Hold On

It has been a while since I have written but things have been crazy. I have also been feeling really down lately and have not really had anything good to say. So if you cannot say anything nice then do not say anything at all.
Most everything on my list has been checked off. I have most all the canning done, I changed the sheets on my bed, I shaved my armpits and I found my missing cat at a garage sale last week.
I do need to fill you in though on some hard stuff I have had to do. I am only going to post this on the Internet because I feel that someone may be able to really benefit from the truth of life.
Life is hard and there is a lot of stuff that we all have to go through. Everybody has different ways of dealing with life and everybody has dysfunctional families. Warning: those who cannot admit to the dysfunction are probably some of the most dysfunctional.
I have a daughter and her name is Alysha Lillian. She was born on November 16, 1992. We are exactly 15 years and 4 months a part. I have spent over half my life raising her. She has been my morning and my night. We have had good and bad times but mostly real times. There has always been little eat, not much gas in the tank, free lunch at school, homemade Christmas and only local TV. There have also been lots of books, sleepovers in the living room, hours doing our nails, class parties and quiet nights. But there has never been a lot of touch, we never held hands, never snuggles on Saturday mornings, or hugs after she fell off her bike, never a kiss good by or even a love to say hello, never any touch.
I tried to change what I felt inside but the pain was to deep to reach out, the only thing I could do was hide it. I could hear her cries for mothers love; she needed to feel the warmth of the heart that beat to keep her alive. I could not give her what she so desperately needed. I have carried this truth with me, and now it is infected. Like the wound that you do not see because you have covered it for so long.
Why is it that the wicked things that we hate turn into the wicked things we are? Why is it that the pain we feel, we inflict upon the ones we love. We so desperately want to protect our loved ones but yet we line them up for fire.
I sat there in drug class with my beautiful Alysha. I now see her every week during this time. We sit at long tables and she sits across from me. Next to her sits the perpetrator.
We will be doing an exercise on communication, the drug class facilitator says and hands us an 81/2 X 11 sheet of paper. On the paper we have written a few statements that we want you to go over with your child and parent. Ok, this should be simple.
I look up at Alysha with her big eyes and start the list:
What I most love about you is…
The changes I have seen in you are…
I feel closest to you when…
I feel furthest from you when…
What I am most concerned about you is…
What I wish we could talk about but don’t is…
By the time I had read the third thing on this list my eyes were pouring with tears and my heart needed to be picked up off the floor. I miss you is all I can say. She throws her self into my arms and sobs. For the first time I hold on to her. I love you is all I can say I love you. It is so hard Mom she says. I know Alysha it has always been hard.
After years we embrace her tears on my chest and my tears in her perfect silky hair. I wish that I could turn back the time and hold her more, tell her that I loved her.
I look up and see the perpetrator sitting there and now it is his turn to go through the list. He smiles and lets out a laugh as she walks over to sit back down next to him. It takes all of my will to stop myself from jumping over the table and punching him in the face. The pain he has caused the tears that have been shed and he sits and laughs.
Hold your babies tonight. Give them all of your love, kiss them and hugs them and do not ever let go. Baby fits mother so hold on to him tight. Hold on because life hurts like hell.

One day

It has been a while since my last post. I have had a lot going on and truthfully I have not even had time to check my e-mail. A few years ago I started canning. Now I do most of my winter food supply by canning it myself. My Mom as thought me everything there is to know about canning and now I cannot get enough of it. We have done Tomatoes yellow and red, peaches, pears, beans, jams and corn. Needless to say I have spent a lot of my time in the kitchen.
On top of, volunteering in Quinn's class once a week. Attending back to school night last week. Taking the kids to gymnastics one day a week and church one extra night a week. Jason's Dad was here last week so we had four days entertaining him. We have all had a bad case of the flu bug and our cat has run away 7 times since last Tuesday. My brother has been evicted from his house again and his daughter who is only 15 in now pregnant. My daughter had court last week and will be attending drug and alcohol classes once a week for twelve weeks. I have been court ordered to attend these classes with her and my ex-husband. Jason's mom is still having chemo and we see her one night a week. Our rental house in Emmett is for sale and the renter in the back house has not paid the water bill in two months. Lauren had a birthday and we spent a day filling her cup. Our water heater broke and flooded the garage and Jason is going out of town this weekend. We have sold one of our extra cars and the man will be here from Pittsburg to pick it up on Saturday. I have a cold my face has broken out, I need to change the oil in the car and the sheets on my bed have not seen the washing machine for several weeks. One of my good friends had twins and I have had her gift sitting in the front seat of my car for two weeks. As soon as I can get to the post office I will send them off. I also have stack of books that need to go back to the library and the deposit has to be made, my grocery list is now two pages long and Henry peed the bed last night. I need to take the dog in to have her ears cleaned and I have my yearly exam on Tuesday. The mirror in the bathroom was knocked over and broken last week and the lawn out in Emmett needs to be mowed. Jason is doing construction on the job he has been working on the last six months so he has to work most weekends and late every night. Oh shit, I just burnt dinner!
And to think I would give all of this up for one day of quiet. This is my life, how are you?

School Days Start

It has been a very long week........
Quinn had his first day of school. He is now a very big boy attending the first grade. He will now eat lunch at school and stay till 3:35. Of course they had a half a day on Monday and no school on Friday and then no school on Monday again so we will have to give it a week or two and see what happens. Quinton has so far not really had any use for school. He has a great teacher this year who seems to be a science and health nut so hopefully he will get something useful out of this year.

Lauren is now doing three half days of preschool. She on the other hand loves school. She makes friends easy, she likes to color, write and listen to stories and she loves her teacher. So that leaves me with Henry, it’s just the two of us three days a week in the morning. Now I can get my grocery shopping done with just him. This may sound like it is not that big of a deal, but you try to go shopping with three little kids who all go different directions and never tell you where they are going.

Jason has been working on a project for the Boise Airport and they have been doing construction for the last few weeks. He has been working from sun up to sun down. This weekend was going to be his first day off and so he decided to get a really good case of food poisoning. That has been really fun but I do not recommend trying it.

It is also harvest season and I have canned peaches and dilly beans this week. I have two bushels of tomatoes in the garage waiting to be canned next. My garden is one of my favorite places to be. There is something about growing my own food then preserving it. It is such a great life skill to have and to know that I can provide for my family with out much help from the dreaded grocery store.
If you know anything about me you know that I frequent thrift store and garage sales. I have collected most of my canning equipment and jars from theses places. Also Jason and I have been switching out diet to little to no commercial processors. It has been a challenge and a lot of label reading. Now that I know what is good to eat it actually saves a lot of time at the store. There are now isles that I can skip completely. Also it protects me from the impulse buys, most which include the things we try to stay away from.
The trick is to keep your husband away from fast food that is poisoned.

To end the week we finished the inspection of a rental we have out in Emmett. Our renter has decided to move back to Alaska. We are done with the rental days and are going to put this property on the market. I always liked this house and it will be sad to see it go but we are really trying to focused on simplify our lives. It is a charming two-bedroom home that was built in 1926. It sits in the Williamson addition of Emmett and was actually Williamsons house. It has all the original hardwood floors, pulley windows and claw foot tub. There is also a one-bedroom mother-in-law house in the back. We just had them painted before the last tenant moved in. We would love to keep it but we just never find the time to give it the attention it needs.

Well I hear Henry beating on his older sister again so it is time to play referee. And I wonder why I can’t find anytime?