The Things I Carry

Cold metals have left their marks,

The smooth thin lines,

Barely recognizable as the years have passed;

Prove that I am capable of surviving. 

Laid there in fits of drunken anger

The blood, hot against the cold steel,

portrayed my marriage perfectly.

Four of them adorn my body,

each one followed by a promise

of sobriety,

of change,

of transformation.

At the time I believed he would

be the one to perform these actions.

Vile from my heart would fall out,

sounding like gentle roses upon his ears;

promises that I would love him,

be true to him,

and stand by him.

With each instance that I had to reaffirm

these promises to him

my resolve to find a way to escape solidified.

I changed from a young girl

wishing to be blissfully married

to a mother of a young child.

I transformed myself

from a scared mother

to a strong,

independent,

single mother.

Fresher marks now adorn my body.

Creases around my mouth and eyes

prove that I have learned to laugh again,

to smile without end.

Other new metals now wrap my finger;

the combination of metals and stones

affirm to me that I am now safe,

loved,

cherished.

The cool metals now warm my heart and soul.

The scars across my abdomen,

numb to the touch

attest that I have birthed two healthy children.

Their laughter and giggles fill my head

and overflow my heart on a daily basis.

My body carries permanent reminders

of a life I once lived

as well as markers of a life I live now.

I sobered up to the idea of what love,

faithfulness,

and marriage was about.

The scars I carry with me

serve as a reminder to a life once lived;

a warning to others of a life that shouldn’t be theirs;

a prayer that intelligence overrides passion.

....Mostly written as part of my Literature writing assignment in response to "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, but wish to keep it & share it here.

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Warning: This is long.

This blog post is going to most likely be fairly jumbled and confusing and annoying and I can't promise that I won't swear during it. In fact, one can almost put money on the fact there is going to be swearing. Sadly I don't have words strong enough to express my complete disgust and irritation and pissed-offness that has prompted this post...I'm not even terribly sure such words even exist, so I'll see what I can do to create one or two.

So anyways...you may want to grab a piece of paper and create your own timeline and see if you can make any sort of sense of it all with me.

I was pulled over for speeding on Saturday. Legitimately speeding...I was irritated at an idiot driver, sped up to avoid a collision, didn't pay attention 1/2 a mile down the road that I was well over the speed limit, until it was a hair too late. Not the biggest big deal....I'd thought. Annoying & upsetting, for sure, but I was in the wrong and I'm a big girl who wears her big girl panties, I know when I'm in the wrong and can accept the consequences of my actions. It sucks, but it is what it is...

Onto the "I'd thought" part...I was informed that my license has been revoked.

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL!

This is where you're going to need your thinking cap and a pen and piece of paper.

I have not been pulled over since October of 2005. Not for ANYTHING. It is currently August of 2011. So that's almost SIX years without a single moving violation of any sort.

I had originally lost my license in June of 2001. I was 19 years old. Got drunk for the first time in my life. While in the process of getting very drunk I was assaulted by a couple of guys, I left the party in a hurry, walked 3 blocks to where my car was. Unlocked my car, from the passenger side because my driver's door lock mechanism was broke, and it wasn't a fancy enough car for button unlocky thingys. After unlocking the car I hit the power unlock button, shut the door, walked around, and discovered I did not unlock my car...in fact I'd hit lock instead. The awesome part about that is I'd thrown my purse & keys into my car prior to shutting the door. So there I was, at 4am, drunk, for the first time ever, upset over being assaulted, and now my keys are locked in my car and I have no clue if I was still being followed or not - so was freaking out. I start wailing on my car windows with my pretty strappy heeled shoes when a cop rolls through the parking lot and asks me if everything was alright. I gave him the story about locking my keys in my car...left out the part about the assault, etc because I was upset in that moment about my car..and I was drunk. Drunk people are NOT rational, AT ALL. At least I'm not when I'm drunk. Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda, but didn't...yea... Anyways...the cop gets out of his car, looks in the window & sees my keys & purse laying right there, pulls out a slim jim from the trunk of his car & unlocks my car for me. I AM FUCKING DRUNK AND 19, PEOPLE! THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH THIS! I get in my car and drive off. Two blocks down the road Mr. Nice Cop pulls me over, asks me if I've been drinking, because he said I was driving with my bright lights on, through town. Do understand at this point my bright lights did not even work on that car, a fuse had gone out or the switch had, can't remember now...but I was drunk & had only had the used car for almost a week, and I am not rational when drunk. Of course I admit to having been drinking, etc...he calls my grandma to come pick me up & take me to her house, I was to stay in her care for at least 10 hours to sober up. Oh, and my breathalizer test showed that I blew a .095, which at the time was just .005 below the legal limit...the next month the new law went into effect that the legal limit was only 0.08. Anyways, several court hearings later I convince the judge that I'm not going to pay a lawyer $1500 in addition to my fines & such, she accepts my guilty verdict and life went on.

I was also a very stupid 19 year old. VERY FUCKING STUPID 19 year old! I LOVED to race cars back then, especially on the highway...yea, add those tickets in on a suspended license. So I racked up some points on my own. By the time I was 6 months past my 19th birthday I was newly married to my ex-husband AND newly pregnant AND getting ready to move 600 miles away AND this was all during that period of time that my folks both ended up in jail over my sister's lies AND the rest of my family thought I was being petty and selfish for not bending over backwards to take in my 17 year old sister and 14 year old brother to finish raising. I was FUCKING 19 years old! If my almost 40 year old parents couldn't keep a handle on their 17 year old child what in God's green earth makes anyone think I can? But whatever...I was pregnant, married, and moving far away...most of my biological family thinks I'm utterly selfish and in need of serious psychological help (although my psychiatrist thinks I just need to talk to someone more often than just once every few months).

Ok...so some time goes by, I work to pay off/down all my fines, yada yada...life went on. My ex & I moved back to Arkansas about a year after moving away, my dad was sentenced to 30 years, my mom got out of jail, my sister was living with her now husband, and my baby brother was back with mom...My license was still suspended - thanks to my racing on a suspended license I'd lost my license until I was 21. Not quite the biggest of deals since my ex never allowed me to do much of anything anyways without him, so whatever. The times I did have to drive I was careful enough to not get caught nor in a wreck, so whatever, what's done is done.

Then it got a bit dicey.

In December of 2002, just 4 months after Mikeal was born and 6 months before my 21st birthday, my ex was arrested. He was charged with attempting to sexually assault a 5 year old little girl...and I won't go into all the details of that right now because I don't need to REALLY make my blood boil more than it is already, but it ended with him being thrown in jail for a while, in Missouri...we were still living in Arkansas, he'd crossed state lines to do this... I ended up needing to move back in with my mom, in Oklahoma. A month later my ex's adopted father bailed him out, yada yada, I was convinced at that time that he'd just been urinating & she walked in on him...I wasn't a terribly bright 20 year old either, but I was in a dark depression then, physically & emotionally exhausted from the abuse, etc. My family (aunts, uncles, cousins) of course wouldn't believe my husband would ever do such things I accused him of, I was just making things up for attention and I needed serious psychological help still for wanting to leave this great man that my ex was and whom I had a child with.

What's really fucked up is my mom witnessed firsthand the abuse of my exhusband...he'd come in, drunk & cranked out, one night & hit the wall of the bedroom where Mikeal & I were sleeping because I was asleep....that resulted in a fist fight between my mom, my brothers, and my ex husband. The oldest of my brothers, who was there because he'd broken his back a few months before and was finally at the end of his recovery...and living at mom's during this time period with his (ex) girlfriend and their oldest child (who was 6 months old at the time)...was the first to jump up and respond violently towards my ex for having DARED to even act like he was raising his hand at me! Then mom got involved because not only did he act like a threat towards me but he then was involved in a first fight with another of her children...and my mom is NOT a force to be reckoned with. My ex ended up with a bloody nose & some scars. Mom had a bloody toe. Daniel ended up thrown/falling off the deck and had a concussion. I was on the phone with the cops. I WAS DONE! I was so far past done with having anything at all to do with my ex that I was just D.O.N.E. - DONE! The cop showed, put my ex in the back of his car, then came to talk to us. He thought it'd be best to just not provoke him and let him sleep off his drunk. WTF! Daniel agreed not to press charges since he'd just finished his own stint in prison not but a few months before that and wouldn't wish it on anyone...Mom then left it up to me to press charges, since he was my husband. I said yes. Then was talked out of it by either my mom or the cop, the rest of that night is a bit fuzzy to me, I just remember ANGER and disbelief. Here I am, with a not even 6 month old crying child, abused for over a year by this man, my mom is bleeding, my brother is puking & convulsing, and no one wants to press charges, in fact I think it even got turned around on me that I'd somehow provoked this violent rage.

Mom kicked us out and we ended up moving 100 miles deeper into Oklahoma, into a camper, at my ex-adopted father-in-law's house (Charlie). I felt slightly safer about being there because Charlie was not only a long time foster father to teenage boys but he was also the newly retired police Lieutenant. Fuck was I wrong. Anyone that ever wonders why a woman stays in an abusive relationship...this is the exact reason why. They're shunned by family members or made out to look like they're the ones in the utter wrong...that they'd somehow provoked the abuser into being abusive...because to everyone else they're the greatest piece of shit to ever grace the Earth with their presence. I was finally 21 but because of everything we never did finish paying off my fines and I was never taken to get my license reinstated.

In September of 2003, Mikeal was only 13 months old, my ex was given a four MONTH sentence with four years PROBATION for attempting to rape this 5 year old. His lawyer had been able to get him a plea bargain where it was reduced to just indecent exposure. And people really wonder why sex offenders run the streets. You can look for yourself even...Here's the national sex offender registry listings. My ex's name is Bryan Gilliam..you'll have to agree to the terms of use & then enter a captcha to search his name, but he's there. Last known address = moved out of state, to Arkansas...and that's all they know, as of about 2 years ago. Maybe he's in Arkansas. I suspect he's working under the table for his old boss, who lives in Missouri, but has contracts all over the country, selling newspaper subscriptions with a crew of young teenagers, door to door...somewhere.

But the most important thing about him going to jail is I was finally free of him. I did not take his family, nor their influence, into consideration. In October, less than a month after he was sentenced & booked, I wrote him a letter telling him that I was leaving him, I wanted a divorce, and that there was no way in any sort of Hell that I would ever take him back.

Within a week I started getting pulled over on my way too and from work. I had a toddler to take care of and couldn't do it if I just sat at home because my license wasn't reinstated yet. I spent a great many days in and out of that courthouse, sometimes my name was found on the docket other times it was like the ticket I was holding was something I'd dreamed up...On December 22nd my neighbor had gone with Mikeal and myself to Arkansas to take care of some of my license stuff...a good 3 hour drive, one way. We stopped at a nice place to eat, my neighbor got smashingly drunk, even though she was supposed to be driving me there and back because I wasn't able to get my license totally reinstated that day afterall. But my lovely neighbor was also kind enough to cause the waitress to spill a pitcher of beer on me.

I drove for 3 hours..it's nearly 2am when we finally get into the home stretch of the trip. Less than 3 miles from my apartment I was pulled over. I was charged with a DUI. Damnest thing about that is despite the fact I REEKED of beer I was sober...and the breathalyzer test proved that I was sober. I blew a 0.00. But because I REEKED and because this was my ex's hometown, where I was the horrible evil wife who was leaving her husband while he sat in a jail 500 miles away, they booked me anyways. Told me that I was somehow cheating the test. Now, if you remember back to the beginning, I'm a big girl and I know how to wear my panties...I'm not above accepting consequences for my actual actions. I was put in jail anyways. I did get to make a phone call to a buddy of mine, told him what was up, he agreed to call a few other folks and they'd have my bailed out within the next day or two, in time at least for Christmas morning with my 15 month old son. On the 1st of January (10 days later) at 2:45am I was released from the jail. Who in their bloody right mind puts a 21 year old girl out, on the most dangerous night/morning of the year to either a) find someone sober to come to the jail and pick her up at that horrendous hour or b) walk the 10 miles home at this house, along the highway. It was also freaking cold, snowy, I had a sleeveless shirt on, that I'd been wearing for 10 days already, and no coat. I walked those miles home and thankfully made it there alive. I never did see the judge...she was out on vacation I was told. When I did finally get home I called my buddy who'd told me he was going to bail me out...he told me he was told that I was being released the next morning and when he showed up the next morning to see if I needed a ride he was told that I was already gone. The 50 some odd voicemail messages on my machine over those 10 days I was locked away basically confirmed his story.

I was continuously harassed though. First by the cops, then by my neighbor lady, then by my landlady (who's son was best friends with my ex while they were in high school), then over time learned the rest of my ex-in-laws were also set to make my life absolute hell while I lived near them. I lost job after job because of them, I sank into a darker depression, I lost vehicles, my family were under the impression that I'd brought this all on myself. I started drinking HEAVILY. I will admit now that I'm utterly shocked that I did not get arrested a few times for ACTUALLY being drunk while driving, but by then the harassment had slowed from law enforcement, since it'd picked up with everyone else..and Charlie also passed away around this time. Coincidence? Yea, you can judge that one for yourself.

In February I had a 3 week work conference to attend in Austin, Texas. Of course I made arrangements with my mom, my sister, and a few friends of mine to watch Mikeal for me while I was down there because I wasn't going to be reimbursed for the $10 an hour childcare during any seminars, etc I had to attend on a daily basis. I went down there, a week into it my baby brother was thrown off the back of a car (car surfing in the high school parking lot, less than 20mph) ended up in ICU for a week. No one was willing/able to get Mikeal, so I had to make an emergency dash to Joplin, MO, from Austin, TX, in less than 24hrs round trip. I'd made some awesome friends during my time there who were more than willing to accommodate Mikeal & myself during the duration of my conference. Mikeal ended up with coffee burns at the hospital while I was en route. A nurse had left her scalding cup of coffee at the edge of the counter & what does any 18 month old child do when they want a drink & see a cup? They grab it. Burnt the right half of his face & his neck - 2nd & 3rd degree burns. Mostly just 2nd degree. He wasn't hospitalized for it, they treated him and he was back to mostly normal Mikeal by the time I got there. I didn't do anything about it at the time because I was on a tight schedule, my mom was already distraught over Duke still not being awake, and it was just not the time to get into it.

Over the course of the next week Mikeal's neck started showing signs of severe infection, my conferences all wrapped up, and we went back to Oklahoma...I didn't have the funds to pay for the out of network charges if I was to take him to a hospital there in Texas. We get back to our apartment only to find that my landlady had removed all of my appliances...said that the appliances were only on loan to me because a previous tennant had left them there when she'd moved out and had come to get them...umm, they were sitting there in her garage. But whatever, I was just done. Completely utterly distraught and just done. Packed up what I could, put the rest into a storage unit and left. I went to visit my mom to spend a night there or so and help her out with Duke who'd just been released from the hospital. Later that evening Mikeal started running a fever, I took him to the ER (weekend, small town, only thing available). Found out that the burn blisters on his neck were infected with MRSA and to make the trip even more fun I'd been bitten by a brown recluse as I was packing everything in my apartment and that was a nasty site as well. I wasn't allowed to leave his bedside because they were short staffed and didn't have someone available to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't fall out of his bed. During the initial first week there at the hospital I only left the actual hospital room three times to go smoke. Yes I smoked then. I also quit then. Not even my mom would come up and sit with him/us and she just lived 10 miles down the road more than once or twice...she was too busy with her new boyfriend. My car was stolen from the hospital parking lot, with a lot of my stuff thrown out into the ditch by the parking lot. I don't know, no explanation, car was never found, or no one gave enough of a fuck to find it, whatever...

After Mikeal was released from the care of the hospital and we spent a week at my mom's for more IV antibiotics my boss in Tulsa paid for me to stay in a place there in Tulsa. A few months into that I moved to Austin, TX. I couldn't stand the constant harassment anymore. Lots of shit happened, the harassment never did fully cease, but I was far enough away from it that I was able to feel safe living again. Eventually though I had to move back to Oklahoma to get my divorce taken care of 100% as well as take care of my other legal stuff...namely all the harassment tickets I'd accumulated and said FUCK IT to.

During my quest to get everything taken care of I spent time in and out of jail because of warrants that had accumulated...sometimes being 'forgotten' resulting in not seeing the judge even for the first time for weeks. One judge, whom I didn't see until after I'd been sitting in that jail for 29 days chewed out the jailer that had brought me up there. She'd had several previous traffic courts and I should have been before her during the first one after I was booked. Other tickets that I KNEW I had been given during that time just seemed to 'disappear' when I'd go to take care of them...only to show back up in the system some time later...I really wish I would have been better about keeping records of everything then. I did learn from all of that though. I keep EVERYTHING. All utility payment receipts, all court papers, all pay stubs, all tax forms, all my calendars where I right things down during the year. ALL of it. I can't afford not to anymore...not after all the hell I went through then.

I not only was harassed incessently but one of my ex-sister-in-laws, who was constantly in trouble with the law, started using my information when she'd get pulled over, arrested, etc. At one point in time *I* was booked on meth charges and had a felony charge against me for it - I'd found that out during my first trip to this particular county jail - I had to then prove that I was who I said I was, complete with fingerprint cards that dated from the time I was in Kindergarten. (My record was cleaned of MANY things at that time, but not until after I'd paid a lawyer almost $10,000 to hunt down everything to be able to do so.) There were car loans, repossessions, house loans & foreclosures, credit cards, utility bills, checking accounts, I don't know but it amounted to almost $700,000 of debt on my credit report. If you're new reading my blog I'm surprise you're still reading, but I'll let you know now I have NEVER had a credit card, etc...the ONLY thing I have EVER bought on credit was a kitchen stove a few years ago from a Rent to Own place and that was mainly just because it was an emergency and we expected to be able to find a decent working one quick enough to not have to pay on the 'new' one for too long...such isn't the case, we've since moved, and now that stove sits in my basement collecting dust, since about a month after I paid it off. I LOATHE interest payments. Loans are the biggest waste of money a person can ever come across!

Anyways...It took me a while and several tens of thousands of dollars but I got nearly all of it taken care of. Once in a while something will pop up, but the number has slowed DRASTICALLY! Do keep in mind that this was all around 2003-5 so things like identity theft were still 'newish' and when you're a single mom just trying to raise your child, while going through a horrid divorce and being harassed not only by your ex-in-laws but also by law enforcement that's supposed to be on the side of right and truth it's all QUITE overwhelming and the only thing you want to do is just move on with your life so you can breath for a moment...and that screwed my ass. I got to where instead of just fighting and fighting and paying lawyers I'd just pay things off, hang my head, plea no contest, and let it be. I was so screwed, I felt, anyways, and alone in fighting all of it and trying to support Mikeal I just wanted to be done with it.

I ran off a few times for a while. I was pretty good at not getting caught...my last ticket/run-in was in 2005.

In September of 2008 I was involved in an accident, a teenager saw the light was green, but didn't take notice of the fact that I had just barely taken my foot off the brake, because I had been stopped at the JUST previously red light. At that time I still had a few outstanding tickets etc to take care of but the judge told me, when I showed up for my court hearing for not having a license, after the wreck, that if I got everything taken care of and showed him a new reinstated license he'd drop the charges against me. My next court date was November 22nd...I had everything 100% taken care of, by just paying it all off and retaking my driver's test, etc by my court date. I had my new shiny Driver's license in hand on November 15th or so.

I've not been pulled over since. At least not until Saturday, as previously mentioned.

I've ran out of steam on writing this blog post...and if you're still reading, I'm shocked. But the end result is I still am fighting crap that I was ASSURED was taken care of, by court officials, 3 years ago. I have all the paperwork to prove I've paid everything. When my insurance agency ran my license, when we got insurance here, 18 months ago it came back clean...or at least nothing of the last 3 years. Then they do another check every 6 months. Our insurance just renewed in May. So as of May, as in three months ago, my license was still good by insurance company records. Here it is August, I've not been to Oklahoma in 18 months, and Oklahoma has revoked my license.

Fuck me running with a splintered bat anally. I'm TIRED of this BULLSHIT!

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Great Memories

So I posted a day or so ago about those 'You know you're from..." groups on Facebook.

I'm a member of three different groups - one for my high school town, one for my dad's and one for my mom's. I grew up in the areas that my folks went to school & still have family out there, we didn't move to Oklahoma until I was 12 and I've been back to the Arkansas area many times over the years...even met my ex husband there.

Anyways, my folks went to school at rival high schools - which at least back in the 80s was absolutely taboo! I remember running across old cards given to them at their wedding where folks had placed bets on how long their relationship with last because she was from Town A & he was from Town B. For the record they didn't divorce until after their 22nd anniversary & that was only after Dad had been given a 30 year sentence to sit behind bars - I absolutely believe that had all the bullshit and lies not been told that year they would still be married and enjoying their grandkids.

But I digress.

It has been quite interesting to hear about the old towns and compare the stories, even add in some of my own or catch up some folks on their old classmates (my folks). Times have changed quite a bit!

It's also quite hilarious to compare my folks' hometowns to my high school town.

I remember when we first moved to Oklahoma, from Arkansas, Bill Clinton was still President (1994) and I was teased mercilessly by the Oklahoma Native Americans about being a backwoods hillbilly from Arkansas who was likely the offspring of brother & sister pair - I'm not, I assure you. I was teased for being a know-it-all, even though, according to the Okies folks from Arkansas were uneducated and very backwoods. Except anyone can compare the two groups NW Arkansas to NE Oklahoma and understand when I say if I was to be considered uneducated based on being from Arkansas it was only because Oklahomans only knew how to almost spell based on phonetics, not by way of a dictionary. ((Do they even use dictionaries in Oklahoma schools?)) They're, there, & their are all the same word, each used interchangeably. Proper nouns are ...now what are proper nouns? Goodness! I'm SOOO happy I received my early education in a backwoods Arkansas elementary school (the same one my mom & her siblings went to even)!

Again, I digress. No real point in going into the details of it all. Oklahomans will still think they're all that because they have a great football team and everyone they know speak, spell, and write the same way, so they will never really learn the differences. Yes, I know I don't always seem to have spectacular grammar, especially here on my blog, but as I've mentioned a dozen times at least I write my rough draft here & submit it & rarely go back to edit it...unless I actually go back and read the post, then I'll edit it a few dozen times.


Today was a very great day for me where these groups were concerned. That is my purpose of this post.

In the group that centered around the town that my dad grew up in and went to high school at they'd started a thread asking everyone to list their graduation year. I never went to any schools in that district, but felt that it was important for me to comment on the thread anyways. I posted that my dad had graduated there in 1980 RIP Don Pierson <3.

From that post I was given feedback from a few folks who knew my dad. All of which mentioned they remember him as a 'great man'. Upon speaking with a few of them off the main board and in private messages back and forth I really didn't learn anything about my dad I didn't already know or believe about him...I did have a few things confirmed about the stories he'd tell that I never really knew for sure if they were true or if he just embellished for the sake of embellishing - you know those old stories your dad would tell about things he'd done as a teenager - yea, those kind of doubts.

Of course all the stories involved a party, hay, horses, beer, fast cars...a bit similar to what you saw in the old Dukes of Hazzard shows, except instead of the stories starring Bo & Luke Duke they starred Don Pierson & his buddy (different names for different stories or purposely omitted to protect the presumed innocent).

I herd a few that referred to my dad as the Horse Whisperer, something I'd mentioned here, Story #6. They'd tell me that he used to tell awesome stories and they can still think back and remember him sitting back on a hay bale, drinking beer from a Dixie cup, and hear his stories. I loved those stories! The only differences would be my dad drank unsweetened tea and sat in a recliner or on the couch when telling his stories to us kids. It wasn't until I was an older teenager that he went into the stories of keg parties and teenage reckless abandon. I didn't get to hear many of those stories. I did remember the story he told me about my conception...about it occurring in a briar patch in a valley...but didn't remember it until someone else had mentioned something to the tune of "Remember going out to the sticker bushes in The Valley to have sex with your girl". Of course I had to add my tidbit to that thread about my conception - the older generation got a kick out of it.

Of course there were also stories about the skating rink and how they'd have skate sessions where the boys all had to line up on one side of the rink & the girls on the other and how mortifying that was. I know that story from my childhood as well because it was one of those nights that my folks met for the first time. My mom had asked her best friend at the time to ask that 'cute guy' across the rink if he'd dance with her, because she was terrified of being turned down...then upon realizing that her friend went to some 'ugly dude' and had wanted to ask the 'cute guy' for herself my mom raced across the floor to ask him herself before she got stuck with the ugly guy! They dated for four years after that before getting married and having my siblings & myself. I found out my mom's friend still holds a slight grudge against her to this day over that.

Then of course there were stories my dad had told about he & a group of his buddies streaking through the town square - buck naked...but he was never caught by the police, some of his buddies were and were handcuffed, with their hands behind their back, for all the town to see that had gathered for the show. I don't know if my dad was ever actually a part of that group, but I did see a post in reference to the story...but I kinda believe it, it did take place around that same time period.

I never really believed the stories about the KKK holding meetings and chasing non-white folks out of town, but sadly, after reading the posts on the pages I'm left believing it was still going on as recently as the late 80s/early 90s. I know when we left, in 1994 there were only a VERY few Mexicans in the area, can't recall if there was more than one African American family in the area. I know there was one family in the next town over prior to the 90s, but they seemed to be quite well liked by everyone - one of the brothers taught the skating lessons at the roller rink & had since the 60s, up until his death, just a year or two ago, on the skating rink floor even, the other brother taught swim lessons. Of course since then it's been quite diversified thanks to Sam Walton and what started as just a Nickle & Dime store. One also can't forget all the tax breaks that Clinton gave to the businesses that were interested in starting up or moving to the state when he was governor. It was like the area just exploded from a rinky farm community of about 15,000 people to probably a million folks by now, in just 25 years.

But it was great. I'm sure there are stories I may never get a confirmation about, I've asked a few times, so we'll see what becomes of it.

This line that I received as a private message to me about my dad was the best one:
"I believe that there are a lot of people who thought highly of your father... I stand by your dad being one of the best ones."


...yes this post is slightly all over the place, I know this.

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Depression

...sucks.

That's really all I have to say, but I'll likely ramble anyways about whatever escapes from my fingers onto this post by use of the keyboard.

In no particular order:

I miss my dad. He's been dead now for just over four years, but I've not gotten to hang out with him in 10. Sure we talked on the phone a few times & wrote a few letters back and forth, but it wasn't the same. See, my dad spent the last 6 years of his life sitting behind bars. He was given a 30 year sentence for a crime I don't believe he committed. Of course the argument stands that if he didn't commit it then he wouldn't have been given a 30 year sentence, not in this day & age...yea, our judicial system is so upright where innocent folks aren't locked away & the guilty are that - guilty. I mean, just look at the whole Casey Anthony or O.J. Simpson things, right?

I rest my case.

I've tried really hard over the last 10 years to wrap my brain around it to the point that it's so wrapped I think it's just warped instead. I really don't want to believe either side. If I take my dad's side of things and defend him, well, I've lost a great deal of close relationships because I did take his side. If I take his accuser's side then I am compelled to be completely disgusted with my father, but also betray what my heart & mind tells me. The most fucked up part of all that is I may not be quite so conflicted about it had some folks not been so adamant that my dad was completely innocent...until my grandparents both died. It was almost immediately upon their deaths that all these folks, who'd supported my dad, bailed on him, trash talked him, and to this day paint him as the worst kind of scum to walk the planet. Of course his accuser went from just a spoiled little brat trying to get what she wanted to the patron saint of all that's right but wrong in the world, a poor innocent victim. Fuck her.

I miss the children that I birthed that were born with barely a fighting chance at life. Dear Alonna was a victim of doctors not putting all the pieces together & me being so utterly depressed I barely made it through the last half of my senior year of high school. Her father, my first husband, was killed in a car wreck days after we'd gotten married. During our short marriage, because I was a FIRM "virgin until marriage" person, I conceived her. Between severe depression, ulcers, stress, school, work, family life, God only knows what all ailed me at that time, doctors had me on a nice little cocktail of medications to treat each and every ailment. No heed was paid to the notion I could have been pregnant. Hell, I didn't even think anything of it. I still had bleeding from time to time, I didn't pay that close attention to timing and all that because I wasn't having sex...had only had sex twice, and it was in wedlock. Teenage pregnancy doesn't happen except out of wedlock, right? OH, YES, I was a naive one back then. She was born in December...in fact she, Mikaila & my Grandpa all share the same birthday, December 13th. My pregnancy wasn't confirmed until after I'd fallen down a flight of stairs just a few weeks before. The fall down the stairs wasn't detrimental to her, even though I'd like to blame something so innocent on the loss of her life. No. She was born with very underdeveloped organs or holes in the organs that did develop due to all the different medications I had been on during the majority of my pregnancy. I was given the option to have a late-term abortion, but I wouldn't hear of it! What kind of fucking moron suggests such a thing to an 18 year old gal who's not only lost her husband & best friend since preschool, but is now finding out she's PREGNANT and VERY near her due date, just mere weeks after her parents told her to "Get your dog, your computer, don't forget your hamster & the rest of your shit & get lost?!" Simply because she wasn't paying enough of the bills anymore because she was trying to move out into her own place... Then of course I had her, without the first drop of pain medication, because I was scared out of my fucking gourd after learning about all the medications I had been on for the previous 9+ months. I still, to this day, have issues with taking medications & hesitate going down stairs... I PLEADED with the doctors & nursing staff to pull a miracle out of their asses. I don't blame them. They tried. For 14 hours they worked to sustain her. Reflecting on it 11 years later now, pieces of me wish I would have saved them each that grief. It's not the loss of Alonna that haunts me so much as the looks on the doctors' and nurses' faces as they not only tried to console me but also make my miracle come true. Thing that haunts me further is the stigma that "we don't talk about that".

Then there was Bridgett. I got pregnant with her almost immediately after Mikeal was born. Ok, not completely immediately, but I'd gotten my first depo shot after he was born, then my ex husband was thrown in jail for attempting to rape a 5 year old...I was given a lame story about how this little girl had walked in on him while he was peeing in a laundry room and it was just some messed up misunderstanding & all he was guilty of, from the early stories I was told, was indecent exposure. I did what any scared, almost 21 year old girl who's been horribly abused by her husband & no one there to support her, except him, with a 4 month old...I believed him & by my upbringing I stood by him. During the early hoopla of all that I missed my appointment to get my next depo shot, was pregnant when I finally did get a chance to make-up that appointment. I hid that pregnancy for as long as I could during the court proceedings. On our anniversary, in June, I was 23 wks along I shared the news with my ex. He responded by beating the shit out of me & throwing a 27" TV at me...back before they were just 10lb pieces of plastic. Then he left to go smoke some meth with his cousins down the road. ((My naive ass didn't know a thing about any of that until well after the fact.)) I carried my 10 month old son & drug my bleeding ass to a neighbor's house, where the lights were on...it was only about 2am...and they called an ambulance for me. All I really remember was about 24 hours later I was being released from the hospital & that my baby girl had died. I did file a police report. All that got me was a rap for being a troublemaker & liar by the police department. Afterall, the Lieutenant's adopted son would NEVER do such a thing! I made the whole thing up!

I'm proud of the fact that I went to the meeting with his lawyer not long after that...I heard the confession tape for myself & learned the whole truth behind the charges. He'd picked a 5 year old girl up from an apartment complex, took her into a laundry room there, & considered having sex with her before some of the effects of the meth & alcohol he was on wore off just enough for him to let her go. I then spent the next few weeks charming my ex. I'd swear up and down how I'd be there for him & I'd never screw him over, yada yada yada yada yada. He was given a 4 MONTH sentence with only 4 years probation. On September 22nd he was booked on the charges...I left from the courthouse, with his ATM & credit cards in hand, & wiped those suckers clean, including the overdraft privileges. I sold what clothes of his that were left over from my brothers picking through them, I didn't make the first one of his vehicle payments, then I broke every fucking rule that bastard had laid upon me of what I wasn't allowed to do while he was incarcerated. I'd then write him letters telling him about how I started smoking, was going out to the bars, sleeping with whatever I felt like, doing whatever I liked. That $900 wedding ring set he'd bought me & still had a nice balance on - sold them for $175...then had a GRAND time at the bar....at least I think it was grand. I woke up in the bed of the truck, somewhere. ((Mikeal was safe at a babysitter's, who knew/understood/something to that effect my mental state of mind at that time.))

A few months later, on Mother's Day, I called Child Services on myself. I was in a desperate state of mind and was under the impression that they'd at least help me. I was suffering from alcohol addiction, was basically homeless, and well...it was bad. Know what child services did for me? Nada. Told me that because I had the presence of mind to call them that it meant that I was a good mother and could figure it out & didn't see Mikeal as being in any real danger. I BEGGED and PLEADED with them to PLEASE place him in a safe home & to help me get into a treatment program. They didn't. The next day I left Mikeal in the care of my 'less than fit roommate'...while he was passed out drunk (not Mikeal, the roommate) and got a job a few blocks away, working graveyard shift at Waffle House. Thankfully I had some awesome coworkers that let Mikeal & I move into their one bedroom apartment...then instead of going out to the bars I joined a chatroom.

I met a TON of very wonderful folks in that chatroom, and minus a few details, I moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Austin, TX, to move into a house with a complete stranger. Folks down there would drive an hour one direction to help me get out and look for a job, others would watch Mikeal for me, one guy gave me a car...I met Brian during all of that...yada yada...I sobered up, mostly, and my mother grew up a bit. I went back and lived with her for a while so I could get my divorce taken care of 100%, then moved back to Texas, eventually reconnected with Brian again, he proposed at my dad's funeral dinner, we went back home, in Texas, pregnant, yada yada...we've been married almost 4 years now with a Mikaila added to our family.

My ex is still a complete asshole.

My current marriage, like any other, has it low points, but overall it's awesome. I love where I live now, I love my friends, & tolerate most of my family, but I'm completely in admiration of my children and husband! But yet I still feel depressed. The logical side of me says I have no reason to be depressed. There's nothing I can do about the death of these loved ones, I know that having another child isn't going to replace any of the ones I've lost. I can't pinpoint a reason behind my depression. I'm mostly 'at peace' with the trauma my past inflicted upon me, but then every once in a while it just completely blindsides me and throws me for a complete loop and I don't even know what to think. The littlest thing can set it off and big things won't even phase me. I constantly feel like I'm swimming in a black hole that is devoid of everything, but yet I can see that I'm surrounded by all these folks that I know love & care about me and I just feel empty, withdrawn, and sad. But mostly angry.

The anger bothers me the most.

I'm absolutely justified to feel the anger. I can't think of many folks who wouldn't blame me for completely lashing out at some folks who have caused this anger. But at the same time I'm better than that. I feel guilty for having this anger. I want to just let go of the anger but I can't. I can for short periods. Most of the time I don't even notice it lingering. I don't want to be angry. I don't like feeling this way. This in turn makes me not like myself. And the cycle starts again. I've done decent, in my mind, with coping with it. I've gotten better. Stronger. But it's still there, haunting me. I know it's effected persons around me, I try to keep it hidden, to keep it a secret...because it's just not one of those things we talk about... I don't even know how to talk about it. I don't know how to fix it. Sure I can repress it and pretend it doesn't exist...for a while. But I'm not comfortable with that and that fuels my anger, just in more directions.

I don't know what to do at this point. I'm not even sure I even know what I WANT to do. I just know that my head isn't always healthy & it may never be fully healthy...but I also don't want to go through the rest of my life with this anger hoovering over me.

This grown-up shit is hard.


~*~Then of course I'm searching for info that I need, again, for my assignment, that was erased by Windows' need to fucking update without warning and restart without allowing me to save any work I'd worked SOO fucking hard on...and I run across this blog post. I needed it. I'm going to start working on setting the tone to my own happiness & fulfillment...by starting on #3, especially.~*~

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Fire Pit of Reasons....#8-10

By now I'm sure you've read parts 1-4 & 5-7 in my previous two posts, so I'm not going to repeat my disclaimer/warning...

This next portion involves more 'chores' I was commissioned by my father or papa to do, as opposed to just reckless childhood things. See, my Dad was deathly afraid of heights, there was a tree incident that I mentioned here. Then there was another incident involving a radio tower that I don't remember all the details about, so I can't tell that story, I just remember something about a metal radio tower & him & it being one of his reasons he wouldn't willingly climb a ladder. I'm sure your imagination can figure something out. It's because of his passing that I even started blogging. I cherished the stories my dad would tell about his life and it saddens me that I can't remember all the stories or all the details of the stories and doubly saddens me that he's not around to retell the stories to my kids or even help me tell some of my own stories.

My PaPa (dad's dad) was an over the road truck driver so was often gone for weeks at a time. My Granny, whom we moved in with when I was 12, was diabetic and had her right leg amputated when I was about 10 years old. They lived out on a 10 acre farm, in Oklahoma, we would travel out there every other weekend to help out - it was a 2 hour drive one way - but after my dad's brother got married and moved closer to where he worked there was no one right there to help Granny out in case she needed anything. My folks made the decision to move out there, my mom & Granny didn't get greatly along, but it was better than my mom's relationship with her mom & brother who lived on the same dirt road that we did in Arkansas.

I HATED living there! Not because of being on Granny & PaPa's farm but because of the school & 'town' that we lived near. See, in Arkansas we lived outside of the WalMart capital of the world, there was 500 students in my elementary school alone & there were (then) around 10 elementary schools. Plus I was going to be moving up into Junior High & taking advanced courses, it was all mapped out that by my senior year of high school I was going to be taking most, if not all of my college freshman courses. In Oklahoma I don't think there was 500 people in the whole one cop town. There was 14 students in my 7th & 8th grade classes and you had to travel into the next town, 20 miles away, to go to high school, where there was only 64 students in my graduating class. SIXTY FOUR! Where had we not moved I would have been a part of my cousin's graduating class that consisted of 2400 some odd students. I'm not terribly keen on being in the city, we didn't live in the city in Arkansas, we lived in outskirts, in the woods, but there was a variety of PEOPLE. I'm not keen on feeling pigeonholed to have to like just a certain set of people - I have to have a variety of people to mingle with. I like being surrounded by people who have differences in everything. It helps give me options & at least learning capabilities.

To say the least I didn't have a big social life. I went to church, school, and later to work after I got my license to drive. Plus, we lived on a farm, chores are a big part of living on a farm. Chores made easier by the fact that here at Granny & Papa's they had plumbing & running water. I mentioned being dirt poor previously, but didn't mention the fact that part of that included the fact that because of where our house sat we lived too far out to have city water - Grandma had it at the top of the hill, but that was all the further it went...and between being on the side of a hill that was rock and Mom & Dad not having the money to hire someone to dig a well on our property we made due. We had a spring fed pond that was used to water the garden & the animals, we took baths on a regular basis at Grandma's house, and my folks also had a mountain of 5 gallon buckets in the dining room that were filled with water every week. Our house was kept clean, we always had clean clothes to wear, outside of the lack of faucets & the way the bathroom facilities were set up for use it wasn't all that obvious that we didn't have a normal working household. The folks that bought our house after we moved to Oklahoma went to put a well in & it was discovered that the house sits on a huge natural gas pocket, so a water well would not have been an option afterall...the city put in a huge water tower at the top of the hill, in the field across from Grandma's house & they ran water to all the houses out there, (by this time MANY houses & small neighborhoods had started popping up out there as some of the older folks were moved to nursing homes or passed away and the younger generations didn't want the farm lands anymore) at no charge, in exchange for the rights to the natural gas...

Soooo....yea, this post is supposed to be a continuation of reasons why I don't do heights, but I've ventured off course, kinda...I don't know, I think some/most of that information is pertinent to know because this next section isn't necessarily things that any 'normal' kid would be exposed to, but it was part of my teenagehood.

Stick #8....
I was about 14 years old & the barn was needing to be tarred & sealed. My dad, being the type to not do heights, gave us (my brother & I) instructions on how to go about painting on the tar...every nail had to be recovered as well as any holes we found. By this time puberty has taken full hold of me, hormones & my weight do not work well together, & I was TALL...I was about 5'8" and weighed about 180 lbs, give or take some. But I'm mostly legs. Even now, at a 6ft tall adult my legs account for over 1/2 my height, my inseam for pants that actually cover my socks with shoes on is 38", this is the reason I mostly wear boots or heels with my jeans, it's not as obvious that my pants are too short for me.

So, when climbing a ladder to get onto something, such as the barn roof, my feet can be 5 or 6 rungs from the actual top of the ladder and still be able to put stuff on the roof. The tricky part comes into play when I try to actually get all of my body (legs included) onto said roof. Especially when it's a pitched tin roof. Getting off of said roof, via ladder, is 900 times trickier, especially when you're still just as graceful as you have ever been and not terribly fond of being up in the air on 100 year old tin, 30 feet in the air at the peak, painting on tar. See, tar is sticky and thick and the only way to clean it off of anything is to use gasoline, so just wiping your hands off on your pants does absolutely no good, just smears it across your hands even more. However, because the tar is sticky it becomes a bit easier to maneuver back & forth across the pitched tin roof without sliding too terribly far & having to work your way back up to the top, fighting gravity. I was an absolute pro at doing the tarring. I didn't dump my bucket over the edge like my brother 'on accident', I didn't make a complete mess of myself either. I didn't wear glasses before that day, because I had perfect vision, so there was no tar smudges all over my face & hair from pushing them up on my face, like there would be now, but with paint, because I can't seem to think to put the paint brush down before I push my glasses back up my nose...

After a few hours the barn roof was no longer in the shade of the trees & it was lunch time...so hot tin roof + tar + quitting time meant get down off the roof, will start back again in the evening & finish the next morning. Nothing to it. Just use the slant of the roof as a slide, you're not going to go too terribly quickly because your shoes have tar globs on the bottom of them & your hands are tarred as well, so it was a safe enough descent. You dismount from a roof opposite of the way you get on the roof...body first going up, feet first going down...but also the same way as you came up, belly towards the roof. Coming down from the roof your belly is up because you're basically crab walking down...so when you get close to the ladder you have to flip over and crawl the rest of the way down, backwards.

Daniel made it down before me because he's like a freaking spider monkey when it comes to climbing. Back then he was also about 5' tall, even though he was 13, and scrawny. He also wasn't fighting with a freaking bucket of tar because he'd 'dropped' his. My fear of falling was well established so I had a healthy respect for being that high up. I was also prone to freaking minor panic attacks under various circumstances. Daniel is also a freaking practical joker.

He gets down the ladder without issue and starts his taunt of me. The adults are all somewhere besides right there, so there's no one to hold the ladder besides Daniel...and well, he was more interested in taunting than doing anything to reassure me of where the ladder was exactly. I finally am able to get my first foot on the ladder and because of my angle looking down I miscalculated where to put my second foot...I'd gotten it on the outer edge of the ladder, on a hook, instead of between the edges of the ladder. Now, I had to go down at least 4 rungs of the ladder before I could actually hold onto the ladder itself. Thinking that I had both my feet on the same rung I move my first foot down to the second rung. I had relaxed a bit because I was finally on the ladder, making my descent. And then it happened. The rung, that was actually part of a hook, tore through the edge of the tin, and there I was with no feet on the ladder...

I landed on the trailer of hay bales that was sitting there waiting to be packed into the barn, so I didn't fall that whole 15 feet to the ground, only about 8 of it, onto hay bales. Slightly more give to them than the ground would have been, but not by much, but also, because of the way I fell my body was able to get enough reaction in to help prepare for the fall. Over the course of my life at that point I'd learned how to fall 'gracefully'...There was no apparent injury and I wasn't made to finish the tarring, but there was an adult out there at all times after that, keeping an eye on Daniel finish it up. I think my Granny had a bit of say in that tidbit.

Within a few weeks though it was noticed that I wasn't able to see as well and had severe migraine like headaches quite often, so Mom took me in to have my eyes checked right before my Freshman year of high school & I ended up walking out with my lovely prescription eye glasses that I've had ever since. I can not sit here at my laptop and see anything written on the screen.

Lesson learned: ALWAYS have a responsible spotter standing at the bottom of the ladder who is able to hold the ladder in case it should slip. Also? NEVER get on a freaking ladder again, they're just not agreeable to giraffe legs!

Stick #9 & 10
I'm 19 now & living with my cousins' grandma, helping care for her & her 5 indoor cats....

I have since then only been on a ladder twice in the last 15 years. Once because my grandma's cat got outside through an upstairs window and was yowling from the very peak of her roof. Her full two story house. This feat, since she was about 70 at the time, involved me having to take a ladder to the upstairs room, work it out the window & onto the roof of the porch. I then I had to lay that ladder up the peak of the roof, towards the cat....use the ladder to climb up the peak, where it still stopped about 8 feet short of where the beloved cat was sitting, yowling. I didn't make it past the point of positioning the ladder before I was puking from panic. Thankfully my 13 year old cousin was there and I was able to move & hold the ladder further up the roof so he could be as close as possible to the cat, directed him on how to safely climb up there then grab the cat, then make his way back down the ladder & into the window. Stupid fracking indoor cat!

A few weeks later that cat tried to reward me by attempting to kill me. See, I worked three different jobs back then. I did some freelance work as an HTML writer for a few companies, so I had an old 1998 model of a laptop, a few notebooks, & the like - so the laptop bag was heavy. I also worked as a waitress at Ruby Tuesday, so I was carrying my work clothes because I had a shift this day, after work. It was also Sunday, so I had church that morning. Despite being quite tall I've always been greatly fond of heels & the pair I was wearing this particular day was of very nice height, I was also wearing a straight pencil skirt. It was cold & snowy outside, so I had my big heavy winter coat on. I had another change of clothes to change into after I finished my shift at the restaurant to wear to a friends' house. Because I'm running a touch late I arrange all of this stuff, including two extra pairs of shoes, my church bag that had my song book & Bible in it, my drawing pad, and a few miscellaneous things. I also had my purse.

I was living in the upstairs portion of my grandmother's 200 year old house....where the staircase was STEEP. Fourteen total steps from the top to the bottom, but from the top I could potentially reach out to paint the wall portion that was above the door to the bottom of the stairs with a broom handle extension to the roller without issue.

Because I'm carrying all this stuff down the stairs in one trip my hands are too full for me to hold onto the rail, besides I'd lived here for a few months and had tons of practice going up and down these stairs. There's another portion of this story that I won't mention just yet because it deserves it's own post, I'll link it back in when I get it written. Just know that there was another big factor into this bit.**

But, remember that cat, that I had just saved from the peak of the roof? He decides after that day that he likes to be upstairs because he can see more of the world. Prior to me moving in he'd not been allowed upstairs. Also, since the roof incident I made sure to keep my door closed since I liked to have a window open from time to time and there were no screens on the windows upstairs.

I get down on the first step and turn just slightly enough to grab the door to close it. Smacking the cat with the door, which in turns causes him to shriek out, which startles me because I have no clue that the cat was even there.

I go to take the next step down this flight of stairs and that's when that blasted cat runs between my feet & I land at the bottom of the staircase. My aunt Deb came out to take me to the ER because it HURT to stand, BADLY. That hospital x-rayed my leg, where the scrape was, said it wasn't broken, sent me on my way...I went to work later that evening. I never wore heels down a flight of stairs again and I ALWAYS hold onto the railing. If I'm unable to hold the rail then I'm often on the very edge of a panic attack. I have to count my breaths, the steps, and have a clear sight of the stairs. Going down stairs is 900 times worse than going up stairs, but it's still not great. What sucks now is I have a house where the kids' play room is upstairs and my washer & dryer are downstairs....and folks wonder why I don't do laundry on a daily basis!


**That missing bit is included in this blog post.

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Fire Pit of Reasons....#5-7

Stories #1-4 can be found here, as well as the reason for this series of posts....

Again I repeat my disclaimer & warning, after all this is a new post...and not everyone reads part 1 before moving onto part 2....


Instead of ending this post with a disclaimer or other such 'you shouldn't pay attention to this tale' I'm going to start with a list of warnings & disclaimer:

* If you are severely scared of heights you probably shouldn't read any further.
* If you have children you may not wish to continue.
* If you have a tendency to take someone else's mishaps and apply them as possibilities in your own life and react accordingly you probably shouldn't proceed either.
* Please advance with caution if you have a heart condition, are pregnant, or other known or unknown health issues that may be direly afflicted by reading these highlights.

All stories you are about to read are the complete truth by my knowledge, my mother can back up at least 75% of these stories, medical records & child services reports can back up almost as many...and the rest, NEVER tell my mother about, she'd KILL me. ((Okay, so if you read my entry that was a Tribute to my Father you'd likely be close to right in your guess that by now my mom likely already knows all these stories, but lets not remind her of them, that would be best for my health.))

Now that that's out of the way I'm hoping you did take me seriously with my warnings...these tales of "Reasons Stephanie Does NOT do Heights" is not for the faint, weak stomached, or otherwise paranoid type persons.

Disclaimer: *I* have never broken a bone, NOR have I ever received a single stitch (outside of ones necessary to deliver my children via cesarean)...my siblings on the other hand, well....Lets just say I can learn from the mistakes of others.

*******continuation*******

Stick #5
**stage set** I'm now age 10...siblings aged 8, 7, & 4...it was just past my birthday and my birthday is the first one of the year, hence the reason it seems like the ages are a bit off here...Mom & Dad take us to the city park.

Again, this story involves a set of monkey bars, but it's your generic run of the mill metal monkey bars. I'm tall enough by this time that I can pretty much touch the ground and the monkey bars at the same time....pretty much meaning on tippy toes & with the tips of my fingers. So I'm safe from the wrath of monkey bars.

I had also mastered the concept of how to go across the monkey bars without issue. I'm also not quite the toothpick I had been a few years before...thank you stupid hormones. So, when my mom instructed me to help keep an eye on my sister while on the monkey bars it's no big deal. She's almost gotten the hang of it, I just have to help catch her if she slips.

But I'm 10 and the last thing I really want to do is have to hang out and watch my younger sister who was/is the spoiled brat of the litter. But I oblige because I'm the helpful type & I do what I'm told.

So Samantha is going across the monkey bars, falling & crying & whining every time she falls off because she can't make it past the 2nd rung of the bars...and anyone knows that holding someone's legs as they attempt the monkey bars does not do much in the way of actually helping them learn how to do the monkey bars since you need to be able to swing your legs.

After a few rounds of this I decide I'm going to go across the monkey bars WITH her, with my legs wrapped around her torso to help keep her on the bars & give her some room to fall, but while holding onto me.

I'm not terribly sure how many of you are aware of this, but when it's summer & you're going across metal monkey bars the bars are HOT and you naturally develop blisters on your hands if you're not accustomed to swinging across the monkey bars. BAD combination.

So here I am, legs wrapped around my 7 year old sister's chest, swinging across the monkey bars. We make it all the way across successfully the first time. The whiny little brat is insistent on doing it again, despite the fact that both of our hands are blistered & the bars are hot. We get almost halfway across when I decide I'm done, my hands are on FIRE from popped blisters & the hot metal bars.

I inform my sister of my intentions to let go of her and be done. She was NOT okay with this. The spoiled little brat reared her head & let go, with both hands, to grab my legs that were still wrapped around her body. The sudden addition of her 70 pounds of dead weight caused quite the catastrophic fall to the ground. I hit square on my butt, essentially breaking her fall...and her elbow.

For the rest of the summer, since it was my fault she fell & broke her elbow, I was entrusted with the chore of doing everything for her. Yea, because even then I was my sister's biggest fan, now I have to wait on her, hand & foot, for weeks that never wanted to end. Lesson learned: just ignore the whiny brat as much as possible if she wants help, she'll just screw you over in the end anyways...I've relearned this lesson a few dozen times since then. Some folks just never change.

I never did the monkey bars again until I had my own kids, but by then I could hold onto the bars & nearly drag my knees on the ground.

Stick #6
*stage set* Autumn, after my sister's cast is finally off & life has moved on, I'm still 10. We acquired a young pair of Belguim horses. The male, King, is about 18 months old, has never had a saddle put on him, the female, Queenie is about 15 months old, still a few months shy of when my dad wants to start breaking her for riding. See, when my dad was a kid they rode horses, broke horses, and my dad was known, very well, across the area as being a 'horse whisperer'. He had a great knack for breaking even wild horses for riding. This was the main reason we ended up with this pair of horses, the other reason being that the owners, folks my folks had gone to school with, were getting divorced & had to sell the horses & split the cost. I think my dad paid $2 for the horses. His buddy's wife wasn't terribly happy about it from what I remember, but whatever....

Since you've likely already read my post that was a tribute to my father you know that I was a daddy's girl. I wanted to be like my dad in all possible ways...well, all ways that it's possible for a girl to be like her daddy. So it was only natural that I was out with him as he worked this pair of horses. Queenie was EASY. At least in the eyes of my 10 year old self. She was very calm, gentle, no issues, took to having a bareback rider like it was completely natural. Likely the reason my dad let that be the first horse I ever got onto the back of. I was a 'natural' just like my daddy. ♥

I was out there every day with him working with the horses. I only ever got on the back of Queenie the one time to get a 'feel' for being on a horse. He didn't want to stress her too much with having a rider since she was still quite young, but he stood there by my side & walked us around the platform he stood on.

We worked King to the point of he finally being willing to stand there and let me climb on his back. Do keep in mind that my dad does the whole ease the horse into accepting riders with no saddle, then learn them the saddle later. We did have the bit & reigns on him, so I had something to hold onto & guide with.

After about a month of getting him used to me sitting on his back, my dad being right there, able to touch me the whole time, & with a hand on the reign he decided it was time for my first 'real' riding lesson. He gave me both reigns, talked me through MANY different scenarios, not failing to mention the fact that I'd heard maybe EVERY horror story of his & his brothers, including the time a snake spooked my uncle's horse, making it rear back, and the saddle horn embedding into my uncle's thigh. But I'm a chip off my dad's hip, I've got this, I'm a NATURAL....

Except I'm not. Once we got away from the safety of the platform & King realized that my dad had no control of him he BOLTED. He ran me straight to the woods, through the woods, then back again. It was that back again that got me. I was a bit scared & disorientated with the sudden bolt and this being my first time alone on a horse that I didn't react perfectly. I did great on the first run through the woods, I'd remembered my dad's & uncle's stories of such mishaps & knew to keep my body as close to the horse's body as possible & to just hang onto the reigns. Remember, I have no saddle....

King took a hard right, I looked up out of shock as I knew the pond fed stream & a small ravine were in that direction & I wanted to see just where we were headed. Somewhere in that same split second King jumped that ravine (which is only about 2 feet across, about 6 feet deep). So here I was, completely upright due to lifting up to see where we were headed, combined with that whole stupid inertia law of Newton's, and then I stopped suddenly. I was by my waist, hanging from a tree limb, over this ravine.

Belgium horses are not small or even typical sized horses by any stretch of the imagination...they are HUGE. So when one leaps into the air you're guaranteed to be at least 10 feet off the ground. Add in a deep (okay, 6ft deep) ravine below you and you're looking at hanging from a tree limb roughly 20 feet in the air - that's two whole floors of an average office building. Add in a healthy respect for heights and being only 10 years old, unable to catch your breath, and well, a full blown panic attack likely going to be your best friend. Stupid gravity brought me to the ground during that panic attack. I couldn't get my legs to cooperate into wrapping around the limb so I could make a safer descent down the tree.

I did walk away from the incident, I did have a touch of arthritis settle into my hip after that & it gives me fits when the weather isn't perfect, but I didn't break anything. The horses were sold at the auction the following weekend...we never did ever own another horse. Mom just knows the part where the horse ran threw the fence, tearing out a few 4x4 wooden fence posts on his way.

I've since been on a few horses, mainly the carnival type that are hooked to a set of bars that they then walk in a circle. I still haven't mastered dismounting from a saddle & stirrups without getting one foot hung up in the stirrup and landing on my butt, hanging by one foot. I don't have a fear of horses...I have a fear of hanging 20 feet in the air and the gravity induced fall that follows, therefore I no longer get on a horse unless I HAVE to...have to meaning to show my kids that there's nothing wrong with getting on a horse. Riding horseback on the beach, at sunset, is absolutely NOT on my 'bucket list'.

Stick #7
*stage set* I'm 11 now, in 6th grade, and it's winter. What you don't know yet is that since 1st grade and I started school full time (because back then kindergarten was still only a half day) I rode the bus too and from school. You also don't know that because we lived 1/4 of a mile out of city limits, down a steep dirt road hill, the bus did not come down our road, much less stop in front of our house. We had to WALK that 1/4 mile up hill, at 6am, to catch the bus. It did not matter what the weather was like. Mom & Dad both worked from 6am to 4pm, leaving the house around 5:30am, getting home around 4:30pm. I was awakened everyday at 4:30 am to start my chores. I had two goats I had to milk before & after school, chickens, rabbits, dogs, & pigs to feed & water every single day, eggs to also gather after school. I was in 2nd grade when I started milking the goats. So here we are, 6th grade...in Arkansas, it snowed. A very DEEP snow (ok, about 2 feet, but we NEVER saw that much snow, EVER)...so we ended up with a few snow days until the roads the buses took were able to pass without putting kids into too much of harm's way....

Now, remember, we had to walk UP the hill to catch the bus, this meant walking back DOWN the hill to go home. Our road is one of those more or less extended driveways that a few people live down - mainly crotchedly older folks who have no kids living at home and rarely has grandkids that come visit.

Now, the typical thing for any 11 & 10 year old child to want to do under such circumstances is to want to go sledding! There's actually enough snow to be able to do so still on the road, no trees in the road to crash into. Except, when you're 11 you don't take into consideration that the road takes a sharp turn at the bottom of the first crest in the road, where the hill kinda levels out, where the houses are...it curves sharply because if you continue straight you go clear to the bottom of the hill where that spring/pond fed ravine is. This is also a dirt road that about 8 people drive up and down on a daily basis, it's not gotten yet warm enough for the road to be anything but a solid sheet of ice. Walking up the hill with the road that way involved basically walking in the weeds & using the brush along the sides of the road to haul yourself UP the hill.

After being let off the bus my brother Daniel & I got the bright idea to sled down the hill, using our coats and book laden backpacks as the sleds. Remember gravity & inertia? Yea, that thing that says an object in motion will continue to be in motion until an outside force stops it. You gain speed as you go downhill, especially on ice. We think of this fact about the time we get where the road takes a sharp turn...and there's a truck coming UP the hill. Natural reaction says to move, QUICKLY out of the way of this truck that is trying to keep up enough speed to make it both around the curve and then UP the hill in one attempt. We turn our bodies in the direction opposite of the curve. And wind up at the bottom of the hill, at the edge of the ravine.

If you doubly remember there's a creek that runs through this ravine & there are many trees around, so there's ice ...lots of ice. And I'm still a graceful baby giraffe that's learning to walk for the first time on the side of a rocky mountain. It's a good 40 feet from the bottom of this hill back to the road. An hour or so later we still haven't made it back up the hill. The bus dropped us off around 4pm...Mom & Dad get home around 4:30pm. We're also the realllllly super poor kids... To say our folks weren't terribly happy about us using our school books, backpacks, & only winter coats for sleds was an understatement. ((We made it back up the hill by walking the edge of the ravine to the edge of our property line - 10 acres across - where there was a fence, then used the barb wire fence to hold onto to get up the hill.)) Add in the fact we didn't make it to the house until almost 6pm...long story short I still can't go sledding...not just because my folks grounded me for LIFE, but because I've never seen a good sledding hill that doesn't have a road across the bottom of the hill and I know ice plus inertia plus gravity plus moving vehicles just don't go well together.

After that incident (that also involved some police officers) my folks went to the school transportation board & within a week we tore down & rebuilt the fence around our house, cut down a few trees, and the bus started using our driveway to pull into, turn around in, and pick us up/drop us off from school. We then moved to Oklahoma that summer & the bus since hasn't had to go down that road...

I'll conclude this installment for the time being.

The next installment I'll include the instances of my teenagehood where ladders & roofs were involved....

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Fire Pit of Reasons....#1-4

...for my giraffe legs staying firmly on the ground. ☺ (I'd add pictures, but Blogger isn't cooperating at this time.)

Inspired by the Lovely JC of The Animated Woman (@LittleAnimation) & my comment on her Thrill Ride Adventures. :)

From a young age, VERY young age I learned that being off the ground can have some very dire consequences....Since then there have been many events that have only worked to help ingrain that into my brain, just as I think I'm starting to get brave enough to leave the comfy Earth.

Instead of ending this post with a disclaimer or other such 'you shouldn't pay attention to this tale' I'm going to start with a list of warnings & disclaimer:

* If you are severely scared of heights you probably shouldn't read any further.
* If you have children you may not wish to continue.
* If you have a tendency to take someone else's mishaps and apply them as possibilities in your own life and react accordingly you probably shouldn't proceed either.
* Please advance with caution if you have a heart condition, are pregnant, or other known or unknown health issues that may be direly afflicted by reading these highlights.

All stories you are about to read are the complete truth by my knowledge, my mother can back up at least 75% of these stories, medical records & child services reports can back up almost as many...and the rest, NEVER tell my mother about, she'd KILL me. ((Okay, so if you read my entry that was a Tribute to my Father you'd likely be close to right in your guess that by now my mom likely already knows all these stories, but lets not remind her of them, that would be best for my health.))

Now that that's out of the way I'm hoping you did take me seriously with my warnings...these tales of "Reasons Stephanie Does NOT do Heights" is not for the faint, weak stomached, or otherwise paranoid type persons.

Disclaimer: *I* have never broken a bone, NOR have I ever received a single stitch (outside of ones necessary to deliver my children via cesarean)...my siblings on the other hand, well....Lets just say I can learn from the mistakes of others.

Stick in the FirePit #1:
*Setting the stage* I am 2 1/2 years old. My brother, Daniel, is 15 months old. My mother is 8 1/2 months pregnant with my sister, Samantha. We are living in a trailer house, on a Navy base 1200+ miles from family, in South Carolina - family is in Arkansas. The year is 1984.

It's a bright, beautiful day in September and after a long day of doing some near last minute shopping, preparations for the new baby sister, and hours waiting on Daddy to get back to land (he's out on the submarine, had been gone for about 6 months and was supposed to be in that day, ended up being delayed by a few hours) Mom decides to take her two toddlers home for an afternoon nap and to take a nap herself.

She gets her two blonde haired blue eyed angles in their beds in the room they share, checks to ensure they have actually settled down for their afternoon nap, then retires to the couch in the living room. If her darling angels should happen to get up from their nap before Mom gets up from hers she'll be able to hear them and also be easily found in case they need her.

*cue Jaws theme music*

The darling, angel faced toddlers decide that they're too excited to fully take a nap, lay there for a few minutes or so, then decide they want to go outside to go play, naptime is over for them! They go out of the bedroom, down the hall, through the kitchen, but what do they find, but their mother snoring soundly on the couch! The door is locked and upon disturbing the slumbering mama find that she's resistant to the pleas to go play outside. So these darling children look for something to occupy themselves with...they enter the forbidden bedroom. The room is bare outside of a few pieces of furniture for the new baby - the perfect room to play in.

After a small fraction of time has passed by it is discovered that the window is open! ahhh! Fresh air! AND??? An escape route. See, the slumber mama is in the other room and has not yet caught onto the fact that her sweet angels are even in this room - now is the PERFECT time to go play outside.

Being the awesome big sister that she is the eldest of the two children is able to reach & see out the window - green grass & yard toys are just on the other side - she pushes the screen out of the window, easy peasy!

Now, everyone knows that if you go first the younger siblings are always bound to tattle tale, so being the concientious big sister that she is, she gave her little brother a boost so that he too could go outside, seeing as he's not able to reach the window by himself just yet and there's no handy climbing apparatuses available. She lifts him up, pushes him up by his feet, and out he goes - KERPLUNK! Head first into the...remember we're in a trailer house...hitch of the trailer. Now it's the elder sister's turn to go outside...except she realizes a few moments later that she may be tall enough to reach & see out the window she's completely unable to actually climb out the window itself.

The big sister does what any noble sibling does when faced with such a catastrophe - she runs and tells Mom: DANIEL IS OUTSIDE!!! I WANNNA GO OUTSIDE! IT'S NOT FAIR!

This rouses the slumbering mama - she's up!!! SUCCESS!!! Outside we go. And I think that's likely the first time I really remember getting in what could be considered a "shitton" of trouble for helping out one of my siblings. Daniel ended up needing 62 stitches to close the gash in his head - 27 years or so later he still lives...

BUT I learned a VALUABLE lesson that day - Windows are not good substitutes for doors, especially if they're up off the ground.

((You REALLY don't wanna know how over the next few weeks his eyes also ended up in bandages because that same older sister thought she'd be helpful & give him a bath - with liquid laundry detergent while also helping Mom & Dad bring in the groceries...or how a few days after that, while not only was his head still bandaged, his eyes bandaged, and his hands basically taped & bandaged so he didn't tear off the other bandages, his sister helped him out the front door, resulting in him falling down the concrete steps, thus busting his nose & knee....HEY, we were in a hurry that day - Mom was in labor & Dad was finally home!!))

See, all that was PROOF that from an early age I was a VERY helpful big sister and despite all my great intentions I got into a LOT of trouble all because of my younger siblings.



Stick in the Fire Pit #2:
*Scene Set* A few years have gone by, Dad is no longer in the Navy, we're in the middle of building our first house. There are three children now, a fourth is on his way. Children are ages 5, 3, 2, & 6 months gestation. We're living at Grandma's house, just up the hill from where our house is being built by my Dad, my Godfather & some high school buddies of Dad's. Mom is working 40 hours a week at a night shift job, so we're left in the care of Grandma, her husband, and our Schizophrenic Bi-polar Aunt (before medications worked to actually HELP someone with schizophrenia/bi-polar live a normal life). Daniel & I were both in Head Start just down the road, by the airport.

It was a BEAUTIFUL spring day - my 5th birthday in fact. My last year at the Head Start, I was moving up to Kindergarten in the Fall! It was an EXCITING day - FINALLY 5! Like every 5 year old who is told she can do/have anything she wanted I completely believed all these adults, I trusted that when they said that they meant it. So of course, during recess reading hour, with the huge monkey bar thing that 20 some off kids could climb all on at the same time even, I knew that day was going to be the day I could climb up to the very top & sit in the lovely pockets created by the tarp that had been draped over it to discourage climbing & create shade underneath. I enlisted the company of some of my classmates, because really, who wants to hang out alone at the top of such an awesome device! We head up there.

First to the top wins! We (my two buddies & I) were almost halfway up, just to the edge of the tarp when the teachers caught sight of us and instructed us to get down RIGHT NOW! I obliged, I wasn't one for breaking rules, even if it was my birthday. I climbed down & slipped myself back into the group that was sitting, quietly, under the tarp, on the grass. Friend K & A continued the quest, because you know, first to the top wins! A few rungs later & another warning scold from the teacher Friend A comes back down, tearing a small rip in the tarp as she does so. Friend K continues...she's one to do this every day, she's not going to let a little bit of trouble stand in her way of winning this race to the top.

She makes it. Chooses the square she wishes to recline in, nothing the teachers can do about it until she's ready to come back down, they have 40 some off other preschoolers to keep in line and there's only 5 or 6 of them, total, and sits there in the hammock of the tarp.

If I were to guess I'd say these squares ((err, rectangles)) are roughly 2 foot by 18 inches. That day we got to tour a fire truck in the playground. See, the tarp finished ripping as she was laying in the square hammock...the top of this jungle gym/monkey bar thing was roughly 10 feet in the air...and there hung Friend K....by one knee and holding on by one hand. Forget any desire I EVER had of EVER even THINKING about attempting to beat anyone up that thing! The panic & screams & utter chaos just did me in. I learned something very valuable that day as well - I don't care for the limelight all that much and thankfully I had the good sense to listen to the teacher & get down from there or it could have been me...and I was a toothpick kid back then I don't think I would have been so lucky.

((My dad, since he was one of the main parent volunteers, took down the upper portion of that thing over the weekend. My punishment for being one of the ones who'd attempted that climb, besides being the daughter of the guy who tore down the most awesome playground toy ever, was I had to pick up all the nails I could find out of the yard around the house that the guys were done putting the shingles on.))

Stick in the Fire Pit #3 & #4:

*Stage set* We're a bit older now, Mom is no longer pregnant, I'm about 8 years old, Daniel is about 7, Samantha 6, Duke is 3. My mom has a younger half-brother who is only about 6 years older than me, so he was in that weird early teenager phase of life. He was into skate boards, had an awesome bike, the works! He even had a water bed! WAAAAAAYY COOOL! ((Have I ever mentioned that I was a COMPLETE tomboy when I was a kid? No? Ok, well, I'll mention that now, I was QUITE the tomboy growing up.)) Other useful tidbit for this story:
My parents were absolutely into skating, we were at the roller rink at least once a week - they met at the skating rink, they were AWESOME skaters, but by this time (mid-80s) roller skating was something old people did - you know, folks my parents' age (25 & 27 at the time) and I ABSOLUTELY SUCKED at roller skating. My toothpick, giraffe like, one day I'm going to be a basketball star, everyone knew it, legs just REFUSED to coordinate well enough to be able to operate rollerskates, so I spent most of my time on my butt and being ran over (stick #3).

I thought my Uncle S was the COOLEST person EVER. He had all these awesome things and he lived in town, which meant the road was paved & basically flat, as opposed to the dirt road hill we lived halfway down. He had a skateboard, which was the coolest of the coolest things EVER. It was a skateBOARD - absolutely totally different than individual rollerskates, where my feet would go three different directions, on a skateboard though, my feet would be together, on the same flat surface, with one occasionally even touching the ground, not under the power of the wheels. Despite MANY pairs of ripped jeans, knees, elbows, and the occasional face plant I was determined to conquer this cool thing. ((What the hell are these helmets, knee pans, & elbow pads that you're thinking of?!))

Ok, horrible thoughts about my parents not caring enough about our safety to ensure that their children, who owned neither bikes nor skateboards, and this was like 1990, parents, at least mine, hadn't started the whole hovering movement yet, and onto the reason why this warrants mention in my 'fire pit of reasons'....

It has already been established that I have giraffe legs. At this point in time I've not yet hit puberty, so they're still toothpick giraffe legs. I was 8 and stood 5'2" tall and weighed maybe a whole 60 pounds. By this time it is well documented & known that I have the grace of a newborn giraffe, on the side of a mountain, even if the surface is flat. I think it has also been established that I have an uncanny desire to help other folks and I rarely do anything all by myself. What you don't know yet is that directly across the street from my grandfather's house there is some construction going on. This construction is work to put in a rain runoff ditch for that part of town - basically a manmade concrete & railroad tie creek, roughly 5 feet deep.

Remember too that I am only about 8 years old...my uncle was 'keeping an eye on us' playing in the street, folks & grandparents are inside doing whatever adults do when they're only having to really entertain a 3 year old and the other 4 kids (ages 14, 8, 7, & 6) are outside, playing in the street, that is under construction, with no construction workers out there, because it's the weekend and we have a skateboard and a 10 speed bike.

Now, this is before 'extreme sports' was televised or even popular...more one of those things 'punk inner city kids' who were into things like drugs and causing trouble were into, not your typical suburban or country farm kids. So there's no reason to assume that because there are ramps, etc laying around from the construction going on that these kids would ever dream of even attempting such stunts. This is my testament that kids really don't have to be influenced by the television to think of things....

We constructed our own ramps & created dares to go with our obstacle courses. The bike is really too big for anyone to operate even remotely correctly except for the 14 year old uncle and he determines that it would be best that we (the younger kids) should use the skateboard. Since he lives right here he's practiced these jumps and such. I still haven't managed to figure out how to keep my butt or knees off the ground, but I'm POSITIVE I can stand on the board while going down a ramp into a 5 foot deep hole in the ground, it's really not that far.

I get the momentum up...things are going great. I hit the ramp. No, seriously, I hit the edge of the ramp, the board stops. I do not. Stupid inertia & gravity combination! But because I have such WONDERFUL control over what my feet & legs do I see the imminent fall & possible injuries coming towards me, so I pull a stunning move to get off the board in the same moment that it crashed. Then, in super slow motion, it might have taken me AT LEAST 15 minutes to make that fall, my foot gets tangled in one of the cinder blocks laying there that we had moved to help build our ramp. I am dangling there, foot in the block above, my head roughly a foot above the concrete floor of this new drainage ditch. After a bit of 'creative ingenuity' my uncle & siblings are able to get me back up to the street level. Nothing broken!

Lesson I learned that day: I can't do anything that entails wheels under my feet. My reasoning is that my legs are just too long, lanky, & just are unable to coordinate cooperation with the rest of my body to keep me upright. Even into my adult years now I am retaught this lesson, except I've not bothered with roller skates, blades, or skateboards...I can face plant to the ground by just walking across flat, clean surfaces while barefoot & sober.

So, this is installment number one in my series of fire-pitted reasons my giraffe legs & I just don't shouldn't leave the safety of the Earth. You can also read here about how even my bouncing blue eyed 3 year old has even jumped on the bandwagon of reconfirmation of my stand to stay, well, standing, on the ground.


I'm only up to age 8 in this installment. Age 10 & 11 are real winners, but I won't put them in this post. I'm sure your health & sanity thank me.

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