Hot Summer Days

Maybe it is because I live a relatively clean life, I often forget the filth that filled my childhood.  It's hard to predict just how obscure things can reduce me to intermittent ptsd trances where I the past feels so very real.

Not that anyone particularly likes them, but I hate maggots.  Let me be oh so clear on that...I HATE them.

Last week, my dog carried in a dead bird.  Weeks of excessive heat, plus a dead bird, you see where this is going.  Luckily, my husband took care of the bird before I had an opportunity to be completely freaked out.  The next day, we saw trails of the nasty little boogers crawling in a parking lot and on a trash can. 

That has been followed by almost a week of constant nightmares.  Whether I sleep 1 hour or 6 hours, I wake up in a sweaty mess after dreaming of being eaten alive by them.  I've also had flashbacks of childhood every day since.

You might not think something as silly as a maggot would illicit a response any stronger than just common disgust.  I guess that comes directly from the way I grew up.

I grew up in absolute filth.  We always had roaches, which my dad blamed on the wood he stored in the basement for the wood burning stove.  We always had ants or spiders or other random bugs that he was convinced wouldn't be there without the wood.  We had mice.  I don't mean just a couple field mice in the fall either.  We had entire families of huge mice and all over in the house.  Of course my dad blamed those on having children.  Silly enough, I believed him for so long. I believed that if you had kids, they brought mice.

The truth was we had all these things because we lived a dirty life.  My mom nor dad ever picked up after themselves, thereby not teaching their children to be clean.  All house cleaning fell on me starting at a very young age, 6 or 7 at the latest.  I hadn't been taught, but just expected to know how to clean. 

As a kid, I didn't really know there was much more than doing dishes, vacuuming, doing laundry, and taking trash out.  Oh boy, there's so much more to keeping a house clean.  It doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind I was a KID.  My days were largely filled already with going to school and doing homework.  Oh yea and trying to do as much as I could to avoid the inevitable abuse that would be waiting for me every night.

I still do not understand why my parents didn't give my brothers any responsibility.  They weren't that much younger than me. 

My parents didn't have a real air conditioner.  We had a little window unit that my dad didn't allow us to run during the day.  When the summer days got really hot, the unit was moved to their bedroom only.  My mom covered all the windows with foil and we weren't allowed to open them.  You can probably imagine just how hot our house got. 

That was a bad combination with our trash.  In our kitchen, we had a full size rolling cart size trash can.  Living in a small town in the 1980s, we were only charged when we had trash to pick up.  The trash can held a lot before it was ready to be taken outside.  After it was full, I still had a hard time with it because of the weight.  Needless-to-say, the trash sat for a long time before it got taken outside.

You can see where this is going, right?  Hot house, lots and lots of trash in a filthy house...

I spent lots of time as a kid trying to clean up rivers of maggots crawling in our kitchen.  We had a carpeted floor in our kitchen, making it impossible to smash them.  Not a lot of things are safe to spray on carpet that will kill them either. 

It was usually a process of scooping them up with a shovel, carrying them to the driveway and smashing them.  This was my reality for week after week every summer of my childhood.  If my dad found out we had maggots in the kithcen, I always got beat for it too.

That would probably be enough to cause anyone an adverse reaction to them for years and years.  However, that just wasn't the worst of it.

After spending sometimes hours cleaning up, I would have my own mess to clean.  There were so many, I couldn't keep them from crawling on my feet.  I would have to sit down on the floor and pick the ones out that had burrowed into my feet. 

I remember so many times that my dad would stand and laugh at me.  He would tell me that if I missed any of them, they would crawl through my body, into my brain and kill me. 

The flashbacks now are awful and I wish there was a way to stop them.  I do my best just to avoid things like this so I don't have to deal with the flashbacks.  It makes me so thankful that I no longer live in filth and that my husband would never allow that for us.

Don't Forget the Journey

Since I'm a person with lots of issues, I'm also a person who gets multitudes of advice.

I won't say all the advice I've gotten is bad.  Some of it has been really good.  Some of it has been really, terribly bad.  I will say that the majority of it has come at the wrong time in my life.  And, most of that has come from someone who doesn't grasp what my life is truly like.

When offering advice or your opinion about what someone should or shouldn't be doing, there is so much to consider.

Past Experience:  Everyone has their own past experiences.  Without question, everyone can pinpoint some dysfunction from their past, but there are definitely varying degrees of dysfunction.  Even if the level of dysfunction or circumstance seems to be parallel to your life, there is still much to consider.  The method of survival, personality bent, current experiences, how open they are, length of experience, and so much more are all relevant factors to consider when you believe you understand the person.

Some questions to ask yourself about past experience before you consider offering advice:
Has this person truly trusted me with the entire scope of their past?
Do I fully understand who they are and how they have gotten to this point in their life?
Am I completely aware of what their circumstances are right now?

Emotional Stability:  Depending on where the person is at in their journey, they may have times of emotional instability.  When you go through counseling, therapy, down times, etc., there can be a varied swing of emotions.  I speak from experience, each day of the week can be labeled with a different emotion.  Someone just beginning this journey may often find themselves having more bad days than good.  Even when the balance begins to shift and there are more good than bad, it is still a very delicate balance. 

Some questions to ask yourself about emotional stability before you consider offering advice:
Do you have enough contact with this person to know what their emotional state is right now?
Will the advice you are about to offer risk interrupting that delicate emotional balance?
Is the advice something that would be better given during a time of more stability?
If it is difficult and cannot wait, does the person have proper support if the advice rocks their stability?

Spiritual Maturity:  This is a tricky one.  There are Christians who have been so since they were children, yet mature slowly.  There are Christians who accept Christ as an adult and mature very quickly.  It's not much different than the ages and maturity levels in a Freshman class.  Everyone is different.  When someone has emotional instability or severe past experiences, spiritual maturity can be easily effected and hampered.  It seems so easy for Christians, especially seasoned or mature one, to expect spiritual maturity to come with number of years and disregard all other factors.  That is a vital error.  Another error is to expect someone to mature at the same rate which you have matured.  Some people are going to be slower and some faster.

Some questions to ask yourself about spiritual maturity before you consider offering advice:
How spiritually mature were you before you believed, learned or experienced this truth?
Do you honestly know the level of spiritual maturity of this person?
Is this an opinion or advice which could cause this person to stumble or feel inferior because they are not spiritually as mature as you?
Will this advice be pertinent to the spiritual growth of this person?
If the advice is necessary and there is a lack of maturity, what will you do to aid in spiritual growth?

There are so many areas I could cover, but these are the ones on my heart right now.

If I could offer just one piece of advice for anyone wanting to offer advice, it would be this:
Before you give any advice to anyone, take a moment to consider not how much it changed your life but how long it took you in your own journey to learn that lesson.  Don't ever forget your own journey; how hard, how long, how difficult it was for you to take advice from others.

Right Now vs. Used to Be

I sit here amazed at quickly our right now become what used to be.  It all happens too fast.  Maybe that's just life, but it's a part of life I haven't quite matured enough to accept. 

As I began to wade through the mountain of laundry this morning, I went to the closet for hangers.  There I found, as I always do, my husband's clothes spread from his side to mine.  Sliding them back to his side, might seem like a simple task but today it was one that cracked me like a dropped egg. 

You see, I'm convinced part of the reason our right now becomes what used to be so quickly is because we rarely take time to purposely slow down that process.  I think we often let life tangle our time so we can't give attention to things that matter to us or others.  I think the other half of that is how we tend to go from one thing to the next without consideration of how our actions will effect the lives of everyone around us.

It wasn't necessarily the clothes all over the closet that struck a nerve with me, but an idea.  It was the idea that over the past two years,  so many people have made promises, got involved in my life, etc. and yet here I am walking through life kind of alone...again.

And no matter how hard I have tried to hold onto the right now, it always seems to slip in the what used to be.

I used to have a friend who would go to the movies, shopping, out to dinner and have conversation. 

I used to have a couple friends who did bible study with me in ways that I got to comprehend.

I used to have a friend who helped keep me accountable and talk through the tough things in life.

I used to have a friend that called once in a while to catch up or ask how I was doing.

I used to have a friend that would just let me spend an afternoon at their house, just being me.

I used to have a friend that stopped by once in a while just to catch up.

I used to have a friend who would go get a pedicure with me a couple times a year.

In each of those things, I loved the right now.  I savored every moment and wanted to hold onto it forever.  Even though I know it couldn't possibly last forever.  Each of those things became what used to be too quickly. 

Some of the friends have moved on, some have just become too busy.  Some of them, it was just time for them to become what used to be.  Some of them, I long to have that right now back again.

I think it's weighing on me so heavily because my right now doesn't have look so great and seems to be getting lonelier. 

From Father to Son

We made the quick dash back to see my father-in-law for Father's Day.  While I have nothing to celebrate, my husband still does.

It is always emotional for my husband to make that trip, but today was especially so.

Upon arrival, my husband headed to the garage to get a mower part and I was left to visit with my mother-in-law.

I got to have some difficult conversations with her.  I'm fairly certain she doesn't remember my name.  She called me sweetie several times and referred to me as Audra, who is her daughter. 

She shared with me that she doesn't think her memory is getting any better.  Sure, she still blames obscure things.  She thinks if she hadn't retired or had her varicose veins fixed, she'd still be able to remember everything.  She says she has problems remembering everything and that mornings are just as bad as evenings.  She doesn't think the medication works and is looking forward to seeing her doctor this week.  Most of all, she says she has a hard time with names.  Surprisingly, she admitted her frustration with not being able to remember things.

I have to be honest with her and couldn't sugar-coat anything (which I think people do sometimes).  I told her that I was sorry she thought it was getting worse.  I didn't agree with her ideas about what caused the memory loss and I certainly didn't give her false hope that it would get any better.  Instead, I encouraged her to talk about meds with the doctor so that maybe it would slow the progression of this mental monster.

Little did I know that something very sad, yet special was happening in the garage between my husband and his dad.

His dad was handing down manly measuring instruments (sorry I don't know the technical names) to Kent.  They are things he has had for probably 40+ years, things that are no longer manufactured.  They are things that he used to do his job, things that he valued enough to keep for that long.

I watched the tears roll down my husbands cheeks as he talked about everything his dad had given him.  Understandably, he was upset about what seemed to be his dad giving up on ever having a need for these things again.

What I hope he can eventually see is how this wasn't his dad giving up, but passing on valuable items.  It was a proverbial rite of passage.  His dad was, with actions alone, saying he was proud of the man he has become and he wants him to have these things. 

Kent is the only one of the boys in the boys in the family who so closely got their dad's mechanical skills.  I know that his dad sees that in him and is immensely proud of him.  I see him get the proud, puffy chest over all the things his son has done and can do.  Even with his boy in his 40's, he is still a proud papa that looks on his son and can so easily see the impact he has been in his life.

I think my husband has the typical, "I'll never be good enough" feelings that most kids do when they had a parent who was hard on them or maybe a bit absent because they were always working to provide for their family.  I hope someday and soon, my husband can see the he is the apple of his dad's eye. 

With my father-in-law in his 70s, I hope that my husband has many more opportunities like today.  No, I don't mean where he leaves with a box full of stuff.  I mean those rare times when his dad shows him that love that he desires.  Those times when he can get a glimpse of the deep sense of pride his dad has in him.  I hope there are more opportunities for my husband to see that he has indeed become the man his dad wanted him to be and so much more.

Bottom of the Shoe

Yep...this week has been like stepping in pile of dog poop.  No joke, I really did that too.

My husband had to travel Monday through Wednesday.  That's always a stressful time when everything gets displaced.  He left Monday morning and that's when the the crap started hitting the fan. 

As I started to open the door and let the dogs out on Monday morning, I heard a crack. A 1/3 of one of the trees broke apart and landed on my garden.  A friend from church came and cut it up, so at least it didn't kill anything in the garden nor cause a problem for the dogs.

While I was doing dishes, the fridge started making terrible squealing noises when it kicked on.  Thankfully, that stopped after about an hour and another crisis was averted.

On Monday, I had to also deal with home owners insurance.  With a problem created by the agent, our home sat for two solid months without insurance.  Thank God nothing happened during that time.  However, I learned that my American Family agent has to be the worst agent ever.

A visit to the agent's office proved unfruitful.  We've been dealing with this issue for three months, so I was less than pleased.  Needless-to-say, as of tomorrow we will have a new agent for both auto and home insurance.  I could dedicate an entire post just to the problems we've had with insurance companies the past year.

To add insult to injury, I found out on Monday that my hairstylist had quit his previous salon and I could not find him at another.  Simply a mild irritation unless it's tacked onto a week like this one.

Tuesday morning not only did I have to wake up in a bed that wasn't mine, I was woke up by a dog throwing up all over me.  For whatever reason, that dog has continued to throw up everyday at least a few times a day.

I've had to deal with some pretty big personal hurts throughout the week that I just can't go into right now.  Two of my friends were diagnosed with cancer in the past week.  One of my friends had a miscarriage.

I learned my niece and nephew will be spending time alone with my parents next month.  That certainly doesn't make me happy.

Father's Day smacked me in the face and finished me off with a good butt-kicking.

In trying to get new insurance, I learned that once again my in-laws have caused problems for us.  Their accidents have been put on my husband's driving record. 

Last night, I came home to find one of the dogs had eaten two pounds of cherries, which are toxic.  After not sleeping for several nights, I had to keep checking on this dog to make sure she was still breathing.

And yes, I literally did step in dog poop.

I think it was the emotional stuff that wore me down faster than anything.  I still can't find a lot of purpose in my life, nothing to give me direction. 

I've just had it with everything...it's weeks like this one that make me wish my life away and look so forward to heaven. 

A Stolen Title

Since my post last night, my heart has been just broken for my husband.  I can't possibly know how it feels to be him.  I can't empathize with him on what it's like to want to be a father and have that stolen from me.  I can only share what it's like for me to have married a man who should have been given his heart's desire, but wasn't.

My husband loves kids, probably because he is a big kid.  He's not above plucking a nerf ball off the store shelf and throwing it at me as I walk mindlessly in front of him.  He has that innocent ability to laugh at himself first and often, a lot like kids do. 

Since I grew up with nearly every interaction between an adult and child being inappropriate, it's been hard for me to engage with children.  I tell people I'm afraid of them, but I'm not. I'm just not conditioned to be comfortable interacting with them.  Oh and I am totally uncomfortable with the whole idea of playing, which seems to be what kids are all about. 

My husband is the total opposite. When kids wave or talk to him in restaurants or stores, he happily engages with them, usually lighting up.   He even volunteered in the children's ministry at church for a couple years.

There are four kids that my husband loves probably more than he can put words to. 

His niece Kendra is in her 20's and getting married next year.  I know she irritated him endlessly when he was a 20-something and she was a squarely little girl.  Without doubt, she was the apple of his eye.  His nephew Zack, also in his 20's, was all boy and definitely made Kent a proud uncle.  We spent lots of weekends driving to watch this kid ride a motorcycle or 4-wheeler in races. 

He has a nephew, Henry, who is 7 and a niece Hailey, who is 1.  He doesn't get to see either of them very often but when he does, it's so special.

I'm pretty sure it was Uncle Kent that was happier the last time we saw Hailey.





I know in my gut and in my heart, my husband would have made the best dad ever.  He instinctively knows how to balance being firm and loving; caution and play.  It sometimes takes another adult a lot of time and patience to dig through all the layers of my husband to find that caring, loving person.  It's effortless with children.  I know, I just know, he would have been a perfect father for a child.

Maybe I haven't had the opportunity to watch him everyday with a child, but I think I've observed him get as close as our lives have allowed. 

I know, dogs are not the same as children.  But when you have no children, sometimes that love finds it's place with the pets who become your family.  I've watched him hold our pups when they were sick.  When we've had the frantic accidents that called for emergency vet visits, he's been the one to stay calm while I fell apart.  He's the one who gets up in the middle of the night when one of them is sick, needs to go outside or is just thirsty.  When one of them shreds a roll of toilet paper, he's the one who laughs and cleans up the mess while I get frustrated and think about punishment.

There is no question in my mind, he would have been that kind of dad. 

Our newest pup (the black and white Shih Tzu, Winnie) is scared of people, men especially.  She hasn't naturally warmed up to Kent at all, but he continues to patiently love her.  In the mornings, he picks her up, holds her for a moment like a baby and tells her she's a good dog.  As I lay in bed in the mornings, I can sometimes hear him singing to the dogs.  He's done it for years.  He carries on one-sided conversations while he feeds them and goes through his morning routine before work.

You might think all of that is weird.  Not me!  I am thankful to see that side of my husband.  It's how I can confidently say I know he would have been an awesome dad.  It's also how I know that the person I often get upset with or think doesn't love me has so much love in him.

I try not to focus on the anger I have that he cannot be a dad.  That's hard!  I love this man.  I would naturally be angry if anyone stole anything from him.  But this is a special, deep kind of anger over something being stolen from him that can never be replaced, never be given back.  It's an anger that rages from the depths of my soul over a stolen piece of his life that he deserved to have.  It's an anger that many times has driven me to various thoughts on how to set him free to find a wife who could give him a child.

Again, I can't share his thoughts on this nor understand them.  He would likely be far more forgiving than I, holding less hatred toward those who caused the problem.

I wish Father's Day didn't exist or that it was a day when I could celebrate my husband.  Unfortunately, it's one of those days he's just excluded from.  If there was ever a man who deserved to be celebrated for the father he would have certainly been, it's my husband. 

So, even though the title of father has been unfairly, unjustly stolen from him...Happy Father's Day to the man who would have made the best dad EVER!

Father's Day

It was almost like hearing something in slow motion when the man on the radio said, "and when you celebrate your father this Sunday..."

Wow!

I'm not completely oblivious, I know the day falls in June and it is in fact June now.  But it really crept up on me a bit faster than it usually does.  In years past, I've had email reminders a month in advance with advertisements on the latest and greatest gifts for dad.  I didn't get those this year.  Maybe it's because every company that sent one last year, I blocked.

Oh me...I could go through the list of missing Hallmark cards for my dad.  There's the one that says thanks for ruining my life by repeatedly beating, raping, drugging, prostituting and nearly killing me.  But honestly, a very simple one that has a fire breathing dragon or that little creepy doll Chuckie on the front cover would be sufficient with a greeting inside that states, "You are an evil bastard and I hope you rot in hell."

I can't forget the one that would be all too appropriate for my husband to send to him.  Thanks for being the rotten son-of-a-bitch who left your daughter infertile and stole my chance at ever being celebrated as a father.

I'm not sure why, but this father's day is bothering more than most others have.  There won't be anything to celebrate.  We will spend another Sunday alone at home while everyone around us spends time celebrating their fathers.

He probably deserves an entire post just about him, but my husband would have made an awesome dad.  In fact, I think he would have made the best dad ever!  It breaks my heart that he doesn't have that opportunity.

He doesn't have a fertility problem, it's all me.  Sadly, when I found that out, I encouraged him to leave me and find a wife who could give him his hearts desire.  When we married, he was supposed to have every opportunity to have children and not be strapped with an infertile wife.

It makes me sad and angry all at the same time.

I talk big about what I'd like to say to my dad (aka sperm donor), but really I think there's only one thing that would be truly appropriate to say to him this Sunday.

DNA doesn't make you a father and you do NOT deserve to be celebrated.

Who's Fault?

On May 21, Dahrun Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail for spying on his roommate during a homosexual encounter.  Ravi was a teenage college student when he used a web cam to watch his roommate.  Days later, his roommate committed suicide.

After listening to so many reporters and news analysts talk about this case, I have reached a point of complete compassion for Ravi.

An immature Ravi was doing what so many kids do, not excusing his behavior.  Kids, and at 18 he was still a kid, do all sorts of things to each other.  They pick at each other and even harass one another.  They do silly things like spy on each other with web cams. 

Of course back before the invent of web cams, kids did just as awful things.  At our school, the boys would gather on the lower steps of the school trying to get a peek under the girls skirts as they walked up the stairs and into school.  I believe it's natural, human curiosity often entangled with raging hormones that lead kids to be peekers. 

If one of the guys got a bit too frisky with a girl or too aggressive, the principal was alerted.  Never was anyone upset enough to commit suicide.

Ravi did not publicly post videos of his roommate.  There was no evidence that Ravi repeatedly harassed or was part of any sort of hate crime based on his roommate's sexual preference.  There was no supporting evidence that the roommate sought any sort of protection from Ravi nor was there a previous report of any kind of harassment.

I do believe Ravi made a mistake in invading his roommate's privacy, but I think spying is quite a stretch.

Blaming Ravi for his roommate's death is an even bigger stretch.  I understand that the family of this young man are upset for the role Ravi played in upsetting their obviously fragile relative.  But, I don't believe he can be held responsible for the actions of his roommate.

As someone who battles depression and has on occasion contemplated suicide, I can tell you that I never consider it because of something someone else has done to cause an acute flair of emotion.  In fact, as I think through that on occasion, I will walk through precise communication to those I care about.  I would want them to know that it was a decision made because I felt it was best. 

My point in sharing that is that suicide is a choice.  It's a choice someone makes for personal reasons.  It isn't something that someone else forces us to do.  The roommate made a choice all on his own.  He didn't work to resolve the problem which drove him to suicide, which I would contend may or may not have had anything to do with Ravi.

I think the judge in this case should have a cloud of shame hanging over him.  The roommate could have made other choices and it is NOT right for someone to have to pay a price for his choice. 

Since I tend to have compassion for victims of anything, it's taken me some time to think through this and understand why my compassion lies with the "perpetrator" in this case. 

Taco Burgers

That title probably has you wondering what craziness is rolling through my head today.  I have so few good memories from living in my home town or with my family.  When one creeps into my mind, I like to savor it for all that it's worth.

My grandma was no saint and certainly guilty of so much wrong in my life.  But as far as my dysfunctional family goes, she was probably the best of the bunch.  She wasn't physically abusive.  She definitely isn't off the hook.  It was her taking the soft-core pornographic photos of myself and other children in my family.  As I wrote in a previous post, she was extremely mentally unstable. 

Regardless of her shortcomings, she was probably the most overtly caring person in my family. 

It was 14 years ago this month, that she was helping me plan a wedding.  Little did I know, she was incredibly sick and her death was soon to follow. 

She was the person who helped the most with wedding plans and even helped a little bit financially.  I lived with her and my grandpa at the time, giving me an opportunity to have a few special moments as I prepared to move onto the next stage of my life.

I had finished my job at the school in May and was home a lot.  One of the things we would do is make a 10 mile trek to the next town south of us to have lunch once a week.  We even made the trip on Mondays that I had free from work.

This isn't from 1998, but 2012. It brought back a lot of good memories.

 We would drive through the same little fast food place every time.  We would go to Taco Johns and get taco burgers.  On Monday's, they were only 50 cents each.  We'd head home with a bag full of taco burgers and arrive with an empty bag.

They weren't big, but were oh so good.  Taco meat covered with cheese, lettuce and tomato on a bun...how could you go wrong with that?  My 5'2" 130 lb grandma could eat far more than I could.  The sicker she got, the less she would eat. 

We didn't talk a lot and we didn't ever do anything else while on our trip.  It was a break from the norm.  A special time spent with her with no expectations.

I was super excited a few years ago to find a Taco Johns nearby.  Walking in the door brings back so many memories of nothing more significant than just taking a deep breath and stepping away from reality for an hour.

The summer of 1998, I made 6 trips to Taco Johns with my grandma.  At the beginning of summer, I knew my time with her would be coming to an end.  In August, I would be moving two hours away and life would be dramatically changed. 

When summer began, I never imagined that those would be the last 6 trips I made with her.  They would be the last 6 trips I made anywhere with her. 

It's a bit sad that some of my best memories of my grandma involve a car ride to get a bag of taco burgers.  After remembering so much about my past in the last five years, now I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.  They maybe few, but at least I have a couple memories that weren't terrible.