Too Close to Home

This came up on my calendar today, and the timing of it couldn't have been better.

If you've been following the news (or my page) you know that there was a mass shooting very close to here just a few days ago.

So close that the cops tore past my house so fast that I couldn't even tell what color the cars were.

So close that I raced around town, picking my kids up from various places to make sure that they were home and safe.

So close that we locked our doors - something that we never do - until we knew for a fact that the shooter acted alone and was down.

So close that I couldn't tear myself away from the media coverage, my eyes searching the crowds on TV, trying to spot anyone that I knew to make sure that they were safe.

So close that one of my acquaintances was among the injured, and I recognized the name of one of those killed.

So close that I had no choice but to explain to my kids what had actually happened.

Too close.  Entirely too close.

The day after the shooting, it was revealed that the shooter had been served a PFA (Protection From Abuse order, AKA a restraining order) about 90 minutes before he went on his rampage. His former girlfriend filed it on him, alleging that he had physically abused her on at least one occasion.

As soon as that information was released, the discussion of domestic violence began. And of course it's impossible not to read the comments when articles like that are posted. And of course the discussions and the resulting comments and arguments and victim blaming brought back all sorts of not-so-fun stuff from my past - and it's been eating me alive for days now.

For the most part, I'm over it. Yes, I was a victim of domestic violence. Yes, it was horrible. But my life doesn't revolve around it. It is a part of my past, but it doesn't define me, because I won't allow it to do that. It's not something that I normally talk about on a daily basis - but every now and then, something brings it back to the surface and it eats at me. I think back to all of the reasons why I stayed for so long, and I relive certain moments and I feel the pain and the heartache all over again. And then I look at where I am now and realize that no matter how bleak things appeared to be at the time, I'm in such a good place now. But it's a constant battle in my head - between remembering the horrible times in the past and appreciating the good ones now.

And I know that as a community, we are strong. We are so incredibly strong. The outpouring of support from surrounding areas has been amazing and humbling. Our little rural area of Kansas has been thrust into the national spotlight, and we are shining through the darkness.

At the same time that all of this was happening, probably even within the same 24-hour period, I found out that not only is one of my friends dying from cancer - but so is another one. I knew about the first one. At least I knew that he was sick, but to receive the news that it had progressed so far so fast hit me like a freight train. The second one? I had no clue. I totally missed the posts about her condition until I went looking for her to ask her a question, and found out that she's dying. The freight train backed up and hit me a second time. Once again, I'm standing here questioning everything. Why do these things happen? Why is it always the good guys? Why can't we all just get along and why can't everyone live long and healthy and happy lives? Why does life have to be so damned hard?

It's been a rough few days, to say the least. I've been forcing myself to go out and run even when I didn't want to - because I know if I don't, I'll just sit here and eat everything and be lazy and be miserable and slide down into that hole that I try so hard to avoid. But luckily I have my Sole Sis/Slave Driver who keeps me going. She keeps forcing me to run, but that's what I need right now - because I know that if I don't get out and run, I'll feel like crap from sitting around like a lump. If I do run, I still feel like crap, but it's a good kind of crap (if that makes any sense at all). And the running is getting easier, and I do feel better - and that helps so much with the mental stuff right now.

One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. That's all that any of us can do. Keep going, don't stop, and eventually we'll get through all of the crap.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

#HesstonStrong

Bit by bit.

Know what I hate?

(Besides pumpkin flavored anything, that is....)

I hate the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Whether it's the unending list of things to do, financial obligations, scheduling conflicts, or emotional crap, I don't like to be overwhelmed. I like simple. I like easy.

Unfortunately, life isn't always simple or easy.

We came back from vacation a few days ago, and I've been trying to get things done ever since. There's so much laundry and cleaning and sorting and catching up to do, and even with my plethora of lists, I'm still having trouble figuring out where to start.

I spent the majority of the day yesterday mowing the grass. It was wet and overgrown and awful. A job that usually takes less than 2 hours and about a half a tank of gas took me over 5 hours and about 2 1/2 tanks because the grass was so high that it kept stalling the engine. It was a nightmare, but I got it done.

The other really big thing that has been nagging at me, waiting for me to get it done, was weeding the garden. I did it right before we left in the hopes that it wouldn't be so bad when we got home. But, we apparently got upwards of 5" of rain and the weeds went crazy. What makes it more difficult is that we dug this garden this year, so the grass keeps growing back in from the edges.

I knew I had to get it done today, no matter what. I was tired, I was sore, and I was in no mood to do it, but I forced myself to get out there and do it. The ground was just wet enough that the weeds weren't hard to pull, so once I got started, it went fairly quickly and easily, and although I only planned to do about half of it tonight, after about 3 hours I had it completely done.

I worked on it alone, with Alex and Daniel occasionally coming outside to tattle whine give me progress reports on getting their laundry put away. As I worked, I replayed various scenes from our vacation.

I kept thinking about the devastating scene with my mother, replaying it over and over again, until I couldn't tell if I had sweat or tears dripping off of my face - or maybe a little bit of both. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what happened, and so far I'm not succeeding at it at all.

The only good thing about feeling so helpless with that situation right now is that I can flip that good ol' coping mechanism switch. You know the one - it has that crazy label on it that says "If you can't control one aspect of your life, push this button and you can control something else instead".

Eventually I'll be able to accept this new normal with my mother and get past it and deal with it better than I am right now. At this moment I might not be able to get a grip on the emotional baggage that came back with me a few days ago, but I can sure as hell make sure that there are no weeds in my garden.

Getting fresh snacks is a bonus.

Strength

So for the past week or so, I've been busting my butt to replace the flooring in my laundry/bath and beyond. It's been a long, drawn-out job for so many reasons.

I've done the majority of the job myself. The kids have helped out here and there, and The Dude popped in and out when he could, but the vast majority of it has been me plugging away, usually late at night after the kids were in bed. It's been strenuous and draining and just overall not very easy.

The bulk of the job is done. The washer and dryer are back in place, but the toilet is still sitting on the side porch, waiting to be put back in its spot. Edging needs to be done between the tile and carpet, and there are 4 doors that have to be trimmed and rehung, among a host of other little piddly jobs.

I'm tired.

I got up and made breakfast this morning, but after I cleaned the kitchen I went out to the living room and curled up on the loveseat and I fell asleep. And I slept off and on for most of the day. I got up a couple of times to go to the bathroom or get something to drink, but that was it.

At one point I got up long enough to flip a load of laundry and cook some chicken - but only because I was starting to feel guilty for being so lazy.

The whole time I kept thinking to myself - people always tell me how they think I'm so strong. They admire what I'm able to do for myself.

Strong. Independent. Non-stop.

Today, I felt anything but strong. My body hurts. My hands ache so much that opening a new bottle of soda brought me to tears. Typing this is painful.

I felt anything but independent, because all I wanted was for someone - anyone - to come to the house and help. Someone to take the kids out to do something. Someone to do some laundry for me. Someone to hand me some food that I didn't have to make.

Non-stop was definitely not in my vocabulary today. I stopped. I crashed. I slept. I moped at how crappy I feel. I watched videos that made me cry and allowed myself to feel the relief of letting go.

I get so tired of always being strong. It's exhausting. It's overwhelming.

It's not always empowering. It's not always a good thing. And for so many people, it's not a choice - it's a way to survive life, one task at a time.

And sometimes, being strong means admitting that we are weak and we need help. Sometimes it's admitting that we're an emotional mess and we really don't have our act together. Sometimes it's just admitting that we need to recharge before we can do one more thing.

I'm tired. I can't do it all.

And that's ok.

What Makes a Hero?

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, I'm sure that you've seen the hoopla created by Caitlyn Jenner's magazine cover. I usually try to avoid commenting on controversial stuff just because I don't like the drama, but there's one aspect of this one that I just can't shove under the rug.

Let me start off by saying this - I fully support Ms. Jenner's right to do whatever she wants with her body. It's her choice. I may not "get" it and I may not understand it, but at the end of the day it's her body.

I fully support equal rights - for everyone.

I don't care what religion anyone is.

I don't care what color anyone is.

It all boils down to this - if you're a good person, you and I will get along just fine. But if you act like a dick, go and do it elsewhere. Period.

I'm also going to say this - my cousin is in the process of transitioning from female to male. So if you're going to bash anyone in the transgender community, you're screwing with my family. Trust me - you do not want to go there.

Now that all of that is out of the way.....

I've seen several memes floating around questioning whether or not Ms. Jenner is a "hero". Generally, it's a picture of her side-by-side with a picture of a war veteran who has obvious injuries.

Is that veteran a hero? Damned right he is - no question about it in my opinion. My father, my brothers, my nephews, and too many of my friends to count have served (or are still serving) in the military and every single one of them is a hero to me.

Does everyone agree with that? No. There are some people who are anti-war or anti-military for various reasons, and they don't believe that these people are heroes. Do I agree with them? No. Do they have the right to believe what they do? Yes.

What about a police officer? A man who had an officer rescue him from an armed robber might consider that officer to be his hero, while a man who was wrongfully arrested for a crime he didn't commit might not think that officers are heroes.

How about a teacher? She might never put herself in physical danger in her classroom, but the little girl who looked up to her and decided to be a teacher herself might consider that woman to be her hero.

What about the neighbor who called 911 when she saw smoke coming from a nearby home? Because of her call, the house was mostly saved from destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if the homeowner referred to her as a "hero" during an interview later that day.

What about the child who was climbing around on his brother's bed and got his leg caught between the mattress and the headboard and had to yell for his mother to come and "rescue" him? What if he brought this piece of artwork home from school a few weeks later and handed it to his mom, proudly saying to her "you're MY hero, Mom"?

Are you going to tell him anything different?

Caitlyn Jenner might not be a hero to everyone. She might not be a hero to the majority of people in the world. But I promise you this - somewhere, there is someone struggling with his/her sexual identity who is looking up to this woman and who is thankful that she has had the courage to take a very private journey and share it with the world. And that someone might just consider her a hero for it.

We don't have the right to tell other people what to do with their bodies.

We don't have the right to tell people that their belief system is wrong.

We don't have the right to dictate who can or can't be a hero to someone else.

What we do have the right to do is simple -

Stop judging. Be nice. 

Seriously. It's that easy.

Looking back...

If you pay attention to my facebook page at all, you might have noticed that I've been working on cleaning up my computer - I've been going through the past 5+ years of photos, deleting the crappy ones, and transferring the good ones over to flash drives. It's been a long process, and I'm nowhere near done yet. But I'm getting there.

Before I started...

Where I am now...

But of course, in order to do this, I have to go through every single folder of pictures and look at every single one. Luckily they're already pretty much grouped in order by what day I uploaded them from the camera, so I have just been going through them one day at a time.

I've been trying not to dwell on the content of the pictures so much. I'm a very sentimental person, and I can look at old pictures all day long - so I know that I have to really focus on the end goal here or it's going to take me forever to get this done. So far, I've gotten 2008 and 2009 off of my computer (except for a huge rogue folder of 2008 that I just found this morning, but I haven't touched that one yet).

Those were 2 very interesting years in my life. (If you're not familiar with the story, this post will explain a lot of it, and there are links in there that can lead you to other stories. Or you can just ask me. Seriously.)

In 2008 we were living in my old house and I was still married to my second husband. So there are a lot of pictures of him. I wouldn't say that I get sad looking at them - but I have caught myself saying "I wonder what would have happened if....." several times.

In 2009, I kicked him out. And my life fell apart in so many ways, but I didn't admit that for a long time. I don't think that even my closest friends realized how bad it was for me.

But you know what? Looking at those pictures from that time frame - wow, was it ever obvious.

This house - this little ghetto-esque house that we live in now - it gets messy. It gets dirty. It's not always clean and neat and organized. But for the most part, it's decent. We got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved (moving into a house that's less than half the size of your old one will force your hand in that department) and I do my best to keep it organized.

The pictures of the old house? Holy wow, how did we ever live like that? Seriously, it was filthy, and it was so obvious in those pictures. I mean it - I let it get dirty. And that's how it would stay.

Every now and then I'd go on a massive cleaning/organizing binge, and it would look good. For a day or two. And then I would just let everything slide again.

It's funny. I don't always think that I've come that far...but then I start looking back - really looking back - and I see the progress that I've made. I'm still not perfect. The house can still be a disaster at times, but the main difference now is that it might only be 2 or 3 days' worth of disaster, instead of months' worth of disaster. Seeing the actual photographic evidence of the change was truly eye opening for me and has really gotten my brain going back into overdrive again (oh yay).

I think I gave myself a virtual kick in the butt. If I could come this far already...... hmmmm...... might be time to go back to the notebook and write down some more plans.

Why do I do this?

I can't even begin to count the number of times that I've been asked why I blog, not to mention the number of times that I've asked myself the very same question.

It started out as something fun - a distraction, of sorts. And then it started to grow. I admit that in general, I don't write about anything profound or deep. Like the picture of my boots up there says, it's random ramblings. It's therapeutic for me. Having little "real" contact with other adults, it gives me a place to talk, whether or not anyone is listening.

With the exception of a few rants here and there about my exlaws or the trials of being a single parent, for the most part it's just fluff. This is where we went today and this is what we did and oh, look at what I fished out of the sink last night - that kind of stuff.

But now, suddenly, I have almost 900 people following what I write. Seriously? 900? That's between fans on the facebook page, twitter followers, GFC followers on the blog itself, and feedburner subscribers. I know some of those are duplicates so the number isn't really that high, but still....

It boggles my mind.

I've always made it a point to stay away from too much deep stuff. If I wanted to, I could go really deep at times. But I've avoided it for so many reasons. I don't like to create drama, believe it or not. I haven't wanted to open myself up for criticism. The past few years have been hard on me, and for the longest time I was so incredibly fragile that one wrong word, or even a dirty look, caused me to crumble.

I leaned on my friends a great deal during this time, and it strained some of our friendships - I know that. So why would I want to dump all of my crap on a bunch of people who don't even know me? That's the mindset that I've been in ever since I started this blog, except for the few occasions where I blew a gasket and went off on a good ol' Amy-esque rant.

But, I've become stronger. I've been through hell, and I'm still standing - stronger than I have ever stood before. My life is far from perfect, but right now it's going pretty darned good! The Dude has made me realize that there are still good guys out there, and that at least one of them isn't afraid of my life and everything that comes along with it. Yes, it's still early in the game, and he may still come to his senses and bail out at some point - I hope and pray that he doesn't - but if he does, I know that I'll survive it.

I figure that if I am finally to the point that I can put myself "out there" in the dating world, I can maybe start doing the same thing on this blog. I'm not saying that I'm suddenly going to start writing a "deep" post every day, or even every week - but don't be surprised if I start doing it a little more often.

It might blow up in my face and create drama. Or it might go unnoticed. Or, it might help someone else who is going or has gone through the same kind of crap.

If nothing else, it will continue to keep me amused for a period of time every day.

Lazy day

We just really didn't do a heck of a lot today. We had to get up to get the older three kids to school, but as it turned out Sarah wasn't feeling well. So we all loaded up and I dropped the other two off and we came back home. Alex and Daniel didn't have school again today, so we spent the day just hanging around the house doing a whole lot of nothing.

They all took turns playing computer games, so I didn't spent much time online - which was odd, but it was a good sort of odd.

I did work on my quilt blocks for the Christmas block swap that I'm doing...

After school, Jared decided to go with his father to a football game, so we ended up having to go pick him up later this evening. After coming *thisclose* to running into a herd of deer in the dark (there were at least 7 of them right next to the road) we got him and headed back home. The moon tonight was absolutely gorgeous. I tried to get some pictures of it, but my camera just isn't good enough to get it (or I don't know how to work it the right way for night shots).

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I was reminded again today about just how selfish and hateful some people can be, and for some reason, it still surprises me. I wish that people would realize that when they act like this, it just makes them look foolish, and everyone who observes the tantrum will remember it.

We all like to get our own way - it's human nature. But we also need to realize that sometimes getting our own way isn't the most important thing in the world. Realistically, the way we handle NOT getting our own way shows the world what our true character is like. Disagreeing is one thing - throwing a tantrum and making threats is something totally different.

I may not have handled the situation in the best possible way, but it's something that I have worked on for a very long time. I don't take well to feeling threatened in any way (no, it wasn't a physical threat) and I tend to mouth off when it happens (surprised?) but I think that I managed to stay calmer than usual this time.

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Lastly, and totally unrelated to anything else....

With the whole "new and improved" facebook format (*snort*) I have seen several postings from bloggers with pages for their blogs indicating that updates that we post on our blog pages aren't showing up in peoples' news feeds. Supposedly, unless you "interact" with the page, it won't show up because facebook will assume that you aren't that interested in the page.

So, if what is being said is true, if you are a fan of my facebook page - you need to "like" the status updates that I post there, or comment on them, or something to indicate that you actually want to see the updates. I don't know for sure if it's true or not but I thought that I would pass it along.

And if you haven't liked my facebook page yet, why don't you go and do that? :) We sometimes get into some fun conversations over there....