It strikes me as somewhat curious that much of what I write here I attempt to filter and slant to make all seem quite well in my life. And don't get me wrong- I think that overall, I'm a fairly happy person these days, with most of my demons long since exorcised or at least beaten into submission. But of course things aren't always A-OK, I still live daily with doubts and fears and misgivings and guilt, and at times my happy face is just that: a face.

I would say that this last week has been more difficult than most. I've caught myself several times slipping into a semi-daze of depression- never quite getting going throughout the day, just spending my time wandering through the house in my pajamas, drinking cup after cup of coffee but not eating... bouncing aimlessly from site to site but finding little of interest online... attempting to escape through the reading of a good book, but having to put it down after scanning the same paragraph a half dozen times yet still unable to have told you what I'd just read... electing to not answer the phone when it rings, for no other reason than instinctively needing to jealously guard my solitude...
Sadly enough, that's how it's been for me lately. I wouldn't categorize it as a full-fledged depression- after all, I'm still devoting a certain amount of time to the necessities. I guess I'm more just drifting on a sea of apathy, really.

Financially, things could be better; maybe that's part of it. There's a certain amount of strain between my husband and me in regards to my spending- we avoid talking about it, because it invariably leads to arguing, but the money issue lurks silently around the edges of our conversations nonetheless. I agree that I'm careless with money at times; he obsesses about the green stuff entirely too much, to the point where I end up calling him a stingy, greedy bastard- words I instantly regret the moment they tumble from my mouth, but of course cannot take back nor assuage the sting of their having been flung. The bills always get paid, and it's rarely that we're significantly late in doing so. We want for very little, in my opinion. But with a child, come goals, and long-term ones at that- perhaps that's the source of the tightly controlled panic I hear in Tony's voice when he speaks about our future. It's difficult to imagine buying a home, paying for good schooling, and achieving a higher standard of living financially when we have loused up our credit so badly in our past, are still somewhat in debt with various creditors, and literally live paycheck to paycheck. Sigh. Now that I'm keying this paragraph onto my computer screen, I can empathize so much more with Tony- how stressful the role of "Man of the Family" must be, his overwhelming desire to provide for us coupled with guilt for not being "good enough", "rich enough", or "smart enough" to figure out a way to propel us up the ladder another rung or two. I want so badly to assure him of his worth, his success in MY eyes as a husband and father, in a way that truly hits home, but hesitate to even bring it up, afraid that I might fail miserably in my approach and just end up making him feel all that much worse, a subject of pity to be consoled. He's a very proud man, my Tonydaddy. But aren't most of them, for that matter?

So I stay silent, as does he, and we talk about inconsequential matters- I, still in my pajamas at 2:00 in the afternoon; him, outwardly his regularly upbeat smiling self, but with shoulders knotted tense with the stress of trying to hold it all together. Both of us watching our precocious son intently as he struggles to keep his balance in this new, upright position, standing on wobbly bowed legs with a beatific smile on his face.

Good Times, Bad Times, You Know I've Had My Share

This last week has been one of ups and downs, smiles and frowns. Some of the bad news is that my hundred hours of community service (which took me nearly eight months to complete, and I finished back in December of '06) somehow has gotten lost in the labyrinthine system of the courts, and my probation officer called me this morning to inform me that it was my responsibility to rectify this error. She had looked through my file there at Probation & Parole, saw notations that it was being completed throughout the months, spoke with my former P.O. and gotten her assurance that yes, I had completed it, and that I had shown her the slips; but the Community Service Office at the courthouse apparently has no record of any of it being done, so she was assigning me the task of going down there and finding out what they needed to verify it was done. Something that, frankly, I am not so confident in being able to do. I mean, like they're gonna just take my word for it? Of course I don't have any paperwork anymore- I turned it all in to them! And my P.O. said to not be so sure that just my putting a face to my name by going down there will do anything- they've gone through numerous staffing overhauls throughout these last couple years, and chances are slim that anyone from back then still works there. So it looks like my only hope will be to go down to the places where I actually did the community service, and seeing if they had records of it still, or would be willing to attest to the fact that I did it there. I can only hope and pray that they do... if not, I'll bet I have to redo the entire one hundred hours, all because of someone else's misfile. Arggh!

Another lousy thing is my grandmother's deteriorating health- this Tuesday I spent all day, from eight that morning til nearly three in the afternoon, hustling her from appointment to x-ray to blood draw to pharmacy... all in the hopes of avoiding another hospital stay. Well, this morning she was once again admitted to KMC, so all our efforts were for naught. Her congestive heart failure is causing fluid to accumulate in dangerous amounts in her lungs and extremities, and the diuretic her doc prescribed isn't working, so once again we're waiting with bated breath to see if she'll come out the other side of this. It's both disheartening and exhausting for all of us, the family, so I can only imagine how difficult it must be for Grandma.

On the bright side, tonight we'll be hosting my little sister and her fiance for a spaghetti dinner and some Scrabble. It's something we don't do nearly enough- entertain, I mean. All too often, I just toss together something quick and easy- why toil away all afternoon at a five course meal for just the two of us? So, this'll give me a chance to cook a great- albeit simple- dinner, have some great company and conversation, and kick some serious ass at Scrabble!

Another cool thing going on is Tonydaddy's great escape this weekend- he's going on a men's retreat through our church, or rather our church's denomination- the Evangelical Free Church of America. This is so awesome how it came about: someone actually donated the funds for his ticket, knowing we couldn't really afford it, which was why he had planned on skipping it. We could've swung the cost of the trip, but there was also going to be skiing, shooting, meals, etc., and that would've been a bit out of our reach. This way, he'll be able to enjoy the whole thing, thanks to some nameless Christian's generousity! Amazing how God works like that, when it's something worthwhile. I'd been praying for Tony to realize we could afford it, even if it would've made this month's finances a little tight, just because I knew how much he would enjoy himself. I mean, being with a bunch of other Christian guys out in the middle of nowhere, blowing stuff up, skiing his heart out (something he grew up doing almost daily but has had to give up in recent years)... of course I wanted him to go! And now he is. Thank you, God. Thank you, Good Samaritan.

This'll also give me a chance to spend some time with family during the four days it'll be just Jameson and I- we'll be going to dinner with my aunt and uncle, my good friend plans on accompanying me to church Sunday, and who knows what else will pop up. Probably a couple visits to Grandma in the hospital, too. And while part of me will be missing my man, I'll also have the contentment of knowing he's having a blast. Literally.

Taxes, Faxes, and Waxes

Taxes~
I got a packet from the IRS in the mail Friday. You know, the standard "Forms and Instructions" crap. I've been eyeballing it off and on all weekend, and although it's just an innocent sheaf of cheaply inked newsprint, it still has an ominous aura to it, in my opinion.
This may be due to the fact that I'll be filing quite differently than ever before. First of all, I now have a dependent! Two, actually, as my husband's daughter from his previous marriage lived with us for most of last year. Second, after lengthy discussion with the hubby, we decided the pro's outweighed the con's and we'd file jointly- also a first for me. And thirdly, but certainly not leastly- actually the most terrifying I think, I've been employed as an independent contractor these last six months since my release, so will be swimming in unfamiliar waters when it comes to filing; listing all those deductions and what-not. I've heard sharks and other dangerous creatures swim in those seas, just waiting to devour the ignorant souls such as I. And who the hell can afford an accountant? Certainly not I. How I long for the days of the good ol' online short form direct deposit, rubbing my hands together gleefully as I waited for my almost guaranteed return. Now, who the heck knows what's gonna happen. Will I owe? Will I do it wrong and get audited? Little old me? My man's the one who makes the big bucks, even after child support, so it just doesn't seem fair that my piddly little income has to be so darn complicated to compute. Yeah, I've tried to save some receipts of stuff I had to buy for work. Yeah, I've done my best to keep track of mileage. But, I just have this nagging voice sneering at me, one of the more unsavory characters from the committee who live in my head:
"You fool, Kendra. You're gonna get screwed, and you know it. Who do you think you're kidding? You don't know how to work a real job- the only thing you were ever good at was selling dope! And Uncle Sam will never forget how bad you took advantage of him when you were "serving your country". He'll get back at you one of these days, and don't be surprised if this is how he gets ya."
I hate that guy! Wish I could get him to shut up, but you know how that goes. They pick the middle of the night to whisper their negative nonsense, when you're at your weakest and all you want to do is sleep but can't 'cause they nag you to death, reminding you of all the embarrassing moments you've had since second grade and all the woulda coulda shoulda's in your life. I wish one of those fluffy sheep I try counting would crush their heads with a feces-encrusted hoof and silence them for good!

Faxes~
Normally I'm blessed with the ability to do my job from my own computer in my own office, in my own home. This is wonderful- if it were any different, my son would either be in some daycare (which I swore to myself I would never do unless absolutely positively necessary), or I would get very little done chasing him around at my boss's place- a non kid-friendly house, unfortunately. Here, though, Jameson's content to play with his myriad toys scattered strategically throughout our home, so no matter where his chubby little arms and legs crawl him to, he's bound to be sidetracked somewhere along the way, preferably before he reaches my keyboard to reach up and bang out things I really didn't want in whatever I'm happening to work on. He also can't seem to resist the cords- the ipod cord, the power strip ("AAHH!" I always shriek when I see him going for that one) or especially, his favorite: the mouse cord, which when he sees it wiggling while I mouse around, he assumes that must mean it's a game where he must tug on it in return, preferably with enough force to rip it out of my hand and onto the floor, where he then must immediately inspect it with his mouth..... Ah, the joys of motherhood.
But I digress. This little section was supposed to be about my ongoing war with FedEx, and their incredible assertion that 48 of the little boxes we mail every week, and which our company has been doing so for years, this time all happened to weigh 24 pounds apiece. Exactly. These packages were in 9x6x6 boxes, which is about shoebox sizes, except a bit shorter in length. Normally, once packed and labeled, they weigh between just under 2 lbs. or just over 5 at the most, depending on what's in them. So this claim of 24 pounds was freaking preposterous! What the hell did they think was in 'em- plutonium? Obviously someone screwed up somewhere, hopefully on accident- I'd hate to think a company as large and well-established as FedEx would stoop to overcharging by putting B.S. weights on mass mailing companies such as ours and just hoping no one would notice. Well, my boss is a stickler for details, and she certainly did notice. Her being the busy lady she is, she assigned moi the job of straightening the whole mess out. So I put together a graph of tracking numbers, dates, their incorrect estimate next to my exact weight (yes, I actually reproduced every single shipment by looking up what was sent in our records, and weighed it to get an exact number, down to the ounces and grams, even), and package dimensions. You shoulda seen me- I despise Excel, so slogging my way through this was quite the process, peppered with obscenities and shouts of frustration. But I got 'er done, and whipped out a subtly nasty cover letter to go with it- the easy part, for me.
After I was done- I had been given a week to do this, because of all the research involved, but my Virgoan tenacity and perfectionism caused me to finish it over the course of the weekend- I submitted it to my boss for approval before faxing it off, and she was absolutely floored. After showering me with compliments (me brushing it off like it was nothing but knowing inside I was nowhere near as skilled as she was thinking), she offered me a promotion on the spot. I'm not sure if any significant raise will be included, but doing the bookkeeping and invoicing will be a damn sight better than all those cursed trips to the post office. And, after the training- which I'll have to do at her house, I'll still be able to work out of my own home office, thank God.
Meanwhile, however, little Jameson is getting chased around my boss's office by me or her while we attempt to train me on the Namaste Food accounts receivable and payable. Don't know which one is more challenging, learning all these new data entry and filing methods, or trying to concentrate while corralling my child, too.

Waxes~
Ever been struck by the urge to purge one's house of all the accumulated crap and detritus of day to day life which does nothing but create clutter? Well, I got bit by the spring-cleaning bug (yeah, I know it's the dead of winter) and have been boxing up stuff for St. Vinnie's, tossing out bags upon bags of garbage, going though the overstuffed closets of my son (how could he possibly have more clothes than Tonydaddy and I put together?!) and recklessly ripping out the stuff he doesn't wear or has outgrown and bagging it up for the exchange store (I love those places- kids outgrow their stuff so quick; might as well just swap 'em out. [the clothes, not the kid] My faves are Kidlets in Post Falls next to the Post Falls Press, and Switcheroo in the Spokane Valley). I've rearranged both bathrooms. The office, too- difficult since I have baking mixes which I mail stacked every-dang-where, floor to ceiling, and I'm trying to organize it to the point where I can fit a futon in here for when Tony's girls stay the night, so they won't have to sleep on the couch. The operative word here, however, is "try"- not sure if I'll be able to downsize that much, no matter how creative I get. I did get rid of Fifi the lime-green IMac, which I was babysitting for a friend as collateral for loaning him some much needed money. Since she was just taking up space, unused and unloved (I'm entirely Mac illiterate), I blew off the loan and just gave her back to him.
I've been washing windows, waxing floors, cleaning the bathrooms almost daily now that Jameson likes to stick his hands in the toilet, or throw whatever's handy in there if so inclined. He also loves bathtime so much he'll crawl into the master bathroom, where the taps are facing up vertically, rather than horizontally in toward the tub; he can reach them, so he'll turn them on, wait and see if someone will come in when we hear the water running, and if we do, he'll break into a toothy grin, banging his pudgy little hands excitedly against the wall of the huge oval tub, like, "C'mon, Mommy, let's take a bath! Can we, can we, huh huh huh?" Now, if we happen to not hear the water running, he'll get impatient and look for things to throw into the tub. Like a spare roll of toilet paper (I no longer keep those behind the toilet, that's for sure) or the toilet brush. Yep, it's fun fun fun.
Anyway. Hope this nesting urge doesn't mean I'm preggers again! Nah, actually not possible. But something weird's definitely happening- I'm usually not THAT much of a Suzie Homemaker...

Fun in the Sun, I Mean, Snow

Okay, here's me trying to figure out how do to this- after all, it's been about twenty years...



Work in progress....



The finished product, hurray!

Just What Exactly Does "Auld Lang Syne" Really Mean, Anyway?

Although I'm still a little shell-shocked, exhausted from making the rounds over the holidays (Grandma's house for gift exchange, Mom's formal Christmas Eve dinner, etc.) I feel pretty good about this new year and all it may bring. And I'm not the only one! After going to my half-sister's house for a little gift exchange and visit, a few days after the actual holiday, she showed me one whopper of a ring- Ron, her man, had finally popped the question, and did so in style. I had to ask: "Angie, did he go to Jared?" Alas, the answer was no, so I didn't get to do the corny commercial cliche I was hoping on. Seriously, though, this was some really good news for them- it was getting to the point where they needed to either commit or split. I for one was very happy that they chose to get married; I like Ron. For that matter, I like Angie; they're both really great Christian people. Amazingly enough, I only just met this sister a little over a year ago, so am still getting to know her, too! She's another one of my father's offspring which keep popping up here and there every couple of years... he was quite the stud in his day, and sowed his wild oats all over town. Angie was introduced to me through my dad, and ironically enough, her and I are closer now than I am to him anymore. And as for her and Dad, forget it. She wasn't too impressed with him and his rather nonchalant attitude in regards to his offspring, and I can't say I blame her. I've had about enough of it myself. He disowned me one too many times, and unfortunately now that I've changed so much for the better, he has no idea what he's missing out on. But like I said, I don't need it; neither does Jameson. We have plenty of worthwhile family members to spend our time and energy on.

So, speaking of time and energy, I don't really have any set-in-stone resolutions, but a few ephemeral plans are wafting around my psyche, and some possibilities which the man of the house and I have discussed may very well solidify too. But I've been finding it hard to live outside of the here and now, something I ascribe to my having to chase a VERY active, adventuresome nine-month-old around the house most of the day. It's pure joy (mostly), but much more demanding than I ever dreamed. Instead of my life revolving around me, with perhaps my man a close second place, with work, home and leisure trailing behind that, my child is the epicenter of our little universe- his needs of course paramount to ours, and he seemingly devotes much of his time to foiling any attempts to impose a schedule where I can get anything done during the day. So I find myself scrubbing toilets at odd hours, juggling the boy while I cook meals, and gravitating towards toys which amuse him while keeping him captive- literally.

Anyway, all this child-rearing stuff by nature trumps my old habits of spending long hours in a bubble bath or on a quiet walk, musing and/or debating different facets of my life, making deeply thought-out decisions in a logical fashion while drifting through a rootless, independent lifestyle. So these days, any decisions are either made by necessity- again, revolving around the youngest member of the family- or simply talked about by Tony and I in a wistful, those-were-the-days tone, knowing full well our lives are too chaotic and full to do anything drastically different just for the hell of it.

Some things that have been batted about, however, are:
*Shopping for a new bed (ours simply is NOT big enough for two adults and a squirming, crying baby when he feels the need to be cuddled back to sleep in the middle of the night)
*My possibly accepting a lateral promotion from my boss, which would change my job from miscellaneous mailings and other shipping and filing duties, to handling the invoices and other sales-related chores. This is something I'm looking forward to, as I will still be able to do most of it from home, but will eliminate most of the trips to the post office. Sweet!
*A mini-vacation, just Tony and I- time and finances willing- that will use up our two free nights accommodations at either Seaside, Las Vegas, Vancouver (nope, that won't work, as Canada doesn't like felons) or lil ol' Coeur d'Alene itself.
*And finally, though certainly not the least in level of importance.... QUITTING SMOKING AGAIN!!! Yes, I'm confessing to the horrible fact that after almost two whole months of beating down that yucky nico-demon, the bastard got ahold of us again. Arggh! It started with just one or two here and there, but I'm ashamed to say that I'm back up to at least six or seven a day, and Tony's puffing away at the rate of almost an entire pack. Sheesh.

So there you have it. My tentative agenda for the next month. Which will be interspersed with, and possibly encompassed by all the musts and have-to's of day to day life with a young child and that ever-present four-letter-word: responsibility. Keep me in your prayers, nameless, faceless online friends, okay? As I will you.

Life Goes On (and on, and on, and on....)

What a blogging slacker I am! I'm not sure how long it's been since my last post, but I know I have been severely remiss in my online record-keeping. Of course I am a virtual paragon of good intentions (as I used to be every single year I would receive yet another diary; transcribing every little event, right up until January 18th would roll around and the poor leatherbound pretty would commence collecting dust for eternity). Ah well, I would venture to say things are different these days: this, rather than some chronological bore-fest of Jameson's diaper changings and my trips to the grocery store, is more of a collection of, how did I put it? "musings and mutterings", I think- more of a smattering of the more memorable events, interspersed with recurring thoughts I feel are worthy of publication.

So, now that I've applied the balm of justification on my rash of slacker guilt, we can proceed.

Grandma is out of the hospital, the whole family breathing a collective sigh of relief yet again. After a bevy of tests and bushel of Medicare dollars (I'm sure) not one of those snooty specialists will venture a diagnosis; no, their prescription pads instead held up to mask expressions of clueless dismay, they simply scribble more painkillers, anticoagulants and advisements to "take it easy" while we just "wait and see". Grrr.

* * * * * * (a short time later) * * * * * * * *

The house seems remarkable empty, as it's just myself and my just-turned 8-month-old child. The man of the house is out of town, as his occupation all too often requires him to be, and today of all days I find myself missing him terribly. It's not so much the challenge of chasing around our son by myself as I try to get work done(although since our boy started crawling and pulling himself up on things a few weeks ago, things have gotten really interesting around here). Nor is it the loneliness of an empty bed at night- if anything, I welcome the chance to leave the bedside lamp on, reading grittty police procedurals into the wee hours of the night. No, instead I think it's that lack of comfortable back-and-forth communication that I've come to expect and love, a privelege of marriage that comes when you know your spouse inside and out, and they you. The anticipation of, and meeting, each other's needs. The little touches, insignificant to a stranger's eye, but carrying hidden meaning between two people who are still in love after how ever many years. Those are the things I miss when he's gone, and that's what makes this little house seem cavernous with his absence.

When I said "today of all days" I was referring to the fact that, today, December 11th, is Tony's birthday. Now, my hubby has never made a big deal out of his anniversary of birth, and since he's recently crept into his fourth decade of existence, it's even worse. I, on the other hand, am a huge celebrator of any holiday, and the birthdays of those near and dear to me are no exception. So, of course I was devastated when he informed me of his being down in Walla Walla on this date, his time of return uncertain. Not only could I not cook some lavish dinner and present his gifts to him on this day, I couldn't even plan for a belated soiree. No, instead I am left bereft and melancholy, bemoaning his lack of interest in what I wish I could make a perfect day for him, but cannot.

So this morning found me maudlin and edgy, wandering through the house with my coffee cup in hand, distractedly smiling at my son's conquering instincts but preoccupied with thoughts of his father. As the day has progressed, the fog has lifted somewhat, but I still yearn for the homecoming of my other half, as I can't seem to fill the void of his presence with busyness or escapism of other kinds. All too often, I feel as though we take each others' existence for granted, and I just can't wait to frame his face with my hands and look into his eyes, and tell him all I've just written and more.

Working Through the Worry, Praying Through the Pain

What a crazy last week this has been. Crazy enough that I haven't even considered surfing the 'net, let alone blogging on it.

I'm swamped at work. For some reason, my co-workers (spread out over all five regions of the U.S.) decided to up their "blitz box" requests. This is a small complimentary 9x6x6 box filled with either a baking or pasta mix, replete with a glossy paperwork packet and cover letter, that is sent to either stores possibly adding new lines of our product, or prospective clients we're trying to court with a free sample. Normally I send out about 80 of these a month, putting the flat-packed boxes together myself, stuffing everything in it as neatly as possible, printing a FedEx label for it off their site, then recording the data into our database/scheduler.
Well, this last week I got almost 50 of these requests, each one imperative that it gets sent within a day or two. I've kept a lot of late hours, let's put it that way. And this doesn't even take into account the cookbook orders I get, usually 5 or 6 a day, which, since Click-N-Ship still won't send media mail, I have to package and cart down to the post office myself rather than having them picked up. The daily average on those have been at least a dozen. Arggh!

What else... well, a teething son who seems to bonk his head about every ten minutes, necessitating me dropping everything and running frantically over to comfort his wailing woe sure doesn't help. I know it's a process, this learning to crawl and pull himself up on stuff, and we've baby-proofed as much as possible, but dammit, the little guy is just precocious, I s'pose. And/or clumsy.

But let me dispense with the miscellany and get down to the real tragedy, the real reason my heart is aching too much for any typing to have gotten done as of late.

My grandmother is in the hospital for what we first thought was a heart attack, but after endless testing now seems to be some sort of internal bleeding thing. It breaks my heart to think that just now when I've finally become a source of pride to her, and my son is bringing her untold amounts of joy- that we very well may lose her. So I've been at KMC a lot, letting her hold Jameson when she feels strong enough, carrying on these painful one-way conversations that seem utterly inane to me, but I'm hoping she's listening and just liking the human contact. It hurts, though. God, it's tough to lose someone you love when you're actually in touch with your feelings enough to drown in them.

I've had people die in my arms from overdosing. I witnessed a point blank beach party shooting of a girl by her jealous teenaged boyfriend, a kid we all knew. I was 15. I spent that night in the shower until the water ran cold, scrubbing all the blood and bits of brain and bone that I swore I could still feel on me. I've walked in on other dead bodies here and there throughout the years, mostly drug-related; and of course both my older brother and my uncle have both committed suicide.

So there's been a lot of death in my life. Even me, spending time in a hospital bed pumped full of Narcan after an overdose, have been told I was clinically dead at one point. I'm no stranger to the Reaper.

But I'm begging God not to take my Grandma B from me now, not when we're just starting to get to know each other again. The roles have changed- it's now me who comes over and cleans her house, drives her on her errands, fights with her doctors and pharmacists when she's too timid to do it herself. I do most of the talking- she's not the same old spitfire bartending Seahawk fan who raised up three daughters and then had to take care of some of their offspring as well. She's quiet now; spends alot of time in front of the television, sometimes watching Westerns, sometimes just staring at the blank screen. I wonder what she thinks about, but when I ask, the one or two word responses just don't ring true. It's the stroke she had several years back, I know, but it doesn't make it any easier when I compare this virtual stranger to the woman who partially raised me, before I hit my teenaged years and was off and running, not to be raised by anyone anymore.

We all love her just the same. My mom is lost in her own alcoholism a bit too deeply to really devote the time away from her drinking that it would take to visit more often; my other aunt lives way over on an island off the coast of Washington; so my
Aunt Marcie and I are the ones who are there for Grandma these days, but I know the heartache is not something her and I hold an exclusive patent on. My cousins have all been to visit her in the hospital, sheepishly holding their heads down as they mutter excuses why it had been so long since they'd seen her prior to this. Same with the more distant relatives- aunts, uncles, in-laws.

I'm bracing myself for the worst, but I console myself by the fact that she was able to bond with her first great-grandchild (I was the last child, thirty years ago!) and that her and I become, if not truly close friends- due to her condition resulting from the stroke- at least close in many ways.

Thank You, Lord, for these last months of bonding with this amazing woman whose ancestral blood runs in my veins. Thank You for blessing us with the opportunity to share the joy of my son- I've loved seeing those huge smiles: one on her wrinkled face, one on his cherubic toothless one. If You choose to bring her home to You, I will understand, Father, since nothing in Your world happens on accident, but by Your design and divine timing. I only ask that You ease the pain of our loss by filling our hearts with the joy of memories of how she used to be, and with the peace of knowing she's passing on to her eternal reward.

A Glimpse Into My Past

Last week there was a holiday which never fails to give me a little jolt of surprise when I realize that I am one of the people for whom it was enacted- Veteran's Day.

I am indeed a veteran, at least I served in the U.S. Army. But it somehow feels hollow, because from the very get-go I chose a duty station that was non-deployable, a cushy stateside medical post. And I never pictured myself on the frontlines of any war, defending my country- although I'd have gone, had they ordered me to, sure- instead the main things on my mind when I enlisted were the travel, my sign-on bonus, and a chance to go to college.

So I guess that's why I forget that Veteran's Day honors all this country's servicemen and women, including myself. I know I provided a necessary service, as did lots of say, Reservists and whatnot; but we just seem so inconsequential compared to those who fought wars, served hardship tours in far away lands, and shed their blood on foreign soil... I dunno.

On Huckleberries Online, one of my favorite blogs, there was a post by a veteran of the Vietnam War, describing his trip to D.C. to take part in a reading of all the names on the Vietnam Wall. He was so humble and matter-of-fact in his description of the experience- the way he shared about not getting this kind of laudatory welcome when he and his "brothers" came home from the war back then, so it was nice to finally receive it now; his conversing with the many luminaries attending the event, some veterans themselves, and how he respected them; and how he photographed a grave belonging to the son of a local veteran, who, because of his full disability, was unable to travel there himself.

Humbling. For me, anyhow. Put things in perspective.

When I enlisted in the Army, I was barely nineteen years old, and already had made some bad decisions. As a sophomore, I had dropped out of high school; although it was a breeze for me, I thought at the time my social life- one big party with much older people- was more important. I had vague plans for a GED and then some higher education, but wasn't very energetic in pursuing them; in fact, it was sheer luck that I was able to take advantage of a program called "Challenge" that allowed me to attend Maui Community College on a grant and earn my high school credits back through tests I was able to pass. Nevertheless, I blew off the rest of the program once I got my diploma, although I would've been able to continue accruing college credits had I not dropped out. So when by chance I spoke with a recruiter, I made an on the spot decision to sign up, dazzled by the promise of a $15,000 G.I. Bill, a $5,000 sign-on bonus, and the chance to attend college part-time while I was enlisted, for only 25% of the cost.

So I took the ASVAB, testing out at the 96th percentile, which would've allowed me to choose whatever MOS I wanted, had I not already had a bit of a criminal record. Having gotten expelled from a high school for possession and sale of LSD did not look good to Uncle Sam. Did I mention I had already started to make a mess of things even at that tender young age?
I ended up settling for enlisting as a combat medic/ 91B, the civilian equivalent of which is a medical assistant. Not the most glorious job (I was leaning more toward code-cracking, or perhaps foreign languages) but oh well, it offered the above-mentioned sign-on bonus, so that sold me. I swore in, got my traveling papers, and found I was to report to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, then AIT (school) at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

Basic was all I'd been warned about/ promised and then some, but I sweated and groaned and fought my way through it, coming out on the other side a lean, mean, fighting machine. Or something. I remember being both relieved and sad that it was over- I think that was the closest taste to the "real" Army I ever got.
Then AIT... that was more of a mixture of a frantic cramming of information down our throats in the limited time they had to dispense it, as well as continued physical torture, I mean training. I tied for the top score in my graduating class, and was offered the opportunity to train further, what was called a secondary MOS (Military Occupational Specialty). I recognized a one in a million opportunity for being just that, and accepted. I chose veterinary medicine, which in the service is more of a research position- working with laboratory animals mainly. This was okay with me, as it insured I would remain stateside, rather than being deployed to Korea, where most of my former classmates were going.

So I ended up being stationed at USAMRIID (Gosh, the military just adores acronyms, don't they?), the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease- this is the military counterpart to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Very high-tech, very high-security, lots of important stuff going on there. It was a blast. I think I felt challenged for the first time in my life- I was learning new things every day. And I was a part of something huge, one little cog in a massive machine. I felt at first like I could do this forever, become a careerist, maybe enlist in the "Green to Gold" program and become an officer. I loved it.

But real life intervened, as it always seems to do. After a couple years there, what seemed novel and dignified, paled and became mundane and unnecessary, with stuck-up officers and archaic customs. The high security was a huge pain in the butt. I was exhausted, and since the Army pays a salary, not hourly wage, it wasn't like I could lower my hours. The community college I attended was pissing me off- they didn't offer the classes I needed to take during the hours I had available, so why was I killing myself by going? I was thousands of miles away from my family and old friends, all that was familiar, and the East Coast began to seem cold and forbidding, rather than a wondrous cluster of landmarks, museums, natural beauty and culture. In short, I was burnt out.

This story does not have a happy ending. Not really, anyway.
I ended up having to have a major surgery, getting deathly ill from a burst tubal pregnany or cyst, no one seemed to know which. Too busy doctors compounded the problem by prescribing bottle after bottle of heavy-duty pain medication, which my addiction-prone self eagerly accepted. Months of convalescent leave turned me lazy, sulking at the prospect of having to go back to the chaos of Ft. Detrick. By now I lived off post, separated from the other half of a doomed from the start marriage, and was consorting with civilian friends, smoking pot (after all, we all worked in the lab- we knew when the UA's were coming and how to avoid them) and hosting endless parties. When the prescriptions finally began to peter out, I started making runs to D.C. to score heroin, which I smoked or snorted, thinking that since I wasn't shooting it, I wasn't really a junkie. Ha.

I got deeply in debt, and was calling in sick so often that finally my commander and his staff put two and two together. After a tearful confession, I was placed in rehab at Andrews Airforce Base, on the top floor. I was amazed at how many others there were there- apparently drug and alcohol addiction is more common than you'd think in all the branches of the service. My roommate was a female marine sergeant who got caught stealing injections of morphine from the ER in which she worked, and we cried and sweated and cramped and detoxed together, until she broke down and walked out, going AWOL from treatment when she couldn't handle it anymore. I was so envious, I too plotted to leave, but chickened out. After all, I only had seven months left in my four year hitch, why blow it?
This changed when my sergeant from my unit came to visit. He informed me that they were considering an early discharge, dishonorable at that. I kept my cool, nodding and promising to meet with him and the C.O. as soon as I was released, but the minute he left I went to my room, threw my stuff in a bag and took the staff elevator the hell out of there. My logic: why suffer through all these awful withdrawals when they were just gonna boot me out anyway? So I ran.

Called my estranged husband and promised reconciliation if he'd come pick me up. He eagerly accepted, driving up from South Carolina to meet me there in downtown D.C. By then I had scored some dope, so was feeling just fine about the whole stinkin' mess I'd once again gotten myself into.

Suffice it to say that the next year or so was a mindless blur of drugs, travel and fear. Fear of getting caught- after all, I was a federal fugitive- fear of not getting caught and having to live like this forever! and fear of just about everything else you could imagine a young girl facing alone and on the run. It was a nightmare. When I was finally apprehended at a motel in Las Vegas, it was with relief that I confessed who I was and what I was wanted for.

The anticlimax of the whole thing was spending a bit of time in the out-processing center at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where I was set up with a JAG attorney to represent me throughout the process. She looked over my file and decided we had a slam dunk case, and promised to get me a medical discharge under honorable conditions. Which she did, to my surprised relief. I'm not sure if I was deserving of it, but I guess the upshot of the whole thing was the fact I had served about three and a half years out of my required four with a spotless record- in fact, I'd gotten promoted several times, a commendation or two, and plenty of good reviews from my commanders. The threat of early discharge from my sarge was just that- a threat- and had I not panicked and ran, I most likely would have just suffered a demotion in rank to PFC from Specialist, and perhaps some extra duty. But no, instead I was lucky to get off with what I did- loss of my G.I. Bill, most of my benefits, and my pride in having served.

That was the big one, and I think the reason why I usually don't mention having even been in the service. It's humiliating to have to admit how the story ended.

But nowadays, I don't see that sort of pride as such a necessary attribute. I'm okay with having some humility, and admitting my past mistakes. There's only One who I'm interested in impressing- and I think I've made myself right with Him.

Anyway, there's the story with how I (sort of) qualify as a veteran. Thanks for reading.

What Do You Suppose The Dog's Praying For?

A Day In The Life...

Although I don't really have anything drastically deep to impart, no nuggets of wisdom to bestow, no burning desires I feel the need to extinguish, it's been a bit since my last post, so I thought I'd jump in and just let my mind wander as my fingers tap the keyboard.
I know one thing that's been surfacing over and over again lately is my marveling at how drastically different my life is these days. I know everyone experiences lifestyle changes of one sort or another, but at times I really have to shake my head in wonder, laughing at how I'm a complete universe away from, let's say, five years ago.
How 'bout I illustrate. Today was fairly typical of the way things are for me these days, so I'll list some of my activities...
6:30~ Got up with my husband and infant son, fed them both while watching the morning news. Packed a lunch for the man, packed the diaper bag for the boy. Hubby left for work, I did my morning ablutions and headed out with the baby as well.
9:30~ Bible study at my church (His Place). Laughed, prayed, drank coffee with around 35 other Christian women as we studied "Women of the Bible". Made a date for "Mom's Connect" later in the week- clothing exchange and chance to get together with other moms of little ones, yay!
11:45~ Will be turning in a shoebox for "Operation Christmas Child" this Sunday, so spent a few bucks at the Dollar Store on toys, toiletries and candy. I picked a boy, aged 4-9, to shop for. My shoebox will most likely be his only gift, and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy to pack it up as I imagined the joy on this Third World child's face when he opens it.
Noonish to Five-ish~ Worked. In my home office, on my new desktop computer, on our satellite internet connection (read: expensive). I'm blessed with a super-flexible yet lucrative position with a natural foods company, doing a wide variety of online tasks. This allows me to stay home with my beautiful baby boy, instead of having to farm him off at some daycare, while making a necessary contribution to our finances.
5:30~ Dinner and a movie. Literally.
7:30~ Read a few chapters of a Tanenbaum novel. Played with my son, making him laugh until he got the hiccups (this brings me untold amounts of joy). Told myself repeatedly how great quitting smoking feels- it's been a month- and the urge to chew on my fingernails would soon pass.
9:00~ Hanky-panky with the man of the house.
9:07~ (just kidding) 9:45~ Made a cup of Apple Cinnamon tea (reading on the box while I waited for the kettle to whistle that in ancient Egypt cinnamon was valued more highly than gold- hmmm, learn something new every day). Wandered into the office, where I proceeded to mouse around until I landed here. My blog.

Interspersed with the above, there were lots of other miscellany: diaper changes, housework, errand running, chatty little phone calls, snacks. You know. Stuff.

Now, although I won't be able to retrieve an exact timeline of any particular day from my past, I can certainly remember enough gory details to give a convincing facsimile. So here goes....
3:17(a.m.)~ A carload of shady characters, spun out of their minds, show up at my run-down apartment's door wanting to buy some dope. Including all the other losers crammed about the premises, all in various states of intoxication, this makes 14 people in my house. My stress level is rising proportionally, and I put the meth pipe down long enough to search through my drug stores for some sort of downer. The phone won't stop ringing, so I assign someone (can't remember their name right offhand) the task of answering it for me while I step into my office (read: bathroom)in order to weigh out the tweek for the latest customers so they'll get the hell out.
4:20~ I throw a mini temper tantrum. I have the biggest sack of dope, so I feel entitled to do this. Only a couple things get broken, and the upside is that several scumbags are intimidated into leaving. An older guy with tattoos on his neck and track marks on both arms invites me to smoke some pot with him. I accept. The phone still won't stop ringing.
6:05~ Time to re-up. I assign the task of guarding what's left of my belongings to one of the more trustworthy crack whores, telling her I'll throw in an extra quarter gram if she does some housework while I'm gone, as the place is a freaking disaster.
I jump in my beat-up car (extremely well-known to the police by then) and screech off towards Spokane, digital scale hidden in a secret compartment under the hood, stereo thumping obscenely loud music from a top-shelf stereo system, every component of which was stolen. I justify this by saying, "It wasn't ME who stole it. I paid someone for it." The phone won't stop ringing, but as I'm out of "shit", I don't answer.
7:25~ I sit at some crack shack in SpoCompton, fidgeting because my dealer's too paranoid to come out of his closet at the moment. He shouts instructions from within to his many syncophants. I watch some fat guy covered in sweat surreptitiously masturbate in the car out front, a girl who looks all of fifteen try to shoot up in her neck with the aid of a mirror, and an emaciated dreadlocked black guy pick at what he says are bugs crawling out of holes in his dog. I feel sorry for only the dog. Finally get my ounce of meth and peel out, nose upturned at all those horrible addicts.
9:00~ Back in business. Deciding to answer the unceasing ringing of my cellphone, I rack up so many potential sales, I can't remember them all. Having run into this problem many times prior, I'm prepared with a dry-erase marker. I use this to write the customers' names on the inside of my windshield as I drive erratically back into town. They'll be wiped off as I make the stops. I'm swerving because it's hard to drive straight when I've been up for several days, as well as hit the pipe, apply makeup, and change CD's.
12:15~ Eight stops later and six hundred dollars richer, I realize I can't remember the last time I'd eaten or showered. I'm avoiding having to deal with all the riff-raff at my house, so I hole up at a motel for the hell of it, peeping out the window to make sure I wasn't followed. I become absorbed with the mindless task of blowing another glass pipe, and forget about everything except the hissing of the propane torch. Time gets away from me. Since the phone won't stop ringing, I shut it off.
7:29~ Cramped muscles and blistered fingers warn me it's time to stop messing around with the glass tubing. I've blown four pipes and ruined another six feet of tubing as I tweeked, as well as almost set fire to the motel room. Solution: handful of pills and a dozen hits off one of the new pipes, then slink off under the cover of darkness.
8:00~ Turn the phone back on. It immediately rings, with a collect call from my estranged drug-dealing boyfriend, currently a guest in Kootenai County Detention Center. He begs me to be careful, as I lie my head off regarding what I've been up to. I promise to visit, write, bail him out eventually and be faithful and careful until then. All are lies.
8:15~ Back on the road, this time to rescue a fellow dealer. It's kind of a "boy's club", but I do my best to fit in by pulling off crazy stunts such as the one I'm about to undertake: the guy's in an altercation with a rival, so I show up waving a butterfly knife around and threatening to cut off his nuts. It works, and we celebrate by another round of meth smoking. A couple people scamper off to go shoot up instead. I realize I've left my apartment full of people who I promised I'd see shortly, and by now it's probably been picked clean and someone might be cooking a batch of dope in it. I go to leave but someone has slashed my tires, busted my windows and stolen my stereo system. I freak out, raging about idiot thieves with knives... and the phone STILL won't stop ringing.

This is by no means a definitive description of how things were back then. No, it was WAY more psychotic. And x-rated. And sad. And exhausting. I think, no I know, when I was finally arrested and I knew it was over, it was with a feeling of relief that I crawled into that police car, like a great weight had been lifted from my skinny little shoulders.

So do you see what I mean? If it weren't for the publicity I've been afforded as of late, I doubt most people would ever even have the slightest inkling of how different my life used to be. I think even I forget sometimes, and I'm not sure that's so good. I think sometimes I need to be reminded of how crazy and sick it all was, how much better things are for me now.
Yeah, after all the nonstop excitement it gets a little monotonous sometimes these days. Yeah, I'm not a big-time power-tripping dope dealer anymore, I'm just a wife and mom who's just about done cleaning up the wreckage of her past, but has lots of mundanity ahead. But that's okay. Because with the mundane, there is also great joy, inner peace, and the gift of looking into the eyes of my innocent sweet son and knowing I'm doing right by him- that he'll never know that person who his mommy used to be.

All Things Considered...

I'm not sure if I mentioned here that I was the designated chaperon for the little ones this year, that for some bizarre reason I actually volunteered for the driving/ escorting/ supervising (and disciplining if necessary) of my monstrous young nieces and nephews as they tricked and treated their way across town, silly overconfident aunt that I am. Not to mention my own little monster- well, he was costumed as a bat, actually, and an adorable wee bat he was, to be sure- which, although too young to understand the whole to-do, or eat candy, I still was obliged to dress him up and lug him around for the candy-hander-outers to ooh and ahh over.
All in all, there were six of us, the children ranging in age from eleven to seven months, and we made quite the little troupe as we traipsed from neighborhood to neighborhood, candy buckets shaped like jack o'lanterns in hand.
I knew I was, if not in over my head, at the very least swimming in deep waters when I began dismantling costume parts in order to buckle in the youngest into their four carseats. It was a cacophony of "are we there yet" and "Skyler poked me with his light saber!" while I drove to the first upscale cul-de-sac, and a relief to all once we parked, unpacked, and reassembled ourselves at the curb in time for sunset.
The ground rules were set, the littlest were instructed to hold hands with the biggest, and off we went.
* * * *
Three hours later, the buckets were overflowing, the noses were running and bright pink with the cold, and the two youngest were crashed out in the backseat. I caught myself fervently wishing for a nap as well, but quashed the thought and made sure everyone was happy with their haul before buckling them all in for the last time and heading to Grandma and Grandpa's for pizza and a treasure hunt.
That was a blast, and we all stuffed ourselves with Papa Murphy's Cowboy pizza, laughed at the old folks (dressed like pirates), and searched for our goodies with the provided clues. No one was excluded, not even the grown-ups. Or the baby, for that matter- the other kids were happy to "help" find and unwrap his gifts, too.

I wound up sitting alone at one point in the evening, reflecting on how good it felt to be a part of this family, even when it entailed some hard work at making everyone happy. Thinking, "I wouldn't trade this for the world," then realizing, wait a minute, the whole time I was shunning these very same events for my massively selfish drug habit, and ignoring the very people who cared about me the most, that's exactly what I was doing- I had traded them in. For what, now I don't know. An ephemeral sense of well-being? a temporary high? the swollen ego of a drug dealer?
Ha. All that pales in comparison to a room full of laughing people you love, your belly full of good food and your heart full of promise, looking forward to tomorrow.

Is It That Time of Year (sniff, cough..) Already?

Why does it seem like I catch every little bug that wafts remotely my direction? You'd think I had a blinking neon sign visible only to germs saying, "Come on in! Make yourselves at home! Join your buddies!"
Yes, I'm sick. Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself. My throat is so swollen and raw, swallowing is a major ordeal, one that I actually find myself weighing the pros and cons of before doing (Hmm.. is it really worth it? It's gonna hurt- maybe I should forego all liquids and just spit out any saliva that I accumulate). Gross, I know, but these thoughts really have crossed my mind.
I'm also super achey and off-balance: I think my equilibrium bailed out on me when it realized the germs were taking over. I tried explaining this to my husband after noticing his upraised eyebrow at my staggering around like a drunken robot, but instead of the warm reassuring hug of sympathy I expected, I got, "Well, be careful not to drop Jameson if you're that dizzy, babe. Seeya later, loveyaguys," and off he went to work. Arggh.
Four Tylenol, two cups of honey-laced tea, and one hour later, I was at least in an upright position, and my son seemed happy enough rolling around on his play area, so I decided to brave checking my work email and seeing what the day may have brought as far as unavoidable duties. Luckily, there were relatively few things I couldn't put off- I had some stuff to mail, so a trip to the post office is on the agenda for this afternoon; I replied to a couple queries regarding our baking mixes (hopefully my writing was more upbeat than my present outlook); even managed to make a couple froggy-sounding phone calls. All in all, not a bad start.
Now here I sit, sharing my woes instead of my germs- isn't the 'net wonderful? But I feel this brief burst of animation fading fast, and I'm thinking perhaps a nap is in order...

My First Big Nicotine Feen!

I'm now on Day 25 of not smoking. Which I must say I'm pretty damn proud of myself for. After all, I'd done it before, true- but the decision was made for me (read: I was in jail, so I couldn't smoke). Being out in the real world, subject to all the glorious smells and sights and sounds, is wonderful.... except when some of them make me feen for a smoke.

Like the other day. Jameson and I were getting ready to go into Target, so I was strapping on the little front pack I wear him around in when we're doing stuff like that (he loves it, it's his favorite mode of transportation- it's absolutely adorable, too). Now, I've been noticing my ability to smell and taste have been improving, which normally is a good thing. Not in this case. I caught a full-fledged gust of smoke from some lady walking down the lot puffing away, and it smelled SO pungent and sweet and good, bringing with it all the positive associations I attach to smoking... I swear I was this close to running over there and asking her if I could get one of those from her, it had me wanting one so bad. AHHH!!! My first all-out craving. Here I thought I was doing just marvelously, beating this habit no sweat, then with the first good whiff of smoke I catch, it all goes out the window and I might as well be a crackhead jonesing for a hit.

But.... at least I didn't act on it. I gritted my teeth, told my son what I was experiencing (in a silly little sing-song voice which he seems to enjoy but I hope nobody overheard: "Mommy wants a ciggy-butt/ Mommy thinks she's going nuts!/ Give your Mama a nice big hug/ And help her squish that ciggybug!") Then I took a couple deep breaths, reminded myself I'd be throwing away all that hard work of getting to this point now even if I only took one single drag, and just... carried on. I mean, what else is there to do?

It's kinda nice having been in so many treatment centers and programs over the years when I was battling my other addictions, because really, the same tools can be applied to just about any problem one has. I'm a big subscriber to the "Take what you want and leave the rest" theory. Especially when it comes to 12-step programs. I think they're awesome; they're serving a very necessary purpose and giving alot of people who had just flat given up a whole new lease on life, and a method to overcome their addictions. But along with that, at least for me, came a whole lot of unnecessary crap. And unfortunately, I think quite a few newcomers pick up on that as well, and it turns them off to the whole program. When all they need to do is use that theory- listening to whatever's being said (or reading it), and applying the things they can relate to to their life, and tuning out what they can't. And if you do this extensively, picking up bits and pieces from maybe your church, your counselor, AA/NA, a self-help book or two- you end up (at least I have) with a workable mish-mash of recovery tools, theories, mottoes, ways to prevent relapse, and are able to incorporate anything new or valuable into it whenever you come across it. It's great, and seems to be working just as well for my quitting smoking as it did (has, rather- can't talk past-tense about addiction) for my drug use.

Life is pretty darn good for me these days. One day at a time.

Better Late Than Never

Okay, I signed up for that "Blog Action Day" thing, the premise of which I understood to be showing one's eco-consciousness for that day, October 15th. Well, I did take action, I just am only now getting around to blogging about it. I'm slow sometimes, okay?

I've never been very good at the whole tree-hugging, eco-friendly, recycle each and every household item or go to hell thing. And to the best of my knowledge, in that respect I fit right in here in Cd'A, unfortunately. But after feeling that familiar tug of guilt when I read the call to arms posted on my Blogger Dashboard, I summoned up every ounce of goodwill toward the planet I had and vowed to do some greenie good that Monday, even if it killed me. And once I clicked on "yes, I'll participate", I knew I'd better follow through, else that little tug may turn into an all-expenses paid first class guilt trip.

Monday morning rolls around, and I'm sitting here at my desktop going through all my work emails and mentally compiling my "to-do" list for the day, and I realize I'm completely at a loss as far as my plans for an ecological coup. I mean, coming up totally blank (Not surprising when you consider that not even my thumb is green on the best of days- my husband is the one on whom even our houseplants rely). But after some serious calisthenics of my gray matter, I came up with a half-hearted plan, which although it may not count much in the grand scheme of things, I at least will know we're slowing our contribution to the eventual demise of Planet Earth.

My plan being two-part, I put part one into action by methodically stripping our house of every non-essential piece of cardboard, room by room, starting with my office. This may sound minor, but as mailing is a large part of what I do for a living, I end up with massive amounts of dismantled and yet-to-be-assembled box pieces, which I would formerly just fold into the outside trash and let the garbageman haul it away each Wednesday. Well, no longer will I fail to recycle these flattened brown tree corpses, no more will I cavalierly toss this pressboard forest away for landfill fodder. That very day I took my first cardboard-laden trip to the recycling depot at the school down the road, and will be taking as many more as quantity of said cardboard on hand dictates. So there.

Moving on to part two. This one being a little more complicated, it needed finessed. You see, my mother's household produces exorbitant amounts of aluminum cans, of both the beer and soda persuasion (although mostly the former), and I knew for a fact that nobody ever felt the slightest urge to recycle them. If I were to bring up the good it would do the environment, that would fall on deaf ears, sadly enough. There would be retaliatory arguments, and it just may get messy. So I couldn't go there. I considered proposing the financial angle ("Mom, just think of all the money you'll be getting back for every load of cans you take in to the center, for cans you'd normally just be throwing away!") but realized her response would be that it would cost more in gas to drive all the way there and back than the load of cans would be worth. Let alone what a pain it would be to have bags and bags of cans cluttering up the back porch or garage, remembering to throw the aluminum away seperately.... yep, this was gonna be tricky to persuade her, alright.

I finally settled on an old standby; one that I'd used often over the years, which relied on those old parental responsibilities of hers to kick in and bail me out of trouble. So a little subterfuge was being used- hey, it's for a good cause, right? I first went to the Wal and bought a massive Rubbermaid trash barrel, wheeled and handled and lock-lidded. The works. This was installed, with little fanfare, (not surprising as it was just me, Jameson, and their two dogs looking on) in the cramped corner of the back porch. Next I unloaded a smaller tall kitchen can which I'd had in my laundry room, and stationed it behind their inside kitchen trash, finalizing the whole deal by lining it with a bag and fishing out all the empties I could find from the regular garbage and putting them in the new one. Now all I had to do was wait for her to get home from work and notice the new additions. I quickly left and headed back to my house, knowing my phone would be ringing shortly.

And of course it did. "Kendra, what the hell is this? I come home and not only do I find a small dumpster on my back porch, I also see there's another garbage in my kitchen, as if the one I had wasn't enough I need two? This has your name written all over it. It better be good, too," she lit into me.
"Mom, check it out," I started. "You know my blog I've been telling you about? Well, they were doing this thing, like for the environment? And I kinda committed to helping out and then there wasn't anything I could really do except recycle, and you know Tony and I don't really go through cans or anything, but you guys do, so I just thought maybe please please please you wouldn't mind just throwing your cans into the new trash for awhile? I promise I'll take care of everything else, taking them to the center and all that, all you have to do is use the stuff. Please? Just try it for a month. I'm scared if I don't put down that I did what I said I was gonna do that they might cancel my blog and I really like what I got set up so please Mom, would you just give it a try?" Whew. After I got all that out, I waited.
Fingers crossed, just like in the old days.
I heard her sigh, could almost see her shaking her head the way she does when she's exasperated with me. "When are you going to stop getting yourself into these little last-minute jams?" she asked. "You're over thirty years old! So more importantly, when are you gonna stop involving me?"
"But will you do it? Please, Mom...?"
"I guess. Don't really have a choice, now, do I?"
I assured her she was the greatest mom who'd ever lived, that I would never put her in this awful position again, and she'd see, I'd make it up to her, I really would. Then I hung up the phone and sat there, feeling pleased with myself, sure that Mom would eventually come around, and knowing that in my own little way I was doing some roundabout good. For the environment, for my family, for the future. Is that corny or what? Damn, I'm getting soft!

The Cartoon Kendra

This was actually kinda fun, creating an avatar on "Meez"/Photobucket. I dinked around with it for awhile, picking out clothes, hairstyle and color, even makeup and facial features. Obviously I have waaay too much time on my hands...

My Sweet-Smelling Clean Slate of a Son

I just went in to check on Jameson, something I do quite often now that he sleeps in his own room on the other side of the house, and ending up standing there for the better part of an hour, I think, lost in thought while I gazed down at this amazing little being my husband and I (with a whole lotta help from you-know-Who) created.

Not only is the creation itself such a miraculous process, one I remember marveling at continuously throughout my pregnancy as I caressed my swelling midsection with one hand and scrolled through page after page of gestational information with the other, obsessed with what the little guy was up to at any given moment throughout those trimesters... not only that, or as the living miracle continues to grow, and mature, and amaze me- but the awesome weight of responsibility for this child is beginning to settle upon my shoulders, bringing with it a whole new set of wonders and worries and joy.

It's a welcome weight, to be sure- one I'd wished for often for perhaps a decade or so; especially when I was in the depths of addiction and despair, I'd think, "If only I could have a baby, I know that would solve all my problems. That would straighten me up, give me something to live right for." And the ironic thing is, I had given up hope for the magical event to occur, and ended up straightening up on my own, the only way possible: with hard work, devotion and dedication. Only then, after a couple years of clearing away the wreckage of my past and slowly beginning to rebuild a sweeter, simpler life for Tony and myself, only then were we blessed with the amazing news that at the age of thirty I was finally pregnant. God knew when we were ready.

So back to what I was contemplating so deeply earlier this evening as I stared down at the downy fuzz on my son's perfectly molded skull: the duty I have as this boy's mother to raise him right; to instill in him both integrity and morality, and to show him the love and respect he'll need to be able to believe in himself, hold those values close and therefore be able to show love and respect to others; to provide him with whatever he needs to become whatever he wants to be, wherever he wants or needs to go, whomever he's destined to become.

Wow. I can't believe how cavalierly some people can be about the responsibilities of parenthood, how some women just pop out kid after kid, doing nothing except spending the welfare check on crack and farming their offspring out to first Grandma and Grandpa, and once they can't or won't take care of them anymore, allowing the State to step in and take their babies away, not even putting up a half-hearted fight, just signing their rights away and never looking back. I mean, I've met a lot of these women, usually in jail, who speak so casually about the whole thing it just turns my stomach. I know a lot of it is that they're under the spell of whatever their drug of choice is so thoroughly that whatever love they have for their kids has been drowned along with their self-respect, but c'mon! What about maternal instinct, that awesome force we hear about that causes 105 pound women to lift 2 tons of wrecked car off their child in order to save its life, or single mothers who work double shifts and attend college at night just so their babies won't ever have to do the same... I just don't get it. Or rather, they just don't get it.
The power of love has to be stronger than the power of addiction. I wish I could explain to these poor lost women, these failed mothers, that with determination and God's help, they can straighten up. They've been blessed with motherhood, an awesome power that can give them the strength to move mountains if they only let it. They need to succeed and get their babies back, and in doing so, will end up giving themselves something to succeed for. Instead of the vicious circle of addiction, they will have a wonderful one of love and success.

I think my son and all that comes with him has done so much for my self-esteem, my relationship with Christ, my character in general... I couldn't even fathom trading all of that for the sick, twisted world of dope. There's just no way. The jolt of love I feel when I look down at this innocent, sweet-smelling precious child, and this piece of chalk I'm holding which will be used to mark his clean slate, what powerful, wonderful tools in which to navigate the path of parenthood. How incredibly sad that there are other mothers out there who don't or can't feel the same.

Adding 27 Hours to My Life So Far by These 11 Days of Not Smoking

Now that I've rejoined the human race, no longer having the face of a cheeky chipmunk, I'm assuming that the massive doses of penicillin have begun to do their job. Not a moment too soon, as far as I'm concerned- it was awful to look so ridiculous, be a little grumpy still from having quit smoking, be in that much pain, and have the resentment towards Dr. Jerk for screwing my mouth up to begin with. However, I've tried very hard these days to eliminate needless resentment from my life- like the saying goes, Resenting someone is like swallowing poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die. Well, I've poisoned myself enough over the years, and these days I'd rather work on healing instead of falling into the same ole patterns. Especially since the guy's a jerk, why should I waste my thoughts and emotion on him? If I was a better Christian, I'd devote some more time on praying for the idiot, but instead I've managed to only pray for his other patients- both past and future. But I'm sure that as well as drunks and small children, God pays special attention to unwitting patients under the drill- or the knife- of the not-so-skilled practicioners of medicine. Perhaps they're the ones who're the reason for the term practicing, as they haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet.

Hey, how 'bout some good news... I've now been smoke-free for eleven days! My lungs are already feeling better, I've gone on a couple afternoon strolls (walks, actually, pushing Jameson in his stroller) and my usual route, which is around a mile and a half, hasn't made me feel winded at all, even when I've purposely picked up the pace a bit. I know it's probably too soon to really be reaping all the benefits, but I'm pretty proud of myself just the same.

Some of the tools I've been using are the Idaho QuitNet website, which is pretty cool- they have all kinds of little support groups, chats, options to calculate how much money you've saved so far by quitting, how much time you've added to your life, stuff like that. But mainly I just read the emails they send me, which have all the little snippets of congratulatory inspiration, mediocre comics, and comments from other quitters. It really does help me to reaffirm what I'm up to every day, not lose sight of how important this is to me. I intend to watch my son grow up, and not while I wheel an oxygen tank behind me.

Other stuff which has helped have been stocking up on an industrial size canister of Red Vines licorice, which I dip into regularly, as does Tony. He quit too, I'm not sure if I mentioned that previously, but also deserves major kudos as he smoked WAY more than I did and is also on Day 11, with the help of the patch. We both have been chewing lots of gum, too (not Nicorette, just regular old Trident) and I carry a dozen or so Dum-Dum suckers around with me in my purse for when I get the urge while I'm out and about. I hate smelling other people puffing- for some sick reason, it smells SO good! Talk about a trigger.

I've also been cleaning house like a madwoman. Not that it really needed it, but mainly just to stay occupied. The not smoking thing, coupled with my banishment from public view due to my horrible facial disfigurement, led to me attacking kitchen, foyer and bathroom floors- on my hands and knees, no less!- with hot buckets of water redolent with the smells of Pine-Sol and my old- fashioned scrub brush. Next were the carpets and rugs, vacuumed and beat within an inch of their lives, respectively. Hanging the latest (and possibly cutest!) pictures on The Wall of Jameson followed (with no help from the tall member of our family- that lazy bum just sat on the recliner and said stuff like, "A little to the left, babe. Oops, I mean my left." Laundry, plant-watering, cat and fish and son feeding, then homemade french bread pizza for us grownups finished off the afternoon. A few hours of interweb, both work-related and surfing thru my favorite sites, was next. I'm savoring these last few days? weeks? before Jameson is actually crawling- right now I can just plop him down on his blankie on the floor of my office and scatter some toys around him and he's happy. He may roll around the room, but I only have to rescue him when he gets stuck between a bookcase or something and wails. But I know that all too soon I'll be having to follow him everywhere, as he tries to explore, eat, or topple over anything he can find. Ah, the joys of parenthood- I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So, it's late, I'm tired, and have rambled long enough. This was a day in the life of a newly non-smoking mommy and wife who is grateful for what health she has and the many, many blessings she all too often takes for granted. Are we all not guilty of such at times? If you think you may have been overlooking the blessings in your life lately, take a moment and compile a mental gratitude list. You'll be surprised at how it puts all your petty gripes and bickerings in perspective when you weigh out how rich you are in what truly matters.

Incompetent Quacks Masquerading as Dentists

Let me tell you a story. A brief one to be sure, as my lower jaw is throbbing in counterpoint to my tapping of the keys. I feel the need to share this, however, as you may be the next unwitting victim to this overpaid, underschooled charlatan.
Several years ago, in the midst of my legal nightmare (completely of my own doing, to be sure) I had the luck to be warehoused in our local State hold for IDOC inmates, up in the lovely town of Wallace. My stay there was fairly uneventful, and due to it being such a small facility- really just an underpopulated jail, which because of needed funds, they'd volunteered to house state prisoners as well as their own local miscreants.
The food was pretty decent, the rules were relaxed; the jail employees even encouraged us to refer to them by their first names, which lent an air of casualness to the whole thing. And as far as doctor and dental visits went, the inmates merely filled out a request, and when the time came, were escorted on foot down the Main Street of town- wearing the jail jumpsuit and shackled, of course, with two deputies on either side- to the office a few blocks up, pretending to think nothing of the numerous traffic and pedestrians casting us strange looks.
So after a month or two of residence in this laid-back little two-horse town, I decided to fill out a request to get a back tooth refilled- partly because I knew the work needed done eventually, mostly because I looked forward to the little field trip. Not too many days later, I heard my name hollered out down the cellblock, telling me to suit up and be ready to roll out in a few minutes.
We made the journey uneventfully- walking in shackles can be a painful ordeal, but my short legged stride and the fact I'd learned to prepare for such trips with two pairs of socks on to lend padding made the journey bearable. And let me tell you, after months of virtual isolation, people watching was a complete thrill. The sounds of traffic, the children at play... all the chaotic jumple of sounds, sights, smells and colors of a small town in action was quenching a thirst I'd not realized I had.
The dentist's office was like any other at first glance- magazines months out of date, fake plants, brochures from pharmaceutical companies littering every spare surface. We got some raised eyebrows from the duo of law-enforcement escorts and my inmate duds, but the receptionist was expecting us and ushered us back to the room where the drills and what-not would soon begin their humming. I sat gingerly in the too-large chair, testing out the arms that I knew I'd soon be white-knuckling.
When the D.D.S deigned to grace us with his presence an interminable amount of time later, I tempered my irritation with rationalizing that, a) he's a busy guy, all dentists are. b) I'm near or at the bottom of the totem pole due to my latest housing assignment I'd gotten myself into. c) my lil 'ol filling has to be one of the doc's more mundane procedures, nothing like caps an implants and root canals.
Introductions were made, injections were administered, and the tools began to buzz. I'd managed to distance myself from the whole distasteful ordeal, lost somewhere in la-la land (and not from nitrous, either- lowly prisoners are afforded no such luxuries) when my reverie was rudely disturbed by a resounding crack! I happened to be looking up at the dentist's face at the time, the part unobscured by his mask, and there was an unmistakable look of dismay which darkened his brow. This did not inspire confidence on my part, let me tell you.
At that point, everything came to a screeching halt. The tools were withdrawn, the spit-sucker turned off, my mouth allowed to close. After a hushed conversation with the assistant, the dentist rearranged his expression to reflect a grave, hesitant yet caring demeanor as he hunkered down to the side of my chair.
"Ms... Goodrick, is it?" he asked, referring to my chart, "We seem to have run into a problem. You see, as I was sanding away the previous filling to make space for the new, my drill skipped and unfortunately cracked the tooth quite badly. Now, normally this wouldn't be much of a problem, because most insurance would cover the cost of the additional repair work. However, because of your being incarcerated, you're under the policies of the Dept of Correction, who only cover extractions or necesssary fillings." He looked away at this point, I doubt it was because of embarrasment at his mistake, probably just to sneak a look at his watch. "So you see, I'll have to extract the molar instead- let me prepare a few more lidocaine injections, and we'll get started!"
Groggy from the procedure thus far, confused at what had just happened, and intimidated by this blustering buffoon, I'm ashamed I didn't speak up, just let the guy jerk out a perfectly good tooth (well, before his ineptness busted the damn thing in half, the only thing wrong with it was a need for a surface filling.) And of course once I had a mouth full of bloody gauze, I couldn't complain if I wanted to.
Fast forward a few years. This dentist, who I'll perhaps nickname Dr. Jerk, apparently caused more damage than I had originally thought. Now that I have the freedom to visit my own choice of practicioners, I've found a great guy, who after consulting my ex-rays informed me that there was a large fragment of broken jaw bone embedded in that lower socket, most likely from an overzealous extraction by you-know-who. At the time, we decided to hold off on slicing me open and removing it, as at that point it wasn't interfering with anything.
Last night I noticed some sensitivity on my lower left cheek, and upon prodding and poking, realized it was the exact site of the ex-tooth! I grouched about it to my husband, reminding him of the awful Dr. Jerk, but went to bed without giving it another thought.
The baby started hollering for his middle of the night bottle feeding around three-ish, and upon staggering out of bed and into the kitchen, I realized the sensitive little lump had become a full-fledged agonizing golf ball of pulsing swollen heat. After feeding the little guy and getting him back to dreamland, I peered into the living room mirror, and with a sinking feeling, saw my familiar visage had been replaced by one of the chipmunk families'.
Of course it's Sunday. I didn't make it to church, had to call off a dinner I was planning to invite four of our family members to, and the baby duties have fallen on Tony so far today (thank God he was home to help, and not out of town). And my dentist is closed, so hopefully tomorrow they'll be able to fit me in.
I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. I do know, as a former meth user, I'm very fortunate not to suffer from extensive dental problems. I guess the everyday problems, however, I should have held off on addressing until I could go to a dentist of my choosing, rather than a cut-rate hack who views inmates as second-class citizens, unworthy of decent care.

The Other Face of Muslims

There was a guest speaker at my church the other night, a doctor slash Middle Eastern traveler who, because of security reasons, did not give his full name. I'll refer to him as Dr. John throughout this writing.
At the morning service, our pastor urged us to show up that night to hear this guy speak, as he was purported to be very good, very powerful. I knew my husband was going to be on his way out of town by then, and my mother had already offered to watch the baby that night, so I figured, 'why not? should be interesting.'
The Other Face of Muslims was what was written on my program, so I thought, 'okay, a missionary? a sociology guy? a convert? what's he gonna be?' And it wasn't exactly a huge crowd that showed up to hear him speak, either- maybe fifty or sixty people all told.
I took a seat near the front by some folks I knew, and pulled out my pen and scratch paper in case I wanted to take notes (old habits die hard: in college I must've taken my weight in notes; it's the only way I know I'll retain information). I'm very glad I was prepared, as once Dr. John began to get going I was scribbling furiously, not wanting to miss a thing.
He was introduced as being a star in his field of study, one who could've had all the fame and fortune he wanted, but after finding Christ forsook it all and set off to teach English in the most difficult, dangerous countries there are: Iran, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern Muslim-populated states, finally settling in Azherbazhan (sp?) where he's resided the last ten years or so.
A quiet speaker with an open, kind face, I immediately liked him, sensing his innate dignity and heartfelt desire to convey what he'd learned about the Islamic culture. The Muslim people to us, an audience of North Idaho Christians, were so foreign and far away... most of us considered ourselves fairly open-minded and well educated, but as Dr. John continued to speak, I for one realized just how ignorant I truly was in regards to this faith, one that I rarely even thought about, although he informed us it was the largest growing religion in the United States today.
He explained to us that it would be almost impossible for a culture like ours to really understand how their religion and traditions are so intertwined, practically inseparable. It was difficult to distinguish who truly believed, though, as it was considered dishonorable to one's family (a major no-no) to profess to be anything besides a follower of Islam. There was a lot of disenchanted people- youth in particular- but the social stigma for speaking out was so great that most kept it to themselves and became the equivalent of Christmas and Easter churchgoers. Even taking that into consideration, the Muslim people have by far the highest number of atheist/agnostics in the world: about 1/3 of the population. With those statistics, you'd think the missionaries would be flocking to spread the Word and convert all those unbelievers to Christianity, right? Well, think again. Because of the past dangers (Christians being beheaded and all that), the fact that they seem to always be at war, and the unattractiveness to your average missionary (the land of Osama bin Laden and his ilk!) Muslims are by far the least ministered people in all of Christiandom. There are one to two missionaries for every one million Muslims. One percent of all the money collected for mission work, foreign-language Bibles, etc- probably millions- goes to Muslim/ Middle Eastern people. Eighty-nine percent stays right in the United States! Now, just to clarify this statistic, I'm not referring to general collection plate money. I'm talking about money specifically donated in the name of people leaving the U.S. and traveling overseas to try to bring people to Christ. The other amazing thing Dr. John said in regards to this unbalance was the fact that there are more missionaries sent to Alaska than those sent to the entire Muslim world. Wow.
Okay, I thought all that was pretty sad stuff, but in order for it to really hit home, Dr. John began to give us some background on the Islamic faith: Muhammed, the Quran, and the many parallels between our beliefs and theirs.
Apparently the Quran, their holy book, was written entirely by Muhammed, a man from Mecca- a great one, to be sure, but still just a man- around 600 A.D. In doing so, he managed to unite and bring prosperity to the Arab people, who were going through great upheavals at the time. So not only was he a godly prophet and author, he was also a political animal and military man. This is reflected in his writings, especially the later parts of the holy book.
What's too bad, however, is that the devout followers insist that every single word of the Quran is absolutely true and must be obeyed, although Muhammed himself had denounced certain parts of his book as untrue, claiming to have been possessed by an evil spirit while writing (ever heard of the Satanic Verses? those are the ones). I think that the bin Ladens of the world are using angry, violent later portions of the book to fuel their fires of aggression, and in doing so, alienating us from all Muslims, although most are pacifist and hold values similar to ours.
The parallels are startlingly similar to ours, really. It's a monotheistic religion, the Quran and the Old Testament of the Bible having many of the same historical events, as well as directives. Dr. John quoted quite a few suras in which Jesus was mentioned, up to and including His birth (from a virgin) in 3:38, and death (in which Allah raised Him up to Himself) in 4:158. Isaac, Abraham and Ishmael are all mentioned as being prophets as well. There was a lot more, but I just wanted to touch upon a few of the big ones.
So the bottom line was this- there's a lot of good stuff in the Quran, and that's what almost all of the Muslim people have been taught. On the whole, they're a peace-loving people, just looking to improve their quality of life. Aren't we all? And back to the statistics, as far as quality of life goes, almost all of the top thirty countries rated as having the best were predominantly Christian nations. I think the exception was Japan. And at the other end of the spectrum, those thirty countries with the lowest quality of life were ALL Muslim. Now that's sad.
I'm sure there's other factors besides religion- political upheaval, poverty, disease, government or lack thereof... but it's no wonder these guys are losing their faith. With that low of a level of general happiness, wouldn't you doubt the religion of your parents (and their parents) after awhile? Especially if all they ever did was go through the motions, too.
It's too bad that most of America lumps all these good people in with the extremists, the suicide bombers and the hate-mongers. Especially when, according to Dr. John, the Muslims he's met are the exact opposite: considerate, open to new ideas, generous and caring. He's had the opportunity that we have not- to discuss things with them face to face, be invited into their homes and introduced to their families, and share his beliefs.
So he left us with an entreaty: to keep an open mind, to pray for those less fortunate than we, and to remember that Muslims are this- reasonable, relational and reachable. Are we?


By the way, I'm still not smoking! Day 4 and counting... hooray!

Exorcising the NicoDemon

Today's the day. The BIG day. The first day in I-don't-know-how-long that I voluntarily will absolutely not smoke one nasty cigarette all day.
Yep, I'm quitting. No more butt-sucking for me. (Sounds pretty disgusting when you put it that way, huh?) Well, it is disgusting, and I'm sick of it. No more yellowing fingers, no more mouth tasting like an ashtray, no more spending over a thousand dollars a year on a slow form of suicide. Nope, I've decided I would like to see my son grow up, and for him to not have to see me puffing away while we're at it.
I think I have a slight edge on the average quitter, as I only sucked down 9 or 10 cancer sticks a day. There's no smoking in our house, either, so I'd already eliminated the "comfort of my own home" element. The smoking while driving thing will be pretty easy, too- although I used to love to smoke while I drove, since I've had my son he's usually in the car with me, so that's out.
So the toughies are going to be after meals (or sex, for that matter), while in stressful situations, or while around other smokers. But I think I'll be able to combat the urge by reminding myself why I'm doing it, and use the little tricks recommended by others who've succeeded. You know, hard candies, staying busy, that kind of thing.
What really ticks me off is the fact that I'd quit (although not of my own volition) for a little over a month, but caved at the first whiff of secondhand smoke, and have been at it ever since- for about six weeks now. And I've hated it! It hasn't tasted good, nor has it satisfied my neurotic oral-fixation tendencies, for quite awhile now. All the more reason to kick the habit.
I can do this. God's already helped me get rid of a lot of nasty habits in my life... I'm sure He won't mind me bugging Him for help with one more.