Awesomeness. Lots of it.

The past few days have been crazy insane, but in such a good way.

I went to Oklahoma City and ran a (slightly more than) 5K leg of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on Sunday. It was an amazing experience. The marathon itself is a fundraiser for the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum that honors the victims of the bombing there 20 years ago. With over 25,000 runners, this was by far the biggest race that I've ever participated in, and it was incredible.

 I ran faster than I've ever run before, and amazed myself with what I accomplished that day. I ended my leg of the run with a smile on my face, and didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

But more on that later....

I got a ton of stuff done outside today. I mowed the grass (always a huge job), finished weeding the huge front flower bed, got some more flowers planted, watered stuff, got some more seedlings transferred out to the garden (hopefully these actually, you know, survive), planted some more flowers, watered stuff....you get the idea.

Baseball season officially started tonight for Daniel. We rode our bikes up to the practice field and on our way back, we got to see some wildlife that we don't get to see very often - at least not sitting still.

But probably the best part of the last few days....

Remember that memorial quilt that I was working on? It was for my friend's mother-in-law, whose husband passed away in January. I was given a bunch of his work shirts and pants to use to make a quilt. My friend gave me a basic pattern idea, we talked about various details, but for the most part I designed it as I went along. I was terrified that the mother-in-law wasn't going to like it.

After we got done running the race in OKC, my team and I went out to eat. We were sitting in the rocking chairs in front of a Cracker Barrel, waiting for our table, and I scrolled through my facebook newsfeed. There I saw it - my friend's post with pictures of her mother-in-law seeing the quilt for the first time. It was all I could do not to burst into tears right then and there.

Right there. It just doesn't get any better than that.

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I know I've been nagging on my facebook page, but I'm going to do it here too just in case you missed it. This coming Saturday is the Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis. I am participating in that to raise money for research for a cure for this horrible disease that directly affects our family. If you would like to make a contribution, you can do that here.

But wait! There's more!

In order to encourage people to donate, I've agreed to do a couple of things.

For $1000, I will dye my hair purple (not the wash-out kind, either) AND I will get rid of my ugly rainbow-colored crocs that everyone loves to hate.

Seriously though - please help if you can. It would mean so much to me.

Why I Stayed

After I got the boys off to school this morning, I came back home and sat down in front of the laptop as I often do, trying to finish waking up. I scrolled through my facebook newsfeed and I saw a link that several people had posted, and it caught my attention.

19 #WhyIStayed Tweets That Everyone Needs to See

If you haven't read that article yet, do it. Do it now.

Read the tweets. All of them. 

Read the last paragraph.

Now think about what you just read. I mean, really think about it.

How many times have you heard about a domestic violence situation, and questioned why the victim didn't just leave? How many times have you said something along the lines of "If that was me, I'd kick him in the junk and walk out the door"? 

Do you know how many times I said that before?

Trust me when I say that it's not that easy. It's hard. Staying in a bad situation is hard, but leaving is even harder.

A bike ride with this kind of scenery -
perfect therapy.

I went for a bike ride after I read that article. I needed to get out of the house and away from the computer and get some fresh air and quit crying. I ended up going about 6 miles, which is about 5 miles longer than any ride I've done recently, and even with a minor spill along the way, it did me good to work through my thoughts.

It has been 5 years, 4 months, and 3 days since I left my second marriage. And reading tweets like that can still bring me to tears, remembering exactly how it felt. I could feel the pain in those tweets. I can still feel the pain of what I went through - both physically and mentally.

Why did I stay for so long?

We He made the decision that I should quit my job and stay home with the kids. I had no job, no income, no way to support myself and my kids if I left. So I stayed.

I knew that I could file for child support and apply for assistance and things like that, but knowing the bureaucracy and red tape of the system, I wouldn't get it immediately - and landlords don't accept "I'll pay you in a couple of months" before they offer you a lease on your own place away from the abuse. So I stayed.

When we bought the van, he put it in his name because it was "easier" - leaving me with no transportation if I walked out. So I stayed.

Sure, he was mean when he drank. But he was nice to us when he was sober. So I stayed.

He worked hard at his job all day, so when he came home and the house wasn't clean enough, it was definitely my fault because I didn't work hard enough to clean it. But I knew that I could do better to make him happy. So I stayed.

I just needed to be a better wife and mother, and he'd stop drinking and treat me better. I could fix everything that was wrong. So I stayed.

When he dozed off on the couch and I finally figured out that he was hiding flasks of booze in his boots, he responded by kicking me as hard as he could. But really, I had just startled him and it was a reflex, and he didn't really mean to do it. So I stayed.

He choked me in a drunken rage when I was 6 months pregnant with our son. But I had made him angry when I grabbed his shirt to make him look me in the eyes and be honest with me. After I bailed him out of jail that night, he swore that it would never happen again. So I stayed.

He really didn't mean to knock me down and fling my glasses across the floor when he hit me upside the head. I was already crouching down so I was off-balance when he hit me - otherwise it wouldn't have happened. And he really didn't mean to hit me - it was accidental. Honest. So I stayed.

He was with his first wife for close to 20 years. Obviously, if she stayed with him for that long, things must have been fine and this behavior must have started when he married me. I must have somehow broken him - so I had to fix him. So I stayed.

If I left, who would take care of him? I loved him, and I didn't want to hurt him. So I stayed.

I loved him. So I stayed.

It finally took him pulling a knife to get me to realize that I didn't deserve this anymore. My kids didn't deserve it either. No one deserves it - men, women, children, young, old, black, white - it doesn't matter.

If you know of someone who is being abused - the last thing that he/she needs is your judgment. That person needs your support and your love more than anything. It's so hard to get out of those situations - contrary to popular belief, resources are not always readily available. It is not something that most victims are willing to discuss with just anyone, and so often the allegations of abuse come as a surprise to those around them - and they're not always believed, making it harder to get the support that is needed to get out of the situation.

Stop judging the victims. Support them. Love them. Be there for them. 

How many times...

....did I sit down today to fold laundry?

Honestly, I lost count.

Non-Stop Dork

I got up this morning and once I got moving, I was on a mission to get some laundry done. I even donned the infamous purple bandana that usually helps to keep me motivated for some weird reason.

But I kept getting distracted. Sometimes it was my own fault, and sometimes it wasn't.

Of course, I kept watching that silly picture of my dishes that I posted last night and was again amazed at the number of people who shared it. I always find it ironic how the dumbest stuff can go viral (remember this foolishness???) but important stuff doesn't. But whatever - it is what it is.

But it also seemed like every time I turned around, the kids were yelling for something. Someone fell off of a bike. A chain fell off of a bike. Someone else fell off of a bike. The chain came off again. Someone is thirsty.  Someone's being mean to someone else. And so it went for most of the afternoon.

Then the kicker.

"Mom, the garage door is broken."

Wait, what?

Sure enough, when I went outside to look, my already ghetto-esque garage door was hanging at a funky angle. I got closer to investigate, and found that one of the wheels had broken and come out of the track, and so it was hanging there by one wheel. Very carefully, I got the door opened the rest of the way and grabbed some tools and pulled the broken wheel off of the door. Cool Neighbor came over to see what I was up to this time, and he went to his garage and pulled out an old wheel to see if it would fit, but of course it didn't. So, the kids and I loaded up in the van and took off to the hardware store.

Yeah. I need to clean that dump up soon.

$10 later, we had a new wheel. A matched set, actually. A little bit of cursing, a few ninja moves to get cobwebs out of my face, and about 30 minutes later and I had both wheels replaced.

In the 2 1/2 years that we've lived here, that door has never opened so easily. And I got it done and was able to get the door closed before some thunderstorms came rolling into the area, so that's always a plus.

But of course, while all of this was happening, I wasn't getting my laundry folded. Instead, it just kept piling up on my bed. So at the moment, Mt. Laundry is sitting behind me, patiently waiting for me to tackle it. And now that it's this late, I have no desire to do it.

However, I'm going to force myself to do it - otherwise I'll be sleeping on the couch, and honestly, I don't want to do that tonight.

Maybe I'll surprise myself and actually get it done though. We'll just have to wait and see.

He did it!

I was going to post a whole bunch of pictures of my yard and flowerbed - you know, the whole before/after thing - because we spent most of the day out there working and getting things cleaned up and prettified.

But honestly, the best part of the day was right here....

 First time ever - on two wheels. And he did it all on his own.

 And yes, you can hear me squeaking like a deranged chipmunk. Stupid allergies.

Yardwork...again.

Just in case you missed it yesterday, I had a little bit of a run in with Weird Neighbor, who decided for whatever reason that he needed to mow my grass for me.

Now, before anyone decides to rip me to shreds and talk about how grateful I should be (again)...let me summarize.

~Alex has horrible allergies. He can't be around when I cut the grass.
~I planned to cut it this morning while he was at school in order to avoid him having an allergy attack.
~We pulled into the driveway after church to find Weird Neighbor mowing MY grass, unasked and uninvited.
~Alex wasn't even out of the van before he started coughing and horking and sneezing.
~Momma Bear instincts kicked in, and I basically told Weird Neighbor to get out of my yard.

There's more to the story than that, but those are the highlights. If you'd like to go all Judgey McJudgerson on me, please take the time to read the entire thread that I linked to up above - and make sure that you read all of the comments, including mine. Make sure you understand that I have been having issues with this man for a long time, up to and including him attempting to look in the windows of my house.

Also, make sure that you understand that I understand that he was most likely trying to be nice - but as a single mother who lives alone with her kids, I prefer to keep men that I barely know off of my property.

Anyway.....my pissedoffedness (yes, that's a word) went away a bit yesterday, although every time I looked at Alex's bloodshot eyes or heard him sneeze it came back. Then this morning, I went outside, just to see what Weird Neighbor did.

Remember the other day when I went out and busted my butt to clean up a bit outside? Particularly this - what my the sidewalk beside my house looked like until yesterday....

Yeah. I was pretty proud of that. But then he decided to mow Nice Neighbor's yard - including all of her day lilies that border my sidewalk - and this is what I was left to clean up today:

Then I walked around to the back side of my house, and I about lost it.

I have this flower bed back there. It's full of day lilies and irises. The day lilies were there when I moved in, but I brought the irises from my old house. I dug up some of the lilies and rearranged them and put irises in between and busted my butt to make that flowerbed look decent.

Until yesterday, all of those plants went the whole way to the sidewalk. That is, until he MOWED THEM DOWN. Granted, it's the end of the season and I will be cutting them down shortly - BUT he had no right to mow my flowerbed (or my grass). How did he know that I didn't have something else planted in there?

What would possess a person to go onto someone else's property, uninvited, and then mow down their flowerbed? This just boggles my mind.

Anyway....I had to get my mower out and get it fired up and running so that I could mow everything that he missed...

Now, before anyone gets all judgey again and says "OMG look at how tall your grass was!!! No wonder he had to mow it for you, you little Ghetto Queen!" let me explain. The ONLY tall grass in my yard was this stuff right by the curb. Don't ask me why. I don't know the physics of grass-growing. But literally - the rest of the yard was maybe 2" tall, then there were these random sprouts that shot up after the rain - probably something about the curb retaining water for them or something. That's beside the point.

See all of those clippings in the street? That's enough to get a citation from the city around here. So not only did he trespass on my property, but he also left crap in the street that *could* get me a ticket.

Do I think they'll come and try to nail me for it? Probably not. Point is - they could.

(Side note: See that camper in the street? It's been parked there for probably 6 months. He has someone living in it. Seriously. Someone is living in a camper with no running water and no electricity. In front of his house.)

Anyway.....enough of him. I cleaned up the yard (I didn't sweep the street though and I probably should) and I mowed what he didn't and I cut a bunch of branches and I did what I needed to do to make my yard look decent. And hopefully I got my point across that I do not need or want his help with it.

End of story.

Now, for the fun stuff...

Daniel wanted to ride his bike while I worked in the yard but the tires were flat. I couldn't find the pump, and then it dawned on me - I have an air compressor in the back of my van! I just figured that out recently (would have been nice to know about it during TMOART:12 when we were trying to blow up the air mattress) and I got out the owner's manual and figured out how to use it.

Serously? Best. invention. ever.
He played while I worked and we just had a great time spending the afternoon outside.

And of course, a day outside wouldn't be complete without some random wildlife visiting...

I was prepared to walk over to show him to Daniel, until he jumped off of my hand and somehow landed between the left lens of my glasses and my face - and then I immediately busted into some ninja-like moves to get him off of me. Ick. Bugs are cool and all, but not on my eyeballs.

The rest of the day was spent doing the usual laundry and cleaning and whatnot, and then Alex had his first "real" Cub Scout meeting tonight, which was fun.

After we got home, the boys went straight to bed - and then Alex's father showed up. As usual, out of the blue after being MIA again. Blah blah blah, excuse excuse excuse, I yelled at him, he made more excuses and promised to do better, lather, rinse, repeat.

It gets old. It really does. And the only person suffering for his selfishness is Alex.

But that's a whole 'nother story and I just don't feel like going there tonight.

And Spring Break is over.....

Finally. The kids go back to school tomorrow. As much as I love them, I am so ready for them to go back and for us to get back into a good routine again.

We've had a good break. It started out with fabulous weather for the first weekend, then rained for 4 days straight. But once the sun came back out, we spent lots of time outside playing, working in the yard, and going for walks. But, the boys are itching to go back to school. When I told them today that they were going back tomorrow, they both started jumping up and down with excitement.

We went to church this morning, and then this afternoon we went over to The Dude's house to help him work on a car. As it turned out, it didn't need as much work as we thought, but it started running again, so all is good in that department for now. After that we came back home and just hung out and relaxed for a while. Alex finished up some homework that he had forgotten to do before the break, so his backpack is ready to go by the front door.

While we were outside for a little bit earlier, I got some more pictures of the tulips that are blooming.

I can't get over the size of this one...that's my hand holding it.

Anyway, nothing very exciting going on around here. I'm hoping to be able to walk the boys to school tomorrow - Alex's training wheels got the better of him and I ended up having to take them off of his bike because they kept bending so badly, and he just can't get the hang of riding without them, so riding to school won't be an option until I can get him to ride on 2 wheels. So we'll see how it goes if we walk tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be decent all week, so hopefully we can pull it off with minimal whining.

Oh, and since I eliminated the caffeine last week? Down 2.2 pounds. Interesting....

Lessons in bike riding

Daniel and I ended up running all over Wichita this morning. We started out heading to Target to exchange our defective DVD player. I took it back into the store and explained to the customer service guy that I just wanted to exchange it, but I would really like to have my DVD back - you, know, the one that was stuck inside of it. So I went back to the electronics section, got another one, and then walked over to the bikes to see if they had the tires that I needed for his bike.

Of course not - they don't sell tires any more. They sell the tubes, but no tires. Well, that's fantastic, since I already have the tubes....but, whatever.

We went back up front and exchanged the DVD player and left. Then I thought that since we were in the "big city" I might as well check some other local bike shops to see if I could find the tires for less than the $20 that WalHell wanted. Thanks to my trusty phone, I was able to pull up a few that were in the area. I stopped at the first one, and lo and behold, they wanted $20 for the tires too. Uh, thanks, but no thanks. I'll find them cheaper elsewhere.

Then I realized that I was just a few blocks away from Toys R Us. They sell bikes. Therefore, they should sell bike stuff, right? So off we went. We found the bikes in the back of the store, found the tubes, but again, no tires. I hit the nearby "help button" several times and waited for an associate to come help me as the little button promised, but nothing. Irritated, I walked back up front and asked about the tires. Guess what? They don't sell tires anymore.

At that point, I was willing to just give up and go home. We got back in the van and headed in that direction, but at a traffic light I pulled the list up on my phone one more time. There was one more shop that was sort of on the way, so I opted to call it to see what their prices were before I actually stopped in to check. Turns out that he had the tires and they ranged from about $9-11. I asked him to repeat himself, confirmed his store's address, and got there about 3 minutes later.

So, the same tires that would have cost me $40 plus tax at WalHell ended up costing me about $25 at this place. Oh yeah - I was happy - and Daniel was thrilled!

This afternoon, after I picked the boys up from school, I started working on the tires. It was a lot harder than I thought that it was going to be, and my hands are killing me now, but I finally got both tires changed. Turned out that one of the tubes was actually still in good condition, so I now have a spare tube.

I was absolutely tickled that after I got it done, Alex was helping Daniel to get his helmet on the right way. Daniel was so stoked to finally be able to ride his very own bike that he just couldn't get his fingers to work fast enough to get it on himself!

He couldn't wait to get onto it, but of course I hadn't thought to lower the seat yet - he still managed to get on, even though he couldn't reach the pedals. So I adjusted the seat and then we started practicing. I'm not sure how many times I ran up and down the sidewalk with him, but it was more than a few!

He's never been on a "big boy bike" so he really had no idea how to pedal or anything - but I honestly think that the hardest part is going to be getting him to look forward instead of down at his feet or off to the side at something.

Wouldn't life in general be easier if we all remembered that?

It's a lot easier to get to where you want to go if you just focus on what's ahead of you instead of all of the other distractions.




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And just because it's too adorable not to post....after supper and baths, they played for a while and then got really really quiet. I went to tell them to go to bed, and this is what I found.

Moments like this make my heart happy.