Happy New Year - Just Some Jumbled Thoughts!

Holy Cow...time certainly has a way of speeding by anymore. It use to seem so slow and the older I get the faster it goes!!!

It amazes me that my cousins are all grown up, most of them married and building families of their own. It use to bother me that I was the oldest grandchild, but couldn't have the first great-grandchild. But "it is, what it is"...there is some plan for me but I think I have taken several detours and one day it will all come together, either here or on the other side.

I have thought much about my life and why things have played out as they have...why didn't I get married in my 20's and have children? I always thought there would be children in my life and there are...they are the children of my cousins.

And let's not forget my four-legged furry children who I adore, sometimes they are as much as I can handle!

I talk to my Heavenly Father regularly and try to be grateful for the small miracles. Like today, I asked that the lights on 900 South stay green all the way to work and they did! So I was on time!!!

I have a friend who has many health issues but she is one of the funniest and most spritual people I know. She blogs and has such great things to say, especially about her Heavenly Father. I am grateful that she is in my life even tho we don't spend a lot of time together. She makes me smile!

I have decided that my "mission" in life is to be a caretaker...not exactly what I had in mind growing up. But I believe I am were I am suppose to be...my boss and I have conversations about what I believe and others. I can't give him concrete answers to why I believe a lot of what I believe, I just know I do!

I don't think I have ever questioned having a Heavenly Father. And the bad things that have happened are not because He didn't love me...they happened because of my choices or someone else's choices.

I read on a church sign recently: Fear God and man's sole purpose is to obey the commandments. Wow...what a concept, "Fear God"...it's not in my make-up to fear Him that I believe in with all my heart. Do I believe He loves me less because I don't go to church? I don't think so, I know He knows and understands what is my soul better than I do.

I am an open book (except maybe to my mom for her own protection)...I have no idea what this year is going to hold for me, but I am going to make sure that I find the joy and gratitude in each day!

Oh yeah, January was about Chicago and seeing my cousin Charles, his wife Joyce and their three beautiful girls. I was so impressed by Charles and Joyce's parenting skills...and the girls were so sweet! We had a birthday party for my mom. The girls made a big sign and Joyce made a wonderful cake! It was so much fun and so relaxing!

February has passed so quickly...soon it will be March and Spring is just around the corner and I still haven't got my 2008 and 2009 Christmas cards out...oh well, it is, what it is"...

Keith Olbermann on Proposition 8

I got this clip off Facebook this morning from the National Equality March, so I'm not sure when it was actually aired...I agree with Keith and he said it so well...

Life is short and if you are lucky enough to find someone to love, it shouldn't matter what your color, what your religion, or what your sexual orientation is...what happens between CONSENTING ADULTS is no one elses business. LIVE and let LIVE, LOVE and let LOVE! Let our hearts BELIEVE IN EQUALITY for ALL of our brothers and sisters!

I want my name to be written in God's "Book of Love" and I know in my heart God does not make mistakes! The world has changed since the Bible was written...we no longer stone people to death, we no longer believe in slavery, we no longer offer blood sacrifices...as times have changed so have what we believe...

Women had to fight for equal rights, blacks had to fight for equal rights and now the gays have to fight for their equal rights.

A lovely "woman" by the name of Sister Dottie S. Dixon (she is a "marmon sister from Spanish Fark that wants to bring the gays and the marmon church together" and I just LOVE her!), posted a video clip on Facebook about a 10-year old boy who will not say the pledge of allegiance until "we have liberty and justice for ALL". What a brave young man!

And before you quibble with me...reread the part about consenting ADULTS!!! That's my point!!! The two key words: CONSENTING ADULTS!

Suicide - A Shift in Perspective -- 09/04/09

For most of my life I have been on the verge of suicide, that seemed to me as the only answer when the pain got to be too much. This past week my perspective has been forever changed...let's start at the beginning...

When I was 15 years old, I took an "accidental" overdose of aspirin. I had been crying out for help/attention and no one noticed. I had been in pain for a long time, maybe someday the details of why will be important, but for this blog they are not.

Something happened that day that "broke the camel's back" and I sobbed so hard I got a headache. I took some aspirin about 3:00 pm and then some more and then I took the rest and diluted them in water and drank some of it. I went to my room and wrote my mother a letter telling her I was sorry (my father was in Iceland at the time) and put it under my pillow to be found when I was gone.

About 8:00 pm my ears started ringing and I felt hot and my stomach was starting to cramp. At that point I didn't want to be alone and went to the living room to watch TV with my mom. I don't remember that I said anything obvious to her, but she got up and went to the bathroom and came back with the aspirin bottle. It was empty so she asked how many I had taken...I said I didn't know. She told me we were going to the hospital and I said no...and then ran to the bathroom to throw up.

At that point there was no question about where I was going. I don't remember where my brother was...but off to the emergency room on the air force base about a mile away. When I got there they made me drink some ipecac and some water and told me it would take about 10-15 minutes to work...wrong, less than two. They took blood samples and when they came back I heard the doctor tell her that if she hadn't brought me in when she did I would have died in about three hours.

Once I was "stable" they sent us to the big AF hospital in San Antonio...when we got there I was put in a bed and left there to wait by myself. There was a heavy-set woman that was brought in who had taken an overdose of barbituates. I heard them say she had five children and then I watched as they proceeded to tube her and pour the saline in...then a nurse shut the curtain and all I heard was the sounds of her fighting them. I sat there and thought "how dare she do that to her children"...it never entered my mind what I would have done to my mother, to my extended family if I had died. I was in the hospital for three days.

I had to visit with the psychiatrist, he had on his white coat, coke-bottle glasses and hair that looked like he had stuck his finger in a light socket. He was so funny looking to me that I kept staring at the floor to keep from laughing at him and he told me that I didn't seem to have any emotions...little did he know.

In my sophmore year in high school a girl that I had been friends with in junior high committed suicide...the rumour was she had a brain tumor and she shot herself while her parents were away. Again my thought was "how could she do that to her family", still not getting what I had done.

When we were in England...a woman tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison. She had a four-year old son...AGAIN, "how could she do that to her child" and why would she kill herself over a man (another long story there). Still not getting it...

Fast forward to August 26th, 2009...my coworker's son hung himself...23 years old and the father of a beautiful little boy. As I watched my coworker cry, it broke my heart and I FINALLY got it!

IF ONLY...if only he could have held on for another day and then another day. We don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, we just feel the pain and want it to go away. We don't understand that our pain may go away, but those that have loved us, their pain is just beginning and will last them a lifetime.

There are times that you have to live day by day, somestimes it might be hour to hour or minute to minute. Some people call suicide cowardly and maybe it is, but unless you have felt the unending pain and the hopelessness that goes on inside the brain you'll never understand the darkness that seeps into the soul of someone who contemplates suicide.

Long Time, No Blog -- The Mom Episode!

I can't believe it has been so long since I last blogged...when I started I really thought I had a lot to say...hmmm! And then there was Facebook!

I finally started to feel better, that was a plus!

My mother had to put her special Djiboutian cat DjiDji to sleep in April. It is very hard to see your parent so devastated by the loss. It seems that she has been dealing with many losses in the last three years, her mother, her brother, and her cat Smokey. Then last year was full of health problems, her heart, her brain, and then her foot, just one thing after another!

She took off to see my brother in North Carolina in mid-April and was to come home in early June. On May 5th, she developed SHINGLES...I went to NC to help out with her and we ended up putting her in the hospital after one of the doctors at the instacare said she looked worse than when he had first seen her and said she had "adult failure to thrive". Her heart rate was 161. (She has a heart doctor here and is on medication for it). When we asked him what he would do if it was his mom, he said admit her to the hospital. He arranged it and we took her to Wayne Memorial in Goldsboro. I spent the night with her. In the morning David came to get me to take me back to his house while they were running tests on her.

When David came back to get me they had determined that there was a "shadow" and she should have her heart looked at...because she had shingles she could not ride in the ambulance transport with another patient, so we had to wait around for another one to be dispatched from Wake Med in Raleigh. We left Goldsboro about 12:30 and got to the hospital about 2:00 am. Slept in the chairs in her room.

When they came to get her for the catherization, David and I went to the Heart Center Inn...a small, very nice "hotel" for those that needed a place to stay...mostly for patients that had traveled far from home so they had a nice place to stay prior to their proceedures and to recoup before going home.

I spent the first night in mom's room and David stayed in the room. Then she seemed to be okay enough to leave her at night, so David would go home and I would stay in the hotel room. I only spent two nights at David's house and extended my stay to Memorial Day.

I did get to see my aunt and uncle on the Friday before they left town to go to some car race...and my cousin, her husband and kids on the Sunday. And I finally got some NC barbeque on Sunday...I love the vinegar base and I soooo love hush puppies and sweet tea! We had tried to get some on the way to David's on Saturday as take-out and we got taken...there was no pork or coleslaw...I was so disappointed! We had stopped at a place that David had been to before and it was in the town (Wilson) where he works.

It was determined that mom needed some additional care after I left and David was running out of vacation, so the day I left she was transferred to a rehab. She stayed for about two weeks and then went back to David's. She finally came home on July 5th...David was doing the happy dance! He missed his annual trip to the beach in June, but he was a good caretaker while she was there.

The Men of Thunder Down Under and Me in My Tiara