What a crazy twisty road I have been driving down for the last 6 or 7 months. Life was good, then my then my daughter moved back home. She brought with her a husband, a son, a daughter, a daughter, a son and a cat. And mayhem, and noise, and pouting, and screaming, and hatred, and emotions, and prepubescent tantrums, and autistic tantrums, and 6 year old tantrums, and 8 year old sass. I have had days of enough stubbornness to supply a mule farm for a lifetime.

Then there is the flipside

I love that my days are filled with these people in my home. I really like them. They are sweet and silly and joyous. They make me laugh, and giggle, and dance to a music that is not heard but felt.

To those days that are less than joyous, the screaming in each others faces, gouging fingernails into faces, spinning and stemming, meltdown over technology, fighting over movies kind of days, I think back to when the house was quiet and I lived alone, and the babygrands visited. I recall those days fondly, and I miss them a lot.

To those days that are marked with giggles and cuddles and reading, and playing I think back to when the house was quiet and I lived alone, and I recall those days as empty, holding a void that was dark and lonely.

So there we have the road I have been traveling. Ups and downs. Rights and lefts, Starts and stops.

in the end, I'm happy.

Santa Continues His Journey

Santa Daddy

My favorite Santa Claus pictures of my children and of my grandchildren are with my Santa Daddy. The last time he wore his suit was in 2007. For eight long years it has hung in my closet. The last time he wore it, he took it off and told me to keep it, so I can play Santa. I could never fill his shoes, so there it has hung. I pulled it out this year for the first time. I cried as my hands ran over the velvety flocked suit. I think he'd be happy that Santa has started making visits again. It's going to live in someone else's closet now. The suit will make magic happen for many more children in the years to come. I think I did the right thing.

Cloey and Brody with Big Grandpa Santa 2007

Brody with Big Grandpa Santa 2007
 



Carrying on .... 2015



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

I'll be gone for a while ...

I'll see you when I get back.

Need a Good Laugh? Takes 3 minutes. Spew Warning!

empty poetry

Empty.

 

It’s utterly empty.

There are no emotions to fill it. It can’t

 

Get in here. Not that I wouldn’t let it,

It’s just void. I’m not

 

Sure when it happened.

After you left, before he left

 

Me to sort out the nonsense in

his life. It could be that it was empty

 

All along. It has been stripped bare before.

It’s always healed. Words hurt it, hits hurt it,

 

Tears hurt it, but mostly, rejection hurt it.

It’s not healing now, it’s raw, and sore and

 

So aware of what’s not here anymore. I

think that the missing is the part that

 

That causes the most suffering. I know

I’m not the only one. Why do you have to say

 

It like that? So sarcastic. I know, but

I’m the only me. It’s the me part that’s

 

Empty.

Zoloft Cocktail Anyone?

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." Ernest Hemingway from A Farewell to Arms

Zoloft Cocktail Anyone?

Had a really difficult year or so. I have a bad back that kept me out of work for 7 months 2007-2008 school year. Doc finally gave up on me and sent me to a pain clinic. He was able to keep the pain at bay, but it lurked in my peripheral view, always threatening. This past school year, my back went out again. I found a new pain doctor who after many months has finally cured my pain. I don’t see it lurking around anymore unless I have a very strenuous day. I only missed 3 days of work because of my back. No drugs. He did inject major steroids into my back every 5 weeks though. You know what steroids do to middle aged women? Plumps ‘em up like Violet Beauregarde

from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Did me anyway. Well last month he went in and burned my nerves off in 4 spots in my back. It’s a treatment program that I can live with - pain free. Depending on how long it takes for my nerves to grow back is how often I’ll need the Rhizotomy.

Make Mine a Double Please!

On top of the pain, I decide that I want to stop smoking while I’m off work barely moving. I did quit. It was a year this past April. Steroids, quitting smoking - hmmm. One day I go to the doc with a stabbing tummy ache. Seems my stomach is disintegrating. Hmmm. There goes any hope for the lapband I wanted. I have to have major surgery. I had it on June 12. Right after I got back from Yellowstone with mom. I’ve been recovering from this the latest invasion in my life. He cut my from stem to stern, which got infected... the drains just came out a couple weeks ago. Sucked, but I am finally on the mend.

Straight Up with a Lexapro Chaser!

Christmas time Becca says, "Mommy, put your boob in your bra before we take pictures." Hmmmm, checked and both boobs were where they ought to be. So she says, "What’s that?" I say, "What’s what?" She points to my chest. I hadn’t noticed but there on my chest (right above the boobage) is a lump. Big hand sized swelling. Doctor sends me to a surgeon. Surgeon sends me for tests. Doesn’t think it’s cancer - all the tests turned out negative, but he wants to take the lump out. I want to wait awhile. If it aint cancer it can stay for awhile. I told Becca I could use the third boob as advertisement for a boyfriend. I go back to that surgeon in August.

Nevermind, Just pass the Chocolate!

Compound all this stuff with my daddy’s passing and I’m a raving lunatic. Nah, not yet. I do my best to look on the bright side - it’s all going away, and in the end I’m still able to ... live.

That’s a good thing.