . . . Well , assholes , let 's put her in the Olympics ( If you don 't know , then ask another mom . Fuck . ) against my kids when they were about to turn 2 . I can 't help it if you don 't remember how smart G and L were at that age - But do not give me shit that she was walking at 10 months and S refuses to crawl at a year . I 'm just tired of , still , after Dave and I being married for 10 years , after getting kicked out of the house and the family 10 years ago and trying to get back in various times over the years , that none of what I 've done with my kids or that Dave is good enough for them yet . I 'm not good enough for them . The way I choose to live my life . . . Where we choose to live . . . None of it is good enough . . . It 's what I do . When the shit hits the wall , I retreat . Away from everyone that might be able or willing to help or listen . I retreat into Dave . I retreat into the kids . I call my therapist in a mad panic of " GET ME IN NOW BEFORE MY BRAIN EXPLODES ! ! ! " . I retreat because I know that if I pull one more thing onto my bipolar 2 plate , I will downward into a funk that will require a very large amount of medication to pull me out of . Or liquor . Or both . It 's like this , friends . . . I can only juggle so many plates at once . The plates I choose to constantly juggle are my kids and that man child I married . They are the ones I never put down . My next choice to juggle are the ones that directly pertain to them - In the past two weeks , it 's been another car accident , an epic battle with our health insurance over $ 700 , L switching schools to be with G but then not being able to continue on to 2nd grade because of the interim principle 's " philosophical objections " against little boys skipping grades and not wanting to start a precedent at her school and that we 'd broken the law by skipping him a grade ( Well , he skipped a grade at another school , lady . ) . . . Among the regular day to day annoyances of raising three boys and a man child . Then , I choose to take on secondary plates - My family , Dave 's family , and friends . I can only handle so much bullshit that extends from either of those three areas before I want to fucking snap , and they all fill up the same bullshit jar . My family fills it up relatively fast with intruding and nonsense questions like , " How are you going to come up with the money to fix your car ? " or " How much money do you have right now ? " . Well , being that you just bought one of my siblings a house and you are not , nor have you been actively financing my life in over 10 years , you don 't get to ask me those questions . AND , we 're all going to Florida together as one huge happy family in about a week . Shoot me in the fucking head now - Hence where all the money questions are coming from . ( Lyndsey , I 'm probably going to be calling . ) Then if I get one more email about some old lady I 've never met 's sternum , I 'm going to scream . Thank 's Dave 's mom . And then there 's the " friends " . And I use that term loosely . I have a few . I 've recently met a few nice , non bat shit crazy women . I 've started taking part in a playgroup . And then I posted about my issues with the interim principle . ( Not the full story about how I grabbed my balls and called the Kentucky Department of Education on her ass , but hey . Let the triffling tattle tale think that I 'm just a ranting pissed off mom . I 'm ok with that . ) And some some pissy bitch decided to send my vent , which wasn 't anything that I 'd not said to her , her boss , the principle and admin . dean of L 's current school , and the head of primary education for Kentucky to the principle in question . It got brought up in a fucking AMBUSH of a meeting , because they thought I 'd still be bringing my 2nd child to their school . And then she thought that she 'd go ahead and lecture me on internet safety because nothing on the internet is secure . Let me start off by saying that I was mortified . Not that she read what I wrote . I stand behind everything that I put out in public . I was mortified that someone that I 'd never met felt the need to interject themselves into my life in such a way that could have such dire and horrible consequences for L . Secondly , I was pissed for everyone else who posts personal things on the playgroup message 's boards . Thirdly , I don 't need a fucking lecture on internet safety . I 'm not a fucking 12 year old girl . Don 't fucking ambush me in front of the soon to be principle because I ran your ass up the flag pole to your boss , your bosses boss , and the State of fucking Kentucky . But again , the trifling bitch who was doing the interim principle a SERVICE by letting her know what I said didn 't know the entire story . . . Or that I 'd actually done something about it besides sit on the internet and whine . Anyway , so long post short . . . Back to the plates . My arms are short . And if you know me , I make sure that the plates closest to me are the ones that stay up . It 's nothing personal . If I don 't answer your phone call at 10 : 30pm , it 's because that my insomniac ass is finally trying to sleep . If I don 't answer every one of your text messages immediately , it 's because I 've got so much on every one of those closest to me plates that they come first . They have to . They are my priority and always will come first . . . Dave and I officially became a couple on April 30th , 2000 . I was 17 . He was 19 . 6 months , to the day later , he left me for basic training . 7 months after that , on May 26th , 2001 we got married . I was 18 and he was 20 . 18 months after that , G was born - this perfect little non alien - headed baby . 2 years , almost to the day - and a deployment later , L was born . ( My first question when he finally shot out was " What color is his hair ? " " Oh it 's beautiful , it 's red " " GOD FUCKING DAMN IT ! ! ! " I screamed . ) . And then 5 years and 8 months later , S was born . Little , sweet , chicken legged S . This isn 't going to be a long post - Just one long enough to say this in my own way . I haven 't always been in love with him . There have been quite a few times where I 've downright hated him . There have been times where I 've done the life insurance calculation in my head . ( If you 're reading this and you don 't know what the Life Insurance Calculation is , you 're in the wrong place . ) There have been times where I 've intentionally ignored his calls . There have been times where I 've wanted to leave him . There have been two times where I 've actually left . . . And then realized that there wasn 't enough money in the bank account for me to stay gone for long . We 've thrown things , we 've screamed , we 've locked each other out of the house , I 've pushed him out of a moving vehicle ( It was only going 5 miles an hour . Shut it . ) , he left me in the post - partum unit after G was born to go home and get some sleep because he was tired . . . But I love my husband . And like the ebb and flow of a marriage and any relationship that 's lasted as long as ours has as young as ours started , I am in love with him . No matter what stupid shit he 's done on whatever day that 's got me looking at him like he 's a new level of dumbass I 've never seen , ( Seriously , today , he put the basket for the ice maker back in the freezer after it 's been sitting in the cabinet for two years , without washing it , and then put a bag of ice in it . ) he usually does something to redeem himself . How could I not love him . The man went to war for us because it was the only job he could find . He went to Korea when his children were 2 and a half and 6 months for 18 months because it was the better of the two options - Go for 18 and get out for good or Go for a year , come home for 6 months and go back to Iraq . He worked his ass off in a job he hated for 6 years for a Government he didn 't support just to make sure that G , L and I had what we needed - To prove my family wrong about him . After he got out , he worked 4 years in a backbreaking job he tolerated striving for something better for all of us that he finally got - And you know what he said when I congratulated him ? " It 's no big deal - I do it for you guys . " . And right now , after jumping down his shit for annoying me most of the day , I got hungry , at midnight . You know what he 's doing ? Out getting the hamburger I couldn 't live without . He 's put up with my bat shit crazy ass for 11 years . He gets me . He still laughs at me when I tell him something looks like a penis , even if it doesn 't even remotely resemble a dick . He tells me that I 'm dumb when I tell him a horrible joke . He acts interested when I tell him that some dumb cunt wore an IUD on her head to the Royal Wedding . He takes the spiders outside . He 's far from perfect . He looks like a cross between the lost member of ZZTop and the missing cast member of a Pirates of the Caribbean Movie . . . He 's caused me to have TWO redheaded children and THREE boys . . . ( As I 'm typing this , I 'm also watching DVR 'd Royal Wedding coverage , so excuse the interjections . She 's got a cracked rib ? But she refuses to miss the wedding ? What a fucking trooper . ) I finally got tired of hearing Dave bitch . He had 5 fillings done about 6 months ago . He told that god damn piece of shit dentist that the tooth was bothering him , but they told him it was fine . And it kept bothering him . ( Awwww , her mom isn 't a cunt and trying to upstage her daughter ! I 'm impressed ! ) I made him go to Urgent Care . They gave him anti - biotics . He got better . Started bothering him again . He bitched and moaned for about 3 weeks . Now . I can NOT stand it when a grown fucking assed man who spent a year in a war zone and then 18 months in Korea and somehow managed to make it through surgery on his own can 't pick up the phone and handle something as easy as making a dentist appointment . I can 't comprehend how it doesn 't cross his mind . I don 't understand how everyone of those aircraft he has a part of inspecting doesn 't fucking crash - Because if he is anything at work like he 's at home . . . Well you see where I 'm going with this . Finally , I broke down and called another dentist who bailed me out of a jam earlier this year . They got him that afternoon . Great . ( God , the British don 't age well . Is it me , or do they tend to start looking like frogs after the age of 60 ? Maybe it 's because they start losing their teeth . Shitty dental care there , too ) The tooth that had been bothering him was almost completely abscessed . Root Canal / Crown or pull it . Now , we have GREAT dental insurance , but it still cost us 200 bucks . Obviously , he opts for the Root Canal / Crown option . Otherwise , we 'd be heading for divorce court . I refuse to be married to a man who doesn 't have all this teeth - Real or otherwise . I might live in Kentucky - But I refuse to look like we live in Kentucky . LOL Anyway , now I shouldn 't be bitching about 200 bucks out of pocket for 1300 of work , but I 'm pissed that we have to spend it when it should have been a simple filling 6 months ago . So , he goes back the next day . ( Really , Camilla . . . Should you REALLY be there ? T - A - C - K - Y . I don 't care if you 're married to his father or not . The British are so much politer than I am . HOLY SHIT SARAH FERGESON ' S CHILDREN . WE COULD PLAY SKEE - BALL THROUGH YOUR HEAD PIECES . One of them looks like an ornate toilet seat . Not to mention that you look like a common 5 dollar whores - The kind you pay 5 dollars to go away . FUCK . ) 3 hours in the chair . They can 't finish it . Has to go back Thursday . Thank god he spent Wednesday night home , because I came down with a combination of Ebola / Aids / The Plague / Pregnancy / Death . I was up all night puking up my toenails . ( All white / ivory wedding party ? Bold choice . . . And for 85 years old , she is rocking that yellow like a 20 year old . - I 'm not all bitter and angry . LOL ) And the entire time that I 'm up on Wednesday night puking up my toenails , he 's whining like a little bitch about how bad it hurts Well you stupid asshole , had you called the dentist before now , maybe it wouldn 't be that bad . Yeah . It makes me a bad wife . I don 't have sympathy when you continously do stupid things with the same result , expecting the result to change the next time you procrastinate . Not that he wasn 't helpful to me on Wed , but still . It 's a never ending cycle So he 's back at the Dentist on Thursday , another 3 . 5 hours in the chair . Comes home at 7pm . " OWWWWWWWW , It hurtssssssssss . . . . " Really ? Great . ( Ok , I 've seen the dress on CNN before this , and it 's beautiful . Absolutely beautiful . . . And how she managed to keep it a secret until now ? Amazing . ) " I 'm hungryyyyyy . " Really , buddy ? And then I start puking again . And then he realizes that it 's not all about him , because he can stand up without falling over or throwing up . And he mans up and takes care of everything else for the night , while I laid on the couch . ( Needs bigger flowers . Not bigger than your head , but smaller than your fist ? Come on . ) He took the kids to school for me today , too . Big improvement over what would have usually happened . So the question I pose is this : How do you make a 30 year old man FINALLY realize it 's not all about him ? Mothers know that sometimes we have to work through the pain and just do what we need to do , where as men come down this a freaking sniffle and it 's like they are going to die on the rack while being boiled in hot oil ? ( Longest . Isle . Ever . ) I do realize that it 's a little late in the marriage to try to sleep train the man now , but shit . I 'm tired of feeling like the only adult in the house most of the time . ( Oh , no wonder the chairs were turned that way . They can 't see the actual ceremony anyway . LAME . Could you imagine being one of those people stuck in the corner ? I 'd be watching it live on my iPhone Via my BBC App just so I could see what I was hearing ! ) And just now , after watching him take his pain meds , and asking him if he needed to take them to work with him , getting told no , I get a text that said , " Did I leave my meds at home ? " " Yes . I asked you if you needed them , and you said no . " " I thought I put them in my lunchbox . " " Reread my last text . That makes NO sense . " . No , dummy . I asked you that as you had them in your hand . How could they be in your lunchbox if they were also in your hand ? Did they have sex and have little lortab and amoxicillian babies ? I swear to god , if I weren 't around . . . Except I know that he can do it . He has done it . So either he reverts to childhood , or just gets lazy . And I 'm not sure what pisses me off more . Aw . . . He told her that she looked so beautiful . Stop whispering , you too ! It 's almost to cute , making me want to vomit again . Giggle . So much hope . Wait until he needs a fucking root canal and won 't call the dentist himself . I always want someone to stand up and scream " NO KATE , YOU CAN ' T MARRY HIM ! ! ! YOU ' RE CARRYING MY BABY " or " NO WILLIAM ! ! ! YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVED THAT COW LIKE NOTHING YOU ' D EVER SEEN BEFORE ! ! ! " . . . But it never happens that way . Just someone coughing at at the most inopportune time , getting my heart all aflutter . I think Kate 's dad forgot his line , " Her mother and I " . I can totally understand him not wearing a ring . He can 't wear it at work . It 's annoying , they get lost . We 've lost to many to count . Not worth it . And honestly . . . Does it matter ? It 's not like anyone in the free world isn 't going to know 2 things . 1 ) He 's Prince Fucking William Something Something Luis . B ) He just got married in a 34 million dollar wedding ceremony . 3 ) He 's probably going to Leap Frog over his father for the British Crown . While it might seem like a wingman all in itself , I 'm going with it 's probably the greatest birthright , cockblock ever . When 2 billion people watch your wedding , your cheating days are a bit numbered . So , they are married now . Are they going to watch the remainder of their ceremony as spectators ? Church of England weddings are confusing . I 'm waiting for them to bring out slaves and lions . Wait . Then this bitch is yawning . You 're personally invited to the social event of the century and it 's boring you . Send your invite to me so I can comment from the actual Abbey and not couch quarterback it while Shane 's screaming at me about not being able to pull all the laundry out of the basket . That nun with the white hair is sleeping . I 'm having a hard time staying awake through this guy 's reading , too . Shane likes Boys Chamber Choir music . . . I think he 's faking me out to make me think he likes the music so he can turn the Xbox on and off . Oh wait , they are standing up again . But that Nun is still sleeping . ^ 5 to her , I suppose . I guess when you 've lived that long , you are allowed to sleep through whatever the hell you want to , right ? Honestly , they look happy . . . Really happy in comparison to Charles and Di . . . I 'm not a romantic - y , dream of being a princessy girl , but ya gotta hope that they can make it under all the public pressure . . . Or hope that he 's better at hiding his 40 year affair . Now , we had been without cell phones for almost 4 years . The last phone I owned was a Samsung Blackjack . I notoriously had gotten phones from AT & T that wouldn 't work properly or would be afflicted with every known issue , or just wouldn 't work after they sent it to me . Once , people would call me and the calls would be routed to some woman 's house in Cincinnati , Ohio . They couldn 't reproduce the problem , but her home number was the same as my voice mail land line number . ( It 's not free to call your voice mail . Your voice call goes to a land line number . It 's the voice mail platform number . You 've been educated . ) So I had to change my phone number . Anyway , way back in 2007 or some shit , I started having issues with that phone and got a few replacements . I sent all the phones back like I always had . One day , I opened up my bill , and it was for 1600bucks or some shit . WTF , indeed . Well , they never received any of the equipment and couldn 't track it by any of the tracking numbers THEY had given me which means it never got scanned by the warehouse which means I never mailed it which means I had to pay for it . Full price . 3 of them at 500 a pop . I still owe My Nemesis like 1600 bucks . Says them . Every time I get a bill , I dispute it . I will dispute it until the day I die . Fast forward . Dave starts working for Lockheed . Discounts of epic proportions - With whom , you ask ? Of course , it would be my old nemesis , AT & T . But he almost needs a phone for work now and I 've turned into this playgrouping , birthday partying , playdating , soccer mom version of myself that I don 't understand but frankly , I get tired of getting lost in this god forsaken fuck hole . Yes . It 's a circle . I know . Find a spoke and get on it . They will take you to New Circle or downtown . But if you 're not familiar with the roads to the spokes or downtown . . . God forbid I try to venture OUTSIDE of Lexington like I did for a birthday party the other weekend . Anyway , so we start this process by trying to see how much all this would be costing us monthly by setting up a plan online . Entering our information , trying to see if we have a deposit . BOOM - We 've got a refurbished phone ordered . Ok . Now , I don 't know about you , but yes . I accidentally ordered a cellphone from my nemesis . So great . We decide to go down to the store and get the account set up properly with two phones . . . Because some how we went from one free phone that would get passed back and forth to 2 iPhones and data plans and text messaging and OMGMYHEADISGOINGTOEXPLODE . We go to the store . Get the phones . Get cases . Get the account set up the way we think it 's supposed to be set up until we get the accidental phone ( God , it sounds like a pregnancy that you don 't know what to do with at this point , doesn 't it ? ) And things are great . We download apps and ring tones and Angry Birds and blah blah blah . We get the accidental phone , take it back to the store , get the line canceled . . . And think and are reassured that everything is fine , once Dave 's discount is applied everything will be great , the first bill will be like a hundred bucks . ( Massive discount . ) But then the bill comes . And it 's like $ 400 bucks . And I 'm having PTSD flashbacks of wanting to strangle My Nemesis ' customer service representatives that require deep breathing exersizes to keep from murdering someone or committing Hari Kari with a plastic spoon . I call them . " Well let me look into that for you . . . Oh I see , you canceled a line outside your 30 day Buyer Remorse Period . You 're liable for all the charges used on the phone plus the activation fee . " " So who 's job is it to tell us that . The interwebz ? The mailer in the box we didn 't open because our intent was to return the phone unused or Customer Service 's after we called Customer Service and couldn 't cancel the phone ? The guy at the store ? . " ( Now , folks . I worked for 2 years in Sprint Call Centers . The thing I hate MOST is people not wanting to do their jobs . You are there to do one thing and do one thing well . Satisfy the customers you come into contact if you can , if they have a verifiable and just issue with their account . This woman did NOT want to do her job . She wanted to keep her average call time down . Don 't give me shit for giving her shit for making her do her job . ) " You know what , don 't even bother . With our corporate discount , we don 't pay activation fees anyway . No skin off anyone 's teeth . " So she goes in and waves all the fees associated with the Pregnancy Line . Then she finds another problem . " Are you fucking kidding me ? Seriously . My Nemesis is the reason we went without cellphones for 4 years and give me time to port my number back out , and I 'll go without one again , so help me . " 45 MORE minutes of my life wasted on the phone with My Nemesis . Thank you Whatever is out there that I can talk and text at the same time . . . Dave got some relatively amusing texts about firebombing My Nemesis . But anyway , send me your number . We 'll text . I have UNLIMITED TEXTING ! ! ! ! ! Until I get pissed off enough to cancel this fucking thing . Or throw it through a wall . Or at Dave . . . Which I 'm pretty close , because the GPS on it got us into a car accident . Ever have one of those weekends that make you wish you could just fall off the face of the planet ? One of those weekends that absolutely everything went wrong and you forgot to bring your benzos to get through the moment when you wanted to choke a cop ? One of those weekends that you just have to ( Sorta ) laugh when it 's over and hope that your kids remember that you laughed at it - In turn , giving them coping skills ? On Friday , I had been out most of the day . On my way from picking up Garret , I sent Dave a text . " Make sure Liam 's dressed . I 'm taking them out after we drop you off at work . " . " All he has to do is put his shoes back on . " " He needs socks , too . " . Get EVERYONE in the car , get Dave to work , have a few more errands to run before we go to Kids Place . . . But I happen to ask Liam , " Do you have socks on ? " " No . " Of course he doesn 't . Why doesn 't he ? Because his father is absolutely useless when it comes to anything but a Blackhawk 97 % of the time . ( The ONLY reason I keep him around - He does laundry . ) After I get done buying socks for the kids , it 's entirely to late to drive across town in rush hour traffic to go to Kid 's Place and then make it back on time to pick up Dave . Disappointed kids . Bribe them with Chick - Fil - A and massive cupcakes . We all know I 'm not above bribery . Pick Dave up . Go to Buy Buy Baby to look at a new umbrella stroller . . . I shouldn 't say umbrella stroller , because these things are the size of mini strollers , but have the price tags of full size strollers . 189 for an umbrella stroller ? Bring it on , bitch . Although , I 'm a firm believer in " You get what you pay for " . I 'm also tall . I don 't want to buy a 10 dollar stroller from Wal - Hell and spend the next two days before it breaks using it hunched over like Quasimodo with tits and better hair . Now , I don 't know what happened to the husband I married who deferred all baby making purchases to me , but he wasn 't there Friday . We spent over an hour in Buy Buy Baby arguing over the pros and cons of three strollers . OVER AN HOUR . If he had just gone with the one I wanted , we could have been out of there in 10 minutes . But no , we had to do that bullshit compromise thing . And the stroller we settled on is great . If you don 't have to take it off pavement or relatively level grass . But it 's an umbrella stroller . You can only expect so much out of a 150 stroller . Right ? Or maybe I 'm just nuts . Saturday . Oh Saturday , how I want to kick you in the teeth . Wake everyone up . . . It 's SCIENCE CENTER DAY ! ! ! ! Apparently it 's also " Thunder Over Louisville Day " , but I had no idea about all that noise . So we get up , get going down there , start following the GPS on the phone . . . And all of a sudden there 's blocked streets and traffic . WTF . Then we start seeing signs for parking . Some dude was renting his driveway for 30 bucks a car . So we 're all like . . . Hmmmmm Following the GPS , and it tells us to turn right . We turn right . We get hit in the ass end of our car . By a city employee . A city employee who went strait through a right turn only lane . Fuck me . Well , because every cop this side of the Ohio River is at Thunder Over Louisville , it took 2 , yes 2 . . . TWO , hours to get a cop out there . We stood outside and sat in the car for 2 hours with the boys in the car while everyone and their cousin drove by us , almost hitting us multiple times trying to cut each other off . We had a one stop and ask " Is there a reason that this car is parked here ? " , to which I responded , " This is where we 've decided to watch the Air Show . . . After we had an accident . " That was the 2nd stupidest statement / question I 've ever heard from a cop . The first was when we dialed 911 for a car fire , they sent a cop . ( Why not an firetruck , Who the fuck knows . They did the same thing to a friend who was giving birth on her porch . Fucking Clarksville , Tn . ) He looked at our car and said , I shit you not , " Yup , you got a fire under thur . . . " and radioed for a fire truck . We 've had a week . We really have . Not the good kind of week but not the bad kind of week - Just the kind of week that makes you wonder why you had kids at all . Dave and I finally bought cellphones , after 4 years of not having them . Probably wasn 't the best decision , because all G and L want to do is play Angry Birds . If I get woken and asked if they can play Angry Birds at 6am one more time , I might end up in jail for killing one of them . G has finally gotten his act together at the new school and he 's doing wonderfully . He loves his new class , wants to do school work again , and is just overall happy . . . And it 's a great thing to see from the kid who was eating furniture earlier in the year to relieve stress . I really don 't have much to say about G since his issues have mostly been worked through . I do need to haul his little happy ass back to the kid head shrinker , though . . . S is still refusing to crawl . 10 months , 10 days , and the little fatty is happy scooting his ass across the floor while sitting upright . It 's comical . He 's trying to pull up , but . . . Well , I 'm fine with him not crawling . I 'm lazy . I don 't want to have to childproof this bitch . Parts of my house look like they belong in an episode of Hoarders . This is what my computer desk looks like AFTER I spent 20 minutes cleaning it off earlier today . How baby inappropriate is that ? As we all know , I realize my inadquecies in life - Keeping my computer desk clean is one of them . Anyway , the longer he doesn 't walk or pull up on shit , the longer I don 't have to worry about Natural Selection taking out my baby . I do figure if he 's not smart enough not to pull the coffee cup with candy canes down on his head , he 's probably not smart enough to get by in 2028 ( When he turns 18 ) . Also , I type this as he 's actively trying to to a bottle of Febreeze air freshner that 's on the coffee table . He 'll only do it once , right ? Nah , he 's one of my kids . Probably at least 4 times . And L . . . L is going to be the death of me . Mark my words . Put me on deathwatch . com . Take bets . I 'll leave whomever wins my computer desk , everything included . Now , he 's skipped Kindergarten this year . He wants to skip 2nd grade next year . Honestly , if he really tried , he could do it . He 's S M A R T , smart . ( Not really bragging . . . It 's just the truth . ) But because he 's so freaking smart , he knows exactly how to entertain himself while he 's supposed to be doing homework for 4 hours . Sharpen pencil . Make trapezoids out of extra pencils . When mom walks by the kitchen , pretend I 'm writing something . Poke holes in my eraser . Stare at the ceiling and pretend that it 's constellations . Sharpen pencil again . Smack myself in the head with my pencil a few times . Stand up . Sit down . Stand up . Sit down . Color pencil topper with most annoying pencil ever . Sharpen pencil again . The kid lives in his own world and he 's the ruler , regardless of what mom says . Homework is usually a chore . Not because it 's hard for him , but because it 's easy peasy and he already knows how to spell most of the words given . So , for 4 hours yesterday and then a while today , the above was repeated until the twisted all the graphite out of his pencil . Why did this make me so angry , you ask ? 1 ) I 'm fucking nuts . 2 ) It was a specially ordered $ . 89 pencil for left handed people from www . lefthandstore . com with hard graphite . Wouldn 't smear but damn , it was a bitch to erase . I buy PACKS of pencils for a dollar . Then , I noticed he 'd not done a THING on his homework again . Now , we 've told him MULTIPLE times that he either gets his head in the game or we 're holding him back . That 's his worst nightmare . That 's even worse than the nightmare where bees were pulling off his arms and legs . Worse than the one where Daddy was eating him . On the top ten things he doesn 't want to do in his lifetime , repeating 1st grade is number 1 . So , in one of my finer moments of parenting , I grabbed his homework , tore it up and threw it away , as he was shrieking his little 6 year old head off . No homework means no lunch bunch ( Where they get to eat in the classroom on Friday / Monday ) or recess on Friday . No homework means failed spelling test . Failed spelling test means home consequences . There 's a lot of reasons for this , but the main one boils down to this : I refuse to let my children be stupid , regardless of the state of the US Education System . After talking to Dave , I talked to Liam . He 's going to write his teacher a note that says why he 's not got homework and why his mom tore it up . I told him that he 's got the rest of the year to prove to me that he belongs in 2nd grade and not in 1st again , because going to 1st grade again would be very boring for him , more boring than it is now . ( As he said . ) Then he told me I was ruining his life . I told him that he doesn 't know what a ruined life is until he has a child like himself . He laughed at me because he understood what I was saying . I don 't like us . We 're crazy , catty , bitchy , psychotic people who will do all kinds of things to you in the name of friendship . I find it creepy that if you spend enough time with women , our periods sync up - Because we all need to be popping out kids at the same time . . . So we can all be bedraggled , hormonal , exhausted crazy ass bitches together . And then you have me . My type of mom . The one that forgets to bring the sunscreen . The one that feels that if we 're at a park , fruit snacks and pretzels are an acceptable lunch and if you bitch , I 'm taking that away . The one who tells her son that she 's going to knock the smart ass out of him and does it in public . The mom who realizes that her job isn 't to impress the rest of the moms because she 's not going to EVER impress any of them , but still hasn 't figured out how to fit in with them either - Because she 's going bat shit crazy day in and day out . So I spent the day in public ( GASP ) at an outing with a playgroup that I 'm still kind of dipping my toes into the water ( Please reread the line about figuring out how to gracefully fit in with the moms that I find hysterical ) . I 'd had an extremely bad experience with a playgroup here in Lexington in the past , so on top of my normal reservations , I 'm also concerned that someone is going to start telling people something like . . . I 'm leaving my kids home alone at night to score percocet . So anyway , we show up , and G and L were off . They don 't care what age the kids they are playing with are , they just like to play . S and I sat with some of the other moms . S played with some other babies his age , moms talked . . . And as I was sitting there listening ( And mostly talking ) , it kind of hit me - There 's really no reason to be judgmental of anyone 's parenting style . Obviously , you 're going to gravitate who believe in the same sort of things and raise their children the same way you do . . . But just because I feed S peanut butter on a regular basis and you don 't doesn 't make me a bad mother - It makes me a mother who 's made different choices than you . Just because you coddle your child to the point that I want to smack both of you doesn 't make you a dumbass ( Ok , maybe a little ) , but you 've made different parenting choices than I have . It doesn 't make me white trash that I tell my kids to go play or I 'm going to bury them in the back yard as much as it makes you an uppity bitch for rolling your eyes at my comments . Because someone does something that you would NEVER do doesn 't make them a bad mother . It just makes them a mother . Neither of us have to like the choices that we 've made individually , but at least show a little respect for the fact that we 're both doing the best we can because the manual to the ankle biters is still stuck in the uterus . Yesterday , I was changing his diaper , and he rolled over and was reaching for a toy . I asked him , " What are you trying to get little man . . . ? " . To my total and utter fucking shock , he said , " Ball . " . I thought maybe it was a fluke , so a few minutes later I took the ball from him , held it out of his reach and said , " What 's this ? " and he said , " Ball . " . Now , for those of you that are thinking that it 's really early for him to be speaking , I absolutely agree . But he 's been babbling with intent for 4 . 5 months now . He started saying DaDa at 5 months . When he realized that Dave was responding to it , he started screaming DADA whenever he wanted to picked up , was hungry , wanted to be played with . . . When he was hospitalized in Feb of 2011 , he started with MAMA . . . And when the nurses were holding him down for IV sticks , he would be screaming MAMAMAMAMAMA at the top of his lungs . If Dave 's holding him and he wants me , he will reach for me and say , " MAMA " . I remember G and L 's first words like they were yesterday - Because it meant the beginning of a new relationship with my children . All that talking to them ( Or possibly myself . Remember , it was a lonely time for me . LOL ) turned them into verbalizing little things . G 's first word was Cookie , as he was staring at the top of the fridge , where the Biter Biscuits were kept . L 's first word was Monkey , while reaching for his most prized toy as a toddler . At 17 months , G was commanding us to draw happies , sads , shakies , copters , airpains , nakes . . . Happy Faces , Sad Faces , Guitars , Helicopters , Airplanes and Snakes every place we went - Every time he could find a Magna - Doodle . By 2 , G and L knew all their letters and numbers by sight . When I took them for their 2 and 4 year well babies , I had the ever present Magna - Doodle , and was entertaining L with drawing letters and having him tell me what letter it was - The Dr said that there was no way that an almost 2 year old ( He was 22 months ) could know all his letters and numbers 1 - 10 by memory and I must be doing them in order . I handed him the " Coulie " and told him to try . L nailed every letter , and G nailed every sound . I guess I should have known I was in for it then with those two . . . The Dr warned me that he 'd never seen another child in his 15 years of practicing medicine do something like that . Anyway , I guess the long way to the short point is this : I love that S 's talking before he 's crawling . I love that he has such a strong attachment to Mom and Dad . I love that the milestones that are coming first are the ones that are so important to Dave and I . . . Because we love talking to our kids . We love the things our kids say . We love joking with them . I love the mindless babbling of a toddler as he 's watching his favorite Gabbas . . . I feel like I failed G and L . I feel like I have to fit 3 first years of life into one child . Because of the issues with schooling the other two , I feel like I 'm missing out on so much time of those three first years crammed into one . I feel like I have a stronger attachment to S over G and L . Not a favorite child thing , but an attachment . Extreme Mommy Guilt . I realize that I have done the best I could with the situation that I was given at the time . . . But it doesn 't make it any less hard remembering some of the days . . . And being that it 's all this ball of emotion rolled into one - The joy of watching my baby grow up , but knowing that the time is entirely to short , the fact that my other two grew up to fast due to situations that we had NEVER planned for . . . Just have to take it as it comes , right ? . . . Because the world will spin madly on . . . My boys are relatively well behaved . . . Relative to what , you ask ? A Hurricane . ( I was going to make a tsunami joke , but even I felt it would be to soon . ) Game night goes something like this . " What are we playing ? " " UNO ! " " KERPLUNK ! " " NO OPERATION ! " " NO SORRY SILDERS ! ! ! " , All in one single scream that sounds like it 's coming from the same person . Which obviously causes S to pull a " WTF " scream - Which in turn causes one of the three cats to become terrified and run into the kitchen / bathroom / basement and immediately begin to vomit . At least they do it on tile . So we pick Kerplunk , and G thinks he 's being sneaky and putting the sticks in so only he 's going to win . . . He 's giggling like a little bitch , thinking he 's got it in the bag . L 's hogging all the marbles to put in the tube . Argument ensues , S starts screaming again , another cat bolts out of the living room . Now 's when I decide it 's time to get out the water bottle to spray any offenders . It 's better than slapping them on the nose with an newspaper , right ? The newspaper would probably be more effective . Kerplunk starts . The rule is that you have to hand your sticks to daddy so he can put them away . Instead of putting them away , he starts using them as Walrus teeth . Boys immediately voice opinions that range from " GROSSSSSSS " to " LET ME TRYYYYYYY " . . . Great . Thanks Dave . Dave gets sprayed . Finally , someone pulls a stick that marbles fall . Of course it has to be L . Now , I 've commented on his reaction to losing board games before . He gets sprayed in the face . He laughs . Meltdown averted . G starts begging to be sprayed . I tell him no . His turn . He pulls a stick - His own " sneaky stick " . " AWWWW CRAPPPPPPPP ! ! ! I forgot about it ! ! ! " . We 're laughing at him . He throws a marble . He gets sprayed right in the nose . Hilarity insues . On to Uno . Calm game , right ? OHHHHHH NOOOOO . See , G and L often try to see what cards the other has to help mommy and daddy keep the game going . " HE ' S LOOKING AT MY CARDS ! ! ! ! " " NO I WAS LOOKING AT HIS BUTTTTTT " . Really ? That 's what you 're going to tell me ? Things like this keep happening for an hour and eventually the evening starts to calm down . . . But then I got a butt pointed at me and told that L was going to fart on me . I told him that if he did , I 'd plug his butt and then tape him to the bed . Yeah , yeah , I 've not been around much . Sue me . I 'd much prefer if you 'd shoot me right now . Why ? Spring Break . Now , I know I 'm not the only mom who dreads spring break as much as she looks forward to it . 5 days in a row of not having that god awful hour long commute twice a day ? Hm . . . What else . . . I think that 's about it . 5 days in a row of hearing , " Mom , we 're bored . " . 5 days of having to feed them more than once a day . ( They get their own breakfast , eat lunch at school and I make dinner . Best . System . EVER . ) 5 days of getting asked every 20 seconds , " Can we wake Daddy up . " . . . I expect my head to fully explode by Wednesday . I almost wish that I 'd still be alive if my brain were to explode though . . . Because I 'd want to see what G and L do with that mess . . . " You clean it up . " " No , mom said YOU clean it up . " " You dummy , mom 's dead . " " Oh , well then we 'll leave it for dad and tell him S did it . " . Entertaining them was easier when they were younger . We 'd pop in a Wiggles DVD and watch it or play " Come on , Meow Meow Meow " ( Which is exactly what it sounds like . Crawling around the floor like cats . ) . . . But now they want me to come outside and get my fat ass on the trampoline and play Super Mario Galaxy Vs . Ironman where I get to be the bad guy who 's constantly getting up and down or jumping around to get away from the various Mario Items they are throwing at me . Gravity . friends . Gravity . Or board games . . . Fuck , I hate playing board games with these two . G 's at the cheating stage , and L 's still at the state that everything causes a Threat Level Midnight meltdown . G cheats , L screams . L loses , G laughs , L throws a hissy fit . S laughs at L for throwing hissy fit , because honestly , WTF does S know . He 's 10 months old . He thinks his brothers are hysterical . . . Which causes L to do this Gorilla type move that I 'll to my best to explain . He stands up or gets on his knees , femurs extended . He bows out his chest . He straitens this arms and points them behind him at a 45 to 90 degree angle , depending on his level of rage . He will then take in a huge amount of air , and hold his breath until the veins in his forehead and neck pop out and then start growl / screaming at us . Sometimes it comes out as a screech . Not all this causes Dave and I to laugh more which makes L even more upset . . . I take them to a park , and I hear , " We 're hot . " " We 're hungry . " " We 're thirsty . " " We 're afraid of aliens abducting us . " . . . Took a nap after taking G to school . S didn 't wake up until 10 . Walk in his room to get him - and S and his crib are drenched in pee . Clean up the baby , walk into the bedroom , kick the husband . " Did you change the baby before you put him down this morning ? " " No . " " Fuck you . It 's not like I 've not asked you to do that 10 times because he keeps waking up wet . " Now , before you all get upset because I 'm waking up my husband about an unchanged diaper . . . Let me explain . He works nights . He gets home around 1am . He plays PS3 until S wakes up . Sometimes S wants to play . Sometimes S wants to sleep . Dave stays up until about 7am , playing Playstion , AngryBirds , watching TV , porn or whatever , gets the kids ready for school and then goes to sleep until 2 . He gets up and leaves for work at 3 . So yes . I 'm pissed about an unchanged diaper . . . What else does the mother fucker have to do during those 6 hours ? He 's not solving world hunger or the global economy , FFS . Occasionally , I get lucky and he will pick up the living room or vacuum . For example . Before G transferred schools , he lost a library book . I told him he needed to find it before he went to the new school . I told him he needed to find it before he went to Library at the new school . I told him that he needed to find it . I guess he thought that he was going to be sneaky ( Because he usually does . If he thinks he can get away with it , he will try ) and check out Library books . Well , the systems between schools are connected , little man . No new books for you . Now , in our house , there is a list of things mommy doesn 't find . Shoes , Library books , Coats , and toys / toy parts . He comes home yesterday and looks and searches and tears his bedroom apart looking for it . Can 't find it . Comes out and tells me he can 't find it and I can see he 's debating about telling me he thinks that I threw it away - He 's weighing the option of the get out of jail free card vs . the mommy flying into a rage at him losing someone else 's property . He takes the risk . Tells me that I might have thrown it away when I went Storm Trooper on their bedroom a few weeks ago and got rid of 5 lawn bags full of crap . I give him the look . He 's terrified . He 's pathetic looking with his mohawk , and I see tears welling up . . . But I concede his point . Relief . But then mommy drops the bomb - I 'm not paying for it . He is going to . " Well , how am I going to pay for it ? " " Work . " You know that slow motion moment in ' A Christmas Story ' when Ralphie drops the lug nuts and yells " OH FUCKKKK " . . . Well G had one of those moments internally . But if he 's anything , he 's smart . To avoid the lecture , he said , " Can I go clean our room all by myself to pay for it ? " " It will pay for some of the book . I don 't know how much the book is worth , but it 's worth more than one job . " ' A Christmas Story ' moment flashes across his face again . . . And he can tell it 's about to only get worse for him . I proceed to tell him that if he does a half assed job or tells me he 's done before he 's really done , it 's going to deduct from the money that he would have earned for the job . ( Doing things correctly the first time is a big lesson in our house too . ) So I 'm proud of my G . He 's struggled quite a bit lately emotionally and physically . . . But he 's rebounding and realizing that if he just does it the way it 's supposed to be done the first time . . . His life is much , much easier . Ok , now in a house full of boys , this is usually caused by four things . 1 ) To much playing outside , not enough water . Usually tandem with being dizzy , feeling funny , floaty , or weak legged . 2 ) Trying to get out of school . We 've had plenty of this Anxiety crap this year , but I let it ride sometimes . 3 ) Actual illness . 4 ) Forgetting to poop . G and I were getting ready , and I 'm in a full on battle with the cafeteria manager of G 's new school . ( Don 't stamp my kid 's hand with the amount of money he owes . We know . He 's NEW . We didn 't know when his lunch account would transfer over . BITE MY ASS . ) " MOM . . . I still don 't feel good . I 'm going back to bed . " Take G to school , come back , S is screaming . Teeth . Fuck me . I pull him out of bed and check on L . " Can I watch TV . " " No " " Ok " . I come out to the living room to feed S , and pause the Gabba we 're watching and hear the TV . WTF . " L ! What are you doing ? " " I 'm watching TV , duh . " " Didn 't I tell you no ? " " Yeah . " " So why did you turn on your TV ? " " Because you told me I could press the button . " " Um , try again . " " Ok , mom , mainly because I wanted to . " . So I tell him to go lay down . I 'm still dealing with the S , and I hit Shaken Baby Syndrome Threshold . I go put him in his crib , and go check on L . " How you feeling . " " My stomach still hurts and I have a mild fever . " I start laughing . " No Mom , it 's really not funny . " " How are you self diagnosing ? " " Well , my stomach hurts and my head feels a little warm . That 's how I know it 's a mild fever and not a major one . " So we 're going to talk about boobies today , folks . So , as most of you know , I 've shot three kids out of my vagina . G came along when I was 19 , L when I was 21 , and S when I was 27 . With G , I tried and tried to nurse him . L , I made nothing . Not even that fun stuff that leaks out of your boobs when your pregnant . . . But my life was also different with G and L . Dave was a different person with a different career - And I knew he wasn 't going to be around , and I was going to be alone those days that I wanted to drown the kid in the bathtub for biting me for the 27th time that day . When we got closer to S 's due date , I knew G and L were going to be out of the state for an extended period of time but that I was also going to have issues - So I gave it my all . I tried to nurse , which he hated because there wasn 't enough to keep him interested . So we bottle fed and supplemented with breast milk - The whole 5 ounces I got pumping 10 times a day . I took herbs . I took Reglan . I drank that god awful tea . I got advice from every Know - Everything . I attended La Leche League meetings . ( Never feed your child a bottle at a La Leche League meeting . They will chase you out of there with pitchforks and torches ) I returned to the lactation consultant at the hospital . ( 90 dollars that my insurance didn 't pay for , BTW . Where 's the fucking justice in my 14k a year policy , Aetna ? ) I tried and tried and tried . . . And for 8 weeks , S got every bit of breast milk I could give him . Then G and L came home . Do you have any idea how draining it is to pump every 8 hours , on top of doing most of the baby 's feedings and trying to take care of ( then ) 5 and 7 year olds ? Yeah . So I quit . Not without it 's share of guilt , though . And now , I have quite a few friends who are on the ' Boobie Brigade ' . You know the type . . . The militant breastfeeders - The ones who will breastfeed until their child is 2 or in Kindergarten or whatever . The ones who 's first assumption is ' What a terrible mother ' when they see you pop a bottle in your child 's mouth . I also have friends who are on the bottle side of life . I also have friends who see women breastfeeding a 9 month old and their first thought is " Ok . So now that he 's old enough to ask for it , when are you going to stop ? " . So , honestly , I think that we all know that breast is best . But there comes a point in life where our choices are just that . I don 't think that any of my breastfeeding friends are any less competent than I am at parenting or life because they nurse . Nor do I think that my bottle feeding friends are any more competent . ( Most days , I think they are all more competent than I am . ) In the 50 's , American culture 's love of big Pharma took on this pedestrian view of breastfeeding with the dry up shots and the invention of formula . . . But science is now telling us otherwise . But being judgmental of either camp isn 't going to change minds or hearts in our lifetime . . . Because the very person that you 're judging could be someone like me . And labeling breastfeeding mothers anything short of dedicated isn 't going to help anyone . When G and L were a few years younger , they used to play super heroes . Their super power ? Nipples that shot off and punched the enemy in the eye . The title of the blog is something that L said to my MIL when he was 4 , in response to something she said about my FIL . " OH , That Grandpa . He 's being so silly . " . " That 's not silly . That 's stupidity . " . L 's the one who comes up with most of the gems . G catches me off guard every so often , but L . . . Oh , evil , little plotting L . . . One of his spelling words this week is GIRL . Easy peasy for L , right ? You ask him to spell girl , and he 'll spell it , and then all the words he can think of that rhyme with girl . Part of his assignment is to write a sentence using each of his spelling words . " WOW , Look at that hot girl . " . Correct punctuation and all . So , in checking his homework for legibility , I come across the gem there , and nearly spit my pasta . " L ! Who gave you this sentence ? ! " . You 're 28 . You still live at home . You don 't work . You are going to college , AGAIN , after having a 5 year degree on Mommy and Daddy 's dime and are usually bitching about not knowing what to do with your time or about how your dad 's yelling at you to keep your 2 bedroom 's clean . At some point , GROW UP . We 've all got shit . We really do . My relationship with my parents is threadbare . I 'm not all " WOAH IS MEEEEEE . They won 't give me money to go get diagnosed as Austisitc . " What I don 't understand is how two people that shot out of the same woman 's vagina and were parented relatively the same have turned out so differently . Yeah , Dave annoys the ever living fuck out of me most days but at the end of those days , he 's the one that I know will be there for me to depend on . He supports this family with a job that he happened to be great at - not one that he chose . He 's acknowledged his problems and is an amazing father and example to our boys . I guess it comes down to how each individual handles what they go through in life . We 'll tell L that if he keeps walking on toys that we 're going to take him to the Dr and have his feet cut off or that if he keeps acting up that we 're going to take him back to the circus and return him to his real parents . He just laughs at us and tells us to stop being stupid . ( But still believes that we 're still actually stealing his nose . ) G , on the other hand , has required a therapist to get through what he 's gone through this year - For fear that he was either going to eat his entire headboard or wear down his teeth gnawing on it . ( But if we try to steal his nose , he slaps our hands , tells us he 's not a baby anymore and asks to play Call of Duty . ) And as a mom , it 's all about how you handle what your kids are going through . Had Dave 's parents reacted differently to him growing up , he 'd be a different person . Had his dad not had the anger issues he still exhibits today . . . Who knows what happens . . . Had I not gone through what I went through growing up , would I be so worried that I 'm failing my children and one of them is going to turn out like SIL ? Or worried that G is going to be the kid that takes a pipe bomb to school because he internalizes everything ? So I 've been told for a while that I need to start writing things down . Not everything , but the random bullshit things that happen to me on a daily basis . If you don 't really know me , then you 're asking , " Well , like what ? " . " Did you look on the counter ? " " On which counter ? " " ARE WE FUCKING SERIOUS HERE ? " " OH WAIT ! " , he yells from the kitchen , " I found it . Thanks . " . Stay home mom to 3 boys . G is 9 , L is 7 and S was born 06 / 2010 . Also the keeper of a 31 year old man child . How anything gets done around here is beyond my comprehension .
|
That was the 4th loss we 'd gone through , and I wasn 't sure how I was going to get through this one . I was further along than the other 3 , and I had asked Quenton for a priesthood blessing when I thought that things were not going well . The blessing mentioned that everything was going to be okay , that the baby would be fine and that I 'd be fine . Then I lost my baby . After coming home from the hospital , I did my best to avoid thinking about what happened , and , more specifically , what the blessing said . What was more difficult for me to deal with , was that with our very first baby that we had lost ( back in 2008 ) I had received a priesthood blessing that said the exact same thing ; the baby would be fine , I would be fine , everything would go as planned . So , with baby # 4 no longer with us , I was angry . I did NOT understand what I was supposed to do . Why were we receiving these blessings when I wasn 't understanding what Heavenly Father was trying to tell me ? What I heard was NOT what happened . Then Quenton and I talked . We talked about our babies , the ones we had lost . We talked about the blessings , we talked about if they were waiting for us . I expressed my frustrations and my doubts , and we shared our feelings . Quent is the best husband . Ever . I love talking to him about anything and everything , because he is so honest with me . If he has the answer , he 'll tell me . If he doesn 't , he 'll tell me that too . Anyway , the conclusion that we both came to was that our kids are okay , those that are here in this life and in the next . I also received a personal confirmation of this that is very close to my heart . We believe that the big picture helped us to see and understand the blessings I had received . I didn 't get it before , possibly because I wasn 't ready for that knowledge . Quenton and I have grown a lot spiritually in the 8 years we 've been together , and I believe that the knowledge we 've gained especially through that last loss was for now . We had other lessons to learn before . We had to rely on faith . To a lot of people that can be a very difficult concept . When I think about faith , I think about the confirmations I 've had when I 've relied on faith to see me through trials in my life , or to look at the results from relying on faith to make major decisions in my life ; getting baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter - Day Saints , moving to another country , serving a full - time mission , dating someone who had fallen away from believing in God , marrying that same someone , etc . Obviously I had ideas of what would happen when I made these choices , but relying on God to see me through , and asking for guidance in doing my best to make the right / best decision for me really did help me along this path of my crazy life . No , I don 't always receive an answer , and I rarely receive an answer that I want or am the most comfortable with , but THAT ' S OK . I 've come to learn that without these trials in our lives , without having a higher accountability for our actions , how else are we to grow and stretch and progress ? I believe know that I have a loving Father in heaven who knows what 's best for me , and especially when I don 't understand why things happen , I must rely on that faith that I 've learned about in the Book of Mormon in Ether 12 : 6 , " And now , I , Moroni , would speak somewhat concerning these things ; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen ; wherefore , dispute not because ye see not , for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith . " I have seen that . It wasn 't until we suffered through the trials of losing our babies , and could do nothing more than believe in a God who loves us and our children , that we received a very distinct , very clear understanding of where our children are , and that Heavenly Father has indeed kept His promises . We had found out in December that we were expecting again . January held a lot of stressful appointments , and ultrasounds , but by the end we saw a heartbeat and believed that everything was going to be ok with this baby . Then , last Tuesday I had an ultrasound to get proper measurements of the baby , and we were told that they couldn 't find the heartbeat anymore , and with some more blood work it was confirmed that our baby had died . Deep breath . This is not a club that one aspires to belong to , but one that we 've been inducted into nonetheless . For us , this isn 't new territory , but it 's still a devastating loss . It 's been almost a week and I still have not miscarried , which adds to the stress and the sadness that keeps threatening to take over my emotions . Yes , I still get sad . I am still fighting with depression . Most days I would rather lay in bed . Not just to sleep , but to avoid everything else . Having faith has not made me immune to the darkness that I have felt during difficult times , but it has allowed me to see past it , even if it 's just for a moment , and get a glimpse of the eternal perspective . I also have my loving husband to support me , my 3 beautiful children who are truly helping me make it through each hour of each day , and my belief that there is something more than just this life . We are not here to suffer loss and heartache with nothing to show for it . I have felt His love and comfort . Does that mean that because I have faith , nothing horrible or tragic will happen to me or my family ? Most definitely not . I know that when I have had hope in things unseen , believed that Heavenly Father would guide me , had faith that I would make it through the struggles in my life ( even if that means just barely keeping my head above water most days ) , that I will receive knowledge line upon line . It is almost never when I want it , but it is most definitely when I need it . The greatest blessings in my life . : ) I 've debated what to say here or how to say it for a few days now . We lost our baby . It 's been just over a week . I spent Tuesday morning at the hospital making sure that everything was happening as it should , and to get an ultrasound to double check things . The rest of the week has been a bit of a blur . Spiritually I 'm doing ok . I have received great insight and confirmation as to the questions I 've had , so I have no doubt that I will see my baby again . We 've lost 4 children now , and it is such a comfort to me to know that they are in the hands of my Heavenly Father . It 's definitely motivated me to strive to live worthily to return to be with them again . So , in that regard , I feel at peace . Emotionally , I don 't know where I 'm at . Last week I wanted to keep so busy , especially when my mom was here , that I wouldn 't give myself time to be too sad . I 've shed some tears already , and didn 't want to cry anymore ( mostly because if I started I didn 't know how I would stop ) . I feel as if my mind and my heart are at 2 different places . We 've received such wonderful kindnesses from our ward , and I have truly felt how much I am loved by my Heavenly Father . That has been such a blessing to me . I 've always known that Heavenly Father loves me , but , whether I 'm not as in tune with the Spirit as I should be or I have allowed something else to stand in my way , I haven 't always felt it as much as I have this past week . How comforting it is to be reminded of the plan Heavenly Father undoubtedly has for each of us . I still feel sad . Even a little depressed , I guess . I have a bit of a short fuse with my kids , which makes me feel like the worst mom ever . Hopefully I 'll be recovered enough so Quenton and I can attend the temple this Friday ; it 's been a while and I definitely need that balance in my life . I know that families are forever , and I love mine with all my heart . I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for us , and that the true path to happiness is through Jesus Christ and His gospel . That is what is keeping me going . I see that it 's been almost 8 months since I last blogged , and although I feel like nothing has happened , SO MUCH has happened . First , we moved to a new , bigger house in a new city : ) Packing and selling our old house while carting 3 kids around ( one being a relatively new baby ) is something I NEVER want to do again , but the move here is so worth it . We 're closer to Q 's work , which means he 's home sooner and with a bigger house we finally have room for all the kids , plus I actually feel like this is where we 'll put our roots down ( crossing my fingers ) . So far I 've still got lots to unpack , my kitchen island has been covered with " stuff " since March , and we have to finish painting , but I have curtains and everyone has a room , and , most importantly , the playroom is mostly finished . I have so many projects I want to do , which is kind of exciting : ) Jude has been diagnosed autistic . It took me a couple of months to stop bawling at the thought of what that meant for him , and even now reality hits and I wonder how we 're going to do cope with all the changes and challenges , especially when he starts school . But , we 're starting to get his supports in place , and he 's still our awesome Jude dude . : - ) I have to remember to post specifically about this whole experience . It 'll be easier to see the blessings through all of this , because there have been many : ) So , right now I 'm listening to Charlize NOT sleep ( crying , talking , screaming , but not sleeping . . . . ) because I switched her and Jude 's room up . Ususally at this time there 's QUIET . Ahhhh , quiet . I vaguely remember what that 's like . . . . . . I will say this . As chaotic as this last year has been , I truly am grateful for my kids and hubby . I 'll admit , there are times when I really have to remind myself of that because I 'm on the verge of going crazy , but this is the kind of crazy that I love . I know that our lives will keep on changing , and I will probably have a love / hate relationship with it for the next 8 years , but I wouldn 't change anything . : ) He has the sweetest looking face , and my heart melts whenever I look at him . : ) He has a special relationship with his daddy . He will gladly go to him over me any day , and I 'm ok with that . : ) He laughs at Hazel running around , or funny / random parts in movies , and he loves phones , tools , and just being able to climb anything and everything . You know , like all boys do . : ) He teaches me patience , and how to let things go . He definitely has his mother 's heart . : ) Quenton and I have notice since this past summer that Jude isn 't really saying words . When he was around 17 - 18 months , we decided to mention it to his pediatrician . I thought nothing would really happen since Jude wasn 't even 2 , but the doctor said we should bring him in to get looked at . We did , and the doctor said he wanted Jude to see a Speech Language Pathologist . We took him last week , and found out that he has a speech delay , and needs to go for a hearing test in the next couple months . We 're having Early Intervention come to assess him here at home in the next couple weeks , which will be so helpful in giving us more tools to help Jude communicate . We also need to have him further assessed at the Glenrose because of some red flags that came up during our visit . We 've seen these flags ourselves , so I 'm anxious to know what is going on . I know that I 've never gotten a kiss from Jude , that he doesn 't always respond to his name or directions we give him . I can barely type this without getting a lump in my throat ( if you know me , you know that it takes nothing to get me to tear up , so when it comes to my kids , everything is a lot closer to the surface ) . You never expect that your child will have certain struggles , and when they do , you know you will move anything and everything in this world to help them . It is so difficult to see him get frustrated when he can 't communicate all his needs . To be honest , I didn 't think I could be a mother of a child with special needs . I have friends who have children with special needs , and I 've always thought , " wow , they are amazing moms . I could never have the energy to give what I would need to give to a child . " The secret , though , is that when it 's your child , you DO have what it takes to serve them and help them with their struggles , whatever they may be . I recently read this blog post , and it couldn 't have come at a more perfect time for me . No matter our situation , God is always there . Jude is teaching me so much , and helping me to feel my Heavenly Father 's love and suppoI love you , Jude . It 's been a few months , but I finally found a moment where I decided not to catch up on my sleep and also to leave the kitchen like it is ( don 't worry , I won 't post a picture of my kitchen ! ) So , what has been going on here . . . . . . . well , I have 8 days until D - Day , and I think I 'm actually somewhat feeling ready for her arrival . I have seriously been feeling more uncomfortable this time around than with the other two . I went to the doctor yesterday and nothing was really happening , so he suggested lots of squats and walking . After shopping for groceries last night , I decided to do some leg stretches and WOW , was I feeling it later ! But , I have a feeling that I won 't be overdue if I follow the doctor 's orders , so on come the running shoes ! We had a name picked out for baby , but ended up changing it to something that we love . : ) We clearly don 't choose traditional names , but each name has matched our kids perfectly . So , I have been so tired this last month , that my mothering skills have gone down the toilet . Do my kids watch movies through the day ? Yup . Have I fallen asleep on the couch more than once while one or both of them have been busy playing with their toys ? Sadly , yes . I would love to be doing more colouring or crafts , or anything with them , but unless I can sleep well at night , I literally cannot keep my eyes open . : ( How do other moms do it ? I have no idea . I am hoping that once baby is here that even though I 'll be getting up often to feed , I 'll be able to do more with H and J . At least try to establish a schedule while my mom is here to be better prepared when I 'm on my own ! Hopefully the next post will be when she 's here , early , and everything went well : ) aaahhhh , sleep . . . . Where did it go ? I wish I was sleeping right now . But , maybe skipping my nap will give me a better sleep tonight ? Hopefully : ) It 's been a busy couple of months . We had a family reunion back in July , and although I was busy for most of it , it was a lot of fun : ) I loved seeing family I hadn 't seen for a while , and it was nice to get away . I had offered to make some reunion t - shirts for everyone ( 147 people ) , so that 's what kept me busy for the first part of the weekend . Everyone had a number ironed onto their white shirt ( according to when they were born into the family - - - spouses kept the same number ) and we also had a " Nelson 2013 " logo ironed on the front . I think they turned out pretty good : ) Anyway , after we got back I was intending on having plenty of time to pack and get ready for baby to come . But , so far not much has happened . Oh well , I think I 'll probably get an energy burst or something and get tons done one of these days : ) Lately I 've been focusing on forgiveness . I know it 's something that we talk about often at Church , and I thought I understood this principle . But , I 've realized this past month that I 've never really had to apply it in my life , forgiving someone else for a major transgression against me or my family , I mean . Of course little things will happen in our lives that cause us pain and frustration , but for the most part I thought I was able to just let it go . Recently I 've come to accept and understand that there has been an open wound that hasn 't healed in my life ( unrelated to what happened to me as a child ) . It 's affected my spirituality , my ability to love unconditionally in some cases , and I can now see how it has consumed a big part of my life . I 've met with my Bishop a couple of times , and my eyes have already been opened to the importance of being able to forgive others . When someone has / had sinned against me , or done wrong towards me or my family , I instinctively put up a wall and try to put distance between myself and that person . It has caused such a build up of frustration , anger and resentment that it started to be all I thought about when I had a moment to myself . Anyway , I 'm working through this , and have come across some wonderful talks that have given me perspective . Elder Jeffrey R . Holland gave a talk about the love of the Savior . He speaks of the atonement , and how Jesus Christ was able to forgive His tormentors while He was on the cross . Elder Holland continues to speak of Christ 's sacrifice and how we need to remember it . We remember , in part , by following the Savior 's example and forgiving others . burden of forgiveness for the offender . Don 't ask if " justice " doesn 't demand that it be the other way around . When it comes to our own sins , we don 't ask for justice . What we plead for is mercy - and that is what we I know how difficult it is to let things go . I know the pain that comes with being hurt so deeply that you feel it 's better to just stay angry and hold it against others . I also know that I am tired of feeling this way . I want to let it go . I want to be rid of this unbearable weight that stays with me daily . I am by no means finished this process , but I 'm on my way . I am starting to finally understand the true meaning of forgiveness , and I know that in the end this burden will not only be lifted from me , but I will feel peace , and that unconditional love that I have been longing to feel . It will be great . : ) It 's been a big part of my life for the last 3 years or so . I know , everyone gets anxious about things every once in a while . For me , though , it 's more than that . When I was little , I was abused / molested by someone who was close to the family . I don 't want to go into details , but I started to remember things when Quenton and I started dating ( about 6 years ago ) . I had a dream about this man , and memories slowly started coming back to me . Anyway , because of what happened , I can look back at my life and see why I reacted the way I did to certain situations , and partly why I am the person I am today . What 's been on my mind for a long time is how it 's affecting me and my kids . Hazel is going to be 3 in October , and did you know that I 've only taken her to a public park once in her life ? I 've never taken both of my kids . My first thought is that I 'll take my eyes of of Hazel , or either of my kids , and someone is going to take them . I 'm nervous scared to take my kids swimming , even trying to plan swimming lessons is difficult . If there is a pond near a park , my first thought is that if one of the kids ever got away from me , they 're going to drown . I often have nightmares that one of my kids has gone missing and I CANNOT find them . It even took me a while to go out shopping on my own with Quenton watching Hazel ( when this all started to become a problem ) . It seriously took me until Jude was 5 - 6 months old before I actually went to the grocery store by myself with both my kids . Quenton and I rarely have a date because I can 't leave my kids with someone unless I feel 100 % certain that they 'll be ok while we 're gone . Some of these things may not seem too serious , some probably sound completely irrational ( trust me , I 'm not CHOOSING to react this way ) . But , that 's my anxiety . What 's more frustrating is when someone tells me , " Well , Tanya , you just need to do it . You need to take them to the park , or you just need to get out with them . " Maybe that 's a solution ( in a manner of speaking , it IS the solution ) , but it 's difficult to hear that from someone who doesn 't know WHY I 'm anxious about these situations . Bottom line is , if I was hurt by someone who wasn 't a stranger and who my familI 've talked to someone about this , and she 's been super helpful . I 'm constantly thinking of my kids and trying to do what 's best for them and what isn 't going to hold them back . I don 't want my weaknesses to bring them down or affect who they 'll grow up to be . It 's definitely opened my eyes to how anything can change a person , and how we cannot judge why someone may act or react the way that they do . Through all this , I am SO grateful for a loving husband who supports me and who will put up with all the craziness that is me . : ) Life really is good , there are just some bumps in the road .
|
You never know what life 's going to hit you wi h . One minute you 're driving home from work , singing along to a Caro Emerald CD that one of your very bestest friends gave to you , remembering good times shared with her and anticipating sharing a glass of chilled white wine with your husband when you arrive ho e . Life is good , you 're enjoying the rhythm of it , embracing the world , in love with life and just so glad to be in this mome And the next minute you 're in trouble . You and a car are approaching a T - junction from opposite directions . You can see the car approaching you , it is indicating to turn right and is slowing down , but just as you reach the junction , it speeds up and turns right . . . . right into your path . You have no time to react , all you can see is the car in front of you and you know immediately that you will hit it . You are aware of several bumps and jolts , you want it to stop , it is hurting you and your headlights focus on a road sign and you ready yourself for what must be a large impact but the final impact comes seconds sooner as your car is halted by the steep grassy bank . The seat belt has you rooted to your seat , the air bag has exploded and the car is full of smoke and the smell of burning . Caro Emerald is still singing wildly , inappropriately for the moment . You can 't breathe , the pain in your chest is too great but you must get out of the car . You can 't move your left arm to unclip the seat belt and you try to open the car door but your right arm feels weak . The door is jammed . You see people on the road , you can smell smoke and you call feebly for help , you don 't want to burn , you want Caro to stop but you don 't know what to do , you are helpless . And then a lady is urgently tugging and tugging at the driver 's door , she is frantic and as soon as it opens you feel relief as she gently takes control . Her voice is soothing and she tells you it will be OK , she stops Caro and phones your husband . You can 't move your neck or your chest and you can 't see what 's going on around you . The lady 's husband comes to help and supports your neck until the ambulance arrives because you can 't hold your head up any longer . You want to vomit , but you can 't move . The kindness of these strangers is overwhelming and a river of tears runs soundlessly down your face . Everywhere hurts , you want to go home and your husband arrives , and the ambulance and the police and you are looked after and feel safe but your eyes won 't stop streaming , you 're not crying , not sobbing , but the tears won 't stop . Miraculously no - one was seriously hurt - the driver and passenger of the other car were checked out by the paramedics and taken home . I was taken to hospital , thoroughly checked out , left leg stitched up and home again in time for bed . A month on and I 'm well on the mend - I still have aches and bruises but I will be fine . Sadly , my little Mini has been written - off . I 'm still so thankful that my injuries weren 't more serious but I miss my Chicken Eve . She was a fabulous gift from my husband some eleven years ago , and he has put so much love and care into keeping her lovely for me during that time . So will I get another Mini ? I 'm not sure . Nothing can replace Chicken Eve and I have yet to return to work . I am still trying to adjust - I had a horrid accident , but I will never forget how kind everyone has been to me . . . . how brave that lady was to wrench open the car door ( she said that she , too , thought the car was on fire but apparently the smoke was simply the air bag chemicals ) , her husband , the ambulance team , the police , hospital staff , insurance companies , DVLA , the garage , physiotherapist , GP . . . . . . . . and my family and friends who have sent me cards and flowers and affirmed my joy in life . The outcome of that one moment , that small lapse in concentration of a complete stranger could 've been so much worse and my life changed irrevocably ( or even ended ) . I know it sounds dramatic , but I 've had a month to ponder how such seemingly small acts can have such life - changing consequences . The memory of the accident will stay with me for a long time , but I was incredibly lucky that day , and I was cared for by some beautiful people . . . . . . and that 's what I 'm going to hang on to . Spring and Autumn are the seasons of anticipation : Spring obviously so . An end to drab winter it is all about drama and colour . Buds burst and birds nest with a frenetic activity bordering on mania . Like an unruly child , Spring tumbles over itself and charges ahead , unaware of its impact on all it touches . Spring is fickle , a temptress seducing with hot days and then snow ; new life emerges only to be frozen and withered . Spring is vain : she competes with Summer and sets her up to fail . Early hot spells convince the bods at the Met Office that Summer will bring a heat - wave - but she rarely does . On the other hand , Autumn has a measured approach . She steps in when Summer begins to wane and has given up trying to deliver all that was promised by Spring . Autumn is steady , solid . She gives us warm days to enjoy and cool nights to sleep . She turns the air fresh so that being outside is a joy . The wind rushes through our hair and our cheeks glow as Autumn embraces us , asking us to be part of this season and be at one with her . ' I have lavished money these last three months upon the cottage , adding a water - supply , a bath , a boiler , bookshelves , a bathing pool ( a tiny one , but splashable into ) : all the luxuries of the earth . Also I have thrown out of it the bed , the cooking range : and ignored the lack of drains . Give me the luxuries and I will do without the essentials . ' T E Lawrence , 21 December 1933 Oftentimes I have bemoaned the fact that everyday life gets in the way of my yearning to write . First of all , there 's the day job ( which , frankly , I need in order to pay the bills ) and then there 's all the accoutrements of living family life such as shopping , cooking and cleaning ( thankfully I am blessed with Lovely Hubby ( LH ) who certainly does more than his fair share around the house ! ) . Sometimes I 've wondered what it would be like to shrug off the conformity of my life and to truly live as I would like , without compromise and to spend time on the things I really want to do . But is that really what I want ? I recently visited Clouds Hill , retreat and home to T E Lawrence during the last years of his life . Lawrence of Arabia is legendary , in part thanks to Peter O ' Toole and Omar Sharif , yet his home doesn 't match the size of the legend . It 's basically a two up / two down cottage , not very pretty but with the bonus of hiding in the beautiful Dorset countryside . Lawrence wanted to escape from everyday life , which he was certainly able to do at Clouds Hill . Lawrence appeared to have been an eccentric character . As he didn 't much like cleaning and had no taste for food he chose to have no toilet or kitchen in his house . I don 't like to think where he carried out his bodily functions but apparently food was eaten straight from the tin and the empty cans buried in the garden . Sometimes he 'd eat at a local cafe but I think guests were treated to the eating - from - the - tin experience . Lawrence wasn 't encumbered by lots of belongings either , apart from his collection of 2 , 000 or so books . Money was tight for him but if he particularly wanted an item he commissioned the best : he indulged his love of music by buying the best gramophone players of the time and installed a state of the art system for supplying hot water for his bath . And yet he had no curtains at the windows , no dining table , no electricity ( although this was not unusual for rural Dorset at that time ) , sparse furnishings - not to mention the toilet ! Now I 've seen what it can be like , I 'm not so sure . I quite like my toilet and meals around the table . And I suppose it would be lovely to have a bespoke book room - but at the price of curtains ? Yes , life can appear dull living around the 9 - 5 routine and trying to squeeze in dreams and aspirations . . . . . but in some strange way I rather like it . Life is a compromise , no matter what you choose to do . I have to admit that I wasn 't a huge fan of Amy Winehouse in a personal way . I have her album ' Back to Black ' which I think is superb . She has a strong , sultry voice which delights my ears in the same way that a cup of dark Costa Rican coffee warms my throat . I don 't want it all the time , but when I do , I know my senses will be stimulated . But however much I love her voice , I would have never paid to see her perform as the press gleefully reported on Amy no - shows or an Amy so drunk she could not remember her words . . . . or even pretend to remember them . And therein lies the problem . Because Amy had so much press coverage I felt I knew her . She was depicted as an out of control young woman who was constantly drunk or drugged up . Maybe she was , maybe she wasn 't - I don 't know . And to be honest , it 's none of my business . Amy 's death has provoked all sorts of people to voice their feelings on her demise - and usually in a rather smug way . Facebook is full of venom about how she ' brought it on herself ' and ' deserved ' an early death . I remember several years ago the same was said of Paula Yates . The media storm surrounding her death was incredible and I felt moved to write a letter to the Independent newspaper stating that compassion was required . No , I didn 't know Paula Yates , either - I 'm not part of the rock crowd , just a middle - aged mum who works a normal nine to five . Funnily enough , though , I did meet Paula in my teens when the Boomtown Rats were fairly big and she attended Tiffin Boys School Summer Fete in Kingston upon Thames along with boyfriend Bob Geldoff , Pete Briquette ( my heart - throb at the time ) and Johnnie Fingers ( he 'd ditched the pyjamas and was in normal attire as they were there as normal people , not celebrities ) . Paula Yates wasn 't famous at that time and as I was the gobbiest of my two friends , I walked up to Mr Geldoff and asked him for his autograph ( I still have my Tiffin School fete programme to this day ! ) . He graciously obliged as did Johnnie and Pete ( swoon ) . Paula drifted into the background and sat on a wall , observing the scene as hoards of teenagers attacked the threesome armed with pens and programmes . Paula looked like a normal girl out at a local fete and to be honest , she looked ticked off . I had scuppered their plans of enjoying a nice afternoon out and now her boyfriend and gang were having to sign autographs when they obviously had been out incognito ( otherwise I 'm sure that Johnnie would 've worn his pyjamas ) . Yes , she looked a bit menacing - but that 's how we all wanted to look being Punk and New Wave fans . I didn 't know Paula Yates and I didn 't know Amy Winehouse . But through today 's intrusive press coverage and the general public clamouring for information about the famous , watching the demise of talented people has become a circus show . As the Victorians used to take tours around lunatic asylums , so today the masses want to see fallen ' celebrities ' on the front of their tabloids so they can sit and gloat , smug in the knowledge that they ' brought it upon themselves ' . This aspect of human nature both sickens and saddens me . The mind is a fragile organ and sometimes it breaks or becomes weary . I myself am not an alcoholic , nor do I take non prescription drugs - the idea of losing total control scares me . So I have absolutely no idea what it must feel like to be held in the grips of addiction . Maybe Amy was using drugs and alcohol as a means of escape or perhaps it was supposed to be a fun time gone wrong . Who knows ? And that 's exactly the point . Who is qualified to judge ? The Mini event season is here and as always , other commitments prevent me from attending all I would like but a couple of weeks ago I took part in the annual London to Brighton Mini run for the eleventh time ! You may think it would become boring but every run is different , admittedly some more enjoyable than others , but all hold special memories . . . . . like the time we had torrential rain and nearly blew the electrics , or the day we snoozed on the beach and got sunburned . My all time favourite is when it fell on my birthday and lovely hubby texted XFM on our way to Crystal Palace ( at circa 4 . 30 am ) and asked the DJ to play ' Happy Birthday Jane ' by the Enemy . The DJ read out the text and although the song wasn 't on his playlist , he did make a good substitute . I had a recent discussion with friends about finding the time for particular pursuits . The general consensus appeared to be that it is important to maintain focus on one project in order to do it well . I do agree with this , but only to a point . Most things in my life are so important to me and in order to fit them all in I continually juggle and my priorities fluctuate - I try to go with the flow . When I don 't , I become stressed and then everything seems to jar and I lose my internal rhythm . Interestingly , my favourite fictional characters are ones who have many facets and who surprise and inspire me . I try to create my own characters as real , living people with their own quirks , strengths and weaknesses , likes and dislikes . In order to do this , I still live my life - writing is just one of my passions and without the rest , my writing would be one dimensional . My other pursuits expose me to external influences and stimuli - so important for good writing . I 'm back ! Returned safe and sound ! Not quite back to normality yet ( no return to the day - job till Tuesday ) and still very much in holiday mode , even though I 've come back to an avalanche of laundry , the house to clean , garden to weed , bills to pay , etc , etc . I had a great trip and thoroughly enjoyed my camping experience , even though I only slept for a total of four hours on the first night for fear that the tent would blow away ! The second night was much better as I was exhausted and not even a hurricane would have awakened me from my slumber . And now I sit here , at my computer , yearning to get back to my novel but with one niggling question . Where were all the seashells ? It has been some years since I visited the Isle of Wight and I 'm really pleased that I decided to pay a brief visit while working on my novel . You see , my title is The Book of Shells and one of my main characters is an avid collector of seashells . Such a lovely and rewarding hobby . And yet , I found just one seashell during my visit ( that is , excluding ones found for sale in gift shops ) . So where are all the seashells ? Did my character collect them all thus leaving none for modern day visitors ? All the beaches I visited comprised sand , pebbles and shingle . The Book of Shingle ? or The Book of Pebbles ? Mmm - not quite the same , is it ? But the seashells ? It 's a conundrum I shall have to solve . So it 's back to plotting before I can really get into the writing . Wish me luck . With not long to go till the happy Island of Wight event and with a change in the weather , I couldn 't wait any longer and decided to camp in the back garden . My excuse was that I needed to try pitching the tent alone and to ensure that my new sleeping bag was warm enough . The reality was that I just couldn 't wait ! It was getting dark by the time I 'd finished and I couldn 't wait to get into my sleeping bag and read by torchlight . I had visions of spending a peaceful night in solitude . . . I lasted until 2 . 30 am ! Something snuffling around the tent perimeter awoke me and as I lay there pondering on what the large creature ( I couldn 't see it , but it just had to be large ) could be , cold fear started to take hold . ' Right , pull yourself together , ' I thought , but unable to return to the sleepy Land of Nod I decided to pop back into the house for the loo . As I opened the zip from the bedroom into the lounge ( it 's only a small tent but I like to pretend it is a grand affair ) my sleepy eyes in the semi - darkness made out a pair of large men 's shoes facing me . To say I froze would probably be an understatement - I think I started to jabber away in fear before realising they were my husband 's old trainers that I 'd borrowed to walk across the grass the night before . I 've booked a few days off work after Easter ( and thanks to all the lovely Bank Holidays this is giving me a whoppping eleven days off work ! ) and have decided to spend a couple of days on the Isle immersing myself in the air that is ' worth sixpence a pint ' , according to Tennyson . I have decided to ( a ) dump family and friends so as to allow total devotion to my research and ( b ) camp to allow total disconnection from my usual life . I am sure that this total change and immersion in surroundings will do wonders for me - and - my - novel and I hope to return refreshed , brimming with ideas and a notebook filled with jottings and plans . The Island of Wight is a very special place for me , which is perhaps why I have chosen it as the location for my novel . It was the place we took our children for our first family holiday and my young son used to say with wonder in his eyes : ' We 're going to the Island of Wight ' to anyone who asked where we were going for our holiday . So for me , it will never be simply an Isle - it is the magical Island of Wight . I 'm in love with writing . Everything about it is delightful . And I love to read . Read words so cleverly composed that they trickle and gel to create a watercolour that undulates and flows , flirting with my emotions and shamelessly seducing my senses . Words are magical and intoxicating , frivolous and deep . Words can be what you want them to be . Pain and anguish or light and free . The writer chooses the words and their order , it is for the reader to plunge into those words and to be carried by the stream . I 'm in love with writing . I love to write short stories and epic adventures , articles and reviews . My mind flutters over each idea and , as a butterfly gently drinks from a daisy only to be distracted by the black - eyed Susan and the columbine , I drift between my characters and their stories , changing tack in the breeze , never staying too long but always moving on . Of course , this flighty activity means I rarely finish a project . I have pages of works in progress or finished bar the final edit , but another character will call , claiming ownership on my limited time and my fluttering mind . I 'm in love with writing . Everything about it is delightful : from conversing with my characters to dreaming up plots . I fall in love with my creations , argue with them and cry . But I never stay too long for other characters await the brush of my mental wings . I 'm in love with writing . A clean piece of paper and an ink pen seduce . The virginal sheet sits patiently waiting , the ink pen poised ready to leave its mark . The fusion of the two can create a beautiful piece of prose or something dark and sinister . It is for me to decide . I submit to the fluttering in my mind and let the thoughts take control of the tool . They tumble out onto the page , trembling and deliberating , gaining confidence and gelling , creating a union so tight I feel heady . At last the beating wings are spent and for a while my mind is still . But soon a character will call and the wings softly stir . I 'm in love with writing . BBC iPlayer - Dave Monk : 03 / 03 / 2011 www . bbc . co . uk I had my first taste of PR on Thursday : Writebulb was invited to attend the Essex Book Festival launch at Chelmsford Library . Sadly only three of the founders could attend ( Kate has just started a new job so couldn 't take the time off work ) but we still muddled through ! It was quite a nerve - wracking experience with labels stuck on us and radio producers counting us down . . . and lots of people looking at us as if we were celebrities ! It was a very strange experience but incredibly good fun . The folks at Chelmsford Library and the BBC Essex team were so warm and friendly and did their best to put us at our ease . It was great - and much more fun than the day job ! We were given a writing challenge to perform which was read out on air by the first Essex Storytelling Laureate , Mike Dodsworth ( http : / / www . mikedodsworth . com / ) who was fantastic . Our writing challenge was to write a love letter to the county of Essex and we had just 40 minutes to complete it . It is the first time that the three of us ( Stu , Brigid and myself ) have collaborated on anything and we all have very different styles of writing . The piece we produced was certainly very different from something I would have produced alone - but I 'm sure the others feel that way , too . It was a huge learning curve in writing quickly and a great team effort - something that I would like to explore further within Writebulb meetings . I think we can all learn from collaborating with other writers of differing styles . After our 15 minutes of fame I met the lovely Joanna Trollope http : / / www . joannatrollope . com / - gosh , what an amazing lady . She was so kind and gracious . . . I am definitely in awe ! I also met Guy Saville , a new author who spent lots of time chatting with us and giving us insights into the publishing world - very scary ( not Guy ! ) Such a lovely man who has promised to speak at one of our meetings on the proviso that we supply him with chocolate biscuits ! As I awoke I realised that my interest in you is not just scientific , like your salty marshes . I 'd serenade you like Olly Murs , and pen the story of our love like Martina Cole . I know you like a villain . Gill is a very busy man - as well as creator of our wonderful logo , he is a talented artist and Mayor of Delmont , Pennsylvania . From this description he may sound to be a brooding and serious man … . not the Gill I know ! He is charismatic and funny . . . . . . and a true friend ( not many of those about these days ) . All this has had a positive impact upon my writing . I 've critically reviewed my NaNo and concluded it requires a total rewrite . A year ago this would have been a daunting task and one I felt unable to tackle . But now , with all the support around me I 'm in a positive frame of mind and believe I can do it . And I will - I have pledged to have the first three chapters completed by the end of June - yikes ! Last month I read Sister by Rosamund Lupton which is one of the best reads I 've had in a long time . I became immersed in the story and it is one of those books that I was sad to put down at the finish . I love it when a book can do that to me . A housewife with two small children , Rosamund explored ways of going back to work in order to ease the financial burden on her over - worked husband . Of course , employment had to fit around the children and so it was that she decided to write a book . After just three chapters she sent it to an agent who liked it . From there Sister has realised publication , going into the top ten in its first week and remaining there for fourteen weeks . It has been featured on Radio 4 's Book at Bedtime and chosen by Richard and Judy for their Book Club . And the icing on the cake - film rights have been sold . I find Rosamund Lupton 's story inspiring . She wanted to write a book , and she did . No procrastination or hours spent ' studying the market ' , she just got on and did it . Our next meeting hosts a talk by Penelope Fletcher ( of Demon Girl fame ) and we are attending the Essex Book Festival Launch on 3rd March . Added to that , we are attending various Book Festival events around the county . March will be a busy month for us but incredibly exciting . Just hope I can continue with editing my NaNo novel - time marches on ! What an exciting start to the year . One of the fruits of NaNo has been a fast , close friendship with three other NaNoids leading to the creation of a new writing group . We 've been busy setting up our ' constitution ' , deciding on a name ( writebulb ) , organising our first meeting open to the public , deciding on a logo , setting up a blog ( http : / / write - bulb . blogspot . com ) and a Facebook group . Not bad when we 're not quite half way into January . I didn 't think I 'd be nervous at all about the event . Excited , yes . But on the morning I took twenty minutes agonising over which tea , coffee and paper cups to bring to the meeting - my decision making ability was shot to pieces . I was scared . We had no idea how many people to expect , if any . Writebulb was evolving so fast - from the TGIO party in December to our first public meeting just weeks later . But we all agreed that if writebulb consisted of just the four of us , that was fine - we like the way we interact with each other . We 'd already had several emails giving interest in the group and a couple of people wanted to join but were unable to attend the meeting . So how many paper cups to buy ? Four or forty - four ? I opted for what I thought could be a wild possibility of twenty - four . How close to the mark I was . On the day we had seventeen of us in the room - hurrah ! A success ! The meeting went really well . Such a lovely mix of people with very different objectives , genres and interests . Hopefully they 'll come back for our next meeting on 12th February .
|
I call this my " dog walking shawl . " It 's the purpose that I had in mind for it when I saw the pattern . Now that it 's done I can see that it is perfect for that . The pockets can hold dog - poop bags and the shawl covers just enough to take away the chill on those fall evenings . I kinda regret not taking the plunge and finishing it earlier . This is my second " One Skein Wonder . " I made my first one out of some Noro yarn and it wound up being WAY too big . This one is just right size - wise , but I bound off too tightly around the neckline . I also ran out of the grey yarn and had to use the red that I bought for a third ( never to be made ) one . All in all it 's aiight and will suit it 's purpose - I made it to be worn around the house in the winter - but I won 't be running to make another any time soon . This is another project that languished forever . I loved , loved , loved knitting up Shedir . When I finished , I was almost sad but then I was excited by the thought of wearing it . All I needed to do to finish it was weave in two ends . So what happened ? I like my hats much shorter , almost beanie style . I could have accomplished the look I like by omitting two of the pattern repeats but I didn 't think of it at the time . I can still wear the hat with the brim turned up but chances are it 's being gifted to Mark . Pity cause while I really liked it , I 'm not going to be knitting up a second one . The first of the babies sweaters are finally done de done done and I couldn 't be more pleased ! The sweaters are still a little big for my bebes but will be perfect for the fall . The only modification that I made was not to have closure at the back . The pattern calls for twill tape to tie it closed but I figured it wasn 't necessary . I 'm in a tizzy right now because there is so much I want to do around the house before I return to work . I need to reorganize / make room in the closet for the stroller that is eating up too much floor space in our bedroom . I need to clean the apartment from top to bottom . I need to prep menus and shop for food so that I can brown bag it to work . I need to make sure that Mark is comfortable with everything from the setup of the diaper bag to reheating bottles in an emergency ( yes , you can microwave formula ) to bathing a squirmy boy and so on . . . Mark told me last week that he 'd been letting me take the lead on all things baby but now he 's gotta take the reins from me . We 're both nervous as we won 't know how rough or smooth things are going to go until I actually go back to work . Hence all the prep I want to do . Returning to work doesn 't frighten me so much as leaving Mark alone with the twins . I know that a month or two from now we will laugh about how nervous I was . Or at least I hope we will . The finishing on the Classic Cashmere Sweaters is going s - l - o - w - l - y mainly because the yarn used for the body of the sweaters sucks for seaming . It 's made up of 10 individual filaments which keep coming apart or , worse , breaking as I work . I 've seamed about 3 / 4 of the blue one and am going to see if I can finish it today or tomorrow . Then I 'll substitute a different yarn for seaming the green one . Something that won 't split or fray or generally give me agita . I really would like to not have to do my finishing on the subway - losing a tapestry needle to a train lurch springs into my mind - so I 'm trying to get as much of it done as I can before my return . I 'm halfway tempted to move onto finishing other projects first because this has been sheer agony but I 'm weird and stubborn . I like finishing things in the order in which I knit them , so by that reasoning these sweaters need to be done before I can move on to the Harvey Kimonos and then the Hooded Jackets and Oz vests . P . S . Have I mentioned that I am totally addicted to Ravelry ? I keep adding projects to my queue and looking at all my " hibernating " projects makes me feel like a real lame - ass ! I swear I totally want to finish things FASTER so that I have more completed projects to show off . And in a weird way , I think the site is keeping me accountable to my knitting . As they 've gotten older , we 've started noticing the differences in the babies ' personalities much more . Aden just wants to go , go , go ! Where ? Who knows ? It really doesn 't seem to matter to him . He just wants to get there and he 'll figure out what to do later . Whenever we put him down on his belly , he inchworms his way along as fast as his little body allows . Tummy time in a boppy is his favorite thing , ever . For all the worries we had about him , he 's turning out to be a strong little trooper . Click above to view a video clip of Aden enjoying " tummy time " on his boppy . Can 't see the video ? Try these links : Windows Media ( . wmv , 612kb ) | Real Media ( . RM , 7 . 14MB ) Aden 's also a bit of a talker . He likes to be held a lot so he chatters to let us know that it 's a cruel world out there for a lonely baby . Hunter , on the other hand , is much more laidback . She 's not as interested in travelling the world , so to speak and she tends to fuss much less than Aden . She prefers to kinda lounge around and take the world in from wherever she is seated , eyes wide . But Lady Hunter , when she wants something . . . well , she fucking lets you KNOW . Loudly . She 's got a screech that rivals any car alarm or fire truck siren . When she " speaks up " , you better believe we listen . Obviously much of my days goes towards attending to both of these guys and preserving my sanity ( along with my hearing ) . But whenever I can , I get a couple of rows of knitting in . The Baby Surprise Jacket is currently on Row 20 . It 's not a lot of progress for something so simple but I 'm being easy on myself . Some is much better than none . I 've been working a few stitches here and there , getting a couple of rows done over the course of the day . I 'm also trucking along with my finishing . I 've got about half the booties done and am planning to tackle the Classic Cashmere Sweaterns next . I 've got 17 days before I go back to work full - time so my goal is to have all my knitting finished before then . We have our eagerly awaited ultrasound appointment at 9 : 15 today . They 'll be doing growth checks on the twins so I 've got my fingers crossed for good news . According to " What to Expect When You 're Expecting , " the sea monkeys are supposed to be gaining half an ounce per day past this point . I 'm really hoping that Aden gained at least four ounces again . Technically he should have gained between eight ounces and a pound in the two weeks between growth measurements , but any development will make me happy . Both he and Hunter have been squirming so strongly that it 's hard to imagine them being in trouble , and that makes things even more frustrating than they should be . ( I 'll post an update on the appointment when we get back . . . ) I 'm in serious nesting mode right now and as such I am pretty frustrated to find myself on bedrest . There are pictures to be hung , things to purchased , a nursery , albeit a small one , to be set up . I 'll be doing a little more online registry / wishlist shopping after our doctor 's appointment - we need to get the pack n ' play and the second car seat - but frankly there 's not much satisfaction after you hit the " confirm order " button . The only thing that I do have control of is my knitting . There are a slew of things to be blocked and sewn up , to be absolutely finished . Since I started in mid - January , I have completed the knitting on eight sweaters / vests , four pairs of booties , four pairs of mittens , four beanies and two lace caps - all in the newborn to 3 month size . That 's a whole mess of knitting . And a whole mess of UFO 's ( unfinished objects for those not up on " knitter - speak " ) . Since the rest of my baby projects are for larger sizes ( 6 months , 1 year ) , my goal for the week is to have Mark buy me a bottle of Dreft ( or some dye - free , scent - free generic equivalent ) and to get to blocking , sewing up ends and otherwise getting all my newborn knits finished and ready to wear . Some of these only need to be gently blocked and have a few loose ends sewn in ; others require fiddly piecing together and sewing on of buttons , among other things . Still it 's all very doable . I 'm thinking of washing and blocking two sweaters a day , then sewing them up the following day when they are dry . That way I can easily block them on my sewing table with minimal effort . It 'll be slower than trying to do them all at one shot , but it will be more manageable in the long run . Where do I begin with the " Thank Yous " ? Once again , everyone 's generous comments have helped make a difficult time more bearable and provided valuable perspective to us . Thank you so much for taking the time to comment and share your experiences and opinions with us . While we 're kinda " over " the scare , it still lingers in the back of our minds . My next ultrasound is next Wednesday ( 22 weeks ) and I 'm hoping that they get some of those missing parts in and clear up some of the remaining ambiguity . But if that doesn 't happen , we 'll still be soldiering on . The only thing that I have to say about the bed is that the fucker is huge ( and tall ; that is indeed a step stool you see on my side of the bed ) . Mark swears it 's the most comfortable thing ever , but I 'm pregnant , and nothing really feels all that comfortable to me . ( And it won 't until I can sleep on my back again . . . ) I expect that once the sea monkeys are born I will fully appreciate the behemoth . I 've come to love and rely on Moby ( my body pillow ) and now the 4 of us ( Mark , Maia , Moby and me ) fit comfortably on the bed with no space issues . In time , we 'll ditch Moby and add two toddlers to the mix so while I 'm grumbling about the size now , I know it will turn out to be a worthwhile investment . The arrival of the new bed sparked our first bout of getting the apartment baby - ready . We had to relocate three of my bookshelves into the hall to make room for the behemoth , which was minorly traumatic . I had to reorder a bunch of my books so nothing of value was out where the evil cattens could easily destroy it . For example , I had all of my photo albums on one of the shelves so those had to be swapped for other books . After the bed arrived and was in place , we moved my yarn stash / pile / wall of knitting stuff and the Metro shelving thingie I dumpster - dove for in the early 90s that we use as a TV / DVD / electronics stand . I tossed like 8 bazillion exercise VHS tapes , managed to damaged both of my knitting notions storage cases in the process , and had to clean the resulting dust and crap that was everywhere which put me in a not so good mood about reorganizing my life . Unfortunately , I like to do things all at once and not move things one weekend , then do something else the next . Life doesn 't always work that way - especially when you have to make HUGE financial outlays in order to have the convenience of minimizing the disruptions to your life . Doing stuff piecemeal requires patience so I 'm learning to be flexible although Mark can attest that I have been more than a little crabby during the learning process . plan and order our Ikea Pax wardrobe unit ( to house my yarn , Mark 's wardrobe , etc . ) , get a new TV / DVD / electronics stand with a MUCH smaller footprint than the Metro stuff we have now , Aside : Mark suggested we also get a new flat - panel TV because a ) we can 't find something that will support my mega - ancient one because it 's heavy as fuck and b ) who knows when we 'll be able to upgrade our TV in the future ? I 'm insisting that a new box is not a necessity when there 's so much other stuff to buy , but I see his point . I did buy my old box in 1995 or thereabouts but I 'm teetering because spending the cash on that seems impractical to me . and , the piece de resistance , move my computers and the home networking setup from one side of the room to the other . Once I 'm past 24 weeks - the time a fetus becomes viable and is able to survive in intensive care if born prematurely , we 'll start getting the stroller , car seats , crib , etc . That 's 3 weeks from now . It feels like both an eternity and no time at all . Knittingwise . . . The Alphabet blanket has not been feeling the love . I 'm putting an end to that this week , though . ( Yeah , I know I said that last week . ) I 've decided that I 'm not buying any more infant care or pregnancy - related stuff until 24 weeks so I won 't have any new material to read . This will free up my evenings to actually work on the thing . Also , I can actually sit upright in our new bed , which is something I couldn 't do in our old one and this should actually make knitting it a lot easier . I 'm 20 weeks today - halfway for a normal , singleton pregnancy . At 24 weeks , I 'll be at the stage where if , God / universe forbid , the sea monkeys were born early , they could survive with LOTS of medical intervention . 24 has become the new number to obsess over and shoot for , if you hadn 't guessed . Mark and I have started laying some of the groundwork for getting ready for the twins . Yesterday , we plunked down a wad of cash on a new king - sized bed with a REAL mattress AND boxspring to replace our current 10 + year old , stuffing coming out of the sides , lumpy futon and its rickety frame . ( Now you know why we have bad backs ! ) It arrives next Sunday and will precipitate our first bout of room rearranging . We plan on re - evaluating our storage ( wardrobe , TV unit ) needs next week after the bed comes . I 'm sure the size of the behomoth will affect some of our previously made decisions so we 'll need to make sure that we had planned actually works out . Then we 'll order whatever we need online from Ikea . Why online ? Well , whenever I check our local stores ' inventories , they show that they don 't have any of what we need in stock . I 'm not wasting a car rental on an unnecessary trip ! I 'd rather spend the car rental cost on shipping the goods we need . The part that I have been mega - stressing over is the non - essential configuration of drawers and shelves . I 've finally made peace with not getting everything right from the get - go . This has freed me up to concentrate on how to best lay out the room . If I find I need a few more baskets instead of shelves , so be it . I can always order them or trek to Ikea on a weekend to pick them up . My guess is that once the storage system & TV unit are in place and the room rearranged somewhat , we should be at the 24 week mark . By then we will then start setting up for the sea monkeys in earnest . A few sources say that you should be ready for twins by 30 weeks , so that 's another number to shoot for . Aside : Oddly enough , I don 't really think I 'm going to go too early . Partially because I 'm being monitored really closely to prevent that but partially because I just have a gut that things are going to be okay for the most part despite all my worrying . Still , it 's better to be prepared . In the meantime , I need to put my nose to the grindstone on the Alphabet blanket . I am only halfway through the second set of letters and need to make more progress . My main problem is that I 've never really been a " knit at home in the evenings " person . I get my " knit on " during my evening commute and unless I 'm working on something with a set deadline , I opt for vegging in front of the TV instead of knitting . Basically , I 'm usually too drained by the day to want to work on anything taxing . While the blanket isn 't really difficult , it is charted and takes a bit more than I have to give in the evenings . Since it 's " puffy coat season " on the trains and space is at an absolute premium , I can 't really work on it while commuting . I don 't have a real lunch hour to speak of , so that is also out . I 've been leaving it for the weekends when I 've been able to devote hours at a shot and have made mega progress on it . However , the past few have been difficult for me , so I need to get back to working on it during the week . That means working on it at night so I 'm going to try to get one row done before bed each evening . Slow , yes , but better than nothing . I do have to remember that I am , after all , on a deadline with this . This one is a little over 3 / 4 of the way done and should be finished by the end of the week . Next up will be the booties and mittens . Those should take a couple of days , max , so I might as well get them out of the way quickly . Once those are done , I 'll decide whether I want to tackle the leggings or the wrap kimonos . My guess is that I 'll want to do the kimonos because then I 'll get to use some different yarn colors . Before I launch into the usual , a huge thank you for all the wonderful comments everyone left yesterday ! I was surprised to see so many of them and they really made me and Mark smile and grin . It 's nice to see that so many people out there are excited too ! The blog has a new face again . I 'm not quite thrilled with it but I guess it will do until next month . Designwise , I 'm very particular about things but I hadn 't pre - planned this month 's design so it 's natural that I don 't quite like it . Thankfully Februrary only has 28 days so I won 't have to stare at it for too long . For the record , last month looked like this : I 'm dragging quite a bit this morning . Yesterday was another really busy day at work and the follow up doctor 's appointment took a huge chunk out of my morning . I feel as if I 'm in a perpetual state of " catch up " at the office . I hate this feeling and even though my boss tells me it 's totally okay , I feel like a bitch - ass slacker . The doctor 's appointment went well , though , so I can 't complain too much about the time suck . I gained weight - - hoorah ! I 've gained 18 pounds total . I 'm supposed to shoot for 35 - 45 pounds total so I 'm back on schedule now . If I continue to gain a pound a week I should be golden ! The doc also said that my cervix is nice and REALLY long right now so things look good on that front . When I go back in two weeks they 'll remeasure my cervix and finish checking out some of the baby parts that they didn 't get good pictures of . But I got the equivalent of a two thumbs up from my docs which makes me feel really good about how things are progressing . ( For comparison , the previous bump picture taken two weeks ago is here . ) It 's really starting to round out and fill in some ! I ended my crazed day with Knit Club . For one reason or another , I simply hadn 't been able to go for about three weeks so I was determined to get my ass down there last night . Of course I wound up staying out later than I normally do which is contributing to my exhaustion this morning . But it was worth it because I had a blast as usual . Kelly , Courtney , Kiely and I tried out a new place yesterday since the Cosi we usually frequent has been the location of quite a few " Mickey " sightings . Being that no one wanted to port a mouse home in their bag or eat in a place that might have a rodent problem , Kelly scouted out s ' Nice down in the West Village . It was very cosy and no one bothered us which is a huge plus in my book ! I finally got to meet Kiely , our newest recruit , and got caught up with what everyone else was working on . Kelly 's threatening the mittens she was asked to make in hopes that the yarn will submit ! Submit , yarn , submit ! Courtney was happily working on a hat she 's making with Classic Elite Paintbox . . . Kiely was practicing ribbing . . . She 's going to choose her first " real " project next week . And as for me , well it looks like I 'm making a sweater for a very skinny - armed baby but I 'm really not . . . The ultrasound yesterday went hunky dory . Both babies are measuring at about 17 1 / 2 weeks , had heartbeats in the 144 + range and most importantly had all of their important parts - - hearts , livers , brains , kidneys , etc . They had two of what they needed to have two of and all of their fingers and toes . My cervix looked good , according to the tech , which I assume means it was all nice and closed up . The tech was an Eastern European woman who obviously took lots of pleasure in her work . She kept grinning and smiling while coaxing the babies to move into position for the camera . There were moments when the babies ' movements were a little surreal but I had to bite my tongue a few times so I wouldn 't burst out laughing when she addressed the moving fetuses . The funniest thing to me was that she saw the babies ' sexes and didn 't even blink . When we asked if it would be able to determine the sexes , she was like " Oh , you want to find out ? " I guess lots of parents don 't want to know . Mark and I assumed that she was getting the doctor so he could check her findings and find out the sex because she couldn 't tell but she said , " I already know . I just need him to confirm . " The doctor came in and basically stated that our babies were doing fine , and that I 'd be having another ultrasound or two in the future to check in on them . He also told us that we were having ( drumroll please ) a boy and a girl . So there you have it . Perfect instant family according to many of our friends and co - workers . ( Mark 's dad even went so far as to say that I am his hero because of this . ) We 're still going back and forth with names but the boy 's first name will definitely be Aden and I 'm hoping to talk Mark into Hunter for the girl 's first name . I really love the name and think that a feminine middle name will help make up for the genderlessness he doesn 't seem to like . I have my follow up visit with my doc today - - I had the ultrasound yesterday but my doctor is only in on Wednesdays - - so I 'll get weighed and measured and generally checked . I 'll also probably get another small sypnosis of yesterday 's results and what they mean . Basically , I already know that I 'll be going for cervical sonograms every two weeks now to monitor me for signs of my cervix length changing or it opening . I 'm hoping it stays nice and tight for 20 more weeks . P . P . S . Knitting progress is being made . I 'm up to casting on the sleeves on the second of the two sweaters and the Alphabet Blanket is coming along , albeit verrrrry slowly . I have Knit Club with my friends tonight so hopefully I will have good pictures to show you tomorrow . According to the March of Dimes , most twins average 36 weeks of gestation so today would put me at the halfway mark of my pregnancy . Ideally I 'd like to go to 38 weeks , so halfway would be next week . Either way , it 's soon , real soon , and I 'm beginning to feel a little panicky about not being prepared . Our apartment will need a ton of rearranging in order for it to be ready for the sea monkeys . No longer will Mark and I have our separate havens . My room will become the master bedroom and nursery . It is the logical choice because it is the larger of the two rooms and it has a door so we can lock the animals out . Mark 's room will become a combo living room / home office / play room / guest room . Our hallway will become our library , housing the overflow of books from each of our rooms . The kitchen will also become our laundry . All this rearranging will bring upheaval and change at a time when I could want it less . We will need to replace our current , full - sized bed with a larger one to accommodate my growing belly ( for now ) and kids ( in the future ) . We 'll also need to revisit our use of space in my room - - no more yarn in bins stacked against the wall or bookcases lining the walls . A much dreaded trip to Ikea is sorely needed - - dreaded because I know it will be overwhelming and I am already very overwhelmed by all of this . We need to design and buy a suitable wardrobe unit to house yarn and fabric , store adult and baby clothes and put the TV , dvd player and whatever else fits in . Ikea has a customizable Pax unit but I can 't gage how big it is by reading dimensions . ( Sadly I lack this workman 's skill . . . ) I actually need to go to the store and look at the damned thing so I can better determine if it is what I think we 're going to need . " Think " being the operative word . What if I 'm wrong ? What if I make a costly mistake by configuring it wrong ? Cost is weighing heavily on my mind . Aside from the wardrobe , we 'll need to buy some pretty big ticket items soon : a used car , a new bed ( Mark wants king - sized ; I think queen is more realistic because I 'm really concerned about space ) , two cribs ( at first the sea monkeys will sleep together in one crib until they 're too big to continue sleeping in the same space ) , two car seats , a twin - toting jogging stroller ( Mark prefers this type ) , and an apartment - sized washer / dryer . Some things I 'm willing to be cheap on , some things I 'm paying for the best . Craigslist is out of the question for most of this . I want new , fresh out of the box , warranty not voided yet stuff . Don 't get me wrong ; we have the money for this . I just want to maximize our spending dollar so that we can bank the rest for when times are lean . Aside from the cost , the sheer amount of work I foresee - - lugging and moving and rearranging - - is daunting . We have two large rooms that need to be completely turned inside out , a kitchen that needs less work but needs to be somewhat modified nonetheless , and closets that need to be revisited and their uses revised . Mark 's back has been fucked up for a while and I can 't overexert myself - - which is as easy to do as lifting my arms some days . I seriously worry about how long it 's going to take us to make these changes to the apartment . Ideally I 'd like the place to be mostly rearranged before I 'm forced onto bedrest or mid - May , whichever comes sooner . Unlike planning for the wedding , I can 't decide to drop an idea or not do things because I 'm tired . All the changes I have in mind have to be done in order to make for a livable space . Nevermind that the gameplan is to move in 2008 anyway . 2008 may turn in 2009 depending on how we manage as a single income family the first year . While I make decent money , I still have to support my parents so we 're definitely going to be looking at a financial adjustment period . We 're still going to need to make the space we 're in livable and workable for when the sea monkeys arrive , regardless of what the future will bring . So all of this is giving me agita and sometimes I feel that Mark doesn 't see the urgency in it . That 's not the case , of course , and I know I 'm being unfair - - although he could be slightly less laissez - faire when I bring up the anxiety - inducing Ikea trip or suggest he check the Target shopping list . I 've not been very expressive lately about how I 've been feeling , so it 's not fair of me to infer that he doesn 't care . I know he does and that he worries , but also that he 's kinda waiting on me to say , " Okay . Let 's do this . " It 's hard because I spend so much time focused on what 's going on with me . Should I call the doctor for that pain ? Was that gas or the first sign of someone moving ? What is that repeated throbbing ? Why am I not gaining weight quicker ? I should be at the very least 4 lbs heavier than I am now ! Are the sea monkeys really okay ? Will I have to go on bedrest ? How do you prevent flat baby head ? Why don 't I know more about SIDS ? I 've never changed a diaper in my life ; am I going to be a good mom ? And so on . . . And truth be told , I have not wanted to go shopping until my bonus hit . We cut our savings in half last year ( ouch ! ) taking care of an old debt and I really didn 't feel safe buying things until we built the account up again . So now I feel financially secure again and ready to start buying the big stuff . But I 'm overwhelmed by it at the same time . The sweater just needs to be sewn up to be completed . And yes , I know my history with UFOs . However , I will finish it before the sea monkeys are born . I 'm planning on leaving the sewing up for this coming weekend . So far there is only one thing I would change about the pattern . In the neck detailing it calls for a K2tog TBL which adds some decorative interest . Unfortunately a plain old K2tog adds none , so the other side looks unbalanced . On the next sweater I plan to replace the K2tog TBL with a SKPO so that my decreases at the neck match . Kick harder lil sea monkeys ! I know you 've started to . Momma wants to feel you so that she knows you 're growing up nice and strong . It 's a little know fact that my friends Eric and Denise triggered my baby lust . Shortly before my birthday last year , Eric let me know that they were expecting a baby . While I was extremely happy for them , I went into a sort of " my biological alarm has been ringing for years now " depressive spiral . Mark and I talked about it and quite unexpectedly , Mark said that we could try . Now , from the moment we 'd started dating , I knew Mark was infertile - - he believed in full disclosure upfront so as to not dash any hopes . He said if I was looking for a dad , that I should keep on looking . But I fell in love with the man , not his procreative potential . So when we got married , I 'd already known for forever and a day that Mark didn 't want to go through the whole infertility rigamorole again . He 'd already done it with his ex - wife and had really had enough of that experience the first time around . I resigned myself to the fact that we wouldn 't have children , and planned to look forward to a life focused on us . That 's why I was shocked when he expressed a willingness to go for it . This act alone proves how deeply the man loves me . ( As if I needed any evidence of the fact . ) Well . . . Eric and Denise 's baby was born last July . Their little boy was born happy and healthy and shiny and magical . I was , and still am , insanely happy for them . As for us , we were getting ready to get started , having to take a few prerequisite medical tests and get my insurance to approve the treatment . At about the same time , I found out that Nate and Traci were expecting as well . They were due in February and I was overjoyed for them . The depressive spiral didn 't repeat . A few months later , IVF worked for me . Well , Nate and Traci 's little girl was born yesterday . She has a full head of dark hair and precious little fingers and toes . And I 'm thrilled to pieces for them . And for myself , oddly enough . Every positive birth story lets me know that I can do this also , despite my fears . Hunter 's sweater is almost done . It 's got about 12 rows left and should be done by the end of my evening commute today . Then I will immediately begin Aden 's matching blue one , while the carpal tunnel is still mild and manageable .
|
Each year we kick off the Christmas season by putting up the Christmas tree just after the Thanksgiving holiday . For the past three years , we 've gone to the same tree farm , searched for the perfect Noble Fir , and watched as Eric cut it down like an old - fashioned lumberjack . This year was exceptionally fun since Wyatt is now capable of understanding and participating in all of the holiday festivities . He really embraced all of the Halloween activities , and has become quite the pro at spotting a piece of candy from a mile away . " Trick or Treat " is no longer a seasonal phrase , but a daily plea for the beloved Tootsie Pop or Hershey 's Kiss . So , when we told Wyatt that we were going to cut down our Christmas tree , it was of no big surprise that he responded with very bright eyes , " Christmas treat ? " You can 't blame the guy for trying , I guess . Here is the big stud hard at work : Wyatt taking a break from playing in the mud to supervise : Enjoying hot cocoa as a family with Frosty the Snowman : Decorating the tree is my favorite part . Each of our ornaments has some type of significance , so it 's fun to go through them one by one and relive the story behind it . It is such a perfect start to a very joyous season ahead . Cheers ! I never knew Eric could move his hips like this ! Thanks Sweet Yet Sassy ! This was too fun ! Click here to see us cut a holiday rug ! What a crazy month it has been ! It appears as though our " Skinny Bones Jones " is quickly assuming the new title of " Chunky Monkey " . She has been on a feeding frenzy the past few weeks and is quickly outgrowing all of the clothes I thought she 'd be wearing for at least 2 more months ! Even more perplexing is how her neck has all but disappeared . Ha ! Fortunately for me , she still loves to cuddle . Unfortunately for me , her stranger anxiety seems to be worsening . While she would previously be content in someone else 's arms for at least a couple of minutes , she now lets out her terrified cry on the " pass off " . She seems to be warming up to Eric a little better , which makes both of us happy , but she seems to be a little fickle about it . In this photo , she appears to be content in the arms of her daddy . Of course , that picture was taken just moments before crying out in terror , as seen in the following snapshot , in which she was being held by someone else . It 's no big surprise that Big Brother still wins the award for being most adored by her . She loves him to pieces ! As for milestones , she still has never rolled over , but seeing as how Wyatt maybe rolled a couple of times when he was a baby , I 'm not too concerned . She has recently discovered that she is in total control of her hands and feet . I often catch her just staring at her hands in amazement as she moves them across her face . Her core muscles are getting so strong , so I imagine that she will probably be sitting by herself within the next month . She 's teething like crazy , and I 'm expecting to see two bottom teeth peek through her gums any day now . Author : CatrinaWine Selection : For the first time in Sipping Chardonnay history , the wine rack is empty . It 's a good thing we 're going to the store tomorrow . : - ) To me , Thanksgiving is such an important holiday because it allows you to actually take some time to reflect upon circumstances or individuals for which you are thankful . It 's very easy to say that we are thankful . I know because I say it all of the time . I have found that although it is so much more difficult to actually sit down and examine the reasons behind our thankfulness , it can be so unbelievably insightful . As a result , I have truly realized how much my happiness / contentedness in life has been attributed to circumstances not of my own doing . I am certain that if not for the good deeds of others , as well as the pure spiritual interventions that have occurred in my life , I would be a very different person in a very different place . At this point in my life , I am most thankful for ( in no particular order ) . . . * being blessed with two healthy and beautiful children - - they are my world . * a baby that sleeps at night . * my husband , who is working like a madman and sacrificing precious time with his family so that we can eventually live the life we 've envisioned for our family . * my in - laws - - without them , we 'd be living on the streets ! Ohhh . . . and Wyatt would never receive musical greeting cards in the mail . * a mother who raised me to be a strong , independent woman . * a sister who would " bend over backwards " for me if I needed her to ( and trust me , this is no easy task for a person who , in less than a week , will be just five years away from achieving " over the hill " status ! Ha ! Just kidding ! Geez . . . where 's your sense of humor , Sis ? ! ) * old friends - - they 've been there through the best and worst moments and still love me for me . * new friends - - without them , we 'd be incredibly lonely . Last and certainly not least , I am most thankful for the many spiritual interventions that have been bestowed upon me . I have been incredibly amazed by the Lord 's continuous presence in my life , • Permalink We 'd like you to meet Billy - - the very first member of Wyatt 's choo - choo family ! We weren 't sure if Wyatt was ever really going to get in to the whole choo - choo thing , which is why we haven 't started a collection for him . Some friends of mine with boys said that the madness usually starts at about age 2 , and they were right on the money . Wyatt 's brand new obsession hit us like a freight train ( no pun intended ) overnight . Suddenly , everything in sight is a " chugga chugga " or a " choo - choo " . It 's nice to see him using his imagination , but I feel kind of sorry for him sometimes when I see him using the back of the dining room chair as a train track . He has also been setting up his blocks in straight lines and using those as tracks too . Don 't worry . . . we 've already been talking with Santa , and Wyatt is on right on track ( no pun intended . . . again ! ) for getting his first train set for Christmas . I tried to hold out until then , but during our Toys R Us outing this morning ( which you can read about in my previous post ) , I had to break down and buy his first choo - choo . Not only did I want him to finally have one , but so did everyone else in the store . Once he caught a glimpse of the isle which should be renamed as " choo - choo heaven " , he could shout nothing else at the top of his lungs until I finally placed one in his hands ! Call me a sucker , but that 's what I get for bringing him into Toys R Us with me ! . . . of Toys R Us , that is ! Just a little background . . . I despise shopping - - which makes it very difficult for me around the holidays . Don 't get me wrong , I love to buy gifts for my loved ones - - it 's just the process that I loathe . These days , if I can 't buy it online then I don 't buy it . But since the big giraffe ( whose name escapes me at the moment ) charges an arm and leg for shipping , I had to actually step foot inside the store . With two small children , time efficiency is of the utmost importance . Therefore , traffic jams , crowds , and long lines just can 't be tolerated at this stage in my life . There 's just nothing that makes my blood boil more than to stand in line for a greater amount of time than it actually took to do all of my shopping ( another reason I steer clear of any sign that says Wal - Mart ) . It actually wasn 't as bad as I thought it was going to be , mostly because I beat the post - Thanksgiving Day rush ( Hallelujah ! ) . But just as I suspected , one of my items ( imagine that ) could not be found on the shelf - - only online . Grrr . . . . . So , it looks like I 'm going to have to pay the shipping for the one item , but unfortunately for the big giraffe , I 'm giving up the big $ $ to someone else . I know I sound like a big scrooge , but I 'm not going to go through the hassle of doing what I dread most PLUS pay the shipping that I wanted to avoid in the first place . That doesn 't sound irrational , does it ? Did I mention that I LOVE the holidays ? I really do . I just wish I could avoid the shopping part . Besides , isn 't Christmas about spending time with your loved ones . . . which I am SO excited to do this year , by the way . It seems like forever since I 've seen my family . This is my absolute favorite time of year ( minus the shopping . . . but you already knew that ) ! ! ! Ahhh . . . . Geoffery is his name ! That was going to drive me crazy . Without fail , just seconds after dressing Avery in a super cute little outfit for the day , she spits up all over it . This seriously seems to occur EVERY single time I put a new outfit on her . Like this morning , I fed her and waited until the last possible minute to change her clothes . She had not spit up one single time during the morning , despite all of my best efforts to burp her , roll her around on the floor , etc . Not that I want her to spit up - - it 's just an inevitable part of our day ! It would just be nice to get it out of her system so that I can somewhat keep my laundry pile under control . Ha ! Like that will EVER happen ! Anyway , I proceeded to change her out of her jammies , and the second ( literally ) that I picked her up , we were both drenched . Sigh ! ! ! Maybe there is something about being clean and smelling nice that makes babies uncomfortable . Hmm . . . It 's impossible to get frustrated with the little cutie though - - it just gives me an excuse to put her in yet another adorable outfit and post a picture on our blog . Lord knows I love our little cuddle bug , but I sure can 't wait until the days of spit - up are well behind us ! Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Papio Cabernet SauvignonAvery has recently been demonstrating a very unique ( almost manic - like ) way of showing her excitement . I was a bit startled the first time she did this , but it happens so regularly these days that I don 't even give it a second thought . What a funny gal ! By the way , I put the clip to music so you wouldn 't be forced to listen to my high - pitched mommy voice that I now realize is incredibly annoying ! Hmmm . . . now that I think about it , maybe Avery is trying to tell me something ! Lesson # 1 : NEVER let your child take a toy that he is currently obsessed with into a grocery or department store . It will inevitably get lost . Wyatt 's latest obsession has been with Eric 's camouflage flashlight . It goes everywhere with him - - even to bed . We went to the grocery store yesterday just to pick up a few things for dinner , and to avoid a meltdown , I told Wyatt he could bring the flashlight in with him ( I would normally just make him leave it in the car ) . Besides , we were just going to be a few minutes . Somehow the stinker managed to lose it . I wasn 't about to retrace our steps from one end of the store to the other ( who has the time ? ) , so we cut our losses and went home . All I heard last night and this morning was " fashLIGHT ! " over and over and over again . For some strange reason , my telling him that he left it at the grocery store meant nothing to him . So , while we were at Target this morning , I decided to buy a replacement flashlight . Lesson # 2 : NEVER let your child see you place a toy in the shopping cart unless you are prepared to cut it out of the package and install the batteries on the spot . It will almost always result in a tantrum . Let 's just say it was a fun ride home ! We finally broke out the Exersaucer for Avery yesterday . Eric was finally home during the daylight hours , so he was able to retrieve it from the shed in the backyard . I would have done it , but my relationship with spiders is quite rocky , so I thought it was in my best interest to wait until the outdoorsman of the house could do it . Eric is constantly giving me a hard time about my irrational fear of spiders , and is very concerned about me passing it on to our children . I try not to make a big deal when I see a spider , but apparently Wyatt is more intuitive than I gathered because when he saw a spider a few days ago , he shouted , " Oh , no ! . . . " siper " . . . step on it ! " Anyway , here are a couple of pictures of Avery enjoying her new , big girl toy ! Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Dragon 's Bluff Pinot Noir ( wine - tasting trip to Dundee Hills with Michelle ) It 's amazing how excited Oregonians get when the Cascade Mountains receive their first dusting of winter snow - - a sure sign that ski and snowboarding season will soon be in full effect . While we love to ski ( nowhere near " cool enough " to snowboard ) , opportunities to actually get on the slopes are pretty few and far between when you have two small children . But it doesn 't mean we still can 't enjoy the beautiful mountain powder in our own special way - - and that 's what we did today at Timberline Lodge on Mt . Hood . Wyatt and Avery looked like little snow bunnies in their winter gear . Once everyone was suited up and had their potty breaks , we were ready to brave the cold wind . But of course , just as we were about to head out the door , Wyatt became distracted by a very large ( yet very friendly ) fire - fighting bear who goes by the name of Smokey . Here is Wyatt with his bearded friend , Jeremiah Johnson ( also known as Daddy ) , and their new pal Smokey . Yeah , every year it seems that my husband ( bless his heart ) attempts to grow a beard while secretly hoping it might just be the year that the " Tom Selleck " facial hair emerges - - not so much ! He so desperately wants it , despite my preference for a clean - shaven hubby . But I guess I can tolerate the hair on his face . . . as long as he can tolerate the hair on my legs ! ! Ha ! We were definitely lucky to have such great views of the mountain , as we were expecting nothing but cloud cover . Mount Hood is such a spectacular site during the winter months ! We found a quiet little area to explore that not only provided great photo opportunities , but it shielded us from the wind - - and for that , Avery was very grateful ( as was I ) . We didn 't bring sleds or any other snow gear , but it didn 't stop Wyatt from having the time of his life . He and Eric improvised by running down the hill and falling into the snow . While it looked painful to me , the boys didn 't seem to mind , and it made for some great act • Permalink Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Pepperwood Grove Merlotwith a game that I call UP - UP - UP with a fish ! ~ Cat in the HatClick on photo to enlargeDr . Seuss is hands - down the favorite children 's author in our house , which made selecting Wyatt 's Halloween costume a no - brainer . He wasn 't really sure what to think when I told him he was going to be Cat in the Hat for Halloween . He didn 't actually grasp what that meant until we put the costume on him and he looked at himself in the mirror . He was quite enamored with himself - almost as if he truly believed he was indeed Cat in the Hat ! As for Avery 's costume , I just couldn 't resist when I saw it - - and it just so happened to fit with the theme of Cat in the Hat . This age is so fun because you can dress them in anything you want without much , if any , protest . Trick - or - treating was very interesting . It took us a good 45 minutes just to get off our our street , as most of our time was spent trying to explain to Wyatt that just because someone answered the door , it didn 't give him an invitation to just barge in and stay for tea . He also had a difficult time understanding why he couldn 't eat every single piece of candy right away . Therefore , we spent a lot of time lying down in the middle of the street pouting ! It 's a good thing we started off on our street . It didn 't take him long to get the hang of it - - although he never actually said " trick - or - treat " or " thank you " . It 's very strange , but he has a problem using socially appropriate terms such as " please " , " thank you " , and " sorry " . He can definitely say them , but for some reason he feels very awkward having to say them at the appropriate times . Oh well . . . maybe next year ! He and Eric had a grand time sorting through all of " the goods " when we got back home while I was getting our little fishy to bed . When I came back into the living room , Wyatt was enjoying his tootsie pop and appeared to be experiencing a sugar coma , as we never get the opportunity to see him lying so still and so quiet . For those of you who don 't know , th • Permalink For the most part I 'm a chardonnay , as I consider myself to exhibit a somewhat sunny and mellow disposition ( most of the time ) , but because I find a tremendous amount of joy out of showering my two kids with hugs and kisses , I also possess the subtle sweetness often found in a riesling . But don 't be fooled . I love a great outdoor adventure and am willing to try anything once . This occasional display of boldness is thought to match that of a cabernet , whereas my appreciation for nature suggests that I have an earthy component to my personality - very characteristic of a merlot . ( more )
|
Each year we kick off the Christmas season by putting up the Christmas tree just after the Thanksgiving holiday . For the past three years , we 've gone to the same tree farm , searched for the perfect Noble Fir , and watched as Eric cut it down like an old - fashioned lumberjack . This year was exceptionally fun since Wyatt is now capable of understanding and participating in all of the holiday festivities . He really embraced all of the Halloween activities , and has become quite the pro at spotting a piece of candy from a mile away . " Trick or Treat " is no longer a seasonal phrase , but a daily plea for the beloved Tootsie Pop or Hershey 's Kiss . So , when we told Wyatt that we were going to cut down our Christmas tree , it was of no big surprise that he responded with very bright eyes , " Christmas treat ? " You can 't blame the guy for trying , I guess . Here is the big stud hard at work : Wyatt taking a break from playing in the mud to supervise : Enjoying hot cocoa as a family with Frosty the Snowman : Decorating the tree is my favorite part . Each of our ornaments has some type of significance , so it 's fun to go through them one by one and relive the story behind it . It is such a perfect start to a very joyous season ahead . Cheers ! I never knew Eric could move his hips like this ! Thanks Sweet Yet Sassy ! This was too fun ! Click here to see us cut a holiday rug ! What a crazy month it has been ! It appears as though our " Skinny Bones Jones " is quickly assuming the new title of " Chunky Monkey " . She has been on a feeding frenzy the past few weeks and is quickly outgrowing all of the clothes I thought she 'd be wearing for at least 2 more months ! Even more perplexing is how her neck has all but disappeared . Ha ! Fortunately for me , she still loves to cuddle . Unfortunately for me , her stranger anxiety seems to be worsening . While she would previously be content in someone else 's arms for at least a couple of minutes , she now lets out her terrified cry on the " pass off " . She seems to be warming up to Eric a little better , which makes both of us happy , but she seems to be a little fickle about it . In this photo , she appears to be content in the arms of her daddy . Of course , that picture was taken just moments before crying out in terror , as seen in the following snapshot , in which she was being held by someone else . It 's no big surprise that Big Brother still wins the award for being most adored by her . She loves him to pieces ! As for milestones , she still has never rolled over , but seeing as how Wyatt maybe rolled a couple of times when he was a baby , I 'm not too concerned . She has recently discovered that she is in total control of her hands and feet . I often catch her just staring at her hands in amazement as she moves them across her face . Her core muscles are getting so strong , so I imagine that she will probably be sitting by herself within the next month . She 's teething like crazy , and I 'm expecting to see two bottom teeth peek through her gums any day now . Author : CatrinaWine Selection : For the first time in Sipping Chardonnay history , the wine rack is empty . It 's a good thing we 're going to the store tomorrow . : - ) To me , Thanksgiving is such an important holiday because it allows you to actually take some time to reflect upon circumstances or individuals for which you are thankful . It 's very easy to say that we are thankful . I know because I say it all of the time . I have found that although it is so much more difficult to actually sit down and examine the reasons behind our thankfulness , it can be so unbelievably insightful . As a result , I have truly realized how much my happiness / contentedness in life has been attributed to circumstances not of my own doing . I am certain that if not for the good deeds of others , as well as the pure spiritual interventions that have occurred in my life , I would be a very different person in a very different place . At this point in my life , I am most thankful for ( in no particular order ) . . . * being blessed with two healthy and beautiful children - - they are my world . * a baby that sleeps at night . * my husband , who is working like a madman and sacrificing precious time with his family so that we can eventually live the life we 've envisioned for our family . * my in - laws - - without them , we 'd be living on the streets ! Ohhh . . . and Wyatt would never receive musical greeting cards in the mail . * a mother who raised me to be a strong , independent woman . * a sister who would " bend over backwards " for me if I needed her to ( and trust me , this is no easy task for a person who , in less than a week , will be just five years away from achieving " over the hill " status ! Ha ! Just kidding ! Geez . . . where 's your sense of humor , Sis ? ! ) * old friends - - they 've been there through the best and worst moments and still love me for me . * new friends - - without them , we 'd be incredibly lonely . Last and certainly not least , I am most thankful for the many spiritual interventions that have been bestowed upon me . I have been incredibly amazed by the Lord 's continuous presence in my life , • Permalink We 'd like you to meet Billy - - the very first member of Wyatt 's choo - choo family ! We weren 't sure if Wyatt was ever really going to get in to the whole choo - choo thing , which is why we haven 't started a collection for him . Some friends of mine with boys said that the madness usually starts at about age 2 , and they were right on the money . Wyatt 's brand new obsession hit us like a freight train ( no pun intended ) overnight . Suddenly , everything in sight is a " chugga chugga " or a " choo - choo " . It 's nice to see him using his imagination , but I feel kind of sorry for him sometimes when I see him using the back of the dining room chair as a train track . He has also been setting up his blocks in straight lines and using those as tracks too . Don 't worry . . . we 've already been talking with Santa , and Wyatt is on right on track ( no pun intended . . . again ! ) for getting his first train set for Christmas . I tried to hold out until then , but during our Toys R Us outing this morning ( which you can read about in my previous post ) , I had to break down and buy his first choo - choo . Not only did I want him to finally have one , but so did everyone else in the store . Once he caught a glimpse of the isle which should be renamed as " choo - choo heaven " , he could shout nothing else at the top of his lungs until I finally placed one in his hands ! Call me a sucker , but that 's what I get for bringing him into Toys R Us with me ! . . . of Toys R Us , that is ! Just a little background . . . I despise shopping - - which makes it very difficult for me around the holidays . Don 't get me wrong , I love to buy gifts for my loved ones - - it 's just the process that I loathe . These days , if I can 't buy it online then I don 't buy it . But since the big giraffe ( whose name escapes me at the moment ) charges an arm and leg for shipping , I had to actually step foot inside the store . With two small children , time efficiency is of the utmost importance . Therefore , traffic jams , crowds , and long lines just can 't be tolerated at this stage in my life . There 's just nothing that makes my blood boil more than to stand in line for a greater amount of time than it actually took to do all of my shopping ( another reason I steer clear of any sign that says Wal - Mart ) . It actually wasn 't as bad as I thought it was going to be , mostly because I beat the post - Thanksgiving Day rush ( Hallelujah ! ) . But just as I suspected , one of my items ( imagine that ) could not be found on the shelf - - only online . Grrr . . . . . So , it looks like I 'm going to have to pay the shipping for the one item , but unfortunately for the big giraffe , I 'm giving up the big $ $ to someone else . I know I sound like a big scrooge , but I 'm not going to go through the hassle of doing what I dread most PLUS pay the shipping that I wanted to avoid in the first place . That doesn 't sound irrational , does it ? Did I mention that I LOVE the holidays ? I really do . I just wish I could avoid the shopping part . Besides , isn 't Christmas about spending time with your loved ones . . . which I am SO excited to do this year , by the way . It seems like forever since I 've seen my family . This is my absolute favorite time of year ( minus the shopping . . . but you already knew that ) ! ! ! Ahhh . . . . Geoffery is his name ! That was going to drive me crazy . Without fail , just seconds after dressing Avery in a super cute little outfit for the day , she spits up all over it . This seriously seems to occur EVERY single time I put a new outfit on her . Like this morning , I fed her and waited until the last possible minute to change her clothes . She had not spit up one single time during the morning , despite all of my best efforts to burp her , roll her around on the floor , etc . Not that I want her to spit up - - it 's just an inevitable part of our day ! It would just be nice to get it out of her system so that I can somewhat keep my laundry pile under control . Ha ! Like that will EVER happen ! Anyway , I proceeded to change her out of her jammies , and the second ( literally ) that I picked her up , we were both drenched . Sigh ! ! ! Maybe there is something about being clean and smelling nice that makes babies uncomfortable . Hmm . . . It 's impossible to get frustrated with the little cutie though - - it just gives me an excuse to put her in yet another adorable outfit and post a picture on our blog . Lord knows I love our little cuddle bug , but I sure can 't wait until the days of spit - up are well behind us ! Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Papio Cabernet SauvignonAvery has recently been demonstrating a very unique ( almost manic - like ) way of showing her excitement . I was a bit startled the first time she did this , but it happens so regularly these days that I don 't even give it a second thought . What a funny gal ! By the way , I put the clip to music so you wouldn 't be forced to listen to my high - pitched mommy voice that I now realize is incredibly annoying ! Hmmm . . . now that I think about it , maybe Avery is trying to tell me something ! Lesson # 1 : NEVER let your child take a toy that he is currently obsessed with into a grocery or department store . It will inevitably get lost . Wyatt 's latest obsession has been with Eric 's camouflage flashlight . It goes everywhere with him - - even to bed . We went to the grocery store yesterday just to pick up a few things for dinner , and to avoid a meltdown , I told Wyatt he could bring the flashlight in with him ( I would normally just make him leave it in the car ) . Besides , we were just going to be a few minutes . Somehow the stinker managed to lose it . I wasn 't about to retrace our steps from one end of the store to the other ( who has the time ? ) , so we cut our losses and went home . All I heard last night and this morning was " fashLIGHT ! " over and over and over again . For some strange reason , my telling him that he left it at the grocery store meant nothing to him . So , while we were at Target this morning , I decided to buy a replacement flashlight . Lesson # 2 : NEVER let your child see you place a toy in the shopping cart unless you are prepared to cut it out of the package and install the batteries on the spot . It will almost always result in a tantrum . Let 's just say it was a fun ride home ! We finally broke out the Exersaucer for Avery yesterday . Eric was finally home during the daylight hours , so he was able to retrieve it from the shed in the backyard . I would have done it , but my relationship with spiders is quite rocky , so I thought it was in my best interest to wait until the outdoorsman of the house could do it . Eric is constantly giving me a hard time about my irrational fear of spiders , and is very concerned about me passing it on to our children . I try not to make a big deal when I see a spider , but apparently Wyatt is more intuitive than I gathered because when he saw a spider a few days ago , he shouted , " Oh , no ! . . . " siper " . . . step on it ! " Anyway , here are a couple of pictures of Avery enjoying her new , big girl toy ! Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Dragon 's Bluff Pinot Noir ( wine - tasting trip to Dundee Hills with Michelle ) It 's amazing how excited Oregonians get when the Cascade Mountains receive their first dusting of winter snow - - a sure sign that ski and snowboarding season will soon be in full effect . While we love to ski ( nowhere near " cool enough " to snowboard ) , opportunities to actually get on the slopes are pretty few and far between when you have two small children . But it doesn 't mean we still can 't enjoy the beautiful mountain powder in our own special way - - and that 's what we did today at Timberline Lodge on Mt . Hood . Wyatt and Avery looked like little snow bunnies in their winter gear . Once everyone was suited up and had their potty breaks , we were ready to brave the cold wind . But of course , just as we were about to head out the door , Wyatt became distracted by a very large ( yet very friendly ) fire - fighting bear who goes by the name of Smokey . Here is Wyatt with his bearded friend , Jeremiah Johnson ( also known as Daddy ) , and their new pal Smokey . Yeah , every year it seems that my husband ( bless his heart ) attempts to grow a beard while secretly hoping it might just be the year that the " Tom Selleck " facial hair emerges - - not so much ! He so desperately wants it , despite my preference for a clean - shaven hubby . But I guess I can tolerate the hair on his face . . . as long as he can tolerate the hair on my legs ! ! Ha ! We were definitely lucky to have such great views of the mountain , as we were expecting nothing but cloud cover . Mount Hood is such a spectacular site during the winter months ! We found a quiet little area to explore that not only provided great photo opportunities , but it shielded us from the wind - - and for that , Avery was very grateful ( as was I ) . We didn 't bring sleds or any other snow gear , but it didn 't stop Wyatt from having the time of his life . He and Eric improvised by running down the hill and falling into the snow . While it looked painful to me , the boys didn 't seem to mind , and it made for some great act • Permalink Author : CatrinaWine Selection : Pepperwood Grove Merlotwith a game that I call UP - UP - UP with a fish ! ~ Cat in the HatClick on photo to enlargeDr . Seuss is hands - down the favorite children 's author in our house , which made selecting Wyatt 's Halloween costume a no - brainer . He wasn 't really sure what to think when I told him he was going to be Cat in the Hat for Halloween . He didn 't actually grasp what that meant until we put the costume on him and he looked at himself in the mirror . He was quite enamored with himself - almost as if he truly believed he was indeed Cat in the Hat ! As for Avery 's costume , I just couldn 't resist when I saw it - - and it just so happened to fit with the theme of Cat in the Hat . This age is so fun because you can dress them in anything you want without much , if any , protest . Trick - or - treating was very interesting . It took us a good 45 minutes just to get off our our street , as most of our time was spent trying to explain to Wyatt that just because someone answered the door , it didn 't give him an invitation to just barge in and stay for tea . He also had a difficult time understanding why he couldn 't eat every single piece of candy right away . Therefore , we spent a lot of time lying down in the middle of the street pouting ! It 's a good thing we started off on our street . It didn 't take him long to get the hang of it - - although he never actually said " trick - or - treat " or " thank you " . It 's very strange , but he has a problem using socially appropriate terms such as " please " , " thank you " , and " sorry " . He can definitely say them , but for some reason he feels very awkward having to say them at the appropriate times . Oh well . . . maybe next year ! He and Eric had a grand time sorting through all of " the goods " when we got back home while I was getting our little fishy to bed . When I came back into the living room , Wyatt was enjoying his tootsie pop and appeared to be experiencing a sugar coma , as we never get the opportunity to see him lying so still and so quiet . For those of you who don 't know , th • Permalink For the most part I 'm a chardonnay , as I consider myself to exhibit a somewhat sunny and mellow disposition ( most of the time ) , but because I find a tremendous amount of joy out of showering my two kids with hugs and kisses , I also possess the subtle sweetness often found in a riesling . But don 't be fooled . I love a great outdoor adventure and am willing to try anything once . This occasional display of boldness is thought to match that of a cabernet , whereas my appreciation for nature suggests that I have an earthy component to my personality - very characteristic of a merlot . ( more )
|
Eyewitness Account : Fort Lauderdale Airport Shootings Yes , there were two shootings . The second one America didn 't hear about … Well you can hear it now . I had arrived at terminal 1 realizing a lot of commotion with emergency vehicles . I asked my Uber driver what was going on and he had no idea . He dropped me off at departures on the first floor at Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airport . I went up to the ticket agent for Southwest Airlines and asked her about the cop cars . She replied , " Oh you don 't know , there was a shooting at terminal 2 a little while ago , it 's safe now you 'll be able to board your flight to Havana . " Alarmed I quickly Googled " Fort Lauderdale Shooting " . I asked her where I can buy a pack of cigarettes , she said to go upto the third floor and there 's a newstand there . Before going upto the third floor I decided to go to the crime scene and make a news report . This was my first news report . I did it with a lot of passion and pain for the victim that was reported dead , at the time there was one dead and several injured . Afterwards I did what I had to do , went up to the third floor and sat down in the disabled passengers area on the corner street . That 's when the second shooting happened . I heard gunshots and people screeming . I quickly peaked over the balcony and looked down to the third floor , there was a man with a black hat on shooting at people . I heard more gun shots . I got up , ran , and took cover under some seats . Fearing for my own life I said my last prayer and the second thing I did was pull out my phone and make a very raw video . Everything was happening so fast . After a few minutes things calmed down . And myself and the senior citizens sat down on the bench , some on wheelchair some on the bench . I realized there was an elderly Pakistani man I said " Assalamualaikum " to him and asked if he was OK . He didn 't respond , instead he asked , " What 's going on ? " I told him there was a shooting downstairs but seems like things are calm now . He was in transit coming from Karachi , Pakistan visiting his brothers and sisters . An undercover cop came running up the escalator with his badge in the air yelling and repeating " EVACUATE NOW ! " Everyone started to panic again . I got up , noticed an elderly women needed to be pushed on a wheelchair and pushed her out the doors and settled her in . I went back to the brother from Pakistan . I had flown back from Havana , Cuba to withdraw funds and planned on going back the next day . I was misinformed by Citibank that my debit card would work in Cuba . I had arrived in Havana 4 days earlier with 20 Canadian Dollars which converted to 15 Cuban Dollars . There wasn 't much information on the internet about what visa requirements Cuba had and I was under the impression that I would have to pay $ 25 upon arrival . Travel to Cuba was so new for Americans that there wasn 't much information available . Misinformed again , the ticketing agent told me I had to buy the visa prior to departure across from the counter at the travel agents from Cuba . I spent my last $ 100 bill for the visa , a little frustrated right before the flight boarded . I was able to survive 3 days with 15 CUC and the Cuban people were so hospitable that I got a room , food , and a driver for 3 days ! If it weren 't for my driver , William Texido , to take me in I would 've been on the streets in Cuba until January 18th with no money and nothing to eat . I would 've been an American bum in Cuba . Of course I had backup plans . I was fortunate to hail William 's 1951 Chevrolet outside arrivals at Jose Martin International and recalling my Spanish from high school . I was speaking fluently as I had gone into panic mode . After I had safely placed the elderly woman I went to talk to the Pakistani Brother to see if he was okay and if he needed anything . He asked me to get me in touch with his brother in Texas . I got him connected . After the call I told him about the free Wi - Fi that was available at the airport and helped him connect his phone so that he could use WhatsApp . I remember him telling me later during the day that God had sent me to him like an angel . I was flattered but I thought and told him I was obligated to do what I was doing during the time of crisis . There weren 't any other Muslims there let alone Pakistanis that could speak the same language . I expressed my anger to him about how they had over 15 years to train for these types of attacks yet they still keep happening . A bomb squad was brought as they announced on the PR system there 's no need to panic there 's been a suspicious package that had been discovered that they needed to make sure it was safe . We saw this all happening from the Terminal 1 . A few minutes passed by and they announced their clearing the parking lots and bringing in a sniper team . The sniper team came and set themselves up all across the terminal facing the building that they were clearing out , the parking lot . One officer passed by me and said , " remember this date , January 6th , you were given a second life . " As they were setting up everyone tried to find shelter as we were all exposed to a possible sniper . I set myself up in a corner and crouched down to my knees , with the public as a human shield . A newly - wed couple gave me odd looks … I told them " I 've seen too many movies and played too many video games , I 'm not getting the headshot today , if anything I 'll be playing dead . " Another announcement came that they had cleared the buildings and it was safe . I got up and saw an ambulance pull up . I had walked upto the curb as they pulled out the stretcher - most likely for the 2nd gunman or other people that may have gotten hurt . They also brought some rations for the people at the terminal . After settling down a big red container and a big bag an EMT walked upto me and said , " Help yourself . " I opened up the container and started handing out water to the elderly , women , children , and men , including airport staff . As I walked up and down the terminal it seemed that panic mode everyone was in started to fade away and a bonding started to ensue . I then went to see what was in the big bag . I tossed around bags of Doritos , chips , and crackers . I was helping the wheelchair passengers go to and from the bathroom across from the terminal . They were very thankful . A little while later I bummed a cigarette from a Chinese woman at which point she said how great of a job I was doing . I asked her " What job ? Making people laugh ? " The entire time she thought I was a volunteer doing some kind of resue mission . I joked and said , " Rescue mission ? I 'm in transit just like you are . " She was surprised that I was in transit as other people laughed . It was close to 5 o ' clock when I started having symptoms , " What if the shooters were looking for me ? To kill me ? " I thought to myself . I was supposed to be on the first floor when the second shooting occurred maybe I was supposed to be there . I started conspring . I realized the evening meds I usually take at 6 PM I should take now before symptoms got worse . It was a mixture of paranoia and grandiose feelings . The meds kicked in 15 - 20 minutes later and the negative thoughts went away . Ten hours had gone by when they announced they would start evacuating the stranded passengers to Port Everglades . The buses came , people started to bid farewell and get in line for the bus . People thanked me before I went inside the terminal to check the first floor and to see if the Starbucks was open . We exchanged numbers and business cards . I bid farewell , people were thanking me , I responded to everyone that what I was doing wasn 't anything special and doing good based on what Islam taught me as a Muslim . There were mixed reports coming in at the airport . People were saying the first shooting the shooter wasn 't arrested but they said he was and others about a 2nd gunman . Whoever or it was he was apparently hearing voices before he went on to kill . A little while later after I had done my Starbucks run ( it was closed ) I had gotten on the bus to get to Fort Everglades . The people on the bus recognized me and were happy to see me . We exchanged numbers and business cards again . I got a little impatient and saw there was a hotel up the block and asked the bus driver if I could get off . After I got off I saw there was a sushi restaurant across the street so I decided to have dinner . When I was done I started walking to the hotel when I heard someone calling my name from the back . I turned around there was a man asking me if I had dropped anything . I checked my pockets and it turned out the $ 500 I had withdrawn from the ATM weren 't in my money clip . I told him , " Yes , are you talking about the $ 500 ? " . " We 've got it on the bus for you " . I was so glad , this was the cash I came for from Cuba ! the same bus had only moved one block the entire 45 minutes I was having dinner . Sometimes you 've just got to count your blessings . A whopping $ 267 for the night at the hotel . Demand was high , supply was low . FDD Airport and Miami Airport were closed , all flights cancelled until 5 AM . I was watching the news that was getting censored . Oddly enough , there were no reports of the second shooting . Instead , there was this FBI guy that went onto ramble some nonsense about how when people have fight - or - flight syndrome ( it 's a syndrome now ? I was taught in middle school that it was a reflex ) and how there were reports of a 2nd shooting or a second shooter . Obviously someone had screwed up , someone at the FBI and intelligence and the county … they were covering each others jobs , in my opinion . I dozed off without taking my night time sedatives . I guess I didn 't need them at the time . The lights and TV were on . I was dreaming that I was in heaven , it was one of the most relaxing dreams I had ever had . I woke up in a cold sweat to the phone ringing - it was my wife . She had been trying to rebook my flight with Southwest but was having trouble reaching someone at customer service . She missed me as well . I was happy to have her call me and told her to get some sleep and that I would call customer service . After the call I took I nice long bath . Undercover Brother was on while I rebooked my flight which wasn 't as much of nuisance as I was expecting it to be . The morning came and I had breakfast at the hotel and got packed up and ready to get to the airport . I only had my messenger bag so I was traveling light . I knew I had to be at the airport early for my 11 AM flight to Havana . The shuttle dropped me off at Terminal 1 , I walked in , got online , and was vigilantly observant . I was happy to see the same ticketing agent from the day prior , she was much more nervous , no smile on her face , just doing her job . She asked me to go to the Cuban travel agency across from her and get my stamp again . I said something charming which made her smile . She asked me to come back and that she would take care of me without having to get back in line . The Cuban travel agent recognized me from the day before and he said he was very happy to see me , I gave him a hug . As the other employee stamped the Southwest Airline envelope I asked , " Why aren 't they reporting the shooting that happened here ? " Before he said anything , the other worker replied ; " We had a staff meeting before the airport opened and they told us if anyone asks about the second shooting to say that it was a drill . " Rolling her eyes . We both knew what really happened . " Wow ! Weren 't there more people killed ? That doesn 't happen in a drill … Isn 't it unconstitional for the American government to stage a terrorist attack against its own people ? Did anyone ask that ? " She said , " No . " I asked her if I could record what she said but she asked politely not to . I went upstairs to have a smoke . I ran into an airport staff member who came upto me hugged and thanked me . I told him it really wasn 't a big deal . It really wasn 't . The safety of the people was more important . At one point I asked him where the FBI 's press conference was being held , he didn 't know , another man from the staff was there with him who walked away . As I walked to the TSA checkpoint I had a feeling I was being followed . From my peripheral vision I could tell there were two armed officers that were watching me . After getting off the escalator I looked behind me to see if they were still behind me . I got to the checkpoint . There was another passenger that had walked up right before me and there was some confusion but I knew they were referring to me . After pulling me aside and having me sit down they asked me a series of questions , one officer on the phone , both asking questions after questions , and a police officer watching and observing . An hour and a half went by . They checked everything in my bag . I had nothing to hide so I cooperated and answered all of their questions . I 'll save those questions for another set of questions , an interview , perhaps . I must 've said something right when one of the officer 's decided to tell the other that " He 's fine , we can let him go . " As I got to the gate the plane was pulling up . I knew and the guys behind this knew why the flight was delayed . I did not want to stay in Fort Lauderdale another minute . I had walked inside my home when the voices started . It was a Sunday evening , April 2nd , 2017 , I had just come back from a smoke break outside my home … " Come into my world … " " … I will take care of you … " " I 'll show you the way … " Without hesitation I called Brunswick Hall Psychiatric Hospital , where I was admitted 4 years back . I told them what was going on , they said to hang up and call 911 . I hung up the voices roared back again , it was a woman with a seductive voice … " I love you … come , I 'll show you the way . " At that point I lost control of my hands it was as if someone had grabbed me by my arms and led me into the kitchen . I lunged for a big sharp knife on the countertop and was ready to stab my left arm . The entire time my wife was observing what was going on and intervened when I had grabbed the knife . She yelled , " this isn 't you Adam , this isn 't you ! " I realized she was right and I regained control and dropped the knife . She dragged me to the living room . With her hands against my face she said she 's calling for help . It wasn 't time for my evening medications . Maryam took action , called 911 , and in due time the police showed up . I knew this wouldn 't go too well but I cooperated with the EMT . They took me to Southside Hospital in Bay Shore . When they were letting me in I asked the police officer if I could have a cigarette , something he had promised me once we got to the hospital . " It 's up to them from here on . " I asked the nurse , she said something but it didn 't sound like I was going to get my smoke break . I thought once I had this cigarette that all these racing thoughts in my head would settle down . That 's how it usually worked . They were taking me for intake . I asked the police officer if I could have a cigarette , I didn 't realize I couldn 't smoke indoors so I put my hand in my jacket pocket to take out my pack . The police officer ran to grab my arm , I dodged , got up and the hospital security guard joined to try znd restrain me . It was like a scene from one of those Jason Bourne movies . I kept dodging and they kept trying to grab me until finally the police officer tazed me and I took a few steps and fell to the ground . My wife was also getting restrained by another security guard when I felt life come back to me . Turns out the tazer helped me appreciate how alive I felt . I was yelling as to what they were doing to my wife as they dragged her out of the room . Turns out my wife had kicked the police officer . They had me in handcuffs . The charge nurse came in to talk some sense into me . She asked me to promise to behave and they would take off the handcuffs . I started on my rhetoric banter about how the police and the security was treating us . I calmed down and they took off my handcuffs . I knew I was going to be doing some time . Drugged up and with very little emotions I had a restless night sleeping in the hospital room they had for me . They didn 't allow any visitors at this place . I didn 't know at which point my wife and I had parted ways . They were transferring me to South Oaks Hospital , telling I will have to stay there temporarily for a few days until they get my medication right . I had officially relapse . Schizophrenia , according to what I was taught in Abnormal Psychology class , is 50 % genetic and the remaining are environmental factors such as stress and what not . Stress had definitely been a factor as the Dean of Students at Farmingdale State College had , and still has , put my account on hold . It had triggered my Ulcerative Colitis earlier on in the semester as I was going in and out of Emergency Rooms . I was unable to register for one of the classes I needed . I had to attend weekly mandated therapy sessions at the school . Someone had complained that I was stalking them , to my surprise I had found out through my therapist . Therapy was helping on and off but was adding more stress . I just couldn 't figure out why the Dean was putting me through this and not even have the courtesy to return my phone calls and emails to schedule an appointment . I was expected to graduate with my bachelor 's degree by the summer but it looks like it won 't be for another year that I would have to attend . I had made so many plans but everything came to a halt . I wasn 't driving up until last month when I cleared my suspensions and got a car for myself . Prior to this I would get ready to leave at 4 in the morning Tuesdays and Thursdays to make it in time for my 8 AM Small Business Management class . Public transportation is a joke here in Suffolk County . I guess I needed a break from all this . I had to spend more time with my family . With my newborn who is growing up so fast . The first thing I did after getting discharged from the hospital was to drop my classes and walk in to see the Dean . I was surprised how she too was looking forward to see me and not avoid me . Dean Johnson apologized for not getting back to me promptly . I accepted her apology after having a look at her desk with piles of paperwork on it . She said she wants to see me mid - July / August to see how I 'm doing and she would lift the hold . To my surprise she told me about how a police report had been made , not just a complaint , by this girl that I had small talk with in the hallway for " stalking her " . Lesson learned ; not everyone 's perspective is the same as yours . She also told me how she had been keeping tabs on me for a year and a half now . I felt special and felt tempted to ask why but I knew the answer would be politically correct . During my stay at South Oaks Hospital I attended all the activities and group therapy sessions they had during the day . I found them all to be very therapeutic . I remember meeting my social worker the first day when I kept yawning which caused her to start yawning as well . It made us laugh but I was heavily sedated . I made friends there that felt that they needed to share with me their personal stories . I broke off a violent fight when this kid decided he wanted to throw a chair at this girl . I felt like I was part of the staff . There was a devil worshipper there that felt like she was the chosen one by the Illuminati . I got along with everyone , including the devil worshipper . Ultimately I waited for the hour to strike 5 so I could see my wife . My older brother and sister came by to visit , as well . The doctors at the hospital stopped the Adderall . Today , after my first dose of Adderall I have gotten the drive again to start doing things . I met my doctor yesterday and she felt I was having withdrawal symptoms from Adderall and that it is true I have ADHD . Prior to this I would wake up drop off my wife at work , come back and lay in bed thinking into the abyss . I was wasting time , which I regret , counting every hour before I had to go back to pick up Maryam . It wasn 't like this every day , I would go see my mother too from time to time . She 's always entertaining and gets me engaged . My seven - month - old grabs my attention as well . I have a renewed drive to go back to school . To finish not only my bachelor 's degree but to go onto finish grad school in mental health counseling . Today after so many weeks of being out of touch I made an attempt to socialize with my school friends . During the past few weeks what I thought about the most is about losing control . Regretting how losing control caused my independence to be taken away from me . Now I 'm dependent again on others . At least until I become productive again , which will probably be a year from now when I graduate with my diploma . Unless someone has other suggestions . I had drafted some blog posts which didn 't get published . One of them entitled " Society Labels You Insane ; When You Know You 're in Charge of Your Sanity " … I guess that 's not the case , society drives you to insanity . I had another exorcism done but I 'll save that for a future blog entry . Author Adam AbrahamPosted on May 23 , 2017May 23 , 2017Categories Diary , RelapseTags blog about schizophrenia , Dean , diary of the mentally ill , Relapse , schizophreniaLeave a comment on Losing Control , One of my Biggest Fears Living with Schizophrenia Judging The Perfect Living Muslim First let me point out the fact that there 's no such thing . There 's no perfect Christian , Jew , Hindu , Buddhist , etc . There are people that are disciplined , organized , polite , wreckless , loving , so on and so fourth but we all have our flaws . However , we run into people that are extremely judgmental , unforgiving , and slandering all the time . I believe in a simple philosophy … Let God be our judge . On the Day of Judgment God will be judging us and we will not be worried about what he said , she said , did or didn 't . I will be more worried about what good and bad I have on my account than about the guy that stole my iPad from me . There 's several sayings of Prophet Muhammad , Peace be Upon Him … A prosititue once fed a dog and for that good deed she entered paradise . A person with faith in God the size of a grain will enter Heaven because of God 's mercy and a person who 's proud of all the good things he or she did and all the worship they did will enter hell because of their PRIDE . Yet , we see people backbiting , slandering , gossiping all around us . And so few people that are humble . However , there is still more love in this world than hate . Otherwise the world would 've ended a long time ago . If you have a habit of backbiting without ill intentions remember that word gets around quick . That 's one of the reasons people unfriend people or shut down on social media . The Prophet once gave counsel to Abu Dharr , saying : O Abu Dharr ! Beware of backbiting , for backbiting is graver than adultery . Abu Dharr ( r ) said : Why is that so , O Messenger of Allah ? He ( s ) replied : That is because when a man commits adultery and then repents to God , God accepts his repentance . However , backbiting is not forgiven until forgiven by its victim . I 'm not propogating a life of sin , all I 'm saying stop judging other people . Stop advising them with opinions . If you want to advise them give them facts . Don 't expect them to have the same lifestyle as you as you cannot dictate that . I 've forgiven the non - practicing Muslim that stole my iPad . Because who knows whose prayers are getting accepted … Maybe he needed it more than I did . The preaching Christan employee I had lent $ 250 to and he never returned my calls or answered my texts . I 've forgiven him too . I rule that I follow , and I 'm stating the obvious here , don 't judge a religion based on its people , judge it based on its creed . I hope if I 've done anyone wrong , backbitten , owed money , or anything to anyone that they would forgive me . Ultimately God is our judge he is Ar - Rahman , Ar - Raheem . As a parent it is my responsibility to teach my children right from wrong . To make sure they are safe at all times . To teach them to be polite , respectful , educated , stable , and good productive citizens of society . I will not gossip , lie , slander , argue with my wife or family ( debating is one thing and healthy ) , or teach them to wrong , fraud , con or fool ( comedy is one thing but if your intention is to deceit than no fooling around ) other people whether good or bad … I will teach them to let others go if they 've hurt them and to forgive them . To move on with life . Let God be their judge . Always forgive and try to forget ( I can 't forget because of my mind but for some people it 's easier to forget than to forgive , for me it 's the other way around . ) Enjoy their journey in this life instead of bickering , regretting , fighting , and harming others . We won 't dictate which direction life will take them . Instead we will walk alongside with them . I won 't condition my son or daughter to become a doctor , engineer , or fireman or force them to consider something when they ace a certain test and at the end of sophomore year decide you will become a marine biologist . If he wants to he can and will . I will give them sound advice and try to persuade them . But if they disagree I will understand . When they are ready I will come to a realization that I can let them go into the world , that they 've grown up , they know right from wrong and at that point I won 't just be their father but also their closest friend . It 'll be early too depending on how they mature . So remember life is a journey . Don 't judge others because you don 't know how much your opinion may be hurting them . Forgive . Forget . Move forward on your journey . Don 't get stuck in a jam , and when you do remember you always have other options . YAHOO ! Author Adam AbrahamPosted on January 24 , 2017January 28 , 2017Categories DiaryTags advice , forgiveness , God 's judgment , Islam , judgment day , judgmental people , remindersLeave a comment on Judging The Perfect Living Muslim Some Changes : The Good News and Some Not So Good News So I 've decided I 'm not going to pressure myself on releasing my free chapters after getting them edited . Instead I 'm going to be putting up content to help support our online community and my followers . As much as many of you like to read my book I 'm not saying I won 't be releasing any chapters it 's just that it 'll be slower than expected . I 've been extremely busy with our newborn , photography assignments , and am on my final semester of College . ( Woohoo ! ) Sorry if I 've disappointed anyone on the news of the chapters . I will be posting richer content through the blog . Hope you understand and continue following and getting support directly from me whether its emotional or mental , if I can guide you in the right direction I am humbled not proud . I 'm truly humbled by our online community , over 2000 followers on Twitter , not just getting advice from me but myself getting advice from other professionals and students and making friends throughout the world . With love and many wishes for you on a healthier , happier , and productive year with many more to come . There 's a new president in office . Never lose hope , Author Adam AbrahamPosted on January 23 , 2017January 24 , 2017Categories DiaryTags changes , coming soon , news , updateLeave a comment on Some Changes : The Good News and Some Not So Good News Movie Review : Frankie and Alice ( 2010 ) So I bumped into watching a full - length feature film without being distracted and side tracked by the many things I have going on at the same time . Yes , I like to multitask . And yes , I was multitasking during commercial breaks I couldn 't fast forward on my DVR . The new channel ( # 720 on Verizon FiOS ) , Centric , is targeted for black women , that 's what they advertise - nonetheless they 've got a new viewer on their channel . So , a little before 8 PM EST , actually a few hours before I had started channel hopping during a commercial break on MTVs Wild ' n Out … While ( multitasking ) I interrupted and stopped a few channels up . November Rule was a on , a tongue - in - cheek romantic holiday flick you can check out on demand if you 're a black woman . What caught my eye was Frankie and Alice ( 2010 ) , starring Halle Berry ( Oscar winner : Monsters Ball ) as Frankie and Stella Skarsgård ( Good Will Hunting , Exorcist ) as Dr . Oz . Set in 1970s Los Angeles . Early on Frankie has a blackout . She 's brought to the ER and discharged . Losing her job , unaware of why or who she 's writing checks to , her former coworker thinks she needs help , her mother thinks she 's doing very well working for the telephone company . Later she 's arrested and calls Dr . Oz regarding her arrest . He gets her released under his psychiatric care and she 's brought into the hospital as an outpatient . After multiple psychotherapy sessions , Frankie is diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder by Dr . Oz . Dissociative identity disorder is a rare condition where the person develops alters . These are different personalities that are randomly triggered . It was previously known as multiple personality disorder and in the psychiatry field highly debated whether or not true to its claim by the patients diagnosed with it . I 'm not a psychiAuthor Adam AbrahamPosted on December 12 , 2016January 23 , 2017Format GalleryCategories UncategorizedTags DID , Dissociative Identity Disorder , Frankie and Alice , Halle Berry , movie review , Multiple Personality Disorder , Must Watch MoviesLeave a comment on Movie Review : Frankie and Alice ( 2010 ) Op - Ed : Don 't Hide Your Feelings … They Will Eventually Explode Don 't hide your grief with a smiling face , a cheerful attitude , or a boat full of jokes … find a lending ear . Someone that won 't just hear you but listen to you . Give you sound advice . Give you multiple options that are best for you , a few cards to choose from . Sometimes we need direction , and direction isn 't as simple as putting an address in Google Maps … because even that gets you to the wrong place sometimes . Keep yourself surrounded with good company , caring people , intellectuals whether young or old … it defines your character . We expect too much from family and friends … They 've shaped an opinion about us for a while now and are a bit judgmental or quick to jump to conclusions . Maybe sometimes it takes a stranger , blogging and writing a book about his recovery from schizophrenia , depression , anxiety , panic attacks during a test , trouble with focusing on the task at hand . Or someone who knows when you 're talking and the person youre talking to is not only hearing but also giving you their utmost attention and listening to what 's important to you . Giving back to you their honest answer . I get several direct messages on my @ adamerall Twitter and Instagram and I make it a priority to respond . I 've also had an extensive career in communications . The majority of people have personally told me about how they are not being heard . It starts as early as childhood … when you constantly say " Mom ? " … " Mom ? " … " Mom ? " … And she finally responds " WHAT IS IT ? " You become accustomed to this and know even though your mother can now hear you but is just too caught up with her own thoughts . Maybe it 's about her work quarrels … Maybe it 's about her questioning her marriage … Her own stress . This continues throughout your teenage years when she gets divorced or her husband abandons her and she 's forced to work 2 jobs . Or you have both parents with a conflicting schedule … you 're a latchkey child that comes home to leftovers from last night , procrastinating about the homework , escape to Netflix or video games or worse … drugs . When it 's time for dinner your Dad 's stuck in traffic . You 're mom 's exhausted . And you 're still full of energy whether positive or negative , you choose . Weekends are spent in your rooms … on the iPad , with your studio headsets blaring the latest ( or oldest ) alt - punk - pop - hip - hop - jazz that helps you escape from what you have to what you want . Sundays are spent watching ( or watching some else watching ) football and yelling at the TV screen as if it could hear you . It 's not always that gloomy … you may go out to see the latest Disney flick topping the charts . Or go out shopping , but you 'd prefer that with your friends now because you want to catch the latest trend and have a need to snap it . You 're mom makes really good food . Food so good that you cherish it when you haven 't had it in your adult years while in college or starting your career far away from your parents . When you see her during your " break " you ask " Mom ? " … " Mom ? … " Mom ? ! " … And she catches your attention . She asks , this time less aggressively , " What is it ? " And you ask politely " What are you cooking ? " Maybe she 's sick of making dinner every night … she has even said how much distaste she has for her own cooking several times in the past . This is the time to tell her how much you love her cooking … and that we haven 't had a real conversation all of our life . The next time you cook for her or take her out . Maybe , just maybe , she 'd be more excited to prepare a PB & J sandwich with a nice glass of milk for you instead of pasta , rice and beans , or curry and roti that 's got her hand stamp on it . She 'd be more excited to talk to you than anything else . But why so late to talk to your mother ? Oe father ? That 's the question I would like to ask . It 's always great to give benefit of the doubt , and instead of following the trend , you should set the trend . Make that hard - to - have conversation with your Mom or Dad . About how much attention you crave of them . Don 't worry about how old you are at this point in life . Relationships are building blocks . Brag to your friends how close you are with your parents ( remember you 're setting a trend so give examples ) . They do Let 's not even talk about Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Periscope , or Snapchat … ( I use most of them amongst others - guilty as charged ) … My point is , that 's for when you have good things going on , or at least you think you do , and figure you 're that important that the whole world should know about your every step . Sometimes you share something personal but you 've learned not to do that anymore because you know that would open up a can of worms . Sometimes you report real news and the networks buy it from you , ( Hey ! You made some money and got your five minutes of fame … That 's great ! ) but realistically the chances of that are very slim . But this post isn 't about social media platforms ( apps that you 'll long forget 50 years from now ) … hopefully you have grand kids or are a grand parent keeping up with technology but at the same time communicating with your close friends and family in a healthy and comfortable manner . An important theme I have in my book , " Trans Mongolian " , is about having a support structure in place … if you need help than yell it out in a crowd … someone will come to listen to your outcry . Another theme in the book is independence . Going a bit off topic again … My first job , when I was 15 , was at an after school program . I started in the summer as a student counselor . My Assistant Principal , late Mr . James Ambrose , had gotten me the job after interviewing when I refused his modeling offer from his friend who owned a talent agency . After the summer was over , I realized these [ city ] kids desired attention . Their behavior , grades , and so much more depended on it but unfortunately their parents were working two jobs while their kids stayed 4 hours extra after school . It was a system designed so that working class parents had an option for their kids from ending up with the wrong crowds . Long story short , senior year I put my 2 weeks notice as I noticed it was being mismanaged and the counselors themselves were being unprofessional ( specifically one , he ' done his time . ) After this experience I made sure I won 't put my kids through after school programs either I or my wife will be home every day to welcome our kids home . My advice to working parents : cut back on the hours you work . It 's not worth building up credit card debt and oppressing yourself or leasing that BMW you always wanted . It 's one thing if you need to make ends meet but it 's amazing how far you can go with so little cash . Make time out during the week to spend with your son , daughter , your kids , your spouse , you 're entire family . Surprise Mom and Dad , your Aunt or Uncle , your Sister or Brother , your cousin 's . At first they may get concerned and be honest and relieve them by saying how much you wanted to see how they are doing , talk to them , hear them and talk about old memories . Make new memories . Take time out for each other . While your kids watch that latest blockbuster movie everyone saw and sang the songs to and spoiled the ending for you ( Yes , I 'm talking about Frozen … or any other movie that everyone 's watched except you ; for me it 's Departed ) . So what you do is hop into another movie hall and watch that thriller they made from a bestseller you had or hadn 't had the time to read … Advice to young kids , teenagers , and young adults : START TALKING , LISTENING , HAVING A CONVERSATION . Don 't hide those emotions with your pokerface . Or behind your iPhone thinking that your meme , tweet or snap or whatever it is defines expressing yourself . Don 't get me wrong , expressing yourself is perfectly fine but escaping to candy crush because you don 't to hear anyone nag is just crossing the limit . Your latest rejection at work or with a boy or girl just wasn 't worth it . Maybe the grade you got on your last exam wasn 't what you had expected . Move on , next time study a little harder … or just screw it all up altogether . So what if you 're an underachiever in business school ? Maybe you 'll move onto being top manager in the country and grow to hate it with a passion for whatever reason . You may want to reinvent yourself and it 'll all be worth it . GO ONTO PURSUE YOUR DREAMS AND PASSION . Do complete your college degree as it will open up a side of you that you didn 't know existed . Learn a language . Take guitar classes . Start reading " Programming for Dummies " . Learn something new or hone a skill you already have . No , let 's not talk , or small talk … let 's start having real , in - depth , controversial conversations . Politely , without fighting or getting irritated . Life is too precious to be wasted away , to be taken . Remember : you have a purpose . Otherwise you wouldn 't be God 's greatest creation and you wouldn 't be on earth . Whatever or whenever that may come . Maybe it already has and you don 't like it or don 't want it . You can always decide what to do with it . My advice to all retail associates , whether in sales , customer service , or management … QUIT and pursue your passion . For those that don 't know , I was a GM for UPS , DM for Verizon , and had a shortlived stint at Samsung as District Marketing Manager spanning over 6 years . Go back to school , regardless of your age . Take a year long vacation where you can live like a king on a budget of $ 2000 for the year … Freelance , ( hey , I Remember : age is never a factor … it 's your determination for getting into a better state of mind : mentally , physically , emotionally , and spiritually . And do read the free chapters that are available here on my blog from my book " Trans Mongolian " . Print it out , bring it to work , or if you prefer your Kindle or tablet than swipe through the pages . Do let me know what you think as I 've been writing it over 2 years and have written over 20 chapters . I 'm in no rush to publish it , however I do want to build a strong mental health support structure for everyone because everyone has problems . So , if you 've landed on this page thank you and God Bless . Hope my advice was sound and honest to you . Your lending ear , Author Adam AbrahamPosted on November 21 , 2016January 23 , 2017Categories opinionTags child behavior and support , communication problems , communication skills , hiding your feelings , op - ed , parenting tips , Trans MongolianLeave a comment on Op - Ed : Don 't Hide Your Feelings … They Will Eventually Explode Enjoying Schizophrenia on a Beautiful Autumn Day The day started with a walk to the gas station a few blocks away . It was my morning Sugar Free Red Bull walk . I had taken my morning cocktail , which included Adderall , right after the two boiled egg whites for breakfast . Reaching the end of the block I was approached by my landlord 's son Hasaan in his 5 series . He offered me a ride and I took the opportunity . I got to the gas station , asked if he would like anything . Grabbed a Red Bull and a Snapple , quickly scanning the aisles for newborn diapers , the monthly Amazon diaper subscription had ended right on time but I was the one that had set the wrong date for delivery . I walked up to the cashier and asked if they carried diapers . I really didn 't want Hasaan waiting too long for me . He said no we don 't carry diapers , I paid and went on . After getting in the beamer , I asked Hasaan if he minds driving to the Target a little farther down Sunrise Highway . He wasn 't reluctant in saying yes . At that moment . Or even before that I should say , I came to realize how great of a day I was having . But that moment I reacknowledged how much small things mattered . It was a cool Fall day , I had a light jacket on , earbuds on while I paused the latest audiobook on my Audible app . I walked into Target from one entrance with a mission : newborn diapers cheaper than any I could find . I found the no frills brand . While walking down the aisle with my diaper box I observed Honest Diapers for the same price as the Pampers subscribe and save from Amazon . Did a quick comparison and went with Honest Diapers . Couple dollars more but quality over quantity mattered , sure they were a few dollars more for a dozen or so less . But this isn 't a lesson on diaper buying . I started observing even more things while comparing , a husband to his wife saying " keep walking " every 5 seconds . This was the last place he wanted to be . Perhaps he was getting late for game day ? Started walking to the self checkout , got thrown off by a marketing gimmick to buy $ 50 worth of baby products and get $ 10 gift card . So now I was this close to spending another $ 35 ( that $ 10 gift card wasn 't free , I 'm still purchasing something right ? ) As I walked I realized how much I was enjoying my day . Relaxed . Calm . Spent about 5 minutes in the store thus far while others were panicking to pile up and get out of there . There were looks I got . Some smiles , some weary - eyed , I always do . I like to play a game called reading your mind , it 's a symptom of schizophrenia or even a side affect of Adderall but I took it lightly . I got to checkout and the assistant scanned the coupon . Luckily it didn 't apply to the baby stroller toy and a newborn blanket , which I originally thought was a hand puppet , she said fine print says on baby products such as diapers and wipes . Walked out the other exit and enjoyed the breeze that hit me as soon as I stepped out . Got to Hasaan 's car and drove home . We changed the topics from politics to women to BMWs . I shared some advice . I got home , lost my Red Bull somewhere along the way . My Landlord , Brother Ashraf was fixing the wooden floor in our apartment , amongst other things . Didn 't find space for myself so went on for a second Red Bull . Got to the gas station while listening to my audio book . By the time I came back work was still not done so I sat on the porch and continued listening . My landlord came by to chat in between . I went to ask him if he was still working inside but it looked like he was done as he was piling up the leaves . A little too late I offered my help . Decided to take a picture and tweet @ adamerall : The sun was setting soon . Brother Ashraf invited me in for some tea … I gave him my expertise he gave him his . We talked about apostasy , history , books , US Treasury notes … all relevant to our discussion of what we think is to come . Sometimes Maryam has been fixing me some coffee in the early afternoon so I avoid another walk to the gas stations . Before my evening meds … It caught my eye Bollywood superstar # MadhuriDixit on YouTube … specifically this . There was something that she sings that caught my attention to the dance number that had showed up on auto play . Evening meds done . Telefilm on . Debating whether to watch this or continue listening to audiobook while finishing this post . Musaab 's photoshoot to work on later in the evening and to call it a night . Overall a great day off . This fall season get out of bed and enjoy the small things so you can appreciate the big things .
|
My OCD has cycles and they 're usually stress related , but this recent blip didn 't seem to be . I wondered whether it was anything to do with paying it too much attention - blogging about it , tweeting about it , comparing notes etc so I took a step back from social media to see if it had any effect . It didn 't . Last night I finally caught up with ' Extreme OCD Camp ' . I 'd been a bit worried about watching it wondering whether it would trigger me , or give me new ideas of things to worry about . I 'm also scared of exposure therapy , so watching other people with OCD being forced into doing it was not going to be pleasant viewing . However , I was pleasantly surprised with the show . It was very well done and for once showed the variety and severity of OCD and the emotional turmoil that an individual goes through when triggered . I identified with so much of it . I thought every single one of the participants was so brave and strong for even agreeing to do the show , let alone all the amazing exposures . The exposures were terrifying - I particularly felt for Jack doing his first exposure in the bathroom - not sure I could have done that - but the guys leading the camp weren 't ogres . I felt they had a true understanding of the condition and its effects as well as being compassionate . They made everyone do their exposures , but they allowed the individuals to have a say in our far it went and they were there for them at all times . I 've not seen another programme where the therapists have been so supportive . It certainly got me thinking . Whilst I 'm not going to go on that particular camp , there are things I can do myself . Exposure , I realised , doesn 't have to be the worst thing first , I can set myself a small challenge and see how I go . At the start of the year I began trying to get rid of a ritual a month and had some success , so now I 'm going to try a little bit of mild exposure . Perhaps I won 't wash my hands for 5minutes after touching a newspaper , perhaps I 'll leave it 5minutes before I go and check on family at night and extend this minute by minute . I 'll still be able to ritualise eventually , but hope that over time I 'll do this less . A quote I 'll remember from Extreme OCD Camp is " Do something that scares you everyday " . I might not make it everyday , but that 's something to aim for . I 'll keep you posted ! Firstly , we had an ice - cream tasting at work . Everyone in the office knows I have a sweet tooth and I was clearly very excited about the tasting . Last time we had a number of flavours and could have a whole pot to ourselves . Some people shared , if they wanted . Today , as I gathered round with everyone else , my heart sank to see 12 small pots of varying flavours , but all had been tried ! Everyone was waiting for me to tuck in for my ' expert ' opinion . So , in I went . I avoided the ones that had been eaten a lot , and focussed on those with patches that hadn 't been touched . I know technically any germs could be all over the pot , but I did it anyway . Then pots were being passed around more and people were even swapping spoons and cleaning out the pots . Secondly , I had a small pot of chocolate sponge for pudding . When I took the film off the top , it came off too easily and before I had absolutely double checked that it was properly sealed . I decided that as it was only a tiny bit that would have been unsealed & I was going to put it in the microwave at full power , I would eat it - and I did . Yes , I am slightly freaking out about both of the above , but there 's an overriding sense of pride . I 'm glad I was able to do both of these scary things today . I know I 'll have bad days when I won 't be able to , but one day at a time . It was nice to be in the middle of a group and doing something everyone else was ; something ' normal ' . It 's been a month since I began my little ' experiment ' and so far , it 's kind of gone well - at least with respect to what I had planned . In fact it 's gone better than I hoped . I had anticipated that I would give up one of my nightly routines gradually - a bit each month , hoping to be free of it by June . However , I was able to give up slightly more in February than I thought I would and last night ( 1st March ) , I went further and gave up the whole thing . It 's the first night in about 5 years , when I 've not done any of it . The funny thing is , I wasn 't nervous , or anxious I was excited , I couldn 't wait for the opportunity to be free of it and I felt so liberated last night . I now have to think of the next thing to ' give up ' or change . My success so far as given me great encouragement that this , or at least bits of this , can be overcome and I can get my life back . On the other side to this , my nightly checking that my family are okay and still breathing escalated - sometimes , I wouldn 't even make it back in to bed before I ' heard ' something . As a result my sleep has suffered and I 've been back to getting a maximum of 6 hours a night ( which isn 't enough for me , especially to keep my OCD in check ) . I suppose this is my OCD finding an outlet one way or another - if I wasn 't doing my nightly routine in the old way , it had to find something else to do . Tonight will be my 4th night of cutting back on the bedtime routines . I 'm pleased to report that things are going well so far . In fact I 'm almost ready to cut it down a bit further already . It 's really only a tiny thing to be cutting down on , but it has been quite satisfying none the less . If I can keep this up then I could be free of my bedtime routine by Easter - much earlier than I thought ! The weekend also saw me take another massive step . As regular readers of my blog will know I 'm moving out of the shared house I 've lived in for a year with a friend mainly because of my OCD . They will also know that I 've never spoken of my OCD to anyone outside my immediate family and medical professionals . I came to realise at the end of last week , that although I gave my friend 2 valid and genuine reasons for my leaving , this wasn 't enough . Though I tried to tell her a couple of times in person , things didn 't go according to plan and things get left up in the air on Friday night with her worrying what was wrong . So , I wrote a short note explaining I have OCD and how I wanted to get a better grip on it this year . I didn 't go into too many details so as not to complicate matters but the few lines still took a couple of hours to write . Surprisingly the email made me cry - a lot . I don 't know why , but it did . I then had an awfully anxious wait to see if she would say anything in return . I had asked her in the email not to tell anyone but to keep it secret but I had no guarantees she would . I was extremely nervous and didn 't sleep well that night . I got a message back the next morning . She thanked me for telling her , promised never to tell a soul and reassured me I could trust her . She said she wished she had known earlier so she could have helped me . Today we were back at work together and it wasn 't mentioned and she didn 't treat me any differently at all - it 's almost as if it never happened . It 's taken me over 10years to find the courage to tell a friend and I don 't yet know the full consequences , but it has made me feel better . We need to start ending the stigma surrounding OCD and other mental health issues now . It has gone on too long . Everyone who has a mental health condition has the power to do this - even if it is just one person at a time . My background is scientific - I like facts and figures , I love biology and human chemistry , I 'm logical and practical ; a great lateral thinker . That 's one of the things I find most annoying about myself and my OCD . I know logically that most of the things I worry about are scientifically ill - founded , and I know the scientific realities . However , my OCD mind has been the one in control over the past several years and its voice drowns out my scientific one . In earlier posts I 've already declared that I 'm upping the fight against my OCD this year , but what I haven 't specified is how I 'm going to tackle it . I 'm going to record how I plan on doing it and what success I have with it in the hopes that if it works , it will be useful to others . As I find ' exposure ' terrifying , I am instead , going to treat this battle as a scientific experiment . As a scientist I know that when conducting an experiment , it 's not a good idea to change more than one variable at a time and to do it gradually so effects can be recorded . If you change more than one thing at a time you won 't know which variable was the one that actually made a difference . If you shift something too much , you might miss the fact you didn 't need to go so far - or you might end up in a much worse position than you were . This is the method I 'm going to use on my OCD . My OCD has many layers including my safety , family safety , security and contamination . I am going to pick one of these things to tackle at a time and I 'm going to start small . For example , I have a certain bedtime ritual , which can take almost 45min - 1hour to complete and can put me off wanting to go to bed . My first ' experiment ' is to take this ritual and reduce it , bit by bit . I 've set myself marker points of the 1st of each month . ie on 1st February I will start the reduction in the ritual and see how I cope and adjust - scientifically I expect to prove to myself that whether I do a certain ritual or not , will have no effect on me or my family - except I might get to bed earlier ! With this proof and knowledge , come 1st March I will be able to take the next step and reduce another part . I plan to be clear of this bedtime ritual , which must be about 5 years old , by June . It does mean that getting over all of my OCD will take a long time ( I have numerous worries , fears , compulsions & obsessions ) , and there maybe elements that won 't ever go . What I hope to achieve is freedom from quite so many obsessions and compulsions . If I can get to this point , I think I will be less stressed ( as I will have less things to look out for and worry about ) and I 'll be less tired ( less things to fight in my head , as well as getting to bed earlier and easier ) and maybe then I will feel in a position to tackle the really , really big 2 - 3 things . This Christmas I made another big decision - and that was to move out and back in with my parents . A big part of me didn 't want to do this as it felt like a backward step for someone of my age , but in the end I know it 's the right decision for me . I 've thoroughly enjoyed my time in the house , however it 's not been somewhere I 've really been able to relax . In fact it 's felt like I 've been living in a self - catering holiday cottage & if you read my post on why holidays for me are not restful , you might understand why this has been a problem . Every time I went into the house I had to be on the constant look out for stains or marks . My housemate would wear her shoes in the house and even put them on the coffee table , setting my anxiety levels soaring . Every time I ate a meal I would have to check the plates and cutlery thoroughly . My housemate had a habit of leaving washing up for several hours without even putting things to soak , so even when they went in the dishwasher they would come out encrusted in old food . The same would often be true of glasses , mugs saucepans & baking trays . This meant that even making dinner or getting a drink would be stressful . In the bathroom she would frequently hang her towel so it draped over the handle , meaning I had to touch it every time I opened the door . I have to say that my security OCD at the house wasn 't a problem - I just needed to check the doors once and I was fine , but my contamination OCD spiralled . Living with that much anxiety on a daily basis just got too much and it spilled over into the rest of my life . I was generally stressed all the time , my OCD when I was at ' home , home ' got worse . One of my New Year 's challenges was to overcome 3 of my OCD rituals and more than that , I really want to get to grips with my condition . I 've done it before , so I know I can get back there . However , I knew that at the levels of anxiety I was living at last year , this wasn 't going to be possible . Therefore by retreating back to my ' home home ' my anxiety levels will reduce and I will become mentally stronger and that 's always a good thing in this fight against OCD . I know many people will say I could have told my housemate that I have OCD and explain what my problems were and I did think about this , but ironically she sees herself as a ' clean freak ' and very , very tidy . As it was her house I could hardly have expected her to change her lifestyle so I would have had to live with those things anyway as well as hurting her feelings . We 're still good friends , and maybe one day I will tell her about my OCD , but the timing is not quite right at the moment . I 've technically got a couple of weeks left at the house , but I 've only spent a couple of nights there and will be mainly based at home . I have to say , my anxiety levels have already fallen substantially and I 'm in a much better place to fight my OCD . So yes , I have retreated , but I feel much better armed now and that was the plan . Some people are scared of going to their doctor , admitting their symptoms and getting that diagnosis . Mental health is misunderstood by the public in general and there are so many stereotypes and misconceptions that even a diagnosis won 't help anyone understand the condition any better . People fear that the diagnosis will become known and they will be viewed in the light of those misconceptions . There are so many labels out there these days and people are all grouped together as the same . For anyone with a mental health problem , you know that each case is different . It can be dangerous for everyone with ' depression ' , ' OCD , ' ' anorexia ' , ' anxiety ' , ' bipolar ' to be treated in the same way , so people recoil from being given that name . Most of the time when mental health is covered in the news it 's often because someone has committed some terrible crime . It 's hardly encouraging then to want to be given the same diagnosis . There are others for whom a diagnosis comes as a relief . They finally have a name to their problems , that it is something that is recognised , something other people go through too . With a diagnosis there is also the hope that the problem can be helped . Not all mental health conditions can be cured , but a lot can be managed . A diagnosis means an individual can research their condition , find out all the possible things that might help and start finding out which is best for them . They can find other people with the same diagnosis , compare notes , use them as examples to try and explain to others what it is they struggle with . Doctors may offer medication or therapy . A diagnosis doesn 't always mean the right therapy , or there might be long waits . Mental health is seriously underfunded and there isn 't enough of the right help out there . But there is more hope the right treatment will come once diagnosed . For me , I certainly found my diagnosis a relief . I knew already , before going to the doctors , what it was - but to hear a medical professional confirm it for me was a huge reassurance . I was able to have medication , I was able to get relief . I wasn 't alone and it wasn 't my fault . I 'm well aware that every other person 's OCD is different from mine , but there are also great similarities and , although I don 't wish OCD on anyone , I find it comforting that I 'm not alone . I 've researched my condition further over the years and am finally really beginning to understand it . With this understanding comes the weapons for me to fight the battle . I do understand people 's fears about getting a diagnosis , but in my experience it has only helped . There 's no need to tell anyone if you 're not ready , but I found strength in knowing . I would be most interested to hear what you think - are you scared of getting diagnosed ? Have you got a diagnosis and did you find it helpful ? Today , for my sister 's birthday , I went indoor skydiving . I 'm not much of an adrenalin junkie , but this is one of the few things I could consider , so I said yes and went along . Obviously , I had seen the photos on the website and knew I would be wearing a jumpsuit and helmet - but where this would normally freak me out , I wasn 't bothered . I was more concerned about remembering what I had to do and not looking stupid in front of the audience ! I was doing really well - even when they told us to take our shoes off and stand on a public floor in our socks ( something I can barely do at home ! ) , but then I noticed a ' bad ' mark on my jumpsuit and I was back in that twilight zone of not knowing how to react . I felt my panic surge , but because of where I was and who I was with , I couldn 't do anything about it . I couldn 't even take it off to see if the mark was on both sides . I had to spend the next 40minutes or so in the jumpsuit - my only comfort was that I was in long sleeves underneath . At the same time I wanted to have a rational reaction to it , be just like everyone else . I have been in a similar situation before and it 's brought on a panic attack , but this time , I was okay . That 's not to say I wasn 't worried - I was , very much so , but the fact I didn 't have a complete melt down was improvement . I controlled my breathing and tried to focus on the here and now - and the challenge of indoor skydiving . The worry didn 't go away completely except for the couple of minutes I was in the wind tunnel , but the important thing was that it didn 't stop me from doing what I had planned on doing . I 'm so glad that I didn 't let my OCD ruin my day or my sister 's . If I had let it have its own way , I would have been out of that jumpsuit , out of my top , scrubbing down with hand sanitiser and on my way home to wash thoroughly and burn my clothes . But if I had done that , it would not only have cost me money , but would have ruined a very special day for my family who were all there together ( a fairly rare occurence ) . I also would have missed out on a great experience . OCD has cost me too many great experiences , and now I want to get them back . Okay , so when I got home I had a shower and washed my hair . My clothes have gone in the wash , except for the long sleeve shirt I was wearing . The jury 's still out on that . It was the only thing to have direct contact with the mark , and I 'm wavering between just washing it and wearing it again and throwing it out . I don 't want the OCD to make me throw another thing away , but I 've been here before - thinking that tomorrow I will be strong enough to make the right choice , but I usually end up giving in . I 'm not there yet and the worry is still there , but I think we could call this battle a draw , which makes a nice change . The latest way my OCD is taunting me is my paranoia about what is in my drinks . I 'm fine if someone makes me a drink ( although it does have to be in my mug at work and I don 't drink the tea ) , but I find it hard to make my own drinks . If I can get away with making it once , that 's fine , but if I have a problem with the first drink it usually means I 'm in for trouble . I know this sounds utterly bizarre . I know logically that there is nothing wrong with any of my drinks , and that what I see are shadows , air bubbles or light refracting from what I can see through the glass or air bubbles of the surroundings - but I am absolutely convinced it 's something bad . There 's no logic to it - I will often throw away the drink only to pour more squash out of the same bottle . It doesn 't usually work for milk - but hot chocolate , sugar , teabags , pretty much anything else . There was one time when I saw a mark on a tea - bag that should not have been there and ever since then I 've been checking every tea bag . I hate being asked to make tea for family as it means confronting this fear and looking to make sure it 's safe to use . This happened probably a couple of years ago and stayed at that until a few months ago when it got ridiculously out of control and transferred itself to all types of drink . It always seems that when I make a drink for someone else everything is fine and I very rarely have to remake it . When it 's a drink for myself I can remake it 5 - 6 times , sometimes I give up . It is easier when I 'm " home , home " and not at the house I share in the week or at work . I think that 's because I 'm more relaxed and comfortable at the place I 've lived my whole life . When I give up making myself a drink ( even getting tap water ) is when it becomes self - sabataging . I know logically that the drink is fine , however I don 't drink it - I can 't . I put off making or getting drinks for myself . This means : 3 ) I get dehydrated . This in itself then leads to dry skin ( I have very sensitive , dry skin as it is , so hydration is important ) , lethargy , my brain function decreases and with this I 'm less able to fight my OCD so it spirals out of control . If I 'm not careful , in hot weather it could even lead to kidney trouble . With the dawn of a new year , the tradition is to set lots of New Year 's Resolutions , mostly along the same old lines of trying to become thinner , fitter , a better person , to stop smoking , to drink less . The majority of these will be forgotten before we get to February . I gave up making New Year 's Resolutions a while ago because I ended up disappointing myself . I now give myself ' objectives ' for the year . We 've just had Christmas at our house and over the holidays we had at various points , my sisters , their husbands , my 6 nieces & nephews and my grandmother . I love seeing them , but it always makes my OCD spiral - my grandmother insists on wearing her shoes around the house ( one of my biggest bug bears ) and then the kids put everything on the floor including themselves and then put everything on chairs , tables etc . I did my best over Christmas , but it was more about avoidance or by doing things such as putting a quilt over ' my chair ' which I could then remove when I wanted to sit in it . I remember the time when that wouldn 't bother me at all - when I would be lying on the floor with them . I 've recently unearthed some old family video footage that 's 10 years old . That was the significant start of my OCD but I saw the times when I still wore shoes round the house - it 's very alien to me . Now , I 'm not suggesting that 2013 's objective is to start wearing shoes in the house again , I 'm not entirely sure what rituals I 'm going to work at , but I 'm ready to take the challenge head on .
|
I 've been single ; I 've been married ; and I 've been divorced . I 've been a good girl who made bad choices , and I 've been a bad girl who made good choices . That 's what this blog is all about . My first trip to Europe was to the city of Amsterdam . I wasn 't really that excited to see Amsterdam but hubby had a conference there and I was coming along ( since he promised a trip to Paris after the conference . ) I knew they had windmills and wooden shoes , but other than that information ( gleaned from the ride " It 's A Small World " at Disneyland ) , I really hadn 't a clue . We got in to Amsterdam and to our hotel room relatively early , but after about 14 hours on an airplane , we were both exhausted . Alex went to the conference center to check in , and rather than hanging around the room , I decided to go take a look . I found a 3 hour tour that sounded kind of fun ( plus , if I went to sleep too early , it would take me longer to acclimate to the time ) . Generally I like to go out on my own , but with no idea of the area , I thought a general overview would be helpful before I started my solo explorations . The tour guide promised we would view the canals , windmills , the amazing architecture , Anne Franks house , and a couple of museums as well as the famous red - light district . Hell yes ! I learned pretty quickly that the canals were everywhere and the houses ( tall and very skinny ) were gorgeous ! We saw some wonderful examples of Dutch architecture every place we looked . The three hours went fast believe it or not , and I was excited to tell Alex how I had spent my early afternoon . The tour had also included taking us to the famed red - light district where the prostitutes sit or stand in windows , only closing the curtains when a customer came to call . The part that was amazing to me is that this district was in a very nice area . Actually , I would be completely unafraid to walk through the district even at night . Far from what I expected , the girls were dressed in at least as much clothing as I see on the beach in San Francisco ! A pair of shorts and a halter top were about as racy as it got in those windows . I also got a chance to look inside the popular " Coffee Houses " where you can order your favorite type of marijuana along with a cup Posted by Bless me Father , for I have sinned . Wait , maybe it should be bless me husband for I have sinned . Or maybe even bless me IRS for I have sinned . I am guilty of the sin of sloth . When Alex travels , I sometimes don 't even put on my clothes at all but sit around drinking coffee in my robe and pj 's all day . I either read blogs , or surf the net or watch reality tv which is a really stupid use of my time . I am guilty of the sin of murder . I didn 't do the murdering , but I encouraged Alex to kill his mother and step - dad 's pet spider named Humphrey . We were newly weds and he knew that to get his little bride to put out , he had better do her bidding . Now , I of course , had no idea that Humphrey was a pet of my in - laws . Had I known that , I would have said nothing about it in the first place . I worked for an elderly man when I was in my 20 's named Mr . Lewy . He was a jeweler and he used to pat my butt when he walked past me . I let him because I was really lousy at my job and figured I had to make up for it somehow . He fired me anyway . So much for the pat on the butt ! Old bastard ! When I was married and had no children , I would stay in bed all day reading until about 10 minutes before my husband got home . Then I would run around and hide everything that needed cleaning and pretend I 'd been working all day . Yeah , he was kind of stupid . ( Not this husband , another one . ) I married a Navajo man . He 's not one - twenty - fourth Navajo . Alex is 100 percent Navajo . People are often fascinated by that fact . Alex 's mom , Shelly , and her husband ( Robert the Snake ) live in Phoenix , Arizona . Shelly is a nurse at Indian Hospital and the Snake works there too . The Snake is from the Mojave Tribe and he is a " Singer " who goes around and performs ceremonies for people . I guess it 's kind of like being a Medicine Man . When an ex - husband of mine was dying , the Snake flew up to Northern California to do a singing for him . The ceremony lasted from about ten at night until ten in the morning . My ex - husband 's wife very much appreciated this . ( Yeah , she and I are friends . ) About twenty years ago , right after Alex and I got married , we made a trip to Phoenix to visit the family . I adore his family , Mom , stepdad and two darling sisters . The visit was progressing nicely , as I was in the " getting to know you " phase with all of them . My Mexican / Irish San Francisco background was as fascinating to them as their connection to the Navajo Nation was to me ! Culturally , we were sometimes worlds apart , but usually not . While Shelly and the Snake were at work , I was walking down the hallway in their home and saw something on the wall that made me do a double - take . It was the biggest , fiercest looking spider I have ever seen in my life . It was the size of a grapefruit . I stood stock still and screamed for my beloved groom to come and save me . Alex came up behind me and said " What 's the matter ? " Look on the wall , beloved husband ! What do you think is the matter ? When Alex saw the spider , he said " What do you want me to do ? " Excuse me ? What did he think I wanted him to do . " KILL THE SPIDER , ALEX ! " Looking very concerned , Alex left the hallway to look for something to kill the spider with . He was gone a long time . I am still frozen right across from the thing . All eight of its eyes are now trained on me just waiting for me to come closer , or even waiting for me to leave so he could scurry off and Posted by When Alex ( my husband ) is traveling , I waste a lot of time . I take two hour bubble baths . I watch reality TV . I get bored and sort of frustrated because I am lonely with him gone . I think of things to amuse myself , but don 't do them . Okay , this morning for example , there is a marathon of " America 's Next Top Model " on TV . I think I 've watched 7 hours of it so far . Now , if there is anybody I dislike more than Tyra Banks , I don 't know who it would be . So why am I sitting at the kitchen table watching my 14 " TV ? I have two respectable sized flat screens on the lower level of the house . I could go watch one of those . Then again , I think we have a 50 inch flat screen upstairs . I could go watch that . What am I talking about ? If I dislike Tyra , why would I want to see her bigger . Also , this has to be the stupidest show I have ever been addicted to . I really think I need help . Even my dogs won 't watch it with me . They like Animal Cops Detroit , and Animal Cops Houston , and Animal Cops San Francisco just fine . So why don 't I turn that on ? I like Animal Cops too . But oh hell no , I want to see who gets to be America 's Next Top Model . Now here 's the really pitiful part , I have seen this before and I already know who is going to win . Dear God , I wish my husband was home . Wednesday was going along just fine . Alex will be home on Friday and that 's good thing . I got up at 8 this morning so I 'm getting ready for the time change this weekend . ( I usually NEVER get up before 9 because most people die early in the morning I 've read and taken to heart . ) Never mind . I did not die so it started off just fine . We got our front porch replaced a couple of weeks ago . Good to have it done because we had some dry rot out there . Our contractor was great and finished the job in a very short time and it looks just like new . ( Okay , the house was built in 1880 , so it looks just the same as the old porch , but without the dry rotted boards . ) It cost about $ 5000 to do the porch , including materials . Really not that bad when I think about it . Two guys worked for 4 full days on it . Not cheap , but not outrageous either . Plus , it had to be done . We also had registration for two of our three cars due about the same time as the porch . So , we 're out quite a bit of money for the last 30 days . Never mind . It 's only money , right ? We also had to take Honey to the vet for her shots and lab work last week . That trip ended up costing $ 350 . Yeah , she 's old and has some health issues but suck it up , we do everything we can to keep her healthy and comfortable . Also , I 've been looking at my hair and realizing it 's looking a bit like a rat 's nest . I know I said I was going to grow it out and get big hair , but I think I 've changed my mind . My hair grows straight up , ( picture those troll dolls ) so maybe that 's not going to work . Plus I swore I 'd never do big hair . Okay , a cut and color costs $ 150 before the tip . I think I 'm going to start wearing hats . Oh hell , maybe I 'll just start wearing a burka for that matter . Then I won 't need cosmetics either . The nice mailman came today . We have one nice guy , and one who does not ever say a word . He 's not that nice . You say hello to him and he just looks at you . You thank him and he doesn 't even look at you . Okay , like I said , it 's a good Wednesday so far . I walked in the house and my goodPosted by HumpDay With Harry Mom 's friend , Peg , over at Square Peg in a Round Hole suggested that Mom let me do a post on Wednesdays since the word " hump " is such a good thing to me ! This is going to be a story of my most wonderful day ever that turned into my worst day ever and believe you me , I have had some bad days . I 'm a lab / pit / shar pei mix . And I am a really good looking guy . My Dad calls me a PMF ( and I know that 's a good thing because it 's the same name as he calls the security guy at the military base who Mom makes goo goo eyes at ! ) The first part of the words is Pretty . The other two I 'm not so sure . Okay , back to hump days . The only real humping I 've ever done is with Dutch , and since we are both neutered males , some people may say it doesn 't count for much . Okay . I would have humped Lola but she 's too short . In fact , she 's so short and small that her head fits right in my mouth . I love to hold her head in my mouth and make noises . And Lola loves it too . Anyway , humping Lola is out of the question . Honey , my sister or something , thinks I 'm stupid . She 's wrong . I 've been to obedience training 3 separate times . And each time I passed . It 's just that I have a touch of ADD Mom says . I get distracted really easy . I got adopted three times from the Shelter . I am a really good boy and I got thrown in the night drop box three times . Three times is a lot to be taken in the car and tossed into a metal box in the middle of the night . I 'm not sure why those people couldn 't keep me or didn 't want to keep me . Maybe it 's because of the ADD thing . Never mind . I 'm in a FOREVER home now . ( But Mom says I still " have issues " . ) The worst distraction in the world I have is squirrels . Squirrels are not nice critters and that 's a fact . They stand in the trees at my house and shake their ugly tails at me . They make these awful noises and just shake back and forth . They climb trees faster than you can imagine . I try to go up after them but I just can 't go as high as they do . I chase them all the time and bark my head off at themLinda Medrano The large building shown on the right side of the photo is known as the Queen of Russian Hill located in San Francisco . I was invited to a sweeping penthouse apartment there ( which covered the entire top floor ) when I was in my early 30 's . My friend Angela invited me to come to Christmas dinner and as my children would be with my ex - husband that day , I accepted her invitation . ( I usually opted to celebrate Christmas Eve with my kids and let the ex take them on Christmas day . ) I met Angela at her gently used clothing store not too far from where I lived . Angela specialized in only the top quality clothing , usually from local television personalities . Some of the clothes had only been used for one tv broadcast . I found out that one of these women was exactly my size ! Angela would call me as soon as this person brought in a load of clothes . For shopping in a resale shop , I was very well dressed ! Angela was a very interesting woman , about 25 years older than I was . Her shop was cozy and beautiful and had fabulous lighting and fixtures . I actually felt that I was in someone 's bedroom when I was in her shop . Since I was a favorite of hers , we began a friendship . She had a boyfriend and told me all about their relationship . She also had grown children , about my age . Angela was a real beauty . When I would come in , she would slip her silver flask of scotch out of her drawer and get a couple of cut crystal goblets and tell me it was time for a " drinkee " . ( I thought this was hilarious ! ) I bought a bottle of very expensive scotch and set off for her apartment on Christmas Day . Angela had told me to come at 2 in the afternoon , and I took a cab so I wouldn 't be late . There was a winding driveway leading up to the front of the complex , and a doorman hurried over to get the door of the cab for me . Hmm . Not exactly like the place I lived , now was it ? I took the old elevator ( with an elevator man ) to the Penthouse . The lobby had impressed me quite a bit too , with antique oriental carpets and huge chandeliers . Very upscale . I rang the doorbPosted by A few years ago , Alex decided to take me to my favorite city in the world , Paris , for my birthday . We spent about a week at the Four Seasons George V Hotel in Paris . This is a 5 - star Hotel and our every whim was catered to . It was a lovely experience all in all . The only problem with a 5 - star hotel is that by default , they are all somewhat generic . The restaurants are wonderful . Check ! The decor is fabulous . Check ! The rooms are sumptuous with the best linens and toiletries imaginable . Check ! The people who work there are beautiful . Check ! The service is impeccable . Check ! The price is astronomical . Double Check ! The downside is that you could move this hotel and locate it at Embassy Row in London , in Hong Kong , or in the Union Square area of San Francisco , or in downtown anywhere ! As a result , local flavor is lacking with these hotels . Beautiful , posh , luxurious , sure , but not French , not British , not American . After a few days , we found a much more modest hotel in the Opera District of Paris . Now we 're on the right page . French is the language spoken here . The little bistros overflow with people ! You see Parisians hurrying home after work with their fresh baguettes under their arms . The lobby smells vaguely of cat pee . ( All hotel lobbies in Paris , except the 5 star hotels , smell a little like cat pee ! ) We had a wonderful street scene out of our windows ! Not landscaped perfection , but much better . Real people living real lives ! The food was amazing and not the fancy expensive fare either . A ham sandwich on that amazing bread was food for the gods ! Add a glass of vin rouge and watch the afternoon unfold around you ! Breathtaking ! I have never experienced such joy in a place . I never tire of this magical City of Light . Kathee at 2010 - The Year of Miracles tagged me with this yesterday . Thanks Kathee ! Okay , in ten years I hope to be : Either dead or alive and nothing in betweenIn possession of my facultiesHaving dogs and husband aroundSeeing my 6 grandchildren with happy adult livesStill loving music and art and moviesIn good health for an older womanThat 's about it ! Now I am supposed to tag 10 people and pass this on to them . Scott at Ergo ( one of the most amazing bloggers I 've encountered ! ) Jen at Redhead Ranting ( not just another pretty face , but she has that too ! Cat Lady Larew at How to Become a Cat Lady without the Cats , ( she 's really my sister from another mother . ) Alyssa at Bloggin 2 Noggin . ( Lots of charm ! ) Suzicate at The Water Witch 's Daughter ( great writer and really funny when she wants to be ! ) Val at Golden to Silver Val , ( interesting woman and damned good writer ! ) Jay , the birthday boy at Cynical _ Bastard ( he is neither , by the way ) . Bridget at Bridget 's Two Cents ( Army wife and mom of 3 and a way fun girl ! ) Southern Sage at the Independent Thinker 's Lounge ( not everybody 's cup a tea , but he 's mine ! Funny , irreverent , smart , and thought provoking . ) And last , but not least is Patience at A Reason Or A Season . ( She 's hilarious ! ) So there you go . Thanks again Kat ! Harry wants in on the action . I 'm letting him do a guest blog . My name is Harry and I 'm a four year old dog . I 'm handsome and big and people all seem to like me a lot . Other dogs usually like me too , because I love to play and have a good personality . I have a neighbor guy named Dutch , a Rhodesian Ridgeback , who is about my size . Folks say we look alike since we are both that really great shade of orange - red . He and I hang out sometimes and we both love to run . We also like to hump each other but since we are both neutered now , don 't take that part too seriously because we don 't . Dutch has a house mate named Samson who is a Pug . He 's kind of a yappy guy and not nearly as much fun as Dutch . There 's another dog there too named Delilah . She 's okay . I hear she 's a French Bulldog , whatever that means . Dutch likes her better than I do . She yaps a lot too . I live with Honey . Honey is either my sister or something . She 's smaller than me but much meaner and she always gives me dirty looks to let me know what I 'm not supposed to do . She can be nice sometimes , but usually not . I mean , Honey will act like she wants to play , but then she gets mad and growls at me or bites my ear for no real reason . Okay , I took her toy , but I was only playing . We also have a black cat named Smokey who lives in our house . Smokey hisses and spits at me whenever he sees me . Whatever , Dude . Cats are weird anyway . They don 't leave me alone with Smokey because as my Mom says , " That would be looking for trouble ! " I have a cousin named Lola . I love Lola . She 's little and black and very curly . She lets me put her head in my mouth and hold it there . I love to do that ! Then we chase each other and she bites me every place she can reach . She 's funny ! Sometimes she makes me get tired because I love to run , but Lola never quits . She just keeps running and running and biting me so I 'll chase her . And she keeps falling in the fish pond and Mom gets mad about that . Lola also poops in the house , but nobody gets mad at her about it . ( What would happen if I tried thPosted by
|
I 've been single ; I 've been married ; and I 've been divorced . I 've been a good girl who made bad choices , and I 've been a bad girl who made good choices . That 's what this blog is all about . My first trip to Europe was to the city of Amsterdam . I wasn 't really that excited to see Amsterdam but hubby had a conference there and I was coming along ( since he promised a trip to Paris after the conference . ) I knew they had windmills and wooden shoes , but other than that information ( gleaned from the ride " It 's A Small World " at Disneyland ) , I really hadn 't a clue . We got in to Amsterdam and to our hotel room relatively early , but after about 14 hours on an airplane , we were both exhausted . Alex went to the conference center to check in , and rather than hanging around the room , I decided to go take a look . I found a 3 hour tour that sounded kind of fun ( plus , if I went to sleep too early , it would take me longer to acclimate to the time ) . Generally I like to go out on my own , but with no idea of the area , I thought a general overview would be helpful before I started my solo explorations . The tour guide promised we would view the canals , windmills , the amazing architecture , Anne Franks house , and a couple of museums as well as the famous red - light district . Hell yes ! I learned pretty quickly that the canals were everywhere and the houses ( tall and very skinny ) were gorgeous ! We saw some wonderful examples of Dutch architecture every place we looked . The three hours went fast believe it or not , and I was excited to tell Alex how I had spent my early afternoon . The tour had also included taking us to the famed red - light district where the prostitutes sit or stand in windows , only closing the curtains when a customer came to call . The part that was amazing to me is that this district was in a very nice area . Actually , I would be completely unafraid to walk through the district even at night . Far from what I expected , the girls were dressed in at least as much clothing as I see on the beach in San Francisco ! A pair of shorts and a halter top were about as racy as it got in those windows . I also got a chance to look inside the popular " Coffee Houses " where you can order your favorite type of marijuana along with a cup Posted by Bless me Father , for I have sinned . Wait , maybe it should be bless me husband for I have sinned . Or maybe even bless me IRS for I have sinned . I am guilty of the sin of sloth . When Alex travels , I sometimes don 't even put on my clothes at all but sit around drinking coffee in my robe and pj 's all day . I either read blogs , or surf the net or watch reality tv which is a really stupid use of my time . I am guilty of the sin of murder . I didn 't do the murdering , but I encouraged Alex to kill his mother and step - dad 's pet spider named Humphrey . We were newly weds and he knew that to get his little bride to put out , he had better do her bidding . Now , I of course , had no idea that Humphrey was a pet of my in - laws . Had I known that , I would have said nothing about it in the first place . I worked for an elderly man when I was in my 20 's named Mr . Lewy . He was a jeweler and he used to pat my butt when he walked past me . I let him because I was really lousy at my job and figured I had to make up for it somehow . He fired me anyway . So much for the pat on the butt ! Old bastard ! When I was married and had no children , I would stay in bed all day reading until about 10 minutes before my husband got home . Then I would run around and hide everything that needed cleaning and pretend I 'd been working all day . Yeah , he was kind of stupid . ( Not this husband , another one . ) I married a Navajo man . He 's not one - twenty - fourth Navajo . Alex is 100 percent Navajo . People are often fascinated by that fact . Alex 's mom , Shelly , and her husband ( Robert the Snake ) live in Phoenix , Arizona . Shelly is a nurse at Indian Hospital and the Snake works there too . The Snake is from the Mojave Tribe and he is a " Singer " who goes around and performs ceremonies for people . I guess it 's kind of like being a Medicine Man . When an ex - husband of mine was dying , the Snake flew up to Northern California to do a singing for him . The ceremony lasted from about ten at night until ten in the morning . My ex - husband 's wife very much appreciated this . ( Yeah , she and I are friends . ) About twenty years ago , right after Alex and I got married , we made a trip to Phoenix to visit the family . I adore his family , Mom , stepdad and two darling sisters . The visit was progressing nicely , as I was in the " getting to know you " phase with all of them . My Mexican / Irish San Francisco background was as fascinating to them as their connection to the Navajo Nation was to me ! Culturally , we were sometimes worlds apart , but usually not . While Shelly and the Snake were at work , I was walking down the hallway in their home and saw something on the wall that made me do a double - take . It was the biggest , fiercest looking spider I have ever seen in my life . It was the size of a grapefruit . I stood stock still and screamed for my beloved groom to come and save me . Alex came up behind me and said " What 's the matter ? " Look on the wall , beloved husband ! What do you think is the matter ? When Alex saw the spider , he said " What do you want me to do ? " Excuse me ? What did he think I wanted him to do . " KILL THE SPIDER , ALEX ! " Looking very concerned , Alex left the hallway to look for something to kill the spider with . He was gone a long time . I am still frozen right across from the thing . All eight of its eyes are now trained on me just waiting for me to come closer , or even waiting for me to leave so he could scurry off and Posted by When Alex ( my husband ) is traveling , I waste a lot of time . I take two hour bubble baths . I watch reality TV . I get bored and sort of frustrated because I am lonely with him gone . I think of things to amuse myself , but don 't do them . Okay , this morning for example , there is a marathon of " America 's Next Top Model " on TV . I think I 've watched 7 hours of it so far . Now , if there is anybody I dislike more than Tyra Banks , I don 't know who it would be . So why am I sitting at the kitchen table watching my 14 " TV ? I have two respectable sized flat screens on the lower level of the house . I could go watch one of those . Then again , I think we have a 50 inch flat screen upstairs . I could go watch that . What am I talking about ? If I dislike Tyra , why would I want to see her bigger . Also , this has to be the stupidest show I have ever been addicted to . I really think I need help . Even my dogs won 't watch it with me . They like Animal Cops Detroit , and Animal Cops Houston , and Animal Cops San Francisco just fine . So why don 't I turn that on ? I like Animal Cops too . But oh hell no , I want to see who gets to be America 's Next Top Model . Now here 's the really pitiful part , I have seen this before and I already know who is going to win . Dear God , I wish my husband was home . Wednesday was going along just fine . Alex will be home on Friday and that 's good thing . I got up at 8 this morning so I 'm getting ready for the time change this weekend . ( I usually NEVER get up before 9 because most people die early in the morning I 've read and taken to heart . ) Never mind . I did not die so it started off just fine . We got our front porch replaced a couple of weeks ago . Good to have it done because we had some dry rot out there . Our contractor was great and finished the job in a very short time and it looks just like new . ( Okay , the house was built in 1880 , so it looks just the same as the old porch , but without the dry rotted boards . ) It cost about $ 5000 to do the porch , including materials . Really not that bad when I think about it . Two guys worked for 4 full days on it . Not cheap , but not outrageous either . Plus , it had to be done . We also had registration for two of our three cars due about the same time as the porch . So , we 're out quite a bit of money for the last 30 days . Never mind . It 's only money , right ? We also had to take Honey to the vet for her shots and lab work last week . That trip ended up costing $ 350 . Yeah , she 's old and has some health issues but suck it up , we do everything we can to keep her healthy and comfortable . Also , I 've been looking at my hair and realizing it 's looking a bit like a rat 's nest . I know I said I was going to grow it out and get big hair , but I think I 've changed my mind . My hair grows straight up , ( picture those troll dolls ) so maybe that 's not going to work . Plus I swore I 'd never do big hair . Okay , a cut and color costs $ 150 before the tip . I think I 'm going to start wearing hats . Oh hell , maybe I 'll just start wearing a burka for that matter . Then I won 't need cosmetics either . The nice mailman came today . We have one nice guy , and one who does not ever say a word . He 's not that nice . You say hello to him and he just looks at you . You thank him and he doesn 't even look at you . Okay , like I said , it 's a good Wednesday so far . I walked in the house and my goodPosted by HumpDay With Harry Mom 's friend , Peg , over at Square Peg in a Round Hole suggested that Mom let me do a post on Wednesdays since the word " hump " is such a good thing to me ! This is going to be a story of my most wonderful day ever that turned into my worst day ever and believe you me , I have had some bad days . I 'm a lab / pit / shar pei mix . And I am a really good looking guy . My Dad calls me a PMF ( and I know that 's a good thing because it 's the same name as he calls the security guy at the military base who Mom makes goo goo eyes at ! ) The first part of the words is Pretty . The other two I 'm not so sure . Okay , back to hump days . The only real humping I 've ever done is with Dutch , and since we are both neutered males , some people may say it doesn 't count for much . Okay . I would have humped Lola but she 's too short . In fact , she 's so short and small that her head fits right in my mouth . I love to hold her head in my mouth and make noises . And Lola loves it too . Anyway , humping Lola is out of the question . Honey , my sister or something , thinks I 'm stupid . She 's wrong . I 've been to obedience training 3 separate times . And each time I passed . It 's just that I have a touch of ADD Mom says . I get distracted really easy . I got adopted three times from the Shelter . I am a really good boy and I got thrown in the night drop box three times . Three times is a lot to be taken in the car and tossed into a metal box in the middle of the night . I 'm not sure why those people couldn 't keep me or didn 't want to keep me . Maybe it 's because of the ADD thing . Never mind . I 'm in a FOREVER home now . ( But Mom says I still " have issues " . ) The worst distraction in the world I have is squirrels . Squirrels are not nice critters and that 's a fact . They stand in the trees at my house and shake their ugly tails at me . They make these awful noises and just shake back and forth . They climb trees faster than you can imagine . I try to go up after them but I just can 't go as high as they do . I chase them all the time and bark my head off at themLinda Medrano The large building shown on the right side of the photo is known as the Queen of Russian Hill located in San Francisco . I was invited to a sweeping penthouse apartment there ( which covered the entire top floor ) when I was in my early 30 's . My friend Angela invited me to come to Christmas dinner and as my children would be with my ex - husband that day , I accepted her invitation . ( I usually opted to celebrate Christmas Eve with my kids and let the ex take them on Christmas day . ) I met Angela at her gently used clothing store not too far from where I lived . Angela specialized in only the top quality clothing , usually from local television personalities . Some of the clothes had only been used for one tv broadcast . I found out that one of these women was exactly my size ! Angela would call me as soon as this person brought in a load of clothes . For shopping in a resale shop , I was very well dressed ! Angela was a very interesting woman , about 25 years older than I was . Her shop was cozy and beautiful and had fabulous lighting and fixtures . I actually felt that I was in someone 's bedroom when I was in her shop . Since I was a favorite of hers , we began a friendship . She had a boyfriend and told me all about their relationship . She also had grown children , about my age . Angela was a real beauty . When I would come in , she would slip her silver flask of scotch out of her drawer and get a couple of cut crystal goblets and tell me it was time for a " drinkee " . ( I thought this was hilarious ! ) I bought a bottle of very expensive scotch and set off for her apartment on Christmas Day . Angela had told me to come at 2 in the afternoon , and I took a cab so I wouldn 't be late . There was a winding driveway leading up to the front of the complex , and a doorman hurried over to get the door of the cab for me . Hmm . Not exactly like the place I lived , now was it ? I took the old elevator ( with an elevator man ) to the Penthouse . The lobby had impressed me quite a bit too , with antique oriental carpets and huge chandeliers . Very upscale . I rang the doorbPosted by A few years ago , Alex decided to take me to my favorite city in the world , Paris , for my birthday . We spent about a week at the Four Seasons George V Hotel in Paris . This is a 5 - star Hotel and our every whim was catered to . It was a lovely experience all in all . The only problem with a 5 - star hotel is that by default , they are all somewhat generic . The restaurants are wonderful . Check ! The decor is fabulous . Check ! The rooms are sumptuous with the best linens and toiletries imaginable . Check ! The people who work there are beautiful . Check ! The service is impeccable . Check ! The price is astronomical . Double Check ! The downside is that you could move this hotel and locate it at Embassy Row in London , in Hong Kong , or in the Union Square area of San Francisco , or in downtown anywhere ! As a result , local flavor is lacking with these hotels . Beautiful , posh , luxurious , sure , but not French , not British , not American . After a few days , we found a much more modest hotel in the Opera District of Paris . Now we 're on the right page . French is the language spoken here . The little bistros overflow with people ! You see Parisians hurrying home after work with their fresh baguettes under their arms . The lobby smells vaguely of cat pee . ( All hotel lobbies in Paris , except the 5 star hotels , smell a little like cat pee ! ) We had a wonderful street scene out of our windows ! Not landscaped perfection , but much better . Real people living real lives ! The food was amazing and not the fancy expensive fare either . A ham sandwich on that amazing bread was food for the gods ! Add a glass of vin rouge and watch the afternoon unfold around you ! Breathtaking ! I have never experienced such joy in a place . I never tire of this magical City of Light . Kathee at 2010 - The Year of Miracles tagged me with this yesterday . Thanks Kathee ! Okay , in ten years I hope to be : Either dead or alive and nothing in betweenIn possession of my facultiesHaving dogs and husband aroundSeeing my 6 grandchildren with happy adult livesStill loving music and art and moviesIn good health for an older womanThat 's about it ! Now I am supposed to tag 10 people and pass this on to them . Scott at Ergo ( one of the most amazing bloggers I 've encountered ! ) Jen at Redhead Ranting ( not just another pretty face , but she has that too ! Cat Lady Larew at How to Become a Cat Lady without the Cats , ( she 's really my sister from another mother . ) Alyssa at Bloggin 2 Noggin . ( Lots of charm ! ) Suzicate at The Water Witch 's Daughter ( great writer and really funny when she wants to be ! ) Val at Golden to Silver Val , ( interesting woman and damned good writer ! ) Jay , the birthday boy at Cynical _ Bastard ( he is neither , by the way ) . Bridget at Bridget 's Two Cents ( Army wife and mom of 3 and a way fun girl ! ) Southern Sage at the Independent Thinker 's Lounge ( not everybody 's cup a tea , but he 's mine ! Funny , irreverent , smart , and thought provoking . ) And last , but not least is Patience at A Reason Or A Season . ( She 's hilarious ! ) So there you go . Thanks again Kat ! Harry wants in on the action . I 'm letting him do a guest blog . My name is Harry and I 'm a four year old dog . I 'm handsome and big and people all seem to like me a lot . Other dogs usually like me too , because I love to play and have a good personality . I have a neighbor guy named Dutch , a Rhodesian Ridgeback , who is about my size . Folks say we look alike since we are both that really great shade of orange - red . He and I hang out sometimes and we both love to run . We also like to hump each other but since we are both neutered now , don 't take that part too seriously because we don 't . Dutch has a house mate named Samson who is a Pug . He 's kind of a yappy guy and not nearly as much fun as Dutch . There 's another dog there too named Delilah . She 's okay . I hear she 's a French Bulldog , whatever that means . Dutch likes her better than I do . She yaps a lot too . I live with Honey . Honey is either my sister or something . She 's smaller than me but much meaner and she always gives me dirty looks to let me know what I 'm not supposed to do . She can be nice sometimes , but usually not . I mean , Honey will act like she wants to play , but then she gets mad and growls at me or bites my ear for no real reason . Okay , I took her toy , but I was only playing . We also have a black cat named Smokey who lives in our house . Smokey hisses and spits at me whenever he sees me . Whatever , Dude . Cats are weird anyway . They don 't leave me alone with Smokey because as my Mom says , " That would be looking for trouble ! " I have a cousin named Lola . I love Lola . She 's little and black and very curly . She lets me put her head in my mouth and hold it there . I love to do that ! Then we chase each other and she bites me every place she can reach . She 's funny ! Sometimes she makes me get tired because I love to run , but Lola never quits . She just keeps running and running and biting me so I 'll chase her . And she keeps falling in the fish pond and Mom gets mad about that . Lola also poops in the house , but nobody gets mad at her about it . ( What would happen if I tried thPosted by
|
This time of year , the harvest season comes at us hard and fast and even though I don 't ( yet ) have an over burgeoning vegetable garden , our friends and neighbors have been keeping us very busy with theirs . I 'm not complaining , on the contrary I love it , welcome it . . . beg for it even , and am so happy when they share the bounty . Very happy , believe me ! It 's just that , when you 're not expecting it , it can leave you stopped dead in your tracks because you have to move fast . Everything I 've been sewing and gluing and painting has gone into a temporary holding pattern while I tend to all living things with a short shelf life . Like the wonderful basil . I spent all day yesterday making my little pesto packets . But first there was a quick trip back to the market for fresh pignoli ( pine nuts ) and grated Parmesan cheese . And instead of peeling and chopping lots of tiny garlic cloves , I bought elephant garlic instead , which is huge . It 's milder too , and that 's nice since this goes in , and is eaten , mostly uncooked . Just setting everything up and doing the prep work took half the morning , but the trusty food processor made the rest go fast . And the time I 'm saving in the long run , really makes up for a few hours of work . I ended up making about half - a - dozen batches . Which worked out to 24 packets , each with ( more or less ) 3 heaping tablespoonfuls in each snack bag . Enough to last through the winter and beyond . Pesto freezes well and it 's really simple to use this way . Just grab a packet and peel back the plastic while it 's still frozen . Nothing sticks so nothing is wasted . Sometimes I just need a small amount to mix with goat cheese or butter to spread on bread , so I just break off a little piece and toss the rest back in the freezer . Super easy when I want to make a quick pasta dish too . And . . . look who 's back . He showed up late yesterday afternoon out of the blue . Naturally we all have mixed emotions about this little fellow . Ginger ran outside and threw her arms around him . I noticed that he seemed quite chatty . Read : " pleasAugust 25 , 2006 in someone 's in the kitchen | Permalink My mailbox has been brimming with the sweetest treasures from afar . This package arrived all the way from the UK . A wonderful surprise from Simmy who 's blog , Echos of a Dream I 've come to know and love . She 's been experimenting with natural dyes and wool recently with pretty good success ; the results of which ( along with some tutorial ) you can read about here . The colors that she 's been able to achieve from things like dahlias , carrot tops , logwood and comfrey just to name a few , are really wonderful . Soft , natural , muted colors that are so pleasing to the eye . I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some of the spoils and can 't wait to work with these . Right now I 'm still just staring at them in awe and feeling so happy , not to mention getting ideas about my own wool blanket project again . Plus there was other fun stuff too that had the girls jumping for joy , like the sweet vintage book , pretty origami papers , foreign postage stamps , craft scrap , and even feathers from her Golden Laced Wyandotte hens , that I 'm sure will inspire lots of crafting around here . Grace and Simmy 's daughter are about the same age and have been sending hand - written letters back and forth , kind of a casual cultural exchange of ideas and friendship across the pond . The impact of which cannot be discounted . After forty + years I still correspond with my 4th grade penpal who lives in Canada . She 's my longest enduring friend even though we 've only actually met in person twice . I have a feeling that many of the bloggers I 've " met " during this past year are going to become similar long - distance friends too . Can 't even begin to tell you how nice it is to read all the comments from those who keep popping in here . I wish I could respond to each one , but time is pretty short these days and I 'm often running to keep up . Like um , now . But before I bounce outta my chair , I have to show a couple more lovely things that arrived recently . This wonderful package was from Lauren , who makes the most incredible collage pieces . We did a swap for thisAugust 22 , 2006 in friendly swaps | Permalink Honestly , I don 't think there 's anything I enjoy more than making little girl 's dresses . This little ensemble was finished just in time for my granddaughter 's second birthday . We spent the day in Portland yesterday , and it was great seeing friends and faces we haven 't seen in a while . Our little birthday girl got so much loot in the form of toys ( and I just knew she would ) so I made her this jumper dress and bag instead . And of coarse , a Stitchette , from one of Hillary 's cute patterns , to go along with it . Which turned out SO cute and it even looks like her ! I like how she fits perfectly in the pocket and the bag . The bag idea probably came from this Japanese craft book ( page 44 ) although I didn 't exactly follow any directions . I just realized that it was similar after I made it and started flipping through it again . Anyway , it 's a fun chunky little bag that 's easy for a small person to get things in and out of without too much fiddling and frustration . The jumper pattern I 've had for a long time though , and it 's one I 've sewn many times over the years . It 's one of my favorites because " it 's SO EASY " just like the pattern envelope says . And you know , that 's just NOT always the case with patterns that make those claims , but this one really lives up to that and it 's simple enough so you can embellish anyway you want , or use just about any kind of fabric . I 'd forgotten that I had this yummy pink and red candy stripe cotton and when I came across it again , I knew this was perfect for what I had in mind . A little white rick - rack adds a fresh note and a vintage look at the same time , but I left this on the plain side with just a simple " applique " for fun . I really like deep hems too , they make most things hang nicer and you can let them out later to add length after a growth spurt . The other fabric is Flea Market Fancy ( Denyse Schmidt ) . This jumper is only three pieces to pin and cut out , with a bodice that doubles as the facing , so all raw edges are nicely tucked away . In a most * tidy * fashion . Gotta love that . When it 's hot like it has been , you can smell the blackberries from the kitchen door . Anyone will tell you that blackberries are the scourge of the northwest . . . except when it 's berry picking time . Then we all sing a different tune . There 's a little corner behind our house that is taken over by bramble that offers up the most choice berries every summer . It can be tricky getting in there to pick them . Even dangerous . There 's always that persistent poison oak entwined amongst the thorny vines to be wary of . But still we forge on until we are scratched bloody and stained with juice , triumphant with our bounty as we return to the house with baskets brimming . At that point , it always feels like we 've just won a battle . I guess in a way we have . Survived one anyway . We try not to eat all the spoils but it 's so hard . I insist on a triple rinse , and it 's a bit of a production that takes time . While the girls do that , I get the pie crusts ready . We ended up with two pies ; one for dessert and one for the freezer , for later . Much later . Like when we 've been chased back inside by the cold and want to taste summer again . Or have company over for an old fashioned Sunday supper and want to spoil them with something special . Pies are such homey little things . Especially one wearing a fancy lattice crust hat . My little pastry wheel makes these lovely pinked edges without much effort . Some strips were a bit thin as I was running short on pie dough . But in the end , it didn 't really matter one bit . No one even noticed or cared when it finally came out of the oven and the aroma hit them . August 19 , 2006 in garden love , someone 's in the kitchen | Permalink I forgot to show this bag I made last week for a little birthday guy who turned 5 years old Sunday . It was really fun making something for a boy this time . I took my cues from the toy shop trucks and a puzzle and designed a little carry - all using the same primary colors . And who knew you could have this much fun with freezer paper ? I 've used it for years for applique , but this was the first time using it to make a stencil . It worked great ! The ruler twill tape added a handy feature , because you never know when you might need to measure something , right ? The little tab on the side says , travel . That just seemed fitting somehow . I couldn 't be more pleased with how it turned out and he liked it too . Started filling it up with all his new toys right away . August 16 , 2006 in bags & totes | Permalink It 's a little cloudy and cooler today . Nice for a morning stroll and a little meandering around the backyard . The wind whipped through here last night , the evidence of which I found brought down the badminton net , one wasp trap , and the yard waste can , partially dumping all the tree branches we trimmed over the weekend . No real harm done though . Checking in here on the enchanted garden , everything looks fine . The pincushion flowers and the clematis have recovered after a deer intruded and nipped all their heads off . Including some of the roses . How it managed to get in here is beyond me . What I thought was safe temporary fencing , turned out not to be so deer - proof after all . Quelle supris ! Considering my options again before another raid . The Corsican mint has filled in it 's little square plot nicely . I like to run my hand over it to release the strong scent which is like no other . It not only looks and smells wonderful but it also keeps the clematis roots damp and cool . And of coarse , makes a wonderful carpet for frolicking fairies . The blue spirea is sending out lovely long spires that harmonize well with the pink roses which really don 't get enough sun in this corner , so whatever bloom they manage to produce makes me happy . And at least one of us is happy . Oh dear . Just look at this sad face . This rag - tag fellow has been visiting for a couple of weeks now , with little encouragement from us , other than a friendly pat and a kind word , but still I think he 's decided to stay . He 's taken to sleeping on the porch now . I 'm not sure where he belongs , if his family is on vacation or if he was just dropped off in the middle of the night , but he doesn 't appear to be hungry or suffering although his eyes look a little runny which has me concerned . No collar , no tags . We 've walked up and down the street inquiring on his behalf without any luck . He 's a mellow fellow , quite gentle and good mannered . Seems well taken care of . But Miss Lily is NOT happy about this at all . She 's been in a huff ever since he showed up . He wants to come in , and sit on laps . She wants to come out , and box his ears . Lily 's strictly an indoor cat so I 'm not sure how this situation is going to play out but in the meantime , she 's keeping a close eye on him . A very close eye . I 'm sort of a prisoner in my own house today . Which actually is just fine because there is so much I need to get done . Or at least , started . My neighborhood road is closed due to repairs and maintenance , so there 's no coming and going while the work crew is on the job . Not sure how my mail will be delivered , or if it even will be . But no worries . The only downside is that the Mister won 't be here for lunch . I think it 's the first time in . . . what ( ? ) years that he hasn 't come home for lunch . I love that he pops in mid - day . We usually make him something special , even if it is only warmed up left - overs . Years ago , he had a long freeway commute that left him exhausted and stressed , so living within a few miles of the job has been fantastic and wonderful for all of us . It 's nice too , that the girls get to see more of their dad and not just at the end of the day when we 're all tired . Sometimes he invites friends from work to join us . That 's always fun . We really need to do that again soon when we aren 't so busy . There 's always some baking and cooking going on around here though . This quiche was delish with the addition of fresh basil from a friend 's garden . I love that little heart shape on the handle of my nutmeg grinder . And Grace is not only a whiz in the dollhouse kitchen ( with her mini cupcakes and petite sweets and what - not ) but also when it comes to making real food . Like that blueberry muffin up there . We use the exact same recipe ( a favorite from the Tasha Tudor Cookbook ) but , hers always taste better than mine . She thinks I 'm just doing the * mom thing * when I tell her that , but it 's true . When she was little , I used to ask her what she did to make her cookies taste so good , and she 'd say in all seriousness , " I put love in it " . We 'd laugh but it does seem to make a difference . I 'm happy that our kids know their way around the kitchen . As soon as they could hold a spoon and stir they were given opportunities to take part . It 's always been a family affair . The point is not so much about the end product , ( which do | Framed Update on this WIP . . . which is now a completed FWYH project that actually came together rather nicely much to my surprise . Because , you know , how often does that happen ? I was a little nervous at the start with having to plunge this into a tepid water bath , hoping beyond hope that all the wool was colorfast and didn 't bleed all over the place . I 've had this happen recently with an old red & white Irish Chain quilt top I had plans of restoring . Oh the anguish ! Still not sure what I 'm going to do about it either . Luckily the yarns didn 't run here though and it came out refreshed and ready for blocking . I used ordinary push - pins and ceiling board that I had on hand , the back of which is porous , but I think you could probably use any kind of flat sturdy board that pins can be poked into . With most needlework pieces , there is a certain amount of distortion due to the tension of yarns pulling in different directions , so the goal of blocking is to bring it back into square and to remove the puckering . So starting in the center of each edge , I placed the pins and worked out , tugging and pulling gently as I went along , until everything was where it should be . Then I let it dry a few days before removing it from the board . The final measurements came to 10 . 5 " x 14 " not exactly a standard frame size , so the past week was spent mulling over custom frame choices and mat colors , but I still couldn 't make a decision . Nothing seemed quite right . For some reason , I started rummaging around in a box of old frames I 've collected over the years , mostly odd sizes that didn 't work for anything else , and not really expecting to find anything in particular but hoping for some kind of direction to go instead . And would you believe I actually found a frame ? A lovely old frame with the exact dimensions ? What are the odds ? I still can 't believe it . But there it was . A little scratched and a little beat up , but nothing a little Minwax didn 't fix . A perfect fit . I 'm just so tickled ! August 11 , 2006 in embroidery | Permalink We joined friends yesterday for an informal picnic at the park and spent the entire day lolling under the shade of the tall trees while the kids romped around in their little groups . These idle breaks in the middle of the week are so refreshing even though it sometimes means facing a growing mountain of work the next day , like um , now . What I 'm really hoping to find time for is a little craft sewing though . It 's a big birthday month around here and I 'm going to run out of time shortly if I don 't make a move soon . Fortunately , I was lucky enough to get one of these adorable embroidery patterns from Hillary and have already gotten a good start on it . I was so smitten with these wonderful wee dolls she made that I wanted to make one for a very special little grand - daughter who is turning two in a couple of weeks . Her mama brought her down from Portland last week for a visit and we were just marveling ( the way all moms do ) about how fast our kidlets grow up . Seems like only yesterday we were throwing the baby shower . I plan to also make a fall jumper with a pocket of some sort for the embroidered doll to ride around in . . . so , guess I 'd better get cracking . August 10 , 2006 in embroidery | Permalink An interesting thing happens when you place ordinary stuff under glass . Or in this case , Plexiglas . It becomes art . Well sort of . You may develop more appreciation for it anyway . For instance , none of these old kitchen tools that I 'd gathered over the years from thrift shops were given a second glance in the basket they were thrown in , but now everyone is stepping closer and marveling over them . My youngest daughter suddenly had questions about the " olden days " and a discussion followed . I had to laugh though . Why do all children think their parents rode in on a covered wagon ? It sometimes seems inconceivable to them that times could be so different than they are today . How lucky we are to have so many modern conveniences that make our lives easier and free up our time for things like making " kitchen art " . I seriously doubt my great - grandmother would view these objects in the same way though , because to her they probably represented hard work and endless chores . But from a relatively modern perspective I imagine simpler times , with images of porch swings and homemade goodness on the table . A bit idealistic I know , but true in a lot of ways and that 's what comes to mind when I see these old kitchen tools . For a time , I was actually using some of them but discovered the paint was chipping and the wood was cracking from tossing them in the dishwasher . I 'm guessing some are close to sixty years old and were not exactly designed for such harsh procedures no matter how well crafted they were . And they obviously were , to have survived all these years . So few things are truly well - crafted anymore . The shadow boxes I used are a case - in - point . Out - sourced and poorly made they gave me absolute fits of frustration because none were the same dimensions . Not one piece of glass I had cut for them fit , which is why the Mister had to come to my rescue and fitted them with Plexiglas instead . My well - appointed modern kitchen is decidedly old - fashioned though . A farmhouse style with sunny walls , cabbage roses and red & white gingham | I 'm not sure putting a coat of chocolate brown paint on the front door would be considered a creative endeavor , but it 's one of the things I 've been doing anyway . And there was good mail . Lots of lovely mail that kept trickling in throughout the week , that made me giddy when I finally had a chance to sit down and go through it all . My kitty craft order was everything I hoped for . Patchwork World ( in Tricolor : red , white & blue ) turned out to be fantastic . Every page is a feast for the eyes and makes me drool with delight every time I flip through it . I finally got some of those darling Korean fabrics and that woven numbers twill tape . The other tape has ladybugs on it . The site is down temporarily because Amy Lee is moving to the UK , good news for crafters there . But you can still check out some fun things on the site like her pattern room with two pages of very cool things to see and make . Then there was my order from Cia 's Palette . More wonderful tiny prints , always so beautifully packaged . I can 't decide which one I like best because they 're all so sweet . The red mushrooms are high on the list though . I already used the floral print to back one of three shadow boxes I put together for the kitchen . ( More about that later in the week after I get everything hung . ) I also have in mind to make a new quilt after I finish up some old projects , and most of these fabrics will be incorporated in it somehow . With all I have on the table ( literally ! ) not sure when I will actually begin this , but I 'll have everything I need to get that started when the moment is right . Probably sometime in the fall when it 's cooler and leaving the iron on won 't be a problem . If you 're looking for old roses , romantic vintage - style florals , check out Jennifer 's website Shabby Fabrics . She carries an amazing collection , and everything I 've purchased so far has been top - notch , plus she ships fast . August 07 , 2006 in show & tell | Permalink Moving right along , I 've decided that for my next finish what you have project , I 'm going to do something with this crewel piece I did way back when . This was done from a kit called Country Life , an Erica Wilson design from the 1980 's . I finished every bit of the needlework at the time , but never had it blocked and framed properly . Which is such a shame really because I 've always loved this and have no excuse for leaving it in a plastic bag all these years . None whatsoever . So often I 'd take it out , admire all the work , then put it away . I think it 's high time I get on it before moths find a hole in the bag . Now , I 'm all for originality but you can learn so much by doing kits . This piece alone has about 40 different stitch designs . Things like the fishbone stitch , turkey work , vandyke , couching , spider 's web , cretan , and wonderful little bullion stitches . I finally mastered the French Knot on that rabbit . There 's so much texture to this piece due to all the different stitches , and I thoroughly enjoyed learning new techniques as I went along . I 'm thinking of framing this in a shadow box instead of with the glass right on top which would flatten it . I really have no experience with this sort of thing , but want it enclosed somehow . So that 's the direction I 'm headed with this one . . . . . . . and then there 's this brand new something , just starting to take shape . This should be interesting to say the least . It 's been a while since I tackled anything like this . Stay tuned for project updates . One of the nice things about keeping a craft blog is , now I 've committed myself to finishing something . August 01 , 2006 in dollhouse miniatures , embroidery , fun & games | Permalink
|
Gwen 's family are doing a house swap , just outside Chicago for just outside Paris , and I am the lucky duck who gets to horn in on the vacation . I took the Eurostar this morning ( less exciting than I had expected . It 's a train . There 's a long tunnel . Whatever . ) and arrived to smiling faces at Gare du Nord . Today we wandered around a bit and took a bus tour ! I loved the bus tour ! The audio guide on the tour suggested that it was possible to purchase video cassettes on the Champs - Élysées . I would like to suggest that perhaps the audio guide has not been updated recently . The narrator was delightfully emphatic and alternated between chatting about things to our left or right ( you may notice the Eifel tower in front of you . . . no , seriously , she said that . ) and playing a piece of music that both Gwen and I were certain we 'd played but completely failed to identify . Some thoughts on the Eifel Tower : 1 . It 's brown . Did you know it was brown ? 2 . Somehow , in person , it is significantly more industrial looking than I expected . 3 . And less pointy . I had gained some skill by the time we actually stopped by the Eifel Tower , and am almost pleased with these ones : The zoom ! Don 't keep it all zoomed in ! Also , change the angle , this is never going to be a good picture . Your head is in the way . Ze Tower ! ( Is it rude to write in a fake French accent while sitting in a gorgeous house in Fontainebleu ? Probably . ) Some notes about my clothes : I 'm wearing a coat . I 'm clearly in Paris . It is mid - July . Pssht . And it was a bit windy . ps . The spell check on blogger is currently set to French . Currently 98 % of this entry is highlighted due to misspellings . The final Harrow Suzuki school concert was this morning which means that now all of my school year things are finished with . The little ones all wore fancy dress ( costumes ) and looked adorable . ( I 'm hoping that one of the group photographs will wend its way to me ! ) My favourites were the two boys who had substantial plastic helmets as part of their attire , because how do you play the violin with a helmet on ? ? The younger group sang a princess song with lots of actions and a pirate song with lots of jumping . They were excellent . We 've been practicing them a capella because I 'm not so great with the piano , but the pianist who was accompanying the violin portions of the concert decided to help us out as well . That was great except that at the beginning of the first song we turned out to have begun in two completely different keys . It took a minute for us all to work that one out and start again . Oops ! Embarrassing ! Fortunately Suzuki parents ( or at the very least THIS group of Suzuki parents ) are the nicest people ever so they just chuckled and we carried on . The older group did a rhythmic vocal warm up that they had written new words for , a dancing song with actions and " ai - yi - yi " - ing , and pease pudding hot in 4ths . Thank goodness for the piano in the pease pudding song ; we always get there in the end , but this time they were able to sing the 4ths straight away . A relief since this was , after all , the concert . Phew . I have a great fondness for any number of these students . They 're clever and focused ( more or less ) and nearly all of them are hilarious goofballs . One of the girls was sat directly in my sight line during the violin pieces and for one song proceeded to follow the line of the music with her face . Does that make any sense ? She was squinching her face all up and then popping her eyebrows up to her hairline following the melody that the violins were playing . Now , if I were a responsible adult I probably would have silently shook my head to get her to stop . But I 'm not . So I joined in . ( And hoped it wasn 't * too * obvious ! ) After the concert her mother laughingly asked what the pair of us monkeys had been doing . ( Tum ti tum . . . . nothing , geeze ) I 'm keeping this group until I leave because I love them so much . Posted by It 's birthday week here at londoncasey , and I 've just realized that because I 've been titling all of these posts with what I actually call my relatives - that means that this one is titled " Mommy " and though I 'm not 100 % certain that I wanted the internet to know that I call my mom ' Mommy ' , well , meh . Let 's go with it . ( She typically gets called " Betsy " by those who know her . ) I 'm leaving London . About a month ago , when this decision was really made and I closed the doors on the half options that were still floating around - I talked to Laine and * FREAKED OUT * about things like . . . phone bills . And health insurance . And the price of food in America . Because I 've not really dealt with those things in the US , only in the UK . ( She promised me that I would be able to figure it out and then forwarded a link to a freelancers union in NY . She 's an excellent sister . ) At the end of this month I will be done with all of my contracted work , though the tykes may continue to pull me in for supply / substitute teaching the first couple months of school . What this means is that though my income drops dramatically come September , I do have this glorious gift of time coming to me . And it feels like a good bookend in a lot of ways - I showed up in London ( and , in fact , started this blog ) with a whole month of time on my hands , a travel card , and a sense of exploratory adventure . Now I get the chance to leave like that as well . I 'm done with teaching for now . I 'll be moving in the middle of the school year and it 's not something I 've been particularly excited about for a while ( you may have noticed the diminishing number of tyke related posts ) . It very well may be something that I come back to , but I shouldn 't think I would look for classroom teaching positions in America . ( For one thing , I really really don 't have an education degree . ) 2 . Do some more rambling . There 's an awful lot of the country I 've not tromped through yet , and some more tromping needs to happen . 5 . Do some European travelling . I 'm going to France ( finally ) in , oh , a week ! I 'd forgotten it was so soon ! But I want to see Berlin and maybe Hungary too . You know why this list isn 't longer ? Because I do the things I want to in London . I go to improv class every week and I have a marvellous yoga teacher , and I get to be involved in all of these cool and exciting games and I walk in a London park at least three times a week , and every time I get on a bus I sit on the upper deck ( and very often in the front ) , and I wander over to Trafalgar Square and squee at all of the squee - ing Harry Potter fans just because it is there and goodness me I am blessed . Not least because everywhere I go I am surrounded by some pretty extraordinary people . This week is birthday week , where about 50 % of my family officially gets older . My grandmother Ruthe is the only one to have her birthday on a day that is not divisible by 3 . Forewarning : I am * exhausted * and likely to be rambly . . . . here goes ! Have I told you about the theatre project I 'm doing ? It 's a site specific devised theatre piece / game for the opening festival of a new youth arts venue near Finsbury Park . We 're working with a bunch of teenagers from the neighboring estate . It 's a fun project in a lot of ways , but particularly exciting for me because I am listed in all the programmes and flyers as a game designer . Or games consultant , or something like that . It makes me feel hip and cool and like I seem like I know what I 'm talking about . The pièce de résistance was running away from zombies in an empty mall . I had an epic moment where I was climbing backwards up a down escalator in order to stay in once place because I needed to avoid the zombies milling around both the bottom and the top of the escalator . I eventually got caught about 20 meters away from the final safe zone , which was excellent because it meant that I got to have a face full of zombie makeup for the after party . City Dash I also helped to run two games - one for fire - hazard and one for hide & seek . Fire - hazard 's game involved having a map and codes stickered to the players ' front and back . The players snuck around the city centre using their maps to find small , hidden stickers with codes to text in for points while avoiding guards who would text in the players chest plate codes to take away points . It is our most tech heavy game and it went off surprisingly well . We ran it twice ; the first day I was a guard and the second day I bossed people around . ( The pictures are of me bossing people around . ) The running of the game mostly involves tracking the course of the game in order to recalibrate it half way through if needed , so I spent the 45 minutes or so that it was running after everyone had their stickers and their texts all set up hunkered down in the corner of an alleyway that led to a lovely covered market , staring at the computer and clicking " refresh . " I think I prefer the bossing people around aspect . Hide & Seek 's game was about ceilidhs and involved dancing , trading ribbons , and running away from " Evil Morris Dancers . " My role there was mostly to be bossy ( yay ! ) and instruct people in how to weave between each other while doing the dance . It was a great deal of fun and also involved a pair of bemused musicians who remained reticent when asked whether this was the weirdest gig they 'd ever done . On the last day of the festival ( I make it sound like this big thing , but it was just a weekend ) there was a game designers brunch to discuss questions about what we do . Er , they do . I wanted to go , but wasn 't sure if it was really something I was part of ( Casey , you were there with TWO games companies . Shut up ) but having crashed in my friend Holly 's hotel room after the zombie game ( I needed a shower and the person I was staying with was heavily pregnant and far away and it was very late and oh my gosh the water flowed pink from all of the fake blood / zombie makeup ) she and I went to the brunch together . At first I stayed quiet , listening carefully to other people . Then someone asked about fire - hazard and I wasn 't sure if I should really answer the question or not because it isn 't * my * company and I 'm not 100 % privy to Gwyn 's plans for it . But blah blah blah by the end of the meeting I was yabbering away like a talkative macaw . At some point recently Gwyn and I were planning / hanging out and recalled a rumor that Jane McGonigal 's book Reality is Broken had a chapter about our friend Kevan , so we tried to get an ebook copy to see if we could find it , but that was kind of a pain and whatever system for reading ebooks that Gwyn had downloaded didn 't have a search function so we were just randomly scrolling through the book . This was remarkably ineffectual in terms of finding Kevan , but did mean that I noticed a picture of a bunch of people jumping down some stairs , With two fire - hazard members now confirmed as being in the book ; we decided that Gwyn would buy the book , send it to me , and I would mark it all up and then report back . The first three steps of that process happened . . . Sorry , Gwyn . I 've just noticed that on the last page I 've written and underlined , " Superfly " which I think is a good shorthand for how I feel about this book . Some of the pages aren 't underlined ! I got chatty in the margins and circled a lot of things . My friend Josh and I have teamed up to design some games for Hide & Seek 's next ' sandpit ' game testing session in a week 's time . We 've worked on about 5 , only one of which is going to be used for this Sandpit , but hopefully more of them will see the light of day in August . It 's birthday week here at londoncasey , where once a year we celebrate the 50 % of my family who managed to be born during BIRTHDAY WEEK . It is , I think , exciting for all of us . Next up is my father , Dan . For his birthday he gets a blog about some tykes . . . . In spite of numerous leaving parties and speeches and class parties and general end of the year - ness , I am still at school . This is because I decided to work for the summer camp . Down in the junior camp ( " down " because we 're in the basement ) we 've got a surplus of tykes . On Monday morning we were expecting around 25 , but as I was registering they just kept coming and coming and coming . When the dust settled we had 35 . Maybe 10 doesn 't seem like that big a number , but in terms of tyke corralling , it is significant . Fortunately we 've now got six staff people , so it has actually been a pleasure so far this week . We do , however , have one child who is literally a hand full . When he wants to be he is an absolute sweetheart and I genuinely enjoy working with him . That being said , when he starts acting up there is very little that we can do . Explaining quietly and in a deep voice while making lots of eye contact that throwing things at other children is not okay only makes him laugh . When he gets worked up he starts getting violent as well . This morning , and I don 't even remember what set this off , I was holding him back and trying to get him under control . He kicked me , pinched my neck , and bit my hand - all of which I could handle and while it wasn 't enjoyable didn 't really phase me . Then he bent my glasses and I lost it . I injure myself often enough that I don 't mind some bruises or cuts ( I have a foot long self inflicted bruise on my thigh right now from where I accidentally tripped and fell onto a bench in the hall during lunch last week . That was embarrassing . I threw food everywhere . One of the year 1 children came up to me after I had cleaned up and sat down again to tell me not to worry because he had fallen down as well and he was okay now . ) But don 't touch my glasses . I felt weirdly exposed with my glasses broken . The right earpiece was bent wide to the side . Nothing was actually broken off but it meant that in order to stay on my head the ear piece needed to be outside my ear rather than behind it . If I looked down , say , to talk to any of the tykes , they slipped down my nose . Linda took the boy away from me immediately after my glasses got bent and I rushed outside to try and get myself under control . I cried . Liz came out and gave me a hug . Chetna came over and gave me a hug . I gulped some air and let myself be led over to the shooting range where the Senior camp was later going to do some archery . So that was cool . I at least managed to hit the target . ( And didn 't further injure myself like I did the last time I did archery as a 9 year old when I somehow managed to shoot the fletching into my index finger . ) We called the kid 's mom and sat him in the room next door away from everyone else . ( With the door open so we could still see him . ) He calmed down quite a lot once he was by himself and ended up sitting there for over an hour while we waited for someone to come and pick him up . I suspect that being in a dark , empty space was probably a good thing for him - less stimulation . By lunch time he was back to being his charming , smiley self . But we still sent him home . I went to an opticians after school and they were able to bend the ear piece back , more or less . They hang behind my ear now but the fit is still looser than I would like it to be and probably now is the time to get a second pair of glasses so that I am not completely bereft if this happens again . Um . Happy Birthday , Papa ! I understand now why you used to get to annoyed when I went for your glasses as a kid . . . . It 's time to launch Birthday Week ! This is the week that about 50 % of my family was born , so it 's an important one . Today , kicking the whole thing off is my grandma , Mical . What does she get ? A completely random blog entry . . . . It is sunny and warm out and I figure he has as good a chance as any for actually * drying * today . I 've tried washing him once before , the first year I moved to London . He had started to smell and , well , that was at least as gross as it sounds . I washed him in the sink of my dorm room and the water turned a disgusting , dark brown . I was discouraged . Also , he took many many days to try . I was further discouraged . So I did what any normal person would do and ignored the problem for another three years . Until today ! Today I fixed the problem ! Today it occurred to me that while the water may turn a truly vile dark brown colour , filled with grime that does not bear thinking about , I could continue to wash him . Today it occurred to me that this wasn 't a one sink full of water kind of a job . Twelve . It was a twelve sinks full kind of a job . And my hands and wrists hurt from squeezing that much water out of essentially a fragile sponge . But by the 12th sink full ? The water was running clear . Thank goodness . Also , can I just say that 25 + years of anthropomorphising Soft Bear makes it VERY difficult to push his head down into a sink full of water ? I had to consciously keep reminding myself that I was not being evil , that teddy bears do not need to breathe , that his eyes weren 't accusing me from underneath the water , that , really , it was good for him to be washed and he would thank me later even if at this current moment he couldn 't understand why I was doing this to him , that when I pulled him , sodden with water , out of the sink that the reason I was holding him like a baby and supporting his head was because the fabric was fragile . Yes . That 's why . I 'm hanging out in London after getting an MMus in Leadership at Guildhall School of Music and Drama . I teach tykes and play games . Nice , huh ?
|
" Security is mostly a superstition . It does not exist in nature , nor do the children of men as a whole experience it . Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure . Life is either a daring adventure , or nothing . " - Helen Keller Sunday , July 31 , 2011 Kristin is going to BlogHer ( lucky duck ! ) and asked if I would do a guest post . After squeeing and feeling pretty good I worried about what to write . After I looked through what was in draft on my site and found NOTHING that I wanted to share . Finally , I decided that I wanted to share this post that I wrote way back in 2008 about a bizarre holiday called Young Readers Day . Confession , when I started blogging I didn 't know WHAT to write about so I found a few websites and a calendar that shared weird and crazy holidays and had at it . Now I don 't write about these crazy holidays so much . I miss it . Here is one of my favorites . Page 15 : Asks if I 'm tired when I see all of the beds . Picks out the one she likes best and demands I do the same . Pouts when I choose the bed with heart shaped frame and informs me we will share . His favorites include dogs solving mysteries , mice on motorcycles and mice running newspapers ( Jack Russell Mysteries , Beverly Cleary 's Ralph S Mouse series and Geronimo Stilton ) . His vocab is now peppered with his sister TERRORIZING him , and how CURIOUS things he doesn 't understand are . He likes to INTERROGATE his sister if he thinks she is in his things ( she usually isn 't ) and wants to CRACK the case when he feels wronged . Madison : OK . ( Spies large print copy of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald ) I am going to read this . The print is large enough that I don 't need my glasses . Me ( trying to remember the plot . Wasn 't there something about affairs , murders and various other illegal activities ? ) : Let 's find another book . What about this mermaid book ? Gloria , age 13Gloria has just discovered interlibrary loan at her local library ( this despite the fact that her aunt is a library type - go figure ! ) and has discovered that genre called Urban Fiction . She was reading through all of the Drama High and Imani Tru series ( both could be considered Urban Lite for teens ) but has since discovered True to the Game by Terri Woods . She and her friends are devouring these books ! I am of the mindset of at least she is reading for pleasure and SHE IS READING ! After speaking with some people who know way more about everything , we come to the conclusion that this is a fad and will change . After Gloria met with some other teens , who also write as she does , she is venturing into Science Fiction , and those coming of age stories her mom describes as plot that has a sad teen growing up too fast or too slow . . . . more specifically ( until I come up with a better name ) Coconut Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookies . I was playing in the kitchen last weekend and honestly meant to post this on Tuesday but life got in the way . I think this recipe may need a little tweaking but it 's pretty damned delicious as it is . Preheat oven to 350 degrees . Cream together butter , sugars , eggs , and vanilla . Set aside . In separate bowl , mix soda , salt , pudding mix , and flour . Slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture , mixing thoroughly as you go . Fold in coconut and chocolate chips . Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets . Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly golden brown . Can yield up to 5 dozen cookies ( it all depends on how much dough you eat while making them ) . These are really a delicious variation of our old favorite , the chocolate chip cookie . They really deserve a better name than they have . Anyone have a suggestion for me ? Came down to my parents on Monday so Gabe could join in swimming lessons and Joey could help out with them . Drove Marty home from my parents ' house Tuesday night ( got home at 11 : 30pm ) so I could get him to church to leave for his 3 day volunteer trip at 8 : 15 this morning . The high school and middle school youth groups are doing volunteer work at a Lutheran Services for the Aging facility . Joey has been helping my mom teach swimming this week . He 's also helped mow the lawn and clean up a rental house they own . He is definitely earning the moolah my mom promised him . Need to get home and sew . Have to finish a few things before I leave for BlogHer in a week . . . eeek , I 'm so unprepared . I 'd like to introduce you to Super Gabe , finder of small kittens and rescuer of the same . We are down at my parents house this week and early today , before lunch , Gabe , my mom , and I took her dogs out for a walk in the woods . When we got back to the house , it was raining . We heard a very loud meow but it sounded like the meow of a very small kitten . My mom and I took the dogs in and asked Gabe if he could find the * kitty . Gabe came in and said " I found it . It 's stuck on a stick . There 's a string coming from it and it 's tangled around the stick . " I had some horrible vision of what could be wrong and , when my mom asked me to go check , I told her to come with me because it didn 't sound good . Well , Gabe gave a very good description of what was going on . We found a very young kitten with its umbilical cord and placenta still attached . The umbilical cord was wrapped around the stick about 6 times . There was no way that poor little thing was going to get free by itself . While I untangled the little one , my mom got a towel . When we brought the little one in , I had to tie off the umbilical cord and cut it . My mom put together some " orphan formula " that we 've fed orphaned kittens in the past and , despite it 's extremely young age , the kitten enthusiastically sucked the formula out of the eye dropper . As the kitten dried off , you could start to see some brownish patches around the face . I think the baby is going to be a calico . Gabe checked around outside and didn 't find any trace of the mommy cat or any other kittens . We figure the mommy cat was a young one and , when she was moving the babies , this little one got tangled . In order to save / move the other baby ( ies ) , she left this kitty behind . . . or that 's our best guess . The question now became what do we do with the baby kitty . While we were trying to figure it out , we wrapped the baby in a heated towel ( boy do microwaves come in handy ) . It was obviously a little survivor and had a hell of a set of lungs on it . It was eating and trying to climb out of the towel onto me . We called my parents ' vet and they suggested we call the cat adoption center and see if they had any nursing mommy cats . It turned out that the adoption center had several nursing mommy cats and luckily one of them adopted the little fighter . I was very relieved because that meant I wouldn 't have to worry about it when I leave town for BlogHer . We live in the land of the free and home of the brave , the great Melting Pot , a country that espouses religious freedom and tolerance for your fellow man . . . or that 's what we 're suppose to do . Since 9 / 11 , I 've watched and I 've seen . I 've seen things that make me incredibly proud of who we are as a country and what we stand for . I 've also seen things that have made me want to weep because of the hypocrisy and narrow minded assholery they display . I knew it was time to say something ( past time really ) when I saw this piece over on Cecily 's blog and recalled a conversation I had with a relative who should know better . This relative informed my that Obama was really a closet Muslim and he lied to us abotu it because the Koran says it 's okay for Muslim 's to lie to non - Muslims in order to advance their cause . This relative further said that ALL Muslims who truly believe in the Koran believe in the violence perpetrated against our country because the Koran espouses those actions . If such a well - educated and supposedly open minded person can hold on to such warped , wrong headed ideas , then anyone can and that scares me . Please , please watch this and remember that you can 't judge a book by it 's cover or , in this case , you can 't judge a patriot by their name or their religion . I recently discovered eBeanstalk . com when Shelly from Momfiles . com told me about them . eBeanstalk . com is a truly fabulous online store with a large selection of entertaining and educational toys for kids . According to their website , they have toys and games for babies up through 12 yr olds but , in the 12 yr old category , I found things that even my teenager would enjoy . eBeanstalk . com has an incredibly wide range of products . They have super cute bead kits that I might just have to buy and play with . I saw some awesome shape sorters that would be a perfect 1 yr old gift . eBeanstalk . com even has a nice selection of art books . But , I think my all time favorite toy I ran across on the eBeanstalk website is the DNA by Science Whiz . This fabulous kit teaches your child all about DNA and even teaches them how to extract DNA from fruit . How cool is that ? I can definitely foresee some shopping sprees on eBeanstalk . com I found the eBeanstalk . com web site easy to navigate and it seemed that the toys and games were placed into age appropriate categories . My only complaint issue with the web site is there were a number of items that were listed twice in the same category . . . same item , same link , double listings . . . but , this relatively minor issue can be fixed easily . All in all , I think eBeanstalk . com is a pretty awesome place to shope for any of the children in your life . Hey y ' all , if you are any part of the Adoption , Loss , & Infertility community , or if you just wanna meet up with any of us , let 's plan to have lunch together . It could just be part of the actual BlogHer lunch . We could share a table or take our lunches out in the lobby . Please ( using this link ) email me ASAP and we can discuss which day to have it and exchange cell # s so we can text each other if we are running late . I 'll also continue the list Mel started here so you can see who is planning to be there . The other night Joey was reading to Gabe . He was reading Skippyjon Jones , Lost In Spice . There is a line in the book that says Skippyjon Jones is nuts about Mars . Well , thanks to the slang Gabe has learned from his older brothers , Gabe changed that line and said " Skippyjon Jones is balls about Mars . " I was watching the news and a report made me wonder where they get some of the bond numbers they give to people . I mean why issue someone a bond of $ 270 , 000 . Why not $ 250 , 000 or $ 300 , 000 ? Gabe struck again . He and Joey were talking the other night and Gabe asked Joey if a T . Rex was a real animal . Joey told him it was and T was short for Tyrannosaurus . Gabe looked at Joey and said " So , T . Rex stands for Tyrannosaurus Sex ? " Joey died laughing and Gabe had no clue what his brother thought was so funny . What names would you NEVER name a child or pet ? Shakespeare said " A rose by any other name would smell as sweet . " I know the Bard had a finger on human emotions and motivation but I beg to differ with him on this idea . Marty , Joey , and Gabriel are all perfectly wonderful names for my boys in my book . And , I love the names ( even the goofy ones ) that all our pets have . While there are many other names I considered when choosing names for my children , there was one name I told Vic we could never , ever use if we had a boy . I could NEVER name a boy Ralph . Why is the name Ralph taboo in my house ? I bet you 'll be surprised by the reason . It actually has nothing to do with the fact that ralph is slang for puking ( although that would have moved the name way down the list ) . No , the name Ralph was stricken from my list because of a book . I was in 6th grade when I read Judy Blume 's book Forever . Forever is the coming of age story of Katherine and includes her relationship with Michael , the boy she lost her virginity to . Michael has a name for his penis and that name just happens to be Ralph . Since then , I have never been able to hear that name without thinking of the book and the connotations therein . What name do you wish you had been named ? Honestly , I have never wished to have a different name . I love my first name and my middle name is the same as my aunt Kathy 's middle name . Do you like the name of your blog ? Way back in the beginning of 2009 , I gave my blog a makeover . It gained a new look and a new name but kept the same url . The more geeky of you might have noticed that my blog url is very different from the name . The url stems from the original name of my blog , The Fertile Infertile . When I first started my blog , we were in the hell of secondary infertility and repeat pregnancy loss . Even after we finally had Gabe , I left the blog name alone . Part of that was because I wasn 't blogging that often and part of it was I just didn 't have a better idea . By early 2009 , I had been back to actively blogging for about 6 months and I knew it was time for a change . You can read a little bit about what the name change meant here and here ( question 2 ) . There are moments in our life when we see something happening and we feel moved to do something , do anything . That happened earlier this year . Earlier this year , my dear friend St . Elsewhere was faced with something no one should have to face . She lost her beautiful baby daughter after only 2 days of life and a long battle to have her . I knew I couldn 't make it better . I knew I couldn 't remove the pain . But , I felt I needed had to do something to show her we , the whole ALI community , would never ever forget her daughter . I wanted it to be something tangible , something that could carry our love to her , something others could contribute to , something she could wrap around her when she needed a hug . In short , I wanted to make her a quilt . I put the call out and asked for people to contribute in any way they felt moved to . . . fabric , notes , prayers , or money to help with supply costs and shipping costs . Y ' all , I was literally OVERWHELMED with the response . There are truly too many people who contributed to list them here . My email in box was overflowing and , shortly , my mailbox was overflowing . Packages and letters came in from all over the world . I received so many beautiful pieces of fabric that I could only include small amounts from each one and still have the quilt be a normal size . This is the final product . . . For those of you who have read my blog or visited before , yes , this is the quilt I attributed to my friend Sheila . It was the only way I could share the progress without letting St . Elsewhere know what we were up to . Due to a long trip overseas and circumstance beyond her control , St . Elsewhere didn 't open the package until very recently and SHE POSTED ABOUT IT TODAY . I am truly honored that I got to participate in something that means so much to her . I honestly feel my roll in this was small . Without the love , support , and generosity of the ALI community , this quilt could not have happened . Thank you everyone for helping me do this . I 'd like to send out one final tribute to both St . Elsewhere 's baby and everyone who helped with this . Here is the slide show I created to go along with the quilt . Two small notes . . . 1 ) because of the music that goes along with this , a song by Michael Jackson , the viewing of this video is blocked in many countries . If you can 't view it , use the email link in the right sidebar and I 'll see about getting you a copy or link that will allow you to view it . 2 ) the third slide showing fabric has the name Helene K on it . She is the one who shipped the fabric , not the blogger who contributed it . I can 't find the email with the correct name . Please let me know if it 's from you . Welcome back to the coolest summer camp around , Calliope 's Blogging Summer Camp . Today , Head Counselor Calliope posed the following question for Day 20 - What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you ? Did you repay the kindness ? Did you blog about it ? This is a really hard question for me to answer because I have had some really phenomenal things done for me during my life . When we were in the depths of infertility hell , the fabulous ladies of the Cross Stitch Crazy board made me a quilt in memory of all my lost little ones . I had two wonderful , lovely friends who dropped their lives , packed up their kids , and came to take care of me during that same time frame . I have had other people do wonderful , helpful things that I simply can 't discuss here . When I haven 't been able to repay the person directly for the amazing kindnesses they 've done me , I have always made sure I paid it forward . Tell us about the best job you ever had , and the worst . Do you ever quote or reference blogs while at work ? Other than being a mom , the very best job I 've ever had was when I volunteered as a paramedic . I think at some level , I 'm an adrenaline junkie and , oh man , did being a paramedic give me that fix . I got to see the weird of the weird and I got to help people who really needed it . I have stories to last a lifetime and , if the hours were more family friendly , I 'd do it again in a heartbeat . The worst job I had was working as a weekend residential counselor at a group home . Here in NC , the type of group home I worked at was known as a Willie M home and was for emotionally disturbed children with violent tendencies . I know the kids were emotionally disturbed . I could have dealt with it better if I had a decent boss but our boss was a raving bitch who never supported her staff and was more than willing to throw us under the bus if she thought it would advance her position . She didn 't back me up when I had a financial claim because of the damage the kids did to my car . It was truly a job from hell . How do you typically dress to run errands ? Do you think bloggers dress better or worse than " regular people " ? I dress very casually most days . . . some might even say a bit sloppily at times . I adore beautiful clothes and would LOVE to be able to afford nicer clothes but our budget is limited and most of it goes to the kids . Such is life . I think bloggers have the same variations of stylish vs casual or sloppy dressers that the rest of society has . It was kind of funny how much attention my dye job attracted . Kim , my stylist , said she had done streaks of color but had never done a full head of such an unusual color . The other stylists kept stopping by to see how it went as Kim progressed with the dye job . My original plan was for almost all of the hair to be purple with a few streaks of turquoise . It was all going swimmingly . My turquoise streaks were in , my hair was over halfway done , Kim and I were chatting , and she turned to get more dye on the brush . She commented that it looked like we would have just enough purple to do the job . As she turned back , I heard a rather loud crash followed by a loud " Shit " from Kim . Generally when your stylist says SHIT , it isn 't a good thing . As she turned back , something knocked the remaining purple onto the floor and we lost about 2 / 3 of what was in the bowl to splatter . Poor Kim was so upset but I laughed and said " Just do the underneath back with the turquoise . It 's not like I 'm going for normal and we have enough left . " Well , it turned out that the spillage was a serendipitous mistake . In the back , the purple merges into the turquoise and the turquoise fades towards the ends . It totally looks like it was done on purpose and I told Kim she should claim it was planned . The lady having her hair done next to me commented that she wished she was brave enough to do something like that because it looked really cool . So , this year I 'm sporting a peacock look just in time for BlogHer . Hopefully , I can find some clothes to match . Hey y ' all . It 's me , the slacker camper here . Still trying to catch up with my Blogging Summer Camp schedule . . . but , I 'm beginning to think it 's hopeless . . well , maybe not hopeless but it 's taking a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would . Camp Counselor Calliope posed this question for Day 19 . . . How do you ( and your partner if applicable ) feel about PDA ? Does your husband / wife / partner know that you blog and , if so , are they involved ? I 'm not a big fan of PDAs . Hugs , little pecks , walking arm in arm , all those things are ok but I find it extremely distasteful when people go at it in public . . . totally without class . My husband does know I blog and reads off and on . In fact , I got him blogging ( sporadically ) at The Warped Musings of My Inner Self . How are you different from your parents ? How are you the same ? Well , except for my curly hair , I look very much like my mother . I am a little shorter and probably ( sadly ) a bit heavier than my mother . I got my skin coloring and lack of height from my dad 's family . My sense of humor is a lot like my mom 's and sometimes it drives my dad off the deep end ( he doesn 't appreciate our risque humor ) . Politically , I seem to fall in between them . My mom still thinks she 's a raging liberal democrat but , when you can get her to talk issues and not parties , she isn 't quite as liberal as she thinks she is . My dad is a dyed in the wool Republican . The joke in our family is that the only time he voted for a Democrat for president was when JFK ran and he only got my dad 's vote because he was Catholic . I definitely consider myself a Libertarian which means I 'm stuck being registered as an Independent . What is the most important lesson you learned from your own mother ( or other primary caretaker ) ? I have learned more than I could ever begin to explain in one post . I learned compassion and I learned how to help others in any way possible . I learned that a woman can be the strong one when it 's needed . I learned from my parents that " For Better or For Worse " means exactly that and you don 't cut and run when you run into trouble . I learned that giving of my time is just as important if not more important than giving of my money . I was truly blessed to have the parents and family that I have . What do you imagine the name of your Grandmother 's blog would be and what would she write about ? I think my maternal Grandma 's blog would be called The Military Wife and she would talk about the experiences she had being married to a career military man and volunteering with the Red Cross during war time . I think my paternal Grandma 's blog would be called The Butcher , The Baker , and the Newspaper Taker . During their life together , she and my Grandpa had a small butcher shop , she baked for her family , and they delivered newspapers to the entire community . I think she would write a little bit about everything . If you had to teach something , what would you teach ? ( If you DO teach , when did you discover your love for teaching / the subject ? ) I think if I ever went into teaching , I would love to teach a hands on art class and maybe venture into sewing , quilting , crocheting , and cross stitch . It would be so much fun . Do you think blogs can play a role in education ? I definitely think blogs can play a role in education as long as kids are taught to question and research everything they read . Blogs can also be a great place to practice writing skills . Soooooo , to wrap it up , PDAs - thumbs up or thumbs down ? Similarities and differences from your parents ? Lessons learned and Grandmother 's blog names ? And , finally , tell me about teaching ? Pick something and spill it ! I have been a bad , bad summer camper . My attendance has been haphazard and I 'm going to try and do a little catch up today . I hope head counselor Calliope will forgive me . Our question today is How do you feel about astrology ? What 's your sign , baby , and do you think it matches your personality ? I don 't take astrology seriously but I do have fun with it . I 'm a Sagittarius and , baby , I 'll claim all the good qualities of a Sag . . . " Sagittarians have a positive outlook on life , are full of enterprise , energy , versatility , adventurousness and eagerness to extend experience beyond the physically familiar . They enjoy traveling and exploration , the more so because their minds are constantly open to new dimensions of thought . They are basically ambitious and optimistic , and continue to be so even when their hopes are dashed . Their strongly idealistic natures can also suffer many disappointments without being affected . They are honorable , honest , trustworthy , truthful , generous and sincere , with a passion for justice . They are usually on the side of the underdog in society they will fight for any cause they believe to be just , and are prepared to be rebellious . They balance loyalty with independence . " and I 'll just avoid the bad vibes given off by the negative qualities . Definitely don 't want to harsh my mellow . What is your favorite thing about the weekend ? Do you take a break from blogs or is this when you catch up ? I love getting to sleep in . I love that , on weekends , we usually don 't have a set schedule and we just get to go with the flow . Sadly , with my husband 's work schedule , the weekend is not a guarantee of us having more time together . As for blogging on weekends , I don 't necessarily take a break then but I guess that I 'm a bit more likely to take a break on the weekend . What was your college experience like ? Were you involved in any clubs , groups , etc ? If you did not go to college what was your experience like after high school ? College was a really incredible experience for me . I think I finally came into my own during college and really gained a lot of self - confidence . Since I was willing to talk about anything and everything , I somehow ended up giving sexual advice to the people on my floor . I ended up gaining a reputation as the Dr . Ruth of my freshmen dorm . I also helped re - establish the Duke Democrats ( I 'm an avowed Libertarian now ) with a dear friend . . . who I get to see in San Diego when I ' 'm there for BlogHer ( Hi Mike ! ) . I also hung out with my friend Mike and his fraternity brothers . I got to go to most of their semi - formals which was incredible . I was vice - president of the Duke Equestrian team and spent one year as the treasurer for my dorm . I also was a member of the Lambda Nu chapter of Alpha Phi Omega - a co - ed service fraternity . And , speaking of dorms , I lived in the coolest dorm on campus . I guess the " popular " groups might have considered us a group of weirdos but we always had fun . We hosted a yearly " Come As You Aren 't " party . We were a bunch of sci - fi geeks and Duke basketball fanatics . We hosted High Tea & Croquet on The Lawn . It was a fucking AWESOME place to live . And , OMG , DUKE BASKETBALL . . . getting to go to games in Cameron Indoor Stadium , camping out in Krzyzewskiville , face painting , and screaming ourselves hoarse . Can you tell I loved my college years ? So , thoughts on astrology , tell me about your weekends , and what was college like for you ? Spill it y ' all . Inquiring minds want to know . Over the past few weeks , I 've noticed a lot of beautiful women being angsty . They 're worrying about what to wear and will what they wear be good enough and " OMG , what if I get there and don 't fit in with anyone " and what if I don 't get an invite to the party . What it all boils down to is they are wondering " What if I 'm not good enough ? " I think watching all these fabulous women stress over an event ( BlogHer ' 11 ) that 's suppose to be fun is what has made me want to participate Ciao Mom 's Things I Like About Me even though I 'm sneaking in just under the wire . So , while you are reading my list of things I like about me , I 'm going to challenge each and everyone of you to think of at least 2 things you can truly and genuinely say you like about yourself . Women tend to be far to harsh on themselves . It 's time to stop that and time to start celebrating the fabulousness of us . 1 ) I like my fabulously curly hair . There was a time in my life that I didn 't like it . In fact , I could safely say I hated it when I was younger . I desperately wanted hair like everyone else . Now , I love that I have a head full of ringlet curls that never ever go away . They curl , they twine , they bounce , and I love them no matter what color they happen to be . 2 ) I like that I 'm secure enough in myself to have fun with my hair . I no longer limit myself to normal colors . Manic Panic is my friend . 4 ) I love that I look and sound like my mother . Until a few years back , I wasn 't aware how alike we look . Now , I can 't see how I missed it . I think I am very lucky because at 66 , she can pass for someone much younger . 11 ) I love my artistic nature . I 've never met a craft I don 't like or one I can 't at least become competent at . There are quite a few crafty things I excel at and a host of things I 'm at least passably good at . It 's amazing how hard it is to be complimentary to yourself . I found myself questioning and second guessing my words . Will I sound like I 'm bragging ? Will I sound obnoxious about it ? But , damn does it make you feel good when you finally put those words on the screen . . . These are the things I like and love about myself . Take a moment and spread the love . . . share the warm fuzzies . Tell me my dear friends , what do you like about yourself ? I challenge each of you who read this post to chime in in the comment section with something you genuinely like or love about yourself . If you had talked to me 10 + years ago , I never ever would have imagined the world of social media as it is . I never would have imagined being as immersed in it the way I am . I blog . I tweet . I 'm on Facebook . I probably spend far more time online than I should really admit . I have to admit I 'm more than a bit addicted to it all . I get antsy if I don 't have access to blogging and I feel the compulsive need to read everything and catch up if I separated from my precious online connection . Hell , 10 years ago I wouldn 't have called myself a writer and now I find myself so addicted to writing that I can 't imagine going more than a couple of days without writing . Honestly , since I don 't differentiate between friends I 've made online and friends I 've met in my everyday life , I would have to to say that a majority of my friends are involved in social media . Now , if you talk about the people I physically interact with on a daily basis , I would guess it 's a much smaller percentage . But , I feel that social media has overall helped my friendships . I have friends who don 't blog who read my blog regularly and it has allowed them to get to know me a lot better . And , my involvement with social media and all forms of online interaction has brought a bunch of people to my life , people I probably wouldn 't have met otherwise , and these are people whose friendship I treasure . I 've also reconnected with friends from my past , people I lost touch with when we moved on to college or moved on due to our significant others . Some of these people from my past will probably pass in and out again but I 've become closer to a large number of them and feel we 'll stay good friends . If you 're reading this , you are already involved at least a little with social media . My only question is just how involved are you ? Do you tweet , blog , or facebook ? Do you do all three ? Welcome , welcome , pull your chair up to the barbeque and let me tell you about the best damned opportunity in our little corner of the blogosphere . Before we start , grab a cold beer from the cooler or maybe a mojito from the pitcher on the table . It 's too hot to be without refreshments . Now , y ' all have to agree that the best parties have door prizes , right ? Well , this fabulous party has some truly amazing door prizes for y ' all to win . See , this little block party here is sponsored by 6 amazing bloggers and one of the coolest companies I 've heard about , AboutOne . Let me tell you a little about AboutOne . When you have an account with AboutOne , it 's like you have a cross between the most amazingly stupendous file cabinet you could ever have and the sharpest , most savvy personal assistant anyone could ever want . AboutOne allows you to keep everything important in one location . Let me repeat that , IT ALLOWS YOU TO KEEP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT IN ONE LOCATION . Seriously guys , for those of you still dealing with infertility hell , you can scan all your medical records in and have them available any time , anywhere . You could use the calender to track all your doctor 's appointments and even your medicine schedule . And , for those of you with children , the advantages of AboutOne just multiply . You can track anything you want , growth , medical records , shot records , scan in artwork , upload videos , and more . The thing I am most excited about is being able to track everything about my oldest son 's high school years . Marty is starting high school in the fall and AboutOne will let me track his grades , his extra - curricular activities , any volunteer activities , and test scores . I can also scan in copies of any awards he receives and keep track of the starting and ending dates for all these activities . I truly wish something like this had existed 14 years ago when Marty was born because I suck at writing down all the milestones in a book but I totally ROCK at keeping things updated online . Just imagine what a boon an AboutOne account can be to all of you . What 's more my dear friends , AboutOne is also PERFECT for childfree couples or couples whose kids have grown up and moved out . You can keep copies of all receipts and tax info in your AboutOne account and track job opportunities or recognition in addition to all the other features mentioned . I am truly amazed at the platform they have developed over at AboutOne and I can 't wait to use it as they continue to expand what it does . The giveaway is open to US residents only and you must provide a valid e - mail address . The giveaway starts right now and runs through July 31st . Each winner will have 72 hours to respond . If you win the cookies , don 't worry about sending me an address . I 'll eat them for you . It happened again . Remember my post yesterday . . . laughing when you know you shouldn 't . . . it happened again today . We have a huge number of kid 's books and one of our favorites is the Sandra Boynton book Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur ! As you can see , the book truly is well loved . The corners are peeling . The spine is worn on the edges . But , it 's been through three boys and we read it a lot . This morning , Joey and Gabe were in the living room . As I came down the hall I heard them laughing and Gabe was saying " Don 't tell mom . Please don 't tell mom . " Well , y ' all know there is no better way to get a parent 's attention than to say don 't tell them . So , I asked . Joey cracked up and said " You know that book Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur ! Well , Gabe was reading that page Dinosaurs singing a dinosaur song . . . but instead , he said said ' Vagina - saurs singing a vagina - saur song . ' " I knew I shouldn 't laugh but I did . I laughed long and hard . . . and , Gabe now has his " song " on an unending loop . There are times you can see the train wreck coming and , you just can 't help yourself , you have to give in . . . you have to laugh your ass off or give in and say something . . . even if you are going to pay later . Sadly , that internal censor between my brain and my mouth loses it 's fight for self preservation far too often . My long time readers have heard about my epic fail of my internal censor that led to the naming of Damn Duck . Go ahead , go read the story and get a good laugh at my expanse . I 'll wait for you to get back . Ok , are y ' all back ? Good . Now , on to another story about the failure of my internal censor or maybe I prefer to think of it as the victory of my sense of humor over stick in the mud adulthood . Let 's hop on the wayback machine and take a trip to the spring of ' 03 . It was early morning ( but not too early ) in the spring of ' 03 . I had Marty , his friend Will , Will 's sister , and little ( at the time ) Joey in the van . We had just picked up Will and his sitter and were headed to school . All I could hear from the back seat was whispering , giggling , and something that sounded vaguely like Yankee Doodle . In an effort to be a good mommy , I asked the kids what they were talking about and they said " We 're not talking . We 're singing . " Well , of course I had to ask what they were singing . . . I should have known better . This is what they were singing . . . When was your first time ? My first time was during the fall semester of my freshman year in college . I had just started at Duke on an Army ROTC scholarship . A few of the guys in my platoon just happened to be members of the DKE fraternity and they invited all of us to their first kegger of the year . That 's where it happened . That was my first time . No , not THAT first time . It was my first time having too much to drink . Honestly , there wasn 't much special about the party except for some awesome swing dancing with my ROTC buddy . There was lots and lots of beer and a few quarters games going on . I found out I had an aptitude for quarters as long as I was aloud to launch them off my nose . Sadly . although I had an aptitude for quarters , I had no tolerance for beer . Boy , oh boy did I pay for it the next day . © 1996 Jim Wallace / Duke The next day , every single ROTC member had to be at the Duke Chapel at 2pm in FULL dress uniform ( can we say tight collars much ) for the Veteran 's Day service . I made it there on time . . . barely And , I managed to stay upright . . . barely . But , Kristin was NOT a happy camper . Trying to appear compose and polished when the room is spinning and you feel like your head is going to fall off is NOT a good thing . Tight collars combined with the gag reflex a hangover induces is also NOT a good thing . a little salt 1 ) Preheat oven to 350 degrees 2 ) Cut veggies into large chunks . I quartered the squash and zucchini lengthwise . Then , I cut them into chunks about 1 inch thick . Although I followed the trial a little bit , I didn 't follow or watch it obsessively . I 'm sure there are things I missed . However , I am comfortable saying that I believe what Casey Anthony did was unforgivable and that karma will bite her in the ass someday . Either Casey killed her little girl and covered it up or her little girl died a tragic , accidental death and she lied about it and went on partying and living life . In my book , both acts are equally incomprehensible . I simply can not wrap my mind around an outlook that would make either of those acts ok . Having said that , I MUST also say that I believe the jury did the right thing given the evidence they were presented with . My gut tells me that Casey Anthony is guilty as hell but , if I had sat on that jury , I believe I would have had to vote not guilty also . Our standard of law demands that , in the face of reasonable doubt , you must vote not guilty . The prosecution in the Casey Anthony trial could NOT present a cause of death . They could NOT present a murder weapon . All they could present was a lot of circumstantial evidence and one lying bitch . The smell of death and a few hairs in the trunk of Casey 's car do not prove she killed Caylee . It does prove the body was in the car but it does NOT prove murder . The jurors who have spoken have all said it made them sick to their stomach to vote not guilty but they were following the letter of the law . While I believe Casey Anthony deserves to rot in hell , I Must give kudos to those jurors for having the moral fortitude to follow the letter of the law . I hit the jackpot yesterday . I headed over to Smart Bitches , Trashy Books last night to check out the name of the latest book in their Summer Reading club . I 'm not sure if I should consider them a good influence or a bad one because , while I didn 't end up buying that , I followed a few links and ended up with a TON of other romance books for very little money . I had a couple of requests to spread the news about how and where I got them so here goes . I am sadly still e - Reader deprived so I have the Kindle for the PC app on both my desktop and laptop . Any serious book lover needs this . The access to free books is FABULOUS . I also have Adobe Digital Edition on my laptop and desktop . This is also a free download and allows me to open ePub and secure digital formats . Books with a * following the price had a sales tax that kicked in . Don 't know if it is because of where I live or some other reason . The sales tax is reflected in the price I have listed . It 's all Kim 's fault . . . Kim and that damned Steve Wozniak . . . oh yeah , and the founders of Twitter because a tweet made me go there . I wouldn 't trade those 40 minutes for anything because I spent those 40 minutes laughing uproariously with my 14 yr old . It was priceless . By the way , if that third tee shirt doesn 't make sense , go read this post by The Bloggess . Seriously , go read it . It is one of the funniest things I have ever read . . . even on the 30 millionth reading . Marty said it isn 't morning until you get to 8 am . I was going to say it wasn 't morning until you wake up . . . but what if you don 't wake up until 12 pm or later ? That would be a serious time paradox . Welcome to Days 6 and 7 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . The thunderstorms are still hanging around my part of North Carolina and my head is still causing me to call it dirty names . Migraines suck and vicodin is my friend . For Day 6 , Calliope asked " When was the last time you tried something new ? What was it and what was the result ? Have you ever done something just so that you could blog about it ? " Hmmmm , the last time I tried something new . . . I don 't think I 've ever done something JUST so I could blog about it but I frequently think " Hmmm , that would be a hell of a lot of fun and it would make a good story . " Today , on Day 7 , Calliope asked " What 's your favorite thing to eat for breakfast , lunch and dinner ? Do you read food blogs or would you ever consider writing one ? " I can 't say I really have a favorite lunch . Wraps with lettuce , tomatoes , some kind of meat , maybe a little spicy mustard , and a little cheese are good . Some days I like cottage cheese and mandarin oranges does the trick . Dinner is also something that I don 't have a clear favorite food for . Time and , sadly , money influence dinner selections a lot . I love experimenting in the kitchen and I also love cooking some of the classics every now and then . As for food blogs , I have a few I read . One of my all time favorites is She 's Becoming DoughMessTic . She 's funny , seriously talented , and a really sweet person on top of it all . I don 't know that I have it in me to write a food blog all the time but it might be cool to contribute to a group food blog . Welcome to Day 5 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . I just squeaked in under the wire . . . another few minutes and it would have been Day 6 . Sorry about being so late but I got shanghaied into teaching at Vacation Bible School at the last minute . Between staying up late on the 4th and teaching at vbs today , I 've been dead to the world . Our assignment today is to talk about what we prefer to do on our birthday . Around le casa de Cruz , what I 'd prefer and what I usually get to do are two vastly different things . See , November and December are major family celebration months here . In a 21 day period , we have 3 birthdays , our anniversary , and Thanksgiving . In my fantasy world , I 'd get to sleep in as late as I wanted and there would be no squabbling to wake me up . I 'd wake up to a clean house ( I 'd say spotless but that ain 't gonna happen even in my fantasies ) and a lovely champagne brunch in bed . I would be free to read or create or shop all day long and my husband and I would get to wrap it up with a romantic dinner for two . Presents are nice but that isn 't the big deal for me . In reality , I usually get a lovely little family celebration sometimes in tandem with a kid party and occasionally alone . My mom or my family always makes sure I have a cake and I usually get a few nice gifts . On the really lucky years , my mom and dad entertain the kids so Vic and I can get a night out together . Honestly , I love my birthdays just the way they are and my fantasy birthday would be so foreign that it would probably seem a little cold to me . The chaos and noise and love of my family is the perfect birthday celebration for me . Welcome to Day 4 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . Our assignment today is to talk about what has most surprised us about being an adult ? What have we learned about ourselves through blogging ? When you are little , you have a very skewed view of what it 's like to be an adult . I know I use to think being an adult meant you could do whatever you wanted , whenever you wanted . . . and , as we 've all found out , that is so far from the truth . So , I guess you could say that was the first surprise I had about being an adult . . . that all this extra responsibility came along with all the freedom . I was also surprised to find out how much like my mom I turned out to be . I will never forget the day I turned to a kid and I could hear my mother 's words coming out of my mouth . It stunned me . Not that what I was saying was anything horrible . . . but , I just never thought I 'd pick up the same phrases and responses the way I did . I was also very surprised by what I ended up doing with my life . When I was younger , I was convinced I would have some kind of high powered career and just knew I would never , ever want to be a stay at home mom . Here I am , 41 years old , and not only am I not in a high powered career but I 'm a stay at home mom and I love my life . I love being able to volunteer in schools . I love my kids knowing I will always be available for them . I can 't imagine living my life any other way . Another thing I 've been surprised by is something I learned about myself through blogging . When I was younger , I never thought of myself as a writer . Now , not only do I acknowledge that I am a writer but I also have come to realize I am pretty good at it . Welcome to Day 3 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . Today , we 're talking about our guilty pleasures . I 'm not really sure if I can claim to have guilty pleasures because I don 't feel bad or guilty about liking any of these things . However , there are things I absolutely love . . . I love to read and can lose myself in books . I read everything from romances to biographies to history . If it 's good , I read it . I truly love to sleep in . The feeling you get when you gently wake up without kids yelling or alarms blaring is amazing . It 's too bad it happens so infrequently . I LOVE shoes . I love flats and sandals and boots and sky high heels . If space and money weren 't an issue , I would gladly have a walk in closet filled with with nothing but shoes . Calliope 's Day 2 of blogging summer camp is the perfect topic for me . With my oldest son starting high school in the fall , it 's had me thinking a lot about what I was like back in high school . I was much more reserved and kind of quiet in new situations . With groups I felt comfortable in , my louder , wilder side came out but most of the time I came across as the good girl . I was involved in a ton of things . I was in Girl Scouts through high school . I earned the highest award in Girl Scouts , the gold award , part of the way through high school and was an assistant leader to a Brownie troop during my junior and senior years . In addition to Girl Scouts , I was involved in a bunch of school activities . I was part of the drama club . Drama club was kind of a big step for me because I wasn 't very comfortable getting up in front of people . I was far to concerned about what people would think of me to ever be a good actor at that age . I know I wasn 't very good but I had a great time with it and one of our members is still acting today . I was also on the Flag Girl squad for two years which was a lot of fun . I rounded out my activities with being on the yearbook staff for two years and was the assistant editor my senior year . The really funny thing is that despite being able to write a kick ass paper for English class and despite being on the yearbook staff , I never thought of myself as being a writer . In fact , until recently , I never thought of myself as being a writer . Photo Friday 's theme this week is vibrance . The first thing I thought of when I heard the theme were the vibrant colors of summer flowers . . . but , I was a slacker this week and all of a sudden it was Friday and I didn 't have any new flower pictures . So , I looked through the pictures I 've taken recently and this picture said vibrance . . . the beautiful colors . . . the striking design . . . I love it . I have a high school student now . Marty has officially registered for high school and I 'm wondering how in the hell more than 14 yrs have passed since I brought that baby home . Did I tell you I have a cat on allergy medicine ? Twice a day I have to give Joey 's kitty , Butterball , an allergy pill . It 's not much fun but it works . He 's no longer sneezing and slinging snot everywhere . The funny thing is the cat takes the exact same allergy pill as I do . Yes , I share meds with the cat . The medicine of choice for nasal allergies in cats is the same medicine I 've taken for my allergies since I was 6 yrs old . I 'm watching Joey at Tae Kwon Do sparring class right now . Two of the adults have already injured themselves . I 'm glad kids are more elastic and bounceable . Welcome to 31 Days of Blog Juice courtesy of Calliope at Creating Motherhood . She says " Think of this as summer camp in the blogosphere . We 've all been dropped off at a month - long camp with fantastic cabins and great wifi . Each night we gather at a looooooooong table over a yummy meal . And as the fireflies dance outside someone puts on some sweet sounding Bessie Smith and we talk about something . We get to know each other better . " Like all summer camps , this one has a schedule . Today 's assignment is to show a photo , sketch , or dramatic rendering of the space where you normally blog . Here 's mine in all it 's messy glory . . . This is also the chair I sit in when I 'm crocheting , cross stitching , knitting , or repairing things . So , I have yarn and patterns and clothes waiting to be fixed and a stuffed animal with a hole all waiting for me to get to it . Even when the rest of the room gets cleaned , my chair and my corner rarely get neater than this .
|
" Security is mostly a superstition . It does not exist in nature , nor do the children of men as a whole experience it . Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure . Life is either a daring adventure , or nothing . " - Helen Keller Sunday , July 31 , 2011 Kristin is going to BlogHer ( lucky duck ! ) and asked if I would do a guest post . After squeeing and feeling pretty good I worried about what to write . After I looked through what was in draft on my site and found NOTHING that I wanted to share . Finally , I decided that I wanted to share this post that I wrote way back in 2008 about a bizarre holiday called Young Readers Day . Confession , when I started blogging I didn 't know WHAT to write about so I found a few websites and a calendar that shared weird and crazy holidays and had at it . Now I don 't write about these crazy holidays so much . I miss it . Here is one of my favorites . Page 15 : Asks if I 'm tired when I see all of the beds . Picks out the one she likes best and demands I do the same . Pouts when I choose the bed with heart shaped frame and informs me we will share . His favorites include dogs solving mysteries , mice on motorcycles and mice running newspapers ( Jack Russell Mysteries , Beverly Cleary 's Ralph S Mouse series and Geronimo Stilton ) . His vocab is now peppered with his sister TERRORIZING him , and how CURIOUS things he doesn 't understand are . He likes to INTERROGATE his sister if he thinks she is in his things ( she usually isn 't ) and wants to CRACK the case when he feels wronged . Madison : OK . ( Spies large print copy of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald ) I am going to read this . The print is large enough that I don 't need my glasses . Me ( trying to remember the plot . Wasn 't there something about affairs , murders and various other illegal activities ? ) : Let 's find another book . What about this mermaid book ? Gloria , age 13Gloria has just discovered interlibrary loan at her local library ( this despite the fact that her aunt is a library type - go figure ! ) and has discovered that genre called Urban Fiction . She was reading through all of the Drama High and Imani Tru series ( both could be considered Urban Lite for teens ) but has since discovered True to the Game by Terri Woods . She and her friends are devouring these books ! I am of the mindset of at least she is reading for pleasure and SHE IS READING ! After speaking with some people who know way more about everything , we come to the conclusion that this is a fad and will change . After Gloria met with some other teens , who also write as she does , she is venturing into Science Fiction , and those coming of age stories her mom describes as plot that has a sad teen growing up too fast or too slow . . . . more specifically ( until I come up with a better name ) Coconut Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookies . I was playing in the kitchen last weekend and honestly meant to post this on Tuesday but life got in the way . I think this recipe may need a little tweaking but it 's pretty damned delicious as it is . Preheat oven to 350 degrees . Cream together butter , sugars , eggs , and vanilla . Set aside . In separate bowl , mix soda , salt , pudding mix , and flour . Slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture , mixing thoroughly as you go . Fold in coconut and chocolate chips . Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets . Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly golden brown . Can yield up to 5 dozen cookies ( it all depends on how much dough you eat while making them ) . These are really a delicious variation of our old favorite , the chocolate chip cookie . They really deserve a better name than they have . Anyone have a suggestion for me ? Came down to my parents on Monday so Gabe could join in swimming lessons and Joey could help out with them . Drove Marty home from my parents ' house Tuesday night ( got home at 11 : 30pm ) so I could get him to church to leave for his 3 day volunteer trip at 8 : 15 this morning . The high school and middle school youth groups are doing volunteer work at a Lutheran Services for the Aging facility . Joey has been helping my mom teach swimming this week . He 's also helped mow the lawn and clean up a rental house they own . He is definitely earning the moolah my mom promised him . Need to get home and sew . Have to finish a few things before I leave for BlogHer in a week . . . eeek , I 'm so unprepared . I 'd like to introduce you to Super Gabe , finder of small kittens and rescuer of the same . We are down at my parents house this week and early today , before lunch , Gabe , my mom , and I took her dogs out for a walk in the woods . When we got back to the house , it was raining . We heard a very loud meow but it sounded like the meow of a very small kitten . My mom and I took the dogs in and asked Gabe if he could find the * kitty . Gabe came in and said " I found it . It 's stuck on a stick . There 's a string coming from it and it 's tangled around the stick . " I had some horrible vision of what could be wrong and , when my mom asked me to go check , I told her to come with me because it didn 't sound good . Well , Gabe gave a very good description of what was going on . We found a very young kitten with its umbilical cord and placenta still attached . The umbilical cord was wrapped around the stick about 6 times . There was no way that poor little thing was going to get free by itself . While I untangled the little one , my mom got a towel . When we brought the little one in , I had to tie off the umbilical cord and cut it . My mom put together some " orphan formula " that we 've fed orphaned kittens in the past and , despite it 's extremely young age , the kitten enthusiastically sucked the formula out of the eye dropper . As the kitten dried off , you could start to see some brownish patches around the face . I think the baby is going to be a calico . Gabe checked around outside and didn 't find any trace of the mommy cat or any other kittens . We figure the mommy cat was a young one and , when she was moving the babies , this little one got tangled . In order to save / move the other baby ( ies ) , she left this kitty behind . . . or that 's our best guess . The question now became what do we do with the baby kitty . While we were trying to figure it out , we wrapped the baby in a heated towel ( boy do microwaves come in handy ) . It was obviously a little survivor and had a hell of a set of lungs on it . It was eating and trying to climb out of the towel onto me . We called my parents ' vet and they suggested we call the cat adoption center and see if they had any nursing mommy cats . It turned out that the adoption center had several nursing mommy cats and luckily one of them adopted the little fighter . I was very relieved because that meant I wouldn 't have to worry about it when I leave town for BlogHer . We live in the land of the free and home of the brave , the great Melting Pot , a country that espouses religious freedom and tolerance for your fellow man . . . or that 's what we 're suppose to do . Since 9 / 11 , I 've watched and I 've seen . I 've seen things that make me incredibly proud of who we are as a country and what we stand for . I 've also seen things that have made me want to weep because of the hypocrisy and narrow minded assholery they display . I knew it was time to say something ( past time really ) when I saw this piece over on Cecily 's blog and recalled a conversation I had with a relative who should know better . This relative informed my that Obama was really a closet Muslim and he lied to us abotu it because the Koran says it 's okay for Muslim 's to lie to non - Muslims in order to advance their cause . This relative further said that ALL Muslims who truly believe in the Koran believe in the violence perpetrated against our country because the Koran espouses those actions . If such a well - educated and supposedly open minded person can hold on to such warped , wrong headed ideas , then anyone can and that scares me . Please , please watch this and remember that you can 't judge a book by it 's cover or , in this case , you can 't judge a patriot by their name or their religion . I recently discovered eBeanstalk . com when Shelly from Momfiles . com told me about them . eBeanstalk . com is a truly fabulous online store with a large selection of entertaining and educational toys for kids . According to their website , they have toys and games for babies up through 12 yr olds but , in the 12 yr old category , I found things that even my teenager would enjoy . eBeanstalk . com has an incredibly wide range of products . They have super cute bead kits that I might just have to buy and play with . I saw some awesome shape sorters that would be a perfect 1 yr old gift . eBeanstalk . com even has a nice selection of art books . But , I think my all time favorite toy I ran across on the eBeanstalk website is the DNA by Science Whiz . This fabulous kit teaches your child all about DNA and even teaches them how to extract DNA from fruit . How cool is that ? I can definitely foresee some shopping sprees on eBeanstalk . com I found the eBeanstalk . com web site easy to navigate and it seemed that the toys and games were placed into age appropriate categories . My only complaint issue with the web site is there were a number of items that were listed twice in the same category . . . same item , same link , double listings . . . but , this relatively minor issue can be fixed easily . All in all , I think eBeanstalk . com is a pretty awesome place to shope for any of the children in your life . Hey y ' all , if you are any part of the Adoption , Loss , & Infertility community , or if you just wanna meet up with any of us , let 's plan to have lunch together . It could just be part of the actual BlogHer lunch . We could share a table or take our lunches out in the lobby . Please ( using this link ) email me ASAP and we can discuss which day to have it and exchange cell # s so we can text each other if we are running late . I 'll also continue the list Mel started here so you can see who is planning to be there . The other night Joey was reading to Gabe . He was reading Skippyjon Jones , Lost In Spice . There is a line in the book that says Skippyjon Jones is nuts about Mars . Well , thanks to the slang Gabe has learned from his older brothers , Gabe changed that line and said " Skippyjon Jones is balls about Mars . " I was watching the news and a report made me wonder where they get some of the bond numbers they give to people . I mean why issue someone a bond of $ 270 , 000 . Why not $ 250 , 000 or $ 300 , 000 ? Gabe struck again . He and Joey were talking the other night and Gabe asked Joey if a T . Rex was a real animal . Joey told him it was and T was short for Tyrannosaurus . Gabe looked at Joey and said " So , T . Rex stands for Tyrannosaurus Sex ? " Joey died laughing and Gabe had no clue what his brother thought was so funny . What names would you NEVER name a child or pet ? Shakespeare said " A rose by any other name would smell as sweet . " I know the Bard had a finger on human emotions and motivation but I beg to differ with him on this idea . Marty , Joey , and Gabriel are all perfectly wonderful names for my boys in my book . And , I love the names ( even the goofy ones ) that all our pets have . While there are many other names I considered when choosing names for my children , there was one name I told Vic we could never , ever use if we had a boy . I could NEVER name a boy Ralph . Why is the name Ralph taboo in my house ? I bet you 'll be surprised by the reason . It actually has nothing to do with the fact that ralph is slang for puking ( although that would have moved the name way down the list ) . No , the name Ralph was stricken from my list because of a book . I was in 6th grade when I read Judy Blume 's book Forever . Forever is the coming of age story of Katherine and includes her relationship with Michael , the boy she lost her virginity to . Michael has a name for his penis and that name just happens to be Ralph . Since then , I have never been able to hear that name without thinking of the book and the connotations therein . What name do you wish you had been named ? Honestly , I have never wished to have a different name . I love my first name and my middle name is the same as my aunt Kathy 's middle name . Do you like the name of your blog ? Way back in the beginning of 2009 , I gave my blog a makeover . It gained a new look and a new name but kept the same url . The more geeky of you might have noticed that my blog url is very different from the name . The url stems from the original name of my blog , The Fertile Infertile . When I first started my blog , we were in the hell of secondary infertility and repeat pregnancy loss . Even after we finally had Gabe , I left the blog name alone . Part of that was because I wasn 't blogging that often and part of it was I just didn 't have a better idea . By early 2009 , I had been back to actively blogging for about 6 months and I knew it was time for a change . You can read a little bit about what the name change meant here and here ( question 2 ) . There are moments in our life when we see something happening and we feel moved to do something , do anything . That happened earlier this year . Earlier this year , my dear friend St . Elsewhere was faced with something no one should have to face . She lost her beautiful baby daughter after only 2 days of life and a long battle to have her . I knew I couldn 't make it better . I knew I couldn 't remove the pain . But , I felt I needed had to do something to show her we , the whole ALI community , would never ever forget her daughter . I wanted it to be something tangible , something that could carry our love to her , something others could contribute to , something she could wrap around her when she needed a hug . In short , I wanted to make her a quilt . I put the call out and asked for people to contribute in any way they felt moved to . . . fabric , notes , prayers , or money to help with supply costs and shipping costs . Y ' all , I was literally OVERWHELMED with the response . There are truly too many people who contributed to list them here . My email in box was overflowing and , shortly , my mailbox was overflowing . Packages and letters came in from all over the world . I received so many beautiful pieces of fabric that I could only include small amounts from each one and still have the quilt be a normal size . This is the final product . . . For those of you who have read my blog or visited before , yes , this is the quilt I attributed to my friend Sheila . It was the only way I could share the progress without letting St . Elsewhere know what we were up to . Due to a long trip overseas and circumstance beyond her control , St . Elsewhere didn 't open the package until very recently and SHE POSTED ABOUT IT TODAY . I am truly honored that I got to participate in something that means so much to her . I honestly feel my roll in this was small . Without the love , support , and generosity of the ALI community , this quilt could not have happened . Thank you everyone for helping me do this . I 'd like to send out one final tribute to both St . Elsewhere 's baby and everyone who helped with this . Here is the slide show I created to go along with the quilt . Two small notes . . . 1 ) because of the music that goes along with this , a song by Michael Jackson , the viewing of this video is blocked in many countries . If you can 't view it , use the email link in the right sidebar and I 'll see about getting you a copy or link that will allow you to view it . 2 ) the third slide showing fabric has the name Helene K on it . She is the one who shipped the fabric , not the blogger who contributed it . I can 't find the email with the correct name . Please let me know if it 's from you . Welcome back to the coolest summer camp around , Calliope 's Blogging Summer Camp . Today , Head Counselor Calliope posed the following question for Day 20 - What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you ? Did you repay the kindness ? Did you blog about it ? This is a really hard question for me to answer because I have had some really phenomenal things done for me during my life . When we were in the depths of infertility hell , the fabulous ladies of the Cross Stitch Crazy board made me a quilt in memory of all my lost little ones . I had two wonderful , lovely friends who dropped their lives , packed up their kids , and came to take care of me during that same time frame . I have had other people do wonderful , helpful things that I simply can 't discuss here . When I haven 't been able to repay the person directly for the amazing kindnesses they 've done me , I have always made sure I paid it forward . Tell us about the best job you ever had , and the worst . Do you ever quote or reference blogs while at work ? Other than being a mom , the very best job I 've ever had was when I volunteered as a paramedic . I think at some level , I 'm an adrenaline junkie and , oh man , did being a paramedic give me that fix . I got to see the weird of the weird and I got to help people who really needed it . I have stories to last a lifetime and , if the hours were more family friendly , I 'd do it again in a heartbeat . The worst job I had was working as a weekend residential counselor at a group home . Here in NC , the type of group home I worked at was known as a Willie M home and was for emotionally disturbed children with violent tendencies . I know the kids were emotionally disturbed . I could have dealt with it better if I had a decent boss but our boss was a raving bitch who never supported her staff and was more than willing to throw us under the bus if she thought it would advance her position . She didn 't back me up when I had a financial claim because of the damage the kids did to my car . It was truly a job from hell . How do you typically dress to run errands ? Do you think bloggers dress better or worse than " regular people " ? I dress very casually most days . . . some might even say a bit sloppily at times . I adore beautiful clothes and would LOVE to be able to afford nicer clothes but our budget is limited and most of it goes to the kids . Such is life . I think bloggers have the same variations of stylish vs casual or sloppy dressers that the rest of society has . It was kind of funny how much attention my dye job attracted . Kim , my stylist , said she had done streaks of color but had never done a full head of such an unusual color . The other stylists kept stopping by to see how it went as Kim progressed with the dye job . My original plan was for almost all of the hair to be purple with a few streaks of turquoise . It was all going swimmingly . My turquoise streaks were in , my hair was over halfway done , Kim and I were chatting , and she turned to get more dye on the brush . She commented that it looked like we would have just enough purple to do the job . As she turned back , I heard a rather loud crash followed by a loud " Shit " from Kim . Generally when your stylist says SHIT , it isn 't a good thing . As she turned back , something knocked the remaining purple onto the floor and we lost about 2 / 3 of what was in the bowl to splatter . Poor Kim was so upset but I laughed and said " Just do the underneath back with the turquoise . It 's not like I 'm going for normal and we have enough left . " Well , it turned out that the spillage was a serendipitous mistake . In the back , the purple merges into the turquoise and the turquoise fades towards the ends . It totally looks like it was done on purpose and I told Kim she should claim it was planned . The lady having her hair done next to me commented that she wished she was brave enough to do something like that because it looked really cool . So , this year I 'm sporting a peacock look just in time for BlogHer . Hopefully , I can find some clothes to match . Hey y ' all . It 's me , the slacker camper here . Still trying to catch up with my Blogging Summer Camp schedule . . . but , I 'm beginning to think it 's hopeless . . well , maybe not hopeless but it 's taking a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would . Camp Counselor Calliope posed this question for Day 19 . . . How do you ( and your partner if applicable ) feel about PDA ? Does your husband / wife / partner know that you blog and , if so , are they involved ? I 'm not a big fan of PDAs . Hugs , little pecks , walking arm in arm , all those things are ok but I find it extremely distasteful when people go at it in public . . . totally without class . My husband does know I blog and reads off and on . In fact , I got him blogging ( sporadically ) at The Warped Musings of My Inner Self . How are you different from your parents ? How are you the same ? Well , except for my curly hair , I look very much like my mother . I am a little shorter and probably ( sadly ) a bit heavier than my mother . I got my skin coloring and lack of height from my dad 's family . My sense of humor is a lot like my mom 's and sometimes it drives my dad off the deep end ( he doesn 't appreciate our risque humor ) . Politically , I seem to fall in between them . My mom still thinks she 's a raging liberal democrat but , when you can get her to talk issues and not parties , she isn 't quite as liberal as she thinks she is . My dad is a dyed in the wool Republican . The joke in our family is that the only time he voted for a Democrat for president was when JFK ran and he only got my dad 's vote because he was Catholic . I definitely consider myself a Libertarian which means I 'm stuck being registered as an Independent . What is the most important lesson you learned from your own mother ( or other primary caretaker ) ? I have learned more than I could ever begin to explain in one post . I learned compassion and I learned how to help others in any way possible . I learned that a woman can be the strong one when it 's needed . I learned from my parents that " For Better or For Worse " means exactly that and you don 't cut and run when you run into trouble . I learned that giving of my time is just as important if not more important than giving of my money . I was truly blessed to have the parents and family that I have . What do you imagine the name of your Grandmother 's blog would be and what would she write about ? I think my maternal Grandma 's blog would be called The Military Wife and she would talk about the experiences she had being married to a career military man and volunteering with the Red Cross during war time . I think my paternal Grandma 's blog would be called The Butcher , The Baker , and the Newspaper Taker . During their life together , she and my Grandpa had a small butcher shop , she baked for her family , and they delivered newspapers to the entire community . I think she would write a little bit about everything . If you had to teach something , what would you teach ? ( If you DO teach , when did you discover your love for teaching / the subject ? ) I think if I ever went into teaching , I would love to teach a hands on art class and maybe venture into sewing , quilting , crocheting , and cross stitch . It would be so much fun . Do you think blogs can play a role in education ? I definitely think blogs can play a role in education as long as kids are taught to question and research everything they read . Blogs can also be a great place to practice writing skills . Soooooo , to wrap it up , PDAs - thumbs up or thumbs down ? Similarities and differences from your parents ? Lessons learned and Grandmother 's blog names ? And , finally , tell me about teaching ? Pick something and spill it ! I have been a bad , bad summer camper . My attendance has been haphazard and I 'm going to try and do a little catch up today . I hope head counselor Calliope will forgive me . Our question today is How do you feel about astrology ? What 's your sign , baby , and do you think it matches your personality ? I don 't take astrology seriously but I do have fun with it . I 'm a Sagittarius and , baby , I 'll claim all the good qualities of a Sag . . . " Sagittarians have a positive outlook on life , are full of enterprise , energy , versatility , adventurousness and eagerness to extend experience beyond the physically familiar . They enjoy traveling and exploration , the more so because their minds are constantly open to new dimensions of thought . They are basically ambitious and optimistic , and continue to be so even when their hopes are dashed . Their strongly idealistic natures can also suffer many disappointments without being affected . They are honorable , honest , trustworthy , truthful , generous and sincere , with a passion for justice . They are usually on the side of the underdog in society they will fight for any cause they believe to be just , and are prepared to be rebellious . They balance loyalty with independence . " and I 'll just avoid the bad vibes given off by the negative qualities . Definitely don 't want to harsh my mellow . What is your favorite thing about the weekend ? Do you take a break from blogs or is this when you catch up ? I love getting to sleep in . I love that , on weekends , we usually don 't have a set schedule and we just get to go with the flow . Sadly , with my husband 's work schedule , the weekend is not a guarantee of us having more time together . As for blogging on weekends , I don 't necessarily take a break then but I guess that I 'm a bit more likely to take a break on the weekend . What was your college experience like ? Were you involved in any clubs , groups , etc ? If you did not go to college what was your experience like after high school ? College was a really incredible experience for me . I think I finally came into my own during college and really gained a lot of self - confidence . Since I was willing to talk about anything and everything , I somehow ended up giving sexual advice to the people on my floor . I ended up gaining a reputation as the Dr . Ruth of my freshmen dorm . I also helped re - establish the Duke Democrats ( I 'm an avowed Libertarian now ) with a dear friend . . . who I get to see in San Diego when I ' 'm there for BlogHer ( Hi Mike ! ) . I also hung out with my friend Mike and his fraternity brothers . I got to go to most of their semi - formals which was incredible . I was vice - president of the Duke Equestrian team and spent one year as the treasurer for my dorm . I also was a member of the Lambda Nu chapter of Alpha Phi Omega - a co - ed service fraternity . And , speaking of dorms , I lived in the coolest dorm on campus . I guess the " popular " groups might have considered us a group of weirdos but we always had fun . We hosted a yearly " Come As You Aren 't " party . We were a bunch of sci - fi geeks and Duke basketball fanatics . We hosted High Tea & Croquet on The Lawn . It was a fucking AWESOME place to live . And , OMG , DUKE BASKETBALL . . . getting to go to games in Cameron Indoor Stadium , camping out in Krzyzewskiville , face painting , and screaming ourselves hoarse . Can you tell I loved my college years ? So , thoughts on astrology , tell me about your weekends , and what was college like for you ? Spill it y ' all . Inquiring minds want to know . Over the past few weeks , I 've noticed a lot of beautiful women being angsty . They 're worrying about what to wear and will what they wear be good enough and " OMG , what if I get there and don 't fit in with anyone " and what if I don 't get an invite to the party . What it all boils down to is they are wondering " What if I 'm not good enough ? " I think watching all these fabulous women stress over an event ( BlogHer ' 11 ) that 's suppose to be fun is what has made me want to participate Ciao Mom 's Things I Like About Me even though I 'm sneaking in just under the wire . So , while you are reading my list of things I like about me , I 'm going to challenge each and everyone of you to think of at least 2 things you can truly and genuinely say you like about yourself . Women tend to be far to harsh on themselves . It 's time to stop that and time to start celebrating the fabulousness of us . 1 ) I like my fabulously curly hair . There was a time in my life that I didn 't like it . In fact , I could safely say I hated it when I was younger . I desperately wanted hair like everyone else . Now , I love that I have a head full of ringlet curls that never ever go away . They curl , they twine , they bounce , and I love them no matter what color they happen to be . 2 ) I like that I 'm secure enough in myself to have fun with my hair . I no longer limit myself to normal colors . Manic Panic is my friend . 4 ) I love that I look and sound like my mother . Until a few years back , I wasn 't aware how alike we look . Now , I can 't see how I missed it . I think I am very lucky because at 66 , she can pass for someone much younger . 11 ) I love my artistic nature . I 've never met a craft I don 't like or one I can 't at least become competent at . There are quite a few crafty things I excel at and a host of things I 'm at least passably good at . It 's amazing how hard it is to be complimentary to yourself . I found myself questioning and second guessing my words . Will I sound like I 'm bragging ? Will I sound obnoxious about it ? But , damn does it make you feel good when you finally put those words on the screen . . . These are the things I like and love about myself . Take a moment and spread the love . . . share the warm fuzzies . Tell me my dear friends , what do you like about yourself ? I challenge each of you who read this post to chime in in the comment section with something you genuinely like or love about yourself . If you had talked to me 10 + years ago , I never ever would have imagined the world of social media as it is . I never would have imagined being as immersed in it the way I am . I blog . I tweet . I 'm on Facebook . I probably spend far more time online than I should really admit . I have to admit I 'm more than a bit addicted to it all . I get antsy if I don 't have access to blogging and I feel the compulsive need to read everything and catch up if I separated from my precious online connection . Hell , 10 years ago I wouldn 't have called myself a writer and now I find myself so addicted to writing that I can 't imagine going more than a couple of days without writing . Honestly , since I don 't differentiate between friends I 've made online and friends I 've met in my everyday life , I would have to to say that a majority of my friends are involved in social media . Now , if you talk about the people I physically interact with on a daily basis , I would guess it 's a much smaller percentage . But , I feel that social media has overall helped my friendships . I have friends who don 't blog who read my blog regularly and it has allowed them to get to know me a lot better . And , my involvement with social media and all forms of online interaction has brought a bunch of people to my life , people I probably wouldn 't have met otherwise , and these are people whose friendship I treasure . I 've also reconnected with friends from my past , people I lost touch with when we moved on to college or moved on due to our significant others . Some of these people from my past will probably pass in and out again but I 've become closer to a large number of them and feel we 'll stay good friends . If you 're reading this , you are already involved at least a little with social media . My only question is just how involved are you ? Do you tweet , blog , or facebook ? Do you do all three ? Welcome , welcome , pull your chair up to the barbeque and let me tell you about the best damned opportunity in our little corner of the blogosphere . Before we start , grab a cold beer from the cooler or maybe a mojito from the pitcher on the table . It 's too hot to be without refreshments . Now , y ' all have to agree that the best parties have door prizes , right ? Well , this fabulous party has some truly amazing door prizes for y ' all to win . See , this little block party here is sponsored by 6 amazing bloggers and one of the coolest companies I 've heard about , AboutOne . Let me tell you a little about AboutOne . When you have an account with AboutOne , it 's like you have a cross between the most amazingly stupendous file cabinet you could ever have and the sharpest , most savvy personal assistant anyone could ever want . AboutOne allows you to keep everything important in one location . Let me repeat that , IT ALLOWS YOU TO KEEP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT IN ONE LOCATION . Seriously guys , for those of you still dealing with infertility hell , you can scan all your medical records in and have them available any time , anywhere . You could use the calender to track all your doctor 's appointments and even your medicine schedule . And , for those of you with children , the advantages of AboutOne just multiply . You can track anything you want , growth , medical records , shot records , scan in artwork , upload videos , and more . The thing I am most excited about is being able to track everything about my oldest son 's high school years . Marty is starting high school in the fall and AboutOne will let me track his grades , his extra - curricular activities , any volunteer activities , and test scores . I can also scan in copies of any awards he receives and keep track of the starting and ending dates for all these activities . I truly wish something like this had existed 14 years ago when Marty was born because I suck at writing down all the milestones in a book but I totally ROCK at keeping things updated online . Just imagine what a boon an AboutOne account can be to all of you . What 's more my dear friends , AboutOne is also PERFECT for childfree couples or couples whose kids have grown up and moved out . You can keep copies of all receipts and tax info in your AboutOne account and track job opportunities or recognition in addition to all the other features mentioned . I am truly amazed at the platform they have developed over at AboutOne and I can 't wait to use it as they continue to expand what it does . The giveaway is open to US residents only and you must provide a valid e - mail address . The giveaway starts right now and runs through July 31st . Each winner will have 72 hours to respond . If you win the cookies , don 't worry about sending me an address . I 'll eat them for you . It happened again . Remember my post yesterday . . . laughing when you know you shouldn 't . . . it happened again today . We have a huge number of kid 's books and one of our favorites is the Sandra Boynton book Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur ! As you can see , the book truly is well loved . The corners are peeling . The spine is worn on the edges . But , it 's been through three boys and we read it a lot . This morning , Joey and Gabe were in the living room . As I came down the hall I heard them laughing and Gabe was saying " Don 't tell mom . Please don 't tell mom . " Well , y ' all know there is no better way to get a parent 's attention than to say don 't tell them . So , I asked . Joey cracked up and said " You know that book Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaur ! Well , Gabe was reading that page Dinosaurs singing a dinosaur song . . . but instead , he said said ' Vagina - saurs singing a vagina - saur song . ' " I knew I shouldn 't laugh but I did . I laughed long and hard . . . and , Gabe now has his " song " on an unending loop . There are times you can see the train wreck coming and , you just can 't help yourself , you have to give in . . . you have to laugh your ass off or give in and say something . . . even if you are going to pay later . Sadly , that internal censor between my brain and my mouth loses it 's fight for self preservation far too often . My long time readers have heard about my epic fail of my internal censor that led to the naming of Damn Duck . Go ahead , go read the story and get a good laugh at my expanse . I 'll wait for you to get back . Ok , are y ' all back ? Good . Now , on to another story about the failure of my internal censor or maybe I prefer to think of it as the victory of my sense of humor over stick in the mud adulthood . Let 's hop on the wayback machine and take a trip to the spring of ' 03 . It was early morning ( but not too early ) in the spring of ' 03 . I had Marty , his friend Will , Will 's sister , and little ( at the time ) Joey in the van . We had just picked up Will and his sitter and were headed to school . All I could hear from the back seat was whispering , giggling , and something that sounded vaguely like Yankee Doodle . In an effort to be a good mommy , I asked the kids what they were talking about and they said " We 're not talking . We 're singing . " Well , of course I had to ask what they were singing . . . I should have known better . This is what they were singing . . . When was your first time ? My first time was during the fall semester of my freshman year in college . I had just started at Duke on an Army ROTC scholarship . A few of the guys in my platoon just happened to be members of the DKE fraternity and they invited all of us to their first kegger of the year . That 's where it happened . That was my first time . No , not THAT first time . It was my first time having too much to drink . Honestly , there wasn 't much special about the party except for some awesome swing dancing with my ROTC buddy . There was lots and lots of beer and a few quarters games going on . I found out I had an aptitude for quarters as long as I was aloud to launch them off my nose . Sadly . although I had an aptitude for quarters , I had no tolerance for beer . Boy , oh boy did I pay for it the next day . © 1996 Jim Wallace / Duke The next day , every single ROTC member had to be at the Duke Chapel at 2pm in FULL dress uniform ( can we say tight collars much ) for the Veteran 's Day service . I made it there on time . . . barely And , I managed to stay upright . . . barely . But , Kristin was NOT a happy camper . Trying to appear compose and polished when the room is spinning and you feel like your head is going to fall off is NOT a good thing . Tight collars combined with the gag reflex a hangover induces is also NOT a good thing . a little salt 1 ) Preheat oven to 350 degrees 2 ) Cut veggies into large chunks . I quartered the squash and zucchini lengthwise . Then , I cut them into chunks about 1 inch thick . Although I followed the trial a little bit , I didn 't follow or watch it obsessively . I 'm sure there are things I missed . However , I am comfortable saying that I believe what Casey Anthony did was unforgivable and that karma will bite her in the ass someday . Either Casey killed her little girl and covered it up or her little girl died a tragic , accidental death and she lied about it and went on partying and living life . In my book , both acts are equally incomprehensible . I simply can not wrap my mind around an outlook that would make either of those acts ok . Having said that , I MUST also say that I believe the jury did the right thing given the evidence they were presented with . My gut tells me that Casey Anthony is guilty as hell but , if I had sat on that jury , I believe I would have had to vote not guilty also . Our standard of law demands that , in the face of reasonable doubt , you must vote not guilty . The prosecution in the Casey Anthony trial could NOT present a cause of death . They could NOT present a murder weapon . All they could present was a lot of circumstantial evidence and one lying bitch . The smell of death and a few hairs in the trunk of Casey 's car do not prove she killed Caylee . It does prove the body was in the car but it does NOT prove murder . The jurors who have spoken have all said it made them sick to their stomach to vote not guilty but they were following the letter of the law . While I believe Casey Anthony deserves to rot in hell , I Must give kudos to those jurors for having the moral fortitude to follow the letter of the law . I hit the jackpot yesterday . I headed over to Smart Bitches , Trashy Books last night to check out the name of the latest book in their Summer Reading club . I 'm not sure if I should consider them a good influence or a bad one because , while I didn 't end up buying that , I followed a few links and ended up with a TON of other romance books for very little money . I had a couple of requests to spread the news about how and where I got them so here goes . I am sadly still e - Reader deprived so I have the Kindle for the PC app on both my desktop and laptop . Any serious book lover needs this . The access to free books is FABULOUS . I also have Adobe Digital Edition on my laptop and desktop . This is also a free download and allows me to open ePub and secure digital formats . Books with a * following the price had a sales tax that kicked in . Don 't know if it is because of where I live or some other reason . The sales tax is reflected in the price I have listed . It 's all Kim 's fault . . . Kim and that damned Steve Wozniak . . . oh yeah , and the founders of Twitter because a tweet made me go there . I wouldn 't trade those 40 minutes for anything because I spent those 40 minutes laughing uproariously with my 14 yr old . It was priceless . By the way , if that third tee shirt doesn 't make sense , go read this post by The Bloggess . Seriously , go read it . It is one of the funniest things I have ever read . . . even on the 30 millionth reading . Marty said it isn 't morning until you get to 8 am . I was going to say it wasn 't morning until you wake up . . . but what if you don 't wake up until 12 pm or later ? That would be a serious time paradox . Welcome to Days 6 and 7 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . The thunderstorms are still hanging around my part of North Carolina and my head is still causing me to call it dirty names . Migraines suck and vicodin is my friend . For Day 6 , Calliope asked " When was the last time you tried something new ? What was it and what was the result ? Have you ever done something just so that you could blog about it ? " Hmmmm , the last time I tried something new . . . I don 't think I 've ever done something JUST so I could blog about it but I frequently think " Hmmm , that would be a hell of a lot of fun and it would make a good story . " Today , on Day 7 , Calliope asked " What 's your favorite thing to eat for breakfast , lunch and dinner ? Do you read food blogs or would you ever consider writing one ? " I can 't say I really have a favorite lunch . Wraps with lettuce , tomatoes , some kind of meat , maybe a little spicy mustard , and a little cheese are good . Some days I like cottage cheese and mandarin oranges does the trick . Dinner is also something that I don 't have a clear favorite food for . Time and , sadly , money influence dinner selections a lot . I love experimenting in the kitchen and I also love cooking some of the classics every now and then . As for food blogs , I have a few I read . One of my all time favorites is She 's Becoming DoughMessTic . She 's funny , seriously talented , and a really sweet person on top of it all . I don 't know that I have it in me to write a food blog all the time but it might be cool to contribute to a group food blog . Welcome to Day 5 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . I just squeaked in under the wire . . . another few minutes and it would have been Day 6 . Sorry about being so late but I got shanghaied into teaching at Vacation Bible School at the last minute . Between staying up late on the 4th and teaching at vbs today , I 've been dead to the world . Our assignment today is to talk about what we prefer to do on our birthday . Around le casa de Cruz , what I 'd prefer and what I usually get to do are two vastly different things . See , November and December are major family celebration months here . In a 21 day period , we have 3 birthdays , our anniversary , and Thanksgiving . In my fantasy world , I 'd get to sleep in as late as I wanted and there would be no squabbling to wake me up . I 'd wake up to a clean house ( I 'd say spotless but that ain 't gonna happen even in my fantasies ) and a lovely champagne brunch in bed . I would be free to read or create or shop all day long and my husband and I would get to wrap it up with a romantic dinner for two . Presents are nice but that isn 't the big deal for me . In reality , I usually get a lovely little family celebration sometimes in tandem with a kid party and occasionally alone . My mom or my family always makes sure I have a cake and I usually get a few nice gifts . On the really lucky years , my mom and dad entertain the kids so Vic and I can get a night out together . Honestly , I love my birthdays just the way they are and my fantasy birthday would be so foreign that it would probably seem a little cold to me . The chaos and noise and love of my family is the perfect birthday celebration for me . Welcome to Day 4 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . Our assignment today is to talk about what has most surprised us about being an adult ? What have we learned about ourselves through blogging ? When you are little , you have a very skewed view of what it 's like to be an adult . I know I use to think being an adult meant you could do whatever you wanted , whenever you wanted . . . and , as we 've all found out , that is so far from the truth . So , I guess you could say that was the first surprise I had about being an adult . . . that all this extra responsibility came along with all the freedom . I was also surprised to find out how much like my mom I turned out to be . I will never forget the day I turned to a kid and I could hear my mother 's words coming out of my mouth . It stunned me . Not that what I was saying was anything horrible . . . but , I just never thought I 'd pick up the same phrases and responses the way I did . I was also very surprised by what I ended up doing with my life . When I was younger , I was convinced I would have some kind of high powered career and just knew I would never , ever want to be a stay at home mom . Here I am , 41 years old , and not only am I not in a high powered career but I 'm a stay at home mom and I love my life . I love being able to volunteer in schools . I love my kids knowing I will always be available for them . I can 't imagine living my life any other way . Another thing I 've been surprised by is something I learned about myself through blogging . When I was younger , I never thought of myself as a writer . Now , not only do I acknowledge that I am a writer but I also have come to realize I am pretty good at it . Welcome to Day 3 of Calliope 's blogging summer camp . Today , we 're talking about our guilty pleasures . I 'm not really sure if I can claim to have guilty pleasures because I don 't feel bad or guilty about liking any of these things . However , there are things I absolutely love . . . I love to read and can lose myself in books . I read everything from romances to biographies to history . If it 's good , I read it . I truly love to sleep in . The feeling you get when you gently wake up without kids yelling or alarms blaring is amazing . It 's too bad it happens so infrequently . I LOVE shoes . I love flats and sandals and boots and sky high heels . If space and money weren 't an issue , I would gladly have a walk in closet filled with with nothing but shoes . Calliope 's Day 2 of blogging summer camp is the perfect topic for me . With my oldest son starting high school in the fall , it 's had me thinking a lot about what I was like back in high school . I was much more reserved and kind of quiet in new situations . With groups I felt comfortable in , my louder , wilder side came out but most of the time I came across as the good girl . I was involved in a ton of things . I was in Girl Scouts through high school . I earned the highest award in Girl Scouts , the gold award , part of the way through high school and was an assistant leader to a Brownie troop during my junior and senior years . In addition to Girl Scouts , I was involved in a bunch of school activities . I was part of the drama club . Drama club was kind of a big step for me because I wasn 't very comfortable getting up in front of people . I was far to concerned about what people would think of me to ever be a good actor at that age . I know I wasn 't very good but I had a great time with it and one of our members is still acting today . I was also on the Flag Girl squad for two years which was a lot of fun . I rounded out my activities with being on the yearbook staff for two years and was the assistant editor my senior year . The really funny thing is that despite being able to write a kick ass paper for English class and despite being on the yearbook staff , I never thought of myself as being a writer . In fact , until recently , I never thought of myself as being a writer . Photo Friday 's theme this week is vibrance . The first thing I thought of when I heard the theme were the vibrant colors of summer flowers . . . but , I was a slacker this week and all of a sudden it was Friday and I didn 't have any new flower pictures . So , I looked through the pictures I 've taken recently and this picture said vibrance . . . the beautiful colors . . . the striking design . . . I love it . I have a high school student now . Marty has officially registered for high school and I 'm wondering how in the hell more than 14 yrs have passed since I brought that baby home . Did I tell you I have a cat on allergy medicine ? Twice a day I have to give Joey 's kitty , Butterball , an allergy pill . It 's not much fun but it works . He 's no longer sneezing and slinging snot everywhere . The funny thing is the cat takes the exact same allergy pill as I do . Yes , I share meds with the cat . The medicine of choice for nasal allergies in cats is the same medicine I 've taken for my allergies since I was 6 yrs old . I 'm watching Joey at Tae Kwon Do sparring class right now . Two of the adults have already injured themselves . I 'm glad kids are more elastic and bounceable . Welcome to 31 Days of Blog Juice courtesy of Calliope at Creating Motherhood . She says " Think of this as summer camp in the blogosphere . We 've all been dropped off at a month - long camp with fantastic cabins and great wifi . Each night we gather at a looooooooong table over a yummy meal . And as the fireflies dance outside someone puts on some sweet sounding Bessie Smith and we talk about something . We get to know each other better . " Like all summer camps , this one has a schedule . Today 's assignment is to show a photo , sketch , or dramatic rendering of the space where you normally blog . Here 's mine in all it 's messy glory . . . This is also the chair I sit in when I 'm crocheting , cross stitching , knitting , or repairing things . So , I have yarn and patterns and clothes waiting to be fixed and a stuffed animal with a hole all waiting for me to get to it . Even when the rest of the room gets cleaned , my chair and my corner rarely get neater than this .
|
do not know how he does it . I admire his determination and will to push through the pain . He and I were chatting today at his office and he says his whole body hurts . My prayer is that each day gets better and that he has some really good days before we return to Tulsa on Thursday . I bought my Change Your Life Bible from Becky Tirabassi in 2007 . It is a special edition of the 365 day Bible that she produced . I was thinking today how God has used this Bible to transform me and strengthen my relationship with Him . Before I bought this particular Bible , I read the Life Application Bible , but I would just jump around and most of the time I would avoid the Old Testament because at the time I thought it was boring . After I started reading my 365 I watched His word come alive . In this past year , the Lord has spoken to me the most through the Old Testament . I love the fact that I been . This morning like many mornings I felt the Lord had a special word for me . I have been reading in Isaiah this past week and it has been rich . Today I read chapter 61 : 8 : " . . . I will faithfully reward my people for their suffering and make an everlasting covenant with them . Their descendants will be recognized and honored among the nations . Everyone will realize that they are a people the Lord has blessed . " My prayer from the beginning of this journey , which is now one year ago , is that my children would become Men and Women of God and that they would fall deeply in love with Him . I pray that their lives will glorify God . The above verse comforts me because I know He hears my prayer and He has my children in the palm of His hand . I then read in the New Testament Philippians 1 : 27 , " I will know that you are standing side by side fighting together for the faith , which is the Good News . Don 't be intimidated in any way by your enemies . This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed , but that you are going to be saved , even by God himself . For you have been given not only for him . " This words are sweet as Pat and I are standing side by side . On Thursday morning after I got up out of my chair and was headed on the radio . I knew that Pat was driving to work at that time and he was listening to the same radio station . I texted him , " We will praise Him in this storm . " He replied , " Yep . . . no doubt " . There is no way I could survive this journey without Him , His strength , guidance and His precious word . He is so intimate with me and I am humbled and in awe . Sweet dreams , xoxo . Lovingly Created by I had one of those hard days and unfortunately we both had one on the same day . He has not felt good today , but did go in for just a bit . Today my heart is heavy and hurting because it is so hard to see him in pain . Oh , how I wish I could trade places with him . My friend sent me this verse this morning , " Because of the Lord 's great love we are not consumed , for his compassions never fail . They are new every morning ; great is your faithfulness . I say to myself , " The Lord is my portion ; therefore I will wait for him . " Lamentations 3 : 22 - 24 So , I cry out to God and I know He hears me which reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Psalm . " Because He bends down to listen , I will pray as long as I have breath ! " Psalm 116 : 2 . In His Grip , xoxo Lovingly Created by dragging and feeling a little stiff . Oh how I hope to one day enjoy this . I laughed at my sister today when she called . She asked me how my run was last night and she was happy I enjoyed it . I asked her what made her think I enjoyed it and she said she saw my FB status when it said , " I just ran the Couch to 5K with Joy and Wendy . " I said , " Kelly , Joy is a friend of mine who lives down the street from me ! " Bahaha ! Pat has not had a good day today . He went to work this morning early , but had to come back home . He is in quite a bit of pain , weary and frustrated . The hardest part of this journey for me is to see him hurting . Please pray the pain lifts and the next few days will be better ones . I loved what I read today in my devotion and needed it so much . While in prayer we are to stand firmly on a promise of God . By doing so you will obtain enough power to throw open the gates of heaven and to take it by force . Jesus desires that we would be very specific in our requests asking for something definite . " What do you want me to do for you ? " ( Matthew 20 : 32 ) is the question . He asks everyone who comes to Him during trials and affliction . Make your requests earnestly and specifically , if you desire definite answers . It is the aimlessness of prayer that accounts for so many seemingly unanswered prayers . Be specific in your petitions . Fill out your check for something definite , and it will be cashed at the bank of heaven when it is presented in Jesus ' name . Well , I am making my requests and writing my check to my Father asking for healing for Pat . He continues to remind me of the scripture he gave me a year ago ( Exodus 14 : 13 ) Moses answered the people , " Do not be afraid . Stand firm and you today you will never see again . 14 The LORD will fight for you ; you need only to be still . " So , I claim and stand on this promise . Your promise gives me peace . Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by feel like we have been gone for more than five days . Pat had a really slow start this morning and was apprehensive about getting on the plane due to some nausea , but he has his wonder drug , Zofran , that does the trick . Thankfully , the flight is just 45 minutes long . As the day grew so the bone pain is beginning . I am looking so forward to my bed tonight as sleep did not come that easy this last week and what a great week to start having hot flashes ! Geez ! I have always been the one cold around this house , but Pat and I have switched places . The scripture 2 Corinthians 5 : 7 says " We live by faith , not by sight . " I have to remind myself that I cannot judge my faith by my feelings although it is very difficult . We are to look at the facts and not the feelings . In my devotional today the author says that God never gives us feelings to enable or encourage us to trust Him and He never gives them to show us that we have already completely trusted Him . God only gives us feelings when He sees that we trust Him apart from our feelings , resting solely on His word and His faithfulness to His promise . That is all I have to keep me focused on this journey . That is why I spend a long time in the mornings reading His word and praying because I have to be refueled before I start my day . I have to cling to God 's promises when I see Pat hurting or watch him try to put one foot in front of the other when he is having a bad day . When I look around at the patients in the cancer center , read the statistics of this horrible disease or watch a friend bury her husband who lost the fight , my feelings can easily win . This is where I have to focus on God 's facts and His promises that he gives me when I read His word . I have to look back at what I know and that is God has never , ever failed me and he is the same yesterday , today and forever . It isn 't easy , so I try to take one day at a time and pray my friend 's , Becky , favorite prayer that I have adopted as my own : Father , go before me and go behind me . I hear the bed and my very own pillow calling my name ! Sweet dreams , xoxo Lovingly Created by Hi from Tulsa . We will be here until tomorrow morning . Pat has had an okay day today . He has extreme fatigue , moving slow and just doesn 't feel good . We will go to infusion tonight to disconnect the chemo at 10 . I got another God hug today . My friend , Andrea Lyles , drove over from Edmond to spend the afternoon with us . She and I were at college together at Southeastern and we have not seen each other since 1982 . Thanks to Facebook , we have only eight weeks and much more to go before I get in shape to run that 5K without walking . I am determined , but I don 't like it yet . We feel your prayers and I know that is why I have such a peace today . This journey would be so hard without you walking it with us . Tootles ! xoxo Hello from Tulsa ! Last night Pat started his new chemo at 4 : 30 PM which also includes lots of fluids and other drugs , but I couldn 't believe that we would leave infusion at 12 midnight . We got back to the hotel room a little after that and then about 1 : 00 Pat had severe stomach cramping , which can be a side effect during chemo , so we had to go back to Infusion . He received some drugs and pain meds and we were able to return to our room at 4 : 30 . I could not wait to close my eyes and when I did I remember thinking " this was what if felt like to have a newborn baby again " . You know , that exhaustion that just makes you want to cry . We were able to sleep until literally lying around . Pat slept most of the day . We spent a lot of the morning in front of the big screen in the lobby where I watched Wyatt Earp ! I am enjoying the westerns ! Speaking of Wyatt Earp , which Kevin Costner played in the movie , Pat has been told for many years that he looks like Kevin and sometimes I can see the resemblance . i even had someone tell me that Garrett could be Kevin Costner 's son . . . not kidding . I am so grateful for sister Kelly 's company Thursday and my friend , Misty 's company last night . She got here about 7 and stayed until after 11 PM . They were just what I needed . Tonight Pat and I had some special visitors . Addie , Pat 's care nurse , brought her husband , James and a sweet couple from Brazil , Raphael and Beatrice , to the hotel room to meet us and pray with us . Raphael is studying here and also teaches at Oral Roberts . James is also a professor there . What a divine meeting and one I will never forget as they encouraged , shared and prayed with us . Another testimony of how blessed Pat and I are to be here in Tulsa and how He has surrounded us and provided for us people to love and support us when we are so far away from home . Pat and I miss our kids and Cash , and I know they miss us . It is hard to be separated from them , and I am thankful for my friends and family who have loved on them and made sure their okay . I even heard of the many friends of ours that loved on ours boys during the football game last night . Again , I am humbled by the support and love we have received this past year . I didn 't know what today would be like for Pat and I in the hotel room , but it has been nice for me to just relax and not have to worry about getting things done or being somewhere . Although Pat has felt very groggy today , he has felt pretty good and has not had any pain or nausea . This new chemo has some quirky side effects and will present some challenges . In my scripture reading today God encouraged me with Isaiah 44 : 2 , " The Lord who made you and helps you says : Do not be afraid , O Jacob , my servant , O dear Israel , my chosen one . For I will pour out water to quench your thirst and to irrigate your parched fields . And I will pour for others , and particularly my kids . Tonight I pray this for you : Ephesians 3 : 16 - 19 , " I pray that from His glorious , unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit . Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him . Your roots will grow down into God 's love and keep you strong . And may you have the power to understand , as all God 's people should , how wide , how long , how though it is too great to understand fully . Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that come from God . " Goodnight ! Paige & Pat xoxo Lovingly Created by understand what it means that it is the Lord who has done this , the Holy One of Israel who created it . Oh how awesome that would be ! ! Lovingly Created by TEAM STP has surpassed our PurpleStride goal of $ 2500 . 00 ! Thank you so much . . . . let 's shoot for $ 5 , 000 . 00 ! I am wearing purple today ! Lovingly Created by nice to fly this time and get it here at a decent hour and not be too pooped from driving . We are staying in the Hilton across the street , which is a nice place with good food ! Pat and I are so excited that ! It is so nice to watch a show that just makes you crack up laughing ! Cam is my favorite . I am excited that my sister is coming to hang out with Pat and I tomorrow . It will be great having her with us . There is nothing like a sister ! Pat 's scans are at 10 and 1 , so please lift him in prayer tomorrow . . I also ask that you pray for us to have peace as we wait for the results . We love you ! xoxo Lovingly Created by What a whirlwind it has been the past two days with deadlines at work to meet before we leave town tomorrow . It is also that time of year for meetings at school so I can make sure my junior is prepared for college and his basketball booster club has social media ! As I sit here writing , a commercial for the Cancer Treatment Center just came on TV . It was Peggy Kessler , a pancreatic survivor . Several people have asked me if those are real cancer patients or actors in the commercials . They are real . You might CTCA commercial and is a seven year pancreatic survivor . What an amazing place ! Pat and I decided to fly to Tulsa tomorrow . Thursday he will have his CAT and PET scans and Friday will be a day full of appointments . Also , we will find out his scan results and see if he is a candidate for the microwave ablation on that liver spot again . Our plan is to return on Saturday . Needless to say , this a very important week for us and we covet your prayers . How wild is this ? Pat just sat down and turned on today 's recorded show by Dr . Oz . The subject is cancer and the first segment is pancreatic cancer . Since you are reading this right now , I am going to give you the highlights of important factors of this disease . Pancreatic cancer is the cancer doctors fear the most . This year 44 , 000 diagnosed people will be diagnosed and 38 , 000 will die . Warning signs are : stomach and back pain ; weight loss , and lightly / clay colored stools . There is no effective screening efforts . shows those who drink a lot of alcohol is at risk and also research shows those who drink two or more sodas a day . He did mention that researchers need to learn more about sodas . Those with type II diabetes are high risk . Blood tests can be done to check liver enzymes and blood . Solutions : Cut fatty red meat and processed meats wasn 't planning on writing about this , but maybe someone needs read this and I could conveniently type while Dr . Oz " dictated " . I can also look at this as a nice segue to Donate to Team STP ! Gotta go pack ! Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by I hear thunder outside and saw lightening on the way home from Life Group tonight . Bring on the rain ! It was nice getting together with our life group . Summer activities caused us to meet less these past few months , so what a joy it is to be with our group again . Pat and I are so thankful for this group of believers who have walked alongside us these past four years . Hey , Life formed our group in 2007 and he most certainly knew what The Easterlings would need and take up most of the LG reward points ! On Mission With God Living God 's Purpose For His Glory by Avery T . Willis , Jr . & Henry T . Blackaby is a new Bible Study I started this morning . I popped into Life Way Friday afternoon and was just wandering initiates a personal , loving relationship with you and invites you to join Him in His work . As God speaks to you , you experience a crisis of belief that calls for major adjustments in your life so that you can relate to Him ad His mission . As you make the adjustments and obey Him , He moves you into the middle of His activity - - as part of God 's mission . As you look at God 's mission through the eyes of His chosen servants , be assured that it is God who is on mission . The mission is His , not yours . But He has determined to accomplish His mission through His people . He is actively working to involve His people with all the peoples of the world so that they may know Him and worship Him . " I wrote in the margin , " I 've seen it . " I know that God has a purpose in our journey , so I would just soon join Him . This experience has certainly caused me to examine what I believe , stretch my faith and make major adjustments in my life . Gosh , I struggle internally with the fact that I know that God chose us to walk on this unknown path , and I feel honored . But at the same time , I want my healthy Pat back . I want to see him healed , happy and pain free . God is definitely at work in and around us . Just the blessings and God hugs he has given us would absolutely amaze you if I had the chance to sit with you and share just how faithful God is . That is why I journal , as I want to read about them again and remember . I never want to forget . He has so much more to teach me about Himself and so much to change in me . Hope you have a good week . Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by It is 9 : 30 PM and I just got in for my jog / walk . It is very unusual for me to do any kind of exercise on a Saturday , much less Saturday night . I guess it is motivation and Pat was encouraging me to also . It has been a great day today ! The only two things that was wrong with it was one , Pat wasn 't with Garret and I , had three basketball games at 11 , 4 and 6 in Carrollton and they won all three ! Pat couldn 't go due to work , so he missed out on some good games . We had such a big break between games one and two that I was hoping Garrett might go hang out in the mall . No ! He is like is dad that way . I am glad I brought a book to read and it was the best fiction that I have read in a long time . It is called Sarah 's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay . It was one of those books that I could not put down and was good from the beginning to the end . Pat and I tried to go to Centennial 's homecoming football game yesterday . We waited until the last minute before we into the stadium and the rain died down , but as soon as we sat down , it started to pour and the lightening began , so everyone was asked to leave the stands . That was enough for Pat and I , so we left . Pat felt good today . He had some appointments and then he finished the retaining wall that he and Matt started this summer . That Patrick just amazes me ! I am looking forward to all summer and lives only an hour away , I miss him so much . When I walked over to turn up the thermostat one morning this week , I glanced into his clean room and I just teared up ! Emptying the nest one by one is hard and it doesn 't matter how many times you have said goodbye . Right moms ? It is going to be a short week next week as Pat and there until Saturday as of right now . We can 't decide what mode of transportation we want to take since we really like to have a car when we are there for three nights . I have several people who have asked what the link is to donate to Team STP . It is : http : / / www . kintera . org / faf / home / default . asp ? ievent = 483398 . Another way to find the link is google Purple Stride Dallas . You will then go to the website and look on the left hand side to join or donate to the team . Paigeme590 @ aol . com is my email if you want me to email you the link . I will be happy too ! We have surpassed our $ 2500 . 00 goal ! Woo hoo ! The weather is getting better and better ! Loved the rain too , but Lord , we need more , please ! Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by Hello there ! Have you been watching the show , " Americas Got Talent " ? Our family has and the finals are on now . My favorite is the Silhouettes . It does feel like this show has been on for a very long time this summer ! Care Manager yesterday in Tulsa and Pat 's CAT and PET scan are scheduled for next Thursday with a follow up appointment with the oncologist on Friday to get the results . Please join us in praying for great scans and that the liver spot has shrunk . Even gone would be good for PurpleStride and I can 't wait for the cooler weather to get here and I hear it is on its way . It did feel a tad cooler after we ran tonight . Wendy is training with me , so we are huffing and puffing as we slowly try to run a little further each night . Thank goodness for accountability partners . I have been wearing out my favorite song each morning on the way to work , the Everlasting . The following lyrics stayed in my head all day : Jesus , we set our hope on you , we set our hope on the love , we set our hope on the One who is the everlasting God ! How was your Monday ? I was dragging all day as this weekend wore me out . I did just do a little jog / walking a while ago . I started out using my Couch to 5K app , but I got a better offer to walk with my friend , Joy . What a God hug to catch up with her ! During my quiet time this morning , I felt God reminded me to be quiet and be still promise . Satan tested him through temptation , and people tested him through their jealousy , distrust and opposition to him . Sarah tested him through her worrisome temperament . YET ( there is that wonderful three letter word ) he patiently endured , not questioning God 's truthfullness and power or doubting God 's faithfulness and love . Instead , Abraham submitted to God 's divine sovereignty and infinite wisdom . And he was silent through many delays , willing to wait for the Lord 's timing . Having patiently endured , he then obtained the fulfillment of the promise . ( Streams in the Desert ) . Gosh , it sounds like it was easy for Abraham . Lord , I am trying ! Hugs ! Paige xoxo PS : Team STP . . . . thinking Purple People ! Hello ! Wow what a busy , busy weekend and that is why I did not stop in for a hello this past few days . Saturday morning I left for Oklahoma and returned about 4 : 00 this afternoon . I didn 't talk much about it here on CB because my dad reads this , but Michele , Kelly and I threw dad a surprise 80th birthday party yesterday in Madill . We have been planning this for sometime and had it on FaceBook , in the church bulletin and in the newspaper in Madill as we thought that would be the fastest and best way to invite all of his friends . We did put SURPRISE on all the media , but some people slipped up , and he started to suspect something was up . Michele had to lie a little bit and tell him it was going to be on Sunday as he said to her one day people kept mentioning his birthday to him and randomly wishing him a happy birthday . That is okay though , as we had not planned for it to be a surprise at first , but he seemed oblivious at first , so we ran with the idea . It really doesn 't matter because he was surprised because he had so many friends and family that attended and a few faces that he had not seen in years . Michele , Kelly and I want to say thank you to those who came , sent a card or sent their best wishes . Kelly did a memory book for him , I did the slide show and Michele did the rest ! We had a really good time and there is nothing better than seeing his face when he walked into the room . We love you , dad ! What an inspiration you are are to me and so many others . The comment that I kept hearing around the room was " Boy , I hope I look that good at 80 " ! I think the song , King of the Road , that played on your slide show describes you well ! After the birthday party , Elizabeth and I went to Erica and Cory 's wedding near Durant . Cory 's mom , Misty , and I met in our first freshman class , Dr . Pat Robbins , at Southeastern and have been best friends since . It was a beautiful outside wedding and we had such a good time . I am praying for many years of blessings for Cory and Erica . This morning I went to church with dad at 9 and then with Mom at 10 : 30 . Mom 's church , a cowboy church , have lunch after their service on Sunday , so that was fun . Brian and Kelly were there along with Brianna , Kelton and Elizabeth . We also celebrated Mom 's birthday which was a few weeks ago . I couldn 't get her to drive home today ! Pat couldn 't go to Oklahoma because he had the Dallas Home and Garden show and Garrett had basketball games with his team from school . They were both missed ! Many of our friends and family in Oklahoma asked about Pat and were disappointed he wasn 't able to go . I am humbled when I hear of those who read our CB and pray for us . We covet your prayers and we are thankful for those who are walking this journey with us . Today before the service started at the Cowboy church , my girlfriend from grade school , Kim , grabbed my hand and told me she had someone she wanted me to see , Duane Elwood . She said when she first saw Duane she asked him if he knew who she was . He said yes , Paige McNatt . Well , her response was no , I am actually Kim Jones . So , when I arrived , she walked me to the back row and told Duane that I was actually here this morning . Duane is fighting pancreatic cancer also and was diagnosed not in getting Duane into the cancer center . Since that time , I have prayed and prayed for Duane and to see him today was a blessing to me . For him being at church today was a God hug as he hadn 't been to church there in a long time . Actually , I am not sure if he has ever attended that church . I ask that you pray for Duane as his journey is a lot worse than ours right now and it breaks my heart to see someone else fighting this same disease . Pat has been feeling fair . He was able to work most of the day at the home show yesterday , but this week he has been having a lot of back pain . I am ready to have those scans done so that we can see exactly what is going on . Team STP is on a roll and I am so excited ! Thank you to all that donated these past few days . I hope you have a great week . Hug those you love . . . life is precious ! Paige xoxo Lovingly Created by Happy Anniversary to me and Pat . . . 27 years ! How Amazing and what a journey ! I wrote the following in my journal this morning and I thought I would share with you : Looking arguments or heated discussions . After 1992 when Pat accepted Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior and I rededicated my life , our marriage became sweeter and sweeter . Oh , how I wish I had my intimate walk with Christ at the beginning of our marriage rather than waiting until my mid 30 's . The sweetest , memorable , and most touching moments in our life began in 2007 when our Life Group was formed which challenged Pat and I in our walk . We studied God 's word , prayed and lived life authentically with our friends . In 2008 , Pat was diagnosed with his first cancer , esophageal . I saw slow , spiritual transformation begin within us . Miracles were seen in situations that I could never imagine being " fixed " . As Pat and I fell more in love with God , we fell more in love with each other and we watched our marriage blossom . God has been in the center of our marriage which gives us security of being who He created each of us to be . He knew what our future held and what we as a couple would need to endure our future walk in the wilderness . Both in the dungeon " iron entered his soul " . And the strength of iron is exactly what he needed for earlier as he had only experienced the glitter of gold . We all need iron in life to enlarge our character . The gold is simply a passing vision whereas , the iron is the true experience of life . The chain that is the common bond uniting us to other must be one of iron . The common touch of humanity that gives the world true kinship is not joy , but sorrow - - gold is partial to only a few , but iron is universal . Your life will be enlarged in proportion to the amount of iron you have endured , for it is in the shadows of your life that you will find the actual fulfillment of your drams of glory . So , do not complain about the shadows of darkness - - in reality they are better than your dreams could ever be . Gold was present in our marriage as I lived a very charmed life prior to 2008 . I remember thinking one day that I should brace for the worst as I hadn 't not seen much death , suffering or many trials . Now I can look back and see how he was preparing me for the journey this family would take . So , the story of gold versus iron beautifully describes how our marriage was formed and how it is playing out in our lives today . We have endured iron , but truly not until 2008 when Pat had esophageal cancer , left his career after 30 years , I started working again after 16 years , we start a new business , and then Pat is diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer along with other major events tousled in the mix . I can say this marriage is made of iron . You can see beautiful flecks of gold , but it is solid iron . I tell my kids often that they are so blessed because their mom and dad are still married and love each other . What a gift ! God again how He intimately loves me and that He continues to circle His arms around me so that I can feel His huge God hugs . I am thankful for these 27 years and pray for 27 more so that we can continue too live out our love story . Pat , you hold my heart and I love you more each day . You are my Hero and my best friend ! Paige A quick hello ! Pat is feeling better each day . Yesterday was a rough one , but it is a new day ! Today he just complained about being really tired . Everyone else in the household is doing fine . Matt is settling in to school as well as Garrett . Elizabeth is working her pretty little fingers to the bone ! It is pretty uneventful around here , which I like . Right now I am fired up about PurpleStride and need more team members or donations . Click here to get information . I began running last night and I am sore today . Our team conditioning coach , Brian ( my brother - in - law ) said I could rest today ! Running is not my thing , but finishing a 5K is on my bucket list . So , let 's go purple together ! Email me at Paigeme590 @ aol . com and I will email you the link to sign up as a team member or to donate . Thank you to those who have supported Team STP ! Sending big hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by Hello ! Darn , Pat doesn 't feel good today . His fever broke about 8 this morning but has a low grade tonight . He and I drove to Berryville to get wiper blades at Auto Zone for the jeep which was a nice drive . We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the RV . Our plans were to go to the Passion Play tonight but he just isn 't up to it . We did cook out some hamburgers a bit ago and enjoy this beautiful weather . I hope it is this nice at home . What a nice change from the sweltering heat . Happy birthday to my daddy on his 80th . You are an amazing dad and I am so blessed to be yours . I hope you have had a great day and I wish I were there to spend it with you . I am thankful for the down time and rest that Pat and I were able to enjoy these past few days . I know he wants to feel better , but hanging out in the Ozarks in his RV offers healing too . We will head home tomorrow so praying for His hedge of protection . Hugs ! A Believer , Mother and Owner of WebPaiges . me . I have three beautiful children that I adore . I lead a very blessed life and I am held firmly in God 's grip . In November of 2011 , I lost my husband to pancreatic cancer which changed my life as I knew it . What would I do without my loving Heavenly Father who carries me as I learn to depend on
|
do not know how he does it . I admire his determination and will to push through the pain . He and I were chatting today at his office and he says his whole body hurts . My prayer is that each day gets better and that he has some really good days before we return to Tulsa on Thursday . I bought my Change Your Life Bible from Becky Tirabassi in 2007 . It is a special edition of the 365 day Bible that she produced . I was thinking today how God has used this Bible to transform me and strengthen my relationship with Him . Before I bought this particular Bible , I read the Life Application Bible , but I would just jump around and most of the time I would avoid the Old Testament because at the time I thought it was boring . After I started reading my 365 I watched His word come alive . In this past year , the Lord has spoken to me the most through the Old Testament . I love the fact that I been . This morning like many mornings I felt the Lord had a special word for me . I have been reading in Isaiah this past week and it has been rich . Today I read chapter 61 : 8 : " . . . I will faithfully reward my people for their suffering and make an everlasting covenant with them . Their descendants will be recognized and honored among the nations . Everyone will realize that they are a people the Lord has blessed . " My prayer from the beginning of this journey , which is now one year ago , is that my children would become Men and Women of God and that they would fall deeply in love with Him . I pray that their lives will glorify God . The above verse comforts me because I know He hears my prayer and He has my children in the palm of His hand . I then read in the New Testament Philippians 1 : 27 , " I will know that you are standing side by side fighting together for the faith , which is the Good News . Don 't be intimidated in any way by your enemies . This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed , but that you are going to be saved , even by God himself . For you have been given not only for him . " This words are sweet as Pat and I are standing side by side . On Thursday morning after I got up out of my chair and was headed on the radio . I knew that Pat was driving to work at that time and he was listening to the same radio station . I texted him , " We will praise Him in this storm . " He replied , " Yep . . . no doubt " . There is no way I could survive this journey without Him , His strength , guidance and His precious word . He is so intimate with me and I am humbled and in awe . Sweet dreams , xoxo . Lovingly Created by I had one of those hard days and unfortunately we both had one on the same day . He has not felt good today , but did go in for just a bit . Today my heart is heavy and hurting because it is so hard to see him in pain . Oh , how I wish I could trade places with him . My friend sent me this verse this morning , " Because of the Lord 's great love we are not consumed , for his compassions never fail . They are new every morning ; great is your faithfulness . I say to myself , " The Lord is my portion ; therefore I will wait for him . " Lamentations 3 : 22 - 24 So , I cry out to God and I know He hears me which reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Psalm . " Because He bends down to listen , I will pray as long as I have breath ! " Psalm 116 : 2 . In His Grip , xoxo Lovingly Created by dragging and feeling a little stiff . Oh how I hope to one day enjoy this . I laughed at my sister today when she called . She asked me how my run was last night and she was happy I enjoyed it . I asked her what made her think I enjoyed it and she said she saw my FB status when it said , " I just ran the Couch to 5K with Joy and Wendy . " I said , " Kelly , Joy is a friend of mine who lives down the street from me ! " Bahaha ! Pat has not had a good day today . He went to work this morning early , but had to come back home . He is in quite a bit of pain , weary and frustrated . The hardest part of this journey for me is to see him hurting . Please pray the pain lifts and the next few days will be better ones . I loved what I read today in my devotion and needed it so much . While in prayer we are to stand firmly on a promise of God . By doing so you will obtain enough power to throw open the gates of heaven and to take it by force . Jesus desires that we would be very specific in our requests asking for something definite . " What do you want me to do for you ? " ( Matthew 20 : 32 ) is the question . He asks everyone who comes to Him during trials and affliction . Make your requests earnestly and specifically , if you desire definite answers . It is the aimlessness of prayer that accounts for so many seemingly unanswered prayers . Be specific in your petitions . Fill out your check for something definite , and it will be cashed at the bank of heaven when it is presented in Jesus ' name . Well , I am making my requests and writing my check to my Father asking for healing for Pat . He continues to remind me of the scripture he gave me a year ago ( Exodus 14 : 13 ) Moses answered the people , " Do not be afraid . Stand firm and you today you will never see again . 14 The LORD will fight for you ; you need only to be still . " So , I claim and stand on this promise . Your promise gives me peace . Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by feel like we have been gone for more than five days . Pat had a really slow start this morning and was apprehensive about getting on the plane due to some nausea , but he has his wonder drug , Zofran , that does the trick . Thankfully , the flight is just 45 minutes long . As the day grew so the bone pain is beginning . I am looking so forward to my bed tonight as sleep did not come that easy this last week and what a great week to start having hot flashes ! Geez ! I have always been the one cold around this house , but Pat and I have switched places . The scripture 2 Corinthians 5 : 7 says " We live by faith , not by sight . " I have to remind myself that I cannot judge my faith by my feelings although it is very difficult . We are to look at the facts and not the feelings . In my devotional today the author says that God never gives us feelings to enable or encourage us to trust Him and He never gives them to show us that we have already completely trusted Him . God only gives us feelings when He sees that we trust Him apart from our feelings , resting solely on His word and His faithfulness to His promise . That is all I have to keep me focused on this journey . That is why I spend a long time in the mornings reading His word and praying because I have to be refueled before I start my day . I have to cling to God 's promises when I see Pat hurting or watch him try to put one foot in front of the other when he is having a bad day . When I look around at the patients in the cancer center , read the statistics of this horrible disease or watch a friend bury her husband who lost the fight , my feelings can easily win . This is where I have to focus on God 's facts and His promises that he gives me when I read His word . I have to look back at what I know and that is God has never , ever failed me and he is the same yesterday , today and forever . It isn 't easy , so I try to take one day at a time and pray my friend 's , Becky , favorite prayer that I have adopted as my own : Father , go before me and go behind me . I hear the bed and my very own pillow calling my name ! Sweet dreams , xoxo Lovingly Created by Hi from Tulsa . We will be here until tomorrow morning . Pat has had an okay day today . He has extreme fatigue , moving slow and just doesn 't feel good . We will go to infusion tonight to disconnect the chemo at 10 . I got another God hug today . My friend , Andrea Lyles , drove over from Edmond to spend the afternoon with us . She and I were at college together at Southeastern and we have not seen each other since 1982 . Thanks to Facebook , we have only eight weeks and much more to go before I get in shape to run that 5K without walking . I am determined , but I don 't like it yet . We feel your prayers and I know that is why I have such a peace today . This journey would be so hard without you walking it with us . Tootles ! xoxo Hello from Tulsa ! Last night Pat started his new chemo at 4 : 30 PM which also includes lots of fluids and other drugs , but I couldn 't believe that we would leave infusion at 12 midnight . We got back to the hotel room a little after that and then about 1 : 00 Pat had severe stomach cramping , which can be a side effect during chemo , so we had to go back to Infusion . He received some drugs and pain meds and we were able to return to our room at 4 : 30 . I could not wait to close my eyes and when I did I remember thinking " this was what if felt like to have a newborn baby again " . You know , that exhaustion that just makes you want to cry . We were able to sleep until literally lying around . Pat slept most of the day . We spent a lot of the morning in front of the big screen in the lobby where I watched Wyatt Earp ! I am enjoying the westerns ! Speaking of Wyatt Earp , which Kevin Costner played in the movie , Pat has been told for many years that he looks like Kevin and sometimes I can see the resemblance . i even had someone tell me that Garrett could be Kevin Costner 's son . . . not kidding . I am so grateful for sister Kelly 's company Thursday and my friend , Misty 's company last night . She got here about 7 and stayed until after 11 PM . They were just what I needed . Tonight Pat and I had some special visitors . Addie , Pat 's care nurse , brought her husband , James and a sweet couple from Brazil , Raphael and Beatrice , to the hotel room to meet us and pray with us . Raphael is studying here and also teaches at Oral Roberts . James is also a professor there . What a divine meeting and one I will never forget as they encouraged , shared and prayed with us . Another testimony of how blessed Pat and I are to be here in Tulsa and how He has surrounded us and provided for us people to love and support us when we are so far away from home . Pat and I miss our kids and Cash , and I know they miss us . It is hard to be separated from them , and I am thankful for my friends and family who have loved on them and made sure their okay . I even heard of the many friends of ours that loved on ours boys during the football game last night . Again , I am humbled by the support and love we have received this past year . I didn 't know what today would be like for Pat and I in the hotel room , but it has been nice for me to just relax and not have to worry about getting things done or being somewhere . Although Pat has felt very groggy today , he has felt pretty good and has not had any pain or nausea . This new chemo has some quirky side effects and will present some challenges . In my scripture reading today God encouraged me with Isaiah 44 : 2 , " The Lord who made you and helps you says : Do not be afraid , O Jacob , my servant , O dear Israel , my chosen one . For I will pour out water to quench your thirst and to irrigate your parched fields . And I will pour for others , and particularly my kids . Tonight I pray this for you : Ephesians 3 : 16 - 19 , " I pray that from His glorious , unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit . Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him . Your roots will grow down into God 's love and keep you strong . And may you have the power to understand , as all God 's people should , how wide , how long , how though it is too great to understand fully . Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that come from God . " Goodnight ! Paige & Pat xoxo Lovingly Created by understand what it means that it is the Lord who has done this , the Holy One of Israel who created it . Oh how awesome that would be ! ! Lovingly Created by TEAM STP has surpassed our PurpleStride goal of $ 2500 . 00 ! Thank you so much . . . . let 's shoot for $ 5 , 000 . 00 ! I am wearing purple today ! Lovingly Created by nice to fly this time and get it here at a decent hour and not be too pooped from driving . We are staying in the Hilton across the street , which is a nice place with good food ! Pat and I are so excited that ! It is so nice to watch a show that just makes you crack up laughing ! Cam is my favorite . I am excited that my sister is coming to hang out with Pat and I tomorrow . It will be great having her with us . There is nothing like a sister ! Pat 's scans are at 10 and 1 , so please lift him in prayer tomorrow . . I also ask that you pray for us to have peace as we wait for the results . We love you ! xoxo Lovingly Created by What a whirlwind it has been the past two days with deadlines at work to meet before we leave town tomorrow . It is also that time of year for meetings at school so I can make sure my junior is prepared for college and his basketball booster club has social media ! As I sit here writing , a commercial for the Cancer Treatment Center just came on TV . It was Peggy Kessler , a pancreatic survivor . Several people have asked me if those are real cancer patients or actors in the commercials . They are real . You might CTCA commercial and is a seven year pancreatic survivor . What an amazing place ! Pat and I decided to fly to Tulsa tomorrow . Thursday he will have his CAT and PET scans and Friday will be a day full of appointments . Also , we will find out his scan results and see if he is a candidate for the microwave ablation on that liver spot again . Our plan is to return on Saturday . Needless to say , this a very important week for us and we covet your prayers . How wild is this ? Pat just sat down and turned on today 's recorded show by Dr . Oz . The subject is cancer and the first segment is pancreatic cancer . Since you are reading this right now , I am going to give you the highlights of important factors of this disease . Pancreatic cancer is the cancer doctors fear the most . This year 44 , 000 diagnosed people will be diagnosed and 38 , 000 will die . Warning signs are : stomach and back pain ; weight loss , and lightly / clay colored stools . There is no effective screening efforts . shows those who drink a lot of alcohol is at risk and also research shows those who drink two or more sodas a day . He did mention that researchers need to learn more about sodas . Those with type II diabetes are high risk . Blood tests can be done to check liver enzymes and blood . Solutions : Cut fatty red meat and processed meats wasn 't planning on writing about this , but maybe someone needs read this and I could conveniently type while Dr . Oz " dictated " . I can also look at this as a nice segue to Donate to Team STP ! Gotta go pack ! Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by I hear thunder outside and saw lightening on the way home from Life Group tonight . Bring on the rain ! It was nice getting together with our life group . Summer activities caused us to meet less these past few months , so what a joy it is to be with our group again . Pat and I are so thankful for this group of believers who have walked alongside us these past four years . Hey , Life formed our group in 2007 and he most certainly knew what The Easterlings would need and take up most of the LG reward points ! On Mission With God Living God 's Purpose For His Glory by Avery T . Willis , Jr . & Henry T . Blackaby is a new Bible Study I started this morning . I popped into Life Way Friday afternoon and was just wandering initiates a personal , loving relationship with you and invites you to join Him in His work . As God speaks to you , you experience a crisis of belief that calls for major adjustments in your life so that you can relate to Him ad His mission . As you make the adjustments and obey Him , He moves you into the middle of His activity - - as part of God 's mission . As you look at God 's mission through the eyes of His chosen servants , be assured that it is God who is on mission . The mission is His , not yours . But He has determined to accomplish His mission through His people . He is actively working to involve His people with all the peoples of the world so that they may know Him and worship Him . " I wrote in the margin , " I 've seen it . " I know that God has a purpose in our journey , so I would just soon join Him . This experience has certainly caused me to examine what I believe , stretch my faith and make major adjustments in my life . Gosh , I struggle internally with the fact that I know that God chose us to walk on this unknown path , and I feel honored . But at the same time , I want my healthy Pat back . I want to see him healed , happy and pain free . God is definitely at work in and around us . Just the blessings and God hugs he has given us would absolutely amaze you if I had the chance to sit with you and share just how faithful God is . That is why I journal , as I want to read about them again and remember . I never want to forget . He has so much more to teach me about Himself and so much to change in me . Hope you have a good week . Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by It is 9 : 30 PM and I just got in for my jog / walk . It is very unusual for me to do any kind of exercise on a Saturday , much less Saturday night . I guess it is motivation and Pat was encouraging me to also . It has been a great day today ! The only two things that was wrong with it was one , Pat wasn 't with Garret and I , had three basketball games at 11 , 4 and 6 in Carrollton and they won all three ! Pat couldn 't go due to work , so he missed out on some good games . We had such a big break between games one and two that I was hoping Garrett might go hang out in the mall . No ! He is like is dad that way . I am glad I brought a book to read and it was the best fiction that I have read in a long time . It is called Sarah 's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay . It was one of those books that I could not put down and was good from the beginning to the end . Pat and I tried to go to Centennial 's homecoming football game yesterday . We waited until the last minute before we into the stadium and the rain died down , but as soon as we sat down , it started to pour and the lightening began , so everyone was asked to leave the stands . That was enough for Pat and I , so we left . Pat felt good today . He had some appointments and then he finished the retaining wall that he and Matt started this summer . That Patrick just amazes me ! I am looking forward to all summer and lives only an hour away , I miss him so much . When I walked over to turn up the thermostat one morning this week , I glanced into his clean room and I just teared up ! Emptying the nest one by one is hard and it doesn 't matter how many times you have said goodbye . Right moms ? It is going to be a short week next week as Pat and there until Saturday as of right now . We can 't decide what mode of transportation we want to take since we really like to have a car when we are there for three nights . I have several people who have asked what the link is to donate to Team STP . It is : http : / / www . kintera . org / faf / home / default . asp ? ievent = 483398 . Another way to find the link is google Purple Stride Dallas . You will then go to the website and look on the left hand side to join or donate to the team . Paigeme590 @ aol . com is my email if you want me to email you the link . I will be happy too ! We have surpassed our $ 2500 . 00 goal ! Woo hoo ! The weather is getting better and better ! Loved the rain too , but Lord , we need more , please ! Hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by Hello there ! Have you been watching the show , " Americas Got Talent " ? Our family has and the finals are on now . My favorite is the Silhouettes . It does feel like this show has been on for a very long time this summer ! Care Manager yesterday in Tulsa and Pat 's CAT and PET scan are scheduled for next Thursday with a follow up appointment with the oncologist on Friday to get the results . Please join us in praying for great scans and that the liver spot has shrunk . Even gone would be good for PurpleStride and I can 't wait for the cooler weather to get here and I hear it is on its way . It did feel a tad cooler after we ran tonight . Wendy is training with me , so we are huffing and puffing as we slowly try to run a little further each night . Thank goodness for accountability partners . I have been wearing out my favorite song each morning on the way to work , the Everlasting . The following lyrics stayed in my head all day : Jesus , we set our hope on you , we set our hope on the love , we set our hope on the One who is the everlasting God ! How was your Monday ? I was dragging all day as this weekend wore me out . I did just do a little jog / walking a while ago . I started out using my Couch to 5K app , but I got a better offer to walk with my friend , Joy . What a God hug to catch up with her ! During my quiet time this morning , I felt God reminded me to be quiet and be still promise . Satan tested him through temptation , and people tested him through their jealousy , distrust and opposition to him . Sarah tested him through her worrisome temperament . YET ( there is that wonderful three letter word ) he patiently endured , not questioning God 's truthfullness and power or doubting God 's faithfulness and love . Instead , Abraham submitted to God 's divine sovereignty and infinite wisdom . And he was silent through many delays , willing to wait for the Lord 's timing . Having patiently endured , he then obtained the fulfillment of the promise . ( Streams in the Desert ) . Gosh , it sounds like it was easy for Abraham . Lord , I am trying ! Hugs ! Paige xoxo PS : Team STP . . . . thinking Purple People ! Hello ! Wow what a busy , busy weekend and that is why I did not stop in for a hello this past few days . Saturday morning I left for Oklahoma and returned about 4 : 00 this afternoon . I didn 't talk much about it here on CB because my dad reads this , but Michele , Kelly and I threw dad a surprise 80th birthday party yesterday in Madill . We have been planning this for sometime and had it on FaceBook , in the church bulletin and in the newspaper in Madill as we thought that would be the fastest and best way to invite all of his friends . We did put SURPRISE on all the media , but some people slipped up , and he started to suspect something was up . Michele had to lie a little bit and tell him it was going to be on Sunday as he said to her one day people kept mentioning his birthday to him and randomly wishing him a happy birthday . That is okay though , as we had not planned for it to be a surprise at first , but he seemed oblivious at first , so we ran with the idea . It really doesn 't matter because he was surprised because he had so many friends and family that attended and a few faces that he had not seen in years . Michele , Kelly and I want to say thank you to those who came , sent a card or sent their best wishes . Kelly did a memory book for him , I did the slide show and Michele did the rest ! We had a really good time and there is nothing better than seeing his face when he walked into the room . We love you , dad ! What an inspiration you are are to me and so many others . The comment that I kept hearing around the room was " Boy , I hope I look that good at 80 " ! I think the song , King of the Road , that played on your slide show describes you well ! After the birthday party , Elizabeth and I went to Erica and Cory 's wedding near Durant . Cory 's mom , Misty , and I met in our first freshman class , Dr . Pat Robbins , at Southeastern and have been best friends since . It was a beautiful outside wedding and we had such a good time . I am praying for many years of blessings for Cory and Erica . This morning I went to church with dad at 9 and then with Mom at 10 : 30 . Mom 's church , a cowboy church , have lunch after their service on Sunday , so that was fun . Brian and Kelly were there along with Brianna , Kelton and Elizabeth . We also celebrated Mom 's birthday which was a few weeks ago . I couldn 't get her to drive home today ! Pat couldn 't go to Oklahoma because he had the Dallas Home and Garden show and Garrett had basketball games with his team from school . They were both missed ! Many of our friends and family in Oklahoma asked about Pat and were disappointed he wasn 't able to go . I am humbled when I hear of those who read our CB and pray for us . We covet your prayers and we are thankful for those who are walking this journey with us . Today before the service started at the Cowboy church , my girlfriend from grade school , Kim , grabbed my hand and told me she had someone she wanted me to see , Duane Elwood . She said when she first saw Duane she asked him if he knew who she was . He said yes , Paige McNatt . Well , her response was no , I am actually Kim Jones . So , when I arrived , she walked me to the back row and told Duane that I was actually here this morning . Duane is fighting pancreatic cancer also and was diagnosed not in getting Duane into the cancer center . Since that time , I have prayed and prayed for Duane and to see him today was a blessing to me . For him being at church today was a God hug as he hadn 't been to church there in a long time . Actually , I am not sure if he has ever attended that church . I ask that you pray for Duane as his journey is a lot worse than ours right now and it breaks my heart to see someone else fighting this same disease . Pat has been feeling fair . He was able to work most of the day at the home show yesterday , but this week he has been having a lot of back pain . I am ready to have those scans done so that we can see exactly what is going on . Team STP is on a roll and I am so excited ! Thank you to all that donated these past few days . I hope you have a great week . Hug those you love . . . life is precious ! Paige xoxo Lovingly Created by Happy Anniversary to me and Pat . . . 27 years ! How Amazing and what a journey ! I wrote the following in my journal this morning and I thought I would share with you : Looking arguments or heated discussions . After 1992 when Pat accepted Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior and I rededicated my life , our marriage became sweeter and sweeter . Oh , how I wish I had my intimate walk with Christ at the beginning of our marriage rather than waiting until my mid 30 's . The sweetest , memorable , and most touching moments in our life began in 2007 when our Life Group was formed which challenged Pat and I in our walk . We studied God 's word , prayed and lived life authentically with our friends . In 2008 , Pat was diagnosed with his first cancer , esophageal . I saw slow , spiritual transformation begin within us . Miracles were seen in situations that I could never imagine being " fixed " . As Pat and I fell more in love with God , we fell more in love with each other and we watched our marriage blossom . God has been in the center of our marriage which gives us security of being who He created each of us to be . He knew what our future held and what we as a couple would need to endure our future walk in the wilderness . Both in the dungeon " iron entered his soul " . And the strength of iron is exactly what he needed for earlier as he had only experienced the glitter of gold . We all need iron in life to enlarge our character . The gold is simply a passing vision whereas , the iron is the true experience of life . The chain that is the common bond uniting us to other must be one of iron . The common touch of humanity that gives the world true kinship is not joy , but sorrow - - gold is partial to only a few , but iron is universal . Your life will be enlarged in proportion to the amount of iron you have endured , for it is in the shadows of your life that you will find the actual fulfillment of your drams of glory . So , do not complain about the shadows of darkness - - in reality they are better than your dreams could ever be . Gold was present in our marriage as I lived a very charmed life prior to 2008 . I remember thinking one day that I should brace for the worst as I hadn 't not seen much death , suffering or many trials . Now I can look back and see how he was preparing me for the journey this family would take . So , the story of gold versus iron beautifully describes how our marriage was formed and how it is playing out in our lives today . We have endured iron , but truly not until 2008 when Pat had esophageal cancer , left his career after 30 years , I started working again after 16 years , we start a new business , and then Pat is diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer along with other major events tousled in the mix . I can say this marriage is made of iron . You can see beautiful flecks of gold , but it is solid iron . I tell my kids often that they are so blessed because their mom and dad are still married and love each other . What a gift ! God again how He intimately loves me and that He continues to circle His arms around me so that I can feel His huge God hugs . I am thankful for these 27 years and pray for 27 more so that we can continue too live out our love story . Pat , you hold my heart and I love you more each day . You are my Hero and my best friend ! Paige A quick hello ! Pat is feeling better each day . Yesterday was a rough one , but it is a new day ! Today he just complained about being really tired . Everyone else in the household is doing fine . Matt is settling in to school as well as Garrett . Elizabeth is working her pretty little fingers to the bone ! It is pretty uneventful around here , which I like . Right now I am fired up about PurpleStride and need more team members or donations . Click here to get information . I began running last night and I am sore today . Our team conditioning coach , Brian ( my brother - in - law ) said I could rest today ! Running is not my thing , but finishing a 5K is on my bucket list . So , let 's go purple together ! Email me at Paigeme590 @ aol . com and I will email you the link to sign up as a team member or to donate . Thank you to those who have supported Team STP ! Sending big hugs ! xoxo Lovingly Created by Hello ! Darn , Pat doesn 't feel good today . His fever broke about 8 this morning but has a low grade tonight . He and I drove to Berryville to get wiper blades at Auto Zone for the jeep which was a nice drive . We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the RV . Our plans were to go to the Passion Play tonight but he just isn 't up to it . We did cook out some hamburgers a bit ago and enjoy this beautiful weather . I hope it is this nice at home . What a nice change from the sweltering heat . Happy birthday to my daddy on his 80th . You are an amazing dad and I am so blessed to be yours . I hope you have had a great day and I wish I were there to spend it with you . I am thankful for the down time and rest that Pat and I were able to enjoy these past few days . I know he wants to feel better , but hanging out in the Ozarks in his RV offers healing too . We will head home tomorrow so praying for His hedge of protection . Hugs ! A Believer , Mother and Owner of WebPaiges . me . I have three beautiful children that I adore . I lead a very blessed life and I am held firmly in God 's grip . In November of 2011 , I lost my husband to pancreatic cancer which changed my life as I knew it . What would I do without my loving Heavenly Father who carries me as I learn to depend on
|
Today I lead the funeral for my brother - in - law . They want it to be a celebration . I have led in funerals for my father - in - law , mother - in - law , a close friend and other long term friends . I get nervous before every funeral , but am especially anxious today . There are lots of people helping and I want to write a post about that at some stage . Wish me luck ! about a different life and work experience . I enjoy my friend 's personality , we laugh , listen and sometimes philosophise . But I enjoy walking and running on my own as well . I would My son and I headed out early this morning to park a car about 10k on the road north of Dunedin . We then drove in another car to the " Bull Ring " a car park up a hill on the south side of Dunedin . We were going to walk the ridges that are a backdrop to the city . Over Flagstaff summit , along to Swampy Summit and down the Burns track back to the first car . We started walking at 8 : 15 a . m . we arrived at our parked car at 11 : 50 a . m . It was a great walk with lots of hills , tussock country , different track styles , and different vegetation . It was quite hot with no real breeze even though were high up . A nice morning of exercise and conversation . We did the walk reasonably quickly because we had to go to my daughter 's place for a birthday lunch . My foster daughter has her birthday on 27th December . She has severe intellectual handicaps and is now 34 . . . I think . She had been staying at my daughter 's place over Christmas so we were gathering there for a birthday lunch . I really love how my children treat her as a sister , no questions asked . She is not their sister , she came into our family when she was 9 years old . As far as they are concerned though , she is their sister and they make a fuss of her on her birthday . I wish we all would learn to just decide to see each other as brothers and sisters , for under God that is what we are . My sister rang me last night to tell me that her husband was having a tough time in the hospice . I intended to go up to Christchurch tomorrow to see him and that timing seemed adequate . As we were driving back to the other car after our walk today my cell phone went . My brother was ringing to tell me my brother - in - law was low and expected to go in the next 48 hours . I began to make arrangements to see if I could go today . ( I needed a new supply of blood pressure pills and had a doctors appointment arranged for Wednesday morning ) After the birthday party I had a call from my niece to tell me that he had died peacefully . He and I had briefly talked about his funeral , but we had thought we would get together again before the end came . It was not to be and I am now feeling guilty about my busyness that has prevented me from catching up with him before his death . We have managed to arrange an emergency supply of the pills so I will go up in the early hours of tomorrow . I am feeling guilty about not seeing him . I am feeling guilty about not getting to chaplaincies because I will be busy . I am feeling guilty because I will be leaving before my son and daughter - in - law leave for home . Every where I turn I seem to be neglecting something or someone . I am deeply sad for my sister , and she is my first responsibility at this point in time . It is a very hot boxing day in Dunedin . Everything around here outside is getting hot . I got up early because we had to get rubbish bags and a wheelie bin out at the gate . They were full of rubbish from the Christmas dinner . The recycling wheelie bin was full of plastic drink bottles . Since then I have been slowly unpacking cars and returning things we have used back to their place in house or garage . Now I have the house to myself and am stopping for a cup of tea . I went into town before 8 a . m . yesterday . My first job every Christmas morning is to set up a portable carport shelter type thing in the car park of the church . We use this as cover for people rinsing dishes , it can be cover from the sun or rain , and over the years has been both . I set up the frame work and noticed a young man riding a skateboard up and down the road . I recognised him as a man who had visited our drop - in centre . He had a week earlier asked about the Christmas dinner . When I was sliding the tent type cover onto the frame and struggling to reach all the corners , he skated over and said , " Wanna hand with that boss ? " There he stood , unshaven , studs through lip , eyebrow and ears and tattoos in different places . " Oh yes that would be good ! " I replied . So together we completed the task . Later as our guests began arriving early he came to me and said , " Can I help . . . I could give out name tags ? " I hesitated , thinking about elderly pensioners being welcomed by this apparition . Anyway he got to grabbing a clip board and welcoming people . Then he moved to hosting at a table . Then he did something else where he saw a need . He seemed a simple guy , and indeed had trouble writing , but just floated around being a real treat to the people he assisted . " You cannot tell a book by its cover ! " as my mum used to say . I was going to take a " before and after video " of our Christmas day community dinner . . . like the same video as my last post with the place full of people . But I was just too busy today . I estimate we had 270 there . Others have said 280 or 300 . It was full on . But I am sure most went away happy . The biggest buzz is happy volunteers . . . . . . It is great to see volunteers going away absolutely stuffed ( as in exhausted ) but with big wide smiles on their faces . So many stories I could tell but that 's enough . Relaxing with all my NZ based kids now . The boys are cooking a barbecue tea now , happily relaxed after a couple of cold beers . is of the prodigal son 's father waiting for his son 's return , rushing to embrace his son and throwing him a party . In this love I am freed to " be " . God is in the dreams I have to better Friendship is an interesting thing . I have had a day of it . First thing in the morning I took a friend out to the airport . We have known each other for nearly 7 years and she was going back to Australia for holidays . I arrived back at my office and an old friend who I first met when we were in our late teens and now see about once a year , had left a donation for the Christmas Day dinner . A friend then came and helped me sort out transport lists for the Christmas day dinner . I have known him for 17 years , and in recent years he has got involved in the church . Another friend from my Night Shelter Trust texted me asking if I was " in " . He arrived with gifts for the Christmas Dinner and a greeting from yet another acquaintance . It was good to spend time with him . After we had completed our tasks at around 5p . m . I went down the road to purchase an afternoon tea snack . I bumped into a friend I have known for 17 years . She and I did a community and social work course together years ago . We used to go running together but we have not had contact for years now so it was good to catch up . The thing that is the unifying factor in the experience of these friendships is that I can talk easily with the people . With my friend who spent the day with me we could chat backwards and forwards , question each other , tease each other and just feel at home as we worked . My mate from the Trust I have known a relatively short period of time but we have discovered an easy relationship where we can talk backward and forward . We wanted to open a bag and he said , " Ok where 's your big knife you carry . " In the short time he has known me he has learned that I am seldom without a pocket knife . When I met my friend from the social work class I found we could slip into easy relationship with each other again even though it had been years . My friend who left a donation could leave the briefest of notes knowing that I would sense the warmth behind it . It is " warming " to have such friendships and I am indeed lucky , since I am not good at keeping in touch . I took a friend out to the airport . When I arrived back at the church a couple of members came into my office with a parcel of Christmas treats and a money box full of cash . They had bumped into a man in the car park and he had handed these over . I checked the mail box and an old friend had left $ 150 in cash in an envelope with " Merry Christmas " and a smiling face on it . In brackets he had scribbled , " Assistance with Christmas deal " . When Christmas comes each year I have a hard time . There are a couple of issues . First the carols that everybody likes singing . . . The words are scary and distort what Jesus was about . " Low he abhores not the virgin 's womb ! " What the heck is that about ? That 's real big of him ? " Love came down at Christmas " . It wasn 't there before ? Many carols end with the final verses devoted to getting to heaven . " And our eyes at last shall see him . " - like that was what Jesus was all about ? But people LOVE singing carols . Sorry , I grimace my way through them . The second is that as I read the familiar Christmas stories I cannot take them literally . Angel Gabriel , angels hovering in the sky singing , virgin birth , star directing people etc etc . Apart from anything else the dating has difficulties . I see them as " narrative theology " . But without going into deep scholarly negative sounding discussion it is difficult to communicate this stuff . I could ignore it , but there are those who could be sitting listening to the readings saying to themselves , " Yeah right ? How can I believe this rubbish ? " I hate to disturb people 's Christmas . Squash beautiful nativity scenes ? Rubbish much loved carols ? All I am saying is that often when I read the passage for the day at Christmas I groan inwardly . Why me ? Christmas is hard for heretic preachers , but I have found it harder to give up ministry , damn it ! . . . But I liked this bit . . . A friend , an Australian no less , sent me this in an email saying he saw it and thought of me and passed it on . Don 't know where it originated but it rang bells . It starts off with a biblical reference which is the familiar birth of Jesus and " Shepherds in the hills abiding " story from Luke . But then reflecting on the birth and the whole story goes on to talk about the birthing of love . . . Luke 2 : 1 - 20 . . . This is all it Takes . . . It really touched me because it reminded me of my journey . I am far from as loving as I should be , but it reminded me of my attempts to journey with Jesus and the challenges on the way . I liked it and I pass it on . Our Community Christmas day dinner is an interest exercise . Thankfully we have heaps of volunteers ring up to offer assistance . This is great , but just sometimes they want to come " on their terms " do what they think best . There are some who want to come with their kids to " make the kids appreciate what they have . " I want to scream down the phone , " These people are not zoo animals for your kids to get educated about ! " When we say that we encourage hosts to sit and eat with guests some will say , " I don 't want to eat with them ! " in an almost derogatory fashion . Others just want to do " such and such " . I often think we want to help the " unfortunate " but we want to do it on our terms . Do we listen to them ? Do we respect them ? Are we flexible and willing to do what is needed ? Are we willing to give ourselves , our personality , our love and drop our guard so they can sense another human being ? We have a guy in our church who is in his mid 50 's . He is a " simple guy " though far from having an intellectual handicap . He came to us via the drop - in centre . He is a dyslexic and reading is a slow process for him . In the time I have known him he has had two different full time jobs . He was a cleaner / morning tea room man in an engineering factory and he has been a street sweeper . He is a conscientious worker but in both jobs because of changes in each firm , ( loss of contracts ) he was twice made redundant . Of his own initiative he participates in a Task Force Green job scheme which has him doing some useful work with just a little extra in his sickness benefit . He is hearing impaired and cannot afford hearing aids . He gets gout from time to time and when he does he finds it difficult and painful to walk . He had a small stroke recently , from which he has virtually recovered but is still coming to terms with it . If he goes to the doctor he struggles to pay the fee . When he was first unemployed he did search for jobs . I did a CV with him . He was then put on a sickness benefit . He helps out on a Sunday morning by coming early and setting things up , making coffee and doing simple jobs in preparation for worship . He helps out at the drop - in centre , helping to set up and clean up . But the other day he got this officious letter from Work and Income New Zealand , demanding that he must go look for work . In it they give web sites he can look at so that he can check out opportunities . Now I once taught him to play solitaire on a computer , but he would never even know what a web site is , let alone workout how to navigate the internet ! Get real WINZ . There are no jobs out there for the likes of him ! You say he is now not on sickness benefit , but he is in worse shape now than he used to be . He is not on drugs , he does not do criminal activity , he does not drink , he does not smoke , he is only a little over weight . He is not a bludger ! It is not his fault he is unemployed ! It is the result of the " system " . The super efficient worHelp expected I sometimes get annoyed with the people I try to help . Let me say I do not want to generalise , but there is a group of people who act as if the world owes them a living or anything going . I sense this as people ring up for the Christmas dinner . There are those who really appreciate what we are doing . But there are those who think it is their right ! That the transport provided should be there , and they hope its properly cooked and can we have Karaoke again ! It is that sort of attitude . It is similar at our drop - in centre . One man , an alcoholic , said to me , " If it wasn 't for the likes of me you guys would not have a job ! " I nicely pointed out that we were all volunteers . Another was worried about recent government funding cuts to social work agencies and asked , " Will they cut your funds ? " Well no ! Donations from us and other caring people pay for the drop - in centre . " The government should give us these things ! " he replied . Some will complain because we have not had savaloys in a while , and " when are the cakes coming out ? " I have had them banging on the church door if we are a few minutes late getting things ready . They now know not to do that because I will wait longer before opening . : - ) I have heard them telling door bangers off . . . " Don 't do that ! Dave goes slow if we bang on the door ! " Even some of the Habitat for Humanity people I have worked my guts out to help have come across like I was a paid lackey doing their bidding ! . . . . It sometimes annoys me . . . but I do not let it stop me doing things for people . Their attitude , their reaction is their responsibility , their problem . I am called to give people a hand , to give to the poor and help the oppressed etc , that is my responsibility . Just because their nature is to be selfish and self serving , why should I change my nature to give and to care ? That 's the ideal , but just sometimes I get a bit annoyed . Sometimes people will say , " They are pulling the wool over your eyes ! They are just using you ! " " No they 're not . I know what they are like , but that is their problPosted by I mix with people who are slowing down and knocking off for the year . I have been mistakenly thinking that after Christmas things will lighten up for me and I 'll be able to do some tidying up , some planning etc . But as I think about it I won 't be able to do that . I had a man come to me today and ask when my chaplaincies finish for the year ? They don 't ! Fire service , Ambulance , News Paper and brewery . . . they just do not shut down . I will be continuing to visit until I actually go on holiday . My weeks will be just as crowded . I see people having end of year parties and slowing down toward the holidays and part of me is jealous . The collegiality would be nice as well as the slowing down . But then I choose to do the work I do and there are other deep rewards . I talk to people about their christmas plans and the variety of responses is interesting . Some see Christmas day as a day to get " pissed " . ( drunk ) They look forward to lazing around drinking " stubbies " all day and collapsing into bed having pigged out and thoroughly drunk . Others tell you their plans and it goes like this . " We gotta go out to the in - laws ' for lunch , then we gotta go to my brother 's place , then we gotta go to mum and dad 's place . " It all sounds like hard work ! They often do not sound thrilled . When I think back to our ' normal ' Christmases I sometimes had this feel . You felt you better not hurt anybody by not turning up . You ended the day having been fed a way too much , the kids were scratchy and you were tired and you had not had much time together as a family . When we began our Community Christmas dinners my mum was quite annoyed . " You don 't like family ! " she would complain . After the first Christmas day dinner we climbed in the van to drive three hours to where the family were celebrating so that we would not disappoint mum . Half way there the van broke down and we had to turn around and nurse the van home . Since then we have tried to catch up with family on Boxing day or New Years day . I am lucky . I know I will have a good Christmas day . It will be stressful , very busy and tiring . The one thing I am sure of is that late in the afternoon , I will be sitting at home drinking a stubby with an incredibly warm feeling that we have helped a lot of people , guests and volunteers , have a great day . You can 't beat that feeling ! before . There probably has always been some worship , even in the big snows . It is Christmas Day also , a very important day in the Church calendar . Why worship . There is no time to hold worship and there will be no space in the building . But . . . . . we will be open to all , sharing love , breaking bread together ( eating ) and we will be remembering Jesus . Perhaps that is worship after all ? I don 't get out of the work of preparation though . I have a radio service to record on Wednesday . In Church this morning I had a thanksgiving time for the year that has passed . We thought about the sorts of things we as a church had achieved in the year . It was not a bad list . As we sung the final hymn I looked at the congregation and counted up a number of people who were not worshipping with us this time last year . In spite of the fact that we are an old down town church , and we are mostly older people with an organ as our musical instrument ( which I am not comfortable with ) we have added to our numbers . That 's not bad for our style , our city and where we are . We are not static . Posted by I wrote recently of a law firm who arranged what they termed a " modest donation " toward our Church 's Community Christmas Day dinner . We received the envelope today . There was a Cheque in it for $ 1000 . Wow . Modest ? It enables us to breathe easy . Another lady gave $ 100 , and another gave a heap of personally painted pine cones to help us decorate the place . We have been promised a further ham . It is all happening . I am finding it hard to get around to doing all I need to do , but it certainly is a great adventure , exciting even though this dinner will be number 23 . People ask me sometimes , " Don 't you want a ' normal ' Christmas ? " We have done it for so long I think I have forgotten what a " normal " Christmas is like . I realised that for most of our married life we have been running Christmas Day dinners . ( we have been married 42 years . ) I heard today that a lady has given us $ 200 toward our Christmas dinner . She is the sister of a Dominican Sister , I don 't know her but she knows of us . The local Dominican Sisters have always been very supportive of our work . Today we talked with the couple who will provide some singing entertainment , and it is so good they are bright , friendly and enthusiastic . The wave of generosity continues . I am out of sorts with my denomination and do not feel I belong . I have read of the United Church of Christ in USA and wish they had a presence in NZ . Maybe my congregation could join them then ? If not the congregation it would be an option for me ? I am out of sorts with Habitat for Humanity NZ and locally I find they are doing things that somehow deny the spirit of Habitat for Humanity . I get emails from the Fuller Centre For Housing which is a continuation of the ministry of Millard Fuller the founder of Habitat for Humanity . I wish they had a presence in NZ so I could get involved . When I was involved in Habitat locally we were building houses and I loved that sense of accomplishment , the sharing between rich and poor and the love enjoyed on site . They are doing things differently locally now . I think that community building was an important part of the total work . The way things are done now it feels like they have cut the guts out of H4H . I am deeply disappointed . I had hoped that Habitat for Humanity could have been my retirement occupation . I still find myself annoyed every time I have to submit statistics in Chaplaincy . I hear too that the on site chaplaincy is becoming less of their work and consultancy / supervision is expanding . I feel we have embarked on a business model of operation and neglected the mission model . So I am a little out of sorts with chaplaincy . One has to ask , am I just hard to get along with ? I am a bit of a dreamer . Walking down the mountain the other day I dreamed of these possibilities . . . . There is more and more a need for families to receive a hand up and for communities to share resources across the rich / poor divide . There used to be another housing group in Dunedin called " Just Housing " . Maybe there is room for another group to operate ? I don 't think I am hard to get along with . In spite of my differences I have hung in with all the above groups a lot longer than many others have . One man wrote ; Today is my day off and I have been in the vegetable garden which means as I work , I think . I had some work emails to deal with early this morning and in the process went to our denominations NZ website . There was a Christmas message from the president with his thoughts about the future . In his message he says this about his dream for our churches . . . . Are we on the same page ? What would our core beliefs be that those of us who are connected to CCNZ would wholeheartedly agree with ( we should sit down and work that through sometime ) . I know we pride ourselves in the statement ' no creed but Christ ' , it does seem to be open to misinterpretation . For CCNZ what does ' but Christ ' really mean ? I have heard the same man raise this issue before . He wants to clearly define what we believe and who believes it , and my guess is he will want us to believe the same as he does . I like our restoration movement slogan , " No creed but Christ " . I like our other slogan , " In essentials Unity , in non - essentials liberty , and in all things love . " I do not like people trying to define dogma . I think that it was in that process that the early church got distorted and drifted away from the way of Jesus . The " Pharisees " continue to invade the church ! I love the story about one of our founders , Alexander Campbell . In the early nineteenth century he was somewhere in Scotland as a Presbyterian minister ( At least of one branch of the then very splintered presbyterian Church ) and attended a communion service . To get accepted for communion you had to answer certain questions about dogma and if you answered correctly you received a little lead token which was your ticket to allow you to take communion . The woman in front of him could not answer all the questions correctly so she was turned away from taking communion , and obviously upset by this turn of events . Alexander Campbell answered correctly , received his token , but when the offering plate came around found himself placing the token in the plate and leaving the service in disgust . He was so distressed that these dogma questions kept followers of Christ away from the communion table . I like " No Creed but Christ " . It allows people who follow Christ , with a variety of interpretations as to what dogma they believe , to actually work together , discover Jesus and discover unity . One of the reasons I have stayed with our Churches is that potentially there is room for liberty . I do feel out of sorts with current trends and the president probably sees me as one who is contributing to fragmentation and dysfunction . ( I don 't rock the boat , just keep doing my thing as I believe it . - a sort of " live and let live " attitude . ) I recall a western comedy song , I think a take off about Billy the kid . In it an imaginary psychologist asks the kid , " When did you run away from home ? " Answer : " I didn 't run away from home , my home ran away from me . - We lived in a covered wagon and I fell out the back " . I feel like that . Churches of Christ , my " home , " started me on a faith journey that included openness , love , scholarship and inclusiveness . I have continued the journey but my " home ran away from me . " Somehow I feel its done a u - turn and is heading back to a superstitious , sectarian and theologically ignorant form of Christianity . I have just become chairman of the local Night Shelter Trust . ( I was a founding member ) We learned that the house we rent was to be auctioned off today . I went along to the auction with another man from our trust . We are of course concerned because the homeless could be even more homeless . I was sitting there waiting for the auction to begin and thinking how much out of my comfort zone I was . The men gathering looked rich property investors , and my companion knew some of them . This was not my scene . Then a suited man came in and I suddenly realised I knew him . He was a friend from the time I did a social work course . We used to run together . He is now a property investor and wheeler and dealer . Way back when we were exploring the beginnings of the night shelter this man had expressed an interest in assisting . Now he was still interested and keen to have a meeting . The house was not sold . We did line up a meeting between him and a group from the Trust . As he shook my hand to leave he said , " This is no coincidence - somehow it I think it was meant to be . " I suspect he may be right . So often in my life when profound work , " God 's work " needs resources the right people " emerge " . For example , we have never run short of money or resources for our Christmas Day dinner . I wish I trusted that more often . Watch this space . ( Speaking of unity . . . it is not found by " sitting down and working through " beliefs . It is found in loving action together . My Night Shelter and Habitat for Humanity experience attests to this . Most of my colleagues on the Night Shelter Trust are Catholics . If we talked " beliefs " we would fight . But by following Jesus in caring action we discover an exciting essential unity in Jesus . ) A great day I have been an unfaithful Kiwi today . I checked the scores of the Hobart cricket test match against Australia last night and I despaired . It looked like another Aussie victory . But I was wrong . The New Zealand bowlers and fielders did their thing well and we beat the Australians in Australia . ( The first time this has happened in since 1993 ) As one email to the TV station said tonight , " Any day we beat the Australians is a great day ! " On Friday night we had our final night for 2011 of our drop - in centre . It is nice to know that we have Friday nights off until February . The guests we have are generally used to this by now but you can sense their sadness as they were saying " goodbye . " We have one guy who comes every Friday , he used to be a weight lifter , so even though he is a gentle guy , he looks mean . He is unemployed but spends his days looking after his dad who is senile , very old and disabled . He comes in on a Friday night , has something to eat with us , plays a few games of pool and then goes to " tuck Dad into bed . " He came in on Friday as usual and when he learned it was the final night eyeballed me and said , " When are you starting again ? " I told him it would be February and the disappointment was written all over his face and eyeballing me again he said , " That 's a very long break . Why ? " I felt guilty , but I do know it is hard work . One of our volunteers commented on Saturday night that Saturdays were always hard after Friday nights . Each Friday night is tiring . I conducted a small ceremony as we interred the ashes of the 101 year old lady whose funeral I took recently . It was a small simple ceremony at a family grave site . The lady had asked that her departure be handled very simply , no great funeral and no money wasted . ( She had the cheapest of coffins to honour her request ) She wanted her ashes buried in a simple cardboard box . I loved her style , I will include such instructions about my departure . We had a family night with guests coming from a range of cultures . These immigrants to NZ came from China , Scotland , Germany , India , Sri Lanka , Iran , Philippine / American , Samoa , Sudan and of course New Zealand . We ate a pot luck meal , the kids played games and adults were busy talking . About three people shared a song with us and then others spontaneously sang . A fifteen year old from Sri Lanka sang , then her thirteen year old sister joined her for another song . Three Indian ladies spontaneously sang a song from where they were sitting . The special for me was when an Iranian lady shared a Persian chant about relying on God . Of course , as with the other songs , we could not understand a word , but the presentation was reverent and sincere . I enjoy this mix of cultures , it enriches my life . Among the group is a mature Chinese couple . The man has very limited English and we have to use simple words and play charades to talk with him . His wife has more English but still struggles sometimes . They have come to our Christmas dinner twice . They were booking in for their third dinner and as they wrote their names down she hesitated . She said , " I want to . . . I want to . . . ( and she turned to her husband and spoke Chinese briefly ) I want to . . . be like you . . . I want to . . . volunteer . . get the meals . . . we have been two times ( holding up two fingers ) it is time for us . . . to help . " I grinned all over . It was so neat . She will be a happy volunteer . The Indian woman who leads the cross cultural women 's group was expressing thanks for support we had given . She said , " Lots of people just talk about helping people , but David ( us ) really does it . These people don 't just talk about it , they actually help a lot of people . " I 'm glad that can be said about us though I don 't think we are as good as it sounds . There 's a leading lawyer in town who has assisted us with our Christmas Day dinner for about four years now . He rang up and left a message on my phone and I rang him back . . . " Now about this Christmas dinner old man . . . . we usually give a modest donation . . . where can I send it ? " The " modest donation " is usually several hundred dollars . " Now also you generally send me to pick people up then I bludge a free meal off you . Do you want my phone numbers so we can arrange that ? " I joked with him that the free meal was why I did the Christmas dinner too . He said , " We 'll bludge together then old man ! " He was a school prefect when I began high school in Dunedin and gave me one or two detentions in my first year at Otago Boys High . It is funny that now later in life we have this once a year friendship . I think its cool . Musical generosity . Over night we have lined up some musical stuff for the Christmas Dinner . We talked with a couple who were so happy to give some items . Another lady who has played piano and sung for us for a couple of christmas dinners is happy to come back . She said , " Thank you for asking " . Pretty cool . Music adds so much . We have Little India restaurant lined up to cook the vegetables and Marlow Pies will cook our twenty plus legs of mutton . The owners of both places have helped in the past . They are both going away this year , but have insisted that they will organise for someone on their staff to look after it all for us . A man in overalls walked into Space2B , did not introduce himself but asked , " Are you the minister of this show ? " " Yes " . . . He dug in his pockets and pulled out a bank cheque for $ 110 " Here , for your Christmas meal - you do well . Bye ! " and walked out the door . ( I recognised him from other years ) Mondays are my only day off each week . We have an acre of ground at our house and we try to establish a vegetable garden . It is not as big as it ought to be . I am aware that many people in the world would love to have this much ground and this climate . They could live off it , where as we waste much of it . We have two goats who are just grass eaters who keep the paddock in check and we have a hen house with eight hens producing a good number of eggs every day . The last three Mondays , have been rainy weather so nothing has been done in the garden . Today was a brilliant day , sunny and warm , but not too warm . With sun hat and sunblock on I planted 9 rows of various vegetables . They are a bit late but with proper care they will produce . I had to fork over the ground and had been tossing stones over the fence into the paddock . I realised that we could use them and that this patch of ground had plenty of them . I managed to collect two buckets of stones which went on the path to the hen house . One of the reasons I enjoy gardening is that it provides time for your mind and heart to catch up on yourself . It enables you to appreciate various things . Here are a few . As I tossed stones from the garden into a bucket I got to thinking how amazing it is . Each stone is a different size and shape yet as I threw them in the bucket I think I got at least 9 out of every 10 in the target . I think it is amazing that my brain , eyes and arms can co - ordinate in such a way ! The human body is a pretty good piece of machinery . I still marvel at cricket batsmen who have a split second to see and hit a ball . ( It is just a pity NZ batsmen could not do it better ! ) I just love that I could , if I had the time , feed myself in a healthy way off my patch of land . Maybe when I retire ? While I was dreaming of this I began to wonder . I realised that presently I find fulfillment in dealing with people , helping them , supporting them and sharing with them . When I retire will I truly be happy just growing a garden ? In the newspaper and via email another denomination in Dunedin was advertising a part time ministry position . I am super busy ; I have significant frustrations in my present ministry ; I need to start looking after my health a bit better so I am tempted to go for a job with less hours . I emailed away for information and to let them know I was interested . There are a number of congregations and the position meant working in a team with others . There was a " Parish Profile " which I was interested to explore . It was all very well worded . There were mission statements , goals and clear descriptions of what was happening . If the figures are to be believed the total attendance at services amounts to about three times what my present congregation is . The biggest congregation of the four has more attending than my present one . The theology they wanted to pursue was " Progressive Theology " which is where I am at . They had some lovely sounding statements about their work . . . but . . . . the heading on part of the Parish Profile read like this ; Significant congregation achievements , events or programmes in the past 3 - 5 years in the congregation and community : Now the answer they gave to that was a program that was essentially geared for the " faithful " and the " thinkers " . These are " evening meetings that will enrich , educate and entertain members of the parish and also the wider community " . There were also a couple of retreats . Is that all they could list in the last 3 - 5 years ? None of the future goals of the parish had them reaching out and serving or interacting with the community in any big way . Now I realise that there are probably other significant things they do not mention but they seem to fall short from my perspective . I then thought " how could my Church answer that same question ? " . . . A weekly Drop - in centre for unemployed , mental health patients etc ; Space 2B open and available to the community ; Settlement resource at Space2B ; New Immigrants Orientation tours with the City Council ; links to , hosting and encouragement of Sustainability groups ; Monthly cultural family nights ; Christmas Day community dinners are just the main ones . As I read this profile I began to think that for our size we are doing very well . We are punching a way above our weight , though admittedly the proportion of my congregation participating in these is relatively small . This different denomination has all the correct words and progressive theology that would tempt me . Their thinking is good . They do a lot of " education and theologizing " which I would enjoy , but it seems all inward . It appears to be intellectual and / or spiritual " masturbation " . They do not seem to be intent on connecting with their community . I could be wrong , but I guess I have to ask , " Would I fit in ? " I would in many respects , because I like their words and theology . But with their apparent directions I may also find more frustration . Then again , it might be something I can change ? The comparisons have been an interesting exercise . We do need to be sowing the seed . Seeds are no good just sitting in their packets , they need planting in the garden . Life seems to be a bit of a blur lately . I am always rushing from one thing to another . Last Monday it rained so I did some work on Sunday 's readings , thinking that could mean I could take some time off during the week . There has been no chance of that happening ! I have been putting in some long hours and often not sleeping well at nights . I mentioned that St John Headquarters had a bit of an explosion and fire that I came across on Thursday . I had visited it then , but had been thinking that I would pop across on Friday morning to see how people were . St John NZ had done away with Workplace Support Chaplains in favour of a counselling service people rang up for , so I had lost my paid chaplaincy job there and now continue to have contact as a voluntary chaplain . I had gone in to the office an hour earlier on Friday morning to get some work done . ( I have a regular visitor for coffee on Friday mornings . ) As I was working away , I had a phone call and visit from two of the leaders from St John . They asked if I could go across and spend some time chatting with staff who had been distressed by the fire etc . Of course I said " yes " , whilst wondering how I was going to fit everything else in . The selfish vindictive side of me wanted say , " Where is your fancy new counselling service you replaced me with now ? " I spent a big part of the morning talking with people for whom the fire had been a frightening experience . Sometimes it just added to stuff that was already happening in their lives . Later in the day I visited the hospital where a staff member had been receiving treatment for burned hands . On Fridays a group we have assisted in getting off the ground meets in our building free of charge . They are " Women Across Cultures " a group of women from many cultures who spend the morning together . ( Because of the presence of one or two women from quite strict Muslim backgrounds men are not allowed in the room . ) We have a group of guys frequent our Space2B at lunch times . This last Friday the women were cooking up a lunch , a multi - cultural delicacy . They sent a message through to Space2B to see how many were there . In due course enough food to feed us all came through . I loved that sharing , it is part of my dream . I had heard that one of my fire fighters had experienced a tough situation on his day off . He was sitting watching TV when there was a fatal accident between a car and a motorbike on the road outside his house . He was first on the scene and stayed with the motorcyclist as his life ebbed out of him , then extinguished the burning bike before any other emergency services managed to get there . I knew the man was coming on duty that night so I made a trip to the fire station to see him and see how he was doing . It was interesting how he said such an incident was so different when off duty . On duty when the alarm goes of you steal yourself up to face whatever and you have your crew with you . When it is unexpected and you are alone it is harder to deal with . We have in our congregation a man we first met through our drop - in centre , his name is Robbie . He helps out in various ways and we support him too . As I was visiting fire stations on Friday I got a text from my wife to tell me that Robbie had suffered a mini stroke and been taken to the emergency department . I went there to see him and sat outside the curtain around his bed listening as the doctor checked him out . I realised that I loved Robbie like my own brother and was feeling deeply for him . He is OK , given medication and back giving me cheek , but that too was part of my Friday . Saturday was also a busy day . I was up early and working . I conducted a wedding and attended the reception in the afternoon . I was pleased with the way I conducted the wedding and the positive vibes I got about it all . I returned home and continued working at around 11 p . m . It was about 12 : 30 a . m . when I went to bed and a little after 6 a . m . when I got up this morning . We New Zealanders are masters of the understatement . I had to laugh as I talked to people who had experienced the explosion and fire at St John . " It was a bit scary " meaning really I was petrified . " Just a little bit of a mess " meaning the room was a blackened stuffed up mess . " I got a bit of a fright " meaning I was scared out of my brain . Fire fighter involved with the motorcyclist said something like , " Yeah it was all a bit sad . " I think he means it was a very tragic accident . Robbie said something like , " Didn 't like it much ! " which meant experiencing the stroke had scared the life out of him . We have a funny way of communicating our feelings . We understate them , when deep inside we have been profoundly impacted . I am impressed with what I can do . I have been incredibly busy and having to fit a lot of stuff into each day . There have been times when I have wondered how I can possibly do it all . But I have ! I have done it well too . I seem to be able to prioritise , think carefully about how to most efficiently do things and manage to come out on top . I have surprised myself with how I will write up a " to do " list and methodically work my way through it and still find creativity . Somehow the insight , the energy and the endurance " comes " . . . I actually feel linked to processes bigger than myself . I had been out in the country for a wedding rehearsal . As I came back to town and down the hill toward the church I noticed fire trucks surrounding the St John Ambulance Headquarters with hoses going everywhere . There had been some sort of explosion inside . It is just across the road from the church so I went over and talked with fire fighters and Ambulance people . They were winding down the incident and I was chatting with firefighters . It was Green Watch , the crews which will be on duty on Christmas day . They came up to me and said that they will be keen to help . It was almost embarrassing their readiness to be involved . Fire fighters have assisted with our Christmas day dinner every year now since about 1995 . I enjoy their involvement and their acceptance of who I am in mission and ministry . It is a real buzz on the day . Tonight we had our Night Shelter Trust meeting . I love working with the people on the Trust . Kevin our chairman of 6 years has decided to step down and I have been " promoted " to the chair . We have made great progress this year in establishing ourselves on a firmer footing and we are hoping to continue the momentum . I am going to have to rely on the whole team doing their thing if we are going to progress . They said as they left that I will have to go home and " adjust your CV . " It will be quite " life - giving " working with this generally enjoyable bunch of people . After the meeting a group of us was sitting around chatting . Into the church walked this rather spaced out looking guy . He turned out to be homeless . He went away and came back again and I eventually took him around to the night shelter . Warren our night shelter manager welcomed him ( he was familiar to him ) and sat him down to talk with him . It seemed a fitting end to a night of discussing the business side of our work . Life for me even at 63 is one big interesting , though challenging adventure . " Here 's what I think . I think we can 't go around measuring our goodness by what we don 't do . By what we deny ourselves , what we resist and who we exclude . I think we 've got to measure goodness by what we embrace . What we create and who we include . " I say a loud " Amen " to that . I am father to five adult children , married since 1969 and a workplace chaplain to firefighters , ambulance staff and brewery workers . I am a retired Church minister . My faith / theology is very much " incarnational " / action orientated . I began my working life as a plumber . I am a volunteer and past director for the local Habitat for Humanity group and a trustee of the Dunedin Night Shelter Trust . In 2002 I was awarded the Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit . I am still a tradesman at heart and love making things and fixing things . I am a Workplace Chaplain to the NZ fireservice . At the firestation every time one man sees me he yells , " Here comes JC 's helper ! " . I guess I am happy to be called just that . . . " Jesus ' helper " . I am a follower of Jesus . A a quote from Dave Andrews in his book , " Not Religion but Love " . " Being a devotee of Jesus is not a matter of subscribing to a certain set of dogmas , obeying rules and regulations , and getting others to subordinate themselves to them . The essence of being a devotee of Jesus is to live in sympathy with God as Jesus did ; feeling the throb of God 's heartbeat , and teaching our hearts to learn to beat in sync with the love that sustains the universe . It means developing our capacity to sense intuitively what causes love pleasure , and what causes love pain , and doing everything we can to enhance the pleasure , and diminish the pain . " The Charter for Compassion The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious , ethical and spiritual traditions , calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves . Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures , to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there , and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being , treating everybody , without exception , with absolute justice , equity and respect . It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain . To act or speak violently out of spite , chauvinism , or self - interest , to impoverish , exploit or deny basic rights to anybody , and to incite hatred by denigrating others - even our enemies - is a denial of our common humanity . We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion . We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence , hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions , religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings - even those regarded as enemies . We urgently need to make compassion a clear , luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world . Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness , compassion can break down political , dogmatic , ideological and religious boundaries . Born of our deep interdependence , compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity . It is the path to enlightenment , and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community . Disclaimer . . . This blog is the personal weblog of me , Dave Brown . The opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone . The positions taken on matters theological or political ( or anything else for that matter ) are in no way to be construed as the official positions of any other person , institution , group or organisation . : - ) Blame me alone . . . . it 's my weird musings .
|
An Unexpectedly Successful show season Posted on December 25 , 2011 by B Colledge The show season has now finished . It seems to be getting shorter each year . Last year we had one more show to go and Rafa won his second novice . This year wasn 't helped by my knee surgery in April . I thought the recovery time would be a few days but I had misread the information . So the boys have received very little training this year . We did manage to get to a few shows . I took my chances in the ring because I haven 't been able to train much and fast pace not at all . But both boys started to pick up some places and I told myself I would be more than happy just to get to shows and anything else would be a bonus . It wasn 't until the middle of August that I was able to get out and train on a regular basis but even now I train very little heelwork . I managed to cope with a full day 's training which some friends had arranged with Herbie Watson , one of our top trainers . It was Herbie who suggested that I could ask a little more from Rafa . This involved concentrating on making sure Rafa kept a constant head position . Rafa being slightly built and a smoothcoat has to be so much more accurate than other dogs and just a slight change in head position can make it look as if he is losing accuracy . For the next couple of weeks we worked on it and I was able to click and treat for perfection having first ensured that Rafa started out properly . Then at the end of August he won his first B . This came right out of the blue because I had stopped entering B . Rafa being the sensitive little soul that he is simply did not have the confidence to do sendaways under ring conditions . So we had been working on building his confidence away from the ring . But Stonehouse championship show entries closed early and we had one B left . I decided to take Rafa in and see what he made of the sendaway . In the event he did one of the best sendaways of the day and won the class . After that he just seemed to gain in confidence . He did have a minor setback at his next show when his dumbbell dropped in a hole and I had to help him . But on his next outing he won his first A and this was from an early draw - not an easy thing to do . By now the confidence was so high that he decided he could go and socialise in stays instaed of being rooted to the spot . Then after more remedial training at home we went to Plymouth DTC 's 2 day show on Dartmoor at the beginning of October . This is one show I love to enter win or lose because there is always such a happy atmosphere and the local hotel allows us to have dogs in our rooms . It is usually accompanied by rain which has never dampened our spirits . Dog trainers are a hardy lot if a trifle eccentric ! This year however it was unseasonably baking hot and we had to do what we could to protect our dogs from the heat . It did not bother Rafa one little bit . He won A again on the first day with Roy just half a point behind him in 2nd and on day 2 he nearly did it again but a rather messy scent relegated him to 2nd with Roy again behind him . But I was more than happy with the weekend because the win meant Rafa had won out of A so no more dumbells for him . I gave the next show a miss because we had a bonus A to work and he was drawn early in B . So that left just one more show this year . It was again on Dartmoor but the show ground conditions are not easy to cope with being irregular and on a slope . Added to which it was extremely windy which didn 't really suit either of us . But Rafa tried his best and put in a really good round . He almost managed his stays getting up to touch my hand just before the end of the exercise . In the event we finished in second place . So we have ended the season on a high . Rafa has actually only worked two B rounds but finished first and second . So I am optimistic that after a winter of building his confidence and working on his C exercises he will come out even stronger next year . This year which started on a real downer with knee surgery followed by months of being unable to do much in the way of training has turned out to be far more successful than I had ever dared to hope . I am still not capable of containing the powerhouse that is Roy . But after saving my life he owes me nothing and as long as he enjoys himself I will continue to enjoy his company whatever he chooses to do in the ring . One thing is for sure , he has never been known to lose confidence or refuse to do any exercise and of course best of all , he has fun . Jake is now 8 months old and his training has had to take a bit of a back seat . But he has been slowly learning his heelwork position and having fun around the shows . That is all part of his education . The kennel club accepted his name as Jabari ( Arabic for fearless ! ) Jake . He is so like Roy in his attitude to life in general but won 't be as big although he is certainly not going to be small . I have been trying to get Jake out on his own with a view to building his confidence around other people so he can just concentrate on whatever we happen to be ding . So when our club ran the Kennel Club good citizens tests I took Jake along so he could do something on his own for a change . He thoroughly enjoyed himself . I really didn 't expect anything from him but he gained his bronze and silver awards which was a bonus . I wouldn 't normally take part in these tests but Jake will not be ready to compete for some time and it does him good to be out and about amongst other dogs and people . The following month I took him to a breed show . Again it was purely for the purpose of socialising him . The show Border Collie is a world apart from the working Border Collie as is the case with many breeds . I had to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping Jake 's attention and preventing him from sitting . Having never trained him for she show ring he was not keen to keep still . But he did enjoy being fed for doing very little . So it was another positive ring experience for him . Needless to say as he bears little resemblance to a show collie he was unplaced in his class . The next few months , knee and weather permitting , I am hoping to be able to work on training for all three boys . We have already made a start . I have got together with a group of friends and we are hiring a hall occasionally so we can help each other with our training . I have decided to retrain Roy 's heelwork just as if he was a pup starting out . I am hoping this will help me to handle the power . But if it doesn 't he will still be my best boy ! Rafa is taking to his C work really well now . He was lacking confidence at first but recently a day 's training with Rob Bint helped greatly . Rafa now loves his distant control and positions on the move in heelwork . I am hoping the sessions with friends will help him gain enough confidence to be competitive . Jake 's retrieve is coming along well and he loves doing heelwork . So perhaps late next year he too will be able to take his place in the ring . He has much more confidence than Rafa but I did discover one peculiarity . He will take off whenever he does not understand what is being asked of him . I think traditional trainers would have resorted to punishment . I decided to ' think outside the box ' assuming he was not deliberately playing up . He had a tendency to run whenever I changed to go right handed in heelwork . I found this out when I put a lead on so he didn 't have the option to run . So I just lured him round to the right a couple of times . After that it was as if a lightbulb had gone off in his head . He simply thought heelwork was left circles only . Now he has put it all together he is thoroughly enjoying himself . It was my fault for going on with left circles only for too long . I had not made it clear what I wanted . Dogs are funny creatures . Collies in particular have their little quirks . Once you understand them it makes life so much easier . Unfortunately a couple of months ago we had to say goodbye to Keeta , our lovely old lady . She was sixteen years old and her kidneys had been failing . One day she made it crystal clear she had had enough so we had to make the decision to let her slip away peacefully . It is never an easy decision but it is the one last thing we can do for our dogs who give so much and yet ask so little of us in return . I am now looking forward to the next show season when I hope to be able to get to more shows . Whatever happens I consider I have been very lucky to have such wonderful dogs . It does not happen by chance . I take great care to choose dogs from bloodlines I like and choose the pup that I can instantly bond with . It never ceases to amaze me that people choose a pup based on coat colour , markings etc . I think this makes pup selection a bit of a lottery . Without the right material how can we possibly hope to forge a successful partnership ? ( see my book - Your Perfect Dog - The Secrets ) . I am so happy that I have such wonderful dogs in my life . A STRANGE SHOW SEASON Posted on September 14 , 2011 by B Colledge It is some time since my last posting and quite a lot has happened . This has to be one of the strangest show seasons I have experienced since I started competing . I have entered the usual shows but as the state of my damaged knee varies from day to day I have missed a lot of them . I do try to train the dogs but a few days ago when I was updating Onenote where I keep all my training notes I found one section had no entries for Roy since mid - July . I thought it was the sync software playing up . But it was simply that I have not been able to train him at home since then . Rafa has a few entries in this same section but not very many . So basically I am delighted with whatever results the boys achieve when we do go to a show . Roy is finally calming down a fraction and has been placed at most of the shows we have been to including a 4th place in a strong C class from running order 1 ! Everyone who knows us will understand what an achievement this was . I am not a morning person and Roy needs a lot of time to acclimatise or he takes over as only he can ! Literally one or two things have prevented him from winning this season . I still live in hope ! Rafa always tries . But being the super - sensitive little soul he is things do not always go his way . He is still having confidence problems although it is getting better . We could have managed without his dumbbell disappearing into a dumbbell sized hole at our last show . He was totally freaked by it but even then he still came 6th in a big class . I had stopped entering him in B because he just didn 't have the confidence to cope with a variety of different Sendaways and training rounds I can do at home . Then because of one early closing entry we actually worked a B . To my amazement he did the best sendaway of the day and won the class . Now if we can just win 2 more he will be C only and will never have to retrieve a dreaded dumbbell again ! ! ! Time is very much on his side however . Roy in the meantime has turned his considerable herding skills to a literally lifesaving event . We were walking in the forest with a friend who has recently had heart surgery , our two four month old pups and a very old dog . A rogue wild boar came charging at us from a fair distance . He wasn 't about to stop and we could only stand and hope . Then Roy ran towards him as it was obvious he was set on killing someone . The boar turned his attention to Roy and chased him off into the forest . I was surprised that the ultra - brave powerhouse that is Roy should run off like that and had visions of those huge tusks ripping my poor boy to shreds . Then a short time later I realised my mistake . The boar broke cover up ahead of us and with Roy in hot pursuit headed off deep into the forest . I have no idea how my brave boy managed to turn the beast after luring it away from us . But he was totally unmarked and we were still rooted to the spot . It was much later before we realised just how much danger we had faced . I always said that Roy would give his life for me if necessary . Thankfully it wasn 't necessary and he certainly saved my life that day . Trifling things like wins at shows pale into insignificance after an experience like that . Jake is five months old now and is growing rapidly . He has now moved on from puppy class and is enjoying classes with both pups his age and older inexperienced dogs . He loves training and I only have to produce his clicker and treats and he starts to run through his repertoire . I do not use much in the way of paraphernalia so all training is off lead . He wears a light leather collar to distinguish between training and just going out for exercise and that is all . I am training heelwork the way I trained Rafa on large mainly left handed circles , tossing a treat back so that he has to choose to join me in the heel position again . I think this is the easiest way to train not only heelwork but also the A recall . And it does allow a pup to make the decision to take part which I think is very important . Jake is going to be a very strong dog one day , just like Roy who carries some of the same bloodlines . I do not want confrontation but I do want a pup who wants to work with me . Setting things up so he thinks it is his idea is right for us . But he won 't see the inside of a competition ring this year at least . Time , as with Rafa , is most definitely on Jake 's side . The show season is drawing to a close and although we have not been to many shows I am pleased with the way my boys have tried for me with not too much in the way of training . At the moment I am just keeping Roy ticking over and working on a more consistent head position for Rafa and of course trying my best to build his confidence . Over the winter I hope my knee will improve a little more so we can do more training . Jake will certainly need more time spending on him as he matures . For now he is just a baby so does not need too much in the way of competition training . I was really looking forward to judging my first C but unfortunately that proved to be impossible . However I did manage to judge a really good quality novice bitch class last month and was pleased with my line - up . Our sport is not doing well for entries with the rising cost of fuel and the difficulty of winning classes to move up these days . So it is always good to see that there is at least strength in depth . In a class of over 40 nobody looked out of place and the winners were very good indeed . I am so pleased I have dogs but I fear the competition is just as hot in the dog classes . I will just have to work that much harder training Jake for when he does eventually make his debut . The New Boy Posted on July 27 , 2011 by B Colledge I can 't believe that it is already half way through the show season and we are still not competitive . We did get to a couple of shows but for the last month I have been side - lined because my knee recovery has suffered a bit of a setback . At least one of the shows was the not to be missed Carmarthen weekend where a great time was had by all . This show has very quickly become one of my favourites . I couldn 't cope with the rounds so we only came away with one third place . Roy took over as he always does when he knows I can 't manage . Rafa was unfortunately disturbed in stays on the first day but managed to complete the test on the second day in spite of another crisis of confidence with his retrieve . I was very proud of him because a couple of weeks earlier he had a fright in the ring and as luck would have it this was just as he was about to retrieve . It cost us a possible win . Rafa isn 't the bravest of dogs but as he is still only 2 years old he has time on his side . Last month I was looking at adverts for litters when one of them caught my eye . I like to know what is being bred - Border Collies of course - what else ? But occasionally I find a pup bred from some of my favourite lines and if the time is right then I may just go and look . This time although the time isn 't really right I went to see a litter of pups . Bred on a farm in the Brecon Beacons you would not expect pups to have had much in the way of socialisation . But as with Rafa what you expect and the reality are not always the same . I took a friend with me and we drove through some beautiful scenery finally arriving at the farm high up on a hill miles from anywhere . We were looking at a wonderful litter of Kelpie pups which were in a pen near the door of the barn - fascinated because they had an orphan lamb for company . So we didn 't immediately notice the Collie pups in the next pen . As we turned to look a small black and white bundle of fluff flew across the pen and latched on to me like an exocet missile . I picked him up and said ' this is my pup ' oblivious to the fact that there were others in the pen . I don 't know if Jake chose me or I chose him but he came home that day . I always find that if I have a strong reaction I don 't ever regret it . But it wasn 't impulse . The breeding was right . Ironically , Lisa who came with me had a similar strong reaction to Jake 's brother Tip . So what had started out as a visit to look at a litter ended up with 2 pups travelling home together , throwing up all over the cage and making a racket in the process . Roy and Rafa who were in the adjacent cage were not amused . NINE WEEK OLD JAKE Unfortunately when we had the pups for just a few days , Lisa was taken to hospital so Tip came to stay with us for a week . Jake was delighted to have his brother with us because the 2 really do get on famously . By now they were both seasoned travellers and came out in the car wherever we went . It has been incredibly easy socialising these pups . The work had all been done before we got them . Bred for brains they soak up training like a sponge . That does not mean that Jake will be entered at a show as soon as he is old enough . Just that he is very trainable and I will as always be taking my time . JAKE AND TIP - BROTHERS WHO GET ON SO WELL Jake 's great grandfather is Roy 's father with other lines in common as well . So the 2 are very much alike . Jake is totally fearless which has already almost caused problems for us . So training a rock solid recall has to be a priority . The day after we got him he sneaked out of the gate and down the track where I had taken him for a short walk . We were frantically searching for him when the postman drove up and asked if we had lost something . Jake was on the back seat totally unphased by his adventure . All this happened in less than a minute . That day I taught him that as soon as he goes out of the gate he turns back to look for a treat . I am so glad he is a quick learner . I think this is one of the many reasons why Border Collies bred from working lines do not do well in a town . They need space and this is rarely available in towns . I always take my pups along when I go to training club and to shows so that they become accustomed to their future lifestyle early . But although I train every day Jake is the first pup I have actually taken to a class . Our club runs excellent puppy classes so I thought it would be a good idea to take Jake as part of his socialisation . Too many people wrap their pups in cotton wool and never let them mix with other dogs and pups so they end up lacking in social skills . Jake is a roaring extrovert and thinks puppy classes are loads of fun . Last week he ran into the main hall and introduced himself to the beginners as well . As I said before , he is fearless ! But once I produce the clicker and treats I have his full attention . He has a phenomenal attention span for such a youngster . At time of writing he is still only 15 weeks old . He is going to be a bit of a handful as he matures but that is my type of dog . Jake has now settled in to his new lifestyle and pack . He loves to play rough games so when Tip comes to visit he is in his element . But between times Rafa is happy to oblige being just a playful youngster himself . Molly loves to play with pups and although she will flatten Jake when she has had enough he adores her and has no fear of her at all . I often think that Collies were born to play rough games - so many of them do . Roy as usual simply looks down his aristocratic nose . He takes the view that pups should be born big enough to know the rules and totally ignores them until they do . Jake once tried to hang on to Roy 's ruff . He got one of Roy 's looks - that is all it took , no noise or fuss . Roy is now allowed his peace and quiet . Molly and Rafa have to take their chances . Keeta is far too old to be bothered so she is out of bounds to Jake . Last week we visited the Sennybridge sheepdog sales , not to buy anything , just for a day out . There were some quality animals there and the prices were ridiculously low . This week we are hoping to go to the Welsh National Sheepdog trials . It is always good to see some of the best dogs and handlers in the world doing what they do best . We have quite a few shows coming up . I am hoping that the knee exercises will allow me to be competitive again sometime soon . If not there is always next year . In the meantime training is restricted to what I can manage . Roy loves fast pace but that is not an option right now . Still heel position is heel position so pace should not really matter . That is what I keep telling myself ! Rafa is once again getting his confidence back and is starting to retrieve happily again . Unfortunately he is not a natural retriever . So if anything does happen to dent his confidence retrieve is usually the first casualty . Fortunately he has never associated retrieve with scent for some reason . It will be good to be back at the shows again win or lose . Jake has already been to one and had the time of his life . Now he is old enough to be taken to the open shows he can be trained around the showground and learn to concentrate with all the distractions . Shows can be fun for dogs but only if they are acclimatised from an early age . For an older dog to be suddenly dragged into a place where hundreds of dogs and people are gathered can be quite traumatic . Roy and Rafa happily leap into the car on show days . I do not expect Jake the extrovert to be any different . How we dealt with confidence problems Posted on April 22 , 2011 by B Colledge It is over 2 months since I last posted and the competitive year has now started with a vengeance . Unfortunately Roy , Rafa and I have been temporarily side - lined so our season is going to be starting later than usual - much later . Even when we do finally get going we have a lot of missed training to catch up on . We did get to one show in March but with little or no preparation we came away empty handed . Now I have had knee surgery at last . So I am hoping that in a few weeks I 'll be able to train my boys again . At the moment even static work is proving to be a bit of a challenge to say the least ! Time out is probably not such a bad thing as far as Rafa is concerned . It all started in February . I was working on his retrieve because his return was not as fast as his go out . We had a wonderful 2 day training course at our club with top trainer Mavis Mills , well known for her positive methods . Naturally we came away full of enthusiasm . Unfortunately in the next couple of days I failed to notice that Rafa was going through a fear period . This is a time particularly noticeable in sensitive young males when the hormones are surging and a dog can exhibit strange behaviour and act as if the end of the world is close . In Rafa 's case he started to behave as if he had never learned to retrieve . We had one last winter league match . As usual Rafa 's heelwork was very neat and so was his recall . Then came retrieve . The dumbell landed on one end and Rafa who had run straight out went into total meltdown and simply stopped in his tracks completely unable to cope . For once he was not in pole position . This left the team needing to win the final class to win the match . Fortunately Roy obliged and we just scraped through . Our team won the league and last week we were presented with a magnificent trophy at the league presentation evening , an event enjoyed by us all . Rafa 's retrieve problem lasted a few weeks but fortunately it eventually came to an end and he is now back to his usual sunny natured self . He was never a natural retriever and I was beginning to wonder if he would ever regain his confidence . But he has come back stronger than ever . Training has had to take a back seat so my boys have had to pursue other hobbies for the past couple of weeks . Fortunately some of their favourite programmes have been on TV . And they have a lot of fun chasing round the garden playing with a log . Rafa 's confidence is so high now that he will even beat Roy to it and fly back up the garden to show me his prize . I have noticed some strange hormonal behaviour over the years . One young dog I had would suddenly take off if you spoke to him at a particular point on his walk . He too was a sensitive soul . I wonder how many times dogs have been punished for things which are simply not their fault . I didn 't see Rafa 's retrieve problem as a dog who had decided he was going to ' try it on ' or ' be dominant ' so just waited for him to return to normal but at the same time working on building his confidence . I think it is just a particular mindset . Positive trainers try to work out how they can communicate better when things go wrong . Traditional or so - called ' balanced ' trainers resort to corrections . I think it is important to establish a relationship with your dog and this has to be one of honesty and trust . How can a dog trust if he is punished for doing his best ? Because most dogs tend to give their best so long as they have a strong relationship with their handler . If they are constantly being criticised why should they keep trying ? I wouldn 't . But so many people expect their dogs to keep trying even though rewards are rarely if ever forthcoming . I believe it is important to make sure that all training is geared to producing a happy and confident canine partner who works with his handler because he enjoys it not because he has no choice . Many judges dread people coming in to the ring to do a training round because so many end up with the handler constantly nagging the obviously miserable dog . Why people think this will help a dog to gain confidence and produce a superior performance I have no idea . We are not obliged to allow training rounds but most of us want to help . And as everyone knows there is a world of difference between training at home and performance in the ring . It is almost impossible to replicate the atmosphere at a show at home . Training in the ring done well can really help a dog 's confidence . And we all want to win but with a dog who is clearly enjoying himself not one who appears to be under duress . If one or more well thought out training rounds can help us to achieve this then the dog can only benefit and everybody wins . I did think the standard at Crufts this year was higher than ever . Even those lower down the order looked happy and confident and definitely qualified to be there . No doubt the round set by judge Dave Howell helped because it was challenging enough to bring out the best in the qualified teams . No dog looked miserable as has been the case in years gone by . I thought the quality was outstanding and thoroughly entertaining . I do love to watch top teams performing well . Unfortunately this is not a view shared by many . And I do understand that competitive obedience is not such a spectator sport as , agility for example . But perhaps this is more that people don 't understand the technicalities . Heelwork done well looks deceptively easy . Nothing could be further from the truth . I find it strange that the public find stays ( that most boring of exercises ! ) fascinating but are distinctly underwhelmed by a brilliant heelwork performance . However this is not confined to dog sports . I went to watch a dressage competition recently and was amazed to find that barely a handful of people were watching in each arena . And this was a championship event . At least at Crufts there are plenty of people enjoying themselves and soaking up the atmosphere . Until Crufts comes round again there will be a lot more championship shows and the race is now on to qualify for next year . My ambitions for the year are more modest . I want to get back into regular training . First I need to work hard to rebuild the muscles in my damaged knee . Then I hope that Roy , Rafa and I can get to shows and have some fun . Any places this year will be a bonus although we will obviously be doing our best to win . I know that Roy will try too hard as usual . Rafa is gaining confidence daily as he matures . I hope that this year it will carry over into the ring . Whatever happens we are going to enjoy our days out at the shows . Just when you think you know your dogs well they sometimes do something to surprise you . A couple of days ago I was throwing a ball for my lot . Unfortunately I failed to notice they were looking away and the ball bounced awkwardly landing somewhere in the middle of a huge bramble patch . Bramble is most definitely a ' no go ' area because it 's thick and practically impenetrable . But I thought I knew approximately where the ball had landed so I asked Roy to fetch it . I was completely wrong . Roy did find it but in a totally different place . He systematically searched the whole area . This may not sound like much but he kept going for nearly 15 minutes and all I could do was stand back and watch in awe . He was so thrilled when he eventually emerged with his prize . Words cannot begin to describe how much I love and admire this dog . The photo above shows the actual area Roy searched . It is the whole of the left side of the track right down to the trees in the distance . That is some area ! Roy and Rafa Positive Winter Training Posted on February 13 , 2011 by B Colledge What a cold icy winter we have had this year . I was so looking forward to going to a favourite show at the end of December but the weather forced its cancellation for a second year running . It seems such a long time since the beginning of December when Rafa won his second novice . It has been impossible to get outside to train most days for the past 3 months . The snow was bad enough but I think the ice was worse . It 's practically impossible to do neat heelwork on an icy surface but then we have had so much mud to follow . It does appear that things are improving now though . I saw my first lamb of the year a couple of days ago and that usually means spring is on its way . The lack of training has been particularly noticeable with Roy who does need plenty to occupy him and space to move . He is a very strong dog and working with him is like trying to drive a Ferrari on ice at the best of times . Rafa too has felt the lack of training but in a different way . He is an ultra sensitive little dog and with little or no outside work his confidence on return in retrieve and scent has taken a bit of a nosedive . I usually move around a lot to motivate him and this is not too easy to do indoors . On the plus side we have been competing in a series of league matches for our club . Rafa winning out of novice meant he had to compete in A and I didn 't know if he would be as happy . I needn 't have worried . Rafa absolutely loves heelwork and he has won all but one of his classes and the last one he was in joint lead . As the other joint leader was a team member we tossed a coin and took 2nd place . Apart from speed on return - something I particularly want my dogs to have - the one thing that has emerged from the winter matches has been return on stays . Rafa worries about strangers walking towards him and has been jumping up to lick my hand on return . It all started last year when dog ran across the ring to attack another . This happened 3 weeks running and after that strong winds blew tree branches down on top of Rafa 's head just as we all went back after the sit stay . At the end of the year a friendly dog invited him to play and forced him out of his stay . All this has finally taken it 's toll . So at the moment we are taking every opportunity to improve Rafa 's confidence with carefully managed stays to help him . I am lucky that I belong to a very supportive club with some really helpful members . So Rafa has been rewarded for holding his stay when someone he knows well goes towards him then several people then someone he barely knows . We are building up gradually and Rafa in a few days has made tremendous strides towards being completely solid . I know that old fashioned training methods would let him fail then punish him . I would not even do this to an ultra hard totally confident dog . Positive methods will always produce perfection if correctly applied . - whatever the type of dog . Both the keen powerful over confident Roy and the sweet sensitive little Rafa have been clicker trained from the time they came to me as pups . I don 't however use a clicker once a behaviour has a name . At this point I switch over to a ' clicker ' word which also has the advantage of portability and you can use it without disturbing other dogs and their training . I thought it might be interesting to compare Rafa when I first started training him at around 5 months and Rafa now . The first video shows how he was started with clicker and treats . Compare this with the one of his left turn training sessions and one of his winning A rounds at a club match . Roy has not been left out . The video I have included of Roy at the start of this article shows clearly how much work we need to put in before we can be truly competitive this year . One thing that never alters is Roy 's enthusiasm . I just love his attitude and I am very lucky to have him in my life . Most of my training is done with both Roy and Rafa together . I find it helps to train with distractions right from the start and as both boys get on so well they really do provide a significant distraction for each other . Going to shows does not then pose too much of a problem as they both know how to focus . I find that it helps also to bring out their competitive streak . However confident you are at training it is always good to have someone who is knowledgeable to offer an unbiased opinion from time to time . So training days apart from being highly motivational have a really practical purpose as well . I was disappointed that the weather prevented a day 's training before Christmas but in January a few of us managed to get to a training day with Rob Bint who is particularly good at noticing when things are not right and come up with some practical suggestions . The one thing I have always been able to train particularly well is left turns . For some reason Rafa 's left turns were to put it mildly dreadful . This is borne out by the videos of the matches . I would never have picked this up so quickly on my own . So Rob 's help and advice has been particularly valuable . Ultra confident Roy has a tendency to over turn and I am so used to this that I would have carried on ignoring Rafa 's training needs for some time left to my own devices . We have just one more winter league match but not until the beginning of march so plenty of time to work on perfecting things . Last weekend we braved gale force winds and rain coming down like stair rods and made a 400 mile round trip to a show . For the first time in a long time Rafa failed to gain a single rosette . It wasn 't that he didn 't try just a series of circumstances . He was disturbed in his A when someone bellowed at her dog to lie down and the dog appeared to leap into Rafa 's face . Unfortunate as this was he would still have been placed if he hadn 't got up at the end of the sit . He just couldn 't cope with someone going back to their dog before I reached him . Roy was his usual wild self . I really wasn 't expecting too much from him because we simply haven 't put in the work he needs to be truly competitive . He even barked and jumped up around my ears in B losing most of his marks on this one exercise . Fortunately he was quieter in A and managed a third place . He amazed me by giving up his dumbell and scent cloths with no trouble at all and he didn 't anticipate a single recall . Competitive obedience relies very heavily on accuracy and attention to detail . The only training which has been possible for the most part this winter has been tightening up work on presents and finishes and turns on the spot . The very thing that has slowed down Rafa 's retrieves has proved invaluable for Roy . Now that the weather appears to be improving I am hoping we will be able to get out more and train . I have two very different dogs but both in their own way have their strengths and I love competing with both of them . I have finally managed to see a surgeon and I am going to have an arthroscopy on the damaged knee which I hope will restore me to full mobility . I do hope so because it would be good to lose all that excess winter weight I seem to have acquired ! Both Roy and Rafa had a good show season last year in spite of everything . I am hoping for an even better one this year . Positive dog training and choosing the right dog works ! Posted on December 22 , 2010 by B Colledge I haven 't updated the blog recently because to be honest there isn 't much happening at this time of year . But just over a week ago I managed to brave the freezing fog and go a fair distance to an obedience show . The show was a well run friendly affair and held in an equestrian centre just outside Blackpool . I don 't think I stopped moving all day because I had four classes so four separate sets of stays and 3 scents in addition to the four rounds . We started early because Rafa was drawn in A . After the stressful journey I don 't think either of us were at our best . It was Rafa 's first time in this type of indoor venue and he wasn 't sure about it . So I took him in at lunchtime when it was fairly quiet and made sure he had a positive experience . This certainly paid off because when he went in to compete in novice later on he was more than happy and actually won the class . So next year he will be working the higher classes . He clearly showed that he is ready because although our morning performance in A was less than stellar we still finished 4th . Back down to earth with a bang though because Roy was so full of himself that I was hardly able to keep up with him . The lack of training showed . Roy needs much more than I can manage at the moment . Unfortunately the consultant had to cancel my knee appointment . It 's a shame but couldn 't ' be helped . I will now have to wait until next year . In the meantime it 's not too easy to cope with fast pace and multiple turns and even halts . So Roy in particular has been affected . But the show was a welcome respite from the unusually cold weather we are having in most parts of the UK this year . If it had been held last weekend we wouldn 't have been able to go because we are snowed in here in the forest . I did have a training day planned at the weekend but that was obviously cancelled . So my boys have had to be content with their walks . We are very fortunate that one of the boundaries to our property is woodland so my dogs can exercise all the year round whatever the weather . Training requires a reasonably flat dry surface though and at this time of year these are in short supply . It will be good to be back at our training club at the start of the New Year . Being pretty philosophical both Roy and Rafa have taken up a new hobby . They love watching television . Rafa has been glued to the snooker and ' Strictly come dancing ' and never missed a single minute . Roy has greatly enjoyed ' One man and his dog ' but then he never misses a single sheepdog trial on TV and no sheep ever gets away ! Although we can 't train outside we are still doing little bits of tightening up work indoors . Valuable marks are lost for less than perfect presents and finishes and positions and starts and elements of retrieve are also possible . So it 's not all doom and gloom . In fact at times it is hilarious as Roy and Rafa both try to outdo each other . Molly likes to make as much noise as possible and the sound level rises considerably . Everyone works round Keeta who is not about to give up her place to anybody . The snow and freezing conditions show no sign of letting up and it already feels like an unusually long winter . But no doubt we will manage somehow . And they do say that what doesn 't kill you makes you stronger ! Before long the winter will be over and a new year will start . Our training club has a series of matches over the winter so we will at least have something to occupy us before the next show season . In the meantime Rafa needs to gain confidence in scent and sendaways so there will be plenty to do before the next show season starts in earnest . WELCOME TO MY BLOG Posted on December 3 , 2010 by B Colledge It 's freezing at the moment in my corner of the world - a forest on the Gloucester / South Wales border . We have got off lightly compared with the rest of the UK but breathing freezing air is still unpleasant . So I have decided to write a blog and hope to add to it at least weekly . I have been taking a look at a book I wrote last year and adding some illustrations . I see so many dogs discarded as being no good when in truth it 's simply the ignorance of their owners . My own chosen breed is very definitely misunderstood being far from easy to manage for the average owner . So I set out to write a book to try and help people make a more informed choice . It 's surprising how little most people know about choosing the right dog never mind training it to realise its potential . I am very lucky that I share my life with my four Border Collies . The oldest one , Keeta , a red / tri , who is over 15 years old is really my husband Tony 's dog . She idolises him and follows him everywhere . In spite of several vestibular attacks she is still very much a part of our family . Keeta just bounces back and carries on regardless . She is almost completely deaf now and her eyesight isn 't what it used to be . But that doesn 't stop her commenting on everything that is going on in her life . Roy is 7 years old . It doesn 't seem long since I went to collect him from his breeder as a 7 week old pup . He 's strong and powerful and my constant companion . He has been placed at most of his last few shows and at last is ( almost ! ) showing signs that he might be taking obedience competitions more seriously . His enthusiasm usually manages to deny us red rosettes because he finds it so hard to contain himself . But I wouldn 't want to change him . Molly is 5 years old and very much likes to be in charge . She has a very powerful personality and has just one rule in her life - everyone does what Molly wants when she wants it - simples ! As a certain meerkat would say ! ! But she has good communication skills . I used to compete with her but rarely do these days because she prefers to do things her way . She makes me smile though and she is happy looking after Keeta at home instead of going to shows . Rafa is the baby of the family at just 20 months . He was chosen for his wonderfully happy personality . Living with really powerful personalities like Roy and Molly could be a problem . But Rafa has no ambitions to be top of the heap and is happy in his role as deputy . He is also my constant companion , gets on brilliantly with Roy which makes for a peaceful life . His first season in competition has proved to be successful with a win and many second places . He 's still very much a work in progress and I have great hopes for him next year . At this time of year there aren 't too many shows so training is winding down somewhat . Although I do wish we could get out to do a little more than just walk . Border Collies love their walks but they also need other things as an outlet for their considerable drive . For my dogs this is competitive obedience which requires the ability to focus and achieve great precision but at the same time show true enjoyment . Molly has far too much ' attitude ' to be truly competitive although she is so intelligent she can pick up something new in an instant . Rafa is a sensitive little soul . He always tries to do things right and can worry terribly if he thinks he might have made a mistake . He 's proving quite a change from my other 2 head cases ! It 's a long time since I tried to train a dog so sensitive . Having such opposites is definitely not dull and really keeps me on my toes . I hope to share our experiences .
|
If there was one thing Ogden Castleberry hated about his Life Job , it was not having a view of the sunset . His single office window was on the wrong side of the building , and only gave him the slightest indication that the twilight aura in the North Pole sky had completely vanished . Darkness crept its way in a semi - circle that engulfed the room , rather than giving a full frontal show . Ogden loved sunset at the North Pole - when the sky wrapped itself in golds and pinks and the sun looked like an orange fireball ready to shoot its powerful rays at everyone and anything . As an elfling , he had marveled at this beauty , soaked in every last breath - taking moment . Norland had the best sunsets in the entire world , because Norland was the most sacred place to ever exist . Only the most special elves lived here . Headquarters was based here , and of course , it was the homeland of the one and only Santa Claus . But what should it matter now ? " You shouldn 't complain , " he said , his voice booming in the room as he began to laugh . " It could be worse . You could be mining coal ! " But his laughter ended in a long sigh , for as much as he was grateful to have such an easygoing job , he wondered if he would enjoy a more laborious one if it was coupled with some company . There were multiple elves chatting away in the offices below and above him . They were sharing family stories , or working on projects , or commiserating about something . All Ogden could do was complain to himself . If only the Council had let him have some company while he worked , then maybe all this wouldn 't seem so tedious . If they had just let his twin brother , Orthor , work with him , then maybe he wouldn 't feel the loneliness of his Life Job so much . But they didn 't . No matter how many times he complained to Elven Resources about getting a new office , or at least having a companion of sorts , this was his fate . Sit . Wait . Watch . He resigned himself to his swivel chair , propped his feet on top of his oak desk , and did just that . Sit . Wait . Watch . " I have the most boring job in all of Norland , " he sighed . He supposed it was a noble job , being entrusted with the most revered text in the Elven Realm . He and Orthor had been ecstatic when their mother announced they would be Book Keepers for the revered Book of Names . It was the giant magic book that held all the names of all the children in the entire world . The good . The bad . The boys . The girls . What elf wouldn 't want to be privy to information of that magnitude ? The brothers had been less ecstatic , however , when they had been informed that they would be split up . Orthor had to take the day shift , and Ogden had to take the night . " Divide the work , divide the spoils , " their Master had said . Ogden had been struggling with that concept ever since . What spoils ? Where were the spoils ? His spoils were awfully spoiled , because never getting to spend any time with his brother was worse than never getting to see a Norland sunset again . He threw his arms above his head and yawned . His thermos , filled with hot cocoa , had been placed in its usual spot next to a brown paper bag that was filled with chocolate chip cookies . He was now prepared for another night of sitting , and waiting , and watching The Book of Names . Well , if he was going to be honest , sitting , and waiting , and occasionally glancing at The Book of Names , because nothing too dramatic really happened within the book . The Book sat in all its glory within its rectangular glass case . The pages magically flipped forwards and backwards on their own . Colors of the scripted text changed from gold to red , red to silver , green to gold . This noble and esteemed job really didn 't require him to do much of anything because the Book was literally a living document , and all Ogden had to do was sit there and let the Book do all the work . When the spirit of The Big Night first entered a child 's heart , their name was automatically written in The Book . Over time , the names changed in appearance - naughty girls were written in red , naughty boys in green , good girls in gold , good boys in silver . It is from this main source that the Lists for the elves at the North Pole were created . But when the time came , and a child no longer believed in the Claus , their name was grayed out and moved to the back of the Book where it eventually disappeared to make way for the new names of new children . Like a revolving door , the Book was in a constant state of rotation . Names come in , names go out , and whether the name was gold or red or gray was all up to the human child who carried it . Ogden had seen names gray out as early as five years old , others as late as thirteen . On average , a name stayed active in the Book for ten years . The sound of the turning pages soothed him , and he closed his eyes , taking in the sweet rhythmic cadence of the " flip , flip , flip " of the Book . It sounded like the gentle flutter of Graespur wings flapping in the night sky , and he wished he wasn 't confined to this chair , this office , this building . He longed so desperately to be free - to watch the sunset , to bask in the moonlight , to sit in a garden feeding the Graespurs , but instead he was confined here - this desk , this office , this lonely life . The pages of the Book slowed down a bit , which was not unusual for this time of year . March was when things were the calmest . Children of the world were in what Ogden called a " lull - state . " They were still coming down from their Big Day high , readjusting from their festivities , getting their lives back to a semi - state of normal . The months of February and March were typically the least active , not many color changes , not much graying . It wasn 't usually until August when the pages of the Book acted like they were possessed , flipping sometimes violently back and forth . That was when the Good and Naughty Lists were finalized for the year , and last - minute decisions were made as to which List each child would ultimately appear . Just thinking about a " lull - state " put Ogden into one of his own . His head sank deeper into the cushion on his chair , and he revisited his previous thoughts of the missed sunset . He crossed his arms over his chest , stuffed his hands in his armpits and grumbled , " It probably was perfect , " before letting his body feel the first tingling sensations of a deep sleep . It 's only March , he thought , it 's not like . and he started to drift off to the sound of the gentle page turns of the Book . The silence in the office startled him and his head snapped up from the side of his shoulder . It took him a second or two to collect his bearings . His hands were still firmly pressed in the deep cups of his arms , and the sides of his mouth were moist with sleep - drool . He looked around the room , making sure everything was in its proper place ; the paintings undisturbed , blinds on the windows untouched , thermos and brown paper bag still in their spots . But something was amiss . Something was . In a near panic , Ogden jumped up from his chair to inspect the Book . His sweaty hands lifted the glass casing so he could get a better look . Sure enough , there it was - a black spot over a child 's name , as if a smudge of coal had been forced upon it , stamping it out forever . There were some people in the world who just didn 't believe in much of anything . Even though belief in the Claus might disappear , the true spirit of the season doesn 't leave a person entirely . That 's why the name is grayed out in the Book . Unless - a person loses all faith and love for the Big Day , and completely obliterates the spirit from their heart . Then they are stamped out , blacked , erased from the Book forever . A black spot over a name was not entirely unheard of . It happened , on average , two or three times a year . But in March ? Ogden stared at the name - Ryan Black . " The irony , " he said . He touched the dark spot to acknowledge the eliminated name , which would free the book to continue its work . It felt like burnt paper , like a charred and brittle soul . He shook his head gently . " Poor guy , " he whispered , removing his finger from the Book . Almost immediately , the pages began flipping back and forth again , quickly at first , then slowing down to a resting heartbeat 's pace . He stood over the Book for a few moments , watching the magic ebb and flow , mesmerized by the changing colors as if they were strobe lights at a dance hall . Just as he was about to put the glass casing back over the Book , the pages stopped again . The silence tied his stomach into knots . Before his eyes , another name was transforming from gold to gray to brown to black ; the paper of the page bubbled up a smudge mark , branding the Book with yet another non - believer . Ogden was transfixed . He had never witnessed the transformation before . Had this been the first black name of the evening , he would have chuckled at the irony , but this wasn 't the first , and this was no laughing matter . In fact , this was unprecedented . He hesitated a little when he lifted his finger from the name , the anticipation bubbling over into his sweaty , shaky hand , the anxiety gnawing at his rumbling tummy . But there was silence . Only silence . The pages of the Book had not resumed rotation , and after waiting a few minutes , Ogden slowly opened his eyes to see the horror on the page before him - a third name had been blackened out . For a second , he thought his heart had stopped . He took a deep breath , and without touching the smudge on the Book , quickly replaced the glass casing . He wasn 't about to stick around to wait and see if any more names would be obliterated . He went to his desk , grabbed his thermos , took a long drink of his hot cocoa , and began pacing heavily back and forth in the center of the room . " It 's only March ! " he said , wiping his mouth with the back of his hand . He tried everything in his power to remain calm . He told himself that maybe it was a mistake , maybe it was just a fluke , maybe it was a ramification of the Double Coal Night - the last Big Night when the bad kids had gotten two years - worth of coal . It could all be related . Couldn 't it ? He reluctantly picked up the blue phone on his desk and dialed ER 's number . He 'd called to complain so many times , he had it memorized . When the operator picked up , he didn 't even have to identify himself . He said , " Goldie ? " Goldie , on the other end , sighed heavily . The boss ? He 'd never met the boss before . Heard stories of the wrath of the boss , the apathy of the boss , the sarcasm of the boss , the magic of the boss , but had never actually come face to face with the boss ! He continued to pace the room for what felt like an eternity . A knock at the door made him freeze in his tracks . He was able to whimper , " Come in , " in a voice that sounded like an elfling . " What 's going on ? " the figure said . Ogden gulped hard , trying to clear the nervous lump that had formed in his throat . " I don 't quite know for sure , " he began . " The Book stopped turning pages and I saw the black marks . Kids names stamped out . I touched them and . " " Three ? Is that what you said ? " The boss 's voice filled the room . Ogden thought he heard the panes of glass on the windows rattle gently . He wiped his sweaty hands down the sides of his pants . " Well . I don 't really know . I . I saw the third one and I just called Elven Resources . " Ogden winced a little , then made his way over to the Book . He removed the casing and touched the last black name he saw . Abby Sutton . He stepped back as the pages immediately began to turn in a violent frenzy . His eyes widened when they stopped as soon as they had started , and four more names burnt out to almost dust . Ogden turned from the Book and faced the doorway . " There 's four more names , " he said slowly . " Miss Skye ? I think you need to see this . " Ember stepped out from the shadows of the doorway and into the light of the room . Her counterfeit appearance of height diminished as she glided across the wooden floor . She walked over to Ogden and the Book , and he could see her hands were caked with coal dust . Her eyes nearly went wild when she saw the pages burnt to a crisp , the names of the hardened children barely visible now on the surface . While they waited for the last member , Ember did her best not to make eye contact with the ten already present . Instead , she transfixed her eyes on the baby blue sky just beyond the picture windows . Puffs of white clouds lazily floated by as if they were nonchalantly saying , " hello ! goodbye ! " Their dreamy movements mirrored the feeling she had in the pit of her stomach . Hello . Goodbye . Get on with the show and back to business . A nudge on her leg from under the table got her attention . Ogden furrowed his brow at her , and she realized she had been drumming her fingers on the table top . The others were staring at her as well . She curled her fingers up into fists and placed her hands in her lap . " Sorry , " she mumbled . One of the rules of any type of meeting was to remain quiet until all members were present . Every seat at the table was specifically designated for an elf . Each elf sat at a high - back mahogany chair with regal wood carvings along the sides and back , and at each spot was an official wooden wedge nameplate that bore the elf 's name and title . The seat assignments never changed . Ember looked down the line , reading the nameplates to herself to pass the time . The head of the table was reserved for Jolevana " Una " M ' raz Ruprecht , Councilwoman # 1 . At the other end was none other than Docena Frost M ' raz , Madame Claus . Docena M ' raz : Mrs . Claus , the Boss 's wife , Lady Frost , the Boss Lady - many monikers for such a dominating force . Mrs . Claus was second - in - command to the Boss , she did his bidding , operated in his place at the Council , and most importantly , took the stress and worries off him ( so all he needed to be concerned with was the Big Night and delivering the goods to all the children of the world ) . And even though Ember had been in her presence before , she still got a little star - struck to be in the same room with the legendary counterpart of the legend himself . However , the missus was not at all the grandmotherly type that Ember had previously expected . The regal Madame Claus wore a pinstripe business suit , elegantly tailored to her svelte body . Yes , Mrs . Claus had silver - gray , almost white hair , pulled into a tight bun . Her round cheeks were rosy with a subtle pink blush , blue eyes carefully accented with black , and her lipstick a dark red , yet she oozed an aura of no - nonsense dominance . Remembering the strong presence of Councilwoman # 1 , Ember wondered if there would be a power - play between the two alpha female elves . Of course it does . She was the outsider at the table . She knew it . Everyone there knew it . She saw it in their sideways glances , hear it in their tones of voice when they spoke to her , sense it in the distance they kept when they stood beside her . The other Council elves were all connected - whether by blood or marriage . She had no ties with any of them . From the reception she usually got , she suspected the mere presence of a Coal Elf at the table made their stomachs turn - a Coal Elf who got special consideration from the Boss and got her Life Job changed , a Coal Elf who was now granted access to some of the innermost workings of their Elven Society . Someone didn 't even have the decency to change her nameplate to Coal Deliverer , because in their eyes she was , and always would be , nothing more than a Coal Elf . All of them made her uneasy , but the nameplate in front of the empty seat across the table made her squirm - Sturd Ruprecht . Field Data Collector . His new position . Created especially for him . For some reason , the Council felt that his presence was a valuable one , and they had explained ( in not so many words ) that even though he had botched the whole " Coal - less Night " scheme , they were determined to keep him around in some capacity . What did Field Data Collector mean , anyway ? The shear ambiguity of the title just reeked of trouble . She had little doubt that the familial ties played an underlying role in Sturd 's new position . Speaking of reeking , the air in the room drastically changed when he bustled through the office door , profusely apologizing , shaking hands with his kin . Ember shook her head in disgust as he approached her , a pointy - tooth smile plastered on his face . " Miss Skye , " he said cordially as he lifted her hands from her lap , cupped them in one of his , and gently patted them . Ember 's skin crawled at his touch . His skin felt like hardened leather and his sharp nails pricked her flesh . " Mr . Ruprecht , " she said in return as she nodded at him , but she could feel the bile gurgling up in her throat . SThis was the first time Ember had seen him since the Council had mandated that he take some time off to " soul search " as part of his punishment . Maybe it did do him some good ? she wondered . He actually looked refreshed . His posture was more refined - he wasn 't as hunched over as she had known him to be . His demeanor was certainly different , and his normal body odor of rotted flesh had seemed to disappear . There was something about him that she couldn 't quite put her finger on . Maybe . " Now that we 're all here , " Mrs . Claus said , " let 's begin , shall we ? " She placed her gavel in front of her as a collective deep breath filled the room . " Now , then , " she continued in her business - like tone , " we all are aware of the situation that has occurred with the Book of Names . As of this morning , there have been fifteen consecutive burn - outs . " " Yes , Madame , " he replied . " Right before I left for the meeting , two more names blacked . " He paused . " I just left . There could be more . " Mrs . Claus ran her hands over the top of her gray hair , just stopping at the center where her bun began . She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head before addressing the Council again . " This is serious , " she began . " Yes , it certainly is , " a strong and haunting voice broke through . It was Councilwoman # 1 , Jolevana M ' Raz Ruprecht - wife of Councilman # 3 , Zelcodor Ruprecht ; aunt of Sturd ; sister of the Boss himself . Una to her closest friends and family members . " Madame , I would hate to think that . " Mrs . Claus glared at her . " To think what ? To think that the Council had anything to do with this ? Because certainly anything that has happened after your so - called ' Coal - less Night ' couldn 't possibly be connected , right ? Let 's get one thing straight , Madame Councilwoman , the Boss is still upset about the whole debacle of the Coal - less Night , and he is still deciding whether or not . " " Whether or not what ? " Una barked . " The Council operated in full accordance with the Codex . We broke no laws . It clearly states in the Eleventh Provision of Regulation Two that . " " You do not need to school me in the ways of the Codex , Una , " Mrs . Claus interrupted . Una folded her hands in front of her at the table and sat completely erect . In a calm voice she cooed , " Then , please , Madame Claus , your insinuation of idle threats is not appropriate at this table . The Council has done nothing wrong , and if His Highness wishes to pursue any further action , then I suggest you tell him to speak to me . directly . " Una and Mrs . Claus locked eyes as an awkward silence sucked the oxygen out of the room - a deep , pulsating silence interrupted only by Ogden 's sporadic knuckle crunching . Una held Mrs . Claus 's strong gaze in a weird kind of standoff with neither one backing down . Ember wondered if one of them was going to lurch across the table and strangle the other . Sturd obnoxiously cleared his throat while Mrs . Claus 's assistant , Senara Calix , put a gentle hand on her mistress 's shoulder , trying to coax her out of her death stare . " We need order and balance , " Councilwoman # 2 spoke out . Her quavering voice was barely audible . " Order and balance , or else everything ceases to exist , turns to dust . " Her eyes dropped down , and Ember remembered that Cerissa Lux , Councilwoman # 2 , was the weak one of the bunch - the emotional one , the one who cried real tears for the victims of the Coal - less Night . Ember 's heart ached for the pitiful tone in Cerissa 's voice . The children of the world had not been punished with coal that year , and it left the elven world in a wicked state of peril . Over - grown Nessie fruits touched the ground . Sickness and death blanketed the entire North Pole . No elf was left unfazed , and Ember surmised that Cerissa must have experienced the devastating loss of a loved one that winter . Una adjusted the purple cords around her black robe . " Yes , Ms . Lux , " she said coldly , still staring at Mrs . Claus , " that is really what this is all about , isn 't it ? " Her eyebrows raised in what appeared to be a silent challenge to the Boss 's wife before she looked over at her female counterpart on the Council . Ogden couldn 't stop fidgeting , and it irritated Ember something awful . She punched his leg under the table and scolded , " Quit it ! " from the side of her mouth . Startled by the disturbance from her side of the table , Sturd 's red eyes immediately focused on her . Mrs . Claus scanned the group and folded her hands in front of her on the table . She sat up straight , and took a deep breath as if to collect her thoughts . " We all know that blackened names are not good for business , " she said calmly , matter - of - factly , and Ember admired her controlled manner in the face of yet another potentially disastrous event . " The total and complete absence of the spirit from the heart of any human should not be taken lightly . Our arrangement with the human world - - good , bad , naughty , nice - is predicated on the belief . If not in the Claus , then in the spirit of the Day in general . The hope that it brings . The light that it shines in man 's heart to motivate him to greatness . The spirit has existed far longer than our Elven race , longer than the humans , since before the division of time . Now we can sit here and debate Nessie fruit and power balance ' til the snowmen come home , but without spirit . " She rubbed her face just underneath her eyes . " Ms . Lux is right . There won 't be anything left to even debate . " " Two , " Mrs . Claus stressed . " Council members , what say you to the recent wave of black names ? Any thoughts ? Any ideas for a solution ? " Thoughts lead to ideas . Ideas lead to plans . Plans lead to Lists getting ripped up and elves getting sick and loved ones getting hurt and worse . Ember wanted to scream , " No ! No plans ! No solutions ! " They needed to figure out what it meant . Zelcodor , Councilman # 3 , reached under his chair and produced a green binder . He slid it down the row of elves at the table until it reached Sturd . " Why , yes , Madame , we in fact have some interesting thoughts on the situation . My nephew , our newly appointed Field Data Collector , has been working on something that might help . For the last six months , he has been observing certain trends and habits in the human world , making notations - collecting data so to speak . With your permission , I would like Sturd to present his findings to the Council . " Mrs . Claus signaled for Sturd to proceed . Sturd opened the binder and rose from his chair . Smiling , he scanned the faces of the elves at the table as if waiting to receive applause or some form of recognition . He hesitated for a moment , and after realizing no such response was coming , he passed everyone a spreadsheet . " Timing , " he began . " It 's all about timing . " Ember 's heart beat faster at the sound of his voice , and a sick feeling invaded her stomach . Having been privy to many of Sturd 's over - the - top orations , she had a feeling this was going to be a real winner . She picked up the paper and stared at the color coded chart . It was divided by months , but separated into two columns - one column outlining the elven world , one column outlining the human world . Sturd held up his paper , his gnarled forefinger pointing crookedly at one of the line graphs . " You see , this line here indicates the discrepancies in our time placement . The humans don 't really start to take the Big Day seriously until mid - November , but by then it 's too late for some of them . Our Lists are finalized by the last Quarterly Meeting in late August . That 's a three - month gap between the final List and human interest . Who knows ? A child can do much in three months . Go bad . Go good . Get better . Get worse . " His emphasis on the word ' worse ' made Ember look up from her paper , instantly suspicious . Ember cocked her head to the side , puzzled , as Mrs . Claus eyed the Council members slowly . She looked directly at Sturd . " Proposal ? " She didn 't look impressed , but her expression indicated that she would entertain just about any idea at this point . The Council members all smiled , but Mrs . Claus was not completely sold on the idea . " Again , I ask - proposal ? How do you think this will be effective ? " Sturd closed his eyes for a second and inhaled . He was obviously annoyed that his plan was not immediately well - received . " Well , Madame , by starting Christmas in July , we could plant the seeds of the Big Day much , much earlier . Children will be more aware , cognizant . The August deadline wouldn 't seem so unfair then . We could help organize fairs , bazaars , dedicated mall outlets , advertising , all the bells and whistles humans thrive on . Let 's set up the new reindeer , Zyklon , to be the breakout star of the season . There 's so much we can do ! The human perception of the Big Day needs a serious shake - up . They 're tired of the same old , same old . If we don 't try to implement something , the situation could have dire consequences . " Ember 's stomach dropped as bad memories quickly resurfaced . The last time Sturd had uttered that word , he announced a plan that had doomed many , many elves . It didn 't feel right to her then , and it didn 't feel right to her now . Mrs . Claus looked back at the paper , back at Sturd , then to the Council members . " What says the Council ? Your Honor ? " she said to Una in a formal tone . Ember 's heart thumped rapidly in her chest like a newborn Graespur . Was this really happening again ? Arbitrary plans not thought through , and implemented wantonly ? Were they really going to go down an unplanned road that could quite possibly lead to dire consequences ? Again ? She knew that if she didn 't say anything now , she would never get the chance again . It amazed her that no one else in the room had voiced this opinion . Clearly , this was a stupid plan ! Why was she the only one who thought so ? " Yes , " Ember blurted , and the faces on the elves at the table froze like stone . Sturd 's lip curled up in a violent sneer , as if he were a rabid dog ready to attack . " This is bogus ! It 's a bogus plan ! " " I 'm sorry , " she said . " I 'm sorry , Madame , it just doesn 't feel right . I don 't see how starting the season earlier is going to stop the names from blacking out . It 's . well . kinda silly , don 't you think ? " Mrs . Claus 's eyes narrowed at the thought , and Ember thought she might actually have gotten through to her . " Mr . Ruprecht ? " she asked . " Miss Skye does bring up a valid point . Would you care to address it ? " Sturd licked his lips and breathed deeply . " But of course . The humans are distracted . They are all about the ' now . ' Their scattered minds are no longer capable of holding on to long - term thoughts or goals . An entire year between Big Nights is becoming more and more of a challenge for them to keep in their hearts . By exposing them at an earlier time , it 's more like a reminder for them , and will ultimately make it easier for them to keep the Spirit alive in their hearts . I 've spent some time studying them , my friends , and I 've seen the way they have changed . " All eyes were on Ember . Una 's head snapped sharply in her direction . " Do you have a plan ? I don 't see you presenting the Council with a solution . " Sweat dampened Ember 's clenched hands . " Yes . I mean , no ma ' am , " she stammered , " I mean . it 's just that . the last time the Council instituted some sort of plan , if I remember correctly , nearly half of our Elven population either got sick or died , and . " Una 's eyes went wild . " Hold your tongue , young one ! " Mrs . Claus extended her arm across the table to silence the Councilwoman . " Ember , I assure you , the Council does not dole out commands willy - nilly , " she said in a stern voice . " And while we may not all agree on certain decisions made - " she paused , and gave a brief , sideways glance in Una 's direction - " we are all held accountable under the strict guidelines of our Codex . " " On that note , if there are no other suggestions at the table , it is settled . We will get the elves in order for a summer launch . Sturd , I want you to present to the Council a full - scale tactical report . We need to start informing the others as soon as possible . " " Wait for me by my sleigh , " Mrs . Claus said to her assistant , Senara , and she and Council members # 2 - 5 exited as well . Left in the room was Ember , Una , and Mrs . Claus . Ember remained seated at the table , waiting for everyone to leave so she could be the last . Una walked over to the opposite head of the table and waited for Mrs . Claus to stand up . " Oh , Docena , now you know what I was talking about . I presume that this is just the nature of the young one . Lots of growing up to do . " Maria DeVivo is a native New Yorker that has had a lifelong love affair with ' the pen . ' A graduate of St . John 's University with a BA in English Literature , she has a passion for all things mystical and mythological . She has taught seventh grade Language Arts since 2000 , and in 2010 , designed the curriculum for an academic elective class entitled Folklore where she has been able share her passion and knowledge on concentrated topics such as folktales and mythology to her students . Having grown up in a large Italian / Irish family of five children ( where Maria falls as the oldest , and of course , wisest ) the mystery and wonder surrounding holiday traditions were a main staple of her upbringing . At the age of seven , when her mother finally admitted the " truth " about Santa Claus , Maria became somewhat of a " Santa - phile , " an obsession that has rooted its way deeply into every fiber of her being . She 's one of those people who cry when Santa makes His grand appearance at the Macy 's Thanksgiving Day Parade . Couple that obsession with a spark of creativity for all things dark and twisted , and her debut novel The Coal Elf was born . Maria resides in Florida , with her husband , Joe , and daughter , Morgan . Back to Twilight Times Books main page A special note to TTB readers . All contents of this web site are copyright by the writers , artists or web site designer . If you discover any artwork or writing published here elsewhere on the internet , or in print magazines , please let us know immediately . The staff of Twilight Times Books feels very strongly about protecting the copyrighted work of our authors and artists .
|
Earlier this month , Little Prince had his second supervised contact meeting with his Birth Mum and youngest sibling . The meeting was held at the same venue as the last meeting , which helped Little Prince feel comfortable as he was familiar with the place and procedures . However , he wanted the meeting to be exactly the same as last time , and tried his best to push us all into our previous roles . He got more and more agitated as it became obvious this wasn 't working , and his behaviour became wilder and wilder . It didn 't help that in all the chaos of getting ready for this meeting that I 'd forgotten to give him his ADHD medication . There was only one Social Worker present at this meeting so there was less opportunity for the Social Worker to help Birth Mother interact with Little Prince . I spent most of the meeting trying to keep Little Prince 's behaviour within normal ( ish ! ! ) limits , which was impossible , but I had to keep trying to help him stay calm . It took all my reserves of patience to stay calm with Little Prince , and I tried my very best . I was very conscious that Birth Mum probably doesn 't understand Little Prince 's issues properly and he was coming over as a very badly behaved little lad . I have had to grow a thick skin and I am pretty good at ignoring people 's reactions to Little Prince 's " odd " or naughty seeming behaviours , but this was very different . This is Little Prince 's Mum , and I want her to know that her / our son is growing up safely in our family and that he is a great little boy that she can be proud of . However , his behaviour wasn 't showing this and I was very embarrassed to think that Birth Mum might assume we were raising him badly : - ( Near the end of the meeting Little Prince started to complain about everything " My parents are always grumpy " " I never get anything / go anywhere / do anything " " Everybody picks on me " etc all things that children feel from time to time ( whether they are true or not ! ) . I don 't know how Birth Mum took this litany of woes , whether she realised that all children do thPosted by Yesterday was RESULTS DAY for A Level students , which of course meant that Drama Teen would find out if she got the grades to go to her first choice University . And she DID : - ) Despite her hard work and resits her results aren 't as good as she wanted , but they were still good enough to get her into University . I am very very proud of the work Drama Teen put in to get to this position and I 've positive she is going to go out into the world and make a difference : - ) Good luck Drama Teen - spread your wings and fly . . . For me this means that I can 't keep hiding my head in the sand , and I have to face up to the fact that Drama Teen really is going to leave home for University : - ( I 've been presented with a shopping list of things she needs to take with her , and its all becoming very very real : - ( I 've always believed my " job " as a parent is to give my children secure roots , and the confidence to grow wings and fly to their next adventures when the time comes . I still believe in this , its just letting my little fledgling spread her wings and fly on her own is harder than I thought ! Posted by I 've not posted for a while as I 've been suffering with a chest infection . I 'm now on two lots of antibiotics ( more like horse tablets ! ! ) and am starting to feel better : - ) I could really do without this in the middle of the Summer Hols : - ( Princess Lollipop has , unfortunately , come down with a chest infection too , although it doesn 't affect her much during the day , the cough is really disturbing her sleep and so she is tired and grumpy and has been tantruming as only a tired 3 year old can ! I 'm finding it hard to deal with , but am trying my very best to stay calm and patient with her . Little Prince has , unfortunately , lost his freedom to play out unsupervised : - ( There was an incident where a man tried to grab a girl into his car in a nearby village , and then a man matching his description was seen watching children at our village park . When we showed Little Prince the photofit released on the internet ( covering the words ) he immediately said " That 's the creepy man who was watching me at the park . " VERY scary and worrying . Little Prince understands why he isn 't being allowed to play out unsupervised , but he is getting bored and restless cooped up in the house and garden . And when he is bored he gets sillier and sillier , and we are having to give him his medication more than I 'd really like . I haven 't been well enough to take the Littlies to our village park , let alone anywhere else ! I feel awful that I 'm not able to let Little Prince play out , or take them out to fun places - I don 't want them to have this as their memories of Summer Holidays : - ( I 'm not sure what else I can do though : - ( Posted by I have always admitted that I enjoy dressing Princess Lollipop in frills , pink and pretty dresses , but I knew that it was a time limited hobby : - ) And it seems at the grand old age of 3 1 / 2 years that Princess Lollipop has decided she 's a Tomboy and only wants to wear " awesome jumpers . " By this she means either one of her brightly coloured tie dyed Mickey Mouse t - shirts , her Tinga Tinga Tales t - shirt or a pink t - shirt with a cartoon figure of a cute black girl ( who she is convinced is herself ) on the front . She throws a tantrum if these " awesome " items are in the wash and she has to wear anything else . She also insists on only wearing jeans or trousers , or in the recent warm weather shorts , skirts are a complete no - no ! And dresses , well getting one of those out of her wardrobe prompts a full , screaming melt down ! ! This time last year she would shout and cry if she couldn 't wear a dress , how times change lol . Princess Lollipop also constantly tells us " I sound like a boy " and won 't be told otherwise ! Her best friend at Big School is a little boy that she bonded with so quickly the staff were convinced they must have known each other before school ! ! She choose a Batman logo picture for her latest sticker chart , which rule orientated ( who therefore has quite firm ideas about gender stereotypes ) Little Prince can 't understand at all . My Frilly Princess has morphed into a Tomboy over the last few months and I 'm loving this new adventure : - ) I 've just got my fingers crossed that she will agree to a " Princess Dress " when she is a bridesmaid at the end of next year ! ! We are still working with Princess Lollipop on improving her sleeping habits , and using sticker charts to help motivate her . She has just finished her latest sticker chart , for getting herself to sleep in her own Princess Bed with no cuddling or scratching . And she chose to got to the Indoor Play Centre for her reward , which is what she normally chooses lol . We set off just before lunchtime , as Little Prince had spent the morning playing out and I 'd been conditioning Princess Lollipop 's hair in the bath . As an extra treat we had lunch at the Littlies favourite Fast Food Place , before driving round to the Indoor Play Centre . It also meant that they wouldn 't be pestering for the expensive food and snacks at the Indoor Play Centre too : - ) Princess Lollipop had a fantastic time playing and made a friend to run round with , I 'm not sure he knew quite how to deal with her though as she was extremely bossy with him lol . Little Prince on the other hand played for about ten minutes and then decided he was bored , and sat sulking at the table with me . I couldn 't persuade him that it would be more fun to play than to sit with Mummy and whinge , and he started to lose his temper . After he had kicked over both a ride in car and a chair , I got cross back with him . I told him I was reading my Kindle and if he wanted to stay with me that was fine , but I wasn 't chatting with him and he had to BEHAVE ! He stopped whinging quite as much , but started to make loud theatrical sighs instead lol . All of a sudden we heard Princess Lollipop shouting for help , and he ran off to assist , even in a foul mood he just has to help his baby sister : - ) This seemed to snap him out of his mood , and he started to play and even admitted it was more fun than sitting sulking lol . We finally left when it was obvious that Princess Lollipop was too tired to play nicely , I had been dreading leaving as our next job was to do the Supermarket shopping WITH the Littlies argh ! ! I told them before we went in that we would be MUCH quicker if I didn 't have to deal with constant " Can I haves ? " Princess Lollipop also agreed that she would be a good girl and stay holding onto the shopping trolley , so that she didn 't have to sit in the seat . She is getting much better at this and I have to keep an eye on and supervise Little Prince more than her ! I 'd like to think that my talk about " No can I haves ? " worked , but to be honest I think the Littlies were just a bit too tired to fuss lol . Whatever it was we managed to whizz round the Supermarket pretty quickly and with minimal fuss : - ) I still think I 'm going to try and be more organised and do the shopping online for the rest of the hols though ! When we got home Little Prince disappeared for ages to the loo and Princess Lollipop just wouldn 't co - operate , so I Posted by Little Prince 's friend E came round to play , and despite the weather being overcast and not that warm , they somehow ended up having an all afternoon water fight ! ! It started when Little Prince found his water pistol , and then he remembered where another one was for his friend . Princess Lollipop was feeling left out , so the boys got a plastic bottle out of the recycling for her ! They started to use more and more plastic bottles , and get wetter and wetter ! Then Little Prince 's friend H came round to play , after I made her check with her parents that it was ok , she joined in too . After a while a very soggy H rode home on her bike , and returned in dry clothes over her swimsuit , much more practical . Princess Lollipop seemed to hate the water fight , screaming and shouting when she got wet , but she refused point blank to come back inside and as soon as she had received enough sympathy , she ran back into the garden to join in again . E 's Mum collected him , but had to wait while I found him some of Little Prince 's clothes to return home in , it took a while as E isn 't as skinny as my Little Princely beanpole ! Little Prince , Princess Lollipop and H carried on soaking each other for a while , but then it started to get too cold even for these hardy soul , and the water fight had turned into more of a mud bath , my poor lawn ! ! I persuaded them all to come inside , and plopped them all ( in their swim suits ) in a warm , bubbly bath . I had to drag them out when the water started to look more like bubbly hot chocolate , and it took ages to get the bath clean again lol . Once they were all warm and snuggly dry in their dry clothes , Little Prince escorted H home , he 's such a gentleman : - ) Princess Lollipop cuddled up on the sofa with her Daddy for a rest before bedtime . I fell ill on Monday night , and spent the night in the spare room to ensure I didn 't disturb Mr Messy or Princess Lollipop . It was a good job I did , and that the bathroom is only next door ( ! ! ! ) as I spent most of the night visiting it ! ! Tuesday I couldn 't eat or drink anything and just slept on and off all day . Drama Teen did a MAGNIFICENT job holding down the fort , and I 'm so so proud of her . She looked after her little brother and sister AND did some washing , sorted out the dishwasher and fed everyone : - ) Wednesday I felt a little bit better , and was able to come downstairs , and managed to keep down toast and water : - ) I was still exhausted , but not quite as badly as I 'd been the day before . And once again Drama Teen did a sterling job , looking after her siblings and the house - I honestly couldn 't have managed without you darling , and I am truly grateful for all your help . Hugs ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) Today , I 'm more or less back to normal , although I haven 't got much energy , at least I 'm not dropping asleep all the time ! I got up later than normal , and was still in my bedroom when Little Prince burst in from playing out , holding a cucumber in each hand ! ! He excitedly told us that he 'd seen a stall in the village that said " take some " and he 'd chosen cucumbers as they are yummy , which is a tad surprising as I 've never known him to ever eat cucumbers ! ! He was so proud of himself and declared he was going back to get some carrots and potatoes next , I told him that wouldn 't be fair and he should let someone else have a turn today ! And I 'll have to go and find this " stall " and check what donation he was meant to have left , and sort that out ! ! ! He was so proud and pleased with himself I didn 't have the heart to say anything to him though : - ) As he has for most of the holidays so far , he spent most of the day playing out . He is doing very well at letting me know where he is , and if he visits a friend 's house he always rings to let me know where he is : - ) He did come back to play at home for a while with his adored H , but they got a bit fed up with Princess Lollipop following them around and wanting to play , so they didn 't stay very long . Poor Princess Lollipop was heartbroken and couldn 't understand why they wouldn 't play with her . Drama Teen played in the garden with her for a while to cheer her up , then when the weather started to look iffy , we cuddled up and watched some Phineas and Ferb episodes we 've got saved on the Playstation . She took over the controls pretty quickly , and she 's right , she CAN do it better than Mummy lol . In the evening we all watched some of the Olympics together after tea , Little Prince is getting quite interested in the competitions ( although I have a sneaking suspicion that part of his interest is getting to go to bed later lol ) . He was quite put out that the GB women 's Judo player only got a silver medal , but didn 't react as badly as he did two years ago when teams he was supporting lost in the World Cup . He was VERY impressed to learn that the world 's greatest ever Olympian , the swimmer Michael Phelps , has ADHD . I have a constant battle to try and get him to see his differences as " opportunities " rather than " problems " and this knowledge does seem to have helped : - ) For a few minutes he was quite interested in developing his own swimming ( he is VERY fast , and constantly improving ) but when he learnt he would have to attend the club more than once a week , he changed his mind . At the moment his social life is much more important to him , and I 'm not going to try and change his mind : - ) I love the fact that the village is safe enough for him to have the freedom to play out and enjoy himself with his friends , and hope that he will look back on Summers like this and have wonderful memories , like I have of my childhood Summers : Posted by
|
( The only Hard Rock in Australia . The Grand Chancellor , or hotel in Surfer 's Paradise , is the building right behind it . The people on the streets are Schoolies . ) Today is another travel day . It doesn 't occur to me on this day , but they had told us previously that flying the day after you go diving isn 't particularly wise . But we rolled the dice and went diving anyway . On this morning we have a 10am flight , so we have enough time to enjoy one last free breakfast at a Shangri - La . This is a sad time , these breakfasts were amazing and they rank high upon my list of favorite things about this trip . We catch a cab back to the hotel which somehow cost us $ 1 less than it did on the way TO the hotel . Go figure . After checking in to the flight we then head off to collect my lost sunglasses . Of course there isn 't anyone at the lost & found desk , so I have to walk all the way to the other side of the airport ( where I started , mind you ) to try to get someone to help me . I had the foresight to leave Steph at the desk as I went for help . And someone eventually came and gave her the shades . Now , off to Brisbane . The flight goes without a problem and we arrive to begin the next great adventure : driving . I 've been nervous about this challenge the whole time we 've been here . I had no experience driving a Right - hand drive vehicle , nor did I have experience driving in a Left - hand drive country . I tend to be very confident in my abilities behind the wheel , but this is a different animal altogether . I liken the feeling I had to the feeling you get showing up to take an exam for which you haven 't studied . The only difference is that instead of getting an F , you could crash the car or kill yourself if you 're not on your game . So after getting our car ( a Suzuki Swift that barely fit our bags ) , I set off very gingerly out of the airport . The main difficulty is that I 've trained myself to stay centered in the driving lane by lining up my right leg with the middle of the lane . Well , that doesn 't work here . I try to compensate , but after a whiPosted by Today : The Great Barrier Reef . As you know , this is one of the Wonders of the World . Steph and I are very excited to get to see it up close and personal . We 've signed up with a tour operator who takes you to two different sites on the reef and lets you dive and snorkel them . Even if you 're not certified to dive , they do an " introductory dive " where they teach you the basics on the trip out and the dive master takes you down for about 20 minutes . The rest of the time you snorkel . The tour company picks you up from your hotel , but since our hotel is at the marina , we didn 't need a ride . We wake up early and were at the boat 15 minutes early for the 730am boarding . As the boat fills up , a group of people from Spain come along looking for a seat . I have been studying Spanish in school , so I figure this is a good opportunity to practice : " Ustedes quiren sentir aqui ? " ( Would you all like to sit here ? ) I say , without much confidence . Maite ( I would later learn her name ) turns around with a look of surprise on her face and says " Yes ! " . So , she and her friend Lucio sit with us and we go back and forth with their broken English and my barely passable Spanish , but we 're able to understand one another , which I find quite gratifying . OK , so , as we get ready to depart , the staff come by with ginger tablets for motion sickness , I got sick once 4 years ago going up windy mountain roads in St . . Lucia , so I figure it couldn 't hurt . I would be proven correct . It turned out to be the choppiest weather conditions for boat driving one can imagine . Imagine as if you are in a boat that is jumping a ramp every 15 feet or so , this was our experience . We had scoped out a seat up front so we could have a pretty view , well , this is the last place you want to be when the boat is being bounced around . So , I quickly make my way out back to the open air . There I find there is a " sick area " that has been set up with staff members holding napkins and sick - bags for everyone who comes out . So it 's me and a bunch of Asian wPosted by Today was designed to be a take - it - easy day on our itinerary . We only had two whole days ( 3 nights ) in Cairns and since we rafted yesterday and we 're going to the reef tomorrow , I figured this would be a good day to do it . Not a whole lot happened today , we slept in and decided to wander the streets of Cairns just popping into shops that we saw that looked interesting . As we got started I would be distressed to learn that I had misplaced my over - priced , prescription Ray - Ban shades somewhere during our travels on the previous day . I tear up our room looking for them , but they aren 't there . ( the story has a happy ending though , I called Qantas that night and , to my great surprise , they actually had them ! I collected them on our flight out a couple of days later . ) But I put this bothersome notion out of my mind as to not ruin our day . One thing we notice is that Cairns is must more ethnically diverse than Sydney . It took me until the 3rd - 4th day in SYD before I counted more than 5 black people . Keep in mind : this is a town of 6 million , and fellow darkies were very hard to spot . Cairns , not so much , they came in all shapes and sizes . Sydney is very much like the New York of this country . By comparison , Cairns is like Key West . Not very busy , and all the activity seems to revolve around the reef and other water activities . We stumble upon a shopping mall as we wandered the streets and one thing that strikes us as odd is that people are fond of pushing shopping karts around the mall with small children in them as if they were watermelons or something . Strange . We finish our day by the pool , just in time for it to get overcast . I pick up a local paper and start reading about the goings - on in Oz . There are celebrations going on in the Goal Coast called Schoolies . This is when the year 12 graduates ( high school seniors ) get to overrun a town and debauch themselves on every type of pleasure they feel that they 've been deprived in their long 17 years . Little did I know how familiar I was to become with this event soPosted by Its a travel day . We have to be up early to catch the 645am shuttle to the airport in time for our 915 flight to Cairns ( it pronounced : Cans ) . The only notable thing about the trip this morning was our shuttle driver was the spitting image of Big Pussy from the Sopranos . He is a Russian immigrant who has been down under for 25 years but he doesn 't have one trace of an Australian accent . Strange . I 'll take this opportunity to document a couple of interesting anecdotes that I have yet to mention . One of the first people we met in the airport in Brisbane was a gentlemen who was returning from NYC where his daughter had run in the New York Marathon , as I mentioned before , our bags took forever to come , so , as he and I waited we had a lot of time to talk . We talked politics for a while and its always fun to learn about the politics of a new place and to get an outsiders view of our own political game . The interesting thing he said is that in Australia , voting is compulsory . Everyone is required by law to do it . My first thought is probably the same as yours : wouldn 't that just lead to a lot of uneducated voters ? He said that does happen . everyone treats their vote differently . I then started thinking on the effect this would have on American politics if everyone showed up . There are certain groups that would fight that decision tooth and nail . Many people benefit from the fact that not everyone participates . I 'm not sure which of us is doing it right , but it was interesting to think about . Is it better to be apathetic and vote or to be apathetic and not vote ? Another funny story happened on our first full day in Sydney . While walking back from the aquarium to the hotel we popped into a convenience store to buy something to drink . As I presented the credit card to pay , the nice Pakistani fellow behind the counter asked me " what is your account ? " . I took a moment to consider his question , then , stumped , I said " I don 't understand the question . " . I 'm not sure if he took this to mean that I hadn 't heard him so he repeated Posted by Its zoo day ! As well as our last full day in Sydney . This fact begins to stir emotions in me I wasn 't aware were present . The harbor and the city they 've built around it are simply beautiful . I 've never seen anything like it . I 'm not a real " big city " guy , so , it may be that I 'm easily impressed , but everything about this city has stood out to me . A few examples : I had never before seen a two story subway system . You go below ground to catch a train , but there are also trains below those trains ! If that weren 't enough train for you , the trains are double - deckers ! You go in one of them and you 'll find you can go upstairs or downstairs to find a seat . Second thing , they actually give pedestrians help to which way to look when crossing the street . I suppose having a lot of visitors to their left - handed country causes lots of confusion when trying to navigate the streets , so , instead of having mass - fatalities at their intersections , they give you a hint . Por ejemplo : Seeing this made me feel as if every city I had visited previously cared not for my well being , but Sydney cares . A third thing , another help for the meandering masses , when you 're at a cross walk , the button you press that tells the system you want to cross is attached to a speaker box that makes a noise when its time to cross . It sounds like a radar gun from a bad sci - fi movie , but its helpful if you happen to be daydreaming or otherwise not looking at the crossing light . Our friend Doug , resident of Sydney , hypothesized that it was an aid to the visually impaired . Again , Sydney cares for her people . You can also see in the picture above that there is a monorail line that circles the city , and when you include the bus service and the ferries to the huge subway line , you have an impressive mass transit system . For a person from Jacksonville who lives 20 miles from the nearest bus stop , this is a sight to behold . OK , so its zoo day . We plan on catching the ferry to the zoo , it docks at the zoo its self , no parking , no finding my way around ? I like it . We Posted by ( View of the Opera House from the rear . No one ever shows this angle . ) Rain , rain go away . Steph and I have been trying to get to a beach around here since day two , but the weather has yet to cooperate with us . We awake on day 4 , to see rain dive - bombing the streets below . Poop ! So , we have to make a tough choice , both options we had planned to choose from today involved being outside , so , do we go to the beach ( or zoo ) and risk having a bad time , or do we try to find something else to do indoors ? This choice paralyzes us for a while and we end up wasting most of the morning . Another thing slowing us down is the fact that we have to check out of our 5 - star suite from the gods and transfer to a place we can afford which is across town and , well , not as nice to put it mildly . So we pack up our gear , bid farewell to our absurd view and we head out . We store our bags with the bellmen so we don 't have to lug them around . Just as we 're leaving the hotel , however , I run into someone I met on - line but had never met in person . Geoff Cooper is a fellow Green Bay Packer fan that I met on twitter . It just so happened he lives in Oz , and it just so happened he was going to be in Sydney the same time we were ( he lives in Brisbane ) , and it just so happens that he was checking into the exact same hotel we were staying in , and it just so happened that we bumped into each other as he was coming in and we were going out . My Packer sweatshirt gave me away . That was crazy . It doesn 't look like they 'll be time to hook up in Sydney but we probably will in Brisbane next week . So , we decide to go to the zoo , but after learning about how much time we need to do it well we decided that we 'd wasted too much time . We call an audible and decide to wander over to the Opera House and take a tour of it instead . As I 'm walking towards it I start thinking about " how many buildings in the world are as recognizable as this one ? " If you were shown pictures of buildings around the world , how many would you know without a caption ? ObvioPosted by ( Me and Steph atop Sydney Harbor Bridge ) I was given a breathalyser test yesterday . Its not what you think , though . I 'll get to that in a moment . . . ( how 's that for a tease ? ) Well , as you can see from the picture , we made it . I was really concerned going into the climb about my own physical abilities to make the climb . As you know by now , we 've walked a TON since we 've been here . My calves feel like beef jerkey now . So , I was worried about having to take a lot of breaks or just breaking down in general . So , after free buffet breakfast ( thanks again AMEX ! ) we walk down to the station where the BridgeClimb takes place . You go in and the first thing you see is a wall - of - fame with all the celebs who have done the climb . This makes you feel like you 're in the right place , brilliant marketing . Steve Irwin , Lawrence Fishburne , Matt Damon , Al Gore , Will Smith , the Prince of Whales etc . , all of them have stood where you 're standing . This gives you an inflated sense of your own importance , but what 's a little delusion between friends , eh ? . So , as we 're standing around waiting to get suited up to climb , we see people coming off of their climbs who are much older and in much worse physical shape than we are , this gives us confidence . We then are called into the queuing area where they go over the do 's and don ' ts and all the other preparations you need . We were all given a breathalyser test to make sure we don 't go up loaded , this was the first time I 've take one of these tests and hopefully I never have to do it again . There are only two other people in our group , a father and son duo up from Melbourne , who are there to celebrate the son 's 18th birthday . Tim and Jake were there names , in - case you were wondering . A joke is then made about Jake passing the breath test since 18 is the drinking age down here . ( Nugget : The US has the most restrictive drinking age in the world , and the most alcoholics . Why do you think that is ? ) Having only four people in a group is a treat since they max out at 14 usually , its almost like a VIP experPosted by ( A manatee , which they call dugongs down here for some reason , swims overhead as we walk through an observation tunnel at the aquarium . ) Walking . The word of the day is : walking . We awoke Monday morning for our first full day in Oz to discover that the weather called for rain . We then had to scrap our plans to go visit Manly Beach and figure out some indoor activities . We call the concierge and he suggests going to the Museum of Sydney and the aquarium , so , we get a map out , plot our course and go . Its at this juncture that its important to remember how little walking we 're required to do in Jacksonville . You cannot operate in Jax without a car , everywhere is a 30 minute drive , the longest distances we 're asked to walk on a given day is from the parking lot to the building you 're entering . So , as a result of this , we did 't really have a good gauge of how far things were from us on a map . When some thing is a ten minute walk , or a 20 minute walk , it doesn 't sound too bad , but compounding a few of these back to back , they take their toll . Our first stop was the Museum , it was a nice history of Sydney , from the convict ships that the British sent to the smallpox outbreak the killed 50 - 90 % of the indigenous population to the bubonic plague to the Harbor Bridge and Opera House construction to the Olympic Games in 2000 , we read it all . Good stuff . While we were in the museum , it started raining really hard . We had no protection and our next stop was a 25 minute walk away , and we were wearing flip - flops ( or thongs , if you 're a local ) . These are not the ideal walking conditions . You have to walk gingerly because you don 't want to slip out of your shoes , but you want to walk fast because you 're getting soaked ! A conundrum for sure . So , we finally get to the aquarium , wet and exhausted , but we 've come so far that our will - to - win carries us through . They have a few animals there that we 've never seen , the highlight of which was the duck - billed platypus . There were a lot of other great animals there like Manatees and sharksPosted by ( The view from our room on the 30th floor of the Shangri - La Hotel Sydney ) So , I figured I should write down my thoughts about this trip somewhere . And what better place than your own blog ? This trip has been in the works for over a year , my time at Amex afforded me the opportunity to make some connections and take advantage of a few deals which has paved our way here . If not for Amex , I could have never afforded this trip . So to them I am grateful . Our trip started at 230om Friday when we departed Jacksonville . We then flew to Dallas . The layover in Dallas was only supposed to be 90 minutes or so , but weather delayed us an hour . That was OK , though , since we were flying into LA and there a 5 hour delay awaited us , so , whether we wait in Texas or Cali , its all the same . We finally got to LAX around 8pm , our flight to Brisbane was scheduled at 11 : 50pm . We have a lot of time to kill . Its at this time that our bodies are figuring out " hey , shouldn 't we be going to bed now ? " since it was 11pm Florida time . But we had to deprive ourselves of sleep until the flight so that we could sleep on the way over . We ate in the airport Chili 's , I drank lots of coffee , and we finally made it onto the flight . Now when i booked the flight 6 months ago , I booked an aisle and a window seat for Steph and I , hoping that the middle would remain open and we 've had more room ( its worked a few times , actually ) but it was not to be this time . So I , ever the gentleman , gave up the aisle to Mr . Random Aussie ( since Steph loves window seats like its made of chocolate cake or something ) and i took the middle seat . Middle seat , in economy , for 12 hours across the Pacific . My knees were not happy with this decision . But fortunately for me I was able to crash almost immediately , I don 't even remember takeoff . And I was able to get a solid 6 hours . In flight movies watched we 're Knight and Day , which was funny and entertaining , and Toy Story 3 , I had heard good things about it . It was good for a kid flick . So , we get to Brisbane and we have to collecPosted by I had my father get sick when I was 22 . And I was poor , alright . And my father had an ulcer , and it exploded and you know all these toxins get in your blood . And basically , my father died , whatever , 50 days after his ulcer . So I had a father get sick while I was poor . My mother got sick when I was rich . And my mother , you know . . . I don 't really want to get into it , but my mother was sicker than my father . And my mother 's alive . My mother 's fine , OK ? I remember going to the hospital to see my mother and wondering , ' Was I in the right place ? ' Like , this was a hotel . Like it had a concierge , man . People don 't . . . if the average person really knew the discrepancy in the health care system , there 'd be riots in the streets , OK ? They would burn this m * * * f * * * down ! " - Chris Rock Slash and M . Shadows , lead singer of Avenged Sevenfold . Slash said he wanted to get Shadows on his album since he was inspired by A7X 's stuff . He said he 's always wanted to play a song like this , but that he 's never been in a band that really allowed him to go this direction . Well , they went there , and did it well . . . Keith Olbermann isn 't my favorite person . I 've recently stopped DVR - ing his show because , after two years of faithful daily viewing , I 've decided I don 't want my news so biased , even when I happen to agree . I want my assumptions challenged . I want to fight the temptation to have my " itching ear " scratched . I don 't learn much when I watch him anymore , so I decided that my time is better spent elsewhere . However , a couple of weeks ago I happened to see his closing Special Comment , and I 'm glad i did . It was a news story and a personal story woven together in beautiful prose . ( Say what you will about Kieth , but the man has a mastery with the English language that few have attained . His pen is quite skilled . ) It was a story about his dying dad and how he had asked his son to kill him . Literally . Well , Keith 's Dad died today ( Keith 's announcement today ) . And as I reflect on this clip , which was the last time he was on air , it becomes even more powerful . Agree with him or not , his words are worth hearing . Condolences , brother . Visit msnbc . com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy I 'm arrogant enough to think that people care what I think . I 've spent the last year or so reading different blogs and I 've finally decided that it could be fun . I intend to just post my thoughts and opinions . No subject will be soely focused on nor will any subject be off limits . Hopefully I can get enough people to read it so I 'm not just one man shouting into the abyss . I 'd like your feedback on anything you deem comment - worthy . I want my thoughts , opinions and assumptions challenged . Hopefully on the other end we can be better people for having freely exchanged ideas .
|
I cannot speak for all of you , for what your story is , or what you are feeling . All I can do is share what my personal reality is … with the knowledge that as I continue to walk my journey , that reality may change . As it has changed in the last fourteen years … since my father , Bill Makosky , passed away . To read my tribute to my dad , written a year after his death , click here . When my father died , I went numb , and then into auto pilot . So many things to do , so many people to interact with , and so many reasons to stay strong for my mother and family . Although my heart knew the grief , anger , sadness , and confusion that lurked beneath the surface , I instinctively protected the depth of those feelings … and chose to reveal only a facade to the world around me . My mother was alone after his death , and needed to be with loved ones . A year after my dad died , my husband and I invited her to come live with us … which meant she had to make that very hard decision to leave all she knew , and the home that she and dad had lived in for most of their married life together . She moved from the small town of Youngstown , OH , to Manassas , VA … which is essentially the crazy Washington D . C . area . And my sisters and I , all did what we needed to do to help her purge most of what she owned , sell her home , ( the home we all grew up in ) and then move in with us . Mom ended up living with us until her death , in 2015 . During that time , I kind of took her lead , regarding her grieving the loss of my dad . In the beginning , she talked about him a lot , and was kind of living in her own reality regarding the man he was . It was obvious to me that they have always loved each other , through any storm that hit them or our family . However , when she talked about him , refusing to aknowledge his weaknesses , or the way some of his words and actions affected my sisters and me , it touched a place inside of me that I could no longer ignore . Carefully , I would remind her that I grew up in our house , and I knew the truth . As the years went by , she was more able to accept the goodness of my dad , and also the darkness that he harbored . We were able to talk about it at times , and although we made that breakthrough , I focused mostly on my relationship with her , and kind of put the death of my father on the back burner . That changed when my mom passed away , for then I was orphaned . The foundation of our family , and the roots that connected us no longer existed . No reasons left for me to gloss over the fact that my father is dead . He is gone . And I miss him very much ! Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Catholicism , Choice for Life and Love , Christianity , Family , Forgiveness , Holidays , My Thoughts , Relationship | Tags : Father , Father 's Day , Fatherless , God 's love , Healing , Heavenly Father , Holidays , love , orphan | Permalink . May 14 , 2017 by blmaluso 18 Comments My Second Mother 's Day Without my Mom Since my mother passed away , about a year and a half ago , I have felt her presence with me … a love that fills me and sometimes overwhelms me . All of the moments that are precious and a treasure to me now , at the time were experienced as normal everyday moments . Not realizing the memories that she was gifting me with … going through my days , as though each one was just another day , and not having the eyes yet to perceive true beauty . My mother lived with Joe ( my husband ) and me for about eleven years . Through those years , I was the one that would help her make purchases for gifts . When it came to gifts for me , she would usually tell me what she would like to give me , and would ask me to choose and purchase . Needless to say , I was never surprised ! When she was in rehab before she died , she was thoroughly enjoying herself . One of the activities she loved was Bingo . One day , I walked in to her room , and her face was all lit up . She told me that she won Bingo , and was able to choose her prize . She chose a beautiful flower arrangement so she could give it to me . She was so excited and happy that she was able to surprise me with some beautiful flowers . I was very touched at the time … but as time goes by , that one simple gesture touches my heart in the most deep way . These are the moments that stay with us . Snapshots of time that keep us grounded in love . The miraculous scenes of life that play and replay through our minds and hearts of times gone by . Watching my mom through the window of the Senior Center when I arrived to pick her up . Seeing her sitting at a round table with five of her friends , laughing so hard that she had to lay her head down on the table . I had never seen her laugh like that . Seeing her in her cute reading glasses , looking up from her book at me , when I came home from work and popped my head in her room to ask her how her day was . She usually said , " I had a beautiful day . " I will never be able to part with those glasses . Watching her eyes light up when Joe or I served up one of her favorite meals . Or favorite desserts . Come to think of it , most everything was " her favorite ! " Losing my temper and yelling about our differing politics . Feeling awful afterwards , I would apologize , and she would just say , " Sometimes things just need to come out . " She would never hold those outbursts against me . Her excitement upon learning that she was going to be a great grandma . That was one of the things that was holding her back from passing on … she wanted to see her grandson 's baby that would be coming in five months . I said , " Mom , you know that in heaven you will be able to see your grandson . " She looked in my eyes and smiled . She said , " I know , but I am not ready to leave this Earth yet . " She didn 't make it to see Brayden 's birth , but I KNOW she is with him now . The privilege of assisting her to shower , wash and style her hair , and put lotion on her . In the beginning , she was embarrassed to have me help her in that way . However , it became comfortable and natural for us . And I enjoyed helping her to feel a little pampered . A few days before she passed away , I climbed into bed with my mom , and put my arm around her , I asked her if it was ok that I was there with her . Her answer ? " We should do this more often . " Yes , we should have … . Once I asked her if there was anything she would have done differently , being that she had a hard life . She told me she wouldn 't change a thing . She said that her family is her blessing , and when things get difficult , you just need to " offer it up to the Lord . " I have learned to do just that , Mom . I have finally learned to offer my life to the Lord . And a large part of myself is the part that came from you . Thank you for loving me . Thank you for being you . Thank you for loving the Lord . Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Christianity , Family , Holidays , Miracles and God Experiences , Relationship , The elderly and their caregivers , Uncategorized | Tags : Beauty , Canasta , emotion , love , Mother , Mother 's Day , reading glasses , Senior | Permalink . March 19 , 2017 by blmaluso 10 Comments Do it Yourself ? While spending time with him the other day , Brayden fumbled through a pocket in his diaper bag , and excitedly pulled out his cute little sunglasses . He seems to be intrigued by glasses … always reaching out to touch and pull off mine . After a moment or two of inspecting the glasses , and then trying to open them , he looked over at me , and handed them over . Brayden sat there smiling , so I put the sunglasses on him , and he sat there for about two seconds before pulling them off and looking them over . Then he proceeded to attempt putting them on . No matter what he did , those glasses were not going on correctly . They were either on his head , hanging from an ear , or around his neck . He kept shaking his head " no " when I put my hand out to help / guide him , and literally pushed my hand away . How many times do we do that very same thing ? When there is something that we desire , or need , we know that God can help us . We pray earnestly , and then hand it over to our Father . As all this is occurring , the Lord is speaking to us in many subtle , and sometimes , not so subtle , ways . He is answering our prayers in ways we don 't allow ourselves to see . Sometimes , He may be guiding us to something even better than we prayed for . Then we need to listen to the Voice that is longing to speak to us , and is waiting , in love , for us to hear . Really hear . Our God , our Creator , the God of the Universe , has a Divine Purpose for all of us . Each one of us has been placed here , at this particular time , for a particular reason . In the meantime , when it seems as though our prayers aren 't being answered as quickly as we would like , we must remember that when Our Lord has a unique purpose for us … He will lead us to it . It is up to us how long it takes for our prayers to be answered and to arrive to our destination . How long will we keep trying to " do it ourselves ? " Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Catholicism , Christianity , Family , God 's Whispers , Trials and hope | Tags : desires of your heart , Faith , grandson , Holy Spirit , Prayer , Trust | Permalink . February 13 , 2017 by blmaluso 13 Comments How Praying The Rosary Changed My Life By opening my heart to Our Lord 's Blessed Mother , I was enveloped in her motherly love for me , and in and through that love , was drawn closer and closer to her Son . Once I realized in my soul that Mary is actually the Mother of God , the mother of Jesus , my heart was then opened to the knowledge that she is also my mother . ( think about it … if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God the Father and Mary , and God is also your Father ( thus Jesus is your brother ) … then it is logical to know that Mary is your Mother . As our Mother , wouldn 't it be true that she would want what is best for us ? That she would want to guide us toward Jesus … our Savior ? That she would intercede for us to her Son , as she did at the wedding in Cana ? While praying the Rosary , there are four sets of Mysteries that are reflected on . With prayerful meditation , these mysteries are life changing . For information and instruction on how to pray the rosary click here . In the chance that my meditations may be a blessing to you , I thought I would share some of my personal reflections associated with each one . I certainly do not wish to insinuate that these thoughts are doctrines or formal teachings of the Catholic Church . These thoughts are personal revelations or enlightenments to me , through the Holy Spirit . There are four sets of mysteries that are used for meditation on certain days of the week . The Joyful Mysteries are said on Monday and Saturday . Today is Monday , so I will start there . The Annunciation Luke 1 : 26 - 38 ( For the love of humility ) Dear Lord , please help me to live my life with perfect trust in You , just as Mary did . Help me to be your vessel … to have the openness to God 's will and the humility of Mary . Help me to trust in you completely , even when not understanding the situation or where it may take me . Allow me to say and have faith in Mary 's words , " I am the Lord 's servant , " Mary answered . " May your word to me be fulfilled . " The Visitation Luke 1 : 39 - 56 ( For charity toward my neighbor ) Dear Lord , please help me to be a vessel , allowing your light and love to flow from me to the ones you place in my life . Guide me to be understanding of the needs of my loved ones , and also any person that you place on my path . You are perfect love . I can never be enough myself to love your children the way that you do . I can never fill the holes in their hearts or heal all that troubles them . I ask that you fill my heart with You , and pour your love through me , even when I am unaware of the miracle taking place . Help me to learn to love as you love , to see as you see , to hear as you hear . Help me to have the spirit and faith of Mary , " My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior , for he has been mindful The Nativity Luke 2 : 8 - 14 ( For love of God ) Dear Lord , please help me to remember that You were born into our world in poverty … placed in a manger , lovingly and with full trust in your providence , by Joseph and Mary . Help me to understand the importance of family , and that the strength of the family is dependent on the foundation of God and His Truth , Love , and Mercy . Help me to be open to your Love , so that I can be a reflection of You , to my family and friends . And as I fall short , please work through me . The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple Luke 2 : 22 - 35 Luke 2 : 39 - 40 ( For a Spirit of Sacrifice ) Dear Lord , help me to always offer my life , my marriage , and my family to you , that you will use our lives to further your kingdom . When I was a young mother , I did not understand the beauty of sacrifice , and I selfishly wanted to keep my children for my own , only seeking their happiness in this world , and holding back from presenting them and myself to you … for your purpose . I ask that you fill in for my ignorance and selfishness , and ask that you infuse us all with your presence , while guiding us in your light , and in your purpose . Help us to use the difficulties in this life to bring us closer to you , and help me to remember to present myself to you each and every day , for you to work through . The Finding of Jesus in the Temple Luke 2 : 41 - 52 ( For zeal for the Glory of God ) Dear Lord , help me to always desire to be in your presence . You knew that you belonged in your Father 's house . Help me to have trust and faith that I too belong in my Father 's house . Help me to always invite you into my heart , to fill me with your love , mercy , wisdom , joy , and understanding , to help me and my life glorify the Father . Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Catholicism , Christianity , Family , Prayer , Rosary | Tags : Blessed Mother , Faith , jesus , Joyful Mysteries , Rosary , sacrifice , selfishness , wisdom | Permalink . January 27 , 2017 by blmaluso 13 Comments The True Women 's March You see , since the so called women 's march that occurred last Saturday , I have been trying to stand for life in the wrong way . I have allowed the anger and hopelessness to overtake me , allowing it to permeate into my own heart . I actually could FEEL the presence of Satan … darkness , anger , cynicism , hopelessness , sadness , pride , hate , and confusion . I made two grave mistakes . The first is that I did not pray ernestly for the Lord to work through me and to cover me with His armor . And the second mistake was allowing myself to get into a conversation … an argument … with the devil online . How do I know that my standing in support of the voiceless unborn is the right choice , and that it is from God ? How do I know that a baby growing in her mother 's womb , that should be the safest place in the world , should always be given the right to life … to be born ? How do I know that the mother , that chooses to kill her unborn baby , will suffer from emptiness and darkness for her whole life , until she allows her broken or stone hard heart to be opened to God 's love , mercy and forgiveness ? The evidence is in the mockery of feminism , that was shown in its full light at the so called women 's march last weekend . It was in the disgustingly vile signs , costumes and spewed hatred coming from the mouths of these women . It was the ignorance and confusion of those women professing to be more than their sexuality … and then wearing vagina costumes framing their faces . It was seen in the rabid joy of women ( and also seen on children and some men ) " celebrating " their cause by crocheting and wearing " pussy hats " in solidarity . It was seen and heard in vile speeches given by celebrities , who portray themselves in disgustingly perverted ways on screen or through their music , screaming hate filled messages . Or could it be that true feminism is rooted in a quiet love and respect for God , family , country , and the empowering knowledge that our bodies were created with the ability to conceive , carry , and give birth to the greatest gift that God can give us … the gift of life . The gift of being a vessel of His love … and saying yes , as Our Blessed Mother , Mary , did , to His will for us . For in bringing another baby into this world , we are expanding Our Lord 's Kingdom . It is so much more than us … it is greater than we can ever fathom . The march last weekend , and the many reasons mothers seek out and kill their babies while growing in the womb , are rooted in confusion , fear , hatred , sadness , selfishness , isolation , pride , arrogance , and despair . This was easily seen and heard while viewing the march , and listening to the protesters and speakers . The body language and the eyes to their souls sadly spoke volumes to me . I ask God for forgiveness for allowing Satan to enter my heart through this past week . I ask that He forgive me for not seeing past the actions and the vulgar , hateful words spewed … for not looking for Him in their hearts and souls . For not seeing the hurt and pain that reside deep within them . Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Catholicism , Choice for Life and Love , Christianity , Family , Forgiveness , My Thoughts | Tags : abortion , Armor of God , ashley judd , feminism , Forgiveness , madonna , March for Life , mercy , pussy hats , Rachel 's Vineyard , womanhood , Women 's March | Permalink . September 17 , 2016 by blmaluso 18 Comments One Year of Life Since … Much has happened in that year 's time , including the birth of our first grandchild , and our move across country to be near him . There has been pain , suffering , fatigue , intense stress , confusion , and grief . However , there has also been a deepening of faith , excitement , joy , and a closeness with my mother that I never experienced before . I feel like her spirit , her heart , is one with mine . I can feel her presence all around me and feel her love for me , my sisters , and our whole family every day . A few years ago , a friend of mine who lost her mom , told me that when you lose your mother , she is just " gone . " This friend did not have a close relationship with her mom before her death , however , when she shared those words with me , she had tears in her eyes . She was communicating her feeling of emptiness , and the reality that there would be no more stories , no more chances to ask her mom questions about her life and her experiences , no more chances to physically feel her mom 's love or to have the opportunity to show her mother how much she appreciated and loved her . Sometimes we focus so much on ourselves and our own needs and pain , that we forget that our parents are human beings . They had a life before we were born , and had struggles and weaknesses to overcome just as we do . As we lived our lives and became more mature and " educated " , it was sometimes easy to overlook the lives of those closest to us , the ones who brought us into this world , and who loved us the most . Many " eye - rolling " and " here we go again " moments … and many times , for legitimate reasons . That is what I am feeling very strongly from my mother . Especially today . I know that sin and weakness no longer affects our relationship . We are joined in perfect love now , and nothing can take that truth away . During this past year , many truths about my mom have been revealed to me . I would like to share some of them with you , in the chance that they may be of help to you . Such simple things that help to keep my heart filled with love and a smile . That when you repeated the same stories over and over , you were sharing with us that these were some of your most treasured memories . At the time , it was frustrating to actively listen to those repeated stories over and over . In fact , I could repeat them word for word . However , now I feel so close to you when I remember those same stories , and imagine the scenes you described to me over the years of my life . You are helping me to know you and myself more and more each day , by understanding your life experiences . That when you called me into your room each morning , or for special occasions , when I was rushing out the door , just to look at what I was wearing and how I looked for the day , that you were missing those " good old days " for yourself , and that it brought you much joy to see me " dressing up " , wearing make up , getting my hair done , wearing jewelry … and going out into the world . You were living your memories through me and my life , and were sincerely happy for me … always telling me that I looked beautiful . Even when I didn 't feel beautiful , I saw my beauty through your eyes . That when you requested certain foods or things during holidays or seasons , and they sat uneaten or unused , that you were reliving a time and season way past … from your growing up years , to your times with dad and our family life . It wasn 't the things themselves that were important to you ; it was the connection , the memories associated with those things . Many things come to mind . Ribbon candy , Easter peeps , filled chocolate Easter eggs , jelly beans , candy corn , embroidery kits , Barbies , baby dolls , beanie babies . Also jewelry , red lipstick and nail polish , and your favorite fragrance , " White Shoulders . " I have been wearing " White Shoulders " all week in memory of your last week here on earth . The connection between us , and the beauty during that painful and precious time will always astound me and fill my heart . I never thought that death could be beautiful , however , your passing from this world to the arms of Jesus was inspiring to me . You grew older gracefully with humility ; and with a trusting heart , let go of us and the world to reach out to your next adventure . Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Catholicism , Christianity , Family , Grief , Somebody Loves Me , The elderly and their caregivers | Tags : communion of saints , Death , Faith , forgiving spirit , Grief , humility , Memories , Mother , White Shoulders | Permalink . July 9 , 2016 by blmaluso 27 Comments Our Journey Continues In early February , Joe ( my husband ) and I were looking at the kitchen and tile selection in our local Home Depot . At that time , we were considering refacing our oak kitchen cabinets , and maybe updating our counter tops and back splash . Since my mom passed away , and our sons and their wives lived across the country in Colorado and California , we knew that sometime down the road we would sell the house , because it was much bigger than our current needs , and we had no family near us . She offered to come to our house to take a look so she could assess and give us some suggestions . Somehow , that initial conversation , and then her visit to our home , led to listing our home for sale . Looking back , it is an amazing thing that transpired , because even though we knew we would be moving some time in the future , we were not planning a move . We decided to list the house to see if we would receive any offers for the price we felt the house was worth , and if it didn 't sell , we would just take it off the market and stay in our home , which we loved . We started deep cleaning and " de - cluttering " so the house could be staged for prospective buyers to walk through . Which really meant we needed to paint , repair , and part with at least half of our possessions , which had been accumulating for 38 years of our life together , and also cherished , sentimental items from our growing up years . You see , we are at the stage in life of downsizing , and we would be moving into a place less than half the size of the home we grew to love . The stress of parting with so much of our " stuff " from our life , and the physical , intense work that needed to be done , while we were both still working our full time jobs , was overwhelming . While we were working through the house part of the process , we still didn 't know if our move would even be feasible . We knew that if it was possible , we would want to move to California , to be near our son , his wife , and our new grandson ! However , a move all the way from Virginia to California , along with the uncertainty of job situations or the high cost of living on the Central Coast of California seemed nearly impossible . Even while we were going through the motions of the needed tasks , we really didn 't believe it would happen . Too many things needed to " fall into place . " Looking back now , I still cannot fathom how we physically and emotionally accomplished everything that was needed for our move . Because , added to the stress of all the tasks was the emotional pain of leaving our home , neighborhood , friends , and our family that lived close enough to travel to by car . A move to California would mean seeing them even less than we already did . So our home was listed in the beginning of March . We went for about a month without any real offers . We didn 't feel that our realtor was marketing our home in the proper way , so we decided to end our contract and the house was taken off the market . The next morning , at about 7 : 30am , we received a call from another realtor , who said that he would love to sell our home . To make a long story short , he listed the house on a Friday night , and we had 3 offers on Saturday . One offer was our asking price and no closing costs . When our realtor called to inform us , he asked my husband , " How fast can you move ? " After the call ended , Joe and I just looked at each other … with unbelief , and I must admit , a little fear . It was becoming real to us ! Joe spoke with his managers at work , and the next blessing was that he was ok 'd to work his job remotely . Which meant we did not need to worry about his employment as we continued on with our plans . We decided that I could look for employment once we were all settled in our new home . The company I worked for in Virginia is a family owned business , and they were wonderful and supportive regarding our move . It warms my heart to think of the going away party they surprised me with , some very unexpected gifts and the kindness and love offered to me . We will never forget the support of all of our family and friends . The unbelievable help that was offered , the cards , gifts , prayers , and good wishes . All is a sweetness that will live in our hearts always . Our new home in San Luis Obispo was waiting for us … sight unseen . Of course we saw some pictures of the little condo online , but never physically saw it until we arrived there . It is perfect for us ! And the amazing thing , is that we found a special place for each and every piece of furniture that we chose to bring to our new home . Share this : TwitterFacebookMorePinterestLike this : Like Loading . . . Categories : Christianity , Family , God 's Whispers , Gratefulness , Uncategorized | Tags : Blessings , downsizing , grandson , journey , San Luis Obispo | Permalink . Post navigation
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.