piece and quiet...

wow.

there is so much to say, i am not even sure where to start. 

i suppose the place to start is with the thing that is uppermost in my mind right now. my son was supposed to leave for the army and bootcamp today. yesterday at about 10:30am, he got a call from the army saying "you have two hours to organize your life, we want you to leave today instead, be at the armory by 12:30pm". it was pretty stressful. his poor girlfriend did not even get a chance to say good bye to him because she's a college student so she was in classes and working yesterday. his mantra yesterday was "what a difference a day makes..." because there were many loose ends that needed to be tied up that will now be done by me and his dad. my baby now belongs to uncle sam and it's depressing as hell. truly. the good news is that i waited until after he was gone before i cried. it was actually when i saw his girlfriend and what a mess she was that i lost it. the rest of the day was colored with this sadness. i was supposed to go to a bellydance practice last night, but with all that was happening, by 5pm i was completely emotionally exhausted and just wanted to curl up into a ball somewhere and sleep. that tells me i was stressed!

in other news, little more than a week ago, i got my hair braided. i think i've mentioned in here that in june, i am going to paris. it will be my first time out of the united states and i am exceedingly excited. there is more to the story than i think i've written here, but that will be for another time. in the ensuing time, i have been paying for this trip, but i paid it off earlier this month! now, barring something catastrophic, i am going for sure! anyway, i don't really want to deal with international plugs and blowing up appliances and such, so i thought it might be easier just to braid my hair. so far so good, with a few exceptions. i, apparently, have a lot of hair, which means i have a lot of braids. i think i will ask her to make the braids a little larger next time because all this hair is HEAVY!! in general, though, i love it.

so, while i was getting my hair braided, the lady who does this for me is a foster parent. she currently has three, i think, under the age of five. one of them is SO adorable! he is the sweetest little boy and his chances for adoption are slim. he has a cleft pallette, and will require some more surgeries for that to be fixed and some other issues from his mother making poor choices before, during, and after her pregnancy with him. his name is noah. he is three. interacting with him made me realize how sad our system is. noah has some siblings, but none of the bio families want to take him because of his disabilities. the foster mom is afraid to take him because she knows he will have some medical challenges and her health care status is tenuous at best...adopting him could break her with medical bills. i thought to myself how sad that this little boy is going to be shuttled around a system that's so inadequate. what are his chances? i began to think perhaps i could help this kid. my kids are grown. he deserves better. i thought and thought about it. when i mentioned it to my husband, he accused me of looking for a replacement child because mine are grown and one was getting ready to leave at the time of the conversation. part of me wondered if i wanted a "do over". it would be very hard to "start over" and have a small child again. is this what i really want? then again, it seems almost selfish not to do this for this awesome little boy. i know i could handle his challenges. i just don't know. it would be amazing, and at the same time, do i want to go back to that place? he's 3, so there would be no diapers, but there would be day care, special ed services, iep's, and dealing with his other issues. too much? i just don't know. i am agonizing over this stuff....what do you think?

i am very excited because the ladies i bellydance with are finally getting to the point where we might be ready to form our own group. we've been coming together for the last couple of years to dance beyond what was done just for class. i think our name will be "hipswitch". i am very excited about this too.

things in the fire world are also exciting. the fire arts festival will be in july, and things are rolling along with that. 

those are the things which are currently on my mind....now i need to post this in a lot of different places =)

peace. 

piece and quiet…

  wow.

there is so much to say, i am not even sure where to start. 

i suppose the place to start is with the thing that is uppermost in my mind right now. my son was supposed to leave for the army and bootcamp today. yesterday at about 10:30am, he got a call from the army saying "you have two hours to organize your life, we want you to leave today instead, be at the armory by 12:30pm". it was pretty stressful. his poor girlfriend did not even get a chance to say good bye to him because she’s a college student so she was in classes and working yesterday. his mantra yesterday was "what a difference a day makes…" because there were many loose ends that needed to be tied up that will now be done by me and his dad. my baby now belongs to uncle sam and it’s depressing as hell. truly. the good news is that i waited until after he was gone before i cried. it was actually when i saw his girlfriend and what a mess she was that i lost it. the rest of the day was colored with this sadness. i was supposed to go to a bellydance practice last night, but with all that was happening, by 5pm i was completely emotionally exhausted and just wanted to curl up into a ball somewhere and sleep. that tells me i was stressed!

in other news, little more than a week ago, i got my hair braided. i think i’ve mentioned in here that in june, i am going to paris. it will be my first time out of the united states and i am exceedingly excited. there is more to the story than i think i’ve written here, but that will be for another time. in the ensuing time, i have been paying for this trip, but i paid it off earlier this month! now, barring something catastrophic, i am going for sure! anyway, i don’t really want to deal with international plugs and blowing up appliances and such, so i thought it might be easier just to braid my hair. so far so good, with a few exceptions. i, apparently, have a lot of hair, which means i have a lot of braids. i think i will ask her to make the braids a little larger next time because all this hair is HEAVY!! in general, though, i love it.

so, while i was getting my hair braided, the lady who does this for me is a foster parent. she currently has three, i think, under the age of five. one of them is SO adorable! he is the sweetest little boy and his chances for adoption are slim. he has a cleft pallette, and will require some more surgeries for that to be fixed and some other issues from his mother making poor choices before, during, and after her pregnancy with him. his name is noah. he is three. interacting with him made me realize how sad our system is. noah has some siblings, but none of the bio families want to take him because of his disabilities. the foster mom is afraid to take him because she knows he will have some medical challenges and her health care status is tenuous at best…adopting him could break her with medical bills. i thought to myself how sad that this little boy is going to be shuttled around a system that’s so inadequate. what are his chances? i began to think perhaps i could help this kid. my kids are grown. he deserves better. i thought and thought about it. when i mentioned it to my husband, he accused me of looking for a replacement child because mine are grown and one was getting ready to leave at the time of the conversation. part of me wondered if i wanted a "do over". it would be very hard to "start over" and have a small child again. is this what i really want? then again, it seems almost selfish not to do this for this awesome little boy. i know i could handle his challenges. i just don’t know. it would be amazing, and at the same time, do i want to go back to that place? he’s 3, so there would be no diapers, but there would be day care, special ed services, iep’s, and dealing with his other issues. too much? i just don’t know. i am agonizing over this stuff….what do you think?

i am very excited because the ladies i bellydance with are finally getting to the point where we might be ready to form our own group. we’ve been coming together for the last couple of years to dance beyond what was done just for class. i think our name will be "hipswitch". i am very excited about this too.

things in the fire world are also exciting. the fire arts festival will be in july, and things are rolling along with that.

those are the things which are currently on my mind….now i need to post this in a lot of different places =)

peace. 

update…

 things are feeling pretty mellow today.

my brother got out of the hospital last thursday. apparently, they got his blood sugar under control. for now, they are going to try to have him control it with just diet and pills, we will see about that. i suspect that how successful that is depends on how successful he is at not drinking anymore.

my son leaves for the army and boot camp in about two weeks and i am very sad about that. he’s been staying with us, and he’s really grown in to a nice man. it’s nice to spend time with him and have him now be a considerate housemate, help with dinner and groceries, and try to look out for my interests. i will always cherish this time i’ve had with him. his girlfriend got a new puppy and he is SO cute. i might post a picture of him later, his name is grizzly and he is part boxer and part saint bernard (!!!) he’s going to be a moose, but right now, he sure is cute. he has the saddest little face and eyes….and his eyes are like a hazel gray/blue. very beautiful. it’s good to have my family around me…

some things have changed in the last little while. there was a guy staying with us that i think i wrote about before. he’s a friend of my daughters and he is the one who brought over "the big ass tv" that is now in my living room. because he was so generous with letting this be at my house, i never really worried about him paying rent because i knew he was going through a rough time. he used to be a metal fabricator, and he had an industrial accident and cut his hand badly on an industrial saw. during the normal course of an on-the-job injury, they drug tested him and he tested positive for pot. no more good job. he worked sales during the holidays and seemed to make pretty decent money, but it was the holidays, so i told myself that he probably needed to buy gifts for family and such, so i wasn’t too worried about it. well, my sis has said that he is the worst about cleaning up after himself. sheesh, you are already living for free, he couldn’t clean up after himself? apparently, not. then, the kids told me he got a pretty handsome tax return, and he did not offer me a single nickel. i think, all told, that he lived with us for about five months, at least. and he did not offer to pay anything, buy any groceries, nothing. the tax return thing was sort of the last straw for me. it made me feel disappointed in him for not even offering and taken advantage of. i had told him before that when my son came home to stay, he would have to stay in my daughters room on the floor if he still wanted to hang out, and he said sure. well, when my son first came home, he made no attempt at all to either clear out or even clean the room that was going to go to my son. i had to clean the room and i am here to tell you, it was nasty. i had gotten it together last summer to use as an office, then my nephew stayed in there for awhile, and i had it looking really sweet. but he had not one time cleaned the floors, there was stuff spilled all over my freshly refinished hardwood floors, it made me feel very sad and disrespected. it’s been over two weeks now since he’s been gone, and i have maintained when they come over, telling them they need to leave at an early time because we all work early. it had gotten to the point where every night was party night and if it was this boy and the other housemate that used to be my daughters girlfriend, if it was the two of them and/or their friends, they’d be up all night and sleeping all day. and existing to drink, drinking in my house, and leaving empty beer cans and trash all over my house.

the ex-girlfriend is gone too, for the most part. she still comes around occasionally, but doesn’t generally stay very long. i felt sorry for her when her and my daughter first moved back in to the house. my daughter has continued to pay rent the entire time she has been in my house, but it’s been more than a year since this girl worked, and she was to the point where she wasn’t even trying anymore. i mean, she said she refused to take a restaurant job because she would not work any where that she had to put her hair up. again….WTF? 

this has been very hard for me. i am a compassionate person and regardless of whether or not these people pay their share, i have to pay all the bills in the house anyway. it didn’t hurt anything to have them there, and the economy has been so bad, i’ve been trying to be a good person. but it had gotten to the point where all they did was party and drink and there was no attempt to respect me, my husband, my household, nothing. it had to stop. but there’s still a compassionate, sad part of me that feels very badly. but not bad enough to let anyone else come into the house that isn’t willing to pay rent!!

i can’t tell you how much more quiet and peaceful the energy in the house has been since they left. it’s felt very family oriented and good. i probably should have done this a long time ago, but i can’t really apologize for being a nice person, either. and i do still feel bad for the ex-gf not having any place to go, but i have a hard enough time taking care of me and my own without taking care of other lost souls too.

i must have needed to vent about this because i did not think i would write about this today when i started this entry. i think that’s all for now.

peace.

family history…

today is marked with a tinge of sadness for me. my mom’s been gone for over two years, last year around this time my brother passed away, and last night, i got a call that my other brother is in the hospital and in the icu. i guess that a year ago he was diagnosed as being borderline diabetic, and i heard he had stopped drinking. however, my sis spoke to him a couple of weeks ago on the phone and he seemed then like he had been drinking.

that’s all i really have time for right now. i will keep folks posted. i think i renewed my subscription, but the last box that returned me to this site gave a database error, so here’s hoping for the best =)

peace.