Leveling the Playing Field

Since I am enrolled in college, I am learning that there are different learning styles: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile. I started out being a visual learner, but I studied while in school while listening to music. Cannot do that now since I get focused on the lyrics and the music and forget what I'm supposed to be studying. I have since moved on. I have changed styles, preferring to do whatever I am studying, like practicing Morse code on a mocked-up Morse code keyer. I couldn't learn Morse code just by studying what was in the text. I really needed to tap out the codes in order to learn the code well enough to pass the test and get my radio operator's license. I am still a radio operator; that is good until 2025.

You see, I had to learn Morse code since I was planning a book on the United States being forced back into the Stone Age because an enemy, probably the Russians, the Chinese, or the North Koreans, had set off an EMP pulse and knocked out all of our technology. I believed we could win a war against a technologically advanced enemy by going low tech. I believed that we, the United States, could defeat a technologically superior aggressor by using low tech weapons. Our army and air force were built of ultralights and used Morse code, which is why I had to learn Morse code in order to write about it accurately, hence I decided to earn my radio operator's license and learned Morse code.

I have always been a researcher, but to me, research was not going to cut it for me with this book -- a book I never completed since I went back to my time homeless in New Orleans and jailed for being a notorious madam, which I was not. The New Orleans police department realized they did not have enough evidence to charge me and kicked me out during an ice storm. I ended up back in the Quarter, hooked up with my friends, and went back to work as a hot dog salesman for Lucky Dogs. I called the book Among Women. I finished that book and planned to write the sequel, but got lost along the way -- very much like I did with the technologically inferior ultralight air force and the Morse code using soldiers who fought the technologically superior aggressors.

If you did not notice, you would have figured it out soon enough since I believe in the underdog and in writing a book about the underdog defeating a superior force. Still sounds like a good book to me and maybe I will get back to it and build my army and air force using low tech weapons. I still might. Anything is possible.

The thing is that I have quite a few talents that I do very well. I just cannot settle down for very long with only one or two creative endeavors. I always need to have several projects going at once. Maybe that is the real problem, using only one talent at a time, finishing what I started, and then moving on.

Or not.

I like having several pots and pans on the stove at the same time. It always turns out better when I am cooking. I have less success when I have more than one creative project going at the same time. I lose interest or lose focus and find myself drifting over to another task, another project, something else. I am usually not so unfocused, but it seems I am these days. Maybe I need to go to a psychologist or get some testing or just get down to business. I have been told that several readers would like to know what happened to Pearl (that is me) after she got out of jail. Where did she go? Where did she end up? Did she ever manage to get a job and work toward a lucrative job?

I will never tell since I might finish the book I started with Among Men and publish it, sending it out into the world and winning myself a publishing contract.

Or not.

I am much like the woman who is dying for water in the desert, falls into a pool of water, and drinks myself until I am sated at last.

Or not.

I was showing Mel, one of the residents here in Messiah, that I once had talent as an artist. I was surprised by everything I showed him and that really did not even scratch the surface of what I have done and what I am still capable of now that I have realized that while my talents are dulled with lack of use, I can still draw credibly well.

I think that is the real problem -- knowing I can do something with practice and getting back into the practice and honing my skills. When I first began drawing as a child, I practiced on whatever caught my eye and got good at the drawing. I remember before the end of school when I was in the fourth grade, we were all told that we would spend the last day of school drawing. I did not want to be shown up and so I went through all my piano practice books and copied everything I could find. I finally settled on Minnie and Mickey Mouse and decided that is what I would draw the last day of school. my

I graduated and went into the fifth grade where I got interested in Ronny Meadows, one of the boys in our class who sang like Elvis Presley. He had presence and he had a good voice. I do not think I remember much more than that until I was punished for scratching my name on the girls' bathroom stall wall. I was punished for defacing school property. I had been punished for scratching my name on the footboard of one of the bunk beds. Mom punished me for that. I was angry and decided that the only way to mark MY stuff was to scratch my name on it since Mom gave my younger sister all the duplicate gifts whether or not I wanted to give them to her. I did not want to reward Carol on my birthday with my gifts. Carol got to keep all of her duplicate gifts and I was going to make sure she did not get my gifts simply because Mom decided it was fair for me to give her my duplicate gifts. I did not get any of Carol's duplicate gifts, which is why I was scratching my name into the footboard of my bunk bed. Carol was not going to get my bed, too. That is why I got punished. I was not supposed to scratch my name into the footboard even if it was mine. Mom was not going to give Carol my bed even if I claimed my bed with my name scratched into it. I had my bed and Carol had hers. There was no issue of equality with beds, just with birthday presents that were duplicates of someone else's gift.

Oh, well. We got through that and Carol did not have to give up my duplicate gifts. End of story. I think that was the beginning of the enmity that flared up between my sister and I and was never resolved. Mom's idea of fairness was not equal between us because Mom decided what was and was not equal. For instance, Mom paid Carol and Jimmy for their grades. She did not pay me for mine because, as she said to me, Mom and Dad would go broke paying me for my superior grades. Carol and Jimmy got Cs and Ds and I always got As and Bs. The only way to make things fair when it came to grades was to pay Jimmy and Carol for their grades and stiff me for mine. I was supposed to understand because I was the smarter one. Mom's kind of equality was never equal for me. I always got stiffed while Carol and Jimmy got paid.

Fair is fair when someone else is doing the choosing. I was never chosen, although it could be said that Mom was leveling the playing field by calling me out. It was the same for homework. Carol and Jimmy had trouble with their homework. Mom decided I would do Jimmy's homework since I was done with my homework already. I refused. I would help Jimmy do his homework, but I refused to do his homework for him. He would not learn if I did it for him. It would be easier for me to do it, but I was not going to let him off so easily and I was not going to cheat and do it for him.

Fairness is as Mom decided what fairness was. Basically, the playing field was level when I did Carol and Jimmy's homework, but no one did my homework for me. Mom and Dad did not understand what I was doing and so I was left to do it on my own.

Water over the dam or under the bridge. It is all in the past, but the memory lingers on.

I cannot point to Carol or Jimmy now because they have their own lives and I have mine. I have my own college classes to get through and I would never ask either of them to do my homework for me. I will do it myself. Mom and Dad are dead and I have come late to the college lessons, but I will do my own work. I will not rely on anyone by myself, which is good since only by doing my own work can I learn, evolve, and progress. So back to work I will go and I will finish my lessons on my own.

I do not need anyone to level the playing field. I will get through the lessons by myself and earn my own grades as I have always done. When I get an A at the end of the semester, I will have earned it and I will not have to worry about which of us will get paid. In the end, I will get paid because I have studied and done my own homework. I will come out of college with a degree and I will have earned every grade I receive. I will also have earned a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice with Human Services. Basically, I will be an attorney, an advocate for the people, the very same people who will be part of the army and air force fighting the technologically advanced aggressor that set off an EM pulse (electromagnetic pulse) that takes out our technology. Maybe this time I can actually pull it all together and write the science fiction book that will earn me a publishing contract to go with the book and will culminate in earning my college degree.

I may have been adopted, but I am not, nor have I ever been, only an underdog. I will level my own playing field and I will be a success.

That is all. Disperse.

The Future is Here

I go through a process when hurdles pop up. I panic a little then step back and consider the problem from a different perspective and then, when I'm done weighing the options, I act. I seldom act in haste until I've weighed the options and see where things are taking me. That is what I did when I left Colorado, seeming to all and sundry to have acted in haste. It may have seemed that way, but I act quickly when I've weighed the options.

I was in a similar state of muddle before I acted and considered asking for help from my friends and my sons with regard to my current situation. Then one of the residents came home last night and told her about her young relative who had just lost her father and she didn't know what to do or where to turn. For all intents and purposes, Sue's relative had lost the only father she knew, though he had been sick and in and out of the hospital recently. She had no idea what to do about the funeral and Sue was encouraging her to move away from Kentucky, the only home she had known, away from her friends and support group, and come here to Urbana -- or at least to this community to be with her family. Sue and her children and their children are the woman's family. Sue's relative has a readymade support system that she does not know. She wants to stay in Kentucky where she has lived with her father until he died (he was not her legal father, but her father for all real intents and purposes). she has worked at a local job there for 11 years and doesn't want to leave her friends, her community, or her job to be near family. I don't blame her. She has every reason and her support system to stay in Kentucky in the community where she has lived.

Though her father is gone, she still has to pay for his funeral and I will assume he did not leave a will or an insurance policy. She has set up a GoFundMe project to pay for everything. Luckily, because of the holiday season, she has had several people willing to send her money through GoFundMe and will be able to make a dent in the funeral arrangements. I do hope she has not succumbed to the usual fear that she must give her father a costly burial, which is where most funeral homes get you. The funeral home directors and employees are only doing their job by talking grieving relatives into the more expensive send-offs because they are in effect business people and that is their job -- to talk you into buying a package that would do the deceased proud. What should be a two thousand dollar funeral will end up being eight thousand and very likely more funeral to do the deceased up proud. That is how funeral homes make money -- by talking the grieving relatives into doing the deceased up proud. Guilt is a great motivator during times of grief.

Luckily, I cannot under the rules of Medicare purchase or pay for a final needs insurance policy because the government would be obliged to confiscate the policy, just as the government would take all the ready cash I have and leave me with no more than $30 cash in my pocket or in my bank account. That is what the government does if you fall under the Medicaid umbrella. You have to pay for the government taking care of you unless you have a financial wizard in your support system who knows where and how to hide your ready cash.

It is only fair. You have to pay the government back if you are going to use the government as a fall-back position or rely on the government to take care of your final needs. It's like health care. You cannot get socialized health care unless someone foots the bill -- like with much higher taxes. So, no matter what Democrats say (and what Bernie Sanders promised) there is no get unless someone else gives. Look at the tax rates in the socialized medicine countries in Europe and you will begin to see what is really going on. Imagine living in a socialized medicine country where everyone's taxes are 50% or higher, systems which are collapsing under the weight of the uncontrolled immigration of Muslims from the Middle East and Africa because the Muslims have lots of children that must be supported by the socialized medicine and cannot pay into the system because minors (children) have no income and thus cannot pay taxes to prop up the socialized medicine system.

The UK's system has already collapsed. Doctors and medical personnel are opting for the private sector and the UK is begging students to train and choose medicine to prop up the failing system. Nurses, aides, doctors, etc. are in short supply because they are opting for private practice and the money they as medical professionals can command in the private sector. I'm certain Angela Merkel's open-handed generosity when she opened her borders and said "Come on in," to the immigrant horde swarming northward from what Obama called fleeing from Climate Change in their home countries and becoming a horde of anarchists and criminals as they settled into communities that cater to the migrant hordes of widows and children of Muslim refugees straining Europe's failing socialized medical system with their hands out and their murderous Islamic violence intact, hiding the bombs, knives, guns, and Muslim ideology savaging the European population that had taken in their widows and orphans in the spirit of generosity and kindness.

What the news reporters won't show you are the rape gangs out for recruits to their Islamic hordes or the bombings, knifings, and murders that accompany the Islamic hordes (mostly young males hopped up on Islamic hate and convinced that Mohammed was right, that the Muslims (good Islamic young males sworn to the cause that Mohammed set out when he created his religion  and subjugated nearly two-thirds of the Western Christian and Jewish world). It is all about the spread of Islam and jihad, which youngsters are taught from the earliest age. 

Islam nearly conquered Europe in the years before the 20th century and will finish the job if left unchecked. Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of hate and jihad. How is that consistent with the socialized Europe that opened its arms to immigration? Muslims were the authors of Hitler's final solution, but Germany did their level best putting together the Holocaust.  There is nothing like German technology, Hitler's hatred of Jews, and the even greater hatred of Islam for the Jews. In this regard, Hitler partnered not only with Japan and Mussolini, but with Islam to rid Europe of the Jews. Nothing like multitasking to do the job all while stealing as much of what the Jews had accumulated of the centuries to see off to see their nefarious ends paid for.

Well, this has nothing to do with Sue's young relative grieving for her father now deceased. I have suggested Sue's relative ask for a leave of absence and come here to Urbana to grieve and lick her wounds. She would be near family and would be able to grieve and heal for a time while testing the waters and deciding on the next step on her chosen path.

Yes, she has a rough row to hoe, but she will mend and will eventually find her place in the scheme of things -- whether it is here or in Kentucky. She will have the support of her family and that is a good thing.

I have to laugh. The college counselor asked me yesterday what support system I had in place to help me through study and college. I had to answer none. I have no family and no familial support, but that is as it has always been. I don't have the grief Sue's young relative has because this lack Yet I am still here and the depression is gone because I have found the ketogenic lifestyle (often called nutritional ketosis) and depression is far behind me.

BB would not admit that such was the case, but Mom often told me things that she meant for only me to hear, so BB would not know because I wrote it in my paper journals and did not share my depression, sadness, or the abuse I suffered with her. She didn't share with me either. Typical sibling rivalry -- we didn't talk. BB shares her thoughts with our cousin, Laura, and probably commiserates with Beanie and the Mushroom on Messengers or similar methods while at work or by their smart phones.

My once close relationship with Beanie has disintegrated since her marriage to Dan. He knew nothing of me because I lived in Colorado and only new of me the one time Beanie stopped by her (actually his) home when she picked me up and dropped me at a cheap motel in Washington Court House where I stayed until I finally ended up in Rehab and then went to my first apartment on Kingsford in Columbus.

I kept a low profile and upset Beanie who was doing my laundry (incontinence issues) and then dropping it at my motel before she raced home to be with her husband. I saw my nephews (Cody and Ants) once and her stepson, Daniel, also once, but Beanie had her job and she worked full time. She didn't have time for me; she had a husband who needed her and he had forbidden her to waste her energy and time dancing attendance on me.

And so I sat watching TV alone, venturing out some days with a taxi driver I'd made friends with, Joe, who took me by his mother's home to visit her and then took me back to the motel. Joe took me to Columbus to apply for the apartment I eventually got and he went back to Washington Court House to live his life.

Beanie couldn't understand why I didn't check out more apartments. How about because I didn't have sufficient funds to do so?

Carol at least took me to check out Messiah Community where I now live and where I spend time alone, though I will soon be studying to take the CLEP tests (what my advisor calls the Fast Track) to opt out of some of my college requirements. I'll take the exams (at least the English 104 exam) on January 1, 2019 and have been told I will get some of my grant money back to be paid into my account. I will be taking 4 classes: 2 math and 1 criminal justice -- and must pass and so I will study until I take the exams in January. I will do all four and will study from now until then. I only need to pass at 70%, but would prefer to do a whole lot better than that.

I've finished my FAFSA (financial aid forms for college) and I will also get a federal grant because of my Dad's military service -- 22 years in the Army. I'll apply for scholarships and other grants as we go along, but I will do my best to take or get as few loans as possible. I don't want to mire myself in horrendous debt at the start.

And so I go forward. Might still pick up the graphic arts later on or I might just throw my hat into the ring and get right to it in politics. That decision should help with volunteering and working with women and seniors. At this point, I am game for anything.

That is all. Disperse.