Staying Positive

Well, everything has been okay lately. Not perfect, but at least I am not calling the police every day to break up fights between Todd and Tate. My college classes are going well, and I am thankful for all that God provides.

Judy

It's been a long time since I have written anything. I have been ... occupying my time with stupid games and things, not really accomplishing anything.

Judy died. I can't even tell you her last name, but she lived six trailers down from us, and she was a wonderful person. She used to work with special needs kids like Graham at the school, but she had to quit her job because she had MS.

Judy was sad about not being able to work anymore, and that is why I think she and Graham hit it off so well, because he needed help with school and she needed to help someone.

I can't begin to list the things Judy did for Graham. She took care of him when I was at school, or just... distracted. And she loved Graham, she loved him. She loved him. And then she moved away, because she got into an assisted care building. I never took Graham to visit her there. Why didn't I take him? I was near the building so many times. It would not have been hard to stop in, but I didn't. There was always something else, something that seemed more pressing. Something more important. And so much time goes by. And I can't believe she is dead now, and I can't take him to see her. I can't believe she is gone. She was only a little older than I am. And I feel like I am drowning in this pain I feel.

I am so sorry, Judy. Graham always loved you, and so did I. I could never thank you enough for all that you did for him.

Not Much Happening

Well, things have been relatively boring, which is a good thing.

Todd is sleeping better. He's still not sleeping the whole night through, but since they put him back on Vicodin he is no longer having those violent muscle spasms, so thank you to those of you who prayed for him.

I am going to sign up for summer lit classes, and I am going to use part of the financial aide to send Tate to New York for the summer. It will keep him and Todd seperated and also be a good experience for him. I emailed his cousin Ashley to see if he could stay with her. If not, I guess I will have him stay with my friend Therese. I would have him stay with his Grandma Sharon, but not for the whole time. I think she would drive him nuts.

I am going to see if Graham can visit my sister in Phoenix for a couple of weeks too. He has never flown in an airplane before, so I think he is over due. I think he will have a grand time with Matty and Mouse.

The new Doctor Who with Matt Smith was on today. I must say, I don't hate it. I do miss David Tennant though.

That is about it for now. I am really tired so I will write more later.

Back in the Saddle

I haven't been posting much for a number of reasons. The first reason is that I have been busy with school work. My Christian Worldview class has been more of a challenge than University Success was. I enjoy it though, but I d0n't agree with a lot of it.

The second reason is that the kids are on vacation and Tate is on the computer all day long, so the only time I have to work on my homework is after he has gone to bed.

The third reason is that I have been having a lot of fun playing the game Sorority Life on Facebook. It's like virtual paper dolls, and I used to love paper dolls. I remember when we first moved to New York, there was a woman named Thelma Borden who lived next door, and she had always wanted a girl, but she had two boys instead. Well, she had some paper dolls that she let Shana and me play with, but only at her house. We used to go over there and play for hours. I remember that one of the paper dolls was named Lilac, and I thought that was the prettiest name. Thelma eventually adopted a 10 year old little girl named Dana. I wonder how Thelma is doing these days?

This morning I heard Todd cry out in pain and I came out of the bedroom to find him on the floor and Tate standing over him. Tate tried telling me that his father deserved to be beaten up, but I did not listen to him. Tate is constantly trying to agrivate his father, and Tate will never just be quiet when he is told. He has to keep picking at things. Well, I did not know what to do with him, so I thought about it and decided to make him clean as punishment. So I told him he was going to clean the house from top to bottom, but he said he would rather go to juvenille hall, and he picked up the phone and called 911. I didn't try to stop him. I figured either the officer would tell him to listen to me or he would take Tate to JH, but either way, Tate would have called the police on himself.

The officer told Tate to be more respectful of his parents and left. Tate went into his room and told us not to wake him until school. What he does not know is that he is grounded from the computer for a month, or until he cleans the whole house, whichever comes first.

So anyway, I am back in the saddle, writing for my blog. Now if I could just get to some poetry writing.

Pulling Teeth

Have you really thought about that expression, "It's like pulling teeth" ?

If you stop and think about it for a moment, pulling teeth is the worst thing that most people can think of, that is why they compare other bad things to it. Well, our trip to the dentist yesterday was like pulling teeth.

Tate was supposed to be getting a root canal, or so we were told, and it was Graham's first appointment with this dentist. Our prvious dentist did not have an orthadontist, and both boys need braces, so I switched to Western Dental.

We got there a little late (only 5 minutes) but they weren't ready to see us anyway, so it didn't really matter.

First of all, their chairs in the waiting room may be comfortable for the average sized person, but you get someone a little over weight and the arms of the chair start cutting into your thighs. I tried to ignore the pain, and thankfully, my thighs went numb before too long.

They took Tate back first and put him in a chair... and there he waited. After an hour, they called me back and told me that the doctor was doing another root canal and that we had to wait another hour for him to even get to Tate. They asked if I wanted to wait. Since they still had not seen Graham, it wasn't like I had a choice. So Tate sat there waiting for another hour.

When they finally called Graham back and started checking him in, they brought Tate to me and told me that they had made a mistake and he did not need a root canal, so they did not do a thing to him, except keep him in a dentist chair for two hours.

After Graham was checked in they took us back to another room, and the chair for me in that room was even more uncomfortable than the waiting room. It killed my back.

Graham and I sat and waited, and waited, and waited. All they ended up doing was "sealing" some of his teeth and cleaning his teeth. They did take xrays. He has been having pain in his neck and shoulders, and since his pediatrition, Dr. Alverez can't find a problem, I am sure that it is because he does not have enough mouth to hold all his teeth.

I stayed with Graham most of the time in the waiting room, but I got to be so uncomfortable that I went to the van and sent Todd in to sit with him. All together, we were in that dentist office almost four hours. It was like pulling teeth!

If you have never had a tooth pulled, let me tell you, it is no picnic! I had one split when I was pregnant with Graham, and they had to pull it. I thought my jaw would break before they got it loosened!

After the dentist we had to take the van back to my mom. We were at her place about an hour. We stopped at the store on the way home, and it was nearly 7 pm when we got home. I immediately got started on cooking dinner when there was a loud banging on the side of our trailer, then my friend Sandy walked through the door.

Sandy said she was my leprechan and said she was taking us out for drinks. I left Tate in charge of dinner and we went with her down to Big Bubba's where we finally got to meet this guy that she moved in with after only knowing a day. His name is Craig, and he is a very nice, very mellow, fun guy. Him and Sandy are very cute together.

Sandy rode the bull at Bubba's. She managed to stay on quite a while, but she eventually got thrown. I bet she is sore from it today.

Todd and I had two drinks with Sandy and Craig and then came back home.

*****

School

Some of the people in my Christian Worldview class are acting very ignorant in our class discussion. Last week the teacher asked us just to consider some of the flaws, or holes in the theory of evolution. Two of the people from the class posted that they would not even think about evolution because it was so far from their beliefs...

HELLO!!!

Forgive me, but I can't tolerate minds that are that closed. I honestly am not an evolution basher. When I took anthropology I discovered that a lot of the things Jehovah's Witnesses taught me about evolution were wrong. For instance, the fossil record does contain fossils of the intermediate stages between modern humans and lesser primates, and the reason the fossil evidence is so spotty is because the odds of something becoming a fossil are very high. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is the midochondrial DNA. I won't try to explain it because I am so not qualified. Here is a link that has good info on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

I tried to reason with people from my class by bringing up how the Catholic Church persecuted and imprisioned Galileo when he declared that the earth was not the center of the universe. We know now for a fact that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around. Will people be looking back at us in another four or eight hundred years and wondering how we could have ever rejected the idea of evolution? It does Christians no good to deny science. True, science does not have all the answers, and that is where faith comes in. I hope that made sense.

This week people in my class are just science bashing. One person stated that science experiments were "just that" experiments, and that scientits only conducted them for research money. Another person who posted that science experiment is the only way to gain knowledge. Talk about two extremities, LOL.

Progress and Anger

Well, I think there has been some progress with Tate after we recently grounded him from the computer and his ipod for two weeks. Twice he has apologized to me for things. That is unheard of. I think we are back on the right track. Thank God.

There is a woman in my Christian Worldview class who is infuriating. She refuses to address half the assignment because it is "too different from what she believes." People like that are the reason there is so much misunderstanding about beliefs in the world. They are the reason propaganda and hatred can be perpetuated.

Lastly, I am out of my mind angry because I just found out that Liz, my mother’s husband’s son’s girlfriend, is a child sex offender. My children have been around this woman for the past three years. Tate even told me that he felt like she was flirting with him a couple of times. I just shrugged it off. I didn’t think he knew what flirting was. Now I wish I had listened to him. The Megan’s Law website says she was convicted of “penetration with a foreign object” and that the victim was under 16. That is all the information it gives about the crime. The picture is a new one. It looks like a driver’s license photo. They probably update the pictures every time they renew their licenses.

I am just sick to my stomach thinking that my children have been alone with this woman. I am going to ask them and make sure that she has not done anything to them. If she touched either of my children, she is going to wish she was never born. She and John have moved to another town. They are apparently out in the desert, miles away from anyone or anything. That is a good thing. If she was still here, my children would not ever be around her again.

Because I was molested as a child, I tried to be hyper-vigilant to make sure nothing like that would ever happen to my kids. I feel like I fell short in this case. I disliked Liz from the moment, the very moment I met her. Now I don’t feel badly about it anymore. I need to trust my instincts more. My instincts told me she was no good the moment that I met her. I remember that the first thing she said to me was a slam about John, while John was sitting right there.

John told my mom about it when he called her the other night. He wants to break up with Liz. I am not sure why he called my mother. I think he was trying to get her to talk to his mother so she would send him the money to move out of Liz's place. He also told my mom that he was sorry things did not work out between her and his father. Personaly, I think John is sorry that he can't sponge off of them anymore.

Harry is in Arkansas now, living with his brother, at least until he can get on his feet. I hope that he finds what he is looking for there. He is a good man and he will make some woman happy, if he can find a woman who will appreciate the attnetion he wants to give her.

On another note, Todd has been having violent muscle spasms. His entire body shakes and his pain is so great that it scares me. Please pray for his pain to be lessened. Thank you.

Love of Money

These are the questions we were asked to address in our online class this week, and here is my initial response to them:

Questions:

1. Jesus taught, "You cannot serve both God and money"(Matt. 6:24, NIV). How do you respond to that statement? How does your response correlate with your worldview?

2. Describe any important issue concerning human origins that evolution fails to explain. Discuss your perspectives with your classmates. What would change in your occupational decision if you were to approach it from a purely Naturalistic viewpoint?

Initial Response:

The scripture in Matthew made me think of another scripture, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith…” (1 Timothy 6:10 NWT). Some Bibles translate it as “the love of money is the root of all evil.” So earning money or having money is not wrong, but it is the love of money that causes problems for Christians.

Getting back to the scripture in Matthew, I think the majority of the people in the United States serve money. The act of acquiring it is the most important thing in their lives. We need to ask ourselves what is more important to us, God or money? Initially, it may easy to say that God is more important in our lives than money, but it is not so black and white when you really think about it.

You don’t have to have money in order to worship it. If your desire for more money, or more material possessions interferes with your service to God, then you are serving money. It is really difficult to find balance because money is necessary to live. Money seems to rule my life at times. My husband was injured a year ago and has not been able to work since. Because of this, we have to consider money in every decision we make. We can’t go to visit friends because we can’t afford the gasoline to drive there, we have to make due when things break because we can‘t replace them, and we had to have a beloved cat put down because we could not afford an operation she needed, which still absolutely breaks my heart.

I have to admit that money is on my mind more than God. It makes me think of a German film I saw called Wings of Desire, where angels are portrayed as being among humans. While traveling through the city, the angels hear the humans’ thoughts. Most of the humans are thinking about money, how they will pay for things, etc… it makes the angels depressed. I don’t think the American version of the film, City of Angels, portrayed it as well.

As far as the Naturalistic Worldview is concerned, I found the Carl Sagan quote quite profound. Maybe I am looking at it in a way he did not intend, but in a way, I think he is right. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says that “there is nothing new under the sun.” I think that could be extrapolated to include the cosmos.

I am not sure that having a Naturalistic Worldview would change my choice of occupation. I could find a job right now that would bring my family more income. For a long time I tried to do it all, work, be a mom, a wife, and write, but my writing was always the casualty to lack of time and energy. Now that I am in my 40’s I realize that if I am going to write, I have to do it. Writing is something that I am very serious about. I have stories in me that are aching to get out, and I can’t hold them back anymore. It is the same with my education. You don’t need a college education to be a writer, but I value knowledge more for the sake of knowledge. I am a perpetual student.