On Gifts ....

On Gifts .... I recently had an occasion to receive gifts. It was my birthday. My (dare I say it?) 47th birthday. I started thinking about gifts and how they make you feel. Loved is the word I finally settled on. Through the years I have had many occasions to receive gifts, but, there a few that stand out in my memory. Christmas 1966 ... I was five years old. I wanted Santa Claus to bring me Tiny Chatty Cathy. That’s all. I wanted that doll more than anything in the world. I not only got her, but I got her bed and her brother Chatty Charlie too! They were sitting under the tree just waiting for me to make them real. A little girls dreams came true! There was a Santa Claus! It’s what I know now that I didn’t know then that makes this gift so special to me and makes it stand out as one of my favorites. My parents were young and in 1966 my daddy was working three jobs to make ends meet. He would land a job a Chevy the next year and life would become easier shortly, but that Christmas my parents had 3 children who believed in Santa and not a spare penny to their name. That fall my momma went to a yard sales, and found those dolls and the cradle they were in for 25¢. She brought them home and cleaned off the ink pen marking on Chatty Cathy’s face, washed and ironed the clothes, made bed clothes and a little blanket out of an old blanket she had, and was saddened that she couldn’t buy me a new one. I was getting someone’s cast off toys for Christmas. She did all this for me with 3 kids under her feet. She did it with love. My brothers both got bikes that year. Both bought a yard sales, both scrubbed down and made new through the love of my parents. Daddy scraping and painting after working 3 jobs, just so they would see our smiles on Christmas morning. We kids had no idea of ‘that horrible Christmas’ as my momma calls it, yet, each one of us have very vivid memories of that day as being our favorite Christmas. It’s so vivid in my memories that I can tell you what my mother was wearing. (A white bathrobe with big pockets that had blue flowers on them) I remember looking up into my daddy’s eyes and being so exited. He had a flat top hair cut. His face was rough with stubble, he smelled like Old Spice. So vivid the memories. It was the love that was packaged under the tree that shined so brightly that made is so wonderful for us. Birthday 1997 ... I was at my Momma’s house having ‘Birthday Dinner’ with a few family friends and my husband and children. It was 7:00 P.M. and we were sitting in the living room having coffee and chatting after dinner when my 15 year old son came into the room and sat a radio on my lap. He had it turned way up and announced to the room to settle down and listen. The DJ came on and said, "This is a dedication to Scott’s Momma. It’s her birthday today and Scott wants you to know how much you mean to him and how much he loves you. Happy Birthday Momma!" He proceeded to play Bette Midler’s ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’. When I finally looked up into my son’s eyes, they were as wet as mine. He shrugged his shoulders and with a sheepish grin said to me, "I didn’t have any money to buy you a gift." I looked around the room and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. To have a teenaged son do something so remarkable, humbled me. It still does. To this day it’s my favorite song, as one can very well imagine. It was love in it’s simplest and purest form. It is one of my most memorable gifts I ever received. Birthday 2008 ... My ex-husband bundled up our grandson in all his winter layers and walked through the snow with my sweet baby Boog. They baby stepped the four blocks to the General Dollar Store to pick out a card. Boog choose a ‘Grandma Card’ with a cat on it. He scribbled in it, on it, and all over it. His chubby little fingers picked up Crayola Colors® one by one till he used every color in the box. There are sweet sticky fingerprints surrounding the card. When I came home that night, Boog handed me the card and said, "BookBookBookBook" I asked him if he gave me a book, and bless his sweet little heart he sat on the floor, patting the spot on the floor next to him for me to sit with him. He held the ‘book’ upside down and proceeded to ‘read’ it to me, with sound effects and all. "Titty say MEOW’, "ha-ha-ha", "I Lub Yaya", "hee-hee-hee" "Dat Peety" "I wite" "MeowMeowMeow". I got kind of misty eyed as he read me my ‘Birthday Book’. Time spent and love shared. There is an undeniably special bond between my grandson and I. It shows on all days. It shined in this ‘book’ for Yaya on my 47th birthday. It was made with love and given with pride. As I look at these memories, I see the commonality in my favorite gifts. It’s evident that the gift of love shines through in all ways. It’s the love we take with us, that sustains us and nurtures us through our lives. The gift of love shown is as great as the gift of love given.

I am smiling ... love me later~tj

There was a Dead Skunk in the Road ... I oned it, you twoed it, I threed it ...

Deer Don’t. Mice and Rabbits Don’t

Bears do. Frogs, turtles and snake do. But the one that does that I take an interest in is skunk. Skunk do. They hibernate all winter. They wait till they know it’s nearly spring and start their waddling strut about. The most fabulous thing happened in this frozen tundra I call home. I smelled a most familiar odor, and I nearly shouted with joy! My poor momma didn’t know what to think of me as I whooped it up while driving home from the grocery store with her. It was quite evident that I smelled skunk last night. It’s almost over! Whew it has been one long winter!

I Hate Traction

I have checked out of life almost completely, except for the random jaunts to the market with momma, I have been to physical therapy and the doctor’ office. Period. For nearly a month now my back has been out. OUT. It hurts ... a lot. Can’t sit, can’t stand, can’t bend, can’t lay down. I gave up on the pain medication. I still hurt, I just didn’t give a rip if I did. I know that this physical therapy thing is helping. My back is getting a softer feel to it. It felt like a concrete wall for awhile. The one thing I don’t like, that’s too kind a phrase, the one thing I HATE during PT is traction. They strap me into this automated contraption and pull me apart. It sets off spasms and pain unknown to me. Well it was unknown till that first day. Then the PT and the Doc both tell me that traction is what’s gonna get me well. UGH! I cry though it, I try not to, but my eyes leak and my teeth hurt from gritting the pain. I just keep thinking that maybe tomorrow when I get strapped down, it won’t hurt. That day will come ... just not soon enough to suit me. Driving home from physical therapy today I saw a dead runned over skunk in the road, and I just hadta smile.

Red Dresses and Curvature

My son is getting married in August to the one person I would have chosen for him if I had met her first. My new daughter to be is the perfect match for my son. She completes him, and he completes her. I love the way they love each other. My daughter and my new daughter to be went out shopping for bridesmaid dresses. They had a ball and found the perfect dress. My daughter tried it on for me and I was astounded! She’s been so busy since she was just 18 having babies that I failed to notice that she is stunning! The dress is a size 8. My daughter never wore an 8, she was a 15 (non maternity) last I knew, or noticed. She filled this strapless dress out in all the right places and I don’t really know when that happened to her. I was sort of sad, and happy at the same time. It will be a beautiful wedding for a beautiful couple of kids.

Assholes

I have got to clear my life of them. I still have these two hangers on that won’t go away. I am much, much, much too nice a lady. I have a soft place to land but he’s only gonna put up with my assholes for so long and then where will I be? Anyone out here willing to teach me how to be a bitch? I’m never too old to learn I suppose. Hey! If somebody done runned ‘em both over in the road would it make spring come faster? Chit, probably not! It would just leave a horrendous smell about the air. It was a thought though ...

Pondering ‘The Real’ Of Us

I was thinking about this the other day. We blog to perfect headshots of folks out there. Hand selected perfect photos of us all. Not a full bodied recent photo in the lot of us (‘Cept for you Karen). That got me to thinking on this a bit. I was thinking that we should have a ‘Get Real’ day and show each other what we REALLY look like. Ugly as it might be for all y’all to see me, it would be nice to know that I ain’t the only one with too many Krispy Kreme Donuts in my past. Vanity aside, I think we should stop the perfectly angled, camera covered photos of us ... if only for one ‘Real’ shot of us. I’m game. Anyone else?

Shop Victoriously

I sell on eBay. I have a little store on there. Well the other day I put on a soap dispenser. It was a cool old thing from the 50's but it was a powdered soap dispenser. Metal instead of plastic. Stainless and enameled. It was sweet. It was a soap dispenser. So a fella emails me. He tells me he wants it and how much to end the auction. So I write him back. This is exactly what I wrote him, "$35.00 I pay shipping." He writes me back, now I ain’t making this up, this is verbatim his email to me. "Thanks for the kind reply. I WOULD like to purchase it. Can we make it $45 inclusive of item, postage and PayPal payment? If so, how would you like to proceed?" Is he joking? I say $35, he says $45. Should I come back with "NO! I said $35, now it’s $33.50 mister!" In hopes that he goes up to $50? I marked it sold at $45 for my Vintage 1950's LURON Heavy Duty Powdered Soap Dispenser. Last week I put a 10¢ Kotex Dispenser Coin Operated Machine on eBay from that was made in 1951. I thought, if someone buys this, they will buy anything. It sold the same day for $50. People continue to scare the hell outta me.

Momma’s Got A Pimped Out Ride

I got a fix-it ticket. I couldn’t believe it! For what you wonder? I drive a white Ford Ranger. No frills, no muss about it. I put a little light up Ford symbol on the rear. It lights up when I hit the brakes. No biggie. "Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo" The cop tells me it’s illegal. It shimmers a blue light. $75 later, the damned light is turned off and my blinkers are fixed and I get bragging rites for having a truck so pimped it’s illegal! Speaking of rides, my son just bought his very first brand new car. A 2008 Chevy Cobalt. Way to go Scott! You finally got a reliable ride. I’m proud for and of you!

Okay that’s all I have to say now.

love me later~tj

 

 

And life rolls on ...

 

My cousin called me tonight. She had something to say to me, and I could hear the sorrow in her voice. I wasn’t alarmed, I had already heard the news she was going to share. I was just waiting for her to be ready to share it.

We grew up tight, me and my cousin Missy. Our mother’s being only sisters might have helped with the closeness of our families. Her daddy’s illness when we were tots threw us together and my mom would watch my cousins while my aunt took care of my uncle. Whatever the dynamics of our situation, we wound up growing up together. Missy’s daddy died when she was four and I was five. Childhood caught us like childhood does, and we grew up, loving each other.

I remember when Missy was going through her rebellious stage, dying her hair whore black, hating her step-father and all he represented, drinking, getting stupid with the boys. Missy was about 14 then, I would have been 15. I was quite a different kind of a teenager at that time. What some called a geek, I embraced my nerdiness and reveled in my parents love. Not a lick of trouble was I ever in, no drinking or boys, I was into playing the violin and doing crafts with my mom. I was earning badges as Girl Scout and writing poetry of the lover’s I might one day have. I couldn’t understand my cousin’s angst against life. I always thought she had everything going for her. Missy was beautiful, had a knock out body, and had a laugh that was quick and was so musical it made the angels giggle. I remember thinking that I didn’t know her at all during that time. We were so different. It was her dark period. Mine would come a few short years later and last a little longer, but that part of the story comes later.

Missy wound up in the Army after she graduated High School. I can’t say that I even know how she wound up there, but she did. Her decision may have been made by her mom, her life circumstances. Whatever her options were, she chose the Army. Before she went away, Missy and I spent a summer vacationing together up north in the wilds of Michigan. I remember Lake Kneff, blow-up rafts, Boone’s Farm and bikinis (hers). We had a wickedly wild evening on an Army Reservist Base. There were men involved but I remained a virgin to the surprise of even me. It was the first time I had visited what being naughty was about.

The next thing I knew about Missy was that she was married and going off to Germany. Missy had married a fellow Serviceman simply to get the heck outta Dodge so to speak. Period. She divorced him shortly after she hit German soil, and ran into the man who would eventually make my cousin a mother.

When Missy was busy getting married again and having a baby girl, I was busy spreading my wings and doing the rebellious dance that I had not experienced earlier in my life. I was a ‘late bloomer’ in my world. The year of 1981 is a very remarkable year in the story of me. It was this year that I learned that men will say anything to have sex. It was this year that I wound up pregnant and at the mercy of the world. I broke my parents heart, and was banished from them. I lost everything valuable to me in that year. I bounced around from family member to family member and finally my brother stopped the roller coaster ride for me. He took me home to face ‘it’ with my parents. I did. It was more than difficult. Inside me I had growing a child that was not wanted by anyone but me. I eventually got a little apartment in Ypsilanti and at almost 8 months along with my precious baby daughter, I went into labor. What was taking place inside me was not known until after it was too late to save her life. My system poisoned her. She lived only four hours, trying her best to cling to life. During that four hours decisions were made that would alter the course of my life. At a time in the world when death during child delivery was just about unheard of, I dangled precariously close to it. My mother was summoned to my side. She made on the spot decisions for me, that I have since forgiven her for. That was in September of 1981. I had medical issues afterward to deal with, but more pressing were the mental issues that threatened to drown me.

I was traveling and ‘finding myself’. What I ended up finding on Long Island in the summer of 1982 was a man whom I could have spent the rest of my life with. Now people shake their head at this, but I wound up pregnant yet again. It was by God’s grace I was pregnant. I was using a diaphragm, the spermicide that comes with that, the ‘Sponge" and a condom, EVERY TIME. He hated my sexual preparations, I wouldn’t go without it. A baby was OUT OF THE QUESTION! Or so I thought. God had other plans. I ran away from my love and never whispered the fact that I was carrying his child. He might tell me to get rid of the baby. I didn’t give him an opportunity to say anything to me for two years. I just slipped out of his life in the night. I came back home. To my parents. Again unwed and pregnant.

Turns out that baby saved my life. I grew up. I got on and became a momma. That experience mended fences that needed mending between me and my folks. I got real with what I needed in life so I could raise my son Scott. I eventually got married and had another baby daughter. And my life moved forward on a positive note. I took a round about course to make a family, but in the end, I did just that.

Missy was just as busy making a family for herself in Germany. A beautiful baby girl she named Mary Helen. Missy was a Momma! Then shortly afterward a bouncing baby boy she named Cheyenne. A turbulent marriage winding up in a second divorce for her left a custody battle of enormous proportions. Amazingly Missy’s babies grew her up, saved her life and she got real with what she needed in life so she could raise her children. She met a real man, who loved HER. Not for what she could do for him, but for how she made him feel, and he was monetarily responsible enough able to take care of her. I always envied that love she has with him, it is the one thing I want in life that has never found it’s way to me. But, because of him, Missy found a life with her children. Together they raised a family, and life moved on.

Missy and I got back together. We were changed women but in the end we loved each other, we were family. We raised our children close. We spent time together. We were up each others butts at times. Life was good. We both decided to go back to school. We both graduated. We shared our worries over raising children. There wasn’t much to hide between us. We carried on, hoping that our influences would weave our children’s moral fabrics. That the children we raised would become upstanding adults, free from the baggage she and I had drug into the creation of growing up. Only time would tell, and so it has.

Early teen years brought a world of emotional turmoil to my daughter’s life. My baby daughter fell into a quagmire of self loathing. She ran away, she searched for her meaning in life. She desperately sought a life of fulfillment. She needed to be needed. The torment I felt for my daughter was understandable. Then came the day that he was to be married. To a boy. A boy without a job or a pot to piss in. A boy who, it became evident to me, loved my daughter. The day that my daughter called me on the phone to tell me she was pregnant brought my world crushing down on me. My daughter couldn’t understand where my sorrow was coming from. "I thought you’d be happy for me." Eventually I would be, but for this moment in time I was grieving. I was grieving the dreams I had held for my daughter. I wanted her to have a life that was easier, and better than mine. I wanted more for her. In two little words, my dreams for her were forever extinguished. "I’m pregnant."

I needed time to say goodbye to the dreams I held for her, and took awhile longer to realize that just like me, her life will evolve into what it is meant to be. It will be what she makes of it. Not what I want for her, do for her, or demand of her. I still look back at that day I found out she was to be a momma and get a tender spot for the daughter I was going to have. I still grieve a little for that baby of mine that was going to grow up and be Someone Important! Someone of Value! Someone of Prestige! Some one of Degree! Now my Becca has her children and her husband. Turns out that those babies saved my daughter’s life. She grew up, and she got on and became a momma, and she is important, and valued. She is someone of prestige and degree. She is all that and more to me. I am so very proud of this baby girl I had a hand in raising.

Then my cousin called me tonight, and I could hear the sorrow in her voice. Missy told me she was going to be a grandma. I knew her sorrow. I felt it. I know where it’s coming from. Her daughter who is homeless, who is a recovering addict, who holds no job, is becoming a mother. Her daughter who was going to grow up and be Someone Important! Someone of Value! Someone of Prestige! Some one of Degree! Her daughter will find her own way in this world. And Missy needs to grieve the passing of her dreams. If life repeats itself like it did for me and my daughter, Mary’s baby will save her life. She’ll grow up, and get on and become a momma.

Missy? She’ll love being a grandmother. It’s the best thing in the world. Literally the best thing God has ever done for me. It’s the love you seek in life. The unconditional love that flows straight from one heart to another. Missy will bury the dreams she held for her daughter somewhere deep in her heart as all of us momma’s have to do at some point, and she will relish the new beginning she can make with her daughter ... and her grandchild.  And life moves on ...

love me later~tj

Giving to the Goodwill should warm your heart ...

Giving Clothes To The Goodwill
 
 
 It should make you feel all warm inside knowing that the clothes you previously wore are now gracing another grateful body!
 
 Remember that cleaning out your closets at least once a year and giving former treasures to Goodwill (or the charity of your choice) is a great way to give back to your community and help those who are less fortunate .
 
 So look through your closets and see if you don't have something that doesn't fit, or might be a little out of fashion .
 
 Those things will probably fit someone else and could be the height of fashion for them.
 
 With that in mind, take a look at this heart warming photo to inspire you, and remind you that your efforts won't go unnoticed .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that just aint right!

 

and I am smiling ...

love me later~tj

Writer's Block Challenge #30 - Through Jaundiced Eyes

Writer's Block Challenge #30

 

 

Through Jaundiced Eyes

The protestors stood in the dark. The only illumination was from what was left of the burning rubble of literacy they refused to allow the children to read. I watched the smoke curl up from the ashes of accomplishment. It started this afternoon at 4:30. It began to unfold as they stormed the front of school house. Arms full of books and cans full of fuel. I was dumbfounded, frozen in place as I watched.

I simply cannot understand such an alien, utterly bizarre mindset. Just about everything on earth rouses the holy ire and outrage of fundamentalists book burners. Everything they don't understand, everything outside their narrow little circle, which means just about anything you can think of, is evil and Satanic in their jaundiced eyes.

These protesters, who are not parents of children in this school are denouncing this community as a den of iniquity, why they don't even live in this school district, or even in this state. In fact, I found out later, the two rabble rousers who instigated this war of the words are a Texas couple who run a well-organized and bottomless-pocketed book-banning organization that has a devoted following among fundamentalists.

Our school district has policies in place if ever a book is challenged. They’ve never had to memorize the policy. A book has never been challenged. A parent must fill out a complaint form. No one else has a right to complain - and the book must stay on the curriculum or the library shelves until it has been reviewed by a committee.

Time after time, I have since read, bigger school districts are yielding in the most cowardly and craven manner to fundamentalist bullying, withdrawing the books immediately, and sometimes summarily dismissing the teachers who used the offending books in their classes. When parents complain, the school will offer them the option of letting their children read an alternate book, but the fundamentalists rarely accept any compromise. They don't just want their children reading "Satanic" books, they don't want anyone to read them!

In fact, in Warsaw County, Indiana, the school board simply handed the disputed books over to the protesters, who then publicly burned them, which brings me to where I am today watching, in perplexed fascination. One minute, doing the business this town brought me here to do, the next minute frozen to this place in time.

I am pondering over the question in my head whether parents really have an absolute right to instill their children with such frighteningly hateful, bigoted and backward attitudes?

As adults we have a right to believe as we choose, however outlandish and flat-out wrong our beliefs may be. But when adults seek to trap their (and everyone else's) children in a bizarre world of darkness, hatred, blind fear and anti-intellectualism, it seems to me to be a very perverted use of parental rights, let alone Constitutional Rights.

To quote Annie Kinsella from the movie Field of Dreams, "They're talking about banning books again! Really subversive books, like "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Diary of Anne Frank".... This is the kind of censorship they had under Stalin!.... Who wants to spit on the Constitution? Who thinks the Bill of Rights is a pretty darn good thing?... All right America - I love ya!"

tjs© February 4, 2008

Click here to see the list of

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000

I think you might be as surprised as I was!