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!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

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I am thankful today for all of my wonderful family, friends, and WordPress followers. I am also thankful that we put the turkey on the bottom shelf in the fridge. This morning when we woke up there was turkey blood everywhere pooling in the veggie drawer. It looked like a murder happened here with blood trailing all over the floor.

Yesterday I took the day off to run errands and cook. I saw a pumpkin pie in the store for less than $5. Tempting, very tempting. But instead I spent hours baking. I made 3 Apple pies and 3 dozen deviled eggs. My grandma taught me how to make a pie crust and yesterday I showed Angel how to make pie.

So, gotta go finish cleaning and cooking. I have 18 people coming in less than 2 hours. Happy Thanksgiving!

The great parenting paradox

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This is something that I have thought about for a long time and it is still a mystery to me. When I was a child, it was such an emotionally crushing time of my life. It really wasn’t anyone’s fault and I am not trying to place blame. It was just the circumstances of my life and really Paul’s too. We both grew up in very difficult situations. So much so that we would do almost anything to give our children the “perfect” childhood. The childhood that we never had.

There were times that I didn’t think I was going to be strong enough to make it through my childhood. I emerged as a healthy adult, but not without battle scars and wounds. I don’t think that I will ever be able to outrun my demons. We have worked incredibly hard to provide an ideal childhood for our children.

However, surviving through difficult times has made me the strong person that I am today. It has given me the courage, the determination, and the grit. I am not a superficial person. I am raising children that I did everything I could to make their life like mine wasn’t. Parents always seem to want things for their children that they never had. I am raising children who have sharing a room with their sibling as their biggest hardship. I have no sympathy for that. I am happy that I feel successful in giving them a great childhood. Yet at the same time I feel resentful. Am I raising healthy kids or spoiled brats?

I sometimes wonder if I am like a parent who grew up hungry overindulging their children with food. Or a parent who grew up poor overindulging their children with vast material wealth without them having to work for it. Is too much of a good thing a bad thing? Will shielding my kids from stress and pain allow them to handle it better when they grow up?

So the question still remains in my mind. Am I doing the right thing? Would I be a better person if my childhood environment was ideal? Would I be able to appreciate the good things in life without experiencing the bad? Sometimes with parenting, there are more questions then answers..

Winter fitness forecast

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Last year my husband and I bought cross country skis. We thought that it would be an excellent way to enjoy exercising outside in the cold snowy winter months. Running on icy snowy roads really isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. I did end up dusting off my treadmill last week. Not because of the snow, we haven’t had enough of that for my grandma to even write flurries on her calendar if she was still living. Last week brought about cool and very windy days. Even I am not crazy enough to run outside in the cold against 40 mph winds.

Last year we bought skis and didn’t get any snow. Really? Well, it figures. In the winter months, I cut back my running down to about 18 miles per week and let Jillian Michaels kick my butt an hour a week. I don’t have any races coming up until next May. I am planning on doing another marathon. Call me vain, but I love how I look all muscular, tone, and lean when I am training for a marathon. This time of year, who cares? I mean half of the month I don’t even bother to shave. I guess there are a few benefits to living in a cold climate.

I am really counting on snow to supplement my exercise routine. We really want to go cross country skiing this year. On average where I live we get a little over 50 inches (130 cm) of snow per season. Statistically speaking, we should be able to ski unless my buying skis last year gives me another year of bad luck regarding snowfall. Imagine if I bought a snowmobile?!? Geez.

My husband and I also depend on snowfall for our other form of exercise, snow shoveling. We have a moderately long driveway. All our neighbors hire someone with a snowplow or have a snow blower. We argue over who gets to shovel. Seriously, this doesn’t give us many sanity points with our neighbors. Yes, we are those fitness freaks. I am so happy that my husband and I are at similar fitness levels. We have so much of the world left to actively explore.

Old school stalking, part 2

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After the horrible first date, Mac talked me into going out with him again. The first couple of weeks were great. He became totally obsessed with me. He listened to all of my stories. Laughed at all of my jokes. At first this was all very flattering. He showered me with time and attention making up for several years of being ignored by my dad. He made me feel like I couldn’t live without him. So after a couple of months of being Mr. Wonderful, when he asked me to marry him I said “yes”. It was probably around this time that the problems started. You see, he didn’t have good enough credit to buy me an engagement ring. So I bought my own.

That was not all that I bought. I bought new tires for his car that ended up getting repossessed. He did buy me a nice word processor to type up my college papers on. But he was so jealous that I was in college that he turned it off on me when I was almost finished writing a paper for a 4 credit class. I had to start all over and ended up just turning it in before the class ended that day.

Then there were other things. Like the time I stopped in after work at 7 PM and he had stayed out all night gambling the night before. He woke up at 7 PM thinking that it was 7 AM. He thought I was kidding. He missed work that day. He started taking my prescription drugs.

Then things got really bad. He started to push me around. He grabbed me by the neck and threw me against the wall. He threw me around enough for me to get pretty bruised up. He lost his temper and punched his fist through the bedroom door. When I threatened to call the cops, he told me that he would accuse me of stealing from him after a couple of times that he had me cash his checks for him.

When I threatened to leave him he got very manipulative. He found my diaries and said that if I left him he would send them to my family members.

The final straw happened about this time of year. Mac was very obsessed with his appearance. He dyed his hair blonde and permed it. He even wore foundation to cover his ruddy complexion. One Thanksgiving, I picked him up to go to my grandma’s house. He forgot to put on his foundation and demanded that I stop at my parent’s house on the way so that he could borrow my mom’s makeup. I was appalled. No fricken way was I going to do that. So he was upset with me and during the prim and proper family meal with all of my extended family, we got into a huge fight. Swear words riccoched across the table. He ended up walking out. I wish I could say that it was the end right then and there.

He relentlessly pursued me over the next couple of months. There were times when I had to hide my car when I was at home. I had to have my friend drop me off at work so he wouldn’t see my car there. When he called, my mom told him that I wasn’t there. Once he left a rose under my windshield in the early morning with a apology note asking to get back together. It freaked me out because I lived an hour away from him.

When I lived with a roommate, he charmed her into thinking he was a great guy. She told him everything that he wanted to know about me. That is how I ended up having my name broadcast over the speakers half the night while I was at the county fair with some friends and another guy. “Alissa, please come to the information desk, Mac is looking for you”. I am so glad that I didn’t marry that guy. Had I known, the first date would’ve been the last.

Old school stalking, part 1

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When my friend, Kristi, set me up on a blind date with Mac she told me that he was going to school to be a lawyer. That really wasn’t accurate. What she should have said was that Mac was a high school dropout that had issues with the law. But what did Kristi know? She was a horrible judge of men. She was asking me to stand up in her wedding while her fiance was asking me to sleep with him. He was a big time cheater, marriage did not fix that.

I decided to go out on the blind date anyway. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship with a great guy who was in the military. He was going to be overseas for a year. It never would have worked out anyway because we were too much alike. We had the same personality, both were firstborns, and we both were left handed.

Kristi did set me up with someone previous to my relationship with the military guy. She set me up with her fiance Ted’s brother. He was a pretty nice guy. On our first double date with Ted and Kristi, they were in the backseat making out the whole time. That, I might mention, makes for a very awkward first date. It didn’t work out.

Mac and I decided that our first date should be a double date with another couple that I didn’t know, not Ted and Kristi. We were going to go bowling. About halfway to the bowling alley, the driver and his girlfriend pulled out some drinks. Apparently, they had been drinking on the ride to my house and needed to stop at a gas station to drop off their empties after almost getting pulled over. Okay, that was not cool at all, but it was not as if I had a cell phone and could call for a ride home. When we got to the bowling alley, it was closed for tournaments.

We stopped at another gas station, this time for gas. The driver went in to pay for gas while his girlfriend started rummaging through his things. She found another girl’s phone number in his checkbook. This is when she got into the driver’s seat and took off with tires squealing in a rubber burning jealous rage. She pulled into traffic without looking and cut off a guy in a Corvette. Cars in both lanes slammed on their brakes and honked at us. She pulled onto a side road, got out of the car, and while screaming tried to break the car windows with her purse. Mac sheltered me with his coat in case she succeeded and got glass shards on us. After what seemed like an hour of screaming and car battery, she took off into the early evening dusk on foot.

Mac drove the car back to the gas station to pick up her boyfriend. We literally spent the rest of the evening looking for her. We stopped at random phone booths to call her family. We drove up and down the side roads. Nothing. Finally after several hours of looking without finding, the driver took me home. Best first date NEVER! If I had known the future, I should have had the first date be the last date.

 

 

To my daughter’s stalker

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I have never met you and hope that I never do. I can understand why you would be obsessed with my daughter. She is that bright light in a dim lit room. Along with butterflies, even the darkest of souls are attracted to her warm glowing light. Sinking ships try to reach that light in this dark world.

I can understand why you said that you would make my daughter love you the way you love her. She is very beautiful. Her stage presence, her angelic singing voice alone has caused the most callous of hearts to open. You noticed that when you met her a year and a half ago on a school choir trip. Even though she told you that she had a boyfriend, that she just wanted to be friends, you thought you could change her mind.

After the trip, you texted, snapchatted, social mediaed, and called her all the time. It got to the point that she told you to stop, but you didn’t. Her boyfriend told you to stop and then you started harassing him. You told him that you were going to kill him at school performances that you knew they would be at and terrorized them in general. Then this summer you hacked my daughter’s facebook account.

We didn’t hear from you too much after that. Although I was disappointed that you decided to go to the same college as my daughter’s boyfriend. I thought that after you got into college and started meeting a lot of girls that maybe you would give up the whole idea that she would love you. She has had the same boyfriend for over two years now, a man I would be happy to call my son-in-law someday.

Then I heard you recognized my daughter’s boyfriend at college from facebook pictures. You punched him in the face. Even though my daughter’s boyfriend didn’t want us to know about what you did, we found out. But this week was the last straw. You hacked into my daughter’s boyfriends facebook account. You posed as him and broke up with my daughter. When she found out it was you, you told her that you loved her and would force her to love you. You said that you were going to find her and rape her. This time you went too far. My husband called you after this. He told you that you are never to talk to our daughter or her boyfriend again. He is not a man to be messed with, so I hope you got the message.

If you ever talk to them again, we will get a restraining order. That is if you are lucky.

Mud bath

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I am happy to say that I checked riding in the back of a pickup truck naked and plastered in mud off my bucket list at a young age. Times with Jody were always an adventure even when her dad wasn’t taking us to the bar or we were trying to fight off teen boys.

Jody’s dad was a farmer, so that in itself was always an adventure. I remember walking around the barn during milking time. Looking at the bull raging in his pen was always exciting. One day while we were riding around the field in Jody’s go cart, she told me that the bull got loose. We sped around getting stuck in the mud, trying to get away from the bull that never showed.

Sometimes Jody’s dad would take us on his tractor. I remember sitting on the back of the hay wagon getting caked with alfalfa. That night I sneezed while my grandma plucked all of the alfalfa out of my hair. It was a big tangled up mess.

But the best story was when I went with Jody to the gravel pit. Her dad bought the property and was building a house. It was a warm day and one of the pits looked like a hot tub of mud. So we took off our clothes, except our underwear, and jumped in the mud. We were neck deep in our hot tub of mud when Jody’s dad found us. We had to sit on some lumber and hold onto the bar on the back of his truck to get home. What a sight we were. Two preteen girls, naked and covered with mud, sitting up in the back of the truck for the world to see. That was one fun day until Jody’s grandma hosed us down in the milk house.

The incident at the public library

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Once, for a very short time in my life, I was a compulsive hand washer. It started after a frightening incident in the library parking lot that happened when I was 13 with my grade school best friend, Jody.

I met Jody in kindergarten. When I was really young my parents had me stay with Jody for a week when they took my brother Matt to the hospital. At the time, Jody’s parents were going through a divorce. I remember sitting on the steps with Jody at age 6 listening to her parents fight. Things may have been thrown, I don’t recall for sure. Just a lot of noise, a lot of yelling. I had my grandparents pick me up before the week was through.

I don’t know why Jody’s mom didn’t like her dad anymore. He was a fun guy. He loved to laugh and would buy us soda at the bar. One night the roads were way too icy to take Jody and I to dance class, so we went to the bar instead. He told me not to tell my mom as she would probably worry. I also went up north with Jody, her dad, and his girlfriend for the weekend. He had to stop halfway there because he was tired and needed a drink at the bar. Lots of quarters for soda that night. I think we may have even put some songs in the jukebox. When Jody turned 10 she had her birthday party at you guessed it, the bar! Jody was a lot of fun too.

When my mom told me that I could bring a friend with me to the library that night, I chose Jody. Once a month, my mom attended a support group for mothers of the disabled at the library. Most of the time the meetings ended after the library closed which is what happened that night. It was a warm summer night, so we waited for my mom in the car. We were talking when 3 older boys showed up at the car on bikes. They saw us and tried to get in the car. We locked the doors, but it was hot. We had to roll the windows down a little as the heat was stifling. The boys tried to pry their fingers in through the crack in the windows. They banged on the glass. That kept trying the car handles over and over, rattling on them, trying to get in. They taunted us, put their penises against the glass, and held condoms against the windows. I found the incident very frightening. 

It was after this happened that I washed my hands over and over. I washed them until they were cracked and bleeding. For months I refused to touch the car handles that those boys touched to try to attack us. Everything they touched felt unclean to me. I wouldn’t touch those handles even if it meant that I had to sit in the middle of the back seat. So I washed and washed until the memory and terror of that night faded. At least I had control over something. 

 

 

Snow tires

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In our school district, we have a late bus that drops kids off at various locations after after school activities. The late bus has been a good experience, well except for that one time. What can I say? Snow tires!

When my son was in middle school, he took the late bus to the drop off spot after wrestling practice. One dark, cold, winter Friday night I went to pick him up and had a little adventure. I attempted to make a Y turn and slid on the ice into a snow bank. So here I was with the back end of my car hanging out sideways on the road. My headlights were buried in the snow and I was afraid that oncoming cars would not be able to see me. Yeah, right about that time I had the image in my mind of getting hit by the bus. I called my husband in freak out panic mode. He was in the middle of making supper and couldn’t get there right away. 

Right after I called home two men, that were strangers to me and each other, showed up and pushed my car out of the snow bank. I really appreciated their kindness. Immediately after that, my son showed up on the late bus. He got in the car and exclaimed that he forgot his homework and wrestling gear on the bus. Big problem because the wrestling meet was the next morning. So here I am trying to flag down a school bus in the dark. The first stop I tried to send my son to get his stuff but the driver didn’t see him and left. So here I am driving along side of the bus waving and honking trying not to hit kids wandering around in the dark. Finally my son got his things off the bus. 

In the meantime, my husband set aside supper to help get me out of the snow bank. Except, I was no longer there. He was getting really worried that perhaps by snow bank I meant ditch. Or something really bad happened, like the bus driving around with my car in its front grill. I tried calling him in the process, but he already left. Thankfully, we all made it home safely that night. This winter I will be sure to have good snow tires.