I started PT today for me knee and I am hopeful for the first time in s long time that I could be able to walk every day again. Dr. Jay explained everything very clearly and then explained what he plans to do. The ball joints in my knees are roughened and scraping when I move. He wants to train the muscles around them to do more of the work when I move to stress the ball joints less. Maybe.
Maybe this will work.
The girls are in Lincoln for a few days, I believe to help them move. The house feels STILL with them gone. With Dave and Jami sleeping days it feels like is just Jess and me here but, weird, the house doesn't feel empty so much as Still. Like it's holding it's breath waiting for them to come back.
I will like Not having to chauffeur then around. I don't mind Jazz so much but Kira, with her "it's your OBLIGATION to drive me to work" BS is just insane. So Much of this generation has no clue what gratitude is!!! Or obligation for that matter. I will be relieved to be thru with them but then I will also probably be dead, no time left to live my own life. It was always going to happen Some Day. I used to pray every night to live until my daughters were 18. Just let me live to raise them!! and extra time to do some things that I couldn't do while raising children would just be a cherry on top. Then I chose to help raise the grandchildren. I actually had some idea that if I could just get Jessalynn thru both school and college it would at least show the younger ones the way and maybe she would even help them. (I'm a comedian) Then I adopted Kira and took guardianship of Jasmine. Choices I made, don't regret! but that cherry on top was pushed back so far I can't see it. I NEVER expected to make it this long!, was always making Plan B plans for if I died before they were raised. And whadya know, her I am greedily hoping to at least see the beginning of Eliot's life!! But, Oh!! Those days sister-in-law Judy and I used to talk about, when we would just be sitting on our porch in our rocking chair passing a joint!! But not only am I allergic to THC but Judy is dead and I will see her soon. I wonder if she made it to her porch before she died?? I'm pretty sure I won't. I could have Elliot and my porch if I live long enough. At least I (dear God) won't be raising my great grandson.
But I have to keep on for Jazz and Kira right now. They should at least be driving by next fall. If they don't have cars they can have mine. Thankful for delivery services!! Jeanette and Jenise will get the boys through.
Jazz and Kira, please. Maybe my rocking chair. My cherry on top.
Maybe.
I worry the world will go to shit before the grandchildren's lives are over. War, the grid going down, things I have tried to plan for in my head but absolutely won't be here to guide them thru. They will survive or they will join me in whatever comes next. I'll be outa here.
I've been in the garden all day except I took Jazz to work at 5. It's been a 90 degree day and I sure am feeling it! I cut out the little trees trying to go thru the fence and pulled the weeds there, too. Dug out around the big maple tree. Then I've been hauling dirt and filling the walkway thru the middle of the garden so I can fence it and still get at everything. I scraped the caterpillar eggs off of every leaf on my plants and killed any little ones that had hatched when I first got out here. So glad I didn't have that surgery and give up my close up sight!! I take a break whenever I feel like I'm going to break. Just ten minutes gets the pain under control most of the time. Taking one now. It will be dark soon so I have to hurry. I want to plant a few things before it rains again. Ok. Here I go.
I have to get another round of seeds in the ground today and put up my fence. And putting up the fence means making the "walkway" I'm pouring in safe to walk in. I have big flat (Sort of) chunks of cement that I dug up as ' stepping stones' but they are uneven, unsteady, and I fall a LOT trying to walk on them. I am very excited that I actually got this started early enough this year!! I'm off and sick in the spring I think because I have so many different allergies. I know I couldn't even get out of bed in the spring most of the time when we lived on the farm. New paragraph well that didn't work so well. Jamie taught me how to use speech to text on this phone and I am trying it right now since I evidently have a million typos for each sentence and not all of them are funny. New paragraph how the hell do I get it to do a new paragraph that might drive me crazy. End of paragraph okay that didn't work either.!
I worked until 3pm ignoring the heat and pain and got a lot done in my garden but not nearly as much as I hoped. I'm excited that the girls will be in Lincoln next Tuesday and Wednesday and i will get a break from chauffeuring then around. I REALLY HATE IT. And Kira's attitude makes it so very much worse. Absolutely No Gratitude because she believes that driving them is my OBLIGATION. Unbelievable. She should be taking a bus with that attitude. I KNOW the bus runs to the mall and probably to the zoo or near it.
Anyway, I will have 2 uninterrupted days but, just my luck, it is forecast to rain on those days, I just hope they at wrong a they so often are!!
I got up and started working in the garden and then remembered that Jess wanted to go to the laundromat today. I told her I wanted to just go alone and do her laundry because I didn't wasn't to stress if she was ok or worried about Nova at home. It took some convincing but she let me do it. Jenise showed up as I was getting ready to leave so I asked her to follow me there and we could hang out while the laundry washed. It was great having her company!! She is very obviously pregnant now!! 🙃🫠😀 I didn't let her carry anything - I won't risk this baby for Anything!! We loaded the washer and went across to Pepperjax and got lunch. Jenise had to go shortly after I moved the laundry to the dryers 🙁 and then I found out what was hard for me to do - folding. I forgot that my use of my arms is very limited without severe pain. I had to stop several times and try to meditate beyond the pain! I almost gave up and just bundled it all and went home but then i pictured Jess having to finish and I got it done. Jess did have to unload the van, it was time to admit I needed help! I took Gabriella out and piddles in the garden a little until it was time to get Kira. Then I went back to my garden until it was too dark to see what I was doing and then I drilled our what was going to be my compost bin. Jami had come out and kept me company while I worked, which was really nice! but then she went in and cut watermelon for us and we stood in the kitchen wolfing down the sweetest watermelon until Jess came in and reminded me I had to pick up Jasmine. Jami rode with me and I tore out of here praying Jazz wouldn't get off on time so I wouldn't be late and she was 10 minutes late so we were good. I hope I'm never late to get her again!! She doesn't get mad at me like Kira does, she's smart, she is just so disappointed in me that I feel terribly.
What a long day! I hope i don't pay for it tomorrow.
Jess really outdid herself yesterday!! I knew there was some kind of plan for my BD. Jess has asked if i was ok with going somewhere Saturday morning and then Jenise knew something and said that she might go, too, and that i shouldn't worry, my mother approved. Jenise said she probably couldn't go but then yesterday morning when she and Phillip walked in the house i knew it was ON and it was going to be great. Phillip drove, (the only person on earth whose driving i trust) and Jess said we could bring the dogs so I figured we were headed for the park. Wrong. We went to the Old Market and I saw the stalls set up and asked "Is that the Farmers Market? I've always wanted to go to that!" And we did!! It felt like being at the Renaissance Fair or a Texas flea market!! I was happy with that but then Jess said, "We have to take the dogs home for the next part" so there was more!! Next we pulled up at the Joslyn Art Museum!!!! and there was a sign saying there was a Japanese water display inside!!!! One thing I had stressed about all week was worrying what they were going to spend but these things were Free!! It was Brilliant!! Then Dave and Jami picked Kira up from work and did the shopping for Jess and Jazz didn't work so I didn't have to do Anything. Jess made my new favorite, gnocci, I ate a big plate, then amazing chocolate cake, and knocked out.
I got other gifts, too, and I hear there are more to come. Nett had to work 😕 so I haven't seen her yet. Kira gave me a water bottle like hers. I filled it with ice water right away and it still had ice in it this morning!!!!
Ok. I guess I don't mind surviving until this birthday but I really hope I'm not starting another 22 year punishment phase!!
I came home last night to balloons on the mail box and the house decorated. Why do we feel embarrassed when someone does something like that???? I wish I was still asleep but had to take Kira to work so my day has begun.
I started writing when I was 8. It started with a little journal that I started writing poetry in. Then I wrote short stories, then long poems that were stories. In Junior High I won my first writing contest for writing "How I Escaped From the Savage Natives on a South Pacific Island", a sci-fi, fantasy, action comedy that hung in a glass case for years at Beverly Hills Intermediate. In 9th grade I wrote and performed in a rhyming play a la Shakespeare for Health Class that the teacher sent to Weightwtchers Anonymous who asked for permission to use and perform it. EVERYONE, including me! said I would end up being a Great Writer. Well, my father changed his mind and said that I would have to give it up someday because he was sure I would be a mathematician or engineer, but that's a different story. My first side hustle was selling poetry to student in my high school for their poetry class. During my teen years I would go to parties and sit in the corner and write poems for people to give to their girlfriends, boyfriend, etc. I loved having people tell me what they wanted to say and then making it into a poem for them. I wrote a poem for Jim Cooper that was his final wishes. Funny, almost 50 years ago and I can still see Jim sitting up on a console stereo while I sat below him scribbling frantically to keep up 🙂. I have a poetry page in here somewhere that has a scattering of my poetry but it is only what I could still remember 10 years or so ago, just a tiny fraction of what I wrote, but at least some of the best, including Jim's will, which wasn't nearly one of my best! just one that stuck in my head. I wrote and performed in another poetry play about dentistry while working for Dental Health Alliance at Sitel telemarketing. I had an extra muse then, author/artist/actor Rodger Gerberding, whose admiration pulled capability out of me that I've seldom experienced, thank you, Rodger❣️ I was in my thirties then. Still thinking I would eventually start writing the novels everyone expected from me. Then I sadly wrote a couple of eulogies, the one for Jackie Lynn and the one for my mothet are also in the poetry page here. After the one for Mom I started feeling like I was struggling to write and I have written very little since then. I think it started with looking back and deciding that 90% of what I had written was actually pure crap. Then it felt like my muse was slipping away. Not Rodger, but the muse I believed had been writing for me all my life. 10 years ago while we were living in the Yellow House I started writing again on my Fire tablet and I wrote my last "good" story poem about a runaway slave traveling north to escape bondage. I felt my muse Hugely. I knew really nothing about the subject, it was one of those that seemed to come from beyond me. I broke that tablet in a fight with Jeremy and lost all of my writing on it. And haven't been able to write Anything since. I am old now, when I was sure I would be writing my novels, if I survived this long! but I have nothing. No muse, no brilliance. NOTHING. I have a lot of brain damage but my muse left long before brain bleeds and White Matter Disease. It could be partly that I don't have half the confidence. Is that even the right word?? I no longer feel like I have anything worthwhile to offer and that feeling compounds and grows daily. Maybe it's looking at the mess of the lives I have influenced and how few people actually look up to or even have any respect for me. Being in your 60's and realizing you have been/are a huge fuck up can destroy you!! And also my Old Age is nothing like I hoped it would be if I made it here. If I saw old age, I saw no longer having responsibilities for kids etc. and time to do whatever I pleased. That hasn't happened!! I have 2 daughters who will always need some kind of help and I am still raising their children. Driving kids to school and work Every Day and trying to run a household with 6 people on less than$2000 a month. True, if I really was going to Do It I have hours between driving kids most days that I could be writing ?? but again, no muse and nothing to offer. I'm a jet circling the tower waiting for permission to land, in a holding pattern, and I know now that the end is a crash. If by some miracle I am still alive when the last grandchildren leave home and I have figured out how to sustain Jami and Jess I Could Have that "free" time. But again. No muse. Nothing to offer. If I went totally mute no one would miss my voice, Kira would rejoice! and that's just the honest truth. I'm not feeling any self pity there. I don't exactly know how/why but I Know it is my own fault even if it was never my intention. It's more than just no longer being relevant. I'm looking every minute for the explanation, how did I fuck it all so badly? but the answer to that is somewhere beyond me still. Self realization is so difficult!! and there is that fear that I actually know the answer but somehow can't bring it forth because I can't bear it. Self destructive self preservation. Involuntary protective delusion. I don't know. Anything.
That must be correct?? Almost there. My friend Fred days he eats steak and eggs and works out twice a day to keep in shape. I had no real reply to that message. I just happen to still be here!! Brain aneurysm, 3 big brain bleeds, microbleeds all over my brain supposed to be killing me. And here I am. Pack a day. Literally wasting away they say. And here I am. Some people actually say "You are supposed to be here!" like they know something. Maybe Jeanette knows. She days this life is actually a punishment. When she said it is thought/ hoped she mentioned that the torture is run in 22 year cycles because I was done with them. I was 66. If I live 3 days more I will be 67.
I'm sure I have experienced Joy. I know i have even if I don't remember. Isn't it always tinged?? It's a beautiful new baby! 😀😃😄 that you will worry about, fear for, and dread the day they are gone. Tinge. It's the whole silver lining thing seen realistically. The cloud doesn't always come first. Not in punitive life!
3 days.
when I am 99% sure this life just isn't worth anything. I always have some anxiety and maybe depression when my heart is "acting up". Usually you aren't even aware of your heart functioning. It just does it's job. Efficiently. Quietly. Then days like this when it feels like it is shaking around in your chest and you are pretty sure that it will just stop beating during one of these kind of days. Not pain. Not even really discomfort. Just knowing it's not working right and then the awareness that everything will stop working when it gets too tired. Too old. Too abused to keep beating. Then awareness that it doesn't really matter all that much. That grip of panic that Jess, some others, will have a hard time surviving without me, it gets less. Maybe it just diminishes in the eventual inevitably. I think, I'm So Tired.
I guess I'll will be surprised every day from here on out that I'm Still Here. (Sorry haters!!) It made me think of waking at Barefoot's with Jeremy. How I would pop up ready to get busy on whatever project I was in the middle of and Jeremy would groan that I couldn't just ever want to smoke a doobie and CHILL with him but he always wanted to be doing what I was doing so he got Up, too. IT WAS THE BEST LIFE. Hardly seems possible if I just look at our circumstances from them. Mom has just died. Barefoot was in prison. I had No Family at all and Jeremy pretty much didn't either. It was like we lived in our own little island. No money, no car, just living by our wits day by day. In a teepee!! I wonder now if it was ever possible for us to stay in that bubble?? If Jami hadn't called in labor with Michelle, if I hadn't returned here to be "Mom and Grandma", how long could that life have lasted?? Would we still be happily there together?? My family here would have survived without me the same as if I had died in Texas, maybe even survived Better. I used to say that I "won" the divorce with Steve because he was missing out on having the children and grandchildren. Yep. All the Joy and all the Pain and Misery of them all. I'm a lot less smug about that Win now!! He took his new life and ran with it. I started a new life, then I threw it away for this reward. I could have experienced the Pride and Joy long distance like Steven has and maybe missed all of the direct kicks in the teeth like he has. Familiarity breeds contempt. ? .
I'm sorry, Jeremy. I've always said that you should have stayed in Texas like I begged you to at the time. The truth was that we should have Both stayed. None of this was your fault.
Funny how sometimes you can feel death taking a step closer. Sometimes it is blatantly noticeable, like a new diagnosis, but more often it is more subtle. Like just realizing one day how old you have grown. Or just knowing how many times you had to beat the odds to still be breathing. I feel like death took a step closer recently. Maybe the realization of mortality because my leg stopped cooperating?? No. That's not death. I think I stated that as more of a fear of living! I start wondering the where, when, why, how. Ideally I wish it could happen in a hospital after a short stay. Not in the house I leave to my family. Not to be"discovered" dead by one of them!! The whole"I can't wake Grandma!" thing is just *shudder*.
I really need to update a Living Will...
Driving me crazy. It's been raining so I can't do much outside. I would just sleep away the days but the leg hurts so much! there is not a comfortable position. So I am neither awake or asleep.
A lot of driving Jazz and Kira. Feeling bad I have to ask them to help with gasoline again but again these are different times than when Jlynn was saving for a car. Keeping up with the household costs and the house insurance etc. is so hard to do!! Then add driving the girls over 600 miles a week... It's just to much. I told Dave how hard this is, that we have a huge water disconnect, and he said he would be out the next day and went downstairs. The next morning I told him I really didn't want that, what I WANT is for him to start bringing in money. He was so relieved!! He should have given me a minute more!! But he gets it now and, BONUS!, he got rid of the monstrosity in the entryway!! I was suggesting dragging it outside and taking an axe to it but he took the time to disassemble it and put the pieces out back where I can actually make use of some of it.
So. I need this gloomy weather to stop and I need my left leg functional again!!!!! I guess that's asking a lot?? This body is just getting too old, I know. My fear lately is that I will be nonfunctional but ALIVE still. What a cruel end!! and likely people wishing a cruel end on me. But that would be cruel on those around me, too, and hopefully no one wishes evil fit them!!
Oh and I really think things are better with Kira. I was afraid that it was fake nice at first but she really seems sincere. ??. I try very hard with her!! I know she's gotten the shit end of the stick in so many ways in her little life so far!! Yes, she can be rude and often lacks empathy or understanding, a lot of that in ways that she has no control over! but I believe she has a good heart that will out shine all of that with a lot of love and just some things going right for her.
That saying years ago, "If Mamma's not happy, NOBODY IS HAPPY."
That is Jess here. She does her BEST to run this mess. And it shouldn't be a Mess for her. I know a HUGE part of this is Jami. She has taken over half the basement and all of the storage areas and trashed them. She says I never bother to go look when they are cleaned up!! It should All Always Be Clean. No one here except Kira and Jazz even work outside the home. ONLY Jess consistently works IN the home and I see her cleaning and cooking from 10 am to 6 pm EVERT DAY and then she gets out again to pick up everyone's mess in the kitchen and run the dishwasher. She knows how many dishes she should have in the kitchen!!!! Sometimes half are missing! But NOT in her room, my room, Jazz's room or even Kira's room any more. WHERE ARE THEY. IN THE BASEMENT. THE ONLY ROOM WE DON'T CHECK. YET. I put up a famous sign. As usual, like the one to scrape and rinse dishes. IT IS IGNORED.
JESS IS NOT HAPPY.
I am going to do everything to MAKE HER HAPPY. If I have to take dishes from living areas I will take Everything Around Them. Maybe the people, too.
Also, this is partly on me. The furniture piled in the Living Room. I Will take care of the Vanity and Loft BED and the books. But WHY IS THAT RIDICULOUS MONSTROSITY JAMI DRUG HOME STILL HERE????!!!!
AGAIN, I will get help to get rid of it but will EXACT A HUGE PRICE THERE, TOO.
No one cares about pissing off, stressing, Jess. I won't care either. I'm done caring about entitled, lazy, PROBLEM, NON-CONTRIBUTING PEOPLE.
DONE.
Oh, I'm sick of hearing Mike's car will be gone "in a few days" too.
I see in my stats where there was a sudden spike in views around when Dave says Lindsey found and started sharing this. Before that, since 2009, ?, I only had some people in other countries who found this and asked to follow it to see some American life. (Of Course I said Yes after telling them my life might not be the best depiction!) and now I still see 4 to eight views happening on each entry. I only have 5 overseas, who don't check in every day, and i just hope Lindsey is not one of the ones reading Every Day. I don't want her to be worried about/concerned with checking what I'm writing every day. I just want her to get over it. Move completely on. Have better things to do. Are u there little girl?? If u are, I know that you were hugely offended I didn't MAKE Jami do what you wanted. I want you to understand 2 things.
1. If I could MAKE Jami do any thing I would have MADE her stop using drugs 40 years ago. Make her give up the meth Now. Stop seeing Mike!, shoplifting, taking other people's things, lying, etc. And throwing her out Never Changes Anything AND she is a fricking boomerang! anyways.
2. I KNEW you would serve No Time even if the charges stuck and, I admit, I had a small hope that you might end up with probation so u would HAVE TO stop doing drugs or risk failing a drug screen. I've already said both of those things. And I am aware that you have an image to uphold with Jake, maybe some Mannings?, and others that you don't do illegal amphetamines and being hateful to me validates your lies. But I know the truth. Not just from the way you were the last several times I saw you but since then I have talked to people who smoked meth with and got meth for you during this time. I know it definitely impacted your DHHS job's demise. I'm definitely not a prude here. Everyone knows that Jeremy and I would get a little coke from M for concerts or big jobs like cleaning out the yellow house until his seizures and my heart condition made it a Very Bad Idea. Weekend users don't scare me. Addiction behavior Does.
But I'm sure you have made your point to everyone that you hate me for "lying" about you. Give it a rest. Tell them you think I'm senile for believing you were using and let it go but LET IT GO. You don't have to ever see/speak to me again. Or you can if you want and act like I made a senile mistake and you are forgiving me. Whatever. But. Stop. This. Remember, negative feelings/actions do more harm to the vessel that carries it than anything it is poured on. STOP carrying this on and STOP POURING. The point is made, I'm sure. The Mannings don't talk to me. Jake hates me. They believe and support You. Isn't that Really what you want?? I believe IN and support you, too, you silly, silly girl. But please. I no longer check so I Don't Know, but. If you still Use. STOP. Get secret help if u have to, but I think u can Just Do It If You Haven't.
Yep, finally rain. I guess I am ready for it. I have to take a break before I am totally broken. I often feel totally betrayed by my body and then I realize it is almost 67 years old and I marvel a little bit that it works at all. How many things do I have that old that still work?? That weird white Christmas candle might last 67 years!!
I'll probably start some seeds, piddle around, chat with Jeremy, take care of some overdue business like paying bills and updating applications, and hopefully clear up some of my gardening mess in the dining room. And a lot of laying around like broccoli (vegetating) 🙃
I will miss being able to be out in my garden. Yesterday I sat down in a pile of soil that I have been moving to my raised beds, and I realized how happy I was just sitting in a pile of dirt. I was digging around me with a hand shovel looking for good top soil to put in my potato growing boxes and removing sticks for my compost and I was Happy. My arm might be broken, (from a fall yesterday!), my knee is trashed and hurts like it is broken, (probably will make an appointment to scan both while I'm laying around) and I was just 😊. I talk to myself constantly while I work. Not bitching about the past like at first (which was good for nothing!!) but just rambling. If Gabriella is with me I act like I'm talking to her, to maybe make me look less crazy! (Not that I care if I look crazy!) but I'm talking about whatever I am doing. I haven't seem the movie "Babe" in decades but I keep saying, "That'll do pig" every time I finish doing something! I had to Google to find out what movie it came from!! but yea, it seems to be my go-to phrase and it makes me smile a little every time so I keep doing it 🙃. Crazy Lady. Yep, that's me!! Not shy about/ don't give a crap about admitting that because I know this Crazy Lady is one of the sanest people in my family, which makes me smile more! NOT that that's actually funny that we have So Many Crazies! but ok a little funny that a 66 year old lady with serious brain damage is one of the sanest!! Maybe that's only "funny" about the crazies who are crazy with living their delusions deliberately to defend their self righteous ignorant actions. That is hilariously bassackwards. Maybe the wrong word there. Self inflicted blindness is simply No Excuse. So people like that are just a joke.
It's not funny but I laugh every time the line "That was the worst apology ever!!" goes through my head. I think of how it came to me reading Jessalynn's text about MY journal and then again when I picture Jlynn thinking it when she read my response here. I only have one apology for her, for calling her names the night I threw them out. That was just stupid trying to hurt her back because she hurt me. You can't hurt someone who doesn't love you. You only make them angry or, in Jlynn's case, indignant. It was childish. Otherwise, yea, no regrets. I'm not angry at Jeremy about it any more. He always bitched about me to any one who would listen and No One who loved me would even listen, let alone chastise me for whatever he was venting about. Yes, he lied about me, too, obviously, but that's just his thing, he survives on Pity. It has kept him alive, fed, and housed for most of his life an you have to admire that skill in him with his epilepsy and brain damage. No. This is all on Jessalynn. Even Brandon's abhorrent disrespect. No One else in my family would let any one else attack me. Even if Jami is mad as hell at me she won't let any one else trash me. Oh, I forget about Lindsey. I too often forget her. I love Lindsey with all my heart for the little girl she was but I never saw that little girl again after John had her. That is heart breaking but sadly true. AND I don't think that the person she grew up to be is her "fault". Also heart breaking! I spent several years looking for who she Was but I think I started to "get it" when she said that she doesn't remember Steve and I having her until she was 6 years old or even the few times I got to see her while Mikey had her. My poor little girl!!! Any ways... no Jeremy is not to blame for any thing Jlynn or Brandon has said or done. She is a horrific person but again, I Loved the little girl BUT I also know that she KNOWS who took care of her almost All of her childhood. I did Everything, Everything for her because her father Always had other priorities, and he Still Does, and mother was on bath salts and Meth an Got knows what until a few years ago. I always had a room for her in my house, took her for doctor appointments, immunizations, school, work, and even drove to Lincoln whenever I could to help her get through first year in college. I guess she thinks that was all Jeremy. ?. No. She just really doesn't give a shit. ALL of the grand kids thought I loved Jlynn more than them, some still do!, but that was never why. I knew all along that Jenise was a better kid, and then a much better Human Being. She and Jazz have always been just amazing people. Kira is pretty rough now but was the sweetest thing growing up! and I think she'll pull thru being a rebelling teenager and be amazing again, too. Jeanette's kids had both parents when they were little and then Jeanette did the best she could as a single parent except maybe the 6 months she was goo goo over Jon Ways. I had them then and with Jeremy's help and Jenise playing mother! to the boys I hope we did good with them. I remember how sweet it was when Jeremy was taking Robby to Boy Scouts and we both always went to the kids events. Almost none of their parents did any of that!! And my poor Shy. The Most Heartbreaking one of the bunch when she was little and now, too. It's hard to believe how we often had 6 or more grandchildren living with us!! They were all so loving! but I did see the darkness in Jessalynn, the rage in Robby, and the hurt in Kira from her parents that I knew could all make them turn out like they are now. Kira Will pull through. We need to get help or something with Robby! and Jlynn, well, I'm pretty sure she will never be better unless she somehow gets a therapist who holds up a mirror or she goes through a tragedy that makes her SEE herself. If I ever really had a "favorite" of course it would be and is Jenise. From the first time I laid eyes on her in her car seat in Rob's car, when I whispered, "Mom? Are you in there?" and Jeanette said she never saw Jenise react like she did with Any One and Nett didn't even know what I asked Jenise! (All because Mom said she would come back in one of my grand children and Jenise was born next!) Whatever. I have to mention my Riley, here, too. I think Jess was first to see that he was "high functioning " autistic. I knew, too, in first grade when I would help him with his homework. I had to figure out how to make math make sense to him but when I did he would just Light Up and show brilliant understanding but then I would have to show him again over and over for it to "stick". Nett and I both have fought for him to get better teaching at school and only this year, when he is a sophmore in high school! does OPS believe his diagnosis!!!! My lost little guy! but he is so off the charts Loving!! Last night he called stranded somewhere and his phone died before I got where he was or told him that yes I would get him. I took off from here like a crazy person with emergency flashers on running red lights and when he wasn't at the last location 360 showed for him, I started driving the area in wider and wider circles until I had him. He did manage to call me, someone let him charge his phone??, and he gave me a street name a few blocks from where I was. I drove 20 miles circling the Benson areas! but he is just terrifying! Without GPS he has no idea how to get around Omaha and he will hitch rides with strangers always believing he can Tell who won't hurt him. I tell him that abusers couldn't get victims unless they could convince people they were "ok" and he gets that but Forgets that. I'm not nearly as crazy protective with any one else but Riley not only Needs it he is just Worth it. 💓
Crap. This was just a little entry about "the worst apology ever" and I just rambled around. Then again, I will be 67 in a few weeks! (if I live that long!!) and this is MY Journal do I get to ramble all I want. Hell, I could Lie in here like Jlynn accuses me! if I wanted but what would be the point of that????? No clue.
See ya!!!!
I'm waiting for my MRI. This is always scary. Right after the last one was All Clear Jeremy and I got in that wreck and I ended up with 3 brain bleeds, one right where my aneurism was repaired!! They said my brain tissue would die everywhere the blood touched and I lost the ability to understand what I read and the ability to hear music in my head, or how to play the guitar and piano, I couldn't picture a single cord. An i have more blanks in my long term memory and serious damage to my short term memory. Then they scanned a month after the accident and said the big bleeds had shrunk but they saw micro bleeds all over my brain. I asked Dr Gold if this meant that I was in serous trouble and he said Yes, the first time he ever answered that question that way! I also have Severe White Matter Disease (which I believe is a fungal issue but it's hard to get doctors to take that idea serious!) so my brain is a wreck. But. THEN my brain damage brother reminded me that the Brain and the Mind are different things and, while they have mapped the Brain NO ONE has figured out what the Mind is! He told me to read a hundred year old way- before-its-time book called "Secrets of the Ages" and it opened my Mind to all the possibilities!!! I hear music, can play some music, and can understand the written word!!! It's been slow progress but IT IS PROGRESS.
Whew! Scan over. They put me in a special high definition MRI because of my new allergy to contrast. It's a tight fit with a cage over my face holding my head in place. NOT for the claustrophobic! They turned on the Beatles and began. I guess I'll find out tomorrow what my Forcast is.
4 days and no test results. I hope that doesn't mean the results are bad or that something went wrong with that special MRI.
... survival in trauma and maybe they don't. All my life, since I was a kid, I have studied survival skills. When I was 11 I started going on "survival hikes", hiking through Texas fields looking around and noticing different things that would help me survive if I was lost or stranded. I still study these things but now, in my old age, know I myself will most likely never need to know them. I am terrified that my descendants will someday be to know such things and I won't be here to help them! At best u will get an eye roll if I try to pass anything on when I know it Could Be necessary to know some day. These days the fears are war, which had always been a fear to be ready for, and something new. The grid going down. If you think through what that could mean for communities it is absolutely terrifying if it lasts more than a few months. When deliveries there is no power or running water and deliveries Stop. Everyone assumed it will just never happen when it is always just a beast beat away!! Terrifying. I try to see my daughters trying to lead this family safely through. Jami knows the most. Jess is the most able to meet an unexpected tragedy. Jeanette knows a lot but will be in the most in danger of not surviving without medical help. I most likely won't live to see it happen. And I hope they don't either!!
Just one of the many stupid things I worry about that I can do nothing about. I garden. Hope someone will carry that on when I am gone, at least keep the idea alive in care God forbid they actually need to know How. I'm leaving a map of what I'm doing, hopefully not just digitally but a hand written one. Just in case.
There were a couple of deer in the neighbors backyard this evening. Kira reacted like seeing aliens! They are all so distant from Life. Scary.
This heat isn't nearly what I grew up with in Texas but it is kidding my butt. Kira says the UV index has been really high, something I knew nothing about until recent decades, but maybe I'm feeling it. The sun at 80 degrees here is painful. It hurts my skin. Not like sunburn but it burns. Trying to just work on the garden in the cooler morning and evening isn't enough an just too many things come up being The Driver here. I'm hauling soil now, filling just the 3 inch high beds is taking me forever. My garden will be very late and I definitely will be buying some seedlings. Almost all of mine are not dead.
It didn't help that Riley called around 1am. I jumped up sure Jeanette was dying again out some other disaster! Riley's allergies were making him sick. Turns out Nett was home from work and had already told him his illness was likely allergies but it made him angry and sure she wasn't really trying to help himso he called me. Poor Riley! and Poor Jeanette! He really thinks he is dying when he gets sick and that his mom just isn't helping him. Then he calls me. He usually believes me, even tho I have said the exact same thing Jeanette did, maybe that's Why he believes me? but it if hard on all 3 of us. Only Riley could get away with waking me like this! because I know he can't help it. I should write down his complete diagnosis sometime so I can remember it, but things like this are all part of it. We are trying so hard to figure out how to help him grow up, Jeanette understands way more than I do and she is often lost, too. I would give my life to help Riley! Ok. Yea, that doesn't sound like much when I so often seem to not value my own life. Just a thing people say to express your much something means?? Something I will delete later when I find a better way to express this???
I am cooking in the high UV with sleep deprivation and too little being done!!
I've been trying to time the sun where I have framed and dug my garden and I'm afraid it might only get 5 hours of full sun!!! I'll check me closely tomorrow but it is just too late and too much work to start over. I'm a little proud of the whole Did It All By Myself thing but if anyone checked it with a T-square and level it wouldn't rate very high!! BUT getting everything (or anything!) exact using reclaimed wood of all shapes and sizes would have been a hellofa job!! I could have redone things until I got it exact but, well, I'm not! Actually, I DON'T think I could. I intended to make the bed at least 8 inches high before I started planting but it can't wait any longer. Hopefully I can add to it after it's planted?? I have 56 square feet framed with about a 4 × 3 space at the north end for corn with beans and peas climbing it. I don't know what to do with the asparagus yet, the space for corn might be the best place? Or I can start it in a crate and dig a separate garden for it after I plant the 56 sq feet???? We can't harvest the asparagus for at least 2 years. The strawberries, whatever survives, won't really produce for at least a year either.
Dave is mowing, dandelion seeds flying everywhere, I wish we had done it before they all went to seed!!! Oh well. At least they are nutritious, Jenise, you will never die of starvation here if the grid goes down etc!!
It's dark. I worked in the SE corner of the yard until I couldn't see what I was doing and then I came on the deck and potted my beautiful Mother's Day flowers Kira gave me. 😃😃😃🥰😍❤️❤️ Maybe she doesn't Hate me completely??? I am hopeful. Maybe too hopefull but it feels good for now.
Now maybe a shower. Besides sweating in the garden all day I stupidly walked by Dave mowing on the wrong side and am covered in dandelion seeds and grass clippings and whatever else the lawnmower was throwing at me. I think I felt a few rocks 🤔.
Ok. Jeanette is alive. Everyone got whey they needed to go (although Jazz was pissed she was 5 minutes late to work) and we are all alive. Last night I Jeremy was asking about Nett and I told him I was afraid of outliving her, or any of them! and I really am afraid Jeanette is going to lose this battle. Please God No! But, what did die during the last 2 days are most of my seedlings. They were at a critical stage of repot or plant or die. They are mostly dead today 😑 but they are replaceable. I just don't know if I have time to start seeds again, I might have to break down and buy seedlings. I hoped the bare root strawberries were the only plant stays I'd have to buy this year. Oh well. Always an emergency several times a year within the family. I have my doubts about how much more I can physically do, too. The left side of my body seems to be really messed up. Then there will be the weather to contend with. Oh and something I hadn't even considered. The neighbor on the east side, where my garden is, is an avid ornamental plant grower, she might even be selling them like I was in Texas, and she uses chemicals for weed control and likely for fertilizer, too. She is super sweet, we talk energy we are both out back, and she said she wouldn't plant anything tall on her side that might shake my vegetables. I told her not to worry but she insisted it if fine. I am not about to complain about the chemicals. I have been googling the problem. It said what I expected, put up a barrier and leave a gap between our gardens. Oh amc how I've already cultivated that first 2 feet of soil! Google doesn't say how wide the gap needs to be, I maybe should start completely over. Damn I should have thought about this!! I saw that she had a garden yard, I just never considered that people use poisons instead of saving the planet except big government farmer!! My Bad.
Something went wrong with her hysterectomy, they think because of the connective tissue disorder, and she is in Lakeside Hospital again 😭. I'm picking up Jazz from work, I got here too early, but I want to go to Jeanette. I'm worried. She just has too much go WRONG! I don't believe I would survive without Jeanette!!!
And I'm supposed to be worried that people don't like/agree with thing I write in my journal. I'm building and digging a big garden for the family, almost ended up in the hospital myself today from severe dehydration working out in the full sun every day, driving 600 miles a week just ruining the kids around, and that was supposed to matter? What is the matter with people? If they don't want to love me they don't have to. I am not ashamed of who I am. I'm not always right but I have the best intentions for my own. What else do they think I should be?
I see I wrote about the dehydration earlier, silly me! and that's why we are told not to depend on Dr Google - we scare ourselves with diabetes and Kidney failure search results when we just need a drink of water!!!!
I might be sick, like something really wrong! My mouth has been super dry for several days no matter how much I drank and now I haven't been able to pee since early yesterday. I really noticed the morning because I ALWAYS have to pee when I wake up.
My spelling has looked really bad because I have been using the slide texting because of my arthritis. I've been going back and correcting this entry, had to fix six mistakes already.
I read through a lot of this all the way back to the beginning. Why did my typing get so very progressively worse thru the years??! Probably because I use the slide texting Nett taught me years ago.
Oh what pitiful misery to read thru the breakup with Jeremy! But time (and a lot of venting in a journal!) really does does heal almost everything! (except losing Herbert. NOTHING makes that pain better😭)
I am So OK. I built and dug my garden, planting it now, and it is a beautiful day.
I was up all night texting with Jeremy. Funny I hate him the least of all the people who decided our break up was their business. Maybe they learned when it's time to go home?? Not my problem now. He's staying at his brother's and bewildered that he is the Calm one in his brother's house! He is finding that I was correct that his family would feel less able to be constantly correcting his behavior. He's the best of the lot!! I don't mind helping him right now, it's what I've been doing for years but with him There I don't have to really deal with his Growing Pains. He was asking about himself as a father figure, why did I say he was good until the kids got old enough to talk back. I sent him the Ukranian artwork entry in here I titled "Jeremy The Father" and he liked it. Was pleasantly surprised that I had saved and dedicated that to him a year ago. (He never snooped in my journals over our 22 years.) Yes, he has some choices of decency that half of my family can't even comprehend. But again, it is a beautiful day.
Very sad that Jess still tested positive today. I believe she has been the sickest by far but still hoped she was clear.
Jeremy still tests positive. He says he has had no symptoms but I don't believe him. One, he had that seizure Day 1.
Crap. I accidentally moved this. This was obviously from the COVID pandemic.
Lucky me❣️❣️❣️ Jenise came Saturday and I got her a chair to set her pregnant butt down by my garden so she could visit with me while I finished turning it, *and I did finish!" And then we snuck off to Blue for sushi again. Then this afternoon Jeanette came for a visit. I've been kinda sick so I couldn't get back out in my garden since Saturday so the company was awesome. I love the ways Jeanette has grown. It feels like we have trade places most of the time now - she is the one teaching me and I am thrilled. I used to always say I didn't just want my kids to learn what I knew but to always strive to go beyond. That that was human evolution. She is proof of that. Not that children have to surpass you to teach you. Once I was showing a prism to a small boy, asking him what he saw in it so I could then explain how it worked and formed the colors. I set it in the light and asked him what he saw and he said "I see the world". My lesson froze in my mouth and I asked him what he meant and he said "Just look! There's you, and me, and everything in this room and everything out the patio door" and sure enough, the world was reflected in that prism!! Lesson over. Lately Jeanette is showing me everything in the prism.
I tried to Google my name looking for my blog. No luck. Then Dave finally explained that Lindsey somehow found this site and sent it to almost everyone we know. You know, I'd write this, usually things I wish people knew, didn't get to say to them, didn't think anyone would ever care to read this (except maybe Jenise, Jeanette and Jami after I am dead). I was just blowing off steam sometimes like therapists tell people to do to get over things. But Lindsey made that dream come true. In so many great and hilarious ways. I might not remember everything any more, might be dealing with inaccurate information, but I have never written Anything I didn't believe to be true at the time (Who lies in a journal???) and nothing that I wouldn't say to someone's face but never thought I would get to. So, sincerely Lindsey, THANK YOU. And I do love you very much. You are one of the very few people that I am estranged from that I truly miss. You are about the only one who I don't blame for a thing. The only one with full right to be upset with your mother (although I wonder that none of that is directed at the enabler of your childhood situation). I love you. Always will.
Jeremy tried for years to find someone to bitch about me to. He was shot down by Jami, Kirk, Jess, Dave and Jeabette, who spit in his face. Especially when he tried to talk about our sex life, none of them wanted to hear about their mother, grandmother, or mother-in-law's sex life or lack thereof until he found Jessalynn and Brandon to listen and sympathize. The flip side of this is that I also went from having sex all the time to zero. I would have loved to find a good boyfriend, husband etc but he wouldn't physically leave and free me and, bitch that I am, I'm not like that. And we are talking 10 years ago. I had Lots of offers. 2 men who had been after me for all my life who were then millionaires. Not that I ever considered money when choosing a partner, example 2 past husbands and Jeremy (legally my husband in Texas). Those 2 suitors died last year, and I'm dying now so it's really not fair to start with anyone. But it would have been really nice to have a good man to grow old with. Jeremy inadvertently stole that from me, too. I let him steal it by not having whatever it took to force him to leave.
Wait, I gotta add somewhere, yes, I always said Jeremy was excusable because of his disabilities, but I realized that is total bullshit. We'll, mostly bullshit. I finally realized that he definitely was capable of controlling his worst issues. Brandon made that plain as day - if Jeremy could always "behave " when Brandon was around, sometimes for Long Days! and Jeremy never lost it. The house breathed sigh of relief when Brandon was coming because we all knew we would get a break from the Anger, yelling, and just plain meanness. How did someone unable to control himself do that?? And with the kids, and yes, there were a lot of them, and they could be a handful! but he NEVER has lost his temper with his favorite, Jasmine. He could be mad as hell about something a child did, cussing and making threats, and if he found out the culprit was Jasmine he cooled down immediately. How was he able to do that?? It's like him saying he couldn't read studying for his CNA so I read his text book to him for weeks, until I had laryngitis and couldn't, and he said, "OK, give me the book, I'll read it". Playing me. Like he played everyone. He supposedly hated being reminded that he was disabled but he sure did use it to his advantage whenever and however he could. But it took until Brandon, that huge, stark, difference in him, THAT finally made it clear as day. His survival technique is his pity parties and he gets away with it mostly by his act that he doesn't want anyone to know about his epilepsy etc., so everyone pitied him all the more until he HAS SOMEONE SUPPORTING HIM FOR 22 YEARS. I was a moron to not get it sooner but not as big of a Moron as the ones still dancing at his pity party. And I do even now still love Jeremy. Even have some admration for the brilliance of his game and gratitude, peace, that I know he will be OK.
I'm sorry you maybe misunderstood things right from the start. When I said Brandon's name, I told you both right away, I wasn't inviting Brandon to get involved. I didn't even need for him to wake from his good dream. I just needed to say the name and remind Jeremy that Brandon was in the house so he would turn into Brandon/ Jeremy. I didn't then or ever invite you two into my relationship or breakup. It would have been real decent of you guys if you if you had left when you realized what was going on. It was none of your business and neither is my journal. If I could have "drug" you anywhere I would have drug you out of My Breakup in My House. Jami saw this on a phone I loaned her and asked if it was ok that she read it and I said Yes, but that it was the good, bad, and ugly. She. Asked. I started writing on this site during the MRSA epidemic until I was invited to write for a big MRSA campaign. My followers followed me there except a few stragglers who commented on this a few times. I think that all stopped by 2014. So this became where I worked things out and let off steam. I understand that you felt free to read it since it was still on a Public format and that you have zero respect for any of my boundaries. Maybe it's your generation? I do love you Jessalynn. I wonder if you read it all or just skimmed thru looking for your own names?? I suspect the latter. Maybe you would have seen how very much I adored Jeremy. You guys have been together a minute so I get it.
After 22 years you go thru times when you deeply love and times you hate the guts of your partner. Hopefully you make up and grow each time but sometimes it becomes unhealthy to continue. Lots of people just fear Change, like Jeremy. I've known and told him for years that this was over and he should go and be happy. He had to be forced. But we are both happier now. That's all that should matter. I can see you guys being offended if you read the journals of everyone you know. That's why we aren't supposed to do it. What's that saying? Something about eavesdroppers never hearing anything good about themselves?? I wrote a lot more about loving Jeremy than about hating him. Did you go back and read when this started on that nightmare Christmas, too??
It's therapy to write. Helps kept your head uncluttered and work things out. I don't know how you stumbled across this but it is Mine. I tell it like I see it here. You guys need to just watch the moats in your own eyes. Leave the speck in mine alone. I'm pretty sure you have better things to do.
PS: I'm not nice to people who I think are bad for my family and I want them to leave. I'm pretty damn nice to others. Give them rides to work and never ask for gas money. Lose $7,000 for helping them. I treat people in general disgustingly like that.
How do you treat people?
God, I see your smug faces saying "Really good"! The holier than thou thing, I hope you get over it. Maybe someday you will wonder if you weren't perfect in all of this. I seriously doubt it.
I am sorry for the name calling, Jessalynn. I know it was childish, I was lashing out like I do when hurt just wanting to hurt you back. Stupid, too. If throwing you out didn't hurt nothing would. Pretty sure I was still wounded the worst but, it definitely took a minute! but I got over it. For a minute I though you had, too, especially for your mother's sake! but I never thought Brandon did. He's not nearly as good an actor.
My Jeremy: from My 2021 Journal titled "Jeremy"
What I already wrote here wasn't really about Jeremy. My tendancy to waunder and ramble leads me astray.
Jeremy is both a very simple and a very complicated person.
First, Who He Is was altered by brain damage as a child. He had a head injury, possibly two head injuries, that damaged his right frontal lobe causing epilepsy. Then there had likely been more damage from the grand mall seizures. On top of that, his mother did drugs including LSD during pregnancy and he was severely abused growing up.
Jeremy, the Basic Person he is, is a beautiful soul. That was all my mother saw when she looked at him. When she chose him for me. Sadly you don't see it very often any more, but Jeremy's eyes are honest and full of heart. My family have pretty much beat that out of him for the last 19 years but I can still see it. That is terrible. From Jami and Mikey throwing him out while I was in the hospital, making him cry telling him he Wasn't Family to Jeanette spitting in his face to Jess and Jessalynn demanding I throw him out, he has been thoroughly abused by us. I've always been in the middle of this and too often protecting my daughters instead of him.
Mom said he had true Loyalty and would take care of me forever. My promise to stay with him let her die in peace.
Could she have possibly Known??
Jeremy has been so beaten down by us that I can barely see the man my mom left me with. But he is still Here.
Jeremy was the Only person in my life when we met and for more than the first year. We were deliriously happy most of the time. Every day was bright and shiny. An adventure. And we weren't living "easy". We were mostly broke living in either a broke down trailer or in a teepee Jeremy built on Barefoot's land. We collected junk and sold it along with houseplants I started and Jeremy dealt a little weed and sometimes he sold plasma for money. Life was very simple. Jeremy was like a genie in a bottle doing everything to grant my every wish. I took care of things like figuring out how to get the medication we needed, free medical care, and keeping up with anything legal and I did most of the cooking and cleaning although he helped with everything I did and he took care of Everything Else. I said I would love to live in a teepee and the next day he made an amazing one out of long metal rods and painter's canvas he found. I wished I had a pond for Mom's koi and he found a pond liner and dug once for me. Everything felt magical.
I was depressed and suicidal when we met. My entire family had cast me out after my 22 year marriage ended except for Mom. She was the only reason I was still alive when I met Jeremy and I had no intention of surviving her.
My brother had me committed not long after I got to Houston. My mother said it was because of his long vendetta against me for suggesting his wife should take the kids and run when he was strung out on meth years and years ago. And she said it was also part of a plan to be sure I didn't inherit the 2 million dollar lawsuit she expected to collect from Dow Corning. Whatever. In Harris County Psyche I befriended a woman named Stacy. She had perfectly sculpted eyebrows and we were locked in a psych ward with all our belongings taken away. I knew she had tweezers!! We were both on a 10 day hold and we ruled the ward together after teaming up.
Several of us agreed to meet when we got out. We were all homeless planning to be each other's support system. Stacy got out first and I went to our meeting place, Smiley Inn, when I got out. When she walked in with Jeremy I had the feeling of Destiny that I never experience anymore although I had no clue of what we would Be. A few of the others joined us but it narrowed down to Jeremy, Stacy and me and then just him and me.
Jeremy was very young. 27? and in many ways he was even younger for his age. It was like no one had raised him to survive in this world beyond being a teenager, and pretty much no one had.
Quickly, Jeremy had one positive influence in his life, his Nana, his father's mother. His father died in a traumatic car crash with Jeremy in the car when he was 4. He lived with his mother and who ever she was with until he was 12 and then she moved to Oklahoma leaving him with her last boyfriend, who called himself Barefoot, an abusive small time drug dealer. Jeremy stayed with Barefoot until shortly before I met him when Barefoot threw him out.
Jeremy had a big windfall inheriting $30,000 from his Nana when he turned 18. Barefoot and his mother talked him out of a few big chunks of it that he never saw again.
Jeremy actually got his diploma from Sam Rayburn High School and was offered social security disability that he turned down. He lives as much as possible in denial of his epilepsy. The stigma of it left him deeply scarred. Even now, he hates for anyone to know that he is epileptic and refuses to acknowledge any limitations he has from it.
I'm sure Barefoot made this worse. He referred to Jeremy by a slur nickname I won't dignify by naming here and he beat him severely until Jeremy beat him. I know he used to put Jeremy in a trash can for punishment so its easy to assume how degrading Barefoot was for him.
It really makes me sick to write that knowing that my girls have treated him even worse the last 20 years!!
When I decided that I had to return to Omaha and be Mom and Grandma again I begged Jeremy to let me go alone. I knew that I would no longer be able to be the person I had been with him. I knew that my daughters would probably be unwilling to accept him with me. I told him this over and over but he still wanted to come to Nebraska. Even i never dreamed how badly he would be received.
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Jessalynn strikes: from 2021 journal "MY GRANDCHILDREN:
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This one hurts the most. Easy Why. The one I believed loved me most. The one I put the most into.
The one who finds me, personally, disgusting.
She said it is because of how I treat Jeremy. Her mother is almost always mean to him and she went to stay with Jeanette who has literally spit in his face. Plus she ragged on me to throw him out for Months and talked of nothing but how much she hates him.
The girls I called The Apple of My Eye, and then my Unicorn, who I would have given my life for. Says. I'M. DISGUSTING.
I knew she was mean. Overlooked it time after time. She would laugh at people I pitied. She never forgave a slight. But I always thought she was better than she was. She cried over TV shows!! I just knew there was real Heart there just hidden by Youth.
I was wrong.What happened with Jessalynn Christmas was caused by an old problem caused by a mistake I seem to make over and over. Or maybe it's just the way it is because I'm so flawed. My grandchildren, one of my children, have No Respect for me. Maybe I don't think about it enough? I don't seem to realize that someone doesn't respects me until it slaps me in the face. It has to be my fault. I assume that people respect me because I see myself as someone who Should Have the respect of people. I manage to take care of my family no matter how little I have to do it. I have good morals that I base my life on and try to teach others.
But I must be just totally missing something.
I think back over my relationship with Jessalynn and see now that she has never really Treated me with respect. We have spent a lot of time together. I have been the person she turned to for advice and help or just the one she called if she was sad or sick. But I have allowed a large measure of closeness that you wouldn't expect in a Grandmother especially as she's gotten older. I kept thinking that this is a Good Way to be with children even though it never works. Jessalynn has always felt comfortable to treat me with disrespect. Jessalynn's text, "I thought we would discuss this maturely but" or some such crap that would never be said to an adult who had respect. I think I teach them manners but Jessalynn didn't have the basic courtesy to not call her host "disgusting" while in her home.
Back it up. One huge thing about what happened was the hypocrisy. Months she spent berating me for Not throwing Jeremy out of the house and I not only let her do it, I took up for Jeremy but also apologized for not throwing him out for her. At most I explained over and over why I wouldn't. What I Should Have Done was tell her it was none of her business or at least let her know how disrespectful to Him it was to sit in his home and say these things. I did not. So when she jumped sides she fully expected me to just take it.
Now, the fact that I didn't wasn't because she finally went too far. It likely had little to do with the content of her new complaint. It was Christmas Eve. The pain and stress of preparing for the holiday this year was almost unbearable. I was feeling like I was crossing a finish line. Jeremy was almost done cooking dinner. The kids would open the few presents we were able to buy this year and it would be over for another year. And There She Was.
I go back to the fact that I would have NEVER dreamed to speak to my mother or grandmother in such a way. Especially not on Christmas Eve in their home!
And I don't think She would have spoken to any other parent or grandparent that way.
So, the problem is Me.
Either I allow a level of familiarity or don't command a level of respect that made her feel she was right. Likely both.
Whatever.
I HAVE TO fix this before it happens again. I still have Kira and Jazz in my house and others in their homes. Sadly, I am now questioning all familiarity with them. They like to tease and play, Kira has a thing where she calls everyone Loser. Do I shut her down from teasing Jeremy and me like that so she doesn't feel comfortable telling us our behavior is disgusting some day??
I really hate this.
I often think I should say something about this house. This Home. How unbelievably peaceful it feels, especially after living in the war zone on Meredith! I almost always feel safe here. Even going outside at night. Jess walks Nova here, makes about a half mile loup around the house. Most of the people around here are gone owners and I see very little gang activity even though we are still in North O. At the other house it was Loud music and people yelling, drunk, high, etc. at least every week ends. I haven't seen one night like that here.
We might actually be the most dangerous house around here.
She is so very much stress on a household! I wish I could fix it but I don't think I can. Jami just will Not work to get along. Not really. She tried to act like she is " conforming " to 'family life' but it is always just trying to get away with whatever she can and denying doing anything wrong whenever she is called out, exactly like living with a juvenile delinquent who happens to be 48 years old. A lot of it is just the Meth. The life style and the people it brings. I tell her to Keep That Out of Here but she just sneaks, does whatever she wants. Kira was trying to explain how her mom must be laughing in my face all of the time and I had to tell her that I'm already fully aware. More like slapping me in the face. It's the drugs, the bad traffic, the mess, the total disrespect for everyone in this house. If confronted she always claims that She is the Victim. But she isn't at all. Some days it feels like we are all being held hostage here. And I am out front taking the bullets when they come because no one else dares confront her but I am always asked to. It's much like Jeremy. Everyone said it was my Fault he was here (until it wasn't) (then I was the bad guy) and they all say it is my fault that she is here. It is. I let her move in against everyone's wishes. Maybe Every Time.
I just know we can't go on like this. Shouldn't go on like this. Won't go on like this.
How to make it end???
And should I? I don't forget that this house chose Jeremy over me. I only had Jami here. I'm not sure how I'd survive here without her. If she had been here for that last confrontation with Brandon it would have gone completely differently. I was standing all alone.
And that is something easily harder to deal with than Anything Jami does.
Today the Dr is going to repair the holes he found in Jeanette's retina a couple of weeks ago. It is her only remaining eye so it's quite terrifying. I believe it will go well but don't know what the future of this last she will be. She was unable to go in far her she check up for 2 years, I think she is supposed to go every 6 months, and that is likely why this got so bad. I've been so afraid of her going blind ever since this started and I'm sure she is, too. Jess and I talk about it, about how she will Have To help here, especially now that she will have this house.
But I pray she has many years of vision left!!
When I'm told I am taking to myself I have often jokingly replies that I do it because I am the only one who listens to me. That's really not a joke any more. Partly old age. Partly being surrounded by ass holes. But yesterday I intentionally talked to myself while working outside, letting myself say all of the things I don't say out loud. Over an hour I ranted letting it All Out. I was hoping it might release some tension. Nope. Pretty sure it made it worse!
My days and nights are back to owl status. I haven't done this for years because of the kids school and because for a long time I just woke at 7am no matter what. Not sure why this happened. It's not good for having to get kids to school and early appointments but I must admit that it has always been what seemed the most natural for me and almost all of my relatives. Night Owls. I will switch back real soon but once the girls have cars and are driving to school and work I'll be able to have whatever schedule that I want 😁.
Oh and this isn't great with it being time to start my vegetable garden.
I do love that we have a home that we feel safe in. And it is ours. Yes, it's the middle of the night and a police helicopter is circling overhead right now, but that is a rare thing here and at least they don't have the spot light on our house!
Wow. They are checking low. Can you see if they are using night vision???
Jami and I went and got old lumber from where they are rebuilding the Fontenelle Youth Center, looks like they're was a fire, but I mostly need it to build my raised garden beds. It was hard as hell work, most of the time was spent removing and hammering down the old nails, but it felt a lot like "old times" when we pulled stuff together all the time. Like raiding thrift store dumpsters on Sunday nights after the garage sales closed. I'm so sore I can hardly move, and I bet she hurts, too! but it felt good and I have what I need to start nice raised bed gardens. 😃
Jess has said she feels life the Martha. In glad that I never told her to start doing all of the house work. She just started after I couldn't and then Jeremy wouldn't. I'm grateful for it. She keeps the house looking fairly decent and prepares good meals. In return I have her the running of this house. Let her pretty much be the Boss which i guess also makes her the Martha. Years ago when I was doing it all including laundry for sometimes 7 kids Jessica pretty much never helped. And she trashed whatever space she had. The landlady had to hire someone to deodorize and clean Jessica's room at the yellow house. All of the upstairs at the Meredith house was trashed except for Kiras room. Now I feel sorry for her sometimes when I hear her vacuuming at night or when she cleans the litter boxes every day making owning cats so my better! I seem to forget the years I did it all and then the years Jeremy barely did it while bitching about having to do the little he did at the top of his lungs. If you walked through the Meredith house barefoot your feet would be black with filth. Jami and Kirk did most of the trashing of the basement there but Jeremy didn't do much better. The basement here was beautiful when we moved in. It's an embarrassing eyesore most of the time now. But socks don't get black walking without shoes in the house and the kitchen is always clean. Thank you, Jess! My room is terrible, has been for months, but I hope to fix it more now that I'm feeling a little better. And I'm trying to put in a garden. This year I will profit more than I spend on it. Jess and Kira have always refused to eat anything I grow. They trust vegetables from the grocery store full of pesticides and handled by strangers, often in Mexico, more that they trust what I grow. I'm going to force the issue this year. We are spending over a thousand a month on food now. Eggs are over $5 a dozen and everything had been outrageously expensive since Covid. They will eat it or go hungry. I made laundry soap that would save us $30 a month and they refused to use it. It was more pure and effective than store bought. It mostly got left when we moved here. I hope to make it again and make them use it. They but a LOT of expensive unnecessary groceries. Jess uses online recipes that complicate simple dishes like goulash and chili. Pot pies that are costly but delicious but I know the cheap way to do it is delicious too. I probably can't change these things but the financial situation might make it get better and growing vegetables will help. I'm looking at getting chickens, too.
One thing about the"expense" of Jess's cooking: I was raised by the generation who survived the Great Depression, meaning I was taught to be extremely frugal, probably excessively so. They may need to know those things in this world some day but I don't want to make them learn it now if I don't have to. And Jess's gnocchi if amazing and worth whatever it costs!!
Ok. Sleep now??
I don't know why I'm awake. It's 3:48 am. The kids are both out of town, I actually did some yard work today and a little cleaning, and I can't sleep. It is so hard to turn off my brain at night. Or any time. And it is too often the same things going through my head almost all of the time.
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why so many in my family despise me. Treat me with absolute disrespect. Probably wish I would just go ahead and die. This is Lindsey, Joey, Jessalynn, and Brandon. Most of the time, in some ways, Brandon bothers me the most. So much hatred and he knows so very little about me! Who I am. Who I have been. He plead with My Family to realize that I AM CONTROLING THEM. That is just wild to me. I might wish I COULD control my family, I sure would worry about them a lot less!! Lindsey, as I have said, didn't bother me so much. I understand that she says she has no memory of her young years with Steve and me. Add to that her bipolar and drug issues and the brain bled she had at birth, plus her horrific childhood after Jami and Mikey took her from me, and I can understand, I can handle she doesn't really love me. I'm not even sure that she loves her own children. How did she live with not having Addie with her for So Long?? I couldn't be away from my children when they were little. Not like that! Steve and I tried to leave the girls with my brother, Mike, when we went in our honey moon and we were in Galveston mess than an hour and went and got the girls. No, Lindsey is Different. Sadly maybe like he own mother. ? And I don't really stress a lot about Joey. I don't really know her or how she was raised to believe and act. She might be treating me the way she was taught to treat me. I know Mikeys parents blame me for how the kids were raised while he was with Jami and for all I know Mikey blames me for it to them, he really hated admitting he was at fault! as much as I blame him. And that's a lot!! I thoroughly believe Lindsey's life would have been a hell of a lot better if he and his parents hadn't helped Jami end my guardianship of Lindsey. Joey has some pretty messed up ideas about her mother, too. She seems to really resent that Jami hasn't been a mother. I'm betting Mikey never told her that he had children with Jami knowing she was a drug addict and he told me that they had an agreement that he would take complete care of the kids when Jami had them. Add to that the fact that he became a drug addict himself and that he had never admitted any responsibility for how they lost the girls to DHS. He certainly never apologized to me for the horrific things he's done to me. Ok, yes, that's another thing I can get caught up in thinking about. But when a man makes you sit in a chair while his drug addicted wife his you over and over screaming acusations for things that NEVE HAPPENED and then threatens you to be careful who you tell about it (he walked in on me sneaking a phone call for help after Jami got tired of hitting me) , well, that can really mess with your head!! Jessalynn's disrespect and abhorrense of me REALLY BOTHERED ME for the first year, that night have been the most pain I've ever felt, but I built armor against her long before her Boyfriend decided to give me a piece of his tiny mind. Years before Jessalynn went in the attack against me over Jeremy I used to wonder if kids sometimes if I was raising grandchildren who were going to hate me. Funny, I want thinking of Jessalynn when I would think about that. I had so much made her the center of my world for so many years I never really thought she could ever be hateful towards me. I felt that she was a little disrespectful a few times when she was in high school but I was also the one she called for WM EVERYTHING for all those years. I know Jess was doing a lot of meth (long after Jessalynn believed it) and always saying hateful things about me to everyone, including Jessalynn, and even though Jessalynn would tell me that she didn't believe her mother I still am pretty sure all that hated had some effect on her. She must have shared some of that with Brandon?? Or maybe he got all of his twisted thinking from listening to and believing Jeremy. Funny, Jeremy had tried to tell his lies about me to every one in the family at some time and he always got called out and shut down until gullible Brandon came along. The year before he came around Jessalynn told me, sometimes Every Day, that she hated Jeremy and that I was wrong to not throw him out. I have to think that Brandon became a believer. I don't know how she did so well in school because I never thought she was really very bright. I did a lot of homework with her in high school and was surprised she even passed some of her classes the way she would do her work. Shoddy. But I guess Good enough to get to and through college!! Then there is Kira now. The one I adopted. She is unbelievably hateful to me. Yes, she tries to act like she cares sometimes but it is so clear that she despises me. Another one who blame me for Jeremy after doing nothing but complain about him FOR YEARS. Fine. It hurt but I've been building that wall with her like I had to with Lindsey. And I don't think She is very nice in general but thinks she is. No one I know does. She is selfish, entitled, spoiled, rude, crude, and invidious most of the time. She talks to me with barely concealed contempt, sometimes not concealed at all. I stopped crying about it a long time ago.
I do have respectful, living grandchildren. Jeanette's children all treat me just amazing, every one of them. Robby has lost his temper with me a couple of times but it never felt like an attack On Me. He sometimes attacks people because he is depressed and having a hard time with growing up. I understand. Riley and Jenise alone are enough to make up for the hateful ones and Phillip is right in there, too. Jazz has never ever been disrespectful. She is not overly loving but she's like that with everyone. Jazz is the most fair minded of them all and is anyways taking up for the underdog and always very loyal to those she cares about. Jenise is the best human being out of all the kids and Jazz runs a close second or maybe it's a tie. Jazz doesn't talk much, I go days in the same house and don't even see her but what I do see is just GOOD.
What I hate if when I start to wonder if I am the common denominator among the hateful kids? or if it about issues they have??? I know that Jeanette and Jami see the other kids pretty much the same way that I do. It actually makes me feel a little better realizing that. And they both love and stand by Me. Jess doesn't so much. She does a lot for me and says loving things but she also does Nothing to defend me when I am attacked no matter how disrespectfully I am treated. When it was Jessalynn and I asked her to help me out at least listen to my side of it she backed away and whispered "but she's My Daughter". When I am attacked by Jessalynn, Brandon, or Jeremy she NEVER SAYS "But that's My Mother". I think some where in her she still hates me. I'm an obligation she takes care of so I will take care of her. That's how that feels. And it isn't that her mental condition makes her unable to stand up for people because she sure as he'll stand up for Jessalynn (as she should!), Brandon, and Jeremy. Oh, I also have our Shyloni. Again, never disrespectful. Honestly loving. So I have 4 grandchildren who despise me. Is it a coincidence that included all Jami's children?? I don't know Michelle. Joey forbade me to really to get to know her several years ago ( even though she emphatically denies ever doing it now!) But I'm afraid that Michelle will take her cue from Lindsey and Joey. I had a chance to see her when they picked Kira up today but I knew it wouldn't be good with Joey there. And Kira. But really, why is it mostly Jami's children?? Jessica affected Jessalynn and Brandon but Jami really had no hand in raising the others. Maybe it's in their DNA to hate me. No, I know that's B S, BUT really, WHY?? Mikey's influence??
No no no. I have to just block out the assholes and keep in mind the good ones. They are more than enough. Amc Jenise is growing another one for me 💕💕💕.
I should sleep soundly and live badly indeed if not for stressing and constantly trying to think of how to "fix this". So talking to them in my head. Definitely stop hoping they will apologize for treatung me like Shit and become decent humans. Stop letting it get my feelings that they say and do hateful things. Just forget them.
I took out life insurance so Kira could be taken care of after I'm gone. She knows about it and it is nauseating that she keeps asking and about that money. I lived longer than I ever expected. She is now capable of working and definitely taking care of herself. I'm going to change that policy. I changed it to go to Jenise when I took Jeremy off the policy but I'm thinking I want it to help my daughters keep this house. I put it in Jessica's name but she is terrible about money and knows nothing about losing bills. I need to at least add Jeanette or just put it in her name. If I die before Kira is out of school she will get my social security until she graduates. That should be enough for her and she is capable of and plans to keep working. too. I hope Jeanette and Jess will do whatever they can to take care of Jami. I can't leave her money or ownership of this house. She's on methadone but she still is and acts like a drug addict. I don't even understand how she hadn't really had a job for decades unless you count when she was dealing drugs. She's still smart, can be brilliant, but somehow does Nothing productive At All. She always had a plan to do SOMETHING but somehow never does. She should have at least applied for SSI by now. Nothing. She trashed the part of the house she uses every time. The basement is a nightmare again. No. I can't trust her with the house or money any more than she can be trusted to take care of Kira. She messed up bad with Kids again lost week. Kira gave her money to get her some tea from Walmart and Jami told her she would get it and for her to wait up for her to get back. It was already around 10pm. She decided to go to a casino with Dave and got home at around 1:30am without the tea. Kira didn't wait up for her but she was Really Pissed Off. I hate how Kira blows up over everything but she had good reason to be pissy about this except I've told her all of her life to NEVER depend on her mother so she doesn't get let down. I guess she thought this time might be different. I really can't believe Jami did it to her and if course she doesn't take responsibility for it. She just said something about hoe she had a messed up night.
Ok. I'm going to try to sleep again. Maybe writing all of this again will cleanse my brain and heart for a while. I can't keep letting the hate torture me. I don't want to learn to just hate them in return, I fight that, but wonder sometimes if that would make it better??...
What is the true meaning of respect? "politeness, honour, and care shown towards someone or something that is considered important"
That is the Google answer. I looked it up trying to understand why I apparently am like Rodney Dangerfield, whose hook line was "I get no respect".
I do get respect from most people. Most important to me, I've received respect from my mother and brothers Even though the respect from my mother came very late in her life, pretty much on her death bed, and Mike spent a decade trying to destroy all respect anyone had for me. My mother was largely influence by Mike for several years and by just never really getting to know me until she was dying. Mike is a much more complicated story that sadly started with an old grudge. A very old grudge he likely still holds but has decided to overlook in our old age. If course I would rather h could see what happened between us now clearly but Mom told me that he never would and she was right. But, I understand those things. What I don't understand, what I find myself fighting to understand, is the total disrespect from at least 3 of my 9 grandchildren. Lindsey. Joey. Jessalynn. And maybe Kira. I can almost understand Lindsey. Or at least excuse her. She is a sociopath from birth, doesn't truly respect any one that I know of, and when you add bipolar and drug abuse it's a mess. And, honestly, Lindsey has taken the trouble to show huge respect at times even though she has almost no memory of the years Steve and I took care of her. Joey didn't grow up around me at all and was raised by people I really don't know, some I don't like the things I do know, so maybe there are things there I don't know. Jessalynn is one of the most confusing for me. She was the grandchild I did Everything for. Dad was lost dating everything that moved and Jess just couldn't handling the world and battled addiction for years, so i tired to be there for her from when she was 4 years old through her first year of college. I try to find an excuse for her, the only one is that her mother actively hated me for years and was always whispering in her ear how terrible and narcissistic I was. I knew it at the time but let myself believe Jessalynn wasn't really effected by it. I was the closest person to her, always the one she called for everything and the one she wanted taking care of her whenever she was sick or hurt. Jeanette told me that Jeremy poisoned her"against" me but how could he when her mother couldn't? (If her mother couldn't?) The year before Brandon Jlynn told me almost daily that I was wrong to let Jeremy stay (and I was telling him and telling him he needed to leave!) so when she told me the way I treated him was "disgusting" at first I thought it was a joke. I know Brandon has a huge influence on that but still don't get it. I do hate Jeremy for it But I am aware that he should have never been able to do it. Maybe to Brandon, he's not the sharpest crayon, but Jessalynn should have had years of just knowing better. This really isn't on Jeremy or Brandon so much as Jessalynn.
It isn't just them. There were those years Jess hated me even as I took care of her! and Jami still holds these things. They are both pretty extremely mentally ill and have a horrendous history of drug abuse. If you google drug abusers blaming their parents and lying about them it is pitifully common.
But I can't stop seeing that I AM THE COMMON DENOMINATOR here.
I should be afforded respect just for my old age in an older society. But even without that, I have singlehandedly held together my household against all odds for decades. When I was with Steve he was weak and had zero clarity on how to survive anything. That was all me. Then Jeremy was more helpless than anyone I've ever known. It's been Me. I KNOW this. So what the hell is this???? I got if thru a freaking Pandemic with Jeremy refusing to take a job that was "beneath him"!!! On just my SSI and a couple of government Covid payouts!!!
