An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

My youngest and I went to coffee last night. We chit chatted about light stuff....this and that....nothing too important. And then I did it, FINALLY. I have been meaning to talk to her for a good long time but didn't have the opportunity or, perhaps, the courage. Before my life started over, while we were still deep within the craziness, I got a call from Jen. Jen was the assistant youth pastor at the church my little one attended. My girl was probably about 13, Jen was maybe 19. The two of them had built a friendship and Jen seemed to be a positive influence in my girl's life. She called me very upset, needed to come and speak to me and the Secret Keeper. I tried to talk to her on the phone but she was insistent. We made arrangements and Jen showed up at the appointed hour. We all sat in the living room in the house that held my heart, my girl looking incredibly uncomfortable, and got to the issue at hand. Jen informed us that my girl had confided in her that years

I'm done with all that history for now.  I've moved on. I have learned to forgive and feel a compassionate love for a very sick man and I am still learning to forgive myself for the ways I failed him and my kids. I know that I did the best I could at the time but my eyes have been opened about the walls I had erected around me and the persistent intermittent anxiety that I unconsciously blamed on the behaviors of the people around me.  From a bad situation, I am learning so much about unconditional love, acceptance, living one day at a time and breathing. I have learned that  Al-Anon  and  Adult Children of Alcoholics  have a tremendous amount of peace to impart if you are willing to put in the hard work. I have learned that changing the way you walk in and react to this world is very easy to say but incredibly hard to do but well worth the effort. More than anything I have learned that we all have good and bad things going on in our lives. We get to choose if our

I know I got in bed on that Saturday night. I don't know why I bothered. Who in the world could turn their brain off? Honestly it was in the following two months that the idea of using a drug or drinking sounded like bliss. How, even for an hour or two, I could forget everything. But that is not who I am. I did not sleep and sometime in the night I decided to check out a few places that I knew he gravitated towards. I drove around the quiet city realizing how crazy the behavior was. Normal people don't do this. Normal people have dinner, watch TV, dine with friends, visit grandkids, feel happy or lonely, but now are peacefully sleeping. Only crazy people drive around a city and look for someone that doesn't want to be found. Somewhere around 4:30 I found him. He was at his office. I parked and walked around the building, the night air chilling my tense body. I saw him in the window. He was at his desk, clearly agitated. Making phone calls, looking on his computer, repe

I cannot remember now. I can't for the life of me remember how we figured out that this man, this good man, was a junkie. That the disease of addiction had made it so that methamphetamine was more important than anything else.  It all makes sense now. The crazy behavior, the writing checks for cash but never using it in front of me, the sores on his arm and hands, the disappearing, sleeplessness, etc etc etc. Why can't I remember? I'll have to talk to my daughter because it seems like an important detail. We get up in the next morning....me frozen, seeing my kids in pain but being unable to do a damn thing about it because I am in shock. I am walking but cannot feel my feet. I am hearing but can't make sense of the words. The crazy texts are still coming. I hate him and the texts. I want to text back horrible things but know if the man kills himself my kids will read those texts and hold me responsible. So I don't. But I lay there, wishing he would. For th

Today is an anniversary of sorts.  What took place exactly three years ago today seems like yesterday and a life time ago at the same time. I woke at 4:00 am and went into the bathroom in the house that held my heart. I'm unhappy as usual; life had been spiraling out of control. While in there my then husbands charging phone lights up. I look and see a picture. It's a young woman, a red head. She is smiling at me, proudly sharing her perfect cantaloupe size breasts along with everything else. I'm shaking as I scroll back and realize that my husband, my once best friend, was using porn on his phone. A lot of it. That may be normal in some relationships but it had not been part of ours. I woke him and an argument ensues. His increasingly crazy behavior happened so slowly that by this particular day, a Friday, it was simply nuts and I'm left feeling confused and constantly wondering what the hell is going on.  I tell him I know he's not attending his AA meetings.

At times I get so antsy.  I think I might be a lot like my grandma. She had a lot of nervous energy and quelled it by chewing Chiclets gum and smoking. Don't get me wrong, she moved around a lot but in small ways, darting here and there, making pot after pot of coffee. I too have a lot of nervous energy. There is a voice inside of me that reminds me how limited my time is on this planet and how I am way too young to start being stagnant. Sitting watching television takes a strange self discipline on my part. I often have to combine it with doing other things. Ironing is a good one, games on my iPad is another. And that is for night time TV.....daytime TV is that much harder. I kinda want to scream, "There's a great big world out there,   people to know, places to see, things to do. Why sit and pretend to live when life is outside these 4 walls?" I still want to go do cartwheels on the beach. I want to feel a warm breeze on the streets of Paris, bask in the sun on a

Frank is a very personal friend of mine.... Well not really but I have known him for 27 years. I started seeing him after experiencing 4 miscarriages and, lo and behold, found myself pregnant. My OB Gyn sent me to see Frank. He is the ultrasound tech for my group. We started out pretty young, Frank and I. I was 25, he was probably a little over 30. I was a shy Mormon raised girl....he was a man with a mission. TV and movies usually show the tech using a tranducer that looks like this: I was one of the lucky ones that got this: After my mother was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer I started visiting Frank yearly. You would think that after 27 years of sticking that thing where the sun don't shine that Frank would remember, if not my name, at least my face.  Every year, year after year, I enter and first thing he says is, "Have you been here before?".  This year I just said, "We are old friends Frank....I know the drill....let's get

Yesterday we had friends over for dinner. The Boy Scout outdid himself with wonderful Indian food. We had chicken tikka marsala, a fabulous curry cauliflower and a cucumber tomato salad with cilantro and mint. The one thing he did not make was naan so I headed over to one of our favorite Indian restaurant to pick that up. Around 4:00 I made my way through the crowds of our busy and bustling downtown area. The summer out-of-towners are here. I was waiting for the light to change just outside a store called Blue Moon, which is geared towards very young gals with a leaning towards boho. I love me some boho so I stop in on occasion but it's rare I ever buy anything, mainly because most of it just doesn't cover enough of my 53 year old skin. I took notice of a small group coming out of the shop. This group consisted of a man that looked to be about 35ish and a much older gent that might have been his father...and a third person carrying two bags of Blue Moon merchandise. I did a

We are beginning the process of planning our front yard landscape. The Boy Scout has just finished up a major clean up, working day in and day out removing grass and crabgrass by hand. The drought made the previous jungle (I mean garden) untenable. The first water bill that came close to the $400.00 mark made that clear as a bell. Previously it looked like this: It had it's appeal but not really for me.  Now it looks like this: Unbelievable!! Now it's time to start planning water-wise landscaping. This California drought is probably never going to be over. Not really. Can't wait to start researching and creating but not the way I once did. The House That Once Held My Heart was a huge part of our lives....changing, planting, painting. Now a days I recognize that a house doesn't love you back and your best efforts should be put into your community; building relationships not fences. Trying to keep cool on this warm California day.....hope yours is going

A trip to the local hardware store provided interesting results tonight. You never know where the grief will come from, it can sneak up on you in the strangest places. I enter the doors of the store that has provided the odds and ends to just about every project done in the house that once held my heart. The number of times we, me and my ex-husband, entered those automatic doors I cannot even begin to count. We would enter with big plans, small projects, dreams of creating a perfect nursery or plans to re-landscape the whole backyard. This store rarely failed us, nearly always providing what we needed. For the most part the man knew exactly what he needed to get and I was there along for the ride or to help with carrying or possibly picking out paint colors. Sometimes we would go and work the project out in our heads. And I guess as a lot of people do, a quick sweep of the nursery for potential new plants or an attractive pot for the front porch, we always spent way more than we s

I love the AA / Al-Anon slogan of "Doing the next right thing". It's meant to be applied to oneself but I sometimes get caught in the trap of expecting someone else to do the next right thing, as I see it. Everyone's next right thing is their own. My right may be opposite of yours. If so, that means that healthy boundaries are pretty important. As I continue the process of "kind of" re-parenting myself, those boundaries become clearer. There is nothing wrong with expectations when it concerns how the actions of another may affect you. I have hopes and dreams...goals. When the repeated action of another may impede my future plans, I have the right to say "NO".  What the other person does with that line drawn in the sand is their own choice. My counselor reminds me that there is a very fine line between healthy boundaries and controlling. I agree. There are times when the scene before me looks like a window acting as a barrier from a heav

Maudie   is a quiet little movie that is well worth a trip to your local indie theater. It's the story of a much loved Canadian folk artist that, honestly, I had never heard of. We begin the story recognizing that there is something wrong with Maud but that is not the focus. The focus is this childlike, tenacious spirit who weathers a difficult life, that includes crippling arthritis, poverty and the lack of a supportive family network, with the help of an old can of paint and a ratty paintbrush. Sally Hawkins is wonderful and completely convincing as Maud Lewis. Ethan Hawke, who is not a particular favorite of mine, puts in a stellar performance. The movie is not your typical love story where everything seems to be neatly wrapped in a tidy package. It's more a voyeurs view of two people who have been tremendously damaged by this world, emotionally and physically, and how they walk their walk together, to the best of their abilities. The Nova Scotia backdrop is every bit a

A friend picked me up at 7:45. We made the 1/2 hour trek to the hills of a nearby town. Not sure of what to expect but cautiously optimistic that something positive would happen, I am pleased to say that YES..... goat yoga is every bit as fun as it looks. If you have the opportunity, by all means give it a try but a more rubber yoga matt is better as you might imagine. And perhaps a change of clothing....just in cases.

“It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women,” they wrote. “From his menstruation musings about  Megyn Kelly , to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about  grabbing women’s genitalia , the 45th president is setting the poorest of standards for our children.”  ~Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski Disturbing indeed! "You know, it doesn't really matter what [they] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass." ~D Trump - Esquire Magazine 1991 'You have to treat 'em like shit' ~D Trump - New York Magazine 1992 “I have days where, if I come home — and I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist,” the Republican said, “but when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof.” ~D Trump - ABC News interview 1994 “I have a deal with her. She’s 17 and doing great ― Ivanka. She made me promise, swear to her that I