Category Archives: Winnifrog

Time flies

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Complaint Department, Daily Drivel, Evil Wizard, Faith, Holiday Thoughts, In Hindsight, On the news, Rants, Taterbug, Winnifrog

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Here it is December again, and a lot has been happening since I haven’t been tap-taping away at the keys. Some of it has been good, and some bad, but at least I can say that life lately is a bit different than the last time I wrote on this here blog.

My mother in law had a serious fall and has been in and out of the hospital yet again, and is presently in a rehabilitation nursing home trying to get back her strength so she can hopefully be home by Christmas. Thankfully nothing was broken, but no one knows what has been causing these weak spells she has been having. They seem to come on quickly, only to resolve themselves before anyone can find a cause. I really wish she would come and stay with us, but mom is stubborn and doesn’t want to leave her home, much less Indiana. If that news were not enough, we also found out the cancer my husband’s aunt had a few years ago has returned, and unfortunately it seems to be already at stage 4, and the doctors are unsure how much they will be able to do to help her. John seems to be taking that bit of news about as well as can be expected for now.

As overwhelming as the hard news lately has been, the good news is that the closing finally happened on the new house, even if moving cost way, way more than we had ever anticipated that it would. In fact, the movers ended up charging us around five hundred dollars more than their original estimate, so needless to say, the last couple of months have been kind of lean around here budget wise while we try to gather the things we will need for the new house. I guess I can’t expect miracles in that department overnight.

Christmas looks to be equally lean this year. I was able to get all of the kids at least a little something, but probably nothing like I know kids are usually hoping for. I hope my older kids will be happy with clothes, paperback books and homemade necklaces. Thor seems to be the easy one to shop for, board books and a see n say, and a little toy truck. I also picked up a used toddler bed for him to use whenever we have the money to get his room finished enough for him to move into.

Thor’s room was one of our not so nice surprises after we moved in here. Not only had someone started ripping the wallpaper down and didn’t bother finishing it, but sometime between the inspection on the house and the closing they had also taken the time to remove the light fixture in that bedroom, and so now we have to buy a new one and find someone to help us install it. We have the light fixture we want spotted, and know what color we are eventually going to paint the room once the work is done, getting it finished is mostly a matter of having the money to purchase the materials and help we will need to make it happen. Unfortunately those things just don’t come cheap nowadays.


I know we have many plans for what we would like to do with the new house in the coming months, but we know much of what we would like to do cannot happen overnight. All we can do is make a list of what we would like to have done, and try to figure out which things are a priority, and which of them would just be something that would eventually be nice to have. For the moment the first thing on the list is to get that light fixture replaced, and to get Thor’s room finished so the hubby and I can finally have some much needed privacy and more room to do our own room the way we would eventually like it to be.

For now the plan for Thor’s room is to paint it a nice pretty Tardis blue to begin with. Eventually when time and money allows the hubby will be painting murals of a nighttime forest with owls in the trees on his bedroom walls. The ceiling eventually will also have glow in the dark stars. Eventually… I’d just be happy getting his room painted and done enough for him to actually move into before spring. It’s all just a matter of too many plans and not enough money to do it all right now.

For now, even a month after moving in, we are still unpacking slowly but surely, and trying to get the house the way we want it to be. We are also slowly but surely trying to learn our way around this new town, and where to find the things we need. Not knowing anyone is really the hardest part of moving somewhere new. I am hoping that once the weather warms up a little and we get settled in, that we will be able to go out and meet some new people. So far the neighbors seem nice, but just like most places nowadays, most people pretty much seem to keep to themselves. Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as easy to get to know anyone these days, maybe myself included. It doesn’t help that I’m rather shy around people I don’t know well, and I can tend to be quite a homebody.

For now we would like to wish you Blessed Holidays from our tiny town in middle of nowhere in Northwestern Pennsylvania. As for myself I will be trying to stay warm, and ride out the winter without turning into a mommysicile.

December has always been a hard time for me these last few years. Today marks the 3 year anniversary of the day my dad passed away, and two years since I lost my lifelong friend Sandy. It’s hard not to curl up and have a good cry, but I know that’s not what either of them would have wanted. Maybe it’s ok to be sad, as long as I don’t forget all the good that is still here. Some days that is easier said than done.

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Hope and fear

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Complaint Department, Rants, Winnifrog

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Optimism is hard for me, the last few years especially, when it comes to dealing with the ongoing situation with my daughter. I’ve wanted nothing more than to have her home, and I make sure I tell her frequently. Unfortunately every time I thought there was a ghost of a chance of it actually happening, I’ve pretty much had my hopes dashed to pieces.

There is another hearing coming up next week. I feel an obligation to be there, but part of me is also nearly paralyzed by knowing that my efforts would be all but futile. Deep inside I know that the outcome would be the same in my presence or without it. It’s as much my own state of mind that I am worried for. Should I go and go through the motions and attend a hearing that has already all but been decided, or should I just stay away and let them do the inevitable without me?

Is there hope of this ending any other way?

Should I really be spending a couple of hundred dollars we don’t really have right now for bus tickets and hotel rooms, when I know almost for sure that I will be coming back home alone with nothing to show for it but depression it may take weeks to shake myself out of?

Would I be a horrible person and mother if I just threw my hands up in the air and told them all that I just can’t do this?

Is it time to let my daughter go, and hope she will be happy with whatever life they can help her build for herself? All I can do is keep reminding her that my door is always open, and she always has a place here, even if the decisions on her future are out of my hands.

Damn this is hard…

Why?

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Chipmunk, Evil Wizard, Rants, Taterbug, Winnifrog

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Let me say I am first off not writing this to tear people down, but to make people think about their actions, and the effects they can have now, and even years and decades later on their children. Some people, and even relatives will not agree with what I am writing. You have your point of view about how the situation was in the past, but I also have mine. All I know is how what happened then, and continues to happen to this day looks and feels to me. When I am still laying in bed at night at 42 years old crying over what might have been, something is wrong, something needs to be said because bottling everything all these years has never worked and still isn’t working.

The last time in my life I can really remember being truly blissfully happy I was only four or five years old. I remember the day my little sister came home clearly, she was sleeping in that white cradle in the front room. I don’t remember feeling jealous even at four years old, I just remember wanting to help, and not being allowed to. Suddenly I was too noisy, in the way, and no one had time for me. I remember as a kid spending most evenings with babysitters, while my mom, bowled, played sports and went out with friends. She wasn’t always the most picky about who she left us with, some of them were really not very good people.

I can remember many times over the years growing up wondering what was wrong with me, and why my parents kept me at arms length, and yet seemed to love my younger sister the way they did. I probably wasn’t the easiest child to deal with, but there were so many times they should have seen just what was going on with me and either overlooked it, or just didn’t want to see it. I wanted so many times to tell someone what was happening to me at that age, but a six year old doesn’t have those words on their own. Nobody, not one single person, be it a teacher, a counselor, or a relative ever once asked me the right questions. Why couldn’t I sit still? Why was I always staring off into space? Why wasn’t I listening? Those were the only questions I ever heard.

Why did my parents never look further to figure out what was going on with me? I don’t get it. Everyone was so quick to label me hyperactive (the label they used before ADHD became the new term) and shove me onto ritalin, and into what other kids called the “dummy class” even though my IQ was high enough that I could actually do work several grades ahead of my level. I remember by only the second or third grade not even wanting to go to school. Bullying was already bad then, and by middle school it was downright intolerable.

It’s hard to understand unless you have been there I think. School wasn’t about education for me, but only about making it through the day and hoping nothing bad would happen to me. In the course of my “education” I’ve been not only verbally bullied, but beaten up, and once was almost sexually assaulted at school by a group of guys who thought it would be fun to try dragging me into an empty science lab after school let out. (Thankfully someone helped me but wound up in the ER because of it) The school did nothing…didn’t even call the police.

Almost everything I have ever learned worth knowing I have taught myself, mostly by reading. I spent most of high school drawing or writing poetry. I had one or two friends, but no really close ones. For the most part I lived in a world of my own. Eventually after my grandfather died, and the few things keeping me stable enough to function started to come apart, I dropped out halfway through my senior year. I just couldn’t take the pressure and the daily abuse there anymore.

I went through a stage where I didn’t want to do anything, fell in with the partyers just to think I belonged somewhere, even though now with older eyes I know almost all of them were just using me. It didn’t seem there was much point to life right then, I was just not dealing with things, and like a lot of my so called “friends” I was just trying to have what we thought was fun.

Everything changed when I found out I was having my son. Even being on my own with his dad not wanting to be anywhere near in the picture, I still felt I finally had something to care about. I went back to school in an alternative program, and finally finished up getting my diploma. I graduated high school, and gave birth to my second baby two days later.

My twenties and even thirties were a string of one bad relationship after another, during which time I had a third child during another short lived relationship. Sometimes you want so badly to be loved that you don’t often realize why you keep making the same bad choices over and over. Looking back now I realize most of those men had a lot of qualities in common with my mother. They were all very demanding, emotionally and verbally abusive, and all very very much all about themselves, and their own wants and needs.

It took me a long time to finally realize why I kept falling into that pattern, and seven years of being alone, before I was finally ready to take a chance on any new relationship. That time I took a chance with a friend who was very different from my usual “type”, and very much more similar to me in personality. I’d finally found someone who could hold a good conversation with me, and not look down at me, or tell me I was crazy or stupid for thinking the things I think, or believe. I’m not all that silly, he was a keeper, so I married him.

I got upset last night and was crying when I thought about what he had said to me earlier in the evening. He asked me why when I’m upset, or stressed out, I curl up inside my shell and won’t talk to him. I don’t mean to push him away, but old habits are hard to break, when living inside yourself was the only way you knew how to survive for so long. Again it’s hard to explain to people who have never been there.

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve been through all of this….

All I’ve ever wanted was to be loved…

Now that I have what I’ve always wanted, it’s hard to change. The more stressed I get the more I fall back into old habits and defenses. These are things I need to work on. Optimism doesn’t come naturally to me. I make one hell of a conspiracy theorist when I am looking for reasons to worry. My nickname isn’t Eeyore for nothing…

The only way I can think to end this post is with a few words of advice. Take them for what they are worth. They are just things I have really wanted to say lately, and really just didn’t know how.

Even if you love your children for different reasons, and feel closer to one child than another, please make sure they all know they are loved and valued. Favoritism hurts more than most parents will ever realize.

Kids, and especially girls who do not believe they are loved and valued at home will turn elsewhere to find the affection they are longing for. Abusers are drawn to these kids like a magnet Love from their family can make all the difference in a child’s future and their relationships with others. Any sense of belonging has to begin at home, without it, some of us float for a lifetime feeling like we don’t belong anywhere.

We want so badly to know that we matter, and our lives, however hard have purpose…

Is this all just a pointless ramble?

Can you really understand?

Worry

10 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by in Boredom, Chipmunk, Evil Wizard, Taterbug, Winnifrog

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Worrying has always been a big issue for me. It gets better or worse depending on my present situation, and my frame of mind that day. My level of anxiety can also affect how optimistic I am at any given moment.

I worry over many different things. One of the things I worry over the most is money. Will John and I have enough money to keep a roof over our heads, and get our son the things that he needs? Will I be able to afford all the things we are going to need down the road? Will we ever be able to live in a home of our own without a roommate?

I also worry about my kids frequently. Is My daughter Whitney doing alight there in Ohio on her own? Where is Alexa, and will I ever get to see her again? Is Thor healthy and growing like he should? I will admit I worry every time I put him down to sleep at night. I must wake up half a dozen times some nights to check on him. I say the same prayer for him every night, sometimes several times a night, even if I don’t pray much about anything else anymore.

Sometimes I worry about staying healthy, and being around for my kids down the road. My older two kids are adults, but one is still a teen, and my youngest son is still just a small baby. I hope to live long enough to see him grow up. It know that is a worry because I am so much older now than before.

I worry about my husband and his health problems. What will happen if he loses what little is left of his hearing? What if his vision gets worse? What happens if he spends another two years unemployed, and he’s turned down for disability all over again? I can’t keep us afloat financially alone forever. I know he’s trying his best, and none of this is his fault.

I should be doing things to make the situation better. I have novels that need to be edited and rewritten, but it’s hard to want to work on it all when I’m this stressed out. Stress isn’t exactly conducive to creativity, at least not where I am concerned. It’s hard to concentrate, when all I can think about is how worried I am about it all.

I wish I knew how not to worry, or at least how to not let it get the better of me. Some days I just want to sit and cry about it all, other days I’m grumpy, and sometimes both at once. It would help if I knew that eventually it would all be alright, but I don’t. No one can promise me that, so the worry remains, it never goes away.

Baby Love

22 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in Chipmunk, Faith, Random Thoughts, Taterbug, Winnifrog

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It’s amazing how fast you can fall in love with babies. Thor has had me wrapped around his little finger since the second I first laid eyes on him. He surely has turned my world upside down, my world now revolves around him. Is he eating well? Is he warm enough? I must wake up half a dozen times a night sometimes just to check on him.

I know I’m blessed more than I can say to have him. Two years ago I never would have believed I’d be married now, or have another child. I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my grown-up life, even with the sadness that friends and family would know about. Only time will remedy that, hopefully sooner rather than later. Even after all this time I am still hoping and praying that someday my girls will come home and my family will be whole again.

For now I guess I will just enjoy the baby snuggles and smiles as long as I can. Babies don’t stay babies for long. As sleep deprived and frazzled as I can be, I also now know just how quickly these days slip away. I’m lucky enough to be given another chance to have them once again.

Enjoying it while it lasts…I love him so much.

December Again

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Holiday Thoughts, In Hindsight, Random Thoughts, Randomness, Utter Randomness, Winnifrog

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Time really flies when you’re not blogging. I keep meaning to write something here, but blogging hasn’t been in the forefront of my mind for quite some time. One reason is more than possibly that I have been spending a lot more time living life, and less time in front of a computer screen. Not having a computer of my own for several months due to a burglary kinda gave not getting around to posting a kick in the pants too.

But my oh my a lot can happen in just one year…

As sad as 2011 was for me, 2012 so far has been a vast improvement, but to explain things I guess I should start with the beginning of the year and work my way through.

John and I got engaged in the late summer/early fall of 2011, and thankfully he got the chance to meet my dad once before he passed away in December of last year. I will admit it’s hard being happy about the holiday season even now without dad here, but I have other things to be happy about now that make things a little better.

Not long after dad passed away I apparently got a little surprise in the form of an unexpected mid-life baby. John and I found out a bit after Valentine’s day. While I was really surprised, we were both extremely thrilled at the news, even nervous as I was to be going through it all again at my age.

A lot of this explains my absence, too busy with it all…well that and nausea that made me sick to my stomach to sit at the keys long.

The baby news did speed up our wedding plans a little, we got married in August in my grandparent’s living room with some family and a few friends there. I got lucky enough to have my beautiful now eighteen year old daughter as my maid of honor. Married life so far is as good as I could have hoped for. I’m very blessed to at last have a good man in my life.

Our Wedding

The pregnancy was mostly uneventful, except for the last week, when we went in and found out the baby was breech during our routine checkup. (don’t ask me how he managed to flip around that late) An unplanned c-section and a few weeks of recovering later, we are both doing well. My son is a beautiful and very intelligent baby. I love him so much already it is almost unbelievable. John is a wonderful dad and takes great care of both of us.

Our baby

So for once here’s a blog post without ranting or complaining, something I didn’t seem to be able to do for the longest time. Could it be that I am really happy for once in my life? I think so….it’s almost scary.