Ah, a post I don’t have to include pictures, do any certain title formatting, put my retrochick image in, answer questions, link to anyone, anything. And I might just write a million words in this post and abuse commas and swear like a sailor, to boot. Just because I can. How I have missed that.
I wish I could say that I’m sitting cozied up by a fire with a laptop, enjoying music, or just plain reveling in silence. But I’m not- my kids are running around all crazy and I’m really just killing time until their bedtimes. I could be a good mom and go play with them or something, but I’m not going to. I’m just enjoying a rare, semi-quite moment in which I actually feel like talking about myself. Not the forced cheery shit I write on other sites, but just really belt out pieces of me left and right. I used to do this all the time, but have had to become very guarded, not just for my image, but because I’ve been horribly sad and depressed and I just don’t feel like talking about me.
Anyway, what I really wanted to write was this: I’ve been reading my grandma’s diary (you can read more about that at loveshakbaby.com. sorry, no link, I’m too fucking lazy to do so.) and I’m struck by how my mom was so lucky to grow up with family all over the place. She had aunts and uncles and cousins all living really close. And then she had some out of state relatives, which they visited and the relatives came and visited them. They were a close family and they hung out a lot.
I never really had that. I was born in Muncie, Indiana where the family all was from, but we moved from there when I was 12 years old and didn’t really stay close with anyone other than my grandmother and now, my Uncle Richard. We all live in the same town but as for family living close by, that’s it.
And we haven’t really stayed much in touch with the out of town relatives except UJ and my cousin Stephanie. I guess I feel bad that my kids won’t have that kind of cousins-aunts-uncles relationship, but hell, my mom grew up with that and my dad *really* grew up with that. And they didn’t seem to want it.
I’ve really become a reclusive sort of person. When I go out, I’m my full-bore fun personality, but it seems I only have so much of that and have to use it really sparingly. Meh. I guess I wish I had more family around, but I have a lot of friends who serve that function.
Anyway, I’m rambling.
God really DOES work in mysterious ways. About20 minutes ago, I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to bed, work on plodding through my Bible study material, or read a book, or what. Suddenly, I got a strong urge to play Nintendogs on Megs’ DS.
Let me tell you, this in and of itself is strange. Nintendogs is boring like you would not believe. The only entertaining part is taking the dogs for a walk and then not picking up their poop so the other dog owners yell at you. Seriously. I don’t find it fun at all. But for some reason I wanted to play it very badly.
I looked around the living room for the DS and couldn’t find it. So I went into Meghan and Nate’s room to look for it. And I smelled something burnt. I went back out into the living room and got Mr. Ivy. Mr. Ivy went in there and looked, and found Nate was curled up into one of the little cubbies under the bunk beds, with his Spongebob lamp. His blankets pressed against the lamp so the bulb was burning the lampshade, as it shows in the picture.
Guys, I was nearly on my way to bed. I could have walked past their room and never smelled it. Mr. Ivy would have never smelled it, his sense of smell is terrible. I really truly believe that God compelled me to want to play Nintendogs so I’d go in there looking for the DS.
Nate was sleeping right next to the lamp. If it had caught fire, and it would have, the blankets he was curled up in would have caught fire, which would have caught him on fire, the wooden bunk beds would have caught fire, Nate would definitely have died, Megs would have probably died- really, we all could have died.
I am really thanking God right now for this, it truly was a miracle. This is sure to go down in the annals of my family history of how God and Nintendogs saved my kids’ lives.
Crazy. I’m having a hard time even processing this. I’m just thankful.
Because I find it amusing to endorse someone, I’m endorsing Obama.
My mom and my uncle will DIE knowing that, they both early-voted for and are rabid about Hillary. God save us all.
I’m okay, I do appreciate everyone’s comments yesterday. I’m just so fucking depressed and I really don’t know why. I do have an appointment on Feb. 13th to try to get that fixed.
Thanks for the love, y’all.
Sometimes I wonder if I just vanished off the face of the planet, if anybody would even care…
or notice…
Right after a person dies there is a flurry of activity, preparing for a funeral and all the rituals that happen after a person dies. And then you mourn, and then you don’t, and you think things are getting better, and they do. But then you get hit with the most random things.
You pick up the pieces and go on with your life. But then you have to go and clean out the bits of that person’s life and you get hit with the grief all over again. We’ve put it off for a long time, but we have been cleaning out Grandma’s storage. She’s had this shit in storage for 15 years- books, junk, papers, more junk.
A little family history- my grandma was from Villa Grove, Illinois and her sister moved to Muncie, Indiana for whatever reason. When Grandma’s sister gave birth to her baby, my grandma went out to Muncie and stayed the summer. There, she met my grandfather. She went back to Villa Grove, but they wrote back and forth for over a year, and then they got married and she moved to Muncie.
My mom always asked her for those letters, but she claimed she burned them. While going through the stuff, we found the letters he wrote her. Mom hasn’t decided if she will let me read the letters- I would really like to- although I was 12 when my grandpa died, by the time I rolled around, she hated my grandpa and I worshipped her, so I hated him too. So, I never had an adult’s perspective and never got to know him. I just thought of him as the asshat that cheated on my grandma and drank and fought with her.
I hope I get to read those letters, I’d like to know the man he was, instead of the man I knew through my grandma-filtered glasses, which were not flattering to him at all.
Instead, I got a diary that covered January 1,1990 through April 24th, 1990. And an envelope that can be best described as an envelope full of crazy- my grandpa cheated on my grandma and she took notes and has all sorts of evidence of it, notes she found in my grandpa’s pockets, lists, every time she saw “the other woman” in public. It’s disturbing, and it’s like a trainwreck- you have to look, even though you know you shouldn’t.
As weird as it may sound, I’m keeping some of the crazy stuff. It’s a reminder of how bitterness can poison your heart and take other people’s hearts with you. It’s a reminder of how when your spouse cheats, you need to either cut them loose or forgive them with your whole heart, because living with the bitterness is Not. A. Good. Thing.
The diary is a whole ‘nother thing, though. Written 2 years after my grandpa died, she was in a fairly happy place in her life and it was interesting. My grandma, like me, was a journaler and wrote journals throughout her life. They’re scattered all over the place, and I don’t think I’ll ever get all of them, but just having this one might be more than enough. She always had a weather report, but also she wrote a few sentences about her day. She could really turn a phrase- “Our roads in this neighborhood are a sea of glass” when writing about the ice storm they had in Muncie.
All this has taught me a fairly valuable lesson- first, get rid of anything crazy I might have written that’s not already on the internet for all to see. I might not have been spared a tranwreck, but I can spare my children when I’m gone from seeing the trainwreck. But I also can see my grandma as more human again, which I had a clear picture of her as a human before she died, she was a good person, she was a bad person, she was wonderfully fun and a delightful person to be around, and a hateful bitch. She was a great friend and a mortal enemy. I loved her more than anything, but understood she was human and had faults.
I think, after she died, I had put her up on a pedestal like she was when I was a little kid. Now, I can remember the good AND the bad, and that makes the hurt a bit easier, and makes my missing her a bit worse.
Mr. Ivy has to sign a bunch of people up for the Nut-E Club to win some contest at work. Basically, I need your name, email address, and birthday (month and day, no year). You’ll get some spammy emails from Mr. Ivy’s place of work (that restaurant with all the peanuts- you know, “Rogan’s Loadhouse”) , I’m sure, but you’ll also get members-only discounts and stuff.
So, if you’re down and you wanna help Mr. Ivy out, drop me an email with that info. badbadivy at gmail dot com
Thankies!
I just EXPLODED on a bunch of people. I hate it when people who are supposed to be your friends talk about you behind your back instead of bringing the problem they have with you, to you so you can explain or change your behavior.
To everyone I haven’t exploded on:
If you have a problem with me, bring it up to me. I’m actually quite an accommodating person and would either try to change my behavior or explain why it would be impossible to change.
But please don’t talk shit about me behind my back. Nothing makes me angrier, seriously.
God, I hate catty women. I really, really, really, really, really hate catty women.
Me: You are beautiful, wonderful, and fabulous.
Megs: And gassy, I just farted.
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