Christmas stalkings

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The first time that my mom met my husband Paul didn’t go all that well. The year was 1995. We met for lunch at a cheap pancake house. We sat in a booth in the nonsmoking section. The conversation flowed up until the point that my mom asked my new boyfriend what his beliefs were regarding God. I warned Paul before lunch that if religion were to come up that he needed to change the topic. But Paul didn’t, he went on and on about how he believed in evolution. At this point, I started kicking Paul under the table as he droned on and on about atheism and the rational mind. So my mom did what any devout Christian would do. She set me up with my ex-boyfriend, Brad.

I met Brad a little further back in the days of ratted hair and tight rolled jeans. Brad was in the military. He was the one who had the same personality as me, was also a first born, both are left handed, and we shared the same religion. My whole family loved him and thought that I would probably end up marrying him someday. But after over two years of being in a long distance relationship, we decided to call it quits right before Brad left for a year commitment on a Navy ship. Right around the time I met Paul, Brad finished his time in the military.

One day, shortly after she met Paul, my mom invited me out to lunch at a pizza place. When I got to the restaurant, my mom was waiting for me at a table with Brad. Brad told me how much he missed me and loved me. He was home to stay and wanted to get back together. My mom chipped in every so often about how wonderful that would be. At one point in the conversation Brad started crying. He grabbed my hands and pleaded to get back together. But it was too late. After the meal, I took Brad back to my apartment a couple of blocks away. I gave him back his class ring and all of his pictures. I was so mad at my mom. My mom took things into her own hands, but God had other plans. Funny how that works.

Last week, I told my mom that after Paul had a conversation with our daughter Angel’s stalker that he seemed to back off. Angel’s boyfriend ran into her stalker a couple of times on campus and he nervously walked away with lowered eyes. I told my mom that I thought our stalker days are behind us now. That is when my mom reluctantly told me to watch my back.

Brad recently accepted my mom’s friend request she sent him five years ago on facebook. Last month Brad’s wife passed away. He sent my mom a message asking if I was happy in my marriage. He told my mom that besides his wife, I was the only other woman he ever loved. He told her that he still loves me a lot. The conversation freaked my mom out enough to take a screen shot of the whole conversation. Way to go mom!

So every time I attend a public event that people know I am at, I am hyper vigilant for stalkers now. Seriously, call me paranoid but my life is just that crazy.

 

Demons past, present, and future

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Every couple of months my mom and I take the day off of work to spend the day together. This usually involves going out to eat for lunch and getting a massage. Last week we had our mother-daughter day. This time it included a back burner task. I decided that we needed to take in all of our old family videos to be saved onto a hard drive. Silly me, I thought that we could drop off the old VHS tapes and be out of there in a half an hour. We ended up being in the store over an hour talking about not only converting our old family videos but also eventually taking the old family photos in to preserve them.  I know that I have at least 3 large bins full of pictures to scan. This is going to be a big project.

It was at that point when it really hit me that my parents are getting old. It seems like yesterday that I was going through all of the old pictures with my grandma and great aunt Grace trying to put names to faces. All of my grandparents are gone now. I have only one great aunt left. My mom is the oldest living sibling. My parents are close to 70. Now is the time to work on this huge project with my mom.

It is also the reason that I don’t want my mom reading my blog. She is getting old. I don’t want this to be a reminder of the most difficult times in her life. She finally has a sense of freedom that she never had before. She doesn’t need to be reminded of the hard times. I don’t need to remind her of the day that she was trying to stop Matt from hurting himself during a meltdown. That was the day that she ended up with a black eye and bloody lip. It would be very painful for her to have to remember those days. It is very painful for me. Her life has been very difficult, I want her last years to be happy.

Matt also went to my daughter’s choir concert this past weekend. At one point he became separated from our mother. He became very anxious and agitated pushing through the crowd to find her. I calmly reassured him that he was alright, that mom was close by. But what happens when she is no longer with us? How will I not only get myself through it but help my brother through when he cannot process change? Every time I spend time with my mom I reassure her that I will help take care of Matt when she is gone. It will be alright, I can do this.

I decided that I will write a book about the journey of life with an autistic sibling. It will be hard. It will be painful. Next year I will dig out the old box of journals written during the darkest years. I will share it with you. I will start the process. Maybe I will even find out why I can’t relax. Why I always have to stay busy. Relaxing makes me nervous. Why does my skin crawl listening to relaxing piano music? Why does quiet meditation fill my soul with terror? Time to face my demons. I can do this.

Why do I torment myself with this? Do you know how easy it would be to delete this blog and walk away like none of this ever happened? But I can’t seem to let it go.

Disabled family cohesion

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Yesterday was my daughter’s last high school holiday choir concert. My mom went and some close friends. You can really tell how close your friends are if they offer to go to see your child perform. I really appreciate that. Our family is a little more sketchy. My mom makes it out to 99.9% of my kids events. My mother-in-law says she is going to 50% of things and usually would cancel out last minute and make it to 20% of things. I think that not showing up at all is better than saying you are going and not showing up or giving a lame excuse not to go. My dad and brothers are very sporadic about showing up to events.

My kids all have late spring/summer birthdays, so year after year I would throw a family party for them all at one time. A couple of years back I decided to cancel the family birthday party due to lack of interest. I felt very frustrated and angry about the whole thing.

Then a couple of days ago I really started to examine the reason why there is this lack of cohesion within my family. Then I remembered every time that we went on family vacations together, all of the times that we went out to eat as a family, the hugs, the laughter, the times that my whole family came out to see my concerts, my graduation. Then I realized that none of that happened. No family vacations, I can’t remember ever going out to eat as a family when I was young. Those things didn’t happen.

This is what REALLY happened. My mom had to find someone to take care of my brother Matt to come to my events. Lots of times my dad would stay home with him. Matt has autism and Tourettes. Taking him out in public to an event such as a concert or graduation was nearly impossible when he was younger. He would often have a melt down in public. He was hyper with a lot of anxiety that he would have a melt down. His anxiety caused his tics to be worse. Tics included hand flapping, eye twitching, and throat clearing. At the very worst, he would injure himself or others and had so much anxiety that after going to an event he would be nervous and throw up for two days afterwards. People were a lot less sympathetic towards those behaviors back when I was young.

So my brothers and I grew up living separate lives. We went to separate schools. We did not support each other. We never learned how. Luke didn’t go to my college graduation or party that followed it because he chose to be with his friends instead. When Luke graduated from college, I went but had my husband stay home to help take care of Matt. When Mark graduated from high school, I didn’t go and went to work that evening instead. Mark never went on to school and I missed his only graduation. It was only later that I learned that family events are important but I can’t go back.

But I can move forward. I can show my children how important it is to support their siblings. I can encourage them to attend their events. I tolerate them saying that they are bored. When is it going to be over? Is it almost done? I am trying to teach them this lesson now so they won’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.

It took me a long time to get over the hurt, depression, and worry involved in extended family events. I can finally say that I get along with my parent and brothers the best that I have ever gotten along with them. I do see my brothers, especially Luke, making more effort to have a relationship. Matt has an easier time going out to events. Things are finally coming together in my story.

 

 

A few bulbs short…

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I am a few bulbs short of a fully lit Christmas tree. I know that you were probably thinking the same thing.

Last weekend when we got our Christmas tree, we had to make sure that it was straight in the stand. This involved a little bit of swearing and sawing. At first it leaned too far to the right. Then too far to the left. Last year our cheap little plastic stand couldn’t hold our big tree. We woke up multiple times to a crash along with ornaments scattered (but thankfully not shattered) and pine pitch tree water all over our carpet. It couldn’t be blamed on the cat although he loves sitting under the tree. The tree stand just didn’t stand. After awhile I got sick of redecorating. Finally my husband couldn’t stand it anymore. He got a rope to anchor the tree in an upright position. He tied the rope around the tree and threw the other end of the rope out the window and closed it. It was quite the sight.

This year I pined for the perfect tree. And it was for a few days anyway. I think it is the most symmetrical tree that we have ever had. The girls and I took a long time decorating it. Then two days later we noticed that a strand of lights was no longer working. I tried replacing bulbs, but that did not work at all. I did not want to take all of the decorations off to remove the partially unlit set of lights. Not to mention shop to try to find the same exact set of lights that I bought a couple of years ago. So I rearranged the lights over the gap. Now the tree no longer looks perfectly symmetrical as far as lights go. And I am still a few bulbs short of a fully lit tree, although I try to hide that as best as I can.

I tri hard for you

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A couple months back when my husband and I were at a business conference, we were invited to a customer appreciation meal at a steak house along with about 50 other clients. Unfortunately, we were the last people to leave the appetizer and cocktail reception to make our way to supper and got separated from our friends. By the time we caught up with them, their table and almost every table except for one table was full. So we sat down with a group of strangers. The good news was that all of us at the table had at least one thing in common. We were all in the same business. If everything else failed to spark a conversation, at least we could talk about work.

I never grew up being a great conversationalist. Paul, however, is a great conversationalist and I learned a lot just by watching him. When I meet new people, the first thing I try to do is find a common interest and ask questions. Do they have kids? Yes, then ask questions about their kids. Who doesn’t like talking about their kids? I know I do. They don’t have kids. Okay, if they are close to me in age I might reminisce about rotary phones. Do they have pets? Are they a runner??? Ding, ding, ding. I hit the jackpot with this group.

About half of the people at our table had just run their first marathon like I did. We exchanged our dog chase stories. Now after a couple of drinks and finding people with similar interests, I seem to forget that I am shy. It was at this time that one of the people at our table stated that he did his first triathlon. He said that he was so proud that he put it on his business cards. Rather gullibly, I responded with a quick “Really? Wow.” Everyone stopped eating and looked at me with eyes that questioned my intelligence. Time for me to crack a joke. “I bet your business card says I tri harder for you.” Everyone laughed loudly. That opened the night up for a lot of running jokes. Our table was voted as the table that had the most fun and laughter.

Another reason why I love being a runner. There are plenty of stories to run by that we can laugh about later.

Just one of those days

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It’s been one of those days. It started with an argument with my husband, well more of a disagreement. Over what? Making plans for next summer. It has started before the calendar has even been turned to 2016. Next summer is getting booked up. What about this date? You know it is my mother’s birthday. Maybe she wants to go along? Well, don’t forget that is when the school usually has their summer school musical theater show. And when do you think we will need to move our daughter into college?? Yadda, yadda, yadda. Oh my, we surely don’t want to start double booking summer events already. Summer is short and the list of things to do is long. I have an idea, maybe we should plan summers 2 years in advance. Geez.

Then I decided to go for a 12 mile run before work. It went pretty good except now I am tired and every part of my body feels sore. Yes, even my toenails. Yes, even my hair. My stomach has been upset all day. I just don’t feel well.

I got to work and the internet and phone lines were down for hours even though our provider said that our service would be disrupted for about 20 minutes. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting around doing nothing when you have work to do. Except paying someone to sit around doing nothing. I decided to send our employee home to work out of the house after she came in this afternoon. I also went home. When I got home, I received the great news that everything was up and running again. Then the calls started pouring in from clients asking why things were taking so long.

Maybe I should just go back to bed! But I can’t. I volunteered to sing for the Advent service tonight. Some days I feel as gloomy as the empty grey days. Blah. It’s just one of those days.

The shy lie

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I am a complete and total liar. I will try to give you an honest explanation. I grew up in a house full of introverts with the exception of my youngest brother. Being an introvert, this was very pleasing to me. On the introversion scale of -10 being the most introverted and 10 being the most extroverted, as a youth I was at a -8. I didn’t start speaking in front of people until I was about 30. (There is hope for you). Then I got married and found myself in a house full of extroverts. This can drive the introvert in me a bit crazy at times always going somewhere always having people over. It did bring me out of my shell and I would say that on the introversion scale I am now about a -2 and so is my son. My husband and daughters are all rather extreme extroverts.

That being said, I had the unique experience of spending half of my life surrounded by introverts and the other half surrounded by extroverts. But I am a liar in an introverted way. If someone asks me if a dress makes them look fat and it does, the first thing I try to do is change the subject. If that doesn’t work, then I will indirectly answer the question by saying something related, but not the truth, like the dress is a good color on you. I want to scream out that the dress looks like crap on you but instead I sweetly say that it does not make you look fat. Instead, it looks good. Yes, it looks good. I lie when everything inside me screams to tell the truth. To make matters worse, I hate confrontation.

I think that blogging has given me an avenue to say what I really mean. Something I find difficult to do in everyday life. Since a majority of you don’t know me, what do you care? Everything within me is telling me that the truth should be told. I really don’t want to be silent anymore. I won’t sit silent and let others think I am an idiot, that I don’t have an opinion.

Yes, the dress makes you look fat! Okay, now can we change the subject?

 

Does anybody know what time it is?

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Every time I think about the clocks in my house, the Chicago tune ‘Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is’ pops into my head.

“Does anybody really know what time it is

I don’t

Does anybody really care

About time”

Time after time, I start my day off on the wrong foot. The clock on the left is in my living room. This is the clock that I rely on to get the kids on the bus in the morning and it is the clock that tells me when I should go to bed at night. I am not sure how a digital clock loses time, but this one does. After a month, the clock loses 10 minutes. You would think that 10 minutes really wouldn’t matter, right? Have you ever had a kid miss the bus? Not something that you would want to watch. Or have you ever had to deal with me when I don’t get exactly 8 hours of sleep? Don’t wind me up.

The “clock” in the middle is my iPhone and it is always right, just like me. Okay, okay the clock is always right and I always write. Wrong right. Sorry.. Time to switch gears.

The “clock” on the right is my iPad. It has never been right (except in this picture). I think that it was probably designed for a procrastinator. The strange thing is that if I publish a blog on the iPad, it won’t actually publish until 12 minutes later because it seems to be confused about the time. Has anyone ever heard of an iPad with the incorrect time?? People just give me a strange confused look if I tell them my iPad is off. I can tell they are thinking that I am a little bit off. It ticks me off a little, but not to the point where I want to clock someone.

The dear hunter

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For the last couple of years, my husband and son went deer hunting. If they didn’t bring home a buck at least on the last day they would bring home a Christmas tree. Today we are getting our tree. No buck or doe though.

When the men leave for the big buck hunt, it is widows weekend for the ladies. Local strip clubs bring in the male strippers. I never went to see the male strippers nor do I plan on doing so. But for a couple of years a group of friends and I would go out to eat and dancing in a small town.

I remember one year in particular rather well. It was the year that one of our friends was pregnant (designated driver). We went out to eat at a supper club that had happy hour basically all night. While we were eating, I ran into some old friends of my parents. Only a week before my mom told me that her friend’s husband kissed her many years ago. Guess who I ran into? Yup, those friends. Awkward! Even though this happened decades ago, it was still new news to me.

Afterwards, we went out dancing. Even as a group of married women not looking for men, we are used to hearing the same old pick up lines. “Hey beautiful, how about I buy you a drink?” Ho hum. But that one night was different. I had a man my age approach me with a pick up line that I never heard before. It was something I was not prepared for. He said, “I heard that you are a singer and I happen to need a female lead singer in my band.” Hmm, now that was interesting.

He bought me a drink and we talked about his band. Then he started to tell me that he was a divorced divorce attorney and he could help me with that too if I was unhappy in my marriage. I assured him that I was happily married to a great guy. I did promise that I would check out his band and call him if I was interested in singing.

I remember it was a really cold night as we walked around to see other bands up the block. Some of my friends slipped and fell on the ice. Too bad he wasn’t “that” kind of lawyer. I almost walked into a telephone pole. I was too busy talking and laughing with the girls to watch where I was going. His group followed our group around. I think that the guy was hunting for woman or business that weekend. After checking out multiple locations, it was time to go home. I lived 45 minutes away. But there was one small problem. Our driver lost her keys somewhere that we had stopped over the night and it was getting to be bar time. It didn’t take long for the guy to offer me a ride home. How kind, funny that he didn’t seem too interested in helping us find the keys.

My friend eventually found her keys and got us all safely home that night. The next day I looked up the guy’s band. It probably would have been something that I would have liked to do and I could have done it. Even though I really, really, really wanted to be a singer in his band, I didn’t want to end up being a divorced lead singer in a band. The cost of following that dream was a price I was not willing to pay.

6 Months of blogging

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Wow, I’ve been blogging exactly 6 months already.

I thought that I would update my bucket list that I started this blog with 6 months ago. I should re-examine this every 6 months. Sounds like a good rule to follow. (Writing down new rule to follow). I am not waiting for a new year’s resolution to do this. You know I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions anyway. Seriously, I see people year after year say that they are going to lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, eat or drink less and then a month later they go crazy making up for the lost time. Don’t get me started on this. Lol.

Everyday is a new day to make yourself a better person.

OLD BUCKET LIST:
1. PUBLISH A BOOK. This is a long term bucket list item. I think that by starting a blog, I am able to get my thoughts together to start this process. My biggest issues with writing has been using technology, some grammar issues, and I did misspell the word cries in an older blog. Sad. It hasn’t kept me up at night though…

2. RUN A MARATHON. I crossed this one off my bucket list!

3. TRAVEL ALL CONTINENTS, EXCEPT ANTARCTICA. I am not doing too great on this, but am still making long term plans to do a lot of traveling.

4. READ THE WHOLE BIBLE THROUGH. 

5. BE A SINGER IN A BAND. I am not getting very far with this as I don’t have the time right now. I am singing at church. I sing on the sailboat while my husband plays guitar. I plan on doing more community theater musicals. I am even toying with the idea of writing songs. The rest of the time I live vicariously through my singer daughter.

6. DRINK GREEN BEER ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY. Some things are just on my list for fun. I heard that hypothetically every Sunday in WI when the Packers play is like St. Patrick’s Day. Fans wear green and drink beer, but I haven’t seen the green beer yet.

7. GET A TATTOO. I want to do this at 50. I would like the state of WI outline, an anchor with flowers, and/or maybe a running tattoo. I have awhile to think about this. I have heard people ask how I would look with that tattoo when I am old. Seriously, how I am going to look when I am old anyway??

New bucket list:

  1. PUBLISH A BOOK.
  2. TRAVEL ALL CONTINENTS, EXCEPT ANTARCTICA.
  3. READ THE WHOLE BIBLE THROUGH.
  4. BE A SINGER IN A BAND.
  5. DRINK GREEN BEER ON ST PATRICK’S DAY.
  6. GET A TATTOO.
  7. DO MY FIRST TRIATHLON.
  8. TRY SURFING.
  9. RE-CREATE THE MUSIC VIDEO RIO BY DURAN DURAN ON THE SAILBOAT.
  10. LEARN HOW TO USE A GUN.

Thanks for reading!