I just want people who say they are Christian to fish or cut bait.
If you are a Christian in truth, your every action is based on "What would Jesus do?"
So, to all the people like my ex husband, my former employers in Dothan, I want to leave a little reminder...
"As you do to the least of these, so you do to me.."
Jesus
For the sake of your souls, I want you to think about that for the rest of your life.
I'm reasonably assured, Mr. and Mrs. Boss, that you would not have kept Jesus in the situation you placed me, your employee in.
I still want to think you would have paid him the wages and benefits you promised, instead of the way you cheated me, taking advantage of the fact that I was alone.
I still want to think you would have at least given him a lunch hour and a day off, not to mention the paid vacation you promised, instead of the way you never gave me the time off, and then said I never asked for, when you know that in fact, I repeatedly asked, scheduled with you, and then at your request canceled, so that you could go to the very place I wanted to go to.
If you wouldn't do it to Jesus, why was it OK for you to do it to me, while going every Sunday to your church?
And while I'm thinking about the way you cheat widows and orphans, I want to ask you if you would have laid off Jesus a week before Christmas, the way you did Eva Lou, Drake, Fox; why Mr. and Mrs. Boss, the list of widows and orphans you cheated while calling on the name of the Christ is rather lengthy, isn't it, going back long before you hired that wave, say for example, the widow of one of your business partners...
I ask you again...
If you wouldn't do it to Jesus, why was it OK to do it to us?
'Cause if you don't answer that question here, you will be answering it in the presence of the Lord.
29 March 2006
26 March 2006
We'd moved to North West Florida in early November 1981 and I put off finding a doctor-Crusty told me I wasn't covered for the pregnancy under the insurance.
I'd been feeling sick for weeks in spite of the Bendictin, a medication prescribed for me every time I'd been pregnant; the only live births I managed were when I reluctantly-I was afraid of potential Thalidymide like effects-took the medication during the pregnancy. When we went to South Carolina to meet Crusty's parents, and I'd got so sick, the ER doctor prescribed it, and I took it just as prescribed. The way the script was written enabled me to refill it as needed for the duration.
I tell myself now that a lot of the things that happened to me were the consequences of so many past lives lived-I used to say "You can take the girl out of the Medieval, but you can't take the Medieval out of the girl."
That January day I was exhausted from the moment I woke; Crusty made supper and called me to the table. When I got up, I found that my body was going numb on the right side; by the time I got to the table, I couldn't move without exercising extreme will, and I couldn't speak at all. My mind was completely clear, I just couldn't get the words from it to my tongue successfully.
After dinner Crusty took me to the hospital. Amoung the other things they did was to give me the name of an obstetrician and inform that I was indeed covered under the insurance.
So, when the doctor's office took my history, they asked if I was allergic to anything or had a 'bad' reaction to any medication. I told them Demerol and I did not get along.
Around 0700 CST the anesthesiologist came in and gave me a shot "to relax" me prior to the insertion of the saddle block. I'd asked to be awake if possible during delivery so that I could see and hold my new child the minute he hit cold air.
I didn't hold his sister until she was nearly a week old, and I've always thought that had a lot to do with the ambivalence we'd felt toward each other-that and the conflict her father created.
I could bore you with details but prefer to tell you that I was really sick. I will say that I was in such bad shape I needed several units of blood on the table, and several more post-op. At least eight people-blood donors-participated in the effort to save my life when I had Fox's sister; I gave blood regularly for years as a small way to say thank-you until I caught Dengue in Central America and had to stop.
Instead of Demerol, they gave me morphine.
Demorol is synthetic morphine. You'd think they might have reasoned that a bad reaction to Demorol might be a good reason to NOT give me morphine. I started throwing up before they made the incision and didn't stop until late the next day.
AAACK! Welcome to the world Fox, Mummy's sick from morphine and may have to turn away to barf...
I felt the action of Fox's removal from the womb as a 'whoosh' sensation.
"Ten!" "A beautiful boy!" Soon after, "Ten!"
My little Fox had passed the most important two tests he would ever take in his life-the Apgar, and he'd done so with the highest scores possible. Thanks be to God, my son had a real chance at life.
Between throwing-up sessions, I begged to see my son, and the nurses untied my left arm so that I could hold him-sort of. I looked at my son-reddish gold hair, blue, blue eyes-and I knew the feeling of love I felt for him at that moment would endure for eternity. I hated when they took him so that Crusty could see him.
Two hours later I was pitching quite a row to have him brought back to me. By that time I was back in my room, still woozy but determined to permit NO distance between my son and me.
The nurses were toughies, but I prevailed by invoking the doctor's permission, and insisting they check with him.
Soon Fox was laid carefuly at my side, Crusty instructed to not let me fall asleep and roll over on him-HMPH, as if! I'd had a saddle block and knew if I so much as lifted my head I would suffer the absolute worst headache. But I could turn my head and just look at him.
Which I did. For hours.
By the grace of God, I had my son and he had me. I knew that Crusty was a jerk, and I silently apologized to Fox that day, and promised him that if Crusty could father so wonderous a child, there must be something good about him, and I would find that good so that Fox and his father would find each other.
Because something wasn't right, and I knew that, just not what that 'not right' thing was.
The morning God gave me the incredible gift of Fox was the only day I was with Crusty that Crusty was unable to destroy with his unremitting negativity.
That morning has sustained me for 24 years.
Fox, my beautiful boy, I would change everything about the last 25 years if I could, EXCEPT you. If God told me I could go back in time in full knowledge of what was to come, and granted me that I could change it all, but not have you, I would say 'thanks, but no thanks.'
I'd been feeling sick for weeks in spite of the Bendictin, a medication prescribed for me every time I'd been pregnant; the only live births I managed were when I reluctantly-I was afraid of potential Thalidymide like effects-took the medication during the pregnancy. When we went to South Carolina to meet Crusty's parents, and I'd got so sick, the ER doctor prescribed it, and I took it just as prescribed. The way the script was written enabled me to refill it as needed for the duration.
I tell myself now that a lot of the things that happened to me were the consequences of so many past lives lived-I used to say "You can take the girl out of the Medieval, but you can't take the Medieval out of the girl."
That January day I was exhausted from the moment I woke; Crusty made supper and called me to the table. When I got up, I found that my body was going numb on the right side; by the time I got to the table, I couldn't move without exercising extreme will, and I couldn't speak at all. My mind was completely clear, I just couldn't get the words from it to my tongue successfully.
After dinner Crusty took me to the hospital. Amoung the other things they did was to give me the name of an obstetrician and inform that I was indeed covered under the insurance.
So, when the doctor's office took my history, they asked if I was allergic to anything or had a 'bad' reaction to any medication. I told them Demerol and I did not get along.
Around 0700 CST the anesthesiologist came in and gave me a shot "to relax" me prior to the insertion of the saddle block. I'd asked to be awake if possible during delivery so that I could see and hold my new child the minute he hit cold air.
I didn't hold his sister until she was nearly a week old, and I've always thought that had a lot to do with the ambivalence we'd felt toward each other-that and the conflict her father created.
I could bore you with details but prefer to tell you that I was really sick. I will say that I was in such bad shape I needed several units of blood on the table, and several more post-op. At least eight people-blood donors-participated in the effort to save my life when I had Fox's sister; I gave blood regularly for years as a small way to say thank-you until I caught Dengue in Central America and had to stop.
Instead of Demerol, they gave me morphine.
Demorol is synthetic morphine. You'd think they might have reasoned that a bad reaction to Demorol might be a good reason to NOT give me morphine. I started throwing up before they made the incision and didn't stop until late the next day.
AAACK! Welcome to the world Fox, Mummy's sick from morphine and may have to turn away to barf...
I felt the action of Fox's removal from the womb as a 'whoosh' sensation.
"Ten!" "A beautiful boy!" Soon after, "Ten!"
My little Fox had passed the most important two tests he would ever take in his life-the Apgar, and he'd done so with the highest scores possible. Thanks be to God, my son had a real chance at life.
Between throwing-up sessions, I begged to see my son, and the nurses untied my left arm so that I could hold him-sort of. I looked at my son-reddish gold hair, blue, blue eyes-and I knew the feeling of love I felt for him at that moment would endure for eternity. I hated when they took him so that Crusty could see him.
Two hours later I was pitching quite a row to have him brought back to me. By that time I was back in my room, still woozy but determined to permit NO distance between my son and me.
The nurses were toughies, but I prevailed by invoking the doctor's permission, and insisting they check with him.
Soon Fox was laid carefuly at my side, Crusty instructed to not let me fall asleep and roll over on him-HMPH, as if! I'd had a saddle block and knew if I so much as lifted my head I would suffer the absolute worst headache. But I could turn my head and just look at him.
Which I did. For hours.
By the grace of God, I had my son and he had me. I knew that Crusty was a jerk, and I silently apologized to Fox that day, and promised him that if Crusty could father so wonderous a child, there must be something good about him, and I would find that good so that Fox and his father would find each other.
Because something wasn't right, and I knew that, just not what that 'not right' thing was.
The morning God gave me the incredible gift of Fox was the only day I was with Crusty that Crusty was unable to destroy with his unremitting negativity.
That morning has sustained me for 24 years.
Fox, my beautiful boy, I would change everything about the last 25 years if I could, EXCEPT you. If God told me I could go back in time in full knowledge of what was to come, and granted me that I could change it all, but not have you, I would say 'thanks, but no thanks.'
I really believe that Crusty is a man who chose to be incredibly evil; I think he thinks he is going to try to 'cop a plea' when he faces God, and I know that my trust that God doesn't do jailhouse lawyers cuts no ice with you in so far as forgiving me for what you went through.
And I suspect that you'd just as soon have not been born, and so wouldn't much apreciate that if changing the past meant not having you, I'd take a pass on changing the past.
I'm hoping I'm wrong.
Because I love you, and I miss you; BTW, I miss 'Bas, too.
I made some very serious mistakes that affected your life. But I tried to learn from them. I tried to not repeat them.
And I told you about them in the hopes that you would choose to learn from my mistakes so as to spare yourself the horror of learning from them by repeating them on your own.
It's what parents do. I'm not perfect at it. But I'm trying.
To me, one of the most important things to learn from what happened is that using a child as a chain, a weapon, or an excuse for revenge, is the single most evil act one can commit.
I did what I did to save your life. Literally.
My birthday wish for you is that one day you are truly glad to be alive, and that until then you can at least keep from spreading any of your pain and anger (at my failings and what I've come to think you see as God's, too) to the world at large, and most importantly, to your own beautiful boy.
Just after I told Crusty the news, he insisted I go with him to meet his parents.
What fun. Morning sickness hit-HARD-while we were there, and I had to go to hospital. While there, I almost lost Fox.
I'd been pregnant twice before my daughter was born. When I lost the first two, test were run, and I was told I would probably have a hard time getting pregnant. They even tried fertility drugs-no pregnancy.
We went to an adoption agency, we told them we would like to give a child a home. (At that time, I thought I was the one with the problem-I hadn't found out yet about the guy I'd foolishly married, and thought I had to make the marriage work. Something like-"made my bed and had to lie in it...")
After reviewing our interviews, my medical records, and some things we'd done for other children, we were fast tracked.
The morning I found out I was carrying her, the adoption agency called to say they had a healthy, white baby girl they would like to place with us.
The doctor scheduled me for a c-section because I'd had one with Fox's sister in 1977, and then the incision was used again in '79-he was reluctant to chance a labour. I pleaded, somehow I knew I would be able to deliver this baby without complications. He said no.
I had something like a stroke during the 7th month. After tests, I was told I had hypoglycemia.
I was also put on the list that got me into the doctor's office, jabbed, poked, examined; it seems as though it was twice a week after the sort of stroke.
No-one was terribly optimistic that I would deliver a living child. Except me, and God.
Crusty was so sure I wouldn't that he refused to buy so much as a bottle or diaper; Fox came home to a laundry basket 'bassinet' and some hand me downs Crusty's sister sent-"just in case."
I suppose I could look it up, but I am fairly sure it was a Thursday afternoon that I checked into the hospital after a Pizza Hut lunch with Crusty and my daughter.
It was so hot, and parched. North West Florida was in the middle of a deep drought, and I joked to my daughter and Crusty that it would really be strange if Fox's birth coincided with the same sort of drought breaking rains my daughter's birth had.
I knew I was in labour on Friday night, the hospital sent me home; early Saturday night they sent me out to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and back in hopes that I would finally get things moving. It was hot even on the bridge, San Francisco was in the middle of a prolonged drought. We were rationing water even to brush teeth...
Around 2pm on Sunday, they realized I was in trouble-I think the seizures really scared them more than me, and I was rushed to surgery.
I came to on Wednesday; it was raining, and had been, they told me, since shortly after she was born. It was still raining when we went home, a week later.
Crusty took my daughter home, and I settled in with a book to wait for the morning, and Fox.
What fun. Morning sickness hit-HARD-while we were there, and I had to go to hospital. While there, I almost lost Fox.
I'd been pregnant twice before my daughter was born. When I lost the first two, test were run, and I was told I would probably have a hard time getting pregnant. They even tried fertility drugs-no pregnancy.
We went to an adoption agency, we told them we would like to give a child a home. (At that time, I thought I was the one with the problem-I hadn't found out yet about the guy I'd foolishly married, and thought I had to make the marriage work. Something like-"made my bed and had to lie in it...")
After reviewing our interviews, my medical records, and some things we'd done for other children, we were fast tracked.
The morning I found out I was carrying her, the adoption agency called to say they had a healthy, white baby girl they would like to place with us.
The doctor scheduled me for a c-section because I'd had one with Fox's sister in 1977, and then the incision was used again in '79-he was reluctant to chance a labour. I pleaded, somehow I knew I would be able to deliver this baby without complications. He said no.
I had something like a stroke during the 7th month. After tests, I was told I had hypoglycemia.
I was also put on the list that got me into the doctor's office, jabbed, poked, examined; it seems as though it was twice a week after the sort of stroke.
No-one was terribly optimistic that I would deliver a living child. Except me, and God.
Crusty was so sure I wouldn't that he refused to buy so much as a bottle or diaper; Fox came home to a laundry basket 'bassinet' and some hand me downs Crusty's sister sent-"just in case."
I suppose I could look it up, but I am fairly sure it was a Thursday afternoon that I checked into the hospital after a Pizza Hut lunch with Crusty and my daughter.
It was so hot, and parched. North West Florida was in the middle of a deep drought, and I joked to my daughter and Crusty that it would really be strange if Fox's birth coincided with the same sort of drought breaking rains my daughter's birth had.
I knew I was in labour on Friday night, the hospital sent me home; early Saturday night they sent me out to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and back in hopes that I would finally get things moving. It was hot even on the bridge, San Francisco was in the middle of a prolonged drought. We were rationing water even to brush teeth...
Around 2pm on Sunday, they realized I was in trouble-I think the seizures really scared them more than me, and I was rushed to surgery.
I came to on Wednesday; it was raining, and had been, they told me, since shortly after she was born. It was still raining when we went home, a week later.
Crusty took my daughter home, and I settled in with a book to wait for the morning, and Fox.
25 March 2006
My son will 24 on Sunday 26th March 2006. Unless Fox opens his heart to a miracle, we will be still estranged; I will not be welcome to contact him, or to wish him a happy day. Sometimes I think he wishes he had never been born.
I remember the day I found out I was pregnant with him. That morning I'd used an EPT.
That afternoon, after extensive tests (my doctor had confirmed a year earlier that I shouldn't be able to concieve, during emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst, and couldn't believe that I could possibly be pregnant any more than I could) and a physical exam, his nurse rang and asked if I was sitting down.
(In 1977, when I had come around a week after the birth of my daughter, the doctors told me the damage due to complications during prenancy and delivery was such that I would probably never become pregnant again; I was told how lucky I was to have A-a living child, and B-my own life. Toxemia, eclampsia, 21 1/2 hours of hard labour.)
Miracle!
To me, boy or girl, I was carrying what to me was an absolute miracle child, albeit a deeply troubling one-I didn't want Crusty to be the father of a miracle!
When the nurse quietly told me the doctor had already made arrangements with a safe private clinic in New Orleans-"Just tell us when...", I told her no thank-you. I said my people don't murder our children no matter how inconvenient. And I told her the baby was a miracle, a gift from God.
I meant it then and now.
When Fox was brand new, and Crusty was trying with a better face to make us look like the normal American family on a shoe string, he took several photos. At first he took a lot of pictures of Fox and me.
(When he finally left, sixteen years later, I destroyed every picture of Crusty that I found, cutting him out of the photos with Fox-there weren't that many, but one I couldn't cut as it was a Polaroid. Fox found it, and burned it; the picture was of Fox at about twenty minutes old, and Crusty was holding him.)
Pictures of Fox and me in the hospital; at home; on holidays; oh God, my beautiful boy.
Yoko Ono had sung a song about her love for her's and John Lennon's son, Celine Dion covered it last year or so; when I heard it I had to pull off the road and cry. I'd sung it in my heart every time I held little Fox.
"Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy..." I never ever let Fox know that. Maybe I should have, but maybe not-he hated to be called by any term of endearment, although we were close until he was about 11.
I sang him a lullabye-"You are so beautiful to me; you're everything I dreamed of, everything I need; you are so beautiful, to me."
Another song that when I hear it, if I am driving, again I need to pull off the road.
I know women who have lost children to death. I know women who prayed, longed for, tried everything, but couldn't carry and deliver a child.
My children are alive. But I have lost them, and on their birthdays I am overcome with grief, more than any other day of the year-when your family has turned away from you, you learn just how many days there are in a year that you really, really hurt-Mother's and Father's Day, Christmas or Passover...but their birthdays, if you are their mother, hurt more than any words can convey.
All I ever wanted was to be their mom. All I ever wanted for them was what all real mothers want for their children. A safe and happy home, a good education, and healthy adult relationship; memories...
When I realized that I didn't love my daughter's father, I left him. He didn't take it well.
Hey, he tried to pick-up my best friend's then 16 year old sister, he'd been caught having an affair with his commanding officer's 18 year old daughter; he slept with two of my three sisters-one of them a full sister, the other a half-and he gave me an STD back when they were called VD and the military doctor would treat the wife without telling her what was going on- Put that with the night he knocked me down the flight and a half worth of stairs in our apartment a month before the baby was born, and you might be able to figure out why I had trouble loving someone like that.
The marriage was a mistake, and I bailed after trying from 15th March, 1975 to 18 November 1977-when our daughter was two months old and he gave me the STD.
On paper, we were married until 4th April, 1980, but he was shipped out three weeks after the wedding, and I didn't join him until October, then he was underway most of the time, and I had a habit of leaving him for a month or so after catching him in some squalid mess until my oldest sister-a former nun would guilt trip me into "trying to save my marriage;" cumulatively I think we figured out we actually lived together a grand total of something like 11 whole months out of the two years we 'tried' to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear...
I told him she would figure him out one day, and that I felt sorry for him.
Little things, like Crusty not wanting to have Fox baptised-Anglican (my preference), or Roman Catholic, (Crusty's); my not wanting to marry Crusty at all-Fox was nine months old when I finally agreed; Crusty making sure his schedule was second shift-I just knew somehow it was so that he wouldn't be home to help with Fox's homework; his reluctance to be around Fox...I would lose it and beg him for a divorce-"You don't love me, you don't love Fox; Let us go!"
He would threaten if pleading didn't work; he also did things to the car or bank accounts if I was determined to leave.
I would beg him to either be a father and husband, or let us go. I knew that Fox needed a real father in his life to teach him to be a good husband and father one day.
I begged God to rescue Fox and me, to send me help-a man to treat me with respect so that Fox would grow up with a healthy model of how real adults treat each other. Not a new husband so much, although I did hope that one day I would be free again, but more importantly I begged God to put a good man into our lives so that my son would see how a real man treats others-other men, women, children.
Fox didn't like God's answer. Neither did I. No-one stood up against Crusty to help us, and Fox believes God could have, should have, and chose not to.
I did and do understand why there are those, including Fox, who believe either God 'let' Crusty do this, and therefore is a real crummy god, or that there simply is no God at all.
But I understand why His answer was what it was.
I don't think Fox likes that I don't blame God.
Oh, my beautiful boy, how I wish I could explain it to you! But your anger stoppers your ears.
You are such an angry young man, but you are a good one. No matter how hard you try to prove otherwise.
So, I miss you.
Maybe next year, mi'jo, mi 'Tteo.
I remember the day I found out I was pregnant with him. That morning I'd used an EPT.
That afternoon, after extensive tests (my doctor had confirmed a year earlier that I shouldn't be able to concieve, during emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst, and couldn't believe that I could possibly be pregnant any more than I could) and a physical exam, his nurse rang and asked if I was sitting down.
(In 1977, when I had come around a week after the birth of my daughter, the doctors told me the damage due to complications during prenancy and delivery was such that I would probably never become pregnant again; I was told how lucky I was to have A-a living child, and B-my own life. Toxemia, eclampsia, 21 1/2 hours of hard labour.)
Miracle!
To me, boy or girl, I was carrying what to me was an absolute miracle child, albeit a deeply troubling one-I didn't want Crusty to be the father of a miracle!
When the nurse quietly told me the doctor had already made arrangements with a safe private clinic in New Orleans-"Just tell us when...", I told her no thank-you. I said my people don't murder our children no matter how inconvenient. And I told her the baby was a miracle, a gift from God.
I meant it then and now.
When Fox was brand new, and Crusty was trying with a better face to make us look like the normal American family on a shoe string, he took several photos. At first he took a lot of pictures of Fox and me.
(When he finally left, sixteen years later, I destroyed every picture of Crusty that I found, cutting him out of the photos with Fox-there weren't that many, but one I couldn't cut as it was a Polaroid. Fox found it, and burned it; the picture was of Fox at about twenty minutes old, and Crusty was holding him.)
Pictures of Fox and me in the hospital; at home; on holidays; oh God, my beautiful boy.
Yoko Ono had sung a song about her love for her's and John Lennon's son, Celine Dion covered it last year or so; when I heard it I had to pull off the road and cry. I'd sung it in my heart every time I held little Fox.
"Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy..." I never ever let Fox know that. Maybe I should have, but maybe not-he hated to be called by any term of endearment, although we were close until he was about 11.
I sang him a lullabye-"You are so beautiful to me; you're everything I dreamed of, everything I need; you are so beautiful, to me."
Another song that when I hear it, if I am driving, again I need to pull off the road.
I know women who have lost children to death. I know women who prayed, longed for, tried everything, but couldn't carry and deliver a child.
My children are alive. But I have lost them, and on their birthdays I am overcome with grief, more than any other day of the year-when your family has turned away from you, you learn just how many days there are in a year that you really, really hurt-Mother's and Father's Day, Christmas or Passover...but their birthdays, if you are their mother, hurt more than any words can convey.
All I ever wanted was to be their mom. All I ever wanted for them was what all real mothers want for their children. A safe and happy home, a good education, and healthy adult relationship; memories...
When I realized that I didn't love my daughter's father, I left him. He didn't take it well.
Hey, he tried to pick-up my best friend's then 16 year old sister, he'd been caught having an affair with his commanding officer's 18 year old daughter; he slept with two of my three sisters-one of them a full sister, the other a half-and he gave me an STD back when they were called VD and the military doctor would treat the wife without telling her what was going on- Put that with the night he knocked me down the flight and a half worth of stairs in our apartment a month before the baby was born, and you might be able to figure out why I had trouble loving someone like that.
The marriage was a mistake, and I bailed after trying from 15th March, 1975 to 18 November 1977-when our daughter was two months old and he gave me the STD.
On paper, we were married until 4th April, 1980, but he was shipped out three weeks after the wedding, and I didn't join him until October, then he was underway most of the time, and I had a habit of leaving him for a month or so after catching him in some squalid mess until my oldest sister-a former nun would guilt trip me into "trying to save my marriage;" cumulatively I think we figured out we actually lived together a grand total of something like 11 whole months out of the two years we 'tried' to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear...
I told him she would figure him out one day, and that I felt sorry for him.
Little things, like Crusty not wanting to have Fox baptised-Anglican (my preference), or Roman Catholic, (Crusty's); my not wanting to marry Crusty at all-Fox was nine months old when I finally agreed; Crusty making sure his schedule was second shift-I just knew somehow it was so that he wouldn't be home to help with Fox's homework; his reluctance to be around Fox...I would lose it and beg him for a divorce-"You don't love me, you don't love Fox; Let us go!"
He would threaten if pleading didn't work; he also did things to the car or bank accounts if I was determined to leave.
I would beg him to either be a father and husband, or let us go. I knew that Fox needed a real father in his life to teach him to be a good husband and father one day.
I begged God to rescue Fox and me, to send me help-a man to treat me with respect so that Fox would grow up with a healthy model of how real adults treat each other. Not a new husband so much, although I did hope that one day I would be free again, but more importantly I begged God to put a good man into our lives so that my son would see how a real man treats others-other men, women, children.
Fox didn't like God's answer. Neither did I. No-one stood up against Crusty to help us, and Fox believes God could have, should have, and chose not to.
I did and do understand why there are those, including Fox, who believe either God 'let' Crusty do this, and therefore is a real crummy god, or that there simply is no God at all.
But I understand why His answer was what it was.
I don't think Fox likes that I don't blame God.
Oh, my beautiful boy, how I wish I could explain it to you! But your anger stoppers your ears.
You are such an angry young man, but you are a good one. No matter how hard you try to prove otherwise.
So, I miss you.
Maybe next year, mi'jo, mi 'Tteo.
23 March 2006
I visit a blog called Job's Tale. The author is a man my age, with great writing and illustration skills-his web page alone, without reading the text-which I don't recommend, you really should read this man's wonderful writing-is visually beautiful, and he graciously posts, on the very rare occasion, some of his other artwork.
A few days ago his most recent post brought me to a stunning realization-I was the recipient of an act of amazing grace (-all pun intended!-:) in the early 1970's, when the Calvary Church first pitched their tents in Orange County California.
I have blogged that I believe in re-incarnation, and have memories dating back to 3K BC. I do.
But in the 2K since the murder of the Christ, I have pondered and struggled with the presentation of him that organized religion has. Instead of bring me (and I suspect many others) closer to him, the message, and therefore ultimately closer to the Father, organized religion has pushed many away! Not from faith, certes, but from knowing Yeshua, well yes, I do think so.
The Jesus Freak times of the early '70's changed that for so many of us! By them, in them, (many, many thanks to the willingness to answer His call to bring our generation closer to His beloved son that we might be free), I and many others were truly saved.
Even if it took us nearly 40 years-HUH?-to figure it out!
Thanks be to God, who does wonderous things for His children!
A few days ago his most recent post brought me to a stunning realization-I was the recipient of an act of amazing grace (-all pun intended!-:) in the early 1970's, when the Calvary Church first pitched their tents in Orange County California.
I have blogged that I believe in re-incarnation, and have memories dating back to 3K BC. I do.
But in the 2K since the murder of the Christ, I have pondered and struggled with the presentation of him that organized religion has. Instead of bring me (and I suspect many others) closer to him, the message, and therefore ultimately closer to the Father, organized religion has pushed many away! Not from faith, certes, but from knowing Yeshua, well yes, I do think so.
The Jesus Freak times of the early '70's changed that for so many of us! By them, in them, (many, many thanks to the willingness to answer His call to bring our generation closer to His beloved son that we might be free), I and many others were truly saved.
Even if it took us nearly 40 years-HUH?-to figure it out!
Thanks be to God, who does wonderous things for His children!
22 March 2006
Last night while in the process of refreshing my memory about Sala Al-Edin, I came across a little news blurb about an jailed Afghani who may be executed for the crime of leaving Islam.
Or as Western reporters phrase it, "Afghan Christian Awaits Execution For Conversion."
Swell. What would the Great One have to say about that one, he who when he won back the Holy City granted safe passage to the Christians and Jews?
Jesus weeps; I suspect Yusef, may he forgive my familiarity, does too. Any good person would find this up-coming execution to be an occasion for tears.
What a horrendous world this is becoming thanks to the always nasty combination of fear, hate, and greed.
I've long understood that greed breeds a foul bastard-one willing to assume the mask of an up-right sentient man in order to blind the people while leading them, through a perfect understanding of how to manipulate human psychology, to achieve nefarious ends. So very clever to know that a sorrowful lot of people will fall into it so easily, and once caught, lie like a parlour rug to cover themselves; if forced to admit complicity, too many will shrug, and embrace evil like a long lost brother.
Makes it so much easier, and so much more fun, for evil. I knew someone once who said human nature is it's own worst enemy.
Of course, I did, do, and hopefully always will believe man is better than some instinct driven one celled blob on a lab slide.
I'm pretty sure God does, too. I think His hope is still floating, but I have to wonder how much longer it will last for those who seem absolutely determined to make themselves the very epitome of walking evil.
I'm not talking about the Taliban in general-I think those men for the most part are terrified of the world they see swallowing them and their people up; I have read too many news articles about some of the monstrous behaviours of Western contractors there and in Iraq to believe the steer droppings that the "Afghanis are savages and the Westerners are not being properly thanked for all their efforts".
So I think generally, the up-coming execution is the response of angry and frightened men.
Hey, while I will not tell the century, I promise you-I REMEMBER DISTINCTLY being bound to a pole and set on fire, OK, for being something that scared the bejeebers out of a bunch of thoroughly terrified villagers-most of whom I'd grown up with. Fear is a terrible, terrible and cruel task master!
To a small degree, I suffer it's effects; I blog under a screen name-hard to find this one even if you 'Google' FoxsMom.
And if you have read most of this blog from inception, you know that my former husband-AKA Crusty-first date-raped me, then used my religious beliefs to trap me into a marriage I never, ever wanted; and then, when my good and common sense reared it's pointed little head, was perfectly comfortable sticking a gun to my head, Fox's head, any one's head who tried to help me get the hell out of Dodge.
To save my son's life, I lived in near total fear for DECADES!!
(And yeah, I am rather pissed, OK? Because now that we are free, Fox blames ME for what he went through at the hands of that monster Crusty; I am completely alone, my son has NO education, and no family to love him-he thinks he doesn't need it, and I have to step very carefully in the Matrix reloaded piece of shit world the Crustys have built for themselves-because they know how to manipulate you into thinking it was all YOUR idea.
Yeah, I'm pissed.
Fear bites-HARD.)
Or as Western reporters phrase it, "Afghan Christian Awaits Execution For Conversion."
Swell. What would the Great One have to say about that one, he who when he won back the Holy City granted safe passage to the Christians and Jews?
Jesus weeps; I suspect Yusef, may he forgive my familiarity, does too. Any good person would find this up-coming execution to be an occasion for tears.
What a horrendous world this is becoming thanks to the always nasty combination of fear, hate, and greed.
I've long understood that greed breeds a foul bastard-one willing to assume the mask of an up-right sentient man in order to blind the people while leading them, through a perfect understanding of how to manipulate human psychology, to achieve nefarious ends. So very clever to know that a sorrowful lot of people will fall into it so easily, and once caught, lie like a parlour rug to cover themselves; if forced to admit complicity, too many will shrug, and embrace evil like a long lost brother.
Makes it so much easier, and so much more fun, for evil. I knew someone once who said human nature is it's own worst enemy.
Of course, I did, do, and hopefully always will believe man is better than some instinct driven one celled blob on a lab slide.
I'm pretty sure God does, too. I think His hope is still floating, but I have to wonder how much longer it will last for those who seem absolutely determined to make themselves the very epitome of walking evil.
I'm not talking about the Taliban in general-I think those men for the most part are terrified of the world they see swallowing them and their people up; I have read too many news articles about some of the monstrous behaviours of Western contractors there and in Iraq to believe the steer droppings that the "Afghanis are savages and the Westerners are not being properly thanked for all their efforts".
So I think generally, the up-coming execution is the response of angry and frightened men.
Hey, while I will not tell the century, I promise you-I REMEMBER DISTINCTLY being bound to a pole and set on fire, OK, for being something that scared the bejeebers out of a bunch of thoroughly terrified villagers-most of whom I'd grown up with. Fear is a terrible, terrible and cruel task master!
To a small degree, I suffer it's effects; I blog under a screen name-hard to find this one even if you 'Google' FoxsMom.
And if you have read most of this blog from inception, you know that my former husband-AKA Crusty-first date-raped me, then used my religious beliefs to trap me into a marriage I never, ever wanted; and then, when my good and common sense reared it's pointed little head, was perfectly comfortable sticking a gun to my head, Fox's head, any one's head who tried to help me get the hell out of Dodge.
To save my son's life, I lived in near total fear for DECADES!!
(And yeah, I am rather pissed, OK? Because now that we are free, Fox blames ME for what he went through at the hands of that monster Crusty; I am completely alone, my son has NO education, and no family to love him-he thinks he doesn't need it, and I have to step very carefully in the Matrix reloaded piece of shit world the Crustys have built for themselves-because they know how to manipulate you into thinking it was all YOUR idea.
Yeah, I'm pissed.
Fear bites-HARD.)
20 March 2006
Anyone doubting the war on women and children needs to have his or her head examined:
From the New York Times, an Op-Ed piece decrying the recent court trend to deny the use of certain evidence (911 tapes of calls made by victims during the commission of domestic violence) in efforts to bring the perp to Caeser's Justice.
The piece is in addition to several mainstream news sources reporting...
Reporting such items as the denial of a regular, weekly day off to domestic staff in the Philippines on the grounds that some of them provide care for infirm or elderly employers who apparently require 24/7 assistance. Guess the 'family' can't figure out that overworked carers have a tendency to abuse their charges-sometimes to the point of murdering the patient in the carer's exhaustion-or maybe that is the family's hope?
Reporting on such outrages as the Italian judges who considered an older man raping a 14 year old non-virgin to have been guilty of a much lesser crime based on the 14 year old's non-virgin status; the recent decisions of American judges: to sentence a 27 count convicted child molester to sixty days; another freed one who turned right around and raped several more children; and of course one would have to be living in a damn cave on another planet to have missed the fine 47 year old fellow who upon his release from prison (after being convicted in his thirties of having violently raped a 12 year old, and who had "lived quietly for several years" yet all of a sudden??!) kidnaps and sexually tortures two teen-aged girls for several days in his under-the-house bunker. Hmmm, video provided by the local police indicate that if the guy was "quiet" it is because he was rather busy excavating the elaborate torture chamber in preparation for recidivsm...
And of course, the litany of Bush White House cutbacks to social programs.
This morning seems to be a morning of Op-Ed pieces; I read a piece on the Telegraph wherein the author vented his frustration with the way British lives are being increasing legislated by some really silly laws engendered by increasing mob willingness to be rather inconsiderate on the neighbours, while 'real' criminals are set free by an increasingly willy-nilly legal system.
I thought about emailing him to let him know that the same thing is happening all over, but decided against it. I decided the guy is probably either smart enough to figure it out on his own if he is being published in the Telegraph, or that he is (typical of Englishmen) overly invested in believing his country is the only one worth thinking about.
BTW-there really is a DIFFERENCE between Englishmen and the rest of Britain. Rather a big one, if one is of Irish, Scots, or Welsh extraction...My father used to say that he wanted me to marry anyone but an Englishman. I confess to you, my brothers and sisters, to teaching my son from an early age to answer the question "What is the lowest form of life on the earth?" with "An Englishman." Half joking, full in earnest:) One has to humour the English, because they really do think they are the only ones...but they are sometimes cute, and we put up with them for the sake of the commonweal-i.e. don't mess with our cousins, eh? They're stupid gits, but they are our stupid gits.
But there are worse things; I used to be a big fan of Nicholas Kristoff until I figured out that his well-written moral outrage seems restricted to other countries-he misses the need to connect the dots, and has it down to a fine art, that.
I think moral outrage should begin at home, as should "mote and log-jammed eye" examinations...
From the New York Times, an Op-Ed piece decrying the recent court trend to deny the use of certain evidence (911 tapes of calls made by victims during the commission of domestic violence) in efforts to bring the perp to Caeser's Justice.
The piece is in addition to several mainstream news sources reporting...
Reporting such items as the denial of a regular, weekly day off to domestic staff in the Philippines on the grounds that some of them provide care for infirm or elderly employers who apparently require 24/7 assistance. Guess the 'family' can't figure out that overworked carers have a tendency to abuse their charges-sometimes to the point of murdering the patient in the carer's exhaustion-or maybe that is the family's hope?
Reporting on such outrages as the Italian judges who considered an older man raping a 14 year old non-virgin to have been guilty of a much lesser crime based on the 14 year old's non-virgin status; the recent decisions of American judges: to sentence a 27 count convicted child molester to sixty days; another freed one who turned right around and raped several more children; and of course one would have to be living in a damn cave on another planet to have missed the fine 47 year old fellow who upon his release from prison (after being convicted in his thirties of having violently raped a 12 year old, and who had "lived quietly for several years" yet all of a sudden??!) kidnaps and sexually tortures two teen-aged girls for several days in his under-the-house bunker. Hmmm, video provided by the local police indicate that if the guy was "quiet" it is because he was rather busy excavating the elaborate torture chamber in preparation for recidivsm...
And of course, the litany of Bush White House cutbacks to social programs.
This morning seems to be a morning of Op-Ed pieces; I read a piece on the Telegraph wherein the author vented his frustration with the way British lives are being increasing legislated by some really silly laws engendered by increasing mob willingness to be rather inconsiderate on the neighbours, while 'real' criminals are set free by an increasingly willy-nilly legal system.
I thought about emailing him to let him know that the same thing is happening all over, but decided against it. I decided the guy is probably either smart enough to figure it out on his own if he is being published in the Telegraph, or that he is (typical of Englishmen) overly invested in believing his country is the only one worth thinking about.
BTW-there really is a DIFFERENCE between Englishmen and the rest of Britain. Rather a big one, if one is of Irish, Scots, or Welsh extraction...My father used to say that he wanted me to marry anyone but an Englishman. I confess to you, my brothers and sisters, to teaching my son from an early age to answer the question "What is the lowest form of life on the earth?" with "An Englishman." Half joking, full in earnest:) One has to humour the English, because they really do think they are the only ones...but they are sometimes cute, and we put up with them for the sake of the commonweal-i.e. don't mess with our cousins, eh? They're stupid gits, but they are our stupid gits.
But there are worse things; I used to be a big fan of Nicholas Kristoff until I figured out that his well-written moral outrage seems restricted to other countries-he misses the need to connect the dots, and has it down to a fine art, that.
I think moral outrage should begin at home, as should "mote and log-jammed eye" examinations...
19 March 2006
We are living in interesting times.
I should have passed, I'm thinking.
Ya know, I read today that five Vermont towns voted to impeach President Bush.
Fellow townsfolk are pissed at those who voted to do so because they are afraid of the political and economic repercussions; the blind loyalists are calling the pro-impeachers traitors.
I dunno, but didn't we used to be free?
I was 17 when Nixon resigned, and I know exactly where I was when the news came over the radio-riding with Gary Aamodt down the interstate from Kings Canyon.
I was 7 when President Kennedy was killed, and I very clearly recall that as well...In part because 22cd November marks the date I became politically aware in this lifetime. I was gob-smacked to understand that I'd come back to a dangerous lifetime, instead of the one filled with peace and prosperity I'd thought I was coming to, but that's another story...
My senior year of high school I found a stray cat, brought him home, vetted him, restored him to luxurious health and stunning feline handsomeness, and named him Leon Jaworski. I loved the guy, and the cat.
I wasn't too sure about Woodward and Bernstein; I wondered at their motives sometimes, although I was grateful that whatever their motives, they'd published.
So hearing the news that Nixon had finally recognized the inevitable, and had wisely moved to avoid the fullness of it, came as no shock, and with not a little satisfaction.
But I felt some pity for the man when his best defense seemed to be that he likely hadn't done much more than prior Presidents, he'd just been exposed.
We all scorned poor Dick and Pat, Julie and Tricia-woohoo, did we ever!
Most of us had bumper stickers that left no doubt as to our personal politics, including one that read "Question Authority."
That one always made me uneasy.
No rebel me, I am mostly a Loyalist, a Royalist, and definitely a Monarchist-Long Live The King, er, Queen(-sorry about that, still miss Good King George. No, no, not that one, although GIII wasn't nearly as bad as the Colonists needed to think-that pesky and greedy parliament...No, I'm talking about His Royal Majesty King George who took up the throne when his wretched brother Edward threw over the common weal for a common whore-Wallis Simpson in the 1930's. Can you imagine??
I died while HRM was still on the throne, so it still takes me a bit to remember to say Queen's English instead of King's. For that matter, it still takes me a bit to recall that in this life I am a native born American-NO, NO, not an American Indian, I'm just saying I was born here in the States because my father, an American citizen, wanted to start their married life-Mummy was an British citizen-in the U.S. which is funny, because I wasn't around that many Yanks until high school, really-Pop surrounded us with ex-pats, and I was raised British for the most part.)
I should have passed, I'm thinking.
Ya know, I read today that five Vermont towns voted to impeach President Bush.
Fellow townsfolk are pissed at those who voted to do so because they are afraid of the political and economic repercussions; the blind loyalists are calling the pro-impeachers traitors.
I dunno, but didn't we used to be free?
I was 17 when Nixon resigned, and I know exactly where I was when the news came over the radio-riding with Gary Aamodt down the interstate from Kings Canyon.
I was 7 when President Kennedy was killed, and I very clearly recall that as well...In part because 22cd November marks the date I became politically aware in this lifetime. I was gob-smacked to understand that I'd come back to a dangerous lifetime, instead of the one filled with peace and prosperity I'd thought I was coming to, but that's another story...
My senior year of high school I found a stray cat, brought him home, vetted him, restored him to luxurious health and stunning feline handsomeness, and named him Leon Jaworski. I loved the guy, and the cat.
I wasn't too sure about Woodward and Bernstein; I wondered at their motives sometimes, although I was grateful that whatever their motives, they'd published.
So hearing the news that Nixon had finally recognized the inevitable, and had wisely moved to avoid the fullness of it, came as no shock, and with not a little satisfaction.
But I felt some pity for the man when his best defense seemed to be that he likely hadn't done much more than prior Presidents, he'd just been exposed.
We all scorned poor Dick and Pat, Julie and Tricia-woohoo, did we ever!
Most of us had bumper stickers that left no doubt as to our personal politics, including one that read "Question Authority."
That one always made me uneasy.
No rebel me, I am mostly a Loyalist, a Royalist, and definitely a Monarchist-Long Live The King, er, Queen(-sorry about that, still miss Good King George. No, no, not that one, although GIII wasn't nearly as bad as the Colonists needed to think-that pesky and greedy parliament...No, I'm talking about His Royal Majesty King George who took up the throne when his wretched brother Edward threw over the common weal for a common whore-Wallis Simpson in the 1930's. Can you imagine??
I died while HRM was still on the throne, so it still takes me a bit to remember to say Queen's English instead of King's. For that matter, it still takes me a bit to recall that in this life I am a native born American-NO, NO, not an American Indian, I'm just saying I was born here in the States because my father, an American citizen, wanted to start their married life-Mummy was an British citizen-in the U.S. which is funny, because I wasn't around that many Yanks until high school, really-Pop surrounded us with ex-pats, and I was raised British for the most part.)
I want to respect the President, the man and the office. I certainly respect the laws of local and higher.
I most assuredly do not condone anarchy. Rebellion and revolution fill me with no little dread.
So that bumper sticker has always made me uncomfortable. I mean, I'm all for critical thinking, but the consequences of that bumper sticker's influence on two, possibly three generations of Americans ain't pretty. (And yes, I KNOW that putting the apostrophe in the sticker is not strictly good grammar. But hey, if I hadn't, would you have got it that the bumper sticker had a stunning yet subtle influence?)
But President Bush's actions seem so questionable that I am alarmed, as an American and a former military person. It does seem that he is deliberately fostering an atmosphere in this country that leads to suspicion and fear.
And that is not good for the people.
In a saddening illustration of the 'Trickle Down Theory' the voters in those five Vermont towns who exercised their rights as Americans to vote peaceably to impeach President Bush are now being threatened with job loss-BTW, do you know that in Bush's America one has NO protection against being fired for political preferences-except in a very few enlightened states??!!- and are being called at best disloyal, and at worst traitors.
HUH? Since when? Someone has got to do something, or we will be repeating some really awful history-trust me please, I have seen this before-too many befores.
I absolutely do not advocate armed resistance. I wasn't a big fan of Ronald Reagan (as a governor, or president, but I did so enjoy his movies, especially the Bonzo ones:) but I certainly didn't cheer when that nutter Hinckley shot President Reagan, on the contrary, I dropped to my knees and prayed my brains out. I pray all of the time that some nut job does not take it into his head to administer 'rough justice' on Bush-HONEST.
I think Dick Cheney is quite wrong to have worked so hard to become vice-president, but every time he goes to hospital for ticker troubles, I pray for his quick and complete recovery.
And OK, while I have some very very strong doubts about the legitimacy of the 2000 election, and frankly still would prefer Gore and or Kerry, the plain fact is that Bush apparently did win the 2004; but hey, he'll be gone soon, right?
Right?
I really wish I could write to President Bush, and give him some advice-
"Dude, lighten up! This is America; not everyone who disagrees with you wants your head on a pike!
OK? So just chill, man, it's all good.
Dude, the way you are acting is making people think you are fronting; they don't trust you, fer shur-did you catch those polls? Dude! The people WANT to like you, so help them out, OK? Like, lose the rhetoric, OK? Just be real with us, ya know. We want to think you really are trying to accomplish something for the good of all Americans, not just the ones you went to college with, and dude, I'm not the one saying it first, if you know what I mean. You, like TOTALLY have to get over it, OK?
OK, so just mellow out! Find your sense of humour, fer shur!
And bud, for real, you need to lose that Dick guy, he just is making people really uncomfortable, OK? I mean, he makes Brownie look smart, ya know, and he is so, um, like furtive, that everyone thinks he's, like, hiding something really more scary than his heart condition and the fact that he can't tell the diff between his, like, hunting partner and a deer, OK?.
Not good, dude, fer shur. I mean, fo' real, that's bad enough, but um, you know, the way he acts it's like he is into something worse, OK?
And that is so not good for the people of this or the other countries you are trying to help in the name of the people of the US, even though a lot of people don't think you, like, asked us first, OK, and that does kinda piss people off, OK? To not be, like, consulted when you are going to spend a really big lot of our money sending our kids over there just to get nailed by a bunch of religious nuts who think their way is the only way...and the religious nuts are pretty much right about the fact that your actions are hypocritical, and scary, because you come off as something of a religious nut yourself-DUDE, I'm just telling you what people are saying, OK?
Oh, and dude, word to the wise, OK? People don't really like spin, except on TV, and fer real, I think that show went off the air anyway?
Ok? So, just maintain, and it'll be cool."
16 March 2006
I never wanted to even think that I was especially special; never thought it, certainly never said it, and if anyone tried to either say that I was, or that I was trying to say so, I have always been quick to dispute them.
Not then, not now, not ever.
But I believe God's promise, and that there is someone out there for me that I will be personally especial to.
The supreme cruelty is to deliberately torch someone's hopes of being that to and for someone else-and Crusty did that to Fox, and to me.
I am trying to give up hopelessness for Lent. It is not, of course, easy.
A couple of years before my best friend's husband died of lung cancer (that metastisized to his brain-he died a horrific death, raving, unable to recognize his beloved wife, daughter, parents...) we were talking on the phone and she scoffed at my grief over what Crusty had done to me when he ensured that my strength and youth would be squandered on the struggle to survive. I reached out to her (although truthfully I knew better and regretted the words the moment they left my mouth. I love her, but she isn't the brightest star in the night time sky) for help, and she scoffed, "You don't need a man to be happy!"
To which I replied (not knowing how short their time was) "Right, how would you feel if you lost Mike?" The thought brought her up short; she gasped, then changed the subject.
Two years later he was dead, a week or so before their double digit anniversary. Now she knows; if I could change it for her I would.
Their teen-aged daughter came home from school one day to find him running naked through the house cutting all of the power cords-ALL; computers, phones, TV, table lamps..
My friend had to call for help to get him to hospital; not understanding (typical of her) the seriousness of the situation she rang his brother; together they managed to restrain him, dress him somewhat, and get him to hospital, where he was quickly admitted.
It took the hospital staff a few weeks to help my friend figure out he had cancer, that he was dying, and would do so without regaining his faculties.
And as quickly as she grasped the notion, she let it go. She and their beautiful daughter hung on to the hope that they would bring him home and he would recover; the doctors had made a mistake-not cancer but some silly little thing that only seemed like cancer-ooops, sorry about that.
When he died it took her six or so months to really 'get' that he'd been sick for YEARS-the illness wrought subtle changes in his behaviour that she missed, dismissed, or plain didn't see.
He left her tremendously in debt, with their business affairs scrambled, and several online stock accounts she can't access because in his deepening paranoia he had pass-worded, 'locked' and 'safe-guarded' the access so tightly even he most have had trouble accomplishing transactions, especially in his last months. Every bit of their rather substantial savings is virtually gone into these accounts-the lawyers will get most of it when she is finally able to force the investment companies to recognize her as the heir.
It is said that misery loves company, and I have disputed that elsewhere in this blog.
I look around me and I see the horror that is engulfing the known world, and I am grief-stricken anew at what someone, ANYONE else, is suffering. I tried to teach my son that the goal in life is to not spread fear, pain, and/or anger. I tried to teach Fox to use whatever bad thing had happening to him as a way to gain compassion for others, and to dedicate himself to alleviating the sufferings of others through the understanding he might have gained from his own. It is, I believe, the only worthwhile goal.
Another stupid saying people use as a justification to spread fear and misery is "No-body said life would be fair!"
Stupid people, and their stupid sayings.
I believe this is The Life of The Winnowing. So stupid people will REALLY answer, this go-round; they won't be going 'round again if they don't change their ways.
Pay attention-if you really want to help...
God said "Life can and should be fair; look, I've made it simple, hey Moishe, take these tablets to my children..."
Not then, not now, not ever.
But I believe God's promise, and that there is someone out there for me that I will be personally especial to.
The supreme cruelty is to deliberately torch someone's hopes of being that to and for someone else-and Crusty did that to Fox, and to me.
I am trying to give up hopelessness for Lent. It is not, of course, easy.
A couple of years before my best friend's husband died of lung cancer (that metastisized to his brain-he died a horrific death, raving, unable to recognize his beloved wife, daughter, parents...) we were talking on the phone and she scoffed at my grief over what Crusty had done to me when he ensured that my strength and youth would be squandered on the struggle to survive. I reached out to her (although truthfully I knew better and regretted the words the moment they left my mouth. I love her, but she isn't the brightest star in the night time sky) for help, and she scoffed, "You don't need a man to be happy!"
To which I replied (not knowing how short their time was) "Right, how would you feel if you lost Mike?" The thought brought her up short; she gasped, then changed the subject.
Two years later he was dead, a week or so before their double digit anniversary. Now she knows; if I could change it for her I would.
Their teen-aged daughter came home from school one day to find him running naked through the house cutting all of the power cords-ALL; computers, phones, TV, table lamps..
My friend had to call for help to get him to hospital; not understanding (typical of her) the seriousness of the situation she rang his brother; together they managed to restrain him, dress him somewhat, and get him to hospital, where he was quickly admitted.
It took the hospital staff a few weeks to help my friend figure out he had cancer, that he was dying, and would do so without regaining his faculties.
And as quickly as she grasped the notion, she let it go. She and their beautiful daughter hung on to the hope that they would bring him home and he would recover; the doctors had made a mistake-not cancer but some silly little thing that only seemed like cancer-ooops, sorry about that.
When he died it took her six or so months to really 'get' that he'd been sick for YEARS-the illness wrought subtle changes in his behaviour that she missed, dismissed, or plain didn't see.
He left her tremendously in debt, with their business affairs scrambled, and several online stock accounts she can't access because in his deepening paranoia he had pass-worded, 'locked' and 'safe-guarded' the access so tightly even he most have had trouble accomplishing transactions, especially in his last months. Every bit of their rather substantial savings is virtually gone into these accounts-the lawyers will get most of it when she is finally able to force the investment companies to recognize her as the heir.
It is said that misery loves company, and I have disputed that elsewhere in this blog.
I look around me and I see the horror that is engulfing the known world, and I am grief-stricken anew at what someone, ANYONE else, is suffering. I tried to teach my son that the goal in life is to not spread fear, pain, and/or anger. I tried to teach Fox to use whatever bad thing had happening to him as a way to gain compassion for others, and to dedicate himself to alleviating the sufferings of others through the understanding he might have gained from his own. It is, I believe, the only worthwhile goal.
Another stupid saying people use as a justification to spread fear and misery is "No-body said life would be fair!"
Stupid people, and their stupid sayings.
I believe this is The Life of The Winnowing. So stupid people will REALLY answer, this go-round; they won't be going 'round again if they don't change their ways.
Pay attention-if you really want to help...
God said "Life can and should be fair; look, I've made it simple, hey Moishe, take these tablets to my children..."
15 March 2006
14 March 2006
Worse and worser...
The news is not good anywhere, and the happynews.com franchise is really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find anything to print.
I have a sure and certain sense that there is a war on joy and hope.
Well, duh!
And there was a 6.8 near Sumatra yesterday.
*************************************************************************************
I have to work 'with' an absolute bitch today. She is one of the worst one-uppers I've met, and she thinks she is my master, so I am not at all looking forward to going to work today.
I found out yesterday that the situation is not temporary, as I had been told, and I am rather angry about it. For the rest of my life with this company-according to my supervisor, I am going to have to report to this God-forsaking bitch to file her work because she is too invested in her self importance to be efficient, considerate, and a good team player-frankly, I am beginning to lose ANY compassion...
I dislike having to work for a large corporation, and I completely hate 'office politics.' So naturally, I am stuck right in the middle of it all.
I was asked to 'help' her organize her files in an effort to end the constant complaints from customers about her inefficiency. OK, fine, I'm good at that sort of thing, I enjoy it actually, and was happy to do it for the sake of the team.
Then she started (I am serious) snapping her fingers at me, ordering me about, and piling HER work on me.
I couldn't wait for it to be over. I gritted my teeth and hung in there.
She pushes our co-worker's buttons, too, and several of them complained to our supervisor, who in turn took us all to the department head.
I speak 'corporatese' although I don't like it either, but my co-workers don't-including our supervisor.
So they missed that our department head told us that he was stuck with the bitch, but he was going to piecemeal reassign her job until she became redundant. He was also very angry that she had gossiped about several higher-ups in the company, and had been 'lording it' over the room, and me when I work 'with' her. She is on her way out, I know this, although the department head and I seem to be the only ones who do...
But to find out yesterday that I have to continue working with her is really upsetting, and I am having a bit of trouble gathering my willingness not to knock the devil out her today!
And to have my supervisor smile at me and say, "But I thought you knew that this would be permanent, and that she would always use you for a file clerk."
I like filing.
I don't like liars.
And I don't like people who deliberately make extra work for someone else in an effort to bolster their ego.
Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to work I go...
The news is not good anywhere, and the happynews.com franchise is really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find anything to print.
I have a sure and certain sense that there is a war on joy and hope.
Well, duh!
And there was a 6.8 near Sumatra yesterday.
*************************************************************************************
I have to work 'with' an absolute bitch today. She is one of the worst one-uppers I've met, and she thinks she is my master, so I am not at all looking forward to going to work today.
I found out yesterday that the situation is not temporary, as I had been told, and I am rather angry about it. For the rest of my life with this company-according to my supervisor, I am going to have to report to this God-forsaking bitch to file her work because she is too invested in her self importance to be efficient, considerate, and a good team player-frankly, I am beginning to lose ANY compassion...
I dislike having to work for a large corporation, and I completely hate 'office politics.' So naturally, I am stuck right in the middle of it all.
I was asked to 'help' her organize her files in an effort to end the constant complaints from customers about her inefficiency. OK, fine, I'm good at that sort of thing, I enjoy it actually, and was happy to do it for the sake of the team.
Then she started (I am serious) snapping her fingers at me, ordering me about, and piling HER work on me.
I couldn't wait for it to be over. I gritted my teeth and hung in there.
She pushes our co-worker's buttons, too, and several of them complained to our supervisor, who in turn took us all to the department head.
I speak 'corporatese' although I don't like it either, but my co-workers don't-including our supervisor.
So they missed that our department head told us that he was stuck with the bitch, but he was going to piecemeal reassign her job until she became redundant. He was also very angry that she had gossiped about several higher-ups in the company, and had been 'lording it' over the room, and me when I work 'with' her. She is on her way out, I know this, although the department head and I seem to be the only ones who do...
But to find out yesterday that I have to continue working with her is really upsetting, and I am having a bit of trouble gathering my willingness not to knock the devil out her today!
And to have my supervisor smile at me and say, "But I thought you knew that this would be permanent, and that she would always use you for a file clerk."
I like filing.
I don't like liars.
And I don't like people who deliberately make extra work for someone else in an effort to bolster their ego.
Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to work I go...
13 March 2006
10 March 2006
Once upon a time in America one was reasonably safe to disagree with the actions of the sitting government; one could express one's opinion and as long as didn't incite riot or mayhem, one could be assured that the expression thereof would not result in being in danger of one's life, livelihood, home, or literal freedom.
I blogged last night that I come from a long line of defenders of America freedom.
We (my clan) got here because of a poltroon named Oliver Cromwell. My many times great-uncle was transported in the hold of a British warship in 1651 to Boston Harbor, and sold at the Boston Market Common as a LIFETIME indentured servant to punish him for 'seditious acts against the Crown.'
He served seven brutal years, and then escaped down Freedom Road to the Carolinas, where he established a free-hold, and raised a small band of men and women who dedicated themselves to two things-going home, and living free.
His blood runs through my veins.
My branch of the family are what could be called "Johnny come lates" as we did not arrive here until the late 1880's, when my great-grandfather and his wife came at the invitation of the Great Southern Railroad-Great-Granddad was an Edinburough and Hieldelburg educated civil engineer.
As an interesting sidebar, Great-Granma Sophie was pregnant with my grandfather Archie; she concealed her pregnancy to prevent Granpa 'Jock' (a nickname given him by irreverant English schoolmates) from leaving her behind. So my grandfather was born in America.
And BTW, my great-grandparents WERE NOT part of the Great Immigration-no Ellis Island for them...They had every intention of returning to Britain after the job was finished.
That said, I assure you, gentle reader, back in the Old Country, we were indeed quite proud of the works of our exiled cousins.
I come from a long, LONG line of men and women willing to give up our lives for ALL men and women's freedom. Somewhere in Kansas is a monument to members of that great-uncle's descendant branch who ran Underground Railroad Stations, and who lived and died in such a way, as have all members of our clan who stood in the breech and said-
"We will live free, or we will die in the defense of our right, and the right of all, to stand upright, and free."
There comes a time when prudence becomes cowardice.
I am no coward, and I will not shame those of my clan who fought, and died, (some of them, that I could, as my dear, late, and so greatly lamented Pop used to say, call a spade a spade,) by becoming a coward now.
Never ever did my great grandparents think they would end up leaving a branch of our clan here, and I know that both my grandfather and my dad hoped with all their hearts that they would die at 'home'-in Britain.
But my grandfather died here, and so did my dad, likely so will I.
Another BTW, a few days ago I blogged that my dad was third generation Californian, and I wish to correct that-I am third, not Pop. Sorry about that, I was thinking about my children, and in a hurry-never meant to give the wrong impression, and it has made me more careful...
But even if I should be so positioned that I do have the return trip, still I will stand in defense of this country in thought, word and deed, and so I will say to you:
This great country is in terrible danger-from within.
Now truly IS the time for good men to come to the aid of their party, and stand up against the great wrongs being committed here and abroad in the name of the people of the US.
The Enemy is seeking to divide us by causing class, racial, and religious divisions to weaken us that we cannot arise against this destruction; we MUST now work together against it or this country WILL fall, and become the nation Bush and his cronies want it to be, one of two classes only-MASTER and SLAVE.
I blogged last night that I come from a long line of defenders of America freedom.
We (my clan) got here because of a poltroon named Oliver Cromwell. My many times great-uncle was transported in the hold of a British warship in 1651 to Boston Harbor, and sold at the Boston Market Common as a LIFETIME indentured servant to punish him for 'seditious acts against the Crown.'
He served seven brutal years, and then escaped down Freedom Road to the Carolinas, where he established a free-hold, and raised a small band of men and women who dedicated themselves to two things-going home, and living free.
His blood runs through my veins.
My branch of the family are what could be called "Johnny come lates" as we did not arrive here until the late 1880's, when my great-grandfather and his wife came at the invitation of the Great Southern Railroad-Great-Granddad was an Edinburough and Hieldelburg educated civil engineer.
As an interesting sidebar, Great-Granma Sophie was pregnant with my grandfather Archie; she concealed her pregnancy to prevent Granpa 'Jock' (a nickname given him by irreverant English schoolmates) from leaving her behind. So my grandfather was born in America.
And BTW, my great-grandparents WERE NOT part of the Great Immigration-no Ellis Island for them...They had every intention of returning to Britain after the job was finished.
That said, I assure you, gentle reader, back in the Old Country, we were indeed quite proud of the works of our exiled cousins.
I come from a long, LONG line of men and women willing to give up our lives for ALL men and women's freedom. Somewhere in Kansas is a monument to members of that great-uncle's descendant branch who ran Underground Railroad Stations, and who lived and died in such a way, as have all members of our clan who stood in the breech and said-
"We will live free, or we will die in the defense of our right, and the right of all, to stand upright, and free."
There comes a time when prudence becomes cowardice.
I am no coward, and I will not shame those of my clan who fought, and died, (some of them, that I could, as my dear, late, and so greatly lamented Pop used to say, call a spade a spade,) by becoming a coward now.
Never ever did my great grandparents think they would end up leaving a branch of our clan here, and I know that both my grandfather and my dad hoped with all their hearts that they would die at 'home'-in Britain.
But my grandfather died here, and so did my dad, likely so will I.
Another BTW, a few days ago I blogged that my dad was third generation Californian, and I wish to correct that-I am third, not Pop. Sorry about that, I was thinking about my children, and in a hurry-never meant to give the wrong impression, and it has made me more careful...
But even if I should be so positioned that I do have the return trip, still I will stand in defense of this country in thought, word and deed, and so I will say to you:
This great country is in terrible danger-from within.
Now truly IS the time for good men to come to the aid of their party, and stand up against the great wrongs being committed here and abroad in the name of the people of the US.
The Enemy is seeking to divide us by causing class, racial, and religious divisions to weaken us that we cannot arise against this destruction; we MUST now work together against it or this country WILL fall, and become the nation Bush and his cronies want it to be, one of two classes only-MASTER and SLAVE.
President Bush was in town this afternoon. He popped in and out fairly quietly, and so far, I've not heard of any problems.
Just a quick thought on my part-the part that openly longs to go 'home' while standing fast by the oath I took in September of 1974 to "protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and is rather proud of the truth that a member of my clan has fought in every single war this United States of America has fought, including the French and Indian, on the side of the USA:
Mr. President, if we, the people of this country, had known the Brits were running our ports, we damn sure would have been damn near as pissed about it as we are about the UAE running the ports. NO FORIEGN ENTITY SHOULD HAVE THE RUNNING OF AN AMERICAN PORT, how do you not get this simple reality?
Sir, as a former United States Coast Guardswoman, I say to you that you have insulted our service, our country, and our not inconsiderable intelligence as a people.
Please stop claiming a mandate-you BARELY won the election this time, OK?
Just a quick thought on my part-the part that openly longs to go 'home' while standing fast by the oath I took in September of 1974 to "protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and is rather proud of the truth that a member of my clan has fought in every single war this United States of America has fought, including the French and Indian, on the side of the USA:
Mr. President, if we, the people of this country, had known the Brits were running our ports, we damn sure would have been damn near as pissed about it as we are about the UAE running the ports. NO FORIEGN ENTITY SHOULD HAVE THE RUNNING OF AN AMERICAN PORT, how do you not get this simple reality?
Sir, as a former United States Coast Guardswoman, I say to you that you have insulted our service, our country, and our not inconsiderable intelligence as a people.
Please stop claiming a mandate-you BARELY won the election this time, OK?
09 March 2006
Misery doesn't really love company-not if the person in misery has an ounce of decency.
My ex said that if I loved blacks and poor people so much, I could learn the hard way about how much help they would give me if the situation changed, and I was the person needing help. (Have I blogged yet about how racist my ex was, and how he got worse in the last terrible years we were together? He hated everyone!)
What happened was that I learned that people like my ex are every bit as savage as I originally thought them to be, and that they think if someone is alone, that undefended person is fair game.
Which I already knew.
I also didn't need to re-learn that poor people of any race or creed are the same-some are good despite the exhaustion inflicted on them by animals like Crusty and my former employers, and some are every bit as brutal as Crusty and my former employers.
Crusty used to go on about "survival of the fittest..." and I learned early on to block it out-which always totally pissed him off.
On occasion I would ask him to define 'fittest', but I digress...
Today one of my co-workers confided that she had to find a place to stay for two weeks while she waits for her apartment to be ready-she has two or three school-agers at home, so it is something of a miracle that she was able to find something at all.
So naturally something has happened to cost her money she hasn't got...
She has been staying with her aunt and uncle, and the uncle has been eating the children's food. She told us (the woman whose son was murdered was in the room when I asked the young woman if she was alright) that she can't even bring home a loaf of bread, cereal, or milk, because the minute she sets anything in the pantry or 'fridge her uncle takes it, often eating it in front of the children, who are now only getting one meal a day at school.
She said she 'lost it on him last night' and was subjected to his drug fueled verbal abuse-which her children witnessed. The end result was that she has to leave her aunt's house.
She is a year younger than my oldest child, my daughter.
I started crying because I understand how awful it is to have your food taken the minute you get it through the door-it has been happening to me-I have lost even more weight this past six months since moving to Atlanta and am hungry most of the time. But at least I don't have to watch a blood relative steal my little one's food, and I was filled with anger and grief. Once I would have been able to get her a safe place to stay with her children, but since Thanksgiving 1998 I have been in rather desperate straits myself.
The rest of the day went better for her, because I think she believed me when I told her that if I had my own place she and the kids could have tucked up with me; I think it helped that our co-worker was sympathetic, too. We brainstormed for a bit, trying to figure out how to help her, but in the end, there wasn't anything we could do besides pray for her and the kids. We tried to talk her into asking another of our co-workers if she could stay at his place, but she has to get her little ones to a school too far away...she said that she was going to have to ask her ex to help her-then she told us that she had been trying to keep the location of her new place a secret from him.
She didn't go into detail, and she didn't have to. We knew what was going on. Been there-done that. Dammit.
I don't think she felt better because we knew from experience about how awful her situation is; I think she felt better because we cared enough to ask, cared enough to be angry on her and the children's behalf; cared enough to not judge, cared enough to try to help her avoid having to ask a dangerous man for help.
I think in 1997, someone declared war on all women and children.
I was going to school online for a while, trying to finish that elusive degree, and through a research class, had become interested in the examination of the global disenfranchisement of the middle classes.
My research indicated that my feeling is right on target-someone has declared war on women and children, having decided them to be un-fit, somehow, for the brutal new world they are trying to foster, and that the war began in full on earnest in 1997.
I don't think our so-called president hates blacks, per se, I think he hates poor people, especially those who has any self-esteem, and sense of dignity.
I think he is trying to cash in on cheap labour, and I think he is attacking American families to achieve his agenda with his tax cuts for his cronies, his funding cuts to aid to families, and his encouragement of swine who are not satisfied cheating American widows and orphans of their homes and rightful wages-I think he is in it over his head trying to bring illegals here so as to drive wages even further down, to further disenfranchise his own fellow Americans. My former employers love the guy-Mr. Boss used to say that "Poor people can't afford dignity..."
"As you do unto the least of these, so you do unto me." I think God defines the third commandmant as those who call themselves Christians while stealing food and shelter from the helpless to be completely guilty of abusing His name...He isn't too big on those who defraud the widowed, orphaned, and the employee, either.
Misery doesn't love company-my co-worker is in a very bad place and I know she doesn't wish this on anyone else, nor do I want to for a minute think she might have brought this on herself (Oh! That standard and perfidous justification!), and I know for an absolute fact that I don't wish this on anyone, for any reason.
Dear God, help this child of yours to a true sanctuary; protect her from this man she was trying to get away from, and oh my God, please protect her and her children from any evil, danger, sickness, harm, temptation; and Father please, arise now and defend us by thoroughly routing these monsters who seek to murder the spirits of those of us who walk in Your Way.
We are beyond exhaustion Father, so either rout these swine who will not know evil, or renew our strength until the day Thy will is made manifest and done, even unto them as deny Your Love, not only for themsleves, but in their arrogant vanity, seek to strip it from those of us who turn our faces, hearts, minds, and bodies to You.
Hear oh Thou God of Israel! Hear the cry of Your daughters-chaste, we are raped and accused of whoring in the congregation by our rapist!! Prudent, we are defrauded by the elders! Good mothers, we are berift of our little ones, cast out into the streets, made homeless!
ARISE OH GOD! Hear the lament, and come to the defense of Your daughters!
My ex said that if I loved blacks and poor people so much, I could learn the hard way about how much help they would give me if the situation changed, and I was the person needing help. (Have I blogged yet about how racist my ex was, and how he got worse in the last terrible years we were together? He hated everyone!)
What happened was that I learned that people like my ex are every bit as savage as I originally thought them to be, and that they think if someone is alone, that undefended person is fair game.
Which I already knew.
I also didn't need to re-learn that poor people of any race or creed are the same-some are good despite the exhaustion inflicted on them by animals like Crusty and my former employers, and some are every bit as brutal as Crusty and my former employers.
Crusty used to go on about "survival of the fittest..." and I learned early on to block it out-which always totally pissed him off.
On occasion I would ask him to define 'fittest', but I digress...
Today one of my co-workers confided that she had to find a place to stay for two weeks while she waits for her apartment to be ready-she has two or three school-agers at home, so it is something of a miracle that she was able to find something at all.
So naturally something has happened to cost her money she hasn't got...
She has been staying with her aunt and uncle, and the uncle has been eating the children's food. She told us (the woman whose son was murdered was in the room when I asked the young woman if she was alright) that she can't even bring home a loaf of bread, cereal, or milk, because the minute she sets anything in the pantry or 'fridge her uncle takes it, often eating it in front of the children, who are now only getting one meal a day at school.
She said she 'lost it on him last night' and was subjected to his drug fueled verbal abuse-which her children witnessed. The end result was that she has to leave her aunt's house.
She is a year younger than my oldest child, my daughter.
I started crying because I understand how awful it is to have your food taken the minute you get it through the door-it has been happening to me-I have lost even more weight this past six months since moving to Atlanta and am hungry most of the time. But at least I don't have to watch a blood relative steal my little one's food, and I was filled with anger and grief. Once I would have been able to get her a safe place to stay with her children, but since Thanksgiving 1998 I have been in rather desperate straits myself.
The rest of the day went better for her, because I think she believed me when I told her that if I had my own place she and the kids could have tucked up with me; I think it helped that our co-worker was sympathetic, too. We brainstormed for a bit, trying to figure out how to help her, but in the end, there wasn't anything we could do besides pray for her and the kids. We tried to talk her into asking another of our co-workers if she could stay at his place, but she has to get her little ones to a school too far away...she said that she was going to have to ask her ex to help her-then she told us that she had been trying to keep the location of her new place a secret from him.
She didn't go into detail, and she didn't have to. We knew what was going on. Been there-done that. Dammit.
I don't think she felt better because we knew from experience about how awful her situation is; I think she felt better because we cared enough to ask, cared enough to be angry on her and the children's behalf; cared enough to not judge, cared enough to try to help her avoid having to ask a dangerous man for help.
I think in 1997, someone declared war on all women and children.
I was going to school online for a while, trying to finish that elusive degree, and through a research class, had become interested in the examination of the global disenfranchisement of the middle classes.
My research indicated that my feeling is right on target-someone has declared war on women and children, having decided them to be un-fit, somehow, for the brutal new world they are trying to foster, and that the war began in full on earnest in 1997.
I don't think our so-called president hates blacks, per se, I think he hates poor people, especially those who has any self-esteem, and sense of dignity.
I think he is trying to cash in on cheap labour, and I think he is attacking American families to achieve his agenda with his tax cuts for his cronies, his funding cuts to aid to families, and his encouragement of swine who are not satisfied cheating American widows and orphans of their homes and rightful wages-I think he is in it over his head trying to bring illegals here so as to drive wages even further down, to further disenfranchise his own fellow Americans. My former employers love the guy-Mr. Boss used to say that "Poor people can't afford dignity..."
"As you do unto the least of these, so you do unto me." I think God defines the third commandmant as those who call themselves Christians while stealing food and shelter from the helpless to be completely guilty of abusing His name...He isn't too big on those who defraud the widowed, orphaned, and the employee, either.
Misery doesn't love company-my co-worker is in a very bad place and I know she doesn't wish this on anyone else, nor do I want to for a minute think she might have brought this on herself (Oh! That standard and perfidous justification!), and I know for an absolute fact that I don't wish this on anyone, for any reason.
Dear God, help this child of yours to a true sanctuary; protect her from this man she was trying to get away from, and oh my God, please protect her and her children from any evil, danger, sickness, harm, temptation; and Father please, arise now and defend us by thoroughly routing these monsters who seek to murder the spirits of those of us who walk in Your Way.
We are beyond exhaustion Father, so either rout these swine who will not know evil, or renew our strength until the day Thy will is made manifest and done, even unto them as deny Your Love, not only for themsleves, but in their arrogant vanity, seek to strip it from those of us who turn our faces, hearts, minds, and bodies to You.
Hear oh Thou God of Israel! Hear the cry of Your daughters-chaste, we are raped and accused of whoring in the congregation by our rapist!! Prudent, we are defrauded by the elders! Good mothers, we are berift of our little ones, cast out into the streets, made homeless!
ARISE OH GOD! Hear the lament, and come to the defense of Your daughters!
06 March 2006
I passed a typical 21st century Sunday-laundry, vacuuming, and e-filing my income taxes.
Of course I first went to the Lectionary Online to read the daily office. I would have read it from my hard copies of the BCP and Bible, but I leave those in the car for something to read over my 30 minute lunch break.
I read the e-papers; I surfed several home improvement sites; I downloaded a few things from a medical websites-I will clear these blasted sinus!
I used TurboTax Online-highly recommend the service if you are looking for a good place to e-file your taxes. I was a bit uncomfortable abut the whole thing until I got started, but I'd seen TurboTax before and the price was hard to beat-free.
I couldn't figure out how I was going to get those W-2's in there, was I to scan them and then email the images, what? But I was instructed to type in my former employer's ID number, and the amounts typed in the boxes-I hit submit and my money should be here in about ten days.
I feel strange, ambivalent about my seeming assimilation into this strange new world. Not sure I like how I was able to do it.
I felt strange too, when I read my email to the columnist ("Why Do You Blog?") printed in the e-paper. Mercifully he omitted my name. I wrote to him, yes, and I understood that he might print some or all of my emailed response. Guess I just didn't think he would.
The week's end has been a wonderment to me. I think I finally have come to an understanding of how deeply wounded I have been by the events of the past several years. How traumatized. I see now that I truly didn't comprehend the depth of hurt I have been carrying.
I understand now why I have had so much trouble feeling as though I might be getting myself together; I understand better, now, I think, how far actually I have come considering everything that has happened, and that my lack of understanding, my impatience with the snail's pace toward feeling myself again, was in effect, slowing me down.
I get it now-I don't have to chastise myself for not accomplishing that long list of things I wanted to do over the weekend-nor do I have to or even need to make excuses for what I didn't do.
I had priorities, and those were met.
But I need to be kinder to myself, too, and not obsess over other people's expectations, or even my own. Because my expectations of the time it takes to get past something like this aren't appropriate.
When my divorce was final I though life would immediately be right again.
But it wasn't. Each day became another, and the discoveries of the depth of my ex's calculated evil were diabolically spaced so as to inflict the maximum pain. Hopefully what I found out in October 2004 is the last of the sickening discoveries.
Meanwhile, it seemed I met every scoundrel living within 250 miles of Dothan. When the furniture (which I stupidly thought paid for but wasn't-Crusty put it on credit without telling me, and shifted the money to his personal account instead) payments went unmade, the manager of the store made me a most indecent proposal as to how I could keep the furniture without having to pay cash money for it.
I told him to come get the furniture, and Fox and I sat on the beach chairs Crusty somehow missed.
I could go on, all the way through the three years and ten months I worked for certifiable monsters who openly gloated that I was trapped and should just get over my self-esteem.
I had to quit my job to get a day off. They hounded me during the last three weeks I was there, and tried to prevent me from packing-I think they were flabbergasted when a couple of frineds showed up and started throwing my things into the rental truck the last day I worked-and they tried to slow the move by constantly interrupting us while at the same time loudly reminding me I had until noon the next day to clear out. All the while, as they had done for the past three years and ten months, they stood and catalogued my things-they especially coveted my desk and art work.
Of course, these are the people who called their 5th cousin their "pet ni__er" to his face, and told people he was a "no-good, rednecked, useless white ni__er who needed a hand-out." He is a brute who bragged about beating a classmate so badly he was in hospitalized for three months and who told me I should throw my son out so that he could move in, and when I laughed, said he would "...fix..." me, and then began to tell people I must be a lesbian until someone pointed out that they could understand why I would prefer to be a lesbian rather than be with him...then he escalated and began to stalk me. I told my employers, they said I must be lying-"Who would be interested in a nobody little white trash piece like you?"
They were right-I was trapped. I had no-where to go, no-one to turn to since Crusty had made sure I had no friends and I damn sure couldn't trust anyone I had met since gaining my freedom from Crusty. I was helpless.
They knew it, and took advantage of it, and taunted me with it continuously.
When I pulled in Atlanta, I had less than $50.00 in my pocket because my former employers had cheated me for the entire three years and ten months I'd worked for them.
I was a mess. I had less than $50.00 in my pocket. But three weeks later I had a job that pays twice what I was making in Dothan. I had a job with a lunch break, and two additional beaks; health benefits, and dignity.
I got my BCBS card last week. I clutched it my hand, and waved it the other drivers as I drove to work.
HEY, LOOK AT THIS! I AM A PERSON AGAIN!! I HAVE BCBS!!!
This weekend I really reached an understanding of just how deeply they hurt me, those fine folks of Dothan, Alabama.
And somehow, the understanding has been something of a healing.
Of course I first went to the Lectionary Online to read the daily office. I would have read it from my hard copies of the BCP and Bible, but I leave those in the car for something to read over my 30 minute lunch break.
I read the e-papers; I surfed several home improvement sites; I downloaded a few things from a medical websites-I will clear these blasted sinus!
I used TurboTax Online-highly recommend the service if you are looking for a good place to e-file your taxes. I was a bit uncomfortable abut the whole thing until I got started, but I'd seen TurboTax before and the price was hard to beat-free.
I couldn't figure out how I was going to get those W-2's in there, was I to scan them and then email the images, what? But I was instructed to type in my former employer's ID number, and the amounts typed in the boxes-I hit submit and my money should be here in about ten days.
I feel strange, ambivalent about my seeming assimilation into this strange new world. Not sure I like how I was able to do it.
I felt strange too, when I read my email to the columnist ("Why Do You Blog?") printed in the e-paper. Mercifully he omitted my name. I wrote to him, yes, and I understood that he might print some or all of my emailed response. Guess I just didn't think he would.
The week's end has been a wonderment to me. I think I finally have come to an understanding of how deeply wounded I have been by the events of the past several years. How traumatized. I see now that I truly didn't comprehend the depth of hurt I have been carrying.
I understand now why I have had so much trouble feeling as though I might be getting myself together; I understand better, now, I think, how far actually I have come considering everything that has happened, and that my lack of understanding, my impatience with the snail's pace toward feeling myself again, was in effect, slowing me down.
I get it now-I don't have to chastise myself for not accomplishing that long list of things I wanted to do over the weekend-nor do I have to or even need to make excuses for what I didn't do.
I had priorities, and those were met.
But I need to be kinder to myself, too, and not obsess over other people's expectations, or even my own. Because my expectations of the time it takes to get past something like this aren't appropriate.
When my divorce was final I though life would immediately be right again.
But it wasn't. Each day became another, and the discoveries of the depth of my ex's calculated evil were diabolically spaced so as to inflict the maximum pain. Hopefully what I found out in October 2004 is the last of the sickening discoveries.
Meanwhile, it seemed I met every scoundrel living within 250 miles of Dothan. When the furniture (which I stupidly thought paid for but wasn't-Crusty put it on credit without telling me, and shifted the money to his personal account instead) payments went unmade, the manager of the store made me a most indecent proposal as to how I could keep the furniture without having to pay cash money for it.
I told him to come get the furniture, and Fox and I sat on the beach chairs Crusty somehow missed.
I could go on, all the way through the three years and ten months I worked for certifiable monsters who openly gloated that I was trapped and should just get over my self-esteem.
I had to quit my job to get a day off. They hounded me during the last three weeks I was there, and tried to prevent me from packing-I think they were flabbergasted when a couple of frineds showed up and started throwing my things into the rental truck the last day I worked-and they tried to slow the move by constantly interrupting us while at the same time loudly reminding me I had until noon the next day to clear out. All the while, as they had done for the past three years and ten months, they stood and catalogued my things-they especially coveted my desk and art work.
Of course, these are the people who called their 5th cousin their "pet ni__er" to his face, and told people he was a "no-good, rednecked, useless white ni__er who needed a hand-out." He is a brute who bragged about beating a classmate so badly he was in hospitalized for three months and who told me I should throw my son out so that he could move in, and when I laughed, said he would "...fix..." me, and then began to tell people I must be a lesbian until someone pointed out that they could understand why I would prefer to be a lesbian rather than be with him...then he escalated and began to stalk me. I told my employers, they said I must be lying-"Who would be interested in a nobody little white trash piece like you?"
They were right-I was trapped. I had no-where to go, no-one to turn to since Crusty had made sure I had no friends and I damn sure couldn't trust anyone I had met since gaining my freedom from Crusty. I was helpless.
They knew it, and took advantage of it, and taunted me with it continuously.
When I pulled in Atlanta, I had less than $50.00 in my pocket because my former employers had cheated me for the entire three years and ten months I'd worked for them.
I was a mess. I had less than $50.00 in my pocket. But three weeks later I had a job that pays twice what I was making in Dothan. I had a job with a lunch break, and two additional beaks; health benefits, and dignity.
I got my BCBS card last week. I clutched it my hand, and waved it the other drivers as I drove to work.
HEY, LOOK AT THIS! I AM A PERSON AGAIN!! I HAVE BCBS!!!
This weekend I really reached an understanding of just how deeply they hurt me, those fine folks of Dothan, Alabama.
And somehow, the understanding has been something of a healing.
01 March 2006
The Lenten Season begins at Midnight.
I was raised in the Roman Catholic religion. I left it at aged 16 years to 'return' to the Anglican religion.
(Yes, I wrote 'return'. Hey, I became an Anglo-Catholic in the 16th Century-I LIKE IT mostly. Trust me, no outward expression of faith-AKA religion-has it ALL right...)
But my faith has NEVER changed-from Day One, it has been:
I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth;
I believe Jesus bar Joseph is the Messiah, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Blessed Mother, was murdered by the pharisees (status quo seekers), and was buried.
I believe he descended into Sheol, where he brought the good news of the reconcilliation of all souls, and I believe that on the third day he arose body and soul from the dead, then ascended into Heaven where he is seated at the right hand of God, awaiting the appointed time to return to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy and catholic church (the word "catholic" actually means nothing more than 'universal'. Look it up.) the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, and the resurection and re-union into everlasting life.
I know my Redeemer lives, and if we yet live, so we live unto him, if we die, so we die unto him...
And I know when I stand before the Father, which I will do without fear, He will tell me the truth, the only truth I know absolutely that I can trust.
The beginning of wisdom is not fear, but is reverence...
This, then, is my faith. It has never wavered from that day to this, nor will it from this day to my last.
Still, I am trying to figure out something to 'give-up' for Lent-doing so makes me think; I am seriously considering attending Ash Wednesday services-doing so strengthens me; I have promised myself and God that I will take back up my studies, and my observations of certain Anglo-Catholic behaviours common during this time of the liturgical year, doing so in an effort to be a better person who will not disappoint our Father.
You see, I am pretty sure He has high hopes for me:)
I was raised in the Roman Catholic religion. I left it at aged 16 years to 'return' to the Anglican religion.
(Yes, I wrote 'return'. Hey, I became an Anglo-Catholic in the 16th Century-I LIKE IT mostly. Trust me, no outward expression of faith-AKA religion-has it ALL right...)
But my faith has NEVER changed-from Day One, it has been:
I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth;
I believe Jesus bar Joseph is the Messiah, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Blessed Mother, was murdered by the pharisees (status quo seekers), and was buried.
I believe he descended into Sheol, where he brought the good news of the reconcilliation of all souls, and I believe that on the third day he arose body and soul from the dead, then ascended into Heaven where he is seated at the right hand of God, awaiting the appointed time to return to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy and catholic church (the word "catholic" actually means nothing more than 'universal'. Look it up.) the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, and the resurection and re-union into everlasting life.
I know my Redeemer lives, and if we yet live, so we live unto him, if we die, so we die unto him...
And I know when I stand before the Father, which I will do without fear, He will tell me the truth, the only truth I know absolutely that I can trust.
The beginning of wisdom is not fear, but is reverence...
This, then, is my faith. It has never wavered from that day to this, nor will it from this day to my last.
Still, I am trying to figure out something to 'give-up' for Lent-doing so makes me think; I am seriously considering attending Ash Wednesday services-doing so strengthens me; I have promised myself and God that I will take back up my studies, and my observations of certain Anglo-Catholic behaviours common during this time of the liturgical year, doing so in an effort to be a better person who will not disappoint our Father.
You see, I am pretty sure He has high hopes for me:)
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