Family First

I wanted to be close to my kids for the summer and they live in Montana. I currently live in Portland to attend college and I love Montana and have to admit that Portland was beginning to wear on me. So I called a friend to see if they needed help at their Produce stand and she gave me a job.
Well last week I quit that job and lost a friend. At this point I don't really regret it. I might later, but right now not only am I glad I quit but it has given me something to really think about.
My eighth grandchild was born last Saturday. A beautiful baby girl with lots of black hair. Total beauty. Well usually I would work on Saturday but because of her birth and as discussioned previously, I took that day off. Babies don't choose the best time to come into this world so you go with the flow and take life as it comes.  When I decided to leave it wasn't pretty, but this subject came up. My friend/co-worker said: "Saturday you really screwed us." I responded: "My granddaughter was born that day."
Co-worker:" How is that our problem?"
Me: "Well, its not, but we discussed this prior to the birth."
Co-worker: "Well, you were also heard saying that you would be there no matter what, it didn't           matter how it affect us here.
Me: Yes, I did....because you guys have been terrible to work with....I can't even go to the bathroom without being yelled at."
Co-worker: "Well you go to the bathroom a lot!"
Me: "Well if you will remember, I told you that I had a bladder infection. But still I came to work."
Co-worker: "Well you are not here now!"
Me: "Nope, and I won't ever be again."
Please understand that this is totally one sided. There were other accusations and justification for the way she was acting and we won't even go into what her husband has been doing lately to her and the employees around her. But this was the focus of my thoughts....Why would I choose your piddly little company over seeing the birth of my granddaughter. My last paycheck was shorted. I get yelled at for doing things that I have not done and for things that I didn't even know I was suppose to do. The customers are complaining about my co-worker, but she blames it on me. But your company is going to make me or break me and I need to choose them over my family.
Now, for the reality check. My family will always comes first. If you are putting your job before your family you  need to step back and re-think your priorities. Job's are important, very important, but nothing comes before family.  Nothing replaces watching children and grandchildren be born. No one looks back on their life and says I wish I had worked more. No one looks back and says that they wish they had spent more time at the office and less time with their children. If your employer asks you to choose between your job and your family....as soon as you can find another job. Good employer understand you choosing your family, because they choose their family everytime.  During interviews I make it clear if you choose to hire me, you will get a good employee. I work hard, and I am on time. I learn quickly and am organized. I will be a valuable asset to your company.  But, I also state....I am a family person. I have children. I will work my butt off for you, but if my kids need me I will be there. If they don't understand that, I chose not to take the job. Our priorities are screwed up when we choose our jobs over our kids. Now I am sure their are different reason to choose that job over your kids....you are the soul bread winner and without that job your kids will go hungry. I get it, I understand...but that is the only decent reason....and you will still regret it.
Time for a reality check people.

Its been a long while since I have posted. I really should post more often, but sometimes my reality gets in the way. What am I saying, my reality always gets in the way.
My reality includes thoughts on people. Really people are the whole reason there is a reality. Lets take the man on the commuter train this afternoon. He wore a real fur coat, a fedora hat, black leather pants, and white dress shoes. I have to admit that I had to stare. I know, I know, my mother told me that its rude to stare, but really? He was dressed like some guy out of Starsky & Hutch, the old TV version. He was the ultimate in "pimp daddy" What do you say to a person like that? Is there anything you can say? I chose to remain quiet and pull my eyes away the peculiar sight. But some images will leave a long and heavy picture in your head.
My thoughts on people should be a bit more respectful but sometimes I just have to say..."What the Hell!" What the hell are you thinking, what the hell are you doing, what the hell....period? I am not really talking about serious stuff. I am thinking more of the stupid crap that people think is OK. Their attire or the way some women wear make-up or bath in perfume. The idea that a guy can really pull off a comb over or thinks that he is going to get away with wearing women's black panties to work. Stuff that makes you shake your head and wonder.
Those are the people that make me wonder how anyone can believe in evolution. I mean seriously. You are one of the strongest in the gene pool?
As you are nodding at my post and thinking back to all the weird people that have crossed your path I will leave this come back line I heard from a gal that was trying to get this guy to leave her alone...."10,000 sperm and you were the fastest one?"

a past thought.....

I wrote a profound thought over a year ago...I thought I should share it.

August 16, 2010

I have found that the more that I try not to be the norm the more the norm seems to find me. I am forced to believe that I am normal. A cookie cutter person that fits into the box that has been assigned to her. I am the mother who has raised kids and has survived to tell the tale. I am the wife that was used and abused and thrown to the curb. I react like every other normal female placed in this situation. I have cried and lashed out. I have forgiven and not forgiven. I want to protect my children from what they don't know and fix the pain that the truth has caused, I don't care that they are adults, that protective instinct never goes away. I want to reconcile with the man that doesn't see me as worth it and yet bury him so far into the past that he could never dig out into my future. I need to prove to myself that I am desirable and prove to the world around that I hasn't destroyed me by destroying my dreams and beliefs in happily-ever-after. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted to be the one that could answer the question; "how did you do it?" I wanted to hold my head high and be the woman that could have a good man, children that I adored and adored me and still have the career that haunts my dreams. I wanted it all - and for a while I had it, but did I really?
So what do I have now?  I have children that adore me. I have friends that see me as weak but strong. I hope that I am brave and honorable. I still believe in forever and that Prince Charming is real...just older and wiser with a few wrinkles and tends to snore. I have decided that I don't want to be needed but wanted. But most of all I am free.
I am free of wondering why I am not worth it. I am free of feeling rejected and alone. I am free to meet myself and actually sit down and learn to love myself. I am free of the hang ups and let downs. I am free of physical abuse that I have to hide from my closest of friends and family. I am free to take risks. To speak up and not let anyone put me down because I did.
Freedom is never free. It always cost you something. In my case it cost me my belief in happily-ever-after. It made me lay down my desire not to fail so that I could fail and learn that failing isn't all that bad.
It cost me a moment of dignity and a second of pain so I could have a life of happiness.

Amen!

Clear Water

Fill a clear glass with water.  That water is clear. It is pure and free of anything. It has no color, it is not tainted with anything. It is clean of all impurities. Now take a dropper of red food dye. You drop it into the water and it disperses through out the glass. At first you see it as it streaks through the water.  But then it becomes almost invisible. The only thing you notice is a slight tint to the water. You can never take the color out of the water. Once the water is tainted its always going to be tainted. The only thing you can do is add more, or pour out the water.
That is how I feel about my life. I left a violent relationship and took only what I absolutely needed. I worked really hard to create a new life. But like that glass of water it has been tainted by a drop of red dye. My past keeps dropping little drops of red dye into my pure clean new life. I feel like no matter what I do I can't stop my new life from being tainted. 
So what to do. I will not accept my old life ever again. I will never be the meek little girl that allowed herself to be treated like a slave. I will not allow my dreams to be stomped on and stopped. I am a different person then who I was back then. I survived that life. I will not be a victim ever again.
So what to do with the tainted water? What do I do when the old life haunts the new life? I do not know. I really wish I could answer that question.  I really want to know what to do with the tainted water...because dumping it out and starting over is not an option. What I have is good. What I have is what I need. I just don't need the past to interfer.
So far I haven't figure it out....but I will let you know when I do.

Hopes and Fears

I have a friend in California that read me this awesome qoute. "We need to make our plans around our hopes, not our fears."
When I heard this I wrote it down and than just stared at the words. Hopes, Fears, Wants, Desires, Needs, Loss there is so many words that ran through my brain like a herd of antelope.
Finally my mind settled on what was really bothering me. Were my plans based off of hopes or fears?
Do I plan my day around the possiblility that I will run into people that scare me? Do I hope that I will become a doctor and then plan around the fear that I will never make the cut? Where is my head?
I had a EMT teacher that once told me  - "We plan for the worst and we hope for the best, but hope was not a plan." Meaning, plan for every precaution don't just let the hope that nothing will go wrong be your plan. 
My hope and dreams are just hopes and dreams without some kind of plan to get there.
Saying, I want to be a doctor, is a hope. But setting the stage for you to go to school and study medicine - earning money to put yourself through school or applying for scholarships puts your dream in motion. It makes your hopes and dreams a reality.
Uh Oh Reality! Yep! Back to one persons fantasy and another persons reality. The real difference between hopes and fears. Plans made in fear never come out exactly as one plans. Plans made in Hope keep us focused.
Don't let fear rule you.
Be brave. Let your fantasy become hope and your hope help with your plans.

When reality means death

Its early in the morning and its hard to sleep. The last week as been a bit of a nightmare. Burying your husband is not easy, but burrying the father of your 3 month old child is even harder. No more family to give you hugs, no one to hand you a tissue to wipe your tears when they won't stop flowing. Just you and your son and the endless night. A noise not far from your house can be heard, but you have neighbors and they could be out, or maybe its that stray dog that comes looking for food in the
garbage cans. You go back to watching your tiny infant sleep. He looks like his dad you think..
Again a sound comes to your ears.  But this time you sit straight up in bed and tune your ears to the night sounds.  Its the back door.  Someone rattled the back door. You are still as the intruder tries each window. Looking down at the tiny body that is just now stirring you rush into action. The shot gun is in the closet, the pistol in the dresser drawer.  You grab both and rush into the living room.  From somewhere you have the forethought to push the couch in front of the door. The baby starts to wimper and you grab the bottle sitting next to him and carefully put it into his mouth, propping it up so that it won't slip out.
Next you grab the phone and dial the familiar numbers that are pounded into your head from the time you can walk, 911. The roar in your ears makes it hard to hear the operator when she answers.
Your explaination and plea come out rather calm even to your own ears. The operator dispatches a police unit and tells you to hide somewhere safe. I have a pistol and a shot gun, and ask without much thought if I can shoot him if he comes through my door. Her words tell me I can. But a tiny voice in my head asks can you if they do? The operators next words give me the courage that I need.
"You do what you need to do to protect your baby."
The door breaks open and the intruder shoves the couch I have used to barricade the door. I point the shotgun at the intruder. Something flashes in his hand..he has a gun. I don't remember the trigger under my finger only that I pulled back on the curved metal. The gun fires loud...making my ears ring. I don't feel the kick until much later when I discover a sore spot on my body. The man lays mostly in the house the door held open with only his foot. He isnt moving. He's bleeding, but isn't moving. A knife is still clutched in his hand.  Is he dead?  Did I just kill a person in my home?
You would think this was an opening scene in a movie, or a book by David Patterson. But it happened and it happened to a young 18 year-old mother. When I read this story my heart hurt for this young woman. What in the name of all that is holy could possess a human being to break into a persons house with the intent to steal after this long illness and death of her husband. Good grief.  The answer was drug.  That altered reality that has been a huge part of abuse, (all all kinds), theft, and death (in all forms) But what was his thoughts, why, when, where all of these answers died with him when a well armed citizen, young and scared, doing what comes naturally to her when her young are threatened, killed him.
My second thought was oh crap. They are going to charge her with murder. She is going to go to jail for homicide or at the very least man-slaughter. That is what our justice system has come down too. But to my surprise they didn't do anything to her. Instead they charged the man that was with him with murder.
So what would you do? If you were in her position would you be the person hiding in a closet hoping that they don't find you and your tiny son? Or, are you the person who pulls out the shotgun and is prepared to kill the person kicking in your door. We do not know the intention of the intruder, but he had a 12 inch hunting knife in his hand when he died. The only thing that man was hunting for was drugs and you don't need a knife to kick in a door.  I would be safe to say that the man was going to use that knife to threaten, hurt, or kill that young mother and her baby.
How different this story could have been if she had not had the courage to protect herself and child. The headlines would have read mother and son found stabbed to death in their home.  No suspects at this time.  The story would have gone on to tell about the young husband who had died of lung cancer and of the young mother who took care of him and her infant son.  Their financial struggles and might even end with the time and date of their memorial service.  Just another statistic. We would shake our heads and turn to the sports page.
Instead we get to cheer. Instead the reality of this world is that she saved herself and her baby and one bad guy is in jail and the other is dead. We cheer. We say justified.
Now the consequences. The nightmares of that night will live with her forever. No matter how many time she will be told that she is justified, the taking of another life is hard to live with. Ask any soldier who has seen war will tell you that. The fear of every noise outside of her house will have her jumping at her own shadow. Letting her baby outside of her sight will cause anxiety. In the end she will probably suffer with Post Tramatic Stree Disorder. She will need to get help and that won't be cheap.
What do you say? How does anyone justify the ripple effect of this kind of harm. All because one persons reality clashed with someone elses reality.
Justified? Yes.  Fair? No. 

Camo and Yoga Pants

My very beautiful daughter recently got into a very interesting discussion on Facebook that involved the way people dress. Now us normal people, normal being a realitive term, would think that there are normal and acceptable ways to dress. Camo jacket with tight yoga pants and combat boots might not be acceptable in most area of society but is very popular in such places as....well West Virginia. Now I have nothing against West Virginia. This state is beautiful and has some of the most wonderful people. But you have to admit that you have been at the grocery and seen someone come in wearing something that you wouldnt be caught dead in. Well this would be one of those days for my daughter.
Now we all have to admit we have all gone into Walmart and seen pictures like this:

 We all have had the urge to say..."lady! What the he**. I have children in this store." But we just turn and go down a different row and tell our children not to stare. You might even have the sense to use this as a teachable moment for your children. They don't have enough money to buy clothes that fit or this is not a good place to wear your bathing suit. But either way you yourself go feeling scared and maybe even violated.
We all have our stories or even the event when we ourselves have passed a mirror and thought; "oh my gosh! Who dressed me this morning?" But what makes us as a human race say..."no, stop the freak show!" Whose reality are we suppose to be living in? Who tells us that two inches of make-up is wrong or that hats are no long "in style". Why is that person in that picture so wrong? 
Now the reason my daughter got into the heated discussion was just for that same question.  Why is Camo, yoga pants and combat boots so bad?  Obviously it wasn't wrong for them to wear it, why is it so bad for us to see it? One persons vogue is someone elses nonsense. Some persons reality is another person's fantasy.
This reverts back to the parent that screams: YOU are not going out in that!

But what if your parents looked like this:



And you wanted to look like this?

Takes on a whole new meaning when all you want to be is what the world thinks is normal and your parents idea of normal.
We as a people look at the world through what we see as normal or what we think of as reality.
My reality is jeans and a t-shirt. My neighbor's reality is a jean skirt and t-shirt. The lady at the grocery store thinks that putting a cap on her head (called a headcovering) is her reality but other woman in the same town consider that oppressive. Women that cover themselves from head to foot are wrong because we don't understand their religion, but a woman that roller skates in a bikini is considered offensive. Each woman listed above has their own reality. Each person looking at them only see's a fantasy because they can't see past their own reality. Who calls out reality and who calls out fantasy. That couple in the goth picture see their daughter conforming to someone elses reality when they themselves have conformed to someone else's reality. In the end we are all conforming to someone else's reality.
So you ask...what if I just want to be normal....blend in...not be seen. Well I say to that...impossible.
We are never invisible. We will always stick out somewhere. The country girl doesn't do well in a night-club, but you couldn't put the city girl in a barn and expect her to know how to clean out the horses stall. One girls "comfortable" is another girls "I don't think so!"
So what do you do? Well I say... Just be you! If you want to wear Camo jackets and yoga pants with combat boots, don't let anyone stop you. If you want to go to Walmart in short shorts with your cheekies hanging out....well I won't be stopping you...but don't be surprised if you don't see a picture of yourself on the internet. Where your ten-gallon hat with pride. Put that eyeliner on as heavy as you can and step into your reality.  Its all in how you see it.