Gettin' Ready

Well, except for our tree, I put out all the holiday knick knack crap last night. 

It all looks so good and makes me so happy.

And, then I look around and think about Wendy and cry.

Oh well, no present for her this year, that should shorten up the gift list and save us a few bucks.

I just hope she stays warm and dry in her refrigerator box eating spam.

Thanksgiving was okeydokey.

Not the best, but not quite the worst either.

It was my first Thanksgiving in this house without my Grammy OR my Grampy, throw in the fact that my Dad has been dead for seven years AND it was my first holiday without Stinky the lush.

Needless to say I didn't bother with the good dishes.

Hot food with a holiday theme was enough.

Heres a funny story and I'll try to keep it short.

My Dads last Thanksgiving he was pretty grouchy.

The chemo, the aches and pains and depression took quite a toll on him.

That morning I had been busy cooking and getting ready with Wyatt and a dog or two underfoot (in my single wide) and was multi-tasking by laundering all the bedding.

I had decided to wash the pillows as Wy had a tendency to chew and spew on them, not taking into consideration that twenty year old goose down pillows may not "weather" a second hand twenty year old washer.

Imagine if you will, twenty minutes passing, a horrendous off balance thumping, and feathers 

e v e r y w h e r e ......

It was a sight that brings tears to my eyes to this day.

In a single wide, the washer and dryer are usually in the hall with the back door directly across from the appliances.

I started throwin' feathers out that door into the backyard as fast as I could, but the more I threw the worse it got.

There were feathers in the hall, feathers on me, feathers on the baby, feathers on the wall. 

Feathers in the grass, feathers on the deck, feathers on the dog, I was in feathers up to my ASS.

As dinner was cooking and the baby was crying and I was cleaning feathers out of the washing machine, my Dad pulled in the driveway.

He walked in the door, took an assessment of my situation, shook his head and said....

"What the hell are you doing... You don't have to wash the Gaw dammd thing before you cook it."

About that time, Wyatt took off his diaper, peed in the potted plat, I started crying  and someone kicked the dog.

GAME ON!

The holidays were off to a grand start!

Just So You Know...

Tom enjoyed the Holiday!

Turkey and Tears

All righty.
So.
Today is the day before the day that my daughter won't be sitting at our Thanksgiving table.
This will be a first for me.

I'm starting to think that I'm not so good at this part of being a Mother.

The thinking part.
The holding it together for the rest of the family part.

I'm really good at the crying part though.

Here's a little sample about what a sicko I am.
I look at Wyatt and cry because he's related to Wendy.
I look at Pooter (the dog) and cry because I remember Wendy playing with him when he was a puppy.
The list goes on.

I'm not going to post tomorrow so here's this...
I am thankful for so many things in my life.
Everything actually.
I am so blessed with good health, good friends and the fact that there is nothing (besides the obvious) that I need or want to make me happy.


This is what I am thankful for the most  (including the few not featured)

Maybe you could do me a favor tomorrow when you sit down with the ones you love.

If you could just say a quiet word to Jesus and remind him that Wendy's not with her family, maybe he'll shine a little light of his own on her.

That would mean a lot to me.

Happy Thanksging.

Do I Really Sound Like that??

I think the camera was shaking because of the whole quiting smoking thing.

Either that or I just suck at filming pigs in the wild.



The quality is poor, but the pig is cute.

Barnyard Boating

I figure this may be the best therapy for dealing with a rogue daughter.

Two goats in a boat.

If they fall overboard and can't swim (which as everyone knows, goats don't swim) Pearl and Barbara can run for help.

I choose to look at it this way...I have either completely lost my mind or I'm beginning to see some light again.

Oh, and did I tell you I quit smoking?

So, if I ever do emerge from my drunken daughter funk I will have put on enough extra tonnage that I will probably need to re-license the car as a stock carrier.

I lost The Game

The Game is very simple, it can be difficult to comprehend initially. A new player usually has to lose The Game once or twice to fully understand it.
Rules
1) When you think of The Game, you lose The Game.
2) When you lose The Game, you announce it to those around you.

Those are the only two rules of The Game.

Game play
The first thing a new player needs to know is that when someone loses The Game (i.e. when someone thinks about The Game), game play temporarily stops for that person and for those around that person (since he must announce his game-loss aloud). The Game then restarts on a person-by-person basis when each person stops thinking about The Game. The Game never actually ends permanently.

No one wins!
No one can ever technically win The Game. It could be argued that when one is not losing The Game (i.e. when someone is not thinking about The Game), they are winning The Game, but it still holds true that no one can ever definitively win The Game.

You probably still don't understand The Game and how to play, so consider the example below.

Example
You have just learned the rules of The Game and how to play. Because you now know this, you are playing The Game, and will be playing The Game for the rest of your life. At this moment in time you are thinking about The Game, so you are losing The Game. Let's say you leave this site, start doing something else, and The Game leaves your mind. But then you start thinking about this site again and therefore you start thinking about The Game... that's a loss of The Game!

Keep in mind that it doesn't matter what makes you think of The Game. Usually it is something completely random and unrelated to The Game that all of a sudden reminds you of The Game. This is what makes it so interesting and fun! If you have a game-loss story you'd like to share, do so in the stories section!

The bottom line
Any time you aren't thinking about The Game and then start thinking about The Game, you lose The Game. It's that simple.

IlostTheGame.org

Enjoy The Game!

Just For Fun

Thanks Michelle : )

It doesn't feel like things are getting any better.

How can this be?

Do you think things are hard for Wendy too, or do you think she just doesn't care?

Wyatt passed out on the toilet yesterday.

Mike heard a big thud and went to the door and knocked.

No response.

He opened the door and there was Wy on the floor with a bloody lip.

He said he was pushing to hard and must have forgot to breathe.

Mike thinks Wy may be lactose intolerant.

Anyone know anything about that?

Does it make you constipated and absent minded towards breathing?

I wonder what the deal is with being constipated around here.

Remember a month or so ago when I thought Gizmo had a stroke but it turned out he was constipated?

Maybe Gizmo's lactose intolerant too.

We let Pearl out of her playpen and into the barnyard yesterday.

It's official, she's a real pig now.

If she were a Native American pig her name would be "Runs With Ducks".

She's having loads of fun frolicking with the flock (and the goats)

Yesterday was the worst birthday of Mikes life. 

Worst celebratory day of his whole life secondary only to the Fathers day I forgot two years ago.

I didn't forget his birthday yesterday, I just didn't care.

Isn't that HORRIBLE.

I suck at multitasking stress and despair.

I should have been able to suck it up long enough to honor the day of my husbands birth, but I couldn't.

I spent the entire day in my extremely uncomfortable emotional coma eating crackers and watching CNN.

The election is over and Wendy is gone.

I have to deal with this.

Oh my Gawd.

Do you see how I roll?

I was telling you about how I flaked out on my spouses birthday and go right back to talking about myself.

I'll have to plan a surprise birthday for him in April to make things right.

I hope he doesn't read this, I'd hate to ruin the surprise, although odds are I'll have forgotten all about it come April.

Remind me of this plan in five months would you...

I wasn't really fishin'.

Ten months ago my 24 year old daughter made  a heartfelt confession to our family.

She was an alcoholic.

She had received a DUI and her drinking and her life was out of control.

When we moved to Oregon in 2006 to care for my Grandparents she stayed in Washington and entered into a downward spiral with alcohol, but did an excellent job of keeping it from us.

She had done time in jail and led me to believe the reason she hadn't called or been in contact for over a week, was because she had lost her cell phone.

I believed her.

When she reached out to family last January her life was so out of control it scared us all, and the part that was most frightening was that none of us had a clue.

She wanted to get sober and believed with the love and support of her family she could do it.

Mike went to Washington, packed her up and moved her down and she settled into the little house next door.

She got a job, she went to treatment and things were looking up

But, as you know if you have been a reader for the last month or so, Wendy has a new boyfriend that I don't approve of and it has put quite a strain on our relationship.

She has all but moved out of her little house here on the farm to stay with "Bob" and his parents.

Last Saturday morning at 7:00 am I received a call from her boss asking if she was here. She hadn't shown up for work and there had been no call.

I assumed she had over slept and decided to give her an hour.

I called back at 8:00 and still no word from Wendy.

I loaded Wyatt up in the car and drove to town. Wyatt had been to "Bobs" once and thought he may be able to remember where he lived.

He got us to the neighborhood and in time we found the house.

We found Wendy at 9:00a still drunk from the night before and when I explained to her that she had more than likely lost her job she didn't care.

She told me she was an adult and she was in love and I couldn't tell her what to do.

It seems over the last six days I have lost my daughter.

I look in her eyes and all I see is a lost soul.

We are practicing tough love, but honest to God I'm not sure who it's tougher on. The person overtaken by alcohol living within their own denial that everything is fine, or the people that love them trying to keep together the pieces of a breaking heart.

I will start attending Al-Anon and doing what I can to cling to some kind of normalcy at home, but for now, I feel like I'm losing not just my daughter but my mind as well.

I will not be blogging until some more numbness sets in, because the only thing on my mind right now is the insanity of our life.

Peas Out

M

Be back soon...

My Wy

Does it make me a bad person to want to home school Wy?

It's not that I think I can do a better job than the teachers, as a matter of fact I don't think I would do a very good job at all.

It's just that I like having him around and I know there will come a time soon when I don't really care for him like Wendy and he'll start to smell funny, so I want to enjoy every minute of him while he's wonderful.

I suppose that's not the best idea though because when he does become a pain in the ass it would be even worse if he was a stinky uneducated ignorant pain in the ass.

Maybe I should go back to school with him.

Since I quit school when I was about his age, it wouldn't hurt to go back for a refresher.

We could spend recess and lunch together.

Then again, maybe I should just get a life.

Oh well, he's mine until Monday.

If I have a monument in this world, it is my son.
-- Maya Angelou

Growing Pains

Wyatt has been having growing pains for the last month or so and I haven't thought much about it.

When he woke up Monday morning he couldn't walk down the stairs.

He. Could. Not. Walk. 

I freaked out, (imagine that) figured he had polio and immediately started mentally fitting him for a metal brace.

After I had him sized up I cracked the phone book in search of a pediatrician.

Wyatt has never been to the doctor.

Well yes he has, but the last time was for his well baby check.

I always took him to the health department across from where I worked downtown for his immunizations, and he's never been sick, so he never had a reason to see a doctor.

If we were still in Washington I would just call his baby doctor, Dr.Les, (isn't that funny, we went from Dr Les to doctorless) but now we're in Oregon, so who do I call...

I find out that the Oregon's Children Hospital has an office in the same building as my shoulder doctor, since I know where that is, thats where we're going.

So I call.

I asked the lady if they were taking new patients.

She asked me if we had insurance.

I said yes.

She asked what kind.

I said Teamsters.

She said a doctor could see us at 1:00.

I wonder what time during the month of never we would have been able to see the doctor if we didn't have insurance.

The good news is, Wyatt does not have polio and will not be needing a metal brace.

He has planters faciitis and will be wearing orthodics.

The tendon between the ball of his foot and his heel is to short because his arch is to high and he's growing to fast.

So he's home from school this week and we're keeping his foot wrapped with sport tape and he's popping ibuprofen every four hours and things seem to be looking up.

Wendy brought her boyfriend over last week.

I don't think he was drunk the first time I met him, I think he's just "short bus."

How do you tell the difference between chemically and mentally impaired?

Anywho, thats all that's new with me.

The Day After

A M A Z I N G.

Last night, I witnessed history.
It was an overwhelming experience that has changed the way I view my country.

I think John McCain gave the finest speech of his entire campaign.
He was calm, honorable and sincere, and I feel that is the true John McCain.
I admire him very much.

Last night I cried.
It was a cry that washed over me and took me by surprise.

We are the lucky ones.
To live in a time that will forever be remembered.

Big Day

Ok, if anybody needs me today I'll be laid out on the couch watching the returns come in jacked up on Mt.Dew and Pop-Tarts.
If I'm not suffering from an election hangover I'll be back tomorrow.

Go Team!

hmmmmm.....

I wonder if Mr Parks ever feels like this....