Paladin is off at therapy.  I just realized that I haven’t been here in like 2 weeks.  Ya’ll need a quick catch up.  So here goes: 

* We’re doing a menage a therapist thing now.  That’s right.  It takes 3 of them for us.  lol  Nah, it’s not quite that dire.  Dr. Mark went on a rotation for 2 months and handed us off to Dr. Max and Dr. Randy.  Dr. Randy is just for Paladin.  That was good because a fair amount of our time in therapy was being spent as one on one time between Paladin and the docs.  He needed his own thing for a while to sort through everything he’s gone through since his illness began all those years ago and to build this new life and find a direction for himself after his forced medical-retirement.  I kind of wish I were there though.  Paladin has significant short term memory loss, and I’m not there to be his short term memory bank.  As for Paladin and I, there are still issues but they are no longer BIG fights.  Just small quiet ones.  That’s progress.  Right?  Eh…

* Brian’s truck broke down and we spent several days shuttling his brother, Manjina around to temp jobs.  Manjina finally got enough cash together and the truck is back on the road… for now.  Brian’s step-brother, Ralph Jr., wants the truck back and since the VA has now taken Brian’s entire $900+ check, it’s a matter of time before the crap hits the fan on that one.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it happens off our property.

* The last kids weekend was spent coloring pumpkins (we’ll carve them this Saturday) and then Sunday after church, we had a picnic/tea party.  They had fun and I took a bunch of video for Youtube (honeywine2000 is the username if you’re curious) to send to the grandparents.  Paladin’s Dad got very emotional over the video.  He is a sweet man.  He and Paladin are both big ol’ girls. 

* Here’s another kick in the lady balls for those of us with no children.  Did you know that if you’re married to someone on Social Security disability you only get benefits if you have children with them or are 62 or older?  Isn’t that lovely?  Doesn’t that fall under some sort of discrimination?  Seriously?

* Then Tina called asking if I’d talked to our Dad recently.  I haven’t.  Heck, I barely get the time to scratch my own butt half the time.  Tina couldn’t get anyone on the phone for a couple of days and finally started calling around.  Where was Dad?  JAIL!  Why?  Apparently, he and Step-slag got into it and he threatened to off himself.  She had the cops take him away.  I guess there’s a backlog of some sort because he’s been in jail a week now in protective custody waiting to see the regional head-shrinker.  Tina called Uncle Jim who lost his mind over this.  I was even surprised at the names he was calling the Step-slag.  At any rate, the last I heard a few of my uncles were getting together to go break him out.  Tina, Uncle Jim, and I have all offered to put him up over here.  Step-slag isn’t answering at their place in Mississippi and for all we know, she’s jumped ship with the contents of the house.  I guess he’s taking too long to kick the bucket.  All those multiple insurance policies must be getting expensive to keep up.  So, I guess I’ll find out eventually what’s going on there. 

* We’re also busting our humps to get everything around here done in preparation for spending more than 2 weeks in San Antonio starting the middle of next week.  A lot of it is that little stuff you do to get ready for winter like build a dog house and take out the air conditioners and repair a broken window.  But, when you’re trying to get all of that done, keeping several medical appointments, taking care of the kids, and taking care of paper work (Paladin is still trying to get his TDY crap fixed…we decided to get an advance for the trip because they’re backed up on TDY payoffs to the point that if we’re lucky we’ll get our last 2 TDY payments sometime in 2010), it all gets to the point where you don’t know what you’re doing from one minute to the next.  I haven’t even thought about what to pack yet!  And then there was special paperwork.

Yep, it took us forever and a day, but we finally got wedding 2 done.    I think it was my favorite.  It was sweet and simple and something of an international affair at that!  We just headed up to Natchitoches to Front Street and had the parish Justice of the Peace meet us there.  Front Street has such great scenery and even though it was a wet morning, we got great pictures.  We even had a local photographer who is also the Cane River Heritage Area office manager pop out and take a few pics for us and she posted them online here.  Then an older gentleman popped out and took our picture telling us that he only spoke French.  Before I could use my extremely limited high school French to ask “French Canadian or France?”, he disappeared.  Then when we went into the Les Saison candy shop for our wedding dessert (handmade chocolate truffles…mmm…so good…I get at least one every time I go), we were congratulated by a gal from London.  We were a real sight, I guess, because people were stopping and waving.  I do love living in the South sometimes.    Everyone seemed so happy to see us everywhere we went.  I would have thought they’d be jaded seeing people taking wedding pictures all the time on Front Street.  It was truly lovely.  It made me wish I’d skipped the first wedding and just had this one.  We had lunch at The Landing and then before heading home, Tina and I went into the local Goodwill.  If we were a sight on Front Street, we must have been something else at the Goodwill!  lol  One lady stopped me and asked if I was buying my dress because she was putting on a bride of Christ passion play.    I’ll say it again:  I love the South.  Just to put the cherry on top of such a Southern experience, I bought several pairs of tap shoes for my Borrowed Girls (they look just like plain mary janes and I was desperate to find them inexpensive dress shoes for the holidays).  On the way back, we stopped at the Nat’l. Guard Armory and Tina dropped off the last of the ex-husband’s things (he’d left some stuff including his paternal grandfather’s coins behind and I wanted to make sure he got them before they deploy in the next couple of months) and he told her that his maternal grandfather died back in May shortly after he’d moved out.  I feel really sorry for them.  I loved his grandfather.  I really did.  Then, after all of that, we stopped at Mom’s to drop Tina off.  I wish I’d had the camera running because Mom was so happy she was about to jump out of her skin.  She said, “So now I really CAN say that they’re my grandkids!”  I just told her that I thought she already was.   They’ve been calling her Grandma for months now.  It was just a really happy day.  And here’s the proof:

Of course, if you’re on my Facebook, there should have been a link to all the photos over on Walmart’s site.  I won’t even lie and begin to promise to talk to everyone any time soon.  I’m hoping that with all the down time stuck in the hotel room in San Antonio that I can catch up for a while at least.  I’ll talk to you soon-ish though! 

Indie: Bite me, Dad.  Bite me, Anna. (a quick nibble by each of us) Now, fire!

I’m guessing it was a mistake to let her sit with us while we watched the schlocky 60’s vampire flick.  She would have to pay attention for the 2 minutes of movie where the Van Helsing-esque character gets bitten and then sets his own arm on fire.  Oh well, if I can forgive her giving us her cold, I can hope that she’ll forget that 2 minutes.  I’d worry about it more but they live in a trailer with no fireplace or anything.  If Mull leaves out candles for her to stick her arm into, somebody should get their ass handed to them.  I can totally forgive her for my swollen glands and itchy throat and the snot that will soon follow.  She’s developed a fondness for kisses.  She wants to give you a dozen kisses all at once.  It’s heaven. 

Mull didn’t wait to start crap.  She got an early go of it on Thursday by once again demanding that Paladin give up custody of the children to a church friend rather than her because she was going to be working until 11pm Sunday.  Ummm, NO!  A thousand times no!  How many times does she have to be told how chain of custody works?  I guess she figured that since the agreement was finalized, Paladin would let her do whatever she wants.  He told her “ok” to shut her up because they were in the Army DEERS office and he didn’t want to start a scene.  This touched off a discussion (not quite a fight but hard feelings nonetheless) between he and I.  He intended to agree to shut her up and then take it up with her when he picked up the kids.  I hate that.  I hate that he gives her even an inch because she pushes that inch just as far as she can.  It didn’t escalate into a blow up between us and that’s got to show some progress on the therapy front.  So when Paladin picked up the kids, he pulled out the agreement and explained to her that the section she was pointing out actually meant that whoever had the kids was responsible for getting them to their activities NOT that she could send any serial killer she found to pick them up.  As usual, she made things hard when they didn’t have to be.  We just kept the kids longer than usual and took them to church ourselves.  Simple.  This could all be easier Mull.  We want to help.  Stop being a bitch.  We overlook you being a whore.  At least for the moment.  Lo and behold, Mull got off work at 6.  Did I mention that the store she works at closes at 6 on Sundays?  It’s not like they don’t post that right on the door, Mull.  If you wanted to go home and have some extra time alone with Blind Ass Idiot Boy, just send the kids things.  We’ve told you a million times that we want any extra time with them we can get.  I’m guessing that’s pretty much the definition of “ass monkey”.  *sigh*

The kids were great.  Savvy’s 9th birthday was Friday.  We promised her we’d bring treats to her Girl Scout meeting.  Paladin sat out there waiting for people to show up for half an hour before he finally tracked down the Preacher & his wife who told him it had been canceled.  Gee, and Mull didn’t call.  Odd.  Savvy, fortunately, has the attention span of a fruitfly, and was so thrilled with her Hanna Montana fest that she wasn’t upset by missing out on a birthday party at Girl Scouts.  Nearly every single thing she got was Hanna Montana.  She was so excited when she found out that because we have them on Halloween she gets to be Hanna Montana for trick-or-treat.  Mull hates Hanna Montana and won’t let her watch it or have anything Hanna Montana.  Why?  I mean, it’s annoying as hell, but the kid loves it.  Let her have this.  I got her a locking diary.  It was something she mentioned once and I kept it in mind for her birthday.  She was thrilled.  She got all hot tween stuff here and Mull got her a Barbie doll so she got little girl stuff there.  So, all the bases were covered.

Sunday was more crap (I need to find a better way to describe this little annoying stuff).  Savvy was campaigning heavily to be signed up at church to be a helper in the little kids class.  Paladin was against Savvy being baptized because she just didn’t have a clue as to what that meant, and he’d talked it over with Preacher and Mull (ok, with Mull you don’t talk…you say things and watch as she tunes you out).  They ignored him and did it anyhow.  In fact, Mull didn’t even tell him about it so that he could attend even though he’d made it clear that he wanted to be there.  That bugs me so much.  We’d have made sure that she’d gotten a beautiful white dress and I’d already been thinking about buying her a nice cross.  Instead, it was like a trip to McDonalds.  Just ok.  Well, as I’d told Paladin all along, he needn’t have worried about it.  Savvy is bored out of her freakin’ mind having to sit through the actual sermon and is starting to hate going to church.  It’s unfortunate, but I knew that would happen.  These kids see church as fun time and aren’t getting the message.  I’m betting that happens a lot in the carnival churches.  Instead of Mull cleaning up the mess she’d created, she told Savvy to get Dad to sign her up to go back into the little kids class as a helper.  So there it fell into our laps.  Paladin and I had a talk with Savvy about how she’d made a promise to God and to the pastor and to the other church members that she could handle being a full member of the church and that means attending the sermons.  In short, we had no intention of letting her out of it.  We told her she could sign up, but only after Christmas.  A few minutes later, I came into the living room and Savvy was all, “I don’t want to go to church.”  Nice try missy.  You’re going.  Paladin took them up there, and he signed her up to be a helper after talking to Preacher and the lady over the little kids and telling them about our decision.  I wasn’t happy that he’d signed her up anyhow, but according to Preacher, Savvy would be about the last person they’d let do it because they save that priviledge for teenagers.  We’ll see.  I have to say that if Savvy ends up doing it in the near future, I think that calls for a face-to-face meeting between Preacher, Mull and Paladin.  If Preacher pulls some shady crap, we will find another church.  I suspect that Mull just tells Preacher whatever she wants to get things from the church though.  A face-to-face would give Paladin a chance to set Preacher straight on the situation. 

The second situation was also church centered.  Paladin came home and grabbed me.  He was in a slight panicky looking mood.  He was definitely hyper.  I finally got him to explain what had happened with Savvy (I don’t go to the sermons because there’s a chance Mull will be there and I’d rather not have her show her ass…she would too).  Then he told me that he was shocked that all of a sudden Bell converted.  I was like, “What?”  As in, repeat that.  At the point of the sermon where they ask people who’ve felt the spirit to come forward, Bell went up and knelt before the altar.  A second or two later, Bell came past and I stopped her and said, “I hear that you found the calling.”  I started to say, “I’m happy for you.”  But she stopped me with, “Oh I just felt like going up.  I still feel the same way about religion in general.”  In the past, she wanted to join the church of the flying spaghetti monster if that gives you a clue to her leanings.  That made me want to throw up a little and I was seriously disappointed.  I told her, “You know, if you’ve really felt the spirit, you’re allowed to feel that way.”  But, nope, she was just going up for the hell of it.  Again, with the sick feeling.  That’s just so….WRONG, insulting, and a few other words too.  I told Paladin who felt better that she wasn’t actually converting but at the same time he felt as sick as I did that she had done such a thing.  I’m guessing that Sanjaya2 caught on because they didn’t leave her room all afternoon and when I sent Savvy to get them for dinner, she came back saying that Bell was crying.  Sadly, it’s just what I’ve been fearing all along.  Her only example is Mull and she is following it.  Act how you think people want you to be in order to get what you want from them. 

Therapy was yesterday afternoon and it was good.  Dr. Mark talked with us about the weekend and my lack of trust when it comes to Paladin handling Mull or the kids.  Hmmm…giving in to Mull and signing Savvy up…neither one of those was going to win him more trust from me.  It’s not that I don’t understand his position and I know he feels caught in the middle (my gut wants to yell “then get on my damned side!”…it’s not like I don’t have his or the kids best interest at heart), but I know from experience that I can trust him to give in any time they beg or scream.  That’s just the way it is.  And, I feel minimized by that.  I feel less important to him because of that.  If we have a decision in place or an attitude in place to deal with these situations and he foregoes it, it feels like a slap in the face to me.  It’s something we’re going to be working on for a long time. 

Dr. Mark focused on Paladin for most of the session.  He wants him to stop feeling so out of control in his life and to find a way to deal with retirement.  I brought up the word “depression” but I think Dr. Mark was wondering that too.  I think Paladin has had a low-grade depression going on for months now.  I know it’s coloring his thinking.  He needs to feel useful and there just isn’t enough stuff to keep him busy around here.

The best part of the session?  Paladin looked over at me and said, “I don’t know if you want to bring up the other thing or not.”  I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about.  I thought maybe it was Bell’s church incident.  NOPE.  It was sex.  Poor Dr. Mark.  LOL  I so wish I could film him during these sessions.  His expressions are priceless.  He definitely does not have a poker face!  The minute Paladin brought it up there was this flash across his face and you could so tell that he would have loved to cover his ears and go “lalalalalala”.  Dr. Mark tried to handle it delicately at first, “Is there not enough frequency or too much or…”  I saved him the trouble and put it straight.  We had a conversation the night before about a lack of experimentation in the boudoir.  I seem to have a knack for finding men who aren’t willing to push the limits of what they’re used to.  It’s sex.  It’s supposed to be fun, guys!  I’ve even gone so far as to find a sex map online and point out a few things to Paladin.  But, I’m old fashioned.  I want him to be aggressive and take control of this.  As I put it to Dr. Mark, if I have to pick out my Christmas present, wrap it, and put his name on it, then it’s just not exciting.  Dr. Mark turned to him and said, “She’s saying she wants to hang from the chandeliers.  How about you look a few things up and take her up on it?”  AMEN.

I have ‘em! 

So I’m wandering around the web today and every new blog I clicked (ok, there were only 2) had music up.  One was a Karen follower who had a song that was really great to the point where I hunted down the song and paid for it.  I’m a rebel when it comes to the whole not wanting to be sued by Universal thing.  It’s by Waylon Jennings’ son.  I’ve since looked at a few of his things on Youtube, and I really like it.  That’s usually how I find new musical things…accidentally or by hearing it on a tv commercial.  I ain’t hip.  This I know.  There are some blogs that I read and go, “Uh nope.”  I may even add them to my reader.  I may try commenting a time or two, but in my heart I know that, as fascinating as I find them, I fit in there like a purple chicken in a swamp.  Easy to spot and devour.  I actually like that though.  It must be hard to try to be hip all the time.  It reminds me of that King of the Hill episode “Uncool Customer” where Peggy meets this gal that knows all the coolest things and near the end of the show you find out that this lady spends most of her life online trying to keep up with the next hot trend.  Sounds exhausting.  That’s one of the great things about getting older.  You learn to let go of the exhausting.  Easy ain’t half bad (another great country song title waiting to be written).

This week has been easy.  It’s been nice.  Paladin and I have been easy.  Therapy was almost fun yesterday.  Not because it was easy.  Far from it.  But, I did enjoy watching Dr. Mark try to talk to Paladin about co-dependency vs. the Zen ideal of the self being a non-entity.  It was hard not to go, “SEE!”  It was nice to see someone other than me try to get through the Paladin logic.  Eventually, Dr. Mark acquiesced and changed the subject.  Well, that and we were running out of time.  If he hadn’t had another appointment, we’d have been there until closing.    I do almost feel sorry for Dr. Mark when we come in the door.  We are the hardest of cases not because our problems are devastating or taking over but because they are in the finer points.  It’s those little fiddly, nagging things that can send people over the edge.  And, unfortunately, we are two people who think.  We have brains and we actively use them.  Paladin is always worried that we’re over-analyzing and making things harder on ourselves.  I feel like Lisa Simpson in that regard: the only way to be really happy in life is to be an idiot.  If you don’t know what’s happening, it’s easy enough to ignore it.  From what we’ve been reading about ourselves, that’s not going to happen. 

One of our homework assignments last week was to take a co-dependency quiz.  This was the best one we found.  Feel free to play along.  I got a 6 and Paladin got a 10 (I honestly would have scored him at a 13).  When I told Dr. Mark my score, he said, “Oh so, you aren’t really at all.”  I corrected him.  Although 3 of those answers related to the past, my 6 answers are a picture of who I used to be and who I sometimes struggle not to be.  I’d call myself a recovering co-dependent.  I’ve learned to be selfish.  It was an uphill battle and there are still times when I’ll buy something for myself and feel like I’ve taken something away from those I love.  I’m worse about that when it comes to time.  That’s one reason why I didn’t blog this summer.  I gave up my time to those I love and in doing that I gave up myself in large part.  Not a great way to try to live indefinitely.  I need to get better at this time as currency thing.  I shouldn’t feel guilty about walking out the door alone, but I do.  Even though I’ve been going out to Mom’s, it’s still not the same as being alone; it’s just a way for me to get out of the house without feeling too guilty.  I know that it’s going to catch up to me soon and I’ll have to get over my guilt for taking time for me alone without my family or friends.  Sadly, even when I am seeing friends, it’s more a chore, an obligation for me than fun.  I hate saying that, but it’s true.  Everything in my life is a chore, a hurdle to be forded.  I do wish I could relax and let go and enjoy the people around me, but I’m too wound even in the easy moments to do that. 

Of course, therapy is doing what most treatments do.  It’s bringing things to a head, making things worse before they get better.  When Dr. Mark changed the subject, he chose to focus on the upcoming kid’s weekend.  I find myself tensing up the second that subject comes up.  It’s become such a no-win for me, and that’s a very depressing thought.  He was asking if there were an example of a way in which Paladin could make the kid’s visit better for me.  The truth is that when they are here I’m so busy trying to set an example for them and to teach them to care for themselves and their family (it’s like a blind spot there…they interact with one another only in 2’s…there’s no sense of family between the 5 of them) that it becomes about trying to take advantage of that window of opportunity to better their lives.  At home, from their own mother, they seem to either be ignored or treated as playtime.  So when they’re here, I try to show them that you can work together and be happy too.  Life doesn’t have to be compartmentalized into this person is for fun, this person is for work, this person is for figuring out whether they are going to be work or fun.  I explained to Dr. Mark that when it’s just me and the kids, we get along really well the vast majority of the time.  We do a little work (I do dishes/clean…they do whatever I’ve told them to do) and then we rest (sometimes we pile in the living room and watch tv…sometimes we retire to our own interests as in they disappear into tv’s or their room and I go to my room where I’m generally followed by at least one or two kids).  It’s not hard living.  It’s simple and easy.  The kids know their boundaries with me.  We know what we expect from each other.  That’s the way I like it.  But, Paladin feels the need to move, and that’s what the kids are used to.  They are used to family time meaning, “We go out and ignore each other in public.”  Sometimes I feel like they’re almost afraid to just sit and talk to each other.  Like they’re trying to fill up the spaces so that they don’t have to know one another.  It’s just not me.  It’s not the way I am with anyone much less family.  I’ve met strangers in Walmart and have gotten more emotionally close to them than these children are to one another and their parents.  I wish I didn’t see that.  I wish I could turn a blind eye to it.  But, it makes me sad to see it.  It’s not “FAMILY” to me.  Know what I mean?

Getting back to Dr. Mark, I told him about the different changes I’ve made in the dynamic that the kids have going.  I focused on Indie and how clingy she tends to be and how I’ve had to pretty much force Paladin and the other children to make Indie act more independently.  And how much Indie has changed!  She has become so independent and open with people that even I do a double take sometimes.  When the kids first came, the Borrowed Girls (3 youngest kids…age 8 to 3) didn’t even brush their own hair.  Bell, the oldest, did it for them.  That’s ridiculous to me.  Ok, I do put their hair up if it’s a ponytail or something like that, but they brush their hair themselves.  Paladin tends to baby them.  He loves them and misses them and has a lot of guilt about not being able to stop some of the things that have been going on in their lives.  In other words, he becomes a bowl of jelly.  He tries to do everything in his power for them.  So right away, we have two opposing goals for the kids.  He wants to make their lives easier to give them a haven, and I want to make their lives harder (so that they know even when things are hard they can make them better on their own…that they can stand for themselves). 

When I told Dr. Mark what Paladin could do would be to back me up more instead of stepping on me, he asked for an example of a situation where I felt things had been left to Paladin and then just got dumped on me (my words…Dr. Mark was far more PC about it).  He got two instead (I don’t remember how one morphed into the other).  I started with Mull’s intent to emancipate Bell.  The short version of this told Dr. Mark a bit more about what we’ve been up against with Mull, and he had at best a disdainful look on his face when I explained how Mull and Bell had come to an agreement that Mull would help Bell get emancipated (I don’t know if I’d gotten into that here or not…basically, we found out that Mull had been kicking Bell out of the house which made Bell happy because she’d go stay with her boyfriend, Sanjaya2…then Sanjaya2 had to move to a nearby town…so now Mull kicking Bell out would mean Bell would have to come to us, a huge downside for Mull…instead, they cooked up this scheme to let Bell and Sanjaya2 get a place of their own).  I found all this out by Paladin coming into our room and telling Bell, “Ok, tell her. “  (I’d went to bed early because I knew Paladin and Bell were going to have a discussion about her going off without calling to ask…and I wanted him to do that parenting)  I was put in the position of being the hard-ass parent and telling her straight up, ‘”NO WAY.  No, judge will do that unless you meet certain conditions for a start, and even if you meet those conditions (which Mull was going to help them do), your Dad & I will be right there telling the judge, “We don’t agree. Send her home with us.”  It’s not that we hate you or Sanjay2, but we’re not going to let you ruin your life without a fight.’ 

The second situation was again with Bell.  She came in telling me that Sanjaya2 was probably going to break up with her and he didn’t feel welcome here anymore and I needed to fix it (aka it’s all YOUR FAULT!).  Oh yeah, all this was because we didn’t drive her over to his place at 9:30pm to drop off a trinket she’d bought him at the zoo (I picked her up from his place at 8:30 that morning…it wasn’t like they’d been apart forever).  Don’t you just love teenagers?  During the entire thing, Paladin stood there watching.  After she left, I asked him, “Where were you?  Weren’t you going to say anything?”  He swears that he had no idea what the conversation was about and didn’t realize we were arguing even though he was within 2 feet of us (which is understandable…she was crying and pouting and I was being a no-nonsense hard ass during it…we weren’t yelling but the conversation was heated if you weren’t listening to the words you wouldn’t know).  But our conversation quickly turned into Paladin telling me that I didn’t know how to parent and that the only kid I’d been a real parent to ended up in jail.  I almost laughed aloud.  Dr. Mark got this whole “oh no he didn’t” look on his face.  I half-expected him to say it.  LOL  I was just like, “Yeah, he did go there.”  Unfortunately, Dr. Mark got a call right about then that his next appointment was waiting.  He barely even had a chance to give us some very vague homework along the lines of “try to be mindful of each other while the kids are there”. 

No, it’s not all roses here.  But, I’ve been much more calm and at peace this week.  There’s been a lot more of the glancing across the room and thinking “I love him” stuff.  I love spending extra time with Paladin and focusing on us and not every other d**ned thing in the world.  I want us to have more of that.  I’m going to demand it, in fact.  We are going to have our time apart this week and hopefully a trip to the zoo together!  My supervisor is coming out, yet again, on Wednesday and I’m going to spend the night at Mom’s on Thursday; so no blogging from there.    But I’ll be around off and on until then.  And for the weekend, I’m going to leave a pre-post with some of that music! 

The way my head feels (or should I say has felt for the last 5 days) I’d like a Squish and he can have my brain.  That’s from Lexx (so’s the title).  Man, I wish they’d put it back on Scifi channel or Syfy or however the heck they’re spelling it these days.  I guess an abbreviation of actual words wasn’t cool enough.  Whatev…  Like I said, my brain is bound and determined to escape by force.  Sucks to be it though because all that bone and skin is trapping it.  There’s a freakin’ cage fight goin’ on up in here.  Paladin is WebMDing me to death because he hates being helpless and oh yeah, he’s a hypochondriac!  Straight up!  He even occasionally admits to it.

I’m just going to giggle at your posts to forget and show off wedding dress numero dos:

No, I'm not pissed just dying inside.

I should be beaten for not putting on my upholstered strapless bra with that.  The only people in my life who know how to corset are Dave and Will.  The Brothers can and will tie you in until you can’t breath.  Tina and Paladin always seem to be afraid of getting it too tight and with a corset, that’s kind of the point.  I barely had the patience to try it on this morning.  I couldn’t stomach the idea of putting it on with the bra and then having to take it all off again because the bra was showing.  So, I just went for it. 

Closer view of the front.

I think I may have to add a dart under each arm because the bust is pretty roomy and it’s that or stuff.  HA!  I’m a DDD.  I don’t stuff!  Still, I like it considering that it took less than 2 hours to make and only cost $2 (I had to buy a spool of ivory ribbon to edge the underarms and to make the waist band).  Some of you are probably wondering how the heck that is possible.  Well, I had a wedding dress from my first marriage:

I did love that dress.  It was beautiful and covered my arm flab!  So when it came time to make the first wedding dress this time around, I made the decision to let go of my superstitious nature and use the sleeves of that dress.  They are simply dazzling.

With all of that beading they weigh a freakin’ ton!  I was able to cut them off of the original dress without damaging the bodice at all.  Since I was all “in for a penny, in for a pound” about it, I also used the side panels, which are also heavily beaded, for dress number one.  Part way through this, I noticed that the way I had cut the dress apart it would take no time at all to make a second dress out of the original wedding dress.  Literally, I had to restitch some of the seams because of the way the panels came off and put that ribbon on.  Nothing to it.  The only real hiccup was that the points at the top of the bodice wouldn’t stay up (they were attatched to the sleeves before and now had no support).  I just added a loop to each point and the extra lacing from the back (which was original to the dress) is looped through before tying to make spaghetti straps!  I picked up the wrap a while back at a shop down the street (JCS in Deridder had them for under $15 with lovely beading and embroidery!), and voila!

To be honest, I feel a little like I escaped from a prom in it, but I like it and adding my 100+ inch mantilla style veil and Queen Anne style tiara and my bouquet should prove me bridal enough.  Oh, and I finally got another cord for the other camera.  So, here are some pics of the bouquet and other decor up close:

Bouquet and veil

Bouquet and veil 2

Each of the men had these arm bracers.

Tina stamped our tree with birds and a deer design on each of the leather bracers that we bought from a guy named Boric on Ebay which turned out to be a girl named Dana.  Ebay you are a mystery.  Oh, and the book is one of about a dozen books of love poetry classics that I had lying around as decorations.  Did I mention that I had to decorate the black cardstock myself( i.e.-spray paint a gold stencil)?  Now, I know why people don’t use all black invites!

The invites.

Each invite came with a peacock feather.

This was one of the flower arrangements in the dining room.

That’s mostly feathers.  Told ya, we’d have made a gay man proud!  I’m glad we didn’t have a real theme for this wedding.  Well, other than key words like: dark, mysterious, fairies, warriors, birds, trees, exotic, sparkle.  I guess looking at the pictures it doesn’t look all brought together really, but in the night with blue lights strung overhead and highlighting the big oak tree on the side of the house and all of the bushes, we pulled off exotic, mysterious sparkle!

Top of the altar.

All of the wall hangings were sheets we bought at Walmart ($13 for the king size…no hemming!  just rip part of the seam at the top edge to open up a pocket for hanging) and were painted by either me or Tina.  I did this one which was a copy of the stamp we used on the bracers and in the background of the parchment of the invitations.

This arrangement was odd but it worked in person.

The top of the altar was a board that my Dad had sawed on our sawmill back when I was a kid.  That flower arrangement was kind of odd, but it did work.  You can’t see it in the pic but there were peacock feathers all through it and that fuzzy looking stuff is baby’s breath covered in glitter that I got at Hobby Lobby (it’s also the stuff filling in my bouquet).  I’d like to go on record as wanting an entire hangar covered in that glittered baby’s breath.  I am in love with that stuff and it was only like $13 for a bouquet of it.  I got mine half price during a sale which is how I got all of the flowers.  I loves me some silk flowers, glitta, & feathers!  Woot!

gold tree branches with xmas ornaments

We cut a lot of branches back in the spring and I gathered them up and stored them.  Then I forced poor Paladin to spray paint them gold.  We added some simple Christmas ornaments (also a half price sale at Hobby Lobby…that’s about $1 for 6 ornaments…we used about 10pks.).  The red lanterns were an impulse buy from a Walmart Memorial Day clearance sale at $2.50 each.  I covered the bottoms of them in glitter and I so wish I’d bought twice as many!

We had masks and mini-tambourines as favors (about $100 from an online Mardi Gras shop), and you’d better believe I sent plenty of tambourines home with the kids.    The garage was favors and entry way central.  The next morning I woke up to find this:

Blondie fell asleep in her dress and I let her wear it most of the next day!  Everybody complained about me letting her wear it so long.  She’s 6.  She won’t be able to wear that dress forever, and unless she starts doing pageants, this will be one of the few times she gets to dress up.  Besides these pics say it all!

The little girls wandered around the next morning in their jammies.  I fed them wedding cake and punch for breakfast.  I know, I shouldn’t have.  But, it was a special day.  With all that extra sugar, Blondie and Savvy decided they should put on a play!  Aunt Teeni (that’s what they call Tina) had to help, of course.

Indie wore those masks around for days.  She kept wearing them to the hospital to visit Mom.  She’d sneak up beside Mom and go, “Boo!”  Then Mom would go, “Oh!  You scared me!”  They did that for hours. 

Ok, I think I’m done for the week.  If I survive, I’ll see ya’ll Monday or Tuesday.  In the meantime, I intend to hunt Rachel down to see if I can get digital copies of the pics.  It’s so nice that she wanted to send me hard copies, but I’m dying to see them!  I’m off to find Squish…

I just put this up on Facebook and I wanted ya’ll to see it to.  It’s a sucky post but it’s the best I can do at the moment.  I miss you and thanks for thinking about me (especially you, Heather    ) and for still looking at this thing.  If you have Facebook, please add me (Anna Lee Meade from Alexandria, LA).  I’m not abandoning the blog…yet.  It’s just that I need to consolidate for now.  I’m going to try to come back here in the next couple of weeks to put up pics of the dresses etc.  Anyhow…here is the so-called “short” version…

First, THANK YOU for all of the lovely birthday wishes.  I do appreciate them.  Although I didn’t get on Facebook, I did check my email twice in the last month.  What?  That’s some kind of speed record for me!    I wanted you to know that I got them and that I felt very cared for when I saw that even though I’ve been MIA for months you haven’t forgotten about me.

For those of you who don’t know, my mother had a bad fall at the end of June.  She fell in her kitchen while she was alone and broke her left femur, her right wrist in 2 places, and her right shoulder.  Mom has been shuffled from hospital to hospital for the last 2 months.  The break in her left femur became infected and she had a second surgery to take care of that.  She got home this last weekend, but we’re still watching for infection.  All in all, she is doing much better even though she is still on a wound vac.  And for any of you behind the Obama health plan, just keep in mind that the current system is what kept Mom being shuffled around and kept Tina in doctors offices for TWO DAYS just to get her 15 prescriptions filled; that’s the plan they want to tighten the controls on.  And, yes, Mike has read the actual plan and kept me well-informed on it.

And that was the easiest part of my last 2 months…

Also, for those of you who don’t know or haven’t noticed (and I’m not trying to make you feel bad about it because I’ve been living under a rock!   ), I’m getting married!  I’m marrying Michael Bradley Jackson on September 4^th if the good Lord’s willin’ an’ the creeks don’ rise!  This has been made more hectic and more interesting by the fact that Mike has 5 children.  Yeah, I said FIVE from the age of 3 to 16 and only one boy in the bunch.  His ex has been neglecting them and treating them like a three year old with a formerly well-loved doll; she loves them but ignores them the vast majority of the time.  Recently, her neglect has taken a very serious turn.  For months, we had been trying to get it through to her that the 3yr. old is supposed to have a poop more than once a week.  A couple of weeks ago, we ended up taking the baby to the ER twice (first visit the doc gave her a suppository and a 10gram dose of laxative…17grams is the adult dose…and it didn’t work).  On the second ER visit, Mike’s ex showed up with military police and tried to prevent him from getting the baby care.  It didn’t come out in her favor, but the cop flat out told us to call CPS on her.  We have.  That was over a week ago and CPS hasn’t even interviewed anyone.  So, yeah, we’re a bit preoccupied with that.  If that’s not enough, this Monday is Mike’s final divorce proceeding (it was supposed to be in June but his ex didn’t bother to file the final motion…his lawyer had to do it).  Because his divorce isn’t final and a crap storm may hit with CPS at any moment, the wedding invitations won’t go out until after Monday.  Yep, with luck I’m marrying Michael Jackson next month.  And, yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ve heard all the jokes.    But this Jackson is so white he can’t moonwalk.  Did I mention that I’m making all of the dresses and all of the flower arrangements and we haven’t found an officiant or found a cake or bought rings yet???  Breathe…

Finally, I’ve just been informed that with the state budget cuts in health care I will be losing work hours…over HALF of my work hours.  I’m tied up in knots about it, but Mike’s all, “We’re doing great.”  He’s right.  Our income, I should say HIS income, finally leveled out this last month, and now he’s making about $300 more a month than when he was in the Army.  It turns out that a brain tumor is profitable, but only if you live through it.  The VA ended up rating him something like 240% disability, but they only pay the 100% which is still very good.  But, I don’t like that I’m not contributing as much as I used to even if it’s nothing compared to his.  The worst part is that because of the nature of the job.  I’m still going to be doing the same amount of work.  It’s just going to be done out of the goodness of my own heart now. 

There were lots of little day to day kicks to the gut around here recently, but these three things are what have kept me hopping and running to keep up with my life for months now.  Mostly it’s the kids that have kept me running.  We’ve had them most of July and part of August.  I love these babies to death, but every time we have them, we find out more about how crappy their lives are.  It’s been one long festival of this ex trying to take the 14yr. old boy out of school to take care of the 3yr. old (which was a long battle, but thankfully, he’s in school now) and right after the ER thing, we found out that she’s been letting the 6yr. old sleep with her and her boyfriend most nights.  Where the heck is CPS?  They know all of this and more and they are still not showing up.  Now, you know the real reason I haven’t been online.  If I stay online like this I’ll keep talking to everyone and these bustles will not get finished today and I’ve got about 2 weeks and my dress hasn’t really been started.  Life is hard.  No doubt about it.  I would love nothing more than to be able to catch up with ya’ll, and I hope I can some day soon.  In the meantime, I’ll at least try to show up once in a blue moon to share and peek at your lives.

Give me your addresses to get your invites!!!  Oh, and if you know I have your address, confirm it anyhow, pretty please?  I have the most messed up address book!  lol

Talk to you as soon as I can!  Oh and when you don’t get on this enough, you find weird pics like people petting parrots that may or may not be ceramic.  This disturbs me…

Hugs, Anna

Are the Go-Go’s playing in your head too?

If I had written this post last night or early this morning it would sound something like this:  AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Fortunately, I’ve come to grips with what happened yesterday.  Well, I’ve pulled my head out of the oven anyhow.  Here’s a quick run down of what the first 10 minutes at the lawyers sounded like:

Lawyer- What’s going on?

Us- Indy…rash…infection…fake choking…

Lawyer- Why aren’t we asking for full custody???  Why hasn’t CPS been called???

Us- Uuuhhh…we were taking what we thought we could get, and we don’t know if the doctor called in CPS or not (base docs let crap slide a lot and I wasn’t at the ER to ride the guy about it). 

We found out that the copy of the original agreement that we got from the lawyer back in January wasn’t a full copy.  According to the agreement, we should have been getting the kids every other week beginning in June.  So now we don’t know why Mull was all, “When are you taking them for 2 weeks?”  Is she just sick of them or was she trying to put some points in her corner or is she just worried that she won’t get paid if we keep them half-time or did she forget that we were supposed to have them too?  I’m always saying that Paladin doesn’t give Mull enough credit for being sneaky, but he swears that she’s disorganized and not too on the ball to boot.  Time will tell especially since we just found out from Sanjaya2 this afternoon that she starts her paid training at the nursing home next week and that she made Bell come to work with her there last Friday leaving the kids with blind Jeremy.  When the lawyer heard that she might be going to work, he was practically salivating, although he didn’t really say why.  He did look like the cat that caught the canary pretty much the entire time and he didn’t even let me get more than 3 sentences out about the state of the children.  It literally was “Indy…rash…infection…Bell wanting out desperately and taking care of the kids 90% of the time.”  It was two hours of strategy and the lawyer pontificating while we were sitting there going, “We get it; let’s do something about it.”

The lawyer’s game plan is this:  Get divorced.  Get married.  One month later, sneak up and bite Mull in the ass with the property settlement.  Keep the kids like they’re a bag of weed and we’re Rastafarians through September.  Then show up at court with all our evidence and go, “Hells nah!  Gimme dem kids!” 

I took it hard.  Really hard.  I completely freaked.  I don’t completely freak too often but I did this time.  Paladin got paid a grand total of $1400 last month and $1100 plus a $200 car note went to Mull.  Does that give you an idea of how hard up things have been here?  We had a little savings and once-empty credit cards and we’ve been making do.  Then I turn around and hear: You need to feed and shelter 5 kids for the next month (if Mull lets us have them the entire time…we’re going to go in stages and play the “we didn’t have them in June the way were supposed to; why don’t we just keep them a little longer” card).  Yeah, I completely freaked.  I admit it.  I didn’t know how we’d do it.  I was stressed already and worn to the bone with Mom.  Now, here I am taking this head on.  Yes, I know it’s what we’ve been hoping for.  The difference is that we weren’t expecting it until after Mull had to give up some of that cash.  It’s damned hard to feed 5 kids under any circumstances and at this rate, she’s actually going to be getting about half of his income and the mortgage takes up nearly the entire other half.  Of course, at the same time I realize that this is temporary and if we can get through the next 3 or 4 months, we might actually get the kids MORE than half time. 

For now, though, I’m being pouty.  I’ve already warned Paladin and freaked him out over it.  If this legal bill gets big enough (and it probably will), it may mean losing the Extravaganza altogether and losing our chance to try to have a child.  I couldn’t help but cry over that.  I told him the truth.  If that happens, I’m just not so big a person that I won’t feel the tiniest twinge of resentment.  In my mind, I would literally be giving up my children for his.  It’s wrong of me to feel that way.  I know that.  I know its unfair of me.  But, I just can’t help it.  As much as I love him and as much as I love these kids, I still want something of me. 

I don’t care if Mull does fall off the side of the Grand Canyon tomorrow; she will always be their mother.  I don’t get that role.  I don’t get the satisfaction of standing up and saying, “That’s my girl/boy” when they graduate or get married.  They won’t be giving birth to my grandchildren.  All I get to do is sacrifice and work and try to make life better for them.  All the thanks I will probably ever get is the karmic satisfaction of knowing I did all I could for them, their smiles and good night kisses.  I feel like an absolute ASS, but yeah, I’d still feel that I’d lost out on something if I don’t at least try to have one of my own.  It won’t ever stop me from being there, but there would be this same hole inside that I’ve been living with for the last 3 1/2 years. 

Let me tell ya.  If you want to scare the crap out of a man that you’re practically married to, that’s a damned fine way to do it.  Paladin always goes to the “you’re leaving me?” place.  Heck, this time even Tina went there.  NO!  I’m not going anywhere.  I’m just telling you how I feel.  He  hadn’t thought of it that way, and he tried to understand.  He also didn’t know about what happened with Mom in the last post.  It came out of left field for him, and I was sorry about that.  But, I’ve been living my life one day at a time for so long now that I’ve just been desperate for down time and for something that’s about me and not about how to avert the latest crisis. 

Today, I spent all day trying to put a game plan together.  Turns out, I AM a Duggar!  Thank the lord!  I now have chore lists and menu plans at the ready.  I just have to figure out some things for these kids to do that won’t cost anything and will keep me from strangling them!  Oh, who am I kidding?  I don’t care if I strangle them as long as its cheap.  Ha!  And, by this afternoon, I was worried less about how to take care of the kids and had enough time to be sad about losing the 2 pieces of our puzzle that have been keeping me going. 

Paladin insists that we’ll make both our baby and our wedding happen.  It didn’t excite me one bit.  His actual words were, “We can do something (for the wedding).”  Yay.  I know exactly what that means.  It’s the same thing I did last time.  Scrape and dig and crawl for something that’s “ok”, but don’t ask for special.  My face told him how I felt.  Then he said, “GET excited.  Dammit!”  At least, it made me smile for a minute. 

Just before Mom fell, Tina gave me some wedding magazines.  I had ripped out a few pages of ideas and had them on my nightstand.  Last night, I couldn’t help but be a total drama queen.  I didn’t even want to see them.  I’m still having a wedding, but as of right now, it’s more for Savvy than for me.  Savvy has her heart set on being a flower girl and has explained to me exactly how it must be done.  Paladin wants it too.  As for me, I want to pout and throw a hissy fit and knock the wedding cake onto the floor.  That’s not going to happen though.  I’m just going to chug along and hope that the creative desire will overcome the destitution desperation.  I’ll be a recessionista bride, right!  Woot??  Meh…

Frankly, I’m a little sick of coming in last but getting Miss Congeniality.  Nobody ever remembers Miss Congeniality.  They see her smile and then she just fades away.  Sometimes I feel like I took an invisibility potion.  I swear I look down and I’m staring right through my hands.  I know.  Welcome to motherhood.  Where’s my badge and taser?

If you’ve got ideas to keep the kids off the streets, send them my way!  Mind you, I refuse to spend half my life cleaning up craft projects that they aren’t going to care less about a week later, but if it’s cheap or free, I want to hear it!  I’ve already looked at the library and all they’ve got is one bug expo and a Wednesday story hour. 

P.S.- Mom is coming home in the morning!  Thanks again for all your prayers. 

We finally got word from the kidney specialist this afternoon.  Mom’s kidney function is down to 20%.  At 12%, they will begin dialysis.  There’s nothing to do but watch her diet and hope that it takes a while before it goes down.

I was on the phone with Tina a few minutes ago.  She told me that Mom had said something about grandchildren.  My heart jumped a little and I thought she was talking about Paladin’s kids.  I think of them more and more as “our kids”.  Tina said that she wasn’t sure if Mom was dreaming or just mumbling because of the pain killers, but she said, “I’m not going to live long enough to have grandchildren.”  That has hit me so hard and on so many fronts.  I can’t stop crying even as I write this.  I don’t know what to say about it.  I don’t know how I feel about it. 

I know they aren’t our kids, but they feel like mine more and more.  I’ve never stopped feeling the need to have my own child, but that has never stopped me from loving these babies that are not my own.  I know what my mother feels.  It’s the same longing I feel.  But, I can’t make her any promises any more than I can make them for myself. 

Tonight, that rips me in two.

Well, Mom’s left leg anyhow.  The ortho doc ended up using only plates to fix both her leg and her knee.  They put her broken wrist in a brace, but they are holding off on doing any surgery to the broken shoulder hoping that it will begin to heal on its own.  There are conflicting replies to any specific questions, but so far, the answer is simple.  My mother will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.  The doctor’s say that she’ll only be able to walk a few steps.  Although we can hope for better with therapy, it’s not likely to get any better than that.  She’s going to be in the hospital for 3 weeks and then in the rehabilitation wing for another 3 weeks minimum. 

We have joked about it in our typical way, “Hey, it ain’t like she was walkin’ a whole lot before.”  It’s our way.  I can see it in my brother’s faces though.  I know that we joke but we also know that Mom’s been slowly going downhill for years.  I even repeated the “joke” to Paladin and Bell after I talked to Tina Sunday night.  I didn’t say anything about the diagnosis at first.  I washed dishes for about an hour trying not to cry.  Finally, Paladin came in from taking care of the little girls, and I told him.  He hugged me tight.  Bell was standing nearby caught up in her teenager stuff, but she was shocked and I knew she wanted to say something.  I told her it was ok that as people get older these things happen.  If there’s one consistent thing I hope I’m teaching these kids, it’s that when you get hit, you stand up and keep going.  It was incredibly hard to leave Tina and Mom in that emergency room and drive the nearly 2 hour stretch to Deridder.  It was even harder knowing that there was nothing I could do, but take care of these babies until I could get back to the rest of my our family.  It wasn’t any easier when the kids were begging me to let them stay another night and I couldn’t because they weren’t allowed in the ICU and I just couldn’t wait another night to see Mom. 

I knew it would be hard to hold it together with the usual insanity, but then we got added nuts.  When I took off Indy’s diaper, that baby had about a tablespoon full of discharge from an infection filling her crotch!  I was so damned mad.  First thing Saturday, Paladin took her to the ER and came back with a diagnosis of vaginitis and an anti-fungal cream (according to Paladin, Mull was shocked when he told her…yeah, it’s easier to see infections if you’re actually taking care of your child and not just leaving them to fend for themselves).  Of course, Sunday was Martian’s birthday and he had a rather annoying and slightly rude friend stay the night for it along with our usual compliment of 5 plus Sanjaya2.  Then somewhere along the way Bell told me that she’d packed enough clothes for a week because Mull told her they were staying the week with us.  Mull either changed her mind or chickened out because she never said boo about it.  Paladin went by on Monday to drop off the bike we bought Martian for his birthday and Mull told him we could have them another day.  I don’t know.  Maybe she was planning to slip a week in throught he backdoor one day at a time?  Paladin explained about Mom and that we couldn’t take them.  Today?  Bell calls up asking if they can come by to pick up something.  I’m guessing Mull was just nosey and was making sure we really were going to the hospital.  I felt so bad sending them back there when they were begging to stay with us.  Blondie spent all weekend telling me, “I love you” (that’s kind of a big deal with her because she’s very attached to her mother).  Savvy even brought me a present.  Indy spent most of the weekend acting out by fake choking (she coughs a few times and then says “I’m choking” and coughs some more) and going into her “I scared” mode where every single thing makes her recoil and yell “I scared”; we started potty training her here this weekend and when she pooped her panties she came to me crying and begging for a diaper like it was the end of the world.  It ties me up in knots.  First thing Monday, we made an appointment with the lawyer (we’ve tried to make others over the last couple of weeks but couldn’t get one).  I’m hoping he’ll pick up the phone and call Child Protective Services on her because Paladin and I won’t unless we have to.  Up until now, his lawyer has obviously considered this an easy case.  He’s WRONG.  It’s about to get a lot more heated unless by some miracle Mull just rolls over for it.  I doubt that will happen.  Mull gets everything she has ever had or will have from giving birth.  It’s part of her psyche and she won’t let go of those kids without an argument.  But, we’re not going to go easy on her.  Enough is enough.  Like I said, my nerves were frayed the entire weekend and I was getting through hour by hour on almost no sleep.  If it weren’t for the kids, I think I’d have been sitting in the hospital crying the entire time. 

I am so grateful for where I am right now.  I stood in the hospital room today with Tina and Paladin arranging Mom’s pillows (it took the 3 of us to get them the way she wanted) and I knew that I couldn’t get any luckier than I am right now.  If Paladin hadn’t been helping me through the day to day stuff this weekend, I’d have lost it.  I’m sure I hid it well, and he probably won’t know until he reads this, but I was pretty low.  I’m so glad I have him.  We may drive each other up the wall at times, but most of the time, we are right there holding on to one another for dear life.  I thank each and every one of you for all your prayers.  Not just for those of these last few days, but for the prayers and hopes of all these months that have gotten me where I am today.  I went from a settled life of mainly inward conflict to a crazy melodramatic life of constant upheaval, and I’m the better for it. 

I called my Dad on Friday night for his birthday.  I hadn’t talked to him in a lot of months.  I let him talk to his soon-to-be-grandchildren for a few minutes before the step-slag made him hang up.  I was still glad that I did it.  My life is a shambles and I want EVERYONE, past and present, to be a part of it no matter what. 

I know that this post probably isn’t making sense, but I’m too overwhelmed to make sense of anything anymore.  Sorry.  I’m going to try to get some sleep tonight and come back tomorrow making some sense. 

Love, Anna.

Earlier in the week, I mentioned that the Borrowed Girls got dirty.  This is an extreme rarity.  I’m not sure if it’s the consequence of living in base housing and a trailer park or if it’s because Mull doesn’t allow them to go outside, but these kids think they can’t go out the front door without me looking at them.  It’s nuts!  Our entire property has a fence.  There’s no where for them to get lost or anything.  But, even when Mull was here (and at her next abode which was a fenced rent house) these kids didn’t go outside alone.  I’m changing all of that, but it’s an uphill battle.  The girls think the only way to play outside is in a nice clean park with play equipment. 

So last weekend, when I was getting ready to feed them all the “special kool aid” because they were driving me nuts, I went outside and filled an old stockpot with water and handed them toys to dig with and an assortment of old dolls and showed them the best spot to make a mud pit.  You’d have thought I was showing them how to make meth.  They thought I had lost it.  Finally, Paladin sat down with them and showed them what a mud pie is.  Savvy is almost 9 and she didn’t know what a mud pie was.  I find that incredibly sad.  I remember fondly eating a bite of mud pie.  I remember more fondly feeding them to Dave.  hee hee  But, we decided that if we left them to it the kid instinct might kick in.  NOT! 

A few minutes later, Paladin and I were having coffee on the porch when Savvy came bouncing up.  She’d gotten mud on her fingertips and wanted to go inside and wash her hands.  Well, just let me get the CDC on the phone, right now, girly!  I yelled out and made the other two stick their heads around the corner (the mud pit is out of sight but we can still hear them from the porch).  Then, I told them in no uncertain terms that they were not coming back inside until I saw mud on their arms, legs, hands, and faces, and I sent them back to play.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen next.  Paladin and I sat there on the porch listening to the groaning and giggling for a few minutes knowing full well what was about to happen.  Finally, Blondie and Savvy appeared doing their impression of Frankenstein going “Eewww!” with every step.  They had went around the corner and put mud on themselves so they could come inside.  (note to self: next time tell them they have to leave it on and continue playing for another 20 minutes)  I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this coming:

Note the look of abject horror on Savvy’s face.  lol  At least, Indy got the idea.  She walked all the way back to the porch with her shorts around her knees and a toy in one hand and a plastic trowel in the other.

LOL  It was beyond fun.  Even with the hour long bathtub cleaning process, it was entirely worth it.  And now, they have lots of clothes to get dirty in.  Muahahah!!!!!

I was going to comment but instead I decided on a quickie post.

I’ll take all zucchini recipes ladies!  I just picked 4 more, and there should be a few dozen more coming soon.  *sigh*  

Don’t be surprised if I start asking for cucumber recipes too.  I made the mistake of planting 2 pkts.  I must’ve lost my mind!  Now, I’m set to be covered in non-pickling cucumbers.  There’s going to be a lot of Greek Rice Salad going on around here soon. 

As for the Borrowed Girls, they’re sizes are 4T, 6 girls and 8 girls, but I expect them to be busting out of those by this Fall. Fortunately, because of the arrival yesterday of my (nearly) final load of crap, Paladin was forced to go through some of the shite that Mull left behind.  When he did, lo and behold there were several summer dresses to fit Indy and some stuff for Blondie.  Now, the only one that I wonder if I have enough stuff for is Savvy.  I’ve got her “enough” but it’s about half of what the other two have and I’m completely expecting the “Why did they get it when I didn’t?” conversation.   

And I thought ya’ll might like an update on Flaxen.  It’s what I thought would happen.  He begged her and they were starting to get back together.  I say “were” because he went to court yesterday and there was an automatic ”no contact order” put in place for the next month and a half.  I hope she will change her mind about him during that time, but it’s doubtful.  It’s such self-destructive behavior and it just kills me.  I’ve not been in an abusive relationship like that (M. had a look in his eye once and I thought he might…my first instinct was to put one hand on the heaviest lamp I owned…I’d have taken him out).  But, I have been self-destructive using my weight and my tendency to isolate.  I hope I understand at least on some level.

Well, I better get back to installing Martian’s walls.  It’s his birthday on Sunday and he gets to move back into his room! 

TTYL!