Letting go

[honeybera]

I wonder what's going on with my computer? Or my internet connection? I can still get on here though, and I'm VERY grateful for that!

I'm mentally setting up what to do first today out in the garden. My mind began to wander towards this afternoon when tasks move indoors due to the heat and I realized that one of the things that stops me cold is to VISUALIZE in my mind the ENTIRE TASK. I looked up above my computer to where I have posted on a printed 8"x11" paper:

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. - Mark Twain

I even (naturally) have it underlined just like it is up on my wall. (I should frame that thing! ) I think I am actually beginning to understand what it means. Each morning BEFORE going out to the garden I decide what is most important to do. In other words, I PRIORITIZE! Today I cleaned the hummingbird feeder and next I'm going to move some tubs that are blocking the path to the front yard and caused DS to take a fall the other day and scrape his calf. Then I'll water (especially the new seeds), and if I'm still able to move, I'll do some snipping of old growth and flowers. Then it will be too hot out there...again. But TODAY will "ONLY" be around 100ºF! "ONLY!!!"

So I need to get moving NOW, but I'll answer you more, coconuts, in a bit.

==================================(Afternoon - inside time)

I got a LOT done today! I moved those 4 heavy pots (HEAVY!!!) to another place temporarily; they're out of the way now. Left behind? A LARGE clump of whippy weeds. They've covered and are in the process of SMOTHERING EVERYTHING in its path! Picture an invasive vine that's been slithering over my neighbor's fence, pretty purple Morning Glory trumpet flowers masking their true and devious nature, and you've pretty much got it. They're all over the full grown fruit trees in a solid blanket to where the trees get no sunshine and eventually die. I keep finding the goat heads that I missed, too, but I'm taking them out as I see them. I'll get them all though! I'm determined.

I also wrestled with the straw bales out there to make some "open tunnels" forming a "T" shaped tunnel for the pups to play in and on, so they get used to the Barn Hunt set up in a comfortable environment. They liked it so far...A LOT!! Next I'm going to take the bale on top and slide it over on top of the open tunnel that I set up this morning so they can get used to going into a tunnel that's open on both ends. They're so curious about everything that this should be right up their alley. I'll take treats out there tomorrow for them so they can begin to relate the straw bales with treats, good things, and happy times.

Spot is apparently thriving, too. I'm sort of glad she is, but managing the pups with Spot is a trick. I can allow ONE of the pups in at a time, but if I let them BOTH in, they pack up and attack poor old Spot. She can take care of herself, but she is sort of old and feeble and skeletal, and it doesn't seem right to have two VERY healthy and robust 6 mo. old puppies packed up against her. So it's going to be one or the other of the pups in with me while Spot is inside. Today I brought the rambunctious, insanely playful, and absolutely adorable Boots inside while I put Spot outside to get some sun. She loves the sun! Mittens was already out there, and alone she gets along with Spot fairly well. So that worked.

This evening I'm going to do a bit more work in the garden since just before dark it will be a nice "cool" 91º out there. I've decided to move a few more pots, this time the empty 30 gallon pots, move some of the big 1 cubic yard of planting soil bags off the futon, mix them with some composted chicken manure and humus in my yard hauler, fill one or two of those 30 gallon pots, and plant my Smooth Criminal squash in one of them while moving some smaller pots over to the dog's yard and dumping their contents into the holes dug by Boots and Mittens. These pots need to be dumped anyways, so why not make good use of the used up soil? It looks like craters out there! Treacherous walking!

I'm also going to plant some more of the Tecoma plants.

I sorta want to take Spanish. I also took years of Spanish in hs but my school was also like 90% Hispanic so learning some basics. I actually can understand a lot but sorta want something a tiny bit more formal...That's it i just sold myself on switching.

I am really liking this free Spanish course I'm taking on my cell phone. It's called Duolingo and like I said, it's FREE. They make it like a game, but have lots of little exercises to do. You may want to give it a try. Like my old friend used to say, "For free take, for buy waste time." I'm on Day 8 now, haven't paid a dime for it, and am remembering a lot from my old high school days. Check your APP store?

Also, sorry to hear about your mom. Well, more sorry to hear about your experience with your mom actually. No child deserves to be treated like that. MD used to tell other people about me, "She's such a nervous child." Hell, she'd be nervous, too, if she was treated like that! SHE made me nervous! Sounds to me like they both must have attended The Svengoolie School of Charm and Torturous Behaviors.

==============================(Tuesday morning)

I just found a Tecoma Hybrid Crimson Flare® Esperanza, a newly created, bright red "trumpet flower" producing plant for my hummers at a local nursery!! I am so tickled about it!! In fact, they have two of them at the nursery! As I look out of my WOW right now, what I see is the RED of my Red Hot Mama salvia, and next to it a first time blooming Tecoma x smithii "Orange Belles" with clusters of bright yellow-orange trumpet flowers, and then my Black and Blue salvia. Above all that is the bright red hummingbird feeder, often fought over by my beloved hummers, hanging on a "shepherd's hook" hanger with wrought iron bunnies "hopping" across the top of it. Oh, and my sweet puppies lounging underneath the bird bath feeder. What a place to relax! I am so lucky!!

I need to block the view of my neighbors, though, and these Tecomas can each reach a height of 8 ft. high and wide, can stand the surface of the sun heat here up against the back fence on a 110ºF day, and are drought resistant (once established). I can get rid of EVERY whippy weed on this property and not hurt my "whippy-weed-purple-blossom-loving" hummers one bit! Instead, I'm offering them an 8'x8' smorgasbord of TRUMPET flowers times THREE plus the hummer feeder and spraying water fountains in red buckets! This isn't set up yet, but will be in the next few days.

I already have the Orange Belles one (I got it last summer) and the nursery has the other two, but in bright red. (Telling you about it, I have convinced myself. Tecomas are rather pricey, $120 each, but so worth it!) Their leaves are EVERGREEN in as mild a winter as we have here, they adore nothing more than to bask in HOT temps., they are fern like in appearance, AND are rapid growers. I'M SOLD!

So a solid 8' wall of loveliness along approx. 24' of my back fence and privacy from the neighbor's 2nd story stare into my backyard, food for the hummers nearly year around, and no pruning necessary to produce blooms. Since I'm planting them each in a 30 gallon container (meaning I can move them around as I please to get the most bang for my buck and the best environment for them, thereby nothing is "in stone" as to their position), they will be that much higher in height, blocking even more view from my neighbor's upstairs windows. What a happy relief!!!

I'M TAKING BACK MY HOME! This is good. It's taking some time, but it IS getting done, albeit slowly. I just made my FIRST appointment with the Disabled Veterans to pick up some of my donations. I forgot what's in the boxes in my car and pickup, but I have until a week from Thursday to count them up, decide if they'll take everything, and add some things, too. Why am I so afraid to part with these things? If I need them sometime in the future, I can easily replace them. (That does sound like MD, though. But where she couldn't STOP "letting go" of things, whether precious to others or not, I need to learn to let go of things and stop the fear involved in doing that.) The way I go on about it, you'd think that I'd had a childhood of extreme poverty and hunger, and so I feel the need to hoard things. That was not the case.

But MD did make things disappear, things that meant a lot to me. I'm beginning to fill her out in my own mind regarding how she handled my abuse. She used a lot of physical abuse, but even more so she used mental torture on me: the songs so sad they'd make me cry and then I was slapped into silence. Leaving me at the church camp with my abuser being one of the ministers. Making my friends, the twins, watch her make my dress so they'd learn how, but saying to them how stupid and ineffectual I was. These dresses, all alike and yellow gingham, were from the money I made all summer selling those gorgeous, ripe beefsteak tomatoes door to door to the neighborhood housewives for 5¢/lb. I made $27.00, a TON of money in those days, and MD took it from me and gave EACH of us $9.00 and insisted we blow it on Playland at the Beach (a now defunct amusement park in San Francisco) and those dumb dresses. The twins became wonderful seamstresses and made all their own school clothes I found out later. I've never even tried to sew anything again. MD was such a dud as a mother.

But now I'm trying to straighten up EVERYTHING, all at once, but this is a BIG job for one person. The other night I heard on TV this saying:

Many hands make light work. - John Heywood

...and it made me cry. I really do feel all alone in this. DS is so busy working, so he just wants to collapse or play some videogames after a 12 hour shift. Understandable. But then where does that leave me? I'm not even sure that I can do it. But I do know that I have to at least try. So one tiny step at a time and try to keep up with what I've already accomplished. And try to keep the faith as well. If I allow this to get me down, I'm sunk!

I can't let the turkeys get me down!

Honeybera

[honeybera]

Happy news before I hit the hay! My Zucchini, Italian bush beans, and Patio Pick bush beans are all UP as of today! The Crookneck yellow squash isn't up yet, but should be soon. I'm pretty pumped about it! That was SO fast!!!

DS kept me up last night until nearly midnight, so I missed working out in the garden today (except for the watering). I'm going to bed now though, so I should be ok for tomorrow. I was just so thrilled about the new growth out there. I may have fresh garden squash and even green beans this year after all! Nighty night!

Honeybera

[coconuts]

Woohoo, things are growing. Yay.

I am using duolingo. I tested out of quite a bit of Spanish and am actually still testing out of a lot of the levels. But i think it is good and it makes us feel like we are accomplishing something lol.

Hope you get out to your garden and some pup training time.

[honeybera]

Hey coconuts!

Woohoo, things are growing. Yay.

Yes, they are! Even my SunGold tomato plant is GROWING! I haven't seen it today up close, but from my WOW, it looks even taller than yesterday! I have 4 healthy zucchini out there, so I'm probably going to transfer them to different pots when they get a few more leaves. I'm counting on having my freeze dryer all set up by then. And the flat Italian bush beans and the Patio Pick bush beans are up and THRIVING. (They're really cute!) This is my first time growing green beans. We'll see how it goes. They will do well in the freeze dryer, too.

I also have been watching a wonderfully blooming Tecoma x smithii "Orange Belles" which I got over at AnniesAnnuals dot com. The SPECTACULAR blooms look just like the pics on Annie's website. It LOVES the sun/heat, so I moved it from the shade near my WOW over to the "all day sun" HEAT that is my yard in the summertime. That wonderful plant is growing even better now! Bright orange blossoms EVERYWHERE! I was going to buy another one, but they're out of stock now, so I began looking around to see if this plant came in RED (for the hummers). It does! I was able to find TWO at a nursery a couple of towns away from here. I may get DS to drive up there and get one of them. They will thrive up against the back fence fiery heat and serve two purposes: as a lovely PRIVACY screen from my neighbor's upstairs windows staring unblinkingly down into my bedroom from 40' away and ALSO as a potent hummingbird magnet and entertainment for me at my WOW. (I also have a blessed mirrored window film on my sliders so no one can see in during the day, and I close my blackout curtains at night. )

I have lots and lots of projects and things to do out in the yard, but I tripped on something the other day and I think I broke or seriously sprained my little toe. Hurt like the dickens!! It is still bruised after 3 days time of healing. I'm trying to stay off of it as much as possible. If I sit still, it doesn't hurt at all. So I'm just sitting and planning at the moment. And I forgive myself for doing that. No guilt. I'll get out there again. Soon as possible! I will WATER this evening at least. Maybe add a bit of dried fertilizer like Dr. Earth Flower Girl (bloom enhancer). Maybe see if I can get one of those red 5 gallon buckets and a solar powered fountain set up out there for my hummers right in front of the Tecoma Orange Belles! I sure hope that works!! (BTW, the pups are drinking out of the bird's water in the bird bath!)

I am using duolingo. I tested out of quite a bit of Spanish and am actually still testing out of a lot of the levels. But i think it is good and it makes us feel like we are accomplishing something lol.

Isn't it great?! I'm amazed at how much I remembered from 8th grade and high school! But I can agree with DS's father who was born in Mexico, raised in a large city in the southwest, and didn't even speak English until he was in school, that this is "textbook" Spanish and not the street Spanish spoken at home. I know a bit of both. I mean, I never heard the term fabrica used as factory. But they do give a good amount of proper grammar and lots of praise for a job well done, so I'm very happy with it, too. AND I figured out how to use the ¿, ¡, and ñ on my cell phone. I have to use my alt tab codes on my regular keyboard. My phone is a LOT easier!!

Hope you get out to your garden and some pup training time.

I will. These pups (and even Spot) are so SPOILED! (As if that's possible!) I have purchased every high-end, healthy food available to them on the (online) market! They chew on Split Elk Antlers, Himalayan Yak Cheese, and curled Pizzle Sticks (Google "pizzle" if you must - I was shocked!) , freeze dried EVERYTHING, like chicken hearts, necks, liver, FEET, you name it, and they become crunchy or nice and chewy with freeze drying...and EXPENSIVE! So another reason to get the freeze dryer up and running!! Lamb "green tripe" chews and all sorts of other delightfully (to them, repugnant to me! ) delicious treats, even venison or duck or bison! But they are happy, have bright white teeth and super shiny coats, so why the heck not?

=====================================(day is done)

...and I just sat down to do my duolingo. OMG! I'm #1 in the Silver League! And I just tried a "story". The third line is "¿Donde estan mis llaves?" (Where are my keys?) I laughed out loud! I KNEW what that meant! I was the "key girl" who gave the keys to the drivers at the ice cream company I worked at! Most spoke Spanish and would say that to me as I grabbed their assigned key for their truck off the rack and I would say back to them, "Cuantos libros de hielo seco?" ("How many pounds of dry ice?" - for their freezers). What a small world it is. Too funny.

Well, off to bed now. Glad you like duolingo. They have a ton of other languages, too, even Chinese! That's next for me.

Honeybera

[coconuts]

Those flowers sound lovely. It's so tricky to plant things where i live because our summers are dry and hot but very short and our winters are long and very cold. Plants don't particularly like that lol. Though my apricot tree has another 200,000 apricots! I suppose when I'm done remodeling ( hopefully soon) we will need to take a few days making loads of apricot jam. Oooh maybe i can make some for christmas presents.
Yes the duolingo is definitely more textbook. But still offers a lot i think. I haven't tried the stories yet, though i have a ton of them. I'm still testing out of most levels. But now I'm to the point where i can test out of 4 of the five levels and then just do that level to pass off a skill. Definitely have learned a few words. Funny but fabrica was also a word i sorta rose my eyebrows over lol. Its nice to know it comes back because I went to a high school in southern California when i was growing up and I was like one of like 10 white girls out of 3000 kids lol. I definitely was a minority and had to learn a lot of Spanish to keep up. Also some teachers would teach in Spanish cause that was the majority of students strongest language. For some reason i couldn't pass calculus when it was taught in Spanish lol. I dropped the class before i totally failed. Not worth it. I think my brain was trying so hard to translate that it couldn't focus on the actual math and calculus isn't exactly easy math. But that was like over 20 years ago so.... Anyways i was doing Indonesian just for fun, but switched to spanish after our conversation. Im really hoping to finish the Spanish course in its entirety. It's a goal of mine.
Ouch on the toe. Owie owie owie. Its funny how such a small body part can create so much pain. I think until you hurt a toe badly you don't realize how much you use them for balance. Hopefully it soaks up the rest and heals quickly.

Coconuts

[honeybera]

Ouch on the toe. Owie owie owie. Its funny how such a small body part can create so much pain. I think until you hurt a toe badly you don't realize how much you use them for balance. Hopefully it soaks up the rest and heals quickly.

Oh thank you, coconuts! I totally agree! I have to wear shoes out in the back yard due to the sharp goat head seeds out there and getting my clogs on is murder! The first stub wasn't too bad. It did bruise my pinky toe, and even the second time (after about 10 min. time and across the room from the first one) was super painful and yet not too bad, BUT the THIRD TIME was brutal! Again, a different place in my room and an hour or so later, but BAM! And then to add insult to literal injury, I did it again in the hallway later that night! I promise you, I am VERY careful with that toe now!!! I'm still not sure if it's broken or not, but after much rest and trying to stay off of it as much as possible, the pain is beginning to subside...some.

I'm still continuing to water, and most of them out there look good. My ONE Sungold tomato plant is blossoming and growing wildly and has at least one tiny tomato on it already. And although my Early Girl tomato was knocked unceremoniously to the ground and left there for God knows how long and had DIED by the looks of it, I've been daily watering it along with everything else and the darned plant is reviving!! New shoots are there again. Amazing! My goodness, those plants are resilient! Ooh! Look at what I found when checking out that last word:

Psychological resilience
Psychological resilience is the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly. Resilience exists when the person uses "mental processes and behaviors in promoting personal assets and protecting self from the potential negative effects of stressors". Wikipedia

Maybe that's why I like my tomatoes so much, and my other "resilient" plants as well. They know how to cope! And how to survive, even when given harsh conditions. Makes sense.

Those flowers sound lovely.

Oh, they are! Purples and blues and yellow-gold (trumpet "tree") and bright reds. It really is pretty! I'm in the process of cutting them back a bit, especially the old flowers, but like I said before: RESILIENT! And I'm going to give them an assist with a nice shot of fertilizer. All my veggie plants, too. Mor-Bloom. I love that stuff. I don't use it nearly as much as I should, though. I'll get better about that. I do see the need.

============================(forgot to send this again)

My little toe is still SUPER SORE and I fear that I've broken it. It doesn't hurt when I stand or even go outside once I've gotten my garden clogs on, but if I lay it against the sheet when I'm sleeping...YOW!! Like I'm stubbing it all over again. But if I go see a doctor, MY doctor, he'll probably want to re-break it and let it heal again. I wish I could trust my doctor, but I don't. I believe that they're all in it for the money and will do what they have to, say what they have to, to get at it. I've been shopping online for some more clogs (since they're so wide in the toe box and my old cheap ones are about to break), but I haven't found what I like yet.

It's so tricky to plant things where i live because our summers are dry and hot but very short and our winters are long and very cold.

Oh my. The worst of both! But at least your apricots love it, and I'm sure your apples do, too. DS and I were discussing how people observe their climates the other day. I had a girl hop on my bus once at night in the dead of Winter in a pair of short shorts and a skimpy top with NO COAT or anything! You could see your breath outside! I said to her, "Aren't you COLD?? It's less than 32ºF outside!" She laughed and said, "I'm from Minnesota. This isn't cold! This is beach weather!" So I guess it's all about how one is acclimated. The heat over here really got to me at one time, but now I'm getting rather used to it. Of course we have a/c, but today I was outside working at 3pm, the beginning of the hottest times of the day. I cut back whippy weeds with my handy-dandy snippers while standing in the shade. Not bad really. It's been almost normal this summer at around 100ºF+/- by 2-3 degrees. That I can live with.

Yes the duolingo is definitely more textbook. But still offers a lot i think. I haven't tried the stories yet, though i have a ton of them.

I've gone back to the beginning just to brush up. I've always had a bit of a problem with estar and ser, so I'm thoroughly going through them again. It's helping. I'm so glad that you're finding Duolingo helpful, too. Try one of the easiest stories to begin with. They're actually kind of cute and funny. Not too challenging. I like them.

I've also found another iPhone gem (APP) called "Get Sleepy", a drug free, auditory, meditation oriented, sleep aid podcast that really works, at least it does for me. It tells a soothing and interesting story and I simply get comfy and listen. Before I know it, I'm waking up hours later, nice and refreshed. The other day I got a phone call that woke me from a sound sleep, and then I was totally awake. "I'll never get back to sleep now!", I thought. So I turned on my podcast to hear more about The Pony Express, and within minutes...ZONK! So for me, out with the Melatonin and Tylenol PM and in with this lovely podcast. And this one is FREE, my favorite price.

My beloved Grandma used to read me to sleep when I was little. A book called "Mixed Pickles" - always that same book. I have no idea just what that book is about, and that doesn't matter one bit. I can still hear in my mind as clear as a bell the sound of her kind and loving voice, patiently reading to me as she sat on the edge of the twin bed, and I'd stare at the bare light bulb as I listened. One of my favorite memories from my childhood.

I've been remembering these and other things lately. Sitting on the curb in front of the house, my nickel that my Grandpa gave me clutched tightly in my hand for either an ice cream or a donut from the Ice Cream Man or the Bakery Truck, whichever one would come down the street first. This was in the 1940s, just after WWII. When that Bakery Man opened the back of his panel truck, I could smell the bakery goods, and they smelled SO GREAT! I gave him my 5¢ and made my choice...and then I ate it to my head!!!! Also, MD would make yummy things for us to eat for lunch which were her favorites, too : grilled cheese and Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup and Jello Chocolate Pudding, the cooked kind. And if I was "a really good girl", my father and MD would take me to get my absolute FAVORITES: Rita's Raviolis or a Foster Freeze drive-in Hot Fudge Sundae (with NUTS). Rita's home had a white door right off the street, probably right into a part of their house. We went into where there was a simple counter with clean white painted walls behind it and the smells were mouthwatering as we stood there waiting for our takeout. As an adult, I could never find the right flavor to match Rita's VERY authentic raviolis (and sauce) until I came upon Fennel Seeds. That was the missing flavor! Now I just add a bit of fennel seeds to my spaghetti sauce (saute quickly with the onions and Italian seasoning before adding the meat to brown and then the sauce) and I get that same wonderful flavor.

I just watched some shows on the History Channel regarding how the foods we find commonplace are actually relatively new (Turn of the Century-ish): Campbell's Soups, Jell-O puddings, frozen foods in general, fast foods, and so on. It's funny how I never thought of these foods as having not been around. They've always, in my mind anyway, been here. Even I can't imagine these foods as mindbogglingly modern. I risk sounding like Methuselah's mother, but I remember when we went to our first McDonald's in our town when it first opened and would get a big bag of 15¢ hamburgers and french fries for our dinner at home and thought that that was so amazing. We treated it like take-out.

[OMG, I just did an internet/Google web search for Mixed Pickles by E.W. Fields. It is still being RE-printed, but I found an original copy of it. This was printed in 1901, so it came out when my Grandma, 17, was a mere slip of a thing. She was originally a Nebraskan farm girl and was very religious. This is a book of religious philosophy written "for boys and girls". I can see her reading it over and over again, "feasting on the Word" as she'd put it. This and her Bible. This makes so much more sense now. It was her childhood book and precious to her and so was I which is why she shared it with me as I fell asleep. I miss her so much!]

Well, let me try to see if I can make it all the way through one Get Sleepy story. I doubt if I can, but if I don't, at least I get a solid night's sleep. Win-win!

Honeybera

[coconuts]

Oh man. Take care of those toes.

Oh yeah i think it's funny how we adjust. My twins wear shorts all year long. They hate pants. There can be a foot of snow on the ground and the roads can be ice rinks and there they are with shorts. As a mom it is definitely cheaper to outfit lol. I have got them both a couple pairs of pants but it's a shock to see them in it.

Yeah our apricots loved it and the birds didn't eat them this year. So we got a healthy batch of apricot jam. Yum. Funny i actually do not like apricots but i do like apricots jam.
We also have a few plums coming on our little tree. Anyways i really better go. My kids will be awake soon and I have deliver the news that their grandfather whom they are very close to passed away last night. They are going to be so sad. This will be the first real death for most of them.

Coconuts

[honeybera]

My kids will be awake soon and I have deliver the news that their grandfather whom they are very close to passed away last night. They are going to be so sad. This will be the first real death for most of them.

My condolences, dear coconuts. It's hard to lose someone, especially for the kids and especially if they were close, but also if this is the first time that death affects them. I'm glad that you are with them. It's hard to take in that it's so permanent when they're so young. But it sure is. Nothing is more so. May you find the perfect words to say to them. I'm sure that you will.

How are you in all of this? Was this an in-law or even closer to you? I wish you the best as you go through this. Know that we are all here for you, day or night, as close as your computer keyboard, ready to listen. ♥♥♥

Honeybera

[honeybera]

One VERY long post!!

I think that MD will always be with me in my head. What a shame. It didn't need to be like this. A bit of kindness would have made such a difference.

She saw me as a competitor, a rival. I wasn't. I was just a little kid. When I was about 5, I used to sit up on the back of the couch and brush my father's dark wavy hair while we watched TV. As soon as she noticed, she would tell me to "get down". Later she would tell my very vain father that all that brushing was making his hair thin. Soon he said no to me and the hair brushing, too. She was always doing mean crap like that.

She made it very apparent that if I wasn't there anymore, she would be happy. I began to list several of the ways she tried to rid herself of me to DS the other day:

When I quit breathing in the hospital shortly after birth, she did nothing, not even ring for a nurse. My Auntie came in, saw what was happening, grabbed me up by one leg, and ran into the hall screaming, "SHE'S NOT BREATHING! SHE'S NOT BREATHING!", and I was saved. What a disappointment for MD. After all, I wasn't what they had ordered. I was a GIRL. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. (BTW, she'd only dropped out of high school at 16 to get married a mere 14 months prior to my birth. It wasn't the fairy tale/movie land life she was hoping for! )

At barely 2, she "told" my deaf (paternal) grandfather to "watch me" (according to her) and completely stopped watching me on his farm as he and my father talked and walked around. I toddled alone ½ mile up the road to the very busy highway and extremely LIVE railroad tracks. A horrified trucker saw me and rightly figured that if he blew his air horns, I'd become afraid and run for home, getting off the train tracks and away from the highway. He followed me up to the farm in his truck and was relieved when all adults came out of the house, being shocked to see me toddling up the road as fast as I could with this big rig right behind me blowing his air horn. Trains came roaring down those tracks almost on an hourly basis. MD blamed my grandfather (my dad's dad), saying that she "told him" to watch me, but he was very deaf. She knew that. Was she so immature that she didn't realize what could have happened to me and that I was HER responsibility, not his, even if she "told" him to watch me? There was no "CPS" in those days.

And when I was about 4, we used to go to the beach. One day they took me into the surf, one on each hand, and they'd lift me up when a wave came. The waves were fairly big, but they'd lift me up really high and it was great fun. Then came a really good sized wave, and when my father lifted me, MD just let go, the wave hit, and my hand was wrenched out of my father's hand. I remember tumbling underneath the water and being pulled out to sea a bit with the undertow, terrified, but my father was suddenly there and grabbed me.

It was always that way. Someone else saving me. Never MD. Never. Again when I was 5, we were invited to a big, crowded swim party at our neighbor's pool. I still could not swim a stroke. As usual, MD disappeared inside the neighbor's house while I floated on an inner tube in the shallow end of the pool. Then I slipped off the inner tube and into the shallow end. I remember that it looked like a blue room as I stood on the bottom of the pool. I would jump up, take a breath, and have just enough time to yell, but then back down I'd go. The trouble was that each time I'd sink back down to the bottom, I'd inch down closer to the pool's bottom slope and farther into the deep end. That made it that much harder to leap up to the top of the water. It was eventually nearly impossible to reach the top of the water anymore, and I was getting really scared. There were people all over near the edge of the pool, chatting in the adjoining patio, and inside the attached living room with ceiling to floor glass windows looking out over the pool area, but no one was paying attention to the drowning kid. None of them knew me (except for my absent parents!) and thought I was "playing". Only the hostess, our neighbor, knew me, and when it hit her what was actually happening, she dropped her drink and dove in, fancy clothes and hairdo and all, and pulled me out. After some time MD appeared (from where I don't know) and took me home. She seemed quite upset with me.

When I was 6, I was already in 2nd grade. I walked "home" about a mile from school (actually my Aunt M's house to be babysat since MD was working with my father at that time), but school was just getting out and I was lagging behind on the school's front lawn grass with the other kids. The City Bus had just picked up a whole bunch of kids and had left. Up the street was a Fire House that had just gotten an emergency call out for a fire and as they proceeded up the street and around the corner, something happened to the steering control on the fire truck. It had locked the steering wheel into the curve and it careened up onto the school house lawn! There was a little girl to my right that it ran over and killed. It also hit another girl, sending her 40 ft. over the chain link fence and into the playground, paralyzed. I had on brand new Mary Janes with a slick sole and as I turned to run, I slipped and fell onto my face. I remember turning my face up sideways and seeing the underpinning of the fire truck as it flew over me, straddling my body. I lifted up my foot (don't ask me why) and the bottom of the truck forcibly took my shoe off front ways , spraining my ankle, and threw my shoe over next to the dead girl. A kind man rushed over to me, picked me up, ran, and forced my head into his chest, saying, "It's alright. Stop crying.", and he rushed me into the building as he spoke. I pulled back and said, "I'm NOT crying!" and when he said, "Yes, you are.", I realized he was right...and then we were inside the school building. Thanks to him I never saw a thing.

The school called MD at my father's business where she was working. She said later that they told her, "There's been an accident at the school. One girl was killed, one is severely injured and is in the hospital, and one is alright. We don't know which one your daughter is." So she took her time getting there, irked that she had to be called away from work. In the meantime, I was set in the back seat of someone's car to wait for her to get there. While waiting, a photographer snapped my picture, my mouth open with a stupefied and blank stare and missing teeth (I was 6), which ended up on the front page of our local newspaper. MD finally did get there and she was irked. She was told that my missing shoe was taken with the ambulance and told it was with the Coroner where she could go to pick it up. She later did, but there was a spot of blood on the shoe, so she gave the matching shoe that I'd been wearing to the people there and said to donate the shoes. She treated the whole thing as a distinct bother to her and her afternoon plans.

There were many, MANY other incidents where I suspect that my safety wasn't upmost in her mind and would have been a blessing to her if I'd not survived. All this happened when I was an only child. My DB didn't happen until I was 10.

Her way of thinking was just off. She even once said that it was a shame that Hitler didn't finish his work with the Jews. OMG. She called me filthy and demoralizing names. Someone in our family did an ancestry search and found both Jewish and Afro-American relatives. Everyone in the family (but me) denies that this is true. She had forgotten that she gave me the actual hard copy of the results of the ancestry research that had been mailed to her, all nicely rolled up and literally tied with a pink ribbon. She was a real monster, and unfortunately, she's still in my head. I wish that that wasn't the truth. I am trying to let her go, but it's tough to do.

=====================(Yeah, forgot to post this...again.)

Blessedly, I woke up today with forgiveness in my heart. MD (nor her two sisters) had it easy going through VERY tough times in The Great Depression. MD was born a mere 6 months before the stock market crash of October 1929. My bio-grandmother didn't have a very good marriage to begin with (maybe why MD fought so hard for hers and why it was so important to her) and was left by my bio-grandfather with 3 little girls to take care of. Bio-GM was a bit of a floozie in those days by all the family stories and took off to "find work" with a girlfriend in a different state. She'd abandoned "the girls" with rather unsavory relatives, real Grapes of Wrath stuff! MD told of all of the sisters sleeping in a crib on the front porch of the migrant camp shack. One night her father had come to give them money. The cousins came out and shot him as he tossed money into the crib and ran. MD was 5 at the time. Her sisters were 7 and 9. They witnessed it all. I know this incident is true because it was in the local papers and my brother found it while doing his own ancestry research and shared it with me.

The girls were then placed with MD's bio-GF. Oh, he was a pip! MD claims that she remembered him molesting her two sisters, but not her ( Why don't I believe that?!), although she did remember running around nude, supposedly because she'd wet her pants and hung them up to dry on the fence. (She remembers being 2. She was actually 5.) No wonder she tried to have ME stop wetting my pants at a mere 9 months old. They all slept in the same bed. (I think I should make this ST just to be safe.) He would sweep out a nearby bar for (money? food? liquor?), fish in the river (used for food), and dig through culled beans from a nearby plant. That's what they ate. We NEVER ate beans nor fish as I grew up. I wonder why.

My grandparents adopted MD at 6 yrs. old and her by-then 8 yr. old sister, too...out of an orphanage. Actually it was a detention center due to the crowding in the orphanages in The Great Depression. They actually tried to adopt their 10 yr. old older sister as well, but she was just too wild by that time and kept trying to get the younger two to run away, claiming, "These aren't your REAL parents!!" So yeah. MD's formative years were a disaster!

However, that doesn't excuse her from her cruelty, both physical, mental, and emotional, to me. It was really tough to get through and it did scar me, too. WAY back in the day, I wanted to be a teacher. I would have been a GREAT teacher. It would have changed my life completely by entering into the teacher's union so early on. BUT BUT BUT I didn't. I got trapped into the swirling, sucking drain of LBJ's War on Poverty. I ended up in subsidized housing with a Welfare check doing the toughest job I ever had: raising 3 kids on a Welfare check in the middle of hell for well over 20 yrs. And it was SO HARD to get out of!!!!

But now here I am. I am alive. I lived through it! I went with another Union job. And I worked and worked until I could retire and have a nice little pension and be a homeowner. Where did I get all this self-love? I don't know, but I'm glad I did. And I'm glad that I began to question myself with counselors some 50 yrs. ago. Not all had the right answers for me, but I SURVIVED!! And I slowly began to accept myself just as I am. And that takes self-forgiveness. And that's what I woke up to today.

TODAY I have enough. I am actually happy...finally. I am alone too much, but now I can cope with that. I'm finally losing weight. How much? I don't know and it doesn't matter. I feel healthier. The nearby forest fires nearly took my cousin B's home, but the wind changed and she was saved. I have no fear of that. We're nowhere near the fires. The sky is looking grey and overcast, but it's just smoke. (Sadly, we could use some rain.) I have to be careful of exercising/gardening in the smoky air, but at least my home is ok. DS is getting GREAT at doing my shopping for me and gets me anything I need. I have everything I want. Life is sweet (at this time) and I am SO GRATEFUL for that. AND I like who I am. So important!! Happy in my own skin is a really good place for me to be in. No complaints today.

I actually wish that MD could have traveled this same path to her own happiness. She always had her demons and now it's just too late. But deep in my heart I know that no matter what, she'd resist all that I'd have to give to her. Denial and fear was all that she knew, and all that she wanted to know. So what can I do? Remain happy. Get my pickup fixed (it's backfiring at the moment, but we'll take it in to the mechanic today - no worries), go pick up a big gorgeous rare plant for my hummers (a Tecoma - Bells of Fire - you can Google it - so pretty! I already have one called Tecoma - Orange Bells, but they're actually more of a yellow-gold color, but RED should be even better), and get several more bales of straw to make a mini Barn Hunt maze for my pups over in the Dog's Yard.

I'm slowly cleaning up my house, too, and even the garage. The other day I called on the phone and had the Disabled Veterans come and take a HUGE bunch of donations away that had been in my car, my truck, and in the garage. Put it all at the end of the driveway, and WHOOSH! It was GONE! Can't beat that with a stick!! And it's tax deductible! So I'm happy with the way that is going. They'll come as often as I call them. One hand washing the other.

I need to go break my fast now. I'm actually getting hungry. We found a new place to get our rotisserie chickens; they expanded our old store (our butter and HWC go-to) and now sell HUGE (3 lbs!) and YUMMY rotisserie chickens! They even sell low carb Mexican sauces to go with them. So yeah, I'm happy again!

Honeybera

[coconuts]

A lot of thoughts you seemed to share. Grieving for yourself. Grieving for your mother. I know i am sometimes angry at my own fathers incompetencr but then i remember he was never properly cared for. I heard once that it takes 3 generations to finally break a family's abuse and trauma cycles. I think of my grandfather hated by his mother, then hating his life and his children. Probe to violent outbursts and a child molester. My dad tried, i think he did. He was physically abusive, but not all the time. He used avoidance as a way to not be his father. When he was around he was emotionally and physically abusive And emotionally neglectful. But he wasn't his father. He was a step of improvement.
And i think i made significant changes and fought to raise my children in love. I try to remember that some of that is because of my dad attempt to improve. Albeit very inadequate I actually think he tried to not be his parents. I admit my children haven't had the most perfect upbringing. Their father has made things difficult for them at times. But they have a good life and i hope that when they have their own families it's even better.
I think im trying to have compassion for people like your md who maybe just didnt quite know how to handle what they were given. Perhaps she hated the idea of having s girl because girls are more susceptible to sa. Which you are sure she experienced. You probably reminded her of herself, and it sounds like she hated who she was too. Always feeling inadequate. Not excuses, just thoughts. She still was not okay. She still hurt you dearly. But you have overcome and you can certainly be proud. Im proud of you.
It also sounds like even if she wasn't looking out for you, the world kind of was. So many ways and reasons you shouldn't be here. But here you are. Safe, strong, amazing. Im glad the world looked after you when your mother could not.