Two Steps Back

My mom came over today and took me to the store, and after we got back to the trailer, I sat in her van discussing what I would like to do for the boys over the summer. I said I wanted to get hold of some of Todd's family in New York and see if they would like him to visit them for a couple of weeks because this is his last summer before he is an adult, and they have not seen him since he was four years old. I feel I owe it to them to let them get to know him a little before he is all grown up and out in the world. I also want him to spend some time with my sister because he sees an example of what can be accomplished through them, if you work hard. But while we sat there talking about Tate's future, he came out the back door and said he had just gotten into a fist fight with his father. He said he was just playing on the computer and his dad hit him, so he hit back. I knew that was not the whole story, but he said Todd was calling the police and was threatening to have him arrested, so I sent him with my mother. I came in and tried to talk to Todd, but he did not want to talk, he was just yelling. So we have taken two giant steps back in all the progress we have made.

The stress has overwhelmed him. I understand because I am overwhelmed too, but I express it in different ways. The past two days I have just been crying. I don't know much, but I know that I am tired of being miserable. I want to laugh with someone. Todd and I need to reconnect or we are going to end up apart. The idea of a divorce just tears me apart. When I married Todd, it was forever in my heart.

I am totally discouraged with myself. I am tired of not being able to do things with my family because I am too fat to walk around. I have got to lose weight. I may start another blog and record everything I eat on it as a way to try and get myself motivated to lose weight.

Dear Lord, I need help to hold this family together. Please soften Todd's heart, and please soften Tate's heart. Please make us into a real and loving family. Please replace the anger and pain in this home with patience and understanding, and love.

I want to pull Tate close and just love him, but he pulls away every time. Please, God, let my son allow me to hold him and love him the way a mother is supposed to pull her children close and soothe their souls. I can't even express how much my heart hurts right now. The pain feels like it is coursing right through my veins and I want to run away, as if I could escape the pain.

I wish I could move in with my mom because for some reason, when I am with her, I feel like I am safe and taken care of, and I don't feel safe right now. Please, God, help me to feel safe again.

Bad Week

It has been one of those weeks where just when you think it can't get any worse, it does.

I just started to feel better. I've been able to breathe without the oxygen for three or four days now.

Last week, I was driving our pick-up to the store when I got pulled over. The cop said that he was pulling me over because my license plate was blocked- which was totally rediculous because what he said was blocking it was the tow hitch, and it has been there since the truck was manufactured in 1983. Anyway, our registration was not current on the truck because we have not had the money to get the truck to pass the smog inspection. So because the registration was run out, the cop had the truck towed, and that was Saturday night. Sunday the bank was closed, so I could not get any money out. Monday they were closed to, so Tuesday I went and drew out everything I had which was only a hundred and seventy five dollars- one hundred of which was for my electric bill- and went to try and get the truck from the place that towed it, but they wanted two hundred and ten dollars, and on top of that, we still needed to pay the police a hundred and twenty seven dollars, so we had to just let our truck go. It was a good truck. It never cost us much in labor to maintain, and never left us stranded. I am so sad to let it go. That was on Saturday. Come Monday Todd drove me over to my friend's house to help her mother do some cleaning, and when he was driving back home his Blazer died. He had to walk back to my friend's house, and his friend Ernest gave us a ride home. My mom's husband had triple A tow it back to our house, and there it sits in the driveway. We don't know what is wrong with it, and we don't have any money to take it to a garage. I already paid the electric bill.

Now the weather is all rainy and the ceiling in the bathroom is leaking so my feet get wet when I have to use the bathroom, and I am just too depressed by everything. I am so tired of just barely scraping by. I don't want a lot, but I want to be able to drive to the mountains, or to the ocean. When I get there, I want to walk on the beach, or through the redwooods. I want to be able to go someplace with my family for dinner. I want to see a movie or buy a pair of shoes without having to worry about being short on the electric bill or running out of food by the end of the month. My friend Sandy wrote on facebook that she had gone out dancing. I want to do that without feeling guilty that I am spending money I should be using to pay bills. Is what I want so unreasonable? I don't know why we have never been able to accomplish it. Not even when both of us were working full time. Now with Todd's back being so bad, he will never be able to work again, and I am going to school hoping to become more employable. I have never had a job that paid more than minimum wage, except when I was working as a truck driver. I would go back to that if I could, but my health is not good enough.

Todd went to the emergency room last night. He said he was having a panic attack. He called 911 and went in by ambulance. He is disappointing me so much lately. He acted like a child about the Blazer breaking down. I tried looking up the symptoms online to diagnose the problem, but he would not check anything. I would have had Tate check things, but I was afraid Todd would get mad. Todd is just not the man I married anymore. He never laughs anymore, at least, not when he is with me. He is whiney and childish and angry all the time. I have fantasies about leaving him for someone who knows how to be happy. But I still love him. I just don't respect him like I used to. He has always had an attitude like the world owes him something, and that has always bothered me, but it has gotten worse lately. I think he has lost respect for himself, and that is a big problem, because I won't be able to respect him until he can respect himself again.

Now I have to do a power point presentation for school, and I have never done one. I have to download a trial version of microsoft office to do it, and I can't get the download to work, and I feel like the whole world is caving in on me. This rain has left a chill in the air and I can't shake it. And now I can't stop crying. Please help me, God. Please help me.

How Do I Breathe?

I need to go back to the doctor. The prescriptions he gave me did not help, and I am having more trouble breathing than ever. Just walking from the bedroom to the living room (a distance of about 10 feet) got me so out of breath. It took me about 5 minutes to catch my breath. That is why I have not been posting a blog every night. I can only be on the computer a short time before I need to lie down and rest. I haven't felt like eating either, which is a good thing. I think I have lost a little bit of weight.

Todd and Tate are doing okay. I can never quite relax around them. There is no telling when things will erupt. This morning Tate's bus was cancelled, so Todd decided to drive him to school. Well, Tate gave him a tough time about it, but instead of getting angry, Todd just came to me. I told Tate to get in the Blazer so his dad could drive him to school. Tate complied. When he got back home, Todd said he wished he had not done it. Apparently the visibility was really bad- which would explain why they cancelled the busses, but Tate has already missed so much school, he can't afford to miss anymore.

Here is where I do my little rant about how, if they are going to cancel the busses, they need to cancel classes too. Otherwise, it is unfair to the bus riders. It is like they are missing out on part of their education just because of where they live. Do any other parts of the country ever have just the busses cancelled, but classes still held for those who walk to school? If I had more energy I might write to the school board about it and protest until things were changed, but I don't have the energy for activism at this point.

Something happened that I am very upset about, but it requires a lot of background and explaining, so I just don't have enough energy to write about it at this point.

My mom is signing up to go to an online college. I am proud of her. She wants to take psychology. I will be so amazed if my mom becomes a therapist. I get good grades in psychology, but I really don't want a job listening to other people's problems. Oh, did I tell you last week when I called to talk to Todd's therapist and ended up talking to his supervisor because he was out of the office, the first thing she suggested I do was get a restraining order against Todd. I told her in no uncertain terms that I would not do that to my husband, but can you imagine if I were a weaker person? She could have talked me into throwing my husband out and wrecked my marriage. A lot of times therapists do more harm than good in that way.

Todd has been waking up with very painful muscle cramps in his legs. He could use prayers to ease his pain. Please pray for me to get well, and for the love in our house to continue to grow. Thank you.

Bad Days

It has been a couple of bad days in a row. I am not even emotionally prepared to write about them yet. I just wanted to let you know that Star Trek is home and much better. The vet determined that he had been mauled by a bigger dog. The children down the street brought him a hamburger to make him feel better, and he is on the mend. I will write more when I am not so exhausted.

Please hold my family in your prayers so that we can make it through these trying times. Thank you.

Star Trek's Trek

Well, Star Trek took a trek to the vet today. Mom called and made an appointment at the Redwood vet clinic. I went with her because she did not know where it was. We have taken our animals there from time to time. They are wonderful, but can be very expensive.

They said that they think Star Trek may have actually been shot, or possibly attacked by a larger dog. It is hard to tell by the wounds. It looks like there was an entry wound on his hind quarters, and then an exit wound next to his penis. There also seems to be some other bleeding going on underneith him, but the vet had a hard time because moving his leg out of the way to get a good look caused him so much pain, so they offered to keep him overnight, at no charge, then tomorrow they are going to sedate him, and shave the areas so they can see what is going on, and then they will be able to tell the extent of the wounds and whether any critical organs were damaged. They said they would try to avoid xrays because we really don't have the money to pay for them. I gave Mom the money to pay for half of the services because she is really going to be hurting for money after Harry leaves.

Mom told me today that Harry had been the answer to her prayers. He did not give her any grief about practicing her religion the way Steve had. He was very clean, and he helped her with Grandpa and took care of her, and that was what she prayed for.

The problem is that he wants to take too good of care of her. He smothers her, and he wants her to do the same for him, which she is not willing to do. She wants to be left alone so she can write and do her own thing. He seemed to take an interest in her writing at first, but now I think he resents it. She has finished 4 novels since they have been together, which is only three years. I think he would be less resentful if she got one of the novels published.

I really feel bad for Harry. The whole situation breaks my heart. I like Harry, even though I never got very close to him. I know that he tried so hard to make Mom happy. He isn't perfect, and I know that the fact that he is racist is a big problem for Mom. I don't think that I could live with that either... but I don't blame him for it, I feel sorry for him. I think that he is a victim of his environment in that way. I am sure he could overcome it if he had the right motivation, but when it is something so deeply engrained, it is not easy to do, and I doubt that Mom ever told him how much it bothers her.

Now that Mom and Harry are breaking up, Mom thinks that God is unhappy with her about it, and that is making it hard for her to trust in Him.

Personaly, I am stressed about it too because I know how much income Mom has without Harry, and it is not enough for her to get by on. I suggested she become a foster parent, because she has always been so good with teenage girls, but she doesn't really want to do that. I can't say I blame her, but I don't know how else she will be able to manage to make it. If I could, I would give her some money every month to help her, but I can't even pay my own bills. I will just have to pray for her and trust God to provide.

Prayers for Star Trek

Star Trek is what my grandfather called his dog. He is a long haired Chihuahua mix. Grandpa had Alzheimer's disease, so the dog started out as Bowser when we gave it to him, but then Grandpa noticed that the dog had one white paw, so he changed the name to White Foot, but later he forgot the "White" part and just remembered the "Foot" part, so he changed it to Star Foot. Later, he forgot the "Foot" part and just remembered the "Star" part. Grandpa had been a long time fan of the Star Trek tv series, so he started calling the dog Star Trek, and that was what finally stuck.

Star Trek was a wonderful companion to my grandpa, especially when the Alzheimer's became really bad. Star Trek was always at his side.

It's been 2 years since Grandpa died, and my mom has continued to love and care for Star Trek. She has a fenced in yard, but he is an escape artist. She got him neutered so he would not run after all the females in heat, but it didn't stop him from climbing the fence. Today, Mom said he got hit by a car. He was not killed, but Mom does not have the money to take him to the vet. I don't know how dire the situation is. I hope he does not have internal bleeding. Mom said something about him having a hole in his hind quarters that she poured some peroxide on. She said he walked around and wagged his tail, but she has not been able to look at the under side of his leg to see how bad the damage is.

Our cat, Thomas, was hit by a car a couple of years ago and his hip was broken, and after a 200 dollar vet bill, we were told they could not do anything for him. Fortunately it healed on its own. I took Mom some of Graham's cough medicine to give to Star Trek. It has codiene in it, so it should ease any pain he is in and help him to sleep. The hardest part with Thomas was keeping him still. Mom did not want us to go in the house because she was afraid that Star Trek would get
excited when he saw us and try to get up.

So anyway, I will be praying extra hard for Star Trek to recover from this. He still has a lot of life left in him, and he is very loved. I know it would really devastate my mother if he were to die. He used to go jogging with her like her body guard, and I know she plans to start jogging again. Oh, I am very, very sad. Poor Star Trek. I hate the idea of animals in pain. If anybody out there is reading this, please say a little prayer for Star Trek too. Thank you.

Here is a poem I wrote about Grandpa when he lost his second wife. She was not my grandmother.

Beloved Wife

He sat on his bed,
knuckles like concord trunks
fumbled with shirt buttons,
“Where are we going?” he asked,
for the fourth or fifth time.

“To the cemetery,”
slipped past the swell of sorrow in my throat.

“Oh?” he said, “who died?”

I had to tell him again,
“It was Jessie, Grandpa.”

His mouth opened
in silent grief, eyes dipped
to hide anguished surprise,
“Is the funeral today?”

A conversation replayed
all the way there.

Blue and white painted sky,
the full moon showing through.
Lavender and yellow daisies
cover the casket.

Faces of family and friends
were all new to him.
Each condolence became
a fresh fracture
to blessed Alzheimer’s.

He sat, eyes in the past,
as Beloved Wife was eulogized.
Present slipped in
when her name was mentioned,
and a new mourning period began.

Fragile hearts struggled
to stay strong, but
when he joined the chorus
of Amazing Grace,
it broke us all to pieces.

Still Sick

Graham and I both went to the doctor today. Graham has bronchitis. Poor little guy. He is miserable. I hope that he did not go to school when he was contagious because his teacher, Mr Dowling had menengitis and suffered a stroke due to the menengitis which left him in a wheelchair. He could not teach for a whole year. Now he has to be very careful not to get sick again or he could land back in the hospital.

Since I made my appointment at the last minute today, I could not see my doctor. I was not pleased with the treatment I got from the doctor I did see. He did not even listen to my chest or examine me in any way. I told him I was having trouble breathing and he started writing out prescriptions. He gave me an inhaler, some nasal spray and allergy medicine, but I know I have caught bronchitis from Graham and will end up back in the doctor's office in a few days to get antibiotics. I asked the doctor about antibiotics and he said I did not need them. I don't know how he determined that, since, as I said, he did not even examine me. I do have to say that the inhaler he gave me worked better than any inhaler I have ever used before, but I am still not able to breathe very well.

As I type one of the neighbor's dogs is barking. It is after midnight. I wish they would bring their poor little dogs inside at night. It is too cold for a little dog to be out all night this time of year. I will say a prayer for all the little dogs left out in the cold. God cares about the animals too. Did you ever read all of the laws in the Old Testiment about the humane treatment of animals?

I deposited the financial aide check today. Hopefully tomorrow the bank will let me withdraw enough to pay the back rent we owe. I also need to get a Walmart gift card so I can order the computer I want from their website. The money will not last long enough to do all the things we need to do with it. I need to pray that I have the selfcontrol to do the wise thing with the money.

Our kitty with the hurt eye came home today and his eye looked a lot better. I still gave him an antibiotic pill. He took it without any trouble at all. I think he will be okay. I should not have to run him to the vet.

Tate has been working on crafts lately. I think maybe that has helped him channel some of his energy so that he is not so eager to fight with his father. He has been making wrist bands and things with studs in them. I must say that they look very nice, much nicer than my attempts working with rhinestones and studs when I was younger.

Breathing

Right now my lungs are so conjested, I am kind of scared. I almost called my mom to take me to the emergency room, but I am going to try and hold out. Emergency rooms are no fun. I will try to get into my doctor in the morning. Graham needs to get to his doctor too. He is the one who gave it to me. I need to pray that both he and I will recover from this bug quickly.

One of our kitties has a hurt eye. His name is Nacho and he is a yellow tiger. He must have gotten in a fight with another cat. I will have to get him some antibiotic cream tomorrow. I need to get him and two other male cats fixed so that they don't fight with all the other Tom cats in the neighborhood. I will call Dr. Piel and see if she can get them later this week.

Oh, just in the nick of time, my financial aide check arrived today, thank the Lord. I should have gone and depostited it right away, that way I may have been able to withdraw funds today, but I did not feel well enough to go to the bank when it arrived, so I decided to just wait.

These funds will not really go very far. There is so much that needs to be done. I need to make sure that I don't spend them on frivilous things.

Bugs

Graham and I both have the flu bug. Graham came down with it on Thursday or Friday and had to share. I have a sore throat and my chest is getting more and more conjested. I used the oxygen last night for a while.

Todd's counselor, Larry, called this morning. I am thankful because he seems to be someone who is genuinely concerned with helping Todd. He listens to me, and that makes me happy because counselors usually just work with the individual and in doing that, they can ruin a relationship. Counselors work on healing the individual, and sometimes they advise things that are not healthy for a couple. When someone enters into therapy, their spouce should not be shut out. I could probably write a book on that alone.

Larry suggested that my mom take the kids for a day or two so that we could get away together. Normaly that would not be an option, because we would not have the money to do it, but with my financial aide check coming in soon, we may be able to manage it. We really do need some time to gether to reconnect with each other. I will pray on it.

Todd continues to be in pain all the time. His legs and feet are swelling up too. If you have never watched someone you love living in constant pain, you have no idea how helpless you can feel. Women are designed to want to ease pain with their touch. What is the first thing you do when your child is hurting? You pull them close. I keep wishing a hug or a good back rub will take Todd's pain away, but there is no healing in my caress, so I must continue to pray for Jehovah to remove Todd's pain.

I had some trouble with this week's homework. I should not have waited until the last minute to do it. There was supposed to be an example posted, but I could not find it. From the looks of the board, neither could a lot of other people, so at least I don't feel alone, but I do wish I had begun earlier so that I would have had the chance to email the instructor about it.

I really hope that my check arrives today so that I can pay the rent and the electric bill. I paid the cable/internet/phone bill already.

Today is Todd's birthday and I didn't buy a cake or a gift for him. I think I will just wait until the check comes in to do that. He will have to understand. I did get him a card. If the check does not come today, I will give that to him and write in it something about giving him his gift later in the week.

Pounding

I was once awakened by the sound of gun shots, and I've been awakened by civil war cannons going off, but this morning I was awakened, for the second time in less than a month, by my neighbor pounding on her back door because she had locked herself out of her house.

Donna pounded for more than 20 minutes before she was able to wake her aunt to let her in the house. The woman needs to get one of those hide-a-key things and leave it outside somewhere. I don't know why she is even locking the door for the two minutes it takes her to drive her daughter around the corner for school.

I really wanted to go and blow off some steam at her, but God must have seen fit to wake Lily to let her in before I decided to put my clothes on and yell at her. I am thankful for that because it would really not have been very Christ-like of me.

Yesterday the high school was cancelled because of fog. That is rare around here. They usually just cancel the bus that Tate rides, but they still hold classes, which means either Tate misses a day of school or we have to figure out how to get him there ourselves. I think that is rediculous. It is like we are being discriminated against because of where we live. First of all, a school bus is a lot safer than driving him to school in one of our vehicles would be. In New York, when they cancelled the busses, they cancelled classes as well.

The school system here is completely backwards. When I went to school we had 7 classes a day, each class was 45 minutes long, and the schedule rotated daily, so that if someone had a time of day when their ability to learn crashed, they would not have the same class at that same time of day every day. The system worked very well, as far as I was concerned. Here, they have only 3 classes a day, and each class is 2 and 1/2 hours long. A teenager's attention span does not last that long. It is a recipie for failure. I should write to the school board about it.

I still feel exhausted. With Tate home all day yesterday, I had to play referee again; could not leave him and Todd alone together. Still, I am thankful that there has not been a fist fight between them since I started this blog, so if anybody out there has prayed for us, I want to sincerely thank you. Your prayers have made a difference.

I am still praying for our financial situation to ease up. I just want to be able to pay all my bills, have good food on my table every day, and maybe a little something for recreation and emergencies.

Todd's birthday is coming up on the 8th. I don't know what to do for him yet. Valentine's Day is less than a week after that. It will be the 8th anniversary of the day that Todd's best friend, Mike committed suicide. I miss Mike so much. Hard to believe it has been 8 whole years. The pain is still so fresh when I think about it. All the questions his death left unanswered are still unanswered.

My friend Tiffany posted pictures of her baby on Facebook. She is the most beautiful little girl you ever saw! She was supposed to be born by planned c-section on February 2nd, but she made her arrival in the world three days early. Her name is Charlotte Patricia. Someone asked if they were going to call her Charlie Pat, and someone else suggested Char Pay.

February

I can't believe February is here already.

I am exhausted. I still don't feel like I can leave Todd and Tate in the same room together without being there to referee. I really need God's help with these two.

I have not gotten much sleep this past week, and I feel like I am getting sick. I wheeze when I breathe. I tried to go to the doctor today, but the appointment got cancelled, after I had already gone to the office. I have to reschedule.

Since my appointment was cancelled, I went to my mom's house for a while and we watched the movie, Amelia. I was pleasantly surprised that Chris Eccelston was in it. I wish he'd had a bigger part. I miss him as Doctor Who. He was a great Doctor.

I am still worried about how my mother is going to survive once the divorce is final and Harry moves to Arkansas. I am afraid she may get back together with Steve.

Steve is a man who is hard not to like. He has a sort of charisma. The problem is that Steve is bipolar with delusions of grandeur. He wants/tries to be a spiritual leader to people. He has never gotten anybody to follow him, probably because his ideas are just too far out there for people to believe in. He believes in God, but he fancies himself some sort of healer and always has some new idea/scheme to improve people's health. These ideas have included bathing in muriatic acid and ingesting small amounts of mouse poison.

My mom absolutely loves Steve, but they have such fundemental disagreements as far as faith goes that she would never marry him. She did allow him to pull her out of her religion for six years, however, before she broke it off with him completely and married Harry.

One of the big problems is that there are no single men my mother's age within her religion. That is why she ended up marrying Harry outside of her religion. Mom once said she would rather spend her life as a bar fly than end up all alone for the rest of it. I don't know if she still feels that way or not, so I have to pray for her to find a means to survive financially after Harry leaves, and also for her to find companionship so that she does not spend the rest of her life alone.