Letting go

[joyagain]

Still here honeybera, reading along. Glad you are keeping busy and outta that funk. Glad you have a place to share and walk through it and out the other side. Glad your DS is surprising you in such a good way. Glad you got those foxtails out of their ears and such, and are getting at mowing them down. Do take care - don't over do it - but do it as it keeps you moving forward, right?

joyagain

[honeybera]

6-3-2023 Saturday
I have now FINISHED both the dog's yard and the garden side today and they are free of those rotten foxtails. Tomorrow I will take down about 1/3 of my Fuji apple tree so I can walk my entire yard freely and then put the scraps into the composter. Or those are my plans anyway. The pups are going to be blessedly not going to have those foxtails in their ears any longer. I'm proud of what I've accomplished.

But I am totally exhausted (in a very good way) and am cutting this short tonight.

==========================(8:30am Sunday morning)

I seem to have a real problem with FINISHING what I start. I need to ponder that as I lop off those low hanging limbs on the Fuji apple tree today. I need to get out there soon because the forecast is for 95ºF today! But even so, I'll be in the shade while cutting them off. Today is literally "one step at a time". When done, it will clear a path from one side of my yard(s) to the complete other side and all areas in between, clear up to the garage side door so I can access the garage directly from the outside as well as the inside (from the house to the garage to the yard). After much neglect out there (lack of watering, no pruning [due to inexperience and fear of messing it up], MAJOR dog damage), I'm beginning to turn this whole thing around, both inside and outside. Most of the stuff cluttering my garage (shelves and Mystery Boxes notwithstanding) is soil and soil enrichments for my garden, which will by its very nature USED UP IN THE GARDEN and not any longer in the garage. Lots of tools, too, all kinds of tools that will have to find permanent homes or out they go. I'm getting new ideas of how I ultimately want that garage space every time I go out there! It's a HUGE undertaking, not one to do right now, but soon. VERY SOON!! It will free up SO MUCH SPACE out there!!!

I'm also finding that I'm no spring chicken anymore, but I also know that with more exercise (walking, gardening, etc. : just MOVEMENT) the old-age-isms will lessen, too. So that can by no means be used as an excuse, but I will be 77 this Fall, and that is NO SPRING CHICKEN, no matter how you cut it. First Trump in a few days, then me in the late Fall. Wow! Where has my life gone? But at least comparing my age with Trump's you can get the full perspective of it. I am old, and it kind of snuck up on me!

I'll be back as soon as the limb-trimming is D-O-N-E.

Honeybera

[honeybera]

I think I'll eat a tadpole, think I'll eat a bug
I've got some worms down in the garden, most recently dug
You said you didn't love me, you told me we were through,
So listen, Honey Baby, this is what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna eat a big old tadpole and run away and hide
And you'd be oh so very sorry if I stayed away and died.
So if you really love me, just say it with a hug,
And I won't eat a tadpole or a bug (I really mean it!)
No, I won't eat a tadpole or a bug.

- from my memory from when I was 1½-5 yrs. old

Now let me see if I can find that song on the internet that I memorized from an old record that we had, and I sang for anyone who'd listen. I was a real ham!

OK, now I've done my internet research and only came up with this song as a "folk song" (http://folklore dot usc dot edu/tadpole-song/) that this guy had also been introduced to as a kid. I remember it verbatim, but that's just me (photographic memory), and it's exactly as it popped into my brain this morning upon awakening. I allowed myself to let it run to see how much of it I recalled. APPARENTLY every single word! And he even did the "I really mean it" part, which made me laugh. But this website also mentioned death, mother, and suicide as words associated with this song - and all of that REALLY makes sense to me now! It's why I stood in the toilet and actually thought about it solemnly...and then pulled the cord so I would go where my poop went: AWAY DOWN THE TOILET! I always say that I'm EXTREMELY GLAD that they didn't own a gun.

This happened in the little cottage in back of my grandparent's house, so I was probably 4 or barely 5 when this happened. I remember thinking that I didn't KNOW where the poop went, but it was better than where I was! I remember seeing the darkened bedroom with my crib (yes, a crib at that age!) across the foot of their bed because it was a one bedroom cottage, TINY bathroom and kitchen, the bathroom was the shower, tiny sink with a mirror above it, and the toilet, and barely room for that. I could see the bright sunlight coming through the kitchen window onto the kitchen table...and I thought really, REALLY hard about whether to pull that handle or not...and then she began to laugh at me, and I PULLED IT.

I actually thought (in my child's mind) that I would go down like the poop did. No one was more surprised than me that I didn't! MD just roared with laughter! I'm sure that if I'd pulled it off, she would have been VERY glad to get rid of my crib and all the responsibilities with it. Imagine: all that leisure time and PRIVATE time with my father! Why, she could have gone off to work with him every day instead of being stuck in that ridiculously TINY cottage with ME!! So she made me dresses so she'd look like a caring mother, stand me on a chair for HOURS pinning this and hemming that, giving me Toni Home Perms that stunk to high heavens and ran near to my eyes because she wanted my flaxen straight hair to be CURLY like my dad's. She curled her own straight hair, too, but whoever was doing it for her didn't slap her every few minutes and tell her how UGLY she was!!! My God, how she must have HATED me for just being there!! AND HAVING STRAIGHT BLONDE HAIR AND GREEN EYES (hers were brown/brown) and a frigging GIRL!! She had PROMISED my father that I was going to be a B-O-Y and they even nicknamed me SPIKE before I was born! It was NOT working out like she'd planned when she dropped out of high school in her senior year in Oct. and married at 16 and got pregnant within 4 months. Not at all! And she was FURIOUS about it!! Unfortunately, I didn't understand this as a child and thought that it really WAS me that was the problem. It wasn't.


However, there I stood. Right in her way. And there was nothing that she could DO about it, not by that time. She couldn't kill me, although I can tell you that she wanted to, and I believed that if she could've gotten away with it, "like an accident" or something, SHE WOULD HAVE! In fact, I'm quite sure that she tried MANY times. How does a toddling 1½-2 yr. old get up on VERY LIVE railroad tracks a mile or two away from the ranch house of my paternal grandfather while MD was "busy"? A bob-tailing big rig driver saw me on the tracks and made the turn and blew his air horn (brilliantly and repeatedly) because he knew that that would scare me and make me run for "home", which it did. They all (MD, PGF, and my father) came out to see what all the ruckus was about, and here I was, toddling like heck as fast as my little feet would carry me, with this HUGE big rig bobtail right behind me. That man saved my life!

And the time they sent me off to this church camp and a pedophile ("Don't scream unless you want to get hurt, little girl!") MINISTER from this church (which I didn't belong to and I knew no one nor of their rather odd customs - MD said they were "holy rollers") grabbed me on a path deep in the woods where I wasn't supposed to be and no one even knew I was there. We had just arrived and I was exploring. I was going into the 7th grade. I believe I was 10 or 11 at the time. When he said that to me as he had grabbed me by my wrists, I realized that I COULD scream, so I did!! With all my might!! And I wrenched my hands away and immediately took off like a deer spooked right up this steep hill next to us! I even lost my thong and ran into the FORBIDDEN boy's tent area, SCREAMING MY HEAD OFF!! The cops were called, the cops questioned me outside, I was taken to an office area afterwards, and then this same GUY that had grabbed me walked in!!!!!! I said, "THAT'S HIM!!!" - and then all the women in there became flustered and said that I MUST be making the entire thing up! "Why, that's Minister So-and-So! She's mistaken!" and these nice church ladies convinced the cops and the cops left!

When I asked to call my mother, THEY REFUSED! ("You won't be calling your mother with these lies of Satan!!") There were no cellphones back then, but there was a payphone, although I didn't know how to use it without money. I went to "church" that evening and had to sit there with this man staring bullets through me from the raised up area where the church officials and ministers sat. And that was scary enough, but then the people sitting around me began to be in what I later on in life learned was to speak in tongues and be slain in the spirit, REALLY scary stuff when you don't know what's happening, especially after my terrifying afternoon and having to sit there with this same man staring at me! They eventually drug me up to kneel at the altar and began hollering about being saved and "the Blood of the Lamb" - I thought they were going to kill a lamb in front of me and put that blood on me. I was SO SCARED!

So when they asked me if I was saved yet, I said, "Oh, YES!" and they finally left me alone!! No dead lambs, no blood smeared on me - but I wanted to just LEAVE there and GO HOME!! This was NOT a fun summer camp!! So I snuck over to the payphone after church and dialed "O" and this nice lady came on and I told her my phone number and that I had to call MD, BUT that I had no money, and she asked me if I knew about a collect call. She then instructed me on how to make a collect call, thank God (no pun intended), and when MD answered and heard what had happened, she was really quite irked...AT ME! I was disturbing them. "So what do you want US to do?" "COME AND GET ME!!!" She honestly said, "Well, we'll come up there tomorrow. It's already nearly 10pm." TOMORROW???? WTF??!! As I look back on it now, I'm HORRIFIED!! I was a mere INCONVENIENCE????

BUT to be honest, that's exactly what I was. My little brother was born and about a yr. old and very cute. I was not there, but my father was to appreciate his son. Just the 3 person family MD wanted...and now I wanted to spoil it all by coming HOME! THE NERVE OF ME!! But they dutifully drove up the next day. The entire trip takes about 30 min. from where their home was to this "Bible camp". They arrived in mid afternoon, which means they had a leisurely breakfast and a late take off to come up there...grudgingly! When she got there, MD was very brisk with me, to the point of being rude! But the church ladies made a beeline for MD and told her exactly what she wanted to hear: I had MADE UP A STORY about one of their most beloved ministers because I just wanted to go home due to homesickness!! My father just went along with it. In my mind's eye I can still see their car pulling away as I chased after it down the pot holed country road up in the redwoods. I was SO SO SO scared all over again.

She also had the opportunity to bring me clothes that the Church felt were more appropriate for Bible Camp: dresses, long pants, nice shoes for church - VERY modest stuff! All I had with me were shorts sets, a bathing suit , and flip-flops. Oh, and ONE dress, zipper in the back, which I couldn't operate by myself, and one pair of shoe shoes. I was a normal kid in an abnormal world. Church was to be attended BEFORE breakfast, AFTER lunch, and AFTER dinner until bedtime EVERY SINGLE DAY. Attending Church and having that preacher stare at me from those bleachers was the entire day outside of meals! We got to go to the beach ONCE the entire time and NO ONE was to wear a bathing suit or even remove our shoes and get our feet wet!! NO ONE!! And BTW, I could not comb my own hair by then either so that was a hassle, too. And showers were out of the question. And they were upset because I didn't make my bed - but I didn't know how. MD always did that - and IF I tried to do that at home, I'd get a beating!! So I just left it unmade the entire time. WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!

WHAT KIND OF PARENTS LEAVE THEIR CHILDREN IN SUCH A BAD PLACE, FIRST OVERNIGHT AND THEN FOR A FREAKING WEEK????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If we were even religious (which we definitely WERE NOT), and if I knew that my child was even slightly uncomfortable there, much less being in the company unsupervised with a man who had tried to hurt her on a daily basis, I would have made that 30 min. drive immediately!!! IF NOT SOONER!! But with the creepy minister guy grabbing AND THREATENING one of my kids? A DAUGHTER!!?? And then the church ladies tell my kid, "You will NOT call your mother!!" Oh man! I'd have been back up there at 10:30pm WITH MORE COPS and not the next day in mid afternoon! Of course, things today are different. The cops would not have just left me there because the church ladies decided to intervene. Things kids say are not taken with a grain of salt.

BUT MAY I SAY AT THE RIPE OLD AGE OF 76 - IT DID HAPPEN!!! EXACTLY AS I SAID IT DID! And I ran right up that hill like I was on fire and that man was right behind me!! I was just quicker than him and it was very steep! Afterwards, when he came into that office, he denied ever seeing me! Lying piece of manure!! One evil, EVIL man!!! But he never did bother me again (naturally!) - he was exposed, was being watched, and was thereby (on his best behavior. But he stared daggers at me the entire time I was there. And MD enjoyed her week without me, leaving me in harm's way. It was always her way.

Wait, I kept going and found who actually sang it: Sue Thompson on an album done and released in 1951 when I was 5. The album is called "The Country Side".

I also had another song I sang: Johnny's a Big Boy Now. But that one I can't even find on the internet.

I'm changing my complete computer area today: new printer, keyboard, desks, and later on I'm SERIOUSLY thinking of getting a new little red 4.5 cu. ft. fridge and a matching red microwave for my room and bringing in the new air fryer I already got for my bathroom (ON SALE for $19) - I love it! I'll be REALLY self contained! Sometimes that walk clear into the kitchen can be a painful and off putting one. I can easily access my backyard for exercise. Something is going on in my head recently. I'm really withdrawing more and more. I don't like change, but this feels necessary. I'll still come out of my room as needed, but IF I can't, I won't be left so alone and so helpless to take care of my own needs, like food, water, and a trip to the bathroom occasionally. I also want a deadbolt lock on my bedroom door with a numeric pad on the outside so DS can get in if needs be, or even emergency people, but not any bad guys. I guess I'm making my room into a small apartment, which is fine with me. If I want to cook something more, I can always go into the kitchen and make a big pot of something, taking the leftovers for my small fridge. Heat it up in my microwave oven. Air fry darned near anything. Cold drinks in the fridge, especially water.

---------------------------(Thursday noon 6-8-2023)

I'm typing this on my NEW KEYBOARD!! My computer is down on the floor (YAY!!) and DS is off to the Best Buy because one of the necessary cables for my NEW PRINTER was left out of the box. My new desks are set up and are working perfectly!! I'M ALSO LOOKING OUT OF MY WINDOW ON THE WORLD IN ITS ENTIRE GLORIOUS SPLENDOR into my backyard/garden with BOTH drapes pulled back for the first time in several years. The sunlight drenching through them is HEAVENLY!! I was only able to pull back one side before now ever since my laptop died and the desktop setup was put in for me. It was too wide for me to reach across it, but now with this more narrow desk, I CAN DO IT once again!!

Next up: buy my new 4.5 cu. ft mini fridge, microwave for the top of it, and the new 8 qt. air fryer with a window in the front of it and a light inside. YAY!!! And then I'm SET SET SET!!!

DS should be back momentarily. Gotta run. TONS of stuff to do.

Honeybera

[honeybera]

Here I sit at my new computer setup, window on the world (WOW) drapes wide open, dogs strolling through the yard, hummers buzzing through periodically, all is right with the world...that I can see. AND that which I cannot see doesn't really matter to me much. I can safely visit it through my TV at my leisure. Life is GOOD ATM! And I intend to appreciate it!

I watered everything out there today. My hummingbird flowers are blooming and it is looking lovely out there with all the colors. Reds (of course), yellows, purples, pinks, and true blue, all trumpet flowers of one kind or another. To be able to watch the entire view outside is so refreshing for me, so empowering and uplifting, and such a nice way to alleviate depression!! AND it encourages me to get out there more and EARLIER due to no mosquitos in the morning and cooler temps, even in the blistering 100ºF and worse summer heat that's nearly upon us! In the mornings even on the worst days it's only in the 60s and 70s, and even cooler sometimes. I can do this!! (One step at a time...)

I need to make dinner now, but I thought I'd like to tell you guys just how happy I am ATM right now. I HAVE A PRINTER AGAIN!!! I found a recipe for coleslaw dressing from scratch that is easy to make and sounds delicious!! Now I can print the recipe out and take it out to the kitchen to make it. I am just tickled pink with all of this! I believe that I'll order my 8qt. air fryer and microwave for my room tonight. The red (or black) "retro" mini fridge-freezer (Insignia or Galanz, varying heights and capacity) will be in a few more weeks. I keep changing my mind about the sizes available, the colors, and the stores and the price? But I have plenty of time, and once it's bought, it's bought.

I also wanted to let you know, Jonesy, that I just made my last $100.00 payment to you through PayPal. It should be coming your way by June 25. If not received by July 1st, please do let me know. MD is all paid back now. I owe her NOTHING and you all on here have benefited. I love it when a plan comes together! If I could have paid her directly, I would have, but this is even better! I really hope that it's helped you keep isurvive.org going. You're doing so much for so many!! ♥♥Thank you!!♥♥

Honeybera

[joyagain]

Hey Honeybera there in your lovely space and place of beauty

- Celebrating you and your ingenuity to create that space for yourself,
and for getting that new computer and printer set up now, being able to print out recipes and whatever you need to,
and being able to open now both drapes and letting that glorious heavenly WOW inspire you to get out there earlier
and get your exercise before the mosquitos and before it gets too hot
and gather up your goodies from the plants
and to have what you need close by in your "apartment", so if in pain you don't have to go to the kitchen.

Doing good taking care of yourself and your needs, and utilizing this forum and thread to share your story, your truth, of both all this as well as, the story of your horrible childhood abuse, your horrific abusers and your pain,
and your spunk despite it all!

joyagain

[honeybera]

I had an interesting thought just now: When I tried to flush myself down the toilet (commit suicide) as a little kid at about 4 yrs. old, MD was standing right there watching me do it. She was around 20 yrs. old when I climbed up and stood in the toilet to "go where the poop goes", and due to the watery mess that would have made on her bathroom floor, it should have infuriated her instantly! I was seriously contemplating taking my own life, and in fact I DID pull the chain, but what happened instead is that she saw my folly and ignorance and began to laugh, and I mean L-A-U-G-H!!! She didn't see my pain or how my heart must have been truly broken by her. No, she saw it as funny...just before her mirth subsided and she turned on me to beat me nearly senseless for creating more housework for her. And so it was always with her.

But this morning I got to thinking about it. One time when my dear GM was babysitting me (complete with "forts" made out of overturned chairs and blankets and many other fun things to do with my grandparents), it was getting late and she wanted me to go to bed, but I wanted to continue to play. She said no, now go to the bathroom before bed and I'll get the story book (only one in the entire house: Mixed Pickles). She helped me break down the "forts" and get into my PJs, but I was really irked! I wanted to stay up and play more!! So I trudged dejectedly and angrily down the hallway and into the bathroom while my GM watched - and sat down hard to show her just how angry I was - but I didn't notice that my dear GP had left the seat up and I sat clear down into the water! My GM laughed so hard at the scene before her!! But it was different. Not the same "mean", snide laugh that MD had laughed, nor was it done for the same reason. Here I was irked, but with MD, after one too many beatings or scoldings for being "too ugly", I was to the point of escape even to the point of suicide. So both times I was in the toilet, but for reasons being polar opposites.

And afterwards my GM gently and lovingly dried me off, put my PJs into the laundry, and changed me into a T-shirt of GP's, still read me my story until I fell asleep, all nicely tucked in and feeling loved again, watching that bare light bulb as she read, and drifted off to sleep. Can you see the difference? My grandparents married very late (mid30s) and only had one child, a little boy who was stillborn. Probably would have lived with today's medicine, but not back in the 1920s. So they adopted MD and my Aunt M. They were only going to adopt one, got her and went out to the car, but the first one said, "What about my sister?" So they went back and took the other one, too. So like my grandparents to do such a thing. Both MD and my Aunt M. argued about which one was "The One" taken first from the orphanage, but knowing them both, I tend to believe my Auntie.

This adoption was done in the depths of The Depression when MD was 5 and Aunt M was 7. For their next Christmas, my GM and GP handmade the girls dolls with doll clothes and a doll house. Throughout The Depression my GM worked as a CPA at home while raising them, and my GP had a job with the railroad. These are the people MD later called "suckers for a sad story". She's really lucky that they were! They took her AND her sister AND even my Aunt J a year later when they both asked, "But what about our OTHER sister?" And they returned to the Orphanage as soon as they realized that THREE sisters had been split up and got Aunt J, too. But Aunt J was Aunt J, even at that tender age of 10 caused so much trouble in the household , like saying to the two younger girls, MD 6yr. and Aunt M 8yr., "Let's run away! These people aren't your REAL parents!!" and was physically abusive to other family members and so on, that my grandparents realized that they had to deal with her disruptive behavior somehow. My Aunt J generally knew where her actual bio-mother and stepdad were living, and my grandparents with their unbelievably generous hearts found them not far from where I live now and took all three girls there for both a visit and a choice. When the visit was over, my grandparents asked all the girls, "Do you want to live here or do you want to live with us?" Aunt J chose her bio-mother and Aunt M and MD chose my grandparents. Everyone kept in contact over the years. Problem solved. That is why I loved my grandparents so much. They were like this in everything - very fair, very patient, and always with the wisdom of Solomon. But this idea of them standing there, within a short time after losing their only child, a son, to stillbirth, and asking that question of their new daughters and TAKING SUCH A RISK of utter disappointment and possible gut wrenching grief all over again, astounds me to this day! Who does that sort of thing? My grandparents really lived their faith!!

So why did MD turn out so rotten? Well, she had five years, her formative years, of mistreatment, sexual molestation, absolute poverty, and the worst one of all: ABANDONMENT prior to her being adopted! All of that horrible negative that she had experienced before her adoption made her feel "less than" and UNWANTED - and she was DETERMINED to NEVER EVER let anyone make her feel like that again! The trouble was that all those feelings were coming from the INSIDE of her, not from the outside, and so thereby she could never really win. And who got to be her whipping boy every time she felt like that? ME.

And she passed it on to me, too. I was cruel to my older son, too, just as she had been to me, and I even lived in the cottage out in the back of my grandparent's house. Talk about deja vu!! I was my grandparent's caretaker which I did happily. But when I really thought that I'd killed my son (he went down and didn't get back up), I called CPS on myself, got a counselor, and began to really explore how it was that I got here and how to STOP IT! That was in 1974, Nixon was standing in the front of the plane, giving two peace symbols and saying, "I'm no crook!" to avoid impeachment, and I watched "All My Children" (soap opera), gardened, and fought "being fat" at 140 lbs!! Honestly, not much has changed...except that I no longer have that FURY, that RAGE, deep inside me if I don't get my way. I roll with the punches more. TONS of T's and counselors later PLUS over 25 yrs. of dealing with the public has really helped me. The rage is gone just like the addictive URGE to smoke has blessedly left me.

But I put some effort into it! I went to T after T, and I always wanted to be "nice" like my GM. I was ALSO lucky to have her as a role model!! And my GP too!! But MD did nothing but lash out at every female around her. The closer to her they were, the more violent the lashing out! She just plain didn't care!! If she ever did admit to the violence and go to someone to help her get rid of HER demons, she would have felt "less than" again or possibly open her up to being unwanted/abandoned, and she was having NONE of that! SHE was "elegant" (or more like mid-western elegant), like she drank wine, yes, but bought the cheapest red she could get and in a 1 gallon jug. She didn't even dress fancy and bought her clothes from a catalog. But her house was CLEAN!! Uncomfortably clean, but then she could look down her nose at others that way. Aunt J gave her a run for her money, and Aunt M just agreed with her, yet stayed out of her way. ME? I was just an infant, then a normal kid, but I was target #1!! I needed a mother, but got Mommy Dearest instead. We lived on my grandparent's property until I was 5, so lucky for me I got their influence, too. GP made me feel needed and capable AND PROTECTED whenever he was around: "helping" with hanging the laundry up on the clothes line and the trash burning and the gardening (he was retired), and my GM allowed me to "cook" anything out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. They fortunately for me helped me to develop an interest in those things. There was never any judgement or shame involved with them.

Did I do some rotten things from time to time? Yes. Because I was a kid! But was I a rotten person because of it? I don't think so. Not now anyway. But back then? You bet I did. And MD always backed up that idea. I was the WORST, the DUMBEST, the MOST UNGRATEFUL, the U-G-L-I-E-S-T kid in the entire WORLD. NO ONE was worse than me! Or so she said. Over and over and over and over again, throughout my entire life, in words and innuendos and attitudes and slights. One tends to believe it after a while when delivered by the person that one should trust above all others. But time away from her led me towards the truth...eventually.

========================(Glorious Monday "morning"!!)

Which can only be said by a retired person! Everything is closed on the weekends and due to my gaming and general lethargy, nothing much gets done (usually) either.

I had a weird dream last night. Or actually this morning because I REALLY slept in...clear until noon. But it was worth having the dream. I dreamed that my dad was still alive and so were my grandparents. My dad said that he was leaving for a minute, that he'd be right back...but then he left me, abandoned me. I was little at first, and then was who I am now, and I felt truly abandoned by him. When I woke up, I began to realize just how damaging that must have been for MD. To understand her (for me) is helpful to me and MY healing. It's really hard to rectify and balance the brutal beatings of an infant and a toddler with MD's rough childhood - AND IT'S NO EXCUSE FOR WHAT SHE'S DONE - but I can at least see what has happened to her and how it effected her into feeling she had the RIGHT to treat me as she did. She needed an anchor baby, I was who she got, and I then rapidly became an inconvenient and undesirable burden to her...and she grew to hate me, an infant, for it!! Day after day of dirty, stinky, crappy diapers, a colicky, screaming baby that was heard by all in my grandparent's crowded house, including her M-A-N (and knowing my father, he would try to AVOID the situation and her and the loud, irritating noise!!), the constant bottles and feeding schedules: NOT AT ALL what she had anticipated!! She even drugged me with phenobarbital in my formula - not kidding!!

Remember: all she knew of babies (and in fact all ANYONE in that household knew of babies, including my grandparents) was what she'd seen in movies of the time. People went to the movie theaters in those days, and at 16 (when she married my father. a wounded vet just home from WWII), people did NOT bring their squalling children to movie theaters! It was ALL adults in my grandparent's household, too (my father had not built the cottage out back yet for another year and a half), and no one was ready for the constant shrieking of me. In 1967, my older DS was also colicky. Tension in the mother is often the cause, and MD actually came to stay with me when I had him - but only to torture me. She went through all my drawers and closets, complaining about how I did EVERYTHING WRONG, how HER way was so much better, and how I needed to just give up the "nasty" form of feeding (breastfeeding) and give my son a bottle of formula that stunk to high heavens! I was so uptight that I could not nurse. I had no milk, or so I thought until I contacted the La Leche League by phone (still around today online). They recommended that I boot MD (WHICH I DID WITH GLEE!! ), get several beach towels, massage my painfully FULL OF MILK breasts in a precise manner, and VERY soon I felt the milk "let down". AND THEN IT GUSHED OUT in a literal stream! I soaked those towels, one after another: one under my breasts, one in the washer, one in the dryer - repeatedly! And oddly, the "colic" ended soon, too. How about that?! ♥♥♥GOD BLESS THE LA LECHE LEAGUE!!!!!!!♥♥♥ Due to their patience and kind and gentle guidance, I successfully breastfed all three of my children!

How did I get off on all of that? I have gardening to do! AND inside work, too! BUT I'm glad I shared that anyway. I FIRMLY BELIEVE that MD caused her OWN problems with colic due to HER being a perfectionist with a movie theater driven philosophy of life!! AND being 17 when she had me! And her adopted mother and closest sister (my Aunt M) having no experience with babies either. That colicky cry is particularly piercing, LOUD, and hard to listen to. I'm saying this from experience myself with my ODS. But if it's not "gas" and is simply an uptight, inexperienced mother (as it often is), the trick is to simply relax and enjoy and LOVE your baby in a peaceful surrounding. Sitting outside (if possible), rocking, and breastfeeding (babies best and most nutritious food + being close to mother) discretely of course (use a light blanket) - how could a baby NOT be soothed by that kind of treatment by a loving mom? They can FEEL the love. They can SENSE it!

And with that...I'm outta here! Got a Fuji apple tree and some invasive whippy weeds that are taunting me out there!!

Honeybera

[honeybera]

Thanks joyagain! You have no idea how important seeing those pom-poms of yours flash and sparkle and to hear your cheering me on encourage me!! Apparently, all this is coming up more and more. I sure seem to be writing about it more and more. LOOOOONG diatribes about MD and her mean, mean ways. The inspiration seems to urgently hit more me and more and day by day. Maybe I'm trying to avoid confronting all this work in front of me?

Right now I have to make some mayonnaise, make a pineapple coleslaw, try out some frozen french fries for DS in my new 4.2 qt. air fryer (which I am very much in love with, but the new BIGGER 8 qt. one for my room has just been shipped) ♥♥♥, plus crisp up the rotisserie chicken in there, too. I'm going to microwave cook the entire 3 lb. bag of freshly purchased organic Yukon Gold potatoes and put them into my fridge and make a yummy potato-egg-bacon salad to go with some main dish or sandwich later on. Real homemade stuff. I'm a kid of the 1950s. These things are not foreign to me.

I DID CLEAN MY STOVE!!! OMG, it looks terrific! Now the chore is to KEEP it just as clean as it is now. Just like the dishes. It's one of my new rules. DS cleaned the microwave since it's way up over my head and very hard for me to reach all the spots inside and above. I'll clean the outside of the door, but he does the rest. I found him with a dish towel buffing a fingerprint off the 30 second button the other day. GOOD!!

======================(Thursday afternoon 86ºF :oops )

WHEW!! <PANT, PUFF!!> OMG!!! I DID IT!!!!! I cut a path from one end of the yard to another by trimming up the WAY WAY WAY overgrown and NEVER PRUNED 25' high Fuji apple tree!! Or at least as high as I could reach (which isn't much), and I left the trimmings on the ground...BUT THIS TIME only until tomorrow morning and not for years and years until the grasses grow up around them and hold the decaying wood in place. No, THIS TIME I HAVE A PLACE (HALLELUJAH!!) for all that freshly pruned off wood: MY COMPOSTER!! And I can move all those trimmings, cut them up into really small pieces (so they "compost" more quickly) with my amazingly sharp loppers (or handheld pruners), CLEAR OUT the "kitchen scraps" (Nitrogen, "green") from the garage that I've been saving up for exactly this, and in it goes! I've also been shredding up many shipping boxes and the paper padding that they often hold (Carbon, "brown"), and that is being stored in my bathroom in white 30 gallon trash bags. The ratio is 1 N + 2 C + air (reason why I got a tumbler model) + water. Given less time than I thought it would take (depending on what I put in there and how small the pieces are), I'll have "Black Gold" in a month or two, the best compost and fertilizer for my plants that there is! I have two separate 50 gallon drums that tumble separately (and extremely easily), so I think that since I need less Green than Brown, I'll use one side for all the kitchen stuff (which there is a TON OF IT! That surprised me) and the other for all of the more solid yard trimmings that I'm creating. However, I do have enough "brown" for both sides and then some!

I am THRILLED with my never before used loppers. If I can get them around a limb, it cuts it off with little effort like a hot knife through warm butter! I'm taking out my vicious looking arched saw to work on the rest of the branches, which aren't blocking my path, but aren't as trimmed back as I'd like them to be. We'll see how I do using a manual (but specialized) saw.

======================== (Saturday evening)

I did a lot of the things that I'd been putting off for so long! I see that as a real plus! I MADE MY MAYONNAISE...AND THEN MY COLESLAW!! That was a real stickler for me, but I don't know why. Well, maybe I do know...I can't stand or walk for very long anymore, maybe a half hour to an hour inside the house or even less time than that, and the FIRST THING OF THE DAY, before my feet go numb, like "go to sleep", and then it begins to HURT and the pain creeps up my feet to my calves, and then I can't walk and HAVE TO sit down and rest a bit before continuing with whatever chore I was doing. The later in the day it is, the worse the pain is.

Now outside is a different matter. I can do all kinds of things out there, the time just gets away from me as I putter around, and before I know it I've been out there for an hour or two or three without any pain whatsoever while doing a good bit of exercise by walking, stretching, and heavy lifting! But inside it's a whole different matter. I can barely walk later in the day. And the pain in my feet and calves is excruciating and I'm so swollen that I have to SQUEEZE my poor feet into my clogs (IF POSSIBLE) to go outside! I can sit and do work, and sometimes I do. I did watch that video today on youtube on my computer on how to make the REALLY INEXPENSIVE, but very sturdy, grow boxes out of the "Mt. Cardboard" boxes that are stacked up in our living room, line them with a 3 mil thick Contractor's trash bag, and seal them up with Gorilla tape. (We also use the boxes as cut up 3" wide fodder for making the micro-cut cardboard for the composter in our micro-cut shredder, which accelerates the composting process by a great deal.) This fellow, on his "Plant Abundance" youtube videos, even shows how to put in really simple drainage plugs, either low or up at about 4" if I want to fill up separate sandbags with potting soil/compost, fill the grow box with water, and let the water leach up automatically into the plants and saving me time watering. It's really quite ingenious.

=========================(Monday afternoon)

I'm shredding papers and clearing out boxes from the big pile of boxes that I put in here about a year or so ago. These boxes are filled with stuff from my 33' long pull trailer that had been parked in two spaces at work and that I lived in for 10 long yrs. (Early 2004-2014) while still owning this house so I wouldn't have to make that hideous 100 mile commute to work every day! I retired early in 2014, and this is the sort of stuff that is in the storage room. It's in my room at this time because my DS said the following: "If you move that stuff out of the way, I'll move out the old roll top desk from the storage room." So I'm thinking that it'd only be a matter of a day or two, and stacked it all up in front of my chest of drawers and fake fireplace (which serves as my TV stand, too - I had a guy make me a glass top for it). However, that was a LONG time ago!! And there the mess sits, still to this day!! So I'm going through it now, finding permanent homes for all of it or tossing it out or selling it (not much in these boxes to sell - example: a BIG unopened bag of Macadamia nuts with a best buy date of 8-13-12!! plus old bras, bags of other plastic bags, and all kinds of other just plain crap) instead of waiting for that damned desk to be moved first. Once MY room is cleaned (HALLELUJAH!!!), I will start on clearing out the storage room closet of all the toys from my OLD ANCIENT HISTORY Child Care TOYS!! I no longer have a child care, I have NO DESIRE to have another at this time (and probably never will), but I found a place called Once Upon A Child who BUYS toys!! And after that, MY CLOSET!

My closet looks neat enough, but it's PACKED with unnecessary stuff. In 2007, I was on a murder case jury (it was an easy to decide case, happily for me! Guy shot his wife in front of all the neighbors), but I had to look presentable in court and this case took over 3 weeks. So I bought a BUNCH of clothes to wear (which I HATE to do - thanks MD) and was able to successfully get through all of that, BUT THE CLOTHES ARE STILL IN MY CLOSET!! I also have a Jackie Gleason wardrobe [Gleason had three separate wardrobes to accommodate his fluctuating weight], along with many things that are still in their packages. That includes brand new shoes that don't fit (and never did - got them off the internet) and lots of sheets and pillowcases that don't fit my bed. So that is a day of decisions that I'm not looking forward to, but will appreciate once it's done and I have more space.

But regarding that desk...my DB moved it in here, and I'm hoping that he'd be willing to move it out of here, too. HE called ME the other night "just to talk". He's NEVER done that before!!! So I'm thinking that we are building a more solid relationship here, and that amazes me!! Now that MD is gone (as is his MD copycat wife), it's like he's forgotten that I'm on the DO NOT CALL list! He and I have always been a sort of "distant close". We made a peace pact when he was just 6 and I was 16 and living in MD's home. We sat on the front porch steps and I told him, "She's pitting us against each other and making us fight. Let's not let that happen anymore." And we both agreed and shook hands on it. That agreement has held until this day. But only now are we really comparing notes, and boy oh boy, are we BOTH learning a LOT! He'd only heard one side for all these years while hearing terrible things about me. We share a history, somehow the same (same people, same family), but light-years apart, too! I was in one place 100 miles away, on Welfare, working, going to college, etc. while he was a farmer over here, pampered and supported by our family (the Golden Child, the Heir Apparent). NOW FINALLY we can compare notes, delve back into family history, and find out the TRUTH on many matters. It's been truly LIBERATING!!

But I can also say that if his wife (my SIL) hadn't died of COVID a year and a half ago, I'd still be persona non grata. He's an awful much like my dad. He makes his choices as the least to cause him any trouble, and I was always considered as trouble. I wasn't "trouble", but I was seen as some sort of threat/trouble by those two ornery women, and their men stayed clear of me to keep the peace. As my father said to me at age 27 when asked by me why he didn't stop the abuse, "I've gotta live with her, Honey." I'll never forget him saying that to me. But it really described the entire situation and where I stood in the family. Same thing happened with my SIL. I was simply not invited to holidays or birthdays ( however nor was MD) and my SIL had my DB all to herself. How like MD she was. And DB allowed it by not saying a word. Oh well.

But now things are very different. He is now a widower. He told me that he's experienced grief for the first time ever. MD said the same thing to me after my father passed. He is doing very well considering what he's been through.

Sending this now...otherwise I just keep adding to it...

Honeybera

[Scars]

Hello, Honeybera,

You have been getting so much done lately. Wow! I'm so impressed.
I have enjoyed reading along.

<3 scars

[honeybera]

Hi Scars! And welcome. ♥ back at ya'!

Thanks for reminding me that I'm choosing to get things done. I was just having my coffee today (sort of late today) and half-watching The Five on Fox News when they played a bumper (music between segments) The Spy Who Loved Me (Nobody Does It Better) and I stopped and froze right there and paused the program. I could "hear" the entire song in my brain (Literally. I can do that.), and I could FEEL my heart wrench and acknowledge the longing for love past, love that never really presented itself to me in any really legitimate way, but rather in simple infatuation (quoth the raven, Never more...). So natch, after seeing if I could remember the whole song, which I did, I turned to my beloved YouTube and listened to Carly Simon sing it first and then just the karaoke version, which I tried to croak out between tears and sobs.

Someone wants me to remember who that song reminds me of, the love of my life, and how much I miss him, but the truth is/was that it was never him, but my idealized version of who he was. I was never happier nor more miserable during 2009-2010, and to hear that little snippet of sound on The Five today and to pause the show, and then hear it in my head brought me to tears for two separate reasons. I'd been alone for 20 yrs. prior to being swept off my feet by this man (deliberately to avoid having men coming in and out of my life as a single parent), so "I wasn't looking, but somehow you found me" really makes sense. And I've been alone ever since, too, for the following 13 yrs. The extreme swings from happy to miserable were tough to take, but I could not let go until recently. We were in contact over the years, but he attempted to put me in real jeopardy with some very devious people, and that was that. 'Nuff said. I don't wish to give this any more time right now. That song is still in my head.

I had the best T EVER tell me that tears are a flushing process and are like little clouds that pass over, ie, they DO pass, so just experience them, let them do their flushing, and then let them go. I'm feeling better already just writing this out. I also have a HUGE empty cardboard box cluttering up my room from my dog stroller (AMAZON: Petique All Terrain Jogger-Sailboat Pet Stroller, Sailboat, not used yet, but unboxed, tires still uninflated, sitting in the kitchen where I'm training my shy dogs to climb into the stroller cautiously). That box is WAY overdue to be eliminated in here and needs cutting up and shredding in my shredder for the composter, plus I have dinner to make before my legs freeze up painfully, and a yard to water...and if I'm still moving/able to stand, I'll re-pot a couple more plants STILL in 4" pots (to one gallon sized pots) before the WAY over 100ºF temps hit in about a week.

Just a cloud passing by...nothing more.

Honeybera

Jonesy - look for that last payment on the MD account by the 25th of this month. ♥♥♥

[honeybera]

Good Afternoon, Jonesy. That last $100.00 payment to isurvive.org to pay off the last of my debt to the deceased MD via PayPal should have either come in by now or will be there soon. I would appreciate it tremendously if you would please notify me on here when it does. I will do a joyful happy dance of true freedom and soul deep satisfaction when I get that news from you. Thanks. ♥♥♥

Honeybera