YAY!

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!

very interesting...

So i had this epiphany yesterday.... It was very strange, and I'm not sure how much of it i'll write about, considering my audience. That being said, if you have any questions, feel free to comment, and I'll elaborate if need be.

The things is that there used to be this person in my life. This person is not in my life at all anymore. I loved this person completely and unabashedly. I learned things that made me who I am from the relationship that I had with this person. Because of this person, I am who I am today; I do the things I do and live the way I live. This person loved me in his own way. He understood my insanity and my comings and goings. There was a time when I would have done anything for him. He will forever be a part of my life and I am forever changed having known him.

He wasn't an exceptional person. He didn't ride in on a white horse and sweep me off my feet. He did little things to show me how he felt. Some of those things he didn't even realize. We had a genuine and pure relationship. He knew me inside out, and I knew him better than he probably wanted me to.

Things ended horribly, and I couldn't wish anything but bad things for him. For years, I wanted to see him suffer. I wanted to see him hurt the way he had hurt me. I wanted someone to completely crush him; to bring him beyond his knees to the ground.

Until yesterday.

My hubby was cleaning out a closet and found something that belonged to this person. It's something that he probably doesn't realize that I have, and that I kinda knew I had, but had forgotten about it. It's something that he would probably like to have back, and it actually went through my head to wrap it up and send it to him for Christmas. Then came the epiphany.

I no longer wish terrible things for him. I no longer want to see him hurt. We are both totally different people now, better or worse, richer or poorer, fatter or thinner, and there is no reason why we both don't deserve happiness and peace in our lives. This came to me all of a sudden. It was very odd, and still kind of is. I sat there and thought about it a moment. I tried to wish that his girlfriend would suddenly hate him and break up with him and stomp his heart out, but that wish wouldn't come. I have a peace about my past with this person now, and it's really fucking with me. This is something that I have been unable to be peaceful about for a lot of years.

So, I wrote more than I thought I would, and if you read this, I love you. Not in a romantic or sexual way. I love the person that you are....because that person helped me define me. And come to think of it, I think you knew that's what you were doing the whole time.

Merry Christmas. No Christmas Ficus this year, okay?

Any suggestions for leftover tofurkey?

I loathe the holiday season....

I don't ruin it for other people. I can fake it with the best of them, and having kids make it better, but I really am not into the holidays. I really never have been. My husband, along with a couple of my other beaus in the past have been complete Christmas junkies....listening to Christmas carols as soon as freakin Halloween is over. This is lunacy, however, I deal. I get on with my life, make it fun for the kiddos, and avoid the radio stations that play all the holiday crap until February.

I don't remember quite when the holidays lost their magic for me. I know that I enjoyed Christmas as a kid, as most children do. I believed in Santa Claus forever. I even remember asking my mom that if I still be lieved in Santa when I was 15, would he still come visit me.... I was always assured that as long as I believed in Santa, he would visit me. The spirit of that is beautiful. My father was into the holidays, and always helped people whenever he could. When I was around 11 or so, he took my sister and me to visit this needy family to deliver them food and toys for Christmas. They were heating their house with their oven. The oven was on full blast and the door to it was wide open. I felt so sorry for that family, and so fortunate that I was in such a warm house with plenty of food and toys. I have tried to do something in that fashion every year since.

This have kinda changed since I've had kids. Having children around the holidays is cool, because I remember how much I loved getting together with my family. Thanksgiving and Christmas was the only time that I got to see my father's family. We would all meet at one person's house, and it was a pot luck, so we had certain dishes to look forward to every year, like Aunt Joyce's deviled eggs with the perfect amount of paprika, and Nancy's strawberry cake. My dad was known for his sausage biscuits. We all would gather together and visit for a while before eating, and before the meal, my dad, being the eldest male, would always say something about the particular holiday and then ask the blessing. Even later when my beliefs changed from my father's, I still appreciated what it meant to everyone else, and realized how precious these times were. As a mother, I want my children to have the same fond memories of the holidays.

Yesterday, it was all about the presentation. My sister in law is a wonderful hostess. She has a lot of money, and a beautiful house in the Philadelphia posh suburbs. Yesterday, she was expecting 16 people for Thanksgiving, so she decided to rent tables and chairs and use her dining room table as a buffet. This worked out well. She did most of the cooking, as she usually does - and does extremely well, I might add - and a few people brought desserts. I was really making an effort for my children and my husband to make the day wonderful and memorable. I know that the whole thing about what the settlers eventually did to the Native Americans was horrible, but that is NOT what Thanksgiving is about.

The night before Thanksgiving, at church, we were given loaves of bread with a prayer attached. The idea was to break the bread and pass it to everyone around the room and then say the prayer for the blessing before the meal. I asked my hubby to help me accomplish this, thinking people would listen to him more, since the majority of the people were his family, the exception being my mother and her fiance' and my sister-in-law's friend and her husband and son. Anyway, the food was all out on the table, and everyone was gathering, and my mother-in-law was making a plate for my father-in-law already because he hadn't been feeling well. My husband began to try to say something about the bread and about that time my sister-in-law started going off about how everyone should be getting the food because GOD FORBID it not be piping hot on your plate, and so everyone disregarded what my husband was saying and started to get their food...which probably shouldn't have upset me. I just feel like I have enough trouble as it is, not liking holidays and getting all sad about my dad and about missing my friend's back home, the LEAST they can do is try and help me make this day a little different from all the other for my children's sake. I want them to look back on holidays and remember family traditions and seeing people, not getting together and eating while it's hot and then having dessert and then going home. It was just like another day for them, sans the extra folks.

So the whole bread thing upset me, and I tried to not show it, and I may not have to everyone, but that's okay. It's over now, and I tried. Now they want to do Christmas Pollyana style. I don't like this idea, but that's another blog for another day.

Happy Tofurkey day.....

Liberty Overalls.....

I had the weirdest dream on Friday night about a guy that I was briefly involved with. It didn’t work out romantically, but we remained close. He was in love with me, and didn’t mind telling me that all the time, but I never felt the same way. I tried to feel it, but it just wasn’t there….and I know how shitty it can be to be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back….that’s another blog for another day….I was up front with him. I told him that I loved him as a person, and I appreciated the beautiful and wonderful person that was he, but that the romance type love just wasn’t there. He was a big man. He was taller than I and worked as a bouncer and as security at a few local Atlanta places. He led somewhat of a tragic life. His father committed suicide when he was young, and he dropped out of high school to care for his ailing mother, who died young as well. He was in bad health, but it was almost inevitable for him. He developed some serious problems, but gradually was trying to make himself better. I tried to stay there for him. I talked to him on the phone almost daily, and went to visit him as often as I could. He always told me how much he loved me, and how he understood that we could never be involved, but he appreciated our friendship, and I cherished it as well. He was a sweet, sweet man with just a bad deal of the cards.

The dream disturbed me. I woke up and suddenly wanted to talk to him. Right before I moved away, I talked to him. He had some surgery and was waiting to be placed in a rehab facility, and wasn’t sure where he would be. I left him all f my information and told him to get in touch with me as soon as he had a stable place to stay. He assured me that he would get in touch with me. He knew my mom as well, so he knew that he could call her if he lost my info. I told him to make sure and stay in touch with me. I told him that if something happened to him, no one would call me, because no one knows how to get in touch with me.

And no one did call me. I googled his name and found an obituary. I found an obituary that was over a year old. My stomach rolled around. I started to shake. I couldn’t believe it. I read it again and again, making sure that the birthday listed was his…making sure that the name was the same..and it was…right down to the middle name. It was plain as day and I am sad. I am so sad that no one got in touch with me. I am so sad that I didn’t try harder to stay in touch with him. Maybe there was something I could have done to help him. He used to always call me when he was down. I would promise to stay on the phone with him until he felt better. I feel terrible that he is gone, and worse that an entire year has passed….and still worse that I never got to say goodbye.

Goodbye, R. Even though I couldn’t love you the way that you wanted me to, I did love you. You were unique and special, and you didn’t deserve all the bad things you had to deal with in life. Thirty-five is way too young to die. I hope that wherever you are is kinder to you than this life was. You deserved so much better.

He makes me want to sing....

Okay, so I was poking around on this chick singer's web site and found this beautiful creature...





It has been a long time since I was literally moved to tears by a voice that just has the heart... He looks kinda like Cat Stevens with a bigger nose. He has the same little bobbing thing going on, and the same kinda feeling and heart, but it's all his own....

from Shelter...

"Listen when all of this around us'll fall over
I tell you what we're gonna do
You will shelter me my love
I will shelter you ..."

He is pure and beautiful, like a singer/songwriter should be. He makes me want to write. I could listen to him forever...

Possession, DUI, failure to maintain lane, eluding law enforcement, habitual violator, et al....

I made it through the singing....I'm at about 85% voice, which isn't that bad, so it sounded half-way decent. Sunday I was at about 40%, so I was thankful that it was all audible.


I saw Jim's name in the Bartow blotter. I hate that I have to read that every day just to see what's going on with some of my old acquaintances. Jim was more of an acquaintance though. He brought out so much in me at one time. I will never forget the first time that I saw him. I was completely mezmorized; entranced; He was tall - taller than I am. He had long red hair and it was in braids all piled up on the top of his head. We were sitting in the waiting area of the principal's office. He was a new kid. He was from California. He had Doc Martins that went up to his knees and they were GREEN! I wanted to know him. I wanted to want him.

He dated a friend of mine, so I started hanging out with her more to be around him. There were stories of him taking her virginity. There were parties I never had the guts to go to. Somehow, we became friends....then he dropped out of school. I would seee him occasionally in town. He drove a little black volkswagon GTI with a red stripe down the side. When I worked at K-Mart, he and Jason and a couple of the other guys in our group of friends would come by and I would give them stuff for free...."just pretend to scan it and put it in the bag!!"---Anything for him to think I was cool. He was so gorgeous.

He came back to school. He sought me out. Suddenly, we were seen together all the time. We sat together at school functions. We walked to classes together. We stood outside after school and talked. He told me his problems. I told him my dreams and fears. He shared them with me. We connected. We understood each other. He became so much more than beautiful in my eyes, and I believed that I was in his. We always managed to run into each other at crazy times.

Then, he disappeared. For over a year, I never heard from him. I never saw his little black GTI around town. I never heard from his family....until the DAY of my wedding to my first husband. I was at my house getting ready, and the phone rings. It was him. Out of nowhere he called me, right before my wedding. He came over to my house the next day and brought his girlfriend and we started hanging out as a foursome. Things were cool. We shared life and drinking and various other abuse of substances....then I got divorced and he disappeared again.

I can't quite remember how I got back in touch with him. I remember running into him and sharing almost $90 worth of Hennessey at Applebee's. After that, things get kinda fuzzy. I think he started calling me from jail. He always had to call collect, and called all the time. I started to visit him. I visited him faithfully. A part of me still wanted more from him. A part of me would have done anything for him. When he got out of jail, we were together all the time. I finally got to know him in all the ways I had wanted to. I taught him how to kiss, an he taught me to let go. I did let go, but by then it was too late. He had begun his downward spiral long before I came along. His insight was fading; his intellect gone. We no longer shared any dreams or fears. He became the victim...the one who always got the raw deal...the why guy...My life was changing.

My relationship with the man i loved at the time was ending. My father was dying. My daughter was growing and demanded me to GROW UP. The night before my dad went into the hospital for the last time, Jim was at my mother's house with me. Then, he disappeared.

He showed up a couple of months later at my house in Atlanta. He didn't tell me why he was there until a couple of days later when he told me he was hiding from the cops. I told him I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't put any risk on my daughter. I put him out of my house, and out of my life.

My mother said to me tonight "I saw in the blotter where ole what's his name was in trouble with the law again..." Some things never change I guess. I hate that I always see the potential in people...what they "could be" instead of what they really are and who they really are. I've been bitten in the ass again and again for that. I still care about him. I knew the beautiful wonderful him. I'm glad I did. I'm glad I had him in my life. I just wish there was more to his.