I don't write here enough for it to be meaningful. Maybe I will change that, maybe not. I am fairly active on facebook but I cherish the idea of this little corner as a place to vent, though I rarely do. I would like to write more of my thoughts down. I would like to do so many things!

It's the day after Christmas, we had a nice quiet one. It was enjoyable but as usual I spent most of my time alone. But the time I spent with Bruce was nice and the dogs were just wonderful. I made a nice dinner and Bruce even suggested we listen to some Christmas carols which pleased me.

I called my mom in the morning and that is always really stressful and sad for me. The stories she tells me break my heart. My dad is long dead and I feel he broke her. My brother, my only brother who I miss so much who died at 40 of alcoholism has been gone 9 years now. His oldest son, the one i was closest to. died this year of alcoholism at 28 year old. It is numbing. And my sister in law, who I hope never to see again, still hunts my mom. She is like a street person now. Her other two sons (one of whom my mother suspects i not my brother's-I rather think both of the others aren't but that's me) live with my mother and it is NOT good. She tells me about calling the police every conversation. This last one she told me that she is bothered that they stay up all night and then sleep all day. They are adults now. My mom said she threatened to throw water on one of them if he wasn't up by a certain time. She actually did this. And he in turn threw something at her which gave her a bloody nose. I can't even begin to describe my mother as a person. She is not unintelligent but not overly so either and she is simple in ways. But she has always been an extraordinarily good person. She tries to control thins she can't. And she let my father just wreck her as a person I feel. I remember her once telling me she had many other suitors but she didn't like a guy to be too nice. I was so depressed by that. I love niceness. my father treated her like a slave. And an object. Yet she was so devoted to him. I know I am a ruined person in many ways, but not so ruined as to EVER stand for the things that she did. And I wonder if she is somehow blessed for her ability to have to have loved him so. Or cursed. Anyway, the nephews....They steal from her and take every advantage.  I feel like I should DO SOMETHING but she doesn't seem to want me to do anything. I enjoy the idea of free will even though I wonder if we are ever free.

We did talk about fudge pleasantly. Woo Hoo! If one reality gets too painful try another. I had a wild hair to make old fashioned fudge, the kind with a candy thermometer. My first batch was edible but grainy. I was pleased when the second batch came out really well (though I think I should have put it in the buttered glass pan a little bit sooner than i did) I tried again today and was too inattentive. i let it go to a higher temperature than I should have and I let it cool too long before beginning to beat it. Each batch i learn stuff. And I enjoy cooking and baking but i really really need to learn to take better care of myself. I am tired all the time and sick much much too often. Thinking of rejoining the gym and i would like to try a juice diet for 60 days and then to really be attentive to what i eat. But that's a long term goal and one I have never been very successful at. However I am becoming much more politically aware and in some cases even active and food is becoming a huge issue to me. Factory farming, GMO's .... MONSANTO which I feel is deathwish incarrnate. And being used to control the population. I see conspiracy everywhere nowadays. Fracking is another hot button for me. I am trying to learn more and trying to learn how to live better in this world with as little wish to control others or BE controlled as i can. And I am belatedly trying to access my more mystical, artistic, intuitive side. Don't know if that is going to fly. But I hope it will.

And I am still in school. It takes so much more energy than I thought it would! I am deeply shocked at that! It is very stimulating and moving though. Learned how easily I cry in math class. I just suck at math! And I try so hard! Bad enough to cry at home about it but I was crying IN CLASS and i was sitting in the front row. I spent hours and hours trying to understand. more hours than I could afford to. Usually I am my own best teacher in a way. I like to study something out for myself and then maybe get together with others and that deepens my understanding. Didn't work for math. I had, do not ask me HOW, but i had an A- in the class. This despite the fact that I wasn't understanding anything and when i did sort of get a glimmer it disappeared almost immediately. The one test we had in the testing center I spent FOUR HOURS there mostly trying to remember anything. i thought I had flunked that test (i thought that every time) but I got an 88%. By the time we got our tests back the material was as inscrutable to me as if i had never seen it before. I cannot tell you how frustrating that was for me! I was in such misery and venting about that so much on FB I think it made my best friend fro high school , who I deeply love an admire drop me. ah well. It also caused my first love to offer to help me. I was very very ambivalent about this. I've written about him before. I've tried to end the small thread of connection we have on fb several times. I never quite make it. Anyway he has noooooooooo idea of his role in my life or my lifelong obsession which is apparently never ever going to go away, and he doesn't need to. I consider him the rock I crashed against and broke myself on, never ever to be whole again in this life. He moved on just fine from me. Obviously and very painfully to me. But who wants to learn that another person would have rather died than go on without them? And I have felt like that since I was 20. Having given it much thought I might have been able to heal, but it would have caused such changes in my most fundamental, intrinsic beliefs that I still wish I could have died. preferably before I was aware of how little I meant to him. But...I needed help with math and he might have been able to help me. He sent me his number and i called. It was highly unsuccessful as a math lesson. First. I was more interested in hearing anything I could about him and second, he was not really seeming to be prepared for how to teach me. I  know he knows everything and more about math than I could ever wish to know, but it was not going well as a tutoring session. But I had to get off the phone when he started talking to me about my intrinsic worth. OMG! That i could not take. Not to hear about my intrinsic worth from someone who shed me like a snake sheds its too small skin or a teenager sheds last year's fashion in light of the new and better. I did find another tutor.... $20 an hour... and I missed a test thinking it was just a study day but managed to get a B+ in the class. Got A's in English... that was my favorite class. We did an "immersion paper" It was supposed to be a 10 page paper about a person you wanted to write about. My first thought was Tim DeChristopher but that would not have worked out as he is still not permitted to speak about the issues he was arrested for. So, I went looking for a wild horse activist. it was a very involved process for me. And it will continue. And of course I am missing having horses and just outraged at what ii happening with wild horses. I dream of a mare I met in the wild. She put her muzzle in my hand and it was one of the most touching things ever in my life. I ended up on tv as a "wild horse activist" which I am not yet, but intend to become. The paper was at 25 pages and I could easily have gone 50. But it had to be 10. I can;t say I am thrilled about the rules of school.

I also got an A in medical terminology. if I hadn't I would have had to quit. It was that easy. And an A in anatomy lecture which was a good deal harder. Only an A- in anatomy lab, and I am worried that that might keep me out of the nursing program. It is very competitive here. Don;t want to take it again. the cadavers are not my thing! And I think I would have to take lecture over again too which would SUCK!!!!! Ended up with a cumulative GPA of 3.77. Taking statistics (last required math class!) psychology, creative non fction writing an am wait listed for physiology and physiology lab. The teacher I want for physiology was my anatomy lecture teacher I think he will sign me in but it won;t matter if I can;t get a lab. Much more I was going to say but tuckered now so perhaps later.

So, what's new? Well. A lot. Bruce's mom decided to go on a bingo trip, which we were all hoping she would enjoy. What happened is that she ended up fainting in a casino and was hospitalized in a different state. Bruce's sister had to fly out and bring her home. And Inez (Bruce's mom) ended up in the hospital at home too. Finally it got grave enough that Bruce flew to FL to be with her. He was there 2 weeks. He offered to stay with her and he would have done that till she died, however many years she had left because Bruce LOVES his mom. They did butt heads though. Finally she told him to go home because his life was here and he needed to get back to work. I was touched. It would have been so easy for her to keep him and she craves his company. When he got home he was constantly on the phone. She was in and out of the hospital, and it was more in than out. I had offered to go to help her and when she went into the hospital again Bruce and I talked and decided I should go out and see what the situation was, and if she were capable of living on her own. I got on a plane and flew to FL. She was in the hospital when I got there. She seemed mostly to be her sassy self but a little frail. She had aspiration pneumonia. She had had breast cancer and a sinus cancer lon ago and the radiation therapy then was not so localized as it is today. She had had problems swallowing for a good 20 years but now those problems were greatly exacerbated and she was deveoping this aspiration pneumonia regularly. I am going to make a long story short. I was really grateful for the time I had with Inez. i loved Bruce's sister and her husband and the rest of his family that i met. Inez was in and out of the hospital while I was there, more in and the nurses would order food for me hoping I would stay which i did because she was so much easier to deal with when I was there. I got to see a very wide range of her personality. i am somewhat ashamed and somewhat amused to say we fought some. But I really loved her. The apiration pneumonia was not going to stop unless she basically stopped eating. For awhile she had a catherther in her leg to provide nutrition. We tried a surgery to correct a hiatal hernia we thought might help her to swallow, but it didn;t. She hated being a patient. She wanted food and drink and wanted the tubes out. Bruce made me explain over and over to her what her options were. She wanted to live. But she was unable to tolerate the aggressive medical procedures that might lengthen her life. Finally, we decided to take her home with hospice care. I committed to being with her as long as she was alive. We brought her home on a Friday. She was so happy to be home. She kept saying what a beautiful place it was and how clean. I had round the clock help, but I gave her most of her medication. I loved the hospice people. I got to meet a long time online friend who just happened to be a hospice nurse. Inez had a good Friday and a wonderful Saturday. She was filled with love and was acting like she was at some wonderful party. She got to talk to a lot of people like her children. By Sunday she was non responsive and never responded again. I was with her when she died. A friend of mine flew all the way out from Utah and we drove back in a long wonderful roadtrip. When I got home I enrolled in school with a goal of becoming a nurse. I've completed my first semester of college with a 3.76 GPA having taken phlebotomy, a CNA class (I am now state certified) English 1010, Elementary Algebra and a LIB class. School was much harder than I remember, but it was fun. I got used to being up at 3 am to do homework. My personal life is a roller coaster. Bruce has been very supportive. My 28 year old nephew is apparently dying of alcoholism. I found this out on mother's day when I called my mother which I do too rarely but there are reasons for that. I don't know if my nephew is alive or dead. I need to call. Bruce and I have tackled cleaning the house. I hope to put a dog groomery in the garage, because I miss grooming. I had hoped to volunteer to groom dogs over the summer and volunteer for hospice but so far i am too busy with the house cleaning. What's new with you?

Before I Don't Say Goodbye

This isn't intended as a polished post. Not that I am a particularly polished writer in any case. This is a vent, one of several that I am fomenting. The oldest, deepest, most painful one. so if it sounds raw and childish, well it is certainly filtered through a raw child. I am not going to send it TO you, what would be the point? But I am impelled to try to express some of what I've been thinking and feeling.


From the first day I met you, you always registered off the scale of my interest. I am not sure why this is so, apparently enduringly true, but it is a fact of my life. However i gave my heart to you it has stuck as a promise. I know I prayed and prayed for forever with you back when I had much more trust in prayer. If there is a God, I find it most amusing that God should have chosen to grant that particular request, being that God would know the disparity of the desires and feelings involved. Believe me, this one simple incident has truly affected my beliefs about the nature of God. Anyway, when I ascertained the disparity and set you free, which for me was the hardest and most painful act I have or will ever perform in this life I know it was not the same experience for me and for you.

At 21 I was convinced i would never love again. I did not so much as hold a man's hand for 15 years after that breakup. I am betting you were getting laid within the week. Likely, BEFORE the breakup. Your enduring lesson to me, and I have never forgotten it, is that my heart is disposable. I have never believed i was worthy of a forever love after you, though I always craved that. In some moods, this is so amusing, in others it is so sad.

I spent years and years feeling you. I will swear this is so. And i never expected any contact with you again. Every important person in my life, who knows of you asked what i would do if you "came back" I never, after those 15 longing years I mean, even considered it as a possibility. And what would "back" mean anyway? Well, I will get to that.

We live in such an age of wonder! The internet makes many things possible and so easy that may have been possible but certainly would have required effort before. When Classmates came out i signed up for it primarily wondering what it might be like to communicate with you, to learn how you remembered me, to hear what you had done with your life and if you were happy. You did not contact me for a very long time. I thought that might actually be for the best because i realize that in relation to you I am something of a crazy person. And that is counter to most of the rest of my personality. I don't mind being a spontaneous person or many other elements of what some people typify as crazy, but to be obsessed with someone I understood never valued me that deeply to begin with is a part of crazy I don't much care for. How do I make that evaluation? Well, for one example there was the fact that you left. And while I was losing the love of my life and my dearest friend I guess you must have missed me somewhat as a friend and confidant, because you wrote to me, telling me with much satisfaction that you felt you had learned to love. How sensitive of you! Once you did contact me all those years later and we were making tentative forays to getting to know about one another's lives I heard so much in your attitudes that told me exactly what i had NOT meant to you. Things like... "I think I remember that picture" I remember your face and your pictures very well. I remember individual kisses and conversations and the way you smelled and tasted. I remember your expressions. Then there was, "I give you about as much time as I do any of my old high school friends" I don't think I was begging for your time, but really? I am one of your old high school friends? it actually shocked me to learn that.

Meanwhile i was coming to grips with the fact that you were in a relationship with a woman who bore your child. I had such a mix of emotions! I realize that i am speaking to a lot of poisonous thought and very hurt feelings here, but there are truths that I am not telling. Something about you makes me STILL crave to know you. I am so happy for your experience of fatherhood. I respect a lot of your values. I just hate looking for you first thing of a morning and you being my last thought of my days when the converse is just not true.

So I am disappointed. But I guess there are no further adventures to share between us, nothing I can give you of any great value. I am tired of feeling like a stalker in your life hoping to glean a little bit about who you've become. I cannot stop the What Is about you that has tied me to you for my whole life, but i can sure as hell sublimate it. And I can pray that God, if any, will be merciful and end this obsession with my life. I really do expect a thought of you to be the last thing that flashes through my dying mind, but if there are other lives, I hope I retain enough sense of the pain you are in my life to turn the other way at first sight. Or perhaps I wouldn't be so tempted again. Who knows.

Anyway, we have the smallest thread of a connection in "the real world" and I am going to give myself a week but then I plan to sever it. I don't think you will feel anything though I do think you will notice. The feeling, again will be mine.

Brought Back to the Human Condition From An Observer's Coolness

Bruce and I were watching Revenge the other day. It was a Bruce pick. I enjoyed seeing Anthony Quinn and wondered a bit why he seemed always fated to play that tough powerful guy with the marshmallow heart who nevertheless is too proud to avoid causing devastating pain to the people he thinks he loves who have wronged him. (I think that was a spoiler, but the movie came out in 1990 and if you haven't seen it by now, too bad so sad)

There was a scene in which Kevin Costner and Madeleine Stowe were tenderly exploring each other's nearly perfect bodies with kisses, and for me this was the heart of the movie. I experienced that scene as if I were an alien to the species and watched with ennuied amusement trying to guess at the purpose of this venture. It truly seemed a strange rite and one that was not only unlikely, but of little value when you factored in time and the probablity of danger.  I was thinking it is so peculiar that in our culture many many intimacies between men and women are perfectly acceptable, we can share our deepest thoughts, we can share day to day lives or mind altering indulgences or a thousand things but this one rite, and a physical one, is the one deemed to be sacred to one relationship (for married people) Trangressions here will cause such anguish. And it seemed so weird to me.

So, of course God had to intervene that night with a dream to dealienate me a bit. I dreamed of who I always dream of and there were achingly sweet proximities and then those brushing hesitant but greedy kisses and the fiery dazzling Swirl and I could touch his hair and smell him and every detail was rich with meaning. And he touched me once intimately then said he had to go, but would return. I woke up humbled and sad and remembering that there was a time i did know passion.

How It Should Have Gone

"Hello" she said across an ache of years, across events unshared and a yearn that was never fulfilled but could not die. "Hi", he said. "I'm sorry I haven't written much, but I give you about as much time as I do my other old high school friends." "Oh, pardon me", she breathed, and silently, Polaris was extinguished from the night sky.

RED, The Disabusement of Pollyanna and A Sweet Ghost Story

I went to see RED with a friend today. I enjoyed the movie very much, There was a time I was rather repulsed by the genre, which I would classify as Savvy Survivalists With Superior Skills Scorning the Societal Status Quo. I was once Pollyanna. I had  in place a well programmed belief system that America was not only benign, but was The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, a place of Liberty and Justice for all.

 Various experiences and events eroded that illusion over the years but it wasn't until my encounter with Meth Lady and The Good Ol Boy Minions that I knew experientially, that America is no such place. My meeting with Meth Lady was of a violent nature. I was proceeding to work at about 35 mph in a straight line when she collided violently and without apparent reduction of speed to the front driver's side of my car. I don't remember being unconcious, but I remember awareness returning so I think I was out. I remember being confused by all the dust inside my car and wondering why it stank. I remember releasing my seatbelt which I did not always wear then. But the paramedics and police who were there VERY quickly (another reason to think I was unconcious) had to turn off my engine. My foot was heavy on the brake and I hurt, especially my arm. The police who came to assist me told me the person who had hit me had inquired how I was, they also told me there were drugs (they mentioned meth) and paraphanalia found in her car and that this was not the first "accident" she had been involved in. They said she was driving on a license that was either suspended or revoked and that she had an insurance slip but that it was undetermined as to whether it was valid.

All this as I was crying in the road wondering what had happened. I remembered seeing her car coming fast in my direction. She wasn't even going to make the entrance of the shopping center she was apparently headed for even had I not been in her path. Indeed her car was far from the entrance and had collided with a palm tree after she hit me. She was standing on the grass smoking and talking on her cell phone. She had NOT been wearing her seatbelt and I saw in her arrest picture that her face was pretty badly lacerated. She WAS arrested and taken to the hospital. I was offered a ride in an ambulance which I declined because I remembered my grandmother's short $900 ride some years before. I knew that I was not at fault but I also knew I couldn't afford an ambulance. I think I was in shock. I didn't have a cell phone so one of the responders let me use his and I called work because Bruce was sleeping and he takes FOREVER to wake up. It's not optional for him. I can't remember if I tried him first but if I did, he didn't answer the phone. So a co-worker came and got me and at my request took me home where I woke Bruce up and told him he needed to take me to the hospital.

It turned out I had a broken wrist and bruises where the seatbelt or the car interior impacted me that turned BLACK. The wrist required surgery and I now have a 2 1/2 - 3" scar on my arm and a screw in my bone. My wrist hurts me to varying degrees and that will probably only worsen over time. I still have memory problems and my even temper is a thing of the past. I actually forgot to mention the memory problems during the binding mediation (which is what my lawyer recommended btw), remembering as Iwas walking out, which struck me as gruesomely funny. The laywer? Well, I contacted a lawyer either that day or the next one. I remember very clearly telling "my" lawyer I wanted to be present for the trial of this woman.

Very long story short:

I did not get to attend the "trial" That occurred within a month of the accident. "My" lawyer was advised of this several months later when I guess he called to find out when it would be scheduled. My assailant did not even have a toxicology test. With a repeat offender who I had heard had been in trouble with drugs since she was in high school and that her problems were apparently bad enough that she lost custody of her child (never confirmed to me, this is just what I heard) But, she is the daughter of a local physician. Go figure! Ain't that convenient?

The woman was convicted on everything she was charged with but the charges were very minimal. Her "sentence" was PROBATION contigent upon her cooperation with the terms of her probation. I asked "my" lawyer why I hadn't been advised of the trial and what my recourse was about this. He said that the prosecutor said he hadn't been aware there was a victim. This, despite a police report that stated erroneously that I had been conveyed to the hospital in an ambulance. So, didn't I have a right to be heard? Nope. And I tried to find a number for the prosecutor in the phone book to vent my outrage. No dice. My lawyer also declined to provide me with contact information. Well. since "my" lawyer told me that her sentence was supposed to be "contingent" on her cooperation with the terms of her probation and since he told me that she a) had fled and had to be captured and forced into rehab...b) had tested dirty for drugs subsequent to her conviction and c) had forged a check, I thought the idea of "compliance" was out the door. But no...None of this affected anything. Had I been at the trial she might have been denied a license for 8 more years than she was (I was not told if her suspension/ revocation was in any way impacted) She had no insurance. So, I had to plead with MY insurance agency for recovery and I feel the settlement was paltry. If I had not carried un/underinsured coverage on my policy I would have gotten nothing. Unless I sued her personally, at which point "my" lawyer said I would doubtless be awarded a judgement (but one that was missing weight due to no toxicology report, etc)  BuT I would be unlikely to actually collect anything. Even though a private search told me this woman apparently makes $41k a year. I found that interesting. And, if her rich parents put a car in her name, as long as it is in her name, they are liable for nothing. My insurance company even declined to try to recoup what they had to put out to me. The whole situation is so rife with either incompetence (which I do not for a second entertain as plausible) or outright corruption that I will never be able to regain any sense of the America I thought I knew. And, when somehing like this happens to you, you begin to hear like and very much worse atrocities that befall others.

So now, movies that encourage caution and even paranoia about government and authority dealings are definitely on my menu of viewing. And I know rich people are out to protect their interests and will do so with brutal consequences to anyone who threatens their wealth. Even to a small degree.

And now, after this cautionary tale I will switch gears to tell you A Sweet Ghost Story. So that we end on a good note and that perhaps we can come away wih the thought that there is an authority that supercedes the temporal manifestations of power.

Something in the movie we went to prompted my friend to tell me of a personal experience. Her husband died a few years ago of cancer and she says that every once in awhile she feels him. Usually when she is in bed for the night she feels a presence like someone is spooning her (I had a similar experience once, but no one on the other side of the Veil I could attribute that to) Her experience is recurrent, though not frequent, and so subtle that she has always wondered if she is imagining it. Well, the other night it was added to. She felt that feeling and said she could actually see part of an arm and white t-shirt which her husband used to wear around the house. She also saw part of the side of a face. As she became more aware her visitor vanished. She mentioned the incident to her daughter who felt it was her mother's husband checking on her and comforting her. I also believe that. And I hope I believe such forever.

Serendipity and "The Ramen Girl"

I am always humbled, amused and impressed by how Spirit works if you (I) am ready for the message. It can, and usually does communicate  to me in the strangest ways!

I had just finished watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which I think is a good movie, but not great. I was still a bit restless and thinking about a few things. It was about 9:15 and I thought, well, maybe another movie. I hardly ever watch 2 movies in a night. The Netflix page makes suggestions and my eyes were drawn to the first suggestion offered, a movie called The Ramen Girl. The synopsis sounded a bit, well, bubble gummy, but I thought I was headed for sleep shortly and why not? So I clicked to begin it. I found myself liking it without knowing quite why immediately and I got an inkling that this might be a "spirit to LeAnn" movie when about 20 minutes into it I heard that still small voice whisper that this movie wouldn't really, how can I put it? - do me any good unless I got up and cleaned the bathroom. Right  then. Oh, and take a shower while you're at it, willya?

So, somewhat in perplexity and half thinking I must be bored with this movie if I had to take a break to clean the bathroom, I got up and cleaned the bathroom. I'd left the movie running so when the bathroom and I were all fresh, I thought I'd start the thing over again. So I did. Found I'd missed some of my message that I might have heard even while I was there the first time.

And then I started to laugh when I hit the "Clean" part. That was funny. My inner Observer sent out warm vibes too, in appreciation I think for me having listened before things got that blatant.

I'm wondering if everyone has these types of experiences, where something seems like it was made just for you, that even if someone else came across it , they might experience something very different from what you are experiencing.

I identified pretty strongly with Abby, the Ramen Girl. And I was having some of those strange yet sublime trains of  thought that sometimes go along with the communication of Spirit. I'd try to share a bit that I consciously remember , but I think the telling might seem coarse, and it wasn't at all. For times like those, I remember the scripture, "And Mary kept these things, and pondered them in her heart" which sometimes seems the very best thing you can do.

There were keywords and little nuances of Spirit in this movie that I felt were there just for me. I'm hoping the spirit in the message is filtering deeply into me right now and I think I'll watch the movie again very soon just to see if other good messages present themselves.