And so it Goes

Maybe I should have gone to medical school when I was younger, especially since I obeyed my Mom's threats and didn't go to the Air Force Academy or join the military since I did not want to be disowned. I am a female and, according to Mom, women who go into the military are tramps, whores, women of low moral character. I didn't want to be disowned. I carefully maintained my ties to the family.

I have since been disowned by my family on my most recent birthday. As I turned 64, I was notified that I was out of the family, receiving the news from Beanie by text message.

I realize being disowned by my siblings is not the same as being disowned by my Mom. It is a whole other ball of wax.

Or is it?

It's a matter of respect and degree. I respected my Mom -- until I didn't. She was not a good person. She was vindictive, petty, and she held grudges forever. Maybe that is why I acquiesced to Mom's demands when she threatened to disown me. Maybe that is why she got her wish -- me not going to the Air Force Academy -- or any other military branch office to sign up. Had I done so, she would have had bragging rights about her daughter (me) forever.

But I didn't, and now I'm too old to join the Air Force Academy and too old to join any other branch of military service, although that would be a mistake on the military's behalf since I will still be living about 86 years from now.

I plan to be alive until I'm 150 long after my siblings will be dead.  BB has high blood pressure and is also diabetic. The Mushroom/Idiot has likely high blood pressure and heart disease.  Beanie has arthritis and will likely have another knee replacement when she gets done.

All of these diseases could be cured (or at least dealt with) had they listened to me, but they don't and haven't. I am the oddball out in left field when it comes to letting them know what to do when it comes to their health -- I am to be dismissed, crazy, nutso, whatever ... not sufficiently grief-stricken with Jessie's death as my brother decided I should be when I found out last year. But how does he know the depth or reality of my grief? As far as I know, no one knows the depth or reality of my grief because they never asked me and I never volunteered my feelings because I didn't have any feelings toward Jessie since I didn't know her at all. It would be like asking my grief for someone I'd never met and never spent time with. Somebody on the other side of the world may have had a full life and a lot of family, but when they died and I was told would express grief and offer condolences for their passing, but that would be it. The same is true of Jessie. I didn't know her and had never met her. the same cannot be said of the Mushroom, BB, or Beanie since they had all met her, talked to her, spent time with her, and traveled to the UK to meet her.

I doubt they had slept with her, although the Mushroom did because he spent a whole month getting to know her and sleep with her since they were going to live together and get married (so I was told several times by the Mushroom -- but he told me he was getting married to her for ten years. She told me she was never going to move to the USA or marry my brother when she contacted me by email.).  Then again, according to my family, I'm a liar -- or so Mom said and told everyone for years. She wanted to make certain that no one believed me. That is how she protected herself before I was able to tell anyone she had been abusing me my whole life. It is best to have the audience prejudiced before someone can talk about you and cast you in an altogether bad light. Hollywood has press agents and managers to do that for people who want to hide who they are or what they've done. That has been ongoing forever.

It isn't because Mom called me a liar and a fantasist or told people I was a liar or a fantasist. I know that because I know I didn't lie, never did. It is the fact that I tell the truth and have always told the truth, or when I make a mistake I note that on my posts. I made that mistake about Jessie's death a year ago December 2018. I was told she died on December 26. BB informed me that it was the 27th and so I made an edit and noted the date I had been told by Beanie AND the date BB told me.

It isn't that I tell the truth because Mom died six years ago; she is not here to call me a liar or make me admit my lies.

The fact is that my siblings do not want me to write about the truth and it is because I tell the truth, though BB says it is because of my mouth. I do not tell my lies to others. I don't gossip. That was Dad's faux pas. He loved to gossip and he gossiped all the time. It was his character. He was an inveterate gossip monger. I know because he gossiped all the time . . . usually to get himself out of trouble when he was in trouble with Mom.

You see, that's the case with Dad and Mom. They had their faults and flaws. Mom lied and Dad gossiped. Mom also sought refuge in her credit cards, cards she got all the time and kept from Dad and being delivered to the house so she could use them more easily every time she took her lunch across the street from Lazarus when she worked downtown.

The fact is that she didn't EAT lunch, she took her lunch hour at Lazarus -- across the street from her office. She also took her breaks at Lazarus. She was often at Lazarus. As long as she could spend money and time at Lazarus, she was modestly happy -- or at least that is what I thought. She was seldom happy -- unless she was spending money.

People used to say that Virginia was generous and had bought things for her friends and other people. What they didn't say is that Mom could be generous -- as BB could be generous -- but she never let you forget it. She reminded you of it every chance she got. It's rather like her compliments. Every time she complimented me, patted me on the back, she slapped me in the face. Pat on the back and slap in the face right afterwards.

Mom was predictable. BB is also predictable. She follows Mom in everything she did. Mom got religion in her middle years. BB got religion in her middle years. She even chased a man she met at church. Mom went to church every Sunday and every Wednesday. BB goes to church on Sundays and to church on Wednesday nights. What Mom did, BB does. She is Mom's shadow, following after Mom, walking in her footsteps, doing what Mom did, and she continues to follow in Mom's tracks like a shadow.

Well, BB is Mom's firstborn, though I was born first and BB followed me.

That's the point -- BB followed me, followed in my footsteps, though she did not get the same grades I did nor did she win the awards I did. After all, BB is the shadow and I cast the shadow. It's nothing but life -- and physics. I do not make the rules. I follow the rules; I'm a human not the Universal Creator. Go figure.

I do not claim any more than I was given at birth. I was born. I breathed. I continue to breathe. No problem. I claim no more than what I've just written.

I am an atheist, but I believe in the Creator of All, what I call the Universal Creator. I don't believe in anyone or anything else because I am an atheist. That's what it means to be an atheist. I do not believe in gods, at least not the manmade version of gods. I have an ego, but not THAT much of an ego. I'm not quite that vain or that deluded.

I have been told I'm deluded, but not THAT deluded.

I have a normal ego, a normal id, and a normal superego. Those are the parts of my brain and my biology that came with the package that included breathing. So, I'm normal -- at least as far normal as I am allowed to be, but that can change whenever my body stops breathing and my heart stops beating. I'll be dead and it won't matter anyway.

And so it goes.

That is all. Disperse.

The Price of Truth

I have received a message from Beanie. She has asked me not to contact her again -- and I will not. She has not answered any of my messages and has not responded to my emails. That is the way things are these days.

I have not had a visit from BB, who promised to visit, which is why I live here in Urbana to be closer to her. I warned here even before moving here that things were about to change for her and that her grandson, now ten and beginning to wish to spend time with those his own age, would not hold her interest long. He is growing up and would rather spend his weekends with his buddies. He is no longer a child but entering the first flush of puberty and choosing his own path in life.

BB warned me that my family has turned against me because of my mouth. It is not my mouth that gives me trouble from my family, but my propensity to write what I see and what affects me. My families actions do indeed affect me and I will write about it. The apartment manager insists that I write what I do and that it upsets my family (which it does and often sets me at odds with my family). That is all part of life and particularly part of this life -- my life.

I have no doubt that my family will not support me when I plunge deep into the political arena and they will not vote for me. I've no qualms about that nor do I expect them to vote for me because we are related. That may be what most people in politics believe; their families will pull together and be seen as supporting them but I have no illusions there.

I do not speak truth to shame the devil (as many people will and do say) but to speak the truth, however painful or onerous it is to whomever. I will speak the truth and not shame the devil -- or my family come to that. I will be true and speak true no matter what comes. I will not, as in times past or even times present, fail to speak or fib just to gain the people's favor. I will not keep a mistress or be a mistress because my family choose to ally themselves with another family, thus marrying me off for the family's good and keep a mistress or be a mistress -- or in the case of the Clintons -- buy off or pay off an inconvenient mistress or get rid of an illegitimate son -- just to be a political success. And I will not mouth platitudes for political success. What you see -- and what you read and hear -- is the truth from my perspective. If I am found wrong later, I will also acknowledge I was wrong and that my information is fallible. But I will not shy away from the truth or make nice just to make my family -- or the people I represent -- happy. That is not (and has not been) my way.

Since I do not believe in the devil -- or in man-made gods -- I have no one to please or harm but myself. I came to grips with the knowledge that my father was not as he claimed to be -- a heterosexual -- and he hid in the closet and played it straight for the rest of the world. Maybe that is what was behind Mom's constant abuse of him and why she could not forgive him for his indiscretions. She tortured him for her own ego and used her power over him to keep him on the straight and narrow path. She abhorred his drinking and he could never fool her by drinking vodka. Her nose was far too keen and so by drinking vodka he only fooled himself; he never fooled her nor did he ever fool the man-made god and Jesus, come to that. He lived a lie all of his life and never repented, though he went to the altar many times, often Mom led the way likely got her own sins and errors as much as for his. 

But I will not follow their path nor will I change my manner of writing. I have previously kept my thoughts private in my written journals, but now (thanks to Mom and Beanie) I am released to publish my own middle-aged meanderings online in full view of the world. I do not shrink from what I once feared -- hiding the truth. Mom has read all that I had written and asked kept from her, which was not done as Mom gained access and read it all: good, bad, and indifferent. She found out that my world did not revolve around her nor did I blame her for as much as she visited on me. Instead, I was mapping my progress along the road of life (my life) without shame or regret or apology.

At least in that regard, Beanie did me a favor by not burning my journals to keep Mom from them. I might have regretted that she had failed me by not burning the journals, but now I am glad that Mom knew the truth, even the truth about Dad, though no doubt she already knew and had kept it from herself and abused Dad in her own way. That was her way -- abusing her husband for the rest of their lives together, even using me to talk him back home when he had quit her and walked away. I regret that I was used thus, but that is in the past and I loved Dad and would have done anything to keep him at home and married to Mom because I was a child and easily manipulated.

You may say that parents should not use their children so callously, but they do and I am proof. I did not know the full scope of Mom's perfidy with regard to Dad and her marriage, but that is in the past and I know that, just as I know that Dad's behavior is also in the past and it does not stay in the past because it is part of my life and I hide nothing. I speak the truth, even when it hurts me. Life is not an easy path and the road to heaven and hell is before us. Whether we travel the broad road paved to heaven or hell, it is the road we choose and final judgment will come in the end.

I do not believe that St. Peter stands at the gate to welcome those who are rewarded with walking through the pearly gates and watches those who travel the broad, paved path to hell with regret while a tear streaks silently down his cheek. Heaven and hell are reward and punishment and I have never believed in them and I questioned how a fire could harm an eternal soul. I wrote about it endlessly and often argued with Mom over that one issue. My path was decided before I drew my first breath and is now solidified in that I have chosen to be an atheist because I do not believe in man-made gods or demons. I believe in the Universal Creator, he whom the Muslims call Allah. Allah is no more the universal creator than I am the man in the moon, but I doubt my saying so -- or writing so -- would change the beliefs of millions of Muslims who are caught in the web Mohammed wove around his believers 1400 years ago, and they are caught in the trap, willingly, because they are not allowed to question the words of a warped and cruel dwarf who was caught in his own madness, trapped by his pernicious and wealthy wife and further trapped by his prepubescent bride protecting her position and catered to his madness in her innocence. Muslims will have to face that and either cast their beliefs aside and join the rest of sane humanity instead of becoming martyrs for their reward in Paradise. It does not exist, but they will have to deal with that I as I have and face the facts.

My future it would seem is bleak and friendless, but I believe that I am the corporeal reality while the Universal Creator figures himself (or itself) out. That is it and all about it.

And so I wish my family had seen me and the truth differently, but they have their way and I have mine. I will not trade lies for truth for them and I will not do so to join a political party like Bernie Sanders did. I will speak the truth no matter how hard it is for others (including my family) to read or hear. I will not be false, but at least I will couch their names and identities as I have with Beanie, BB, and the Mushroom or Idiot (not that nicknames or couching names have fooled the truly determined) but at least it will make my family feel better about what they read or hear and thus they may end up voting for me and/or supporting me as they have not done until now.

The best (or worst) is yet to come.

That is all. Disperse.

All in the Eyes

I remember a time when I was not so infatuated with Don. I even told him that even across a crowded room he would not catch my eye. Why would he? I thought. He is bald and much older than I was (about 12 years) and, though he was well dressed (in a suit and tie), he was not my type. 

At that point in our relationship (and it was a relationship at that point), we could be honest with each other. We were having an affair, so honesty was permissible. Or not. He was married, had two children (his daughter was in college and his son was probably a senior in high school), and his wife and he were on the road to divorce -- as I saw it. Don was not the kind of man who would give in at the end of a thirty-year marriage without a fight. He was still having sexual relations with his wife, Lois, who was still mostly in the picture. Lois was a bulldog and not going to give up without a fight as far as I could see. I should probably say snapping turtle since she would never let Don go without making sure she had a really good settlement.

Their daughter was studying art in college and ensconced in her own life. She had a boyfriend she liked and lived with, but she was not so involved in her own life she would miss the clues in her father's life -- like a mistress.

We (Don and I) did not dare to go too far into the whole issue of her father having an affair and her parents' marriage on the rocks. No, Don and I had to be discreet or he would be blown out of the water. I did not want that to happen since he was my employer.

I, innocent that I was, did not want to end our affair, but I was confident -- and so was Don -- that I could meet his daughter, have a conversation, and go on with my -- our -- lives. Don was confident he could bring about a meeting between his daughter and me on neutral ground -- The Humidor, a club in downtown Cleveland where Don went to share his poetry -- his live poetry. His wife, Lois, would not come; she was not interested in poetry, except in the usual marital sense of being present. Don's daughter would be interested. She was daddy's girl and she was an artist, so bound to be interested in her father's poetry at The Humidor; she would be there.

I would be there, too, since Don and I had been there before and would be again. I was also interested in Don's poetry since I was a writer (another artist) and creative types tend to travel together to be supportive of each other. No doubt, that is why his daughter was going to be there -- not to meet me, though she would be there and she would meet me, but to be supportive of her father's creative endeavor, his poetry reading in public.

And so she and I would finally meet and hopefully like each other and get to know each other without blowing Don's cover (his affair with his much younger female employee.  Her mother had met the employee (me) and had pronounced me as no threat at all to her marriage or to Don since the employee was fat.

She (Lois) had seen me, met me, and dismissed me because I was fat. Don was thin as a rake and his wife was shorter and very petite -- a mere five feet to my five feet eight inches -- and I was fat. No threat to his marriage or his wife as far as she could see. Lois did not see the reason in being at The Humidor since she was not worried and she had to work on documents pertaining to her long term care facility. No sense letting her husband's hobbies (poetry) getting in the way of her promotion at her job. Her daughter would attend the reading and she would get on with her work.

And so it went.

I, for the first time since Don and I began our affair, would drive to downtown Cleveland and arrive at The Humidor separately. I would get a table by myself and he would get a table for himself and his daughter. We would sit apart and, at some point, he would see me, recognize me, and introduce me to his daughter. No harm, no foul. Don and I would be safe -- or rather he would be safe from detection, either by his daughter who would not tell his wife that she had met me and that she had liked me. That is the scenario Don and I had painted in bright, cheery colors.

That is not what happened.

After a horrible miscommunication and screwed up directions, I ended up on the side of town where Cleveland had its projects -- the poor side of town, the criminally active side of town. I am not the shrinking violet type nor am I the panic when I get lost type. I did what any thinking person would do, I stopped at a 7/11 store to get clearer directions. The bonus was that a police car was out front and I met the officer inside the store.

No, the officer was not getting a donut. He was responding to the cashier's alert that a shoplifting criminal had been seen. It was late at night and dark and the police officer had thwarted the perp's plan to steal the money from the store's till. The perp got away -- his driver took off with the perp as he emerged from the store and took off down the road probably to lose the cops in the projects, but it never got that far. The perp (sans cash or loot of any kind) jumped into the car and the driver sped away as I parked my car and went into the store. I was in no danger and the officer was especially kind and helpful to me. He offered to show me the way, getting into his vehicle and leading me down the road (the opposite way to which I had arrived) and waited for me to pull up behind him before heading off down the road.

The officer did not so much as pause at stop lights. Ignoring the lights, he drove through, waving at me through the window to follow, which I did reluctantly -- and somewhat hesitantly. I was following the police so would be in no trouble and in no danger of getting a traffic violation. I followed the officer to the right side of town and began to recognize the street where The Humidor existed. The officer stopped and came back to my car to tell me I was on the right track and The Humidor was right down there -- pointing to the sidewalk where the stairs went down into the sidewalk. The Humidor's sign was visible and I was finally there. I thanked the officer who politely touched his hat and then my hand resting on the window of my car before walking back to his cruiser, getting inside, and driving off having done what I thought was a good deed for the day: he had protected and served the public -- me.

I was soon safely inside The Humidor and ensconced at a table near the back, alone with a drink on the table in front of me, and I waited for Don and his daughter to arrive. I did not have a lot of time to cool my heels and noticed Don and his daughter arrive and take a seat. Her boyfriend (I assume it was her boyfriend since he held her chair and sat down next to her) seated her and sat down between her and Don, chatting amiably.

I was nervous and a bit anxious since they had arrived and were just a table away. I kept an eye on Don, but not so anyone would notice. I tried to listen to their conversation, but the club was noisy and I could not hear anything. Don did not notice me and did not even look in my direction. He was engaged in conversation with his daughter and her boyfriend, laughing and explaining the history of how he came to be there at The Humidor to recite his poetry. I already knew all that, so I did not join in the conversation, stayed silent, and waited for some hint as to when -- and if -- he would introduce me.

He did not.

Don did not even notice me when the emcee called him to the stage where he pulled his poems from his jacket, took a deep breath, licked his lips, and began to read -- and perform -- his poetry. It was Poetry Slam night and everyone else got up on stage and performed their poems. Don was not the poetry slam kind of poet. He was a poet, but much like me who never remembers his writing well enough to recite without reading my notes, Don did not so much as perform his work, he read them.

He read some of his racier poems, but not the poems he wrote about me or about anything that could be construed as being about a young female (or a mistress), just poems that had racy details like ripe peaches warm from the sun and dripping with nectar falling into his hands, and such like.

As soon as he finished and took his seat (still without recognizing me or introducing me to his daughter and her boyfriend), they chatted quietly about Don's performance and marveled at the much younger poets who wore dredlocks and were pierced in various places in their eyebrows, lips, and one young girl had a diamond stud in her nose gesticulated, screamed, and performed their poems to thunderous applause.

Don had rated a polite smattering of respectful applause, but no thunder echoed in that smoky and darkened club -- and no sign of recognition nor did he turn to me or introduce me to his daughter or her boyfriend. After a polite interval, the boyfriend stood up, reached his hand to Don's daughter, and assisted her to stand, helped her into her coat (it was winter after all), waited patiently for Don to rise and shake his hand, and they left. Don followed them out the door and into the blackness beyond the fog of cigarette and cigar smoke, leaving me behind unrecognized and still waiting to be introduced. ''

The eyes certainly do not have it. He did not notice me sitting at the table next to him. He would not have crossed the room -- or turn around -- to look at me. 

I finished my drink and began to stand when the gentleman behind me touched my elbow and asked if I would like to sit down."'No, I think it is time for me to go home."

"Will you be all right to drive?" he asked.

"Of course. I only had one Irish coffee, and it was more coffee than Irish," I said. "After the one coffee, I just drank ice water. That was hours ago. I will be fine to drive," I assured him.

"Just checking," he said. The cops have been out in force and I did not want you to be arrested for drunk driving."

"I think I could walk a straight line after half a dozen glasses of ice water," I said. "Thank you."

I drove home and driving was easier than I thought since I finally knew how to get to The Humidor and would be traveling home on the freeway. The road was slick. It had been snowing and sleeting since I had been inside The Humidor, but slick roads bring out the stupid in other drivers. That night was just such a night for idiots on the road. Good thing I had drunk very little of the Iris coffee. I had never liked coffee -- it was too bitter -- and no amount of Irish cream would change my mind. I did not smoke either, but was brought up in a house where Mom smoked, and so did my Grandma, Grandpa, and my aunt -- all of whom were back in Columbus and unaware that I was out and about on such a night.

As soon as I thought I was no worse for wear, I hit a slick spot and careened toward the back of an empty semi truck. I remembered to keep my foot off the brake and steered slowly into the spin. I slowly and very deliberately caromed off the guard rail until I was pointed back the way I had come. I was shaken but alive and unhurt. The car was still running and no one still driving the freeway had noticed I had had an accident. Not even the police since I saw no police and no cruisers flashing red lights at me. I was safe and unharmed -- and I was unnoticed by drivers heading down the road, opposite to where I was facing. The car was still running and I suddenly had the feeling that I would still be good enough to drive. The truck I almost hit had continued on his way, had not even noticed I almost hit him, and my car was still running.

I looked out at the traffic, waiting for a good time to see if the car could drive, pulled out onto the freeway, hands shaking, turned back around, and headed for home. The car still drove. I had not actually crashed into the guardrail. I was safe, my car still drove, and I soon exited the freeway, hands still shaking, and pulled off at the Budget Motel where I currently lived, parked the car, took a few deep, deep breaths, stilled my hands, and got out of the car. After putting my key in the door, I pushed open the door, hung up my jacket, and fell onto the bed, and did not even notice the door was still ajar. I levered myself up, shut and locked the door, kicked off my shoes, and crawled into bed with my clothes still on.

I was home at last.

I was alive.

I was safe.

Don had not recognized me or introduced me.

The evening was a bust, but I did not care. I was alive, unhurt, and my hands had stopped shaking.

I was alive.

I did not realize anything until the next morning when the phone jangled me awake.

"Who the f...?"

That is all. Disperse.

Banned

Growing up, I knew I was pretty. Mom told me over and over, "You have such a pretty face," as if my pretty face trumped my brains and talent. As long as I had a pretty face, that was all I needed. It may have been all she needed, but the only thing I needed was a penis. That would make everything possible. Boys had all the breaks. Jimmy could do reprehensible things and because he was a boy -- Mom's boy -- all would be forgiven. As long as he had a penis, Jimmy got all the breaks and everything he ever wanted, except when he misbehaved and the neighbors across the street from us in Hampton Roads, Virginia banned him from their yard. The Alexanders, Mrs. Alexander, banned Carol, too. If Jimmy was in trouble it meant he had followed Carol into trouble and Mrs. Alexander forbid them from entering her yard. Carol and Jimmy sat on the edge of the street, their legs dangling into the rain ditch, making sure they did not get any closer. They knew that either Mrs. Alexander's daughters would run and tell on them, tattle to their mother.

I stayed out of the drama, not only because I was not forbidden the yard but because when whatever happened, I had been playing or adventuring with Butchie and Bobby, the Alexanders' oldest boys. They did not suffer a child such as Jimmy and they did not like Carol either. As far as Butchie and Bobby were concerned, Carol was a spoiled brat, just like Jimmy. She was a fussy spoiled brat who always changed her clothes a bunch of times a day. That was too much for the boys.

Their sisters, Debbie and their other little sister were irritating tattletales and the boys treated them as older brothers always treated sisters -- avoiding them as much as possible.

The only Cornwell the boys liked was me, nearly the same age and much more approachable and friendly -- that opposite of Carol and Jimmy. The only other Alexander who liked Jimmy was Juma, the Alexanders' youngest child who had been born in Africa when their father was stationed in Libya with the Air Force.

Dad was Army, but Mr. Alexander was Air Force. He was stationed at Langley Air Force Base where Mom worked a second job. Langley was where the CIA had The Shop of Stephen King's horror novels where the telekinetic -- Fire Starter -- had lived when she was kidnapped by the CIA after the unthinkable happened -- a Fire Starter was born to two students that supplemented their income by volunteering for testing (a study put together by the CIA where student volunteers were given LSD and whatever symptoms occurred were carefully watched by CIA operatives.

No, I do not think that Mr. Alexander was a CIA operative, just an airman who was stationed at Langley -- probably a sergeant or other noncom just like my dad who was a sergeant and stationed at the Army base, Fort Monroe. Fort Monroe was on the peninsula where Dad caught pigeons to add to his backyard collection. Dad built cages for the pigeons and kept them there. That is where I learned how to feed the pigeons, putting corn in their beaks and massaging their necks to encourage the food to go down.

I loved feeding the pigeons and enjoyed holding and feeding the pigeons, especially when they flew around the yard and over the picnic table in the back yard where one of the pigeons let loose as it flew over the table. The bird lime landed on the bite of steak just before Mom put it in her mouth. She was horrified and dumped the mess when she dropped the forkful on the ground. Horrors. Ick! "Jim," she told Dad, get rid of those filthy birds." Mom may have ordered their deaths, but Dad shooed them into the cages and locked the birds away from sight.

Mom fussed and fretted the rest of the weekend, even after the Alexanders went home after playing cards that night. Mom fussed and fretted the rest of the night. Mom and Dad argued all night. Dad laughed about the pigeon's accurate aim. Mom fussed and fretted, furious and upset that Dad had not destroyed the filthy birds. I silently snickered as I had since the pigeon had fouled Mom's steak, but softly so no one could hear me. Carol was upset because Mom was upset and Jimmy fell to sleep still snickering under his breath. Jimmy was a child, he thought it was funny -- until he fell asleep.

Mom fussed at Dad until even I fell asleep. Mom was determined Dad get rid of "those filthy things" once and for all. Whatever dire consequences Mom threatened, the incident was forgotten as all such incidents fade into the past in time.

No doubt Mom planned to let the pigeons loose or contrive to leave the cage door unlocked and open so the filthy things would fly away and leave her food untouched in the future. She refused to ever eat in the back yard. "There will be no more cookouts," she said. Carol was silent. Jimmy whined and fussed. I went out the front door to go across the street.

Mom called me back from the front porch. "You are forbidden to go across the street," she said. I stopped dead in my tracks and she turned around and went back into the house. She knew without a doubt I would soon follow. I was very well behaved, an obedient daughter.

I cast a regretful look behind me as first Bobby and then Butchie stopped in their tracks looking while I walked slowly away, casting glances back at the Alexanders, shrugging my shoulders, and proceeding through the front gate, closing the gate, and dragging my heels as I walked up the stairs into the house. I closed the door behind me, locking eyes with Butchie and Bobby before I closed the door.

Mom pounced on me as soon as the door was closed. "You are not to go into the Alexanders' yard."

"But Mom...," I complained.

"You are forbidden to go over there."

"Mrs. Alexander cast Carol and Jimmy out of their yard. I was not banned," I said.

"You are not going to go to the Alexanders. As long as Jimmy and Carol are banned, you will be banned."

"But Mom...," I complained.

"Not another word." Mom put her foot down and I knew there was nothing I could say or do. Jimmy and Carol were banned and now so was I. End of story. There was no story I could tell, no excuse I could give, nothing I could say that would make Mom relent. If Jimmy and Carol were banned, I was banned. Mom was leveling the playing field. Whatever trouble Jimmy and Carol had gotten into, the Alexanders would have to do without me, too. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander would plead with her -- explain things from their perspective, but Mom would never relent. As long as Jimmy and Carol were banned, I would share their punishment.

Jimmy and Carol had been banned before. I would wait it out until Mom felt Jimmy and Carol were banned no longer. I had shared the banning before. Jimmy would be out, and Carol with him as long as the punishment stood.

Go to your room," Mom said.

At least I had my books. I stomped up the stairs, closed the door between the room I shared with Carol and Jimmy's room, and flopped down on the bed. I had been planning to read, "Heidi" by Johanna Spyri when Aunt Anne sent it for my birthday last week. I had read it once right after I received it, but I would enjoy reading it again. Soon Adeleide was seated on a stool eating melted cheese her grandfather had made and drinking fresh goat milk from one of Grandfather's goats after Peter, the goatherd, brought the goats back and marched off down the Alp to his grandmother's home. As Heidi drifted off to sleep in the linens stuffed with fresh hay beneath the stars visible through the hole in the roof. I could almost smell the fresh hay and heard the roaring of the pines bending here and there in the wind soughing through the pines on the Alp, book clutched to my chest, head nestled in the pillow beneath my head.

"Dinner," Mom called up the stairs. I rubbed my eyes and stumbled up from my nap. I could make it down the stairs to the bathroom, wash my hands, and go to the kitchen for dinner. It smelled good. Meatloaf. I would be glad to scoop up potatoes and carrots and place them around the meatloaf.

Dad was still dressed in his uniform as he filled the plates and passed one to Carol, Jimmy, and me. then he filled Mom's plate and passed it to her, filled his own plate, and Mom bowed her head and had Jimmy say Grace.

For now, the ban would be enforced. Good thing the weekend would soon arrive and I would pack up the weekly delivery of TV Guide. I would have to go door to door to sell the TV Guide as soon as I finished my piano lesson with the old German woman. If I was lucky and had learned my lesson, Mrs. Marquardt would not smack my hands with the ruler. I would play the piano (badly if I had not practiced enough) and would spend the morning smelling Mrs. Marquardt's apartment and the big box of rasins she always fed the pigeons that landed on her second floor apartment window sill. I would learn do my lesson and maybe she would set me something new, something as good as The Spinning Song I learned last month. I hope, I hope.

I would practice after dinner as soon as I washed the dishes. Maybe for once Carol would wash and I would dry, but more likely Carol would not do her part of the chore and I would end up washing the dishes -- again. Mom let Carol get away with it and would order me to wash the dishes. She said it was easier to get me to do the chores than to argue with Carol. I really hoped Carol would do her chores and I could practice my lesson. If I dried the dishes, I would be able to practice sooner.

Carol cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink. She turned on the hot water, squirted the soap in the sink, and picked up the dish rag. "I'll dry," she said.

"It's your turn," I said.

"I washed the dishes last night," she said.

Mom walked in. "Just do the dishes," Mom said.
 
I decided I could practice sooner if I washed the dishes. Mom said she would make up a chore list and post it on the fridge. Wouldn't matter. Even if Mom wrote down the chores, Carol would still make sure she got out of it. I would end up doing the dishes, so I might as well get to it so I could practice.  Sooner started, sooner done. I pulled on the rubber gloves, picked up the dishcloth, and started the dishes.

 "Don't forget to wipe the table and sweep the floor," Mom said.

Sooner started, sooner done. Carol would not even pick up the boom and dustpan and sweep the floor. there was not a chore she would ditch and I would end up doing it all. Right now, I'd wash and she would rag me about washing the dishes faster so she could dry the dishes and put them away.

I washed. Carol griped, hand held out for the next dish. She continued griping and holding out her dish towel covered hand. "Why don't you sweep the floor. I'll get done sooner and you can dry."

"You just want to get me to do your work," Carol said.

"The kitchen has to be cleaned one way or the other. Why don't you sweep the floor?"I asked.

"No, you sweep the floor as soon as you finish washing the dishes."

"Why can't you just sweep the floor?" I asked.

"You would do anything to get out of doing the dishes," she said.

"And you would pile the sweeping on my shoulders and get out of your share of the chores," I said. "When Mom posts the chores list tomorrow, you'll have to do your chores and I won't have to do them for you."

"Wanna bet?" she asked.

"How are you going to slip out of it if Mom writes up the list?"

"I will have studying to do."

"So do I tonight, but I'm washing the dishes."

She dropped the plate into the sink.

"I just washed that," I protested.

"It was dirty," she quipped.

"Where?" I asked, washing the dish again and rinsing it in the other sink.

Carol picked up the dripping dish, let it drip into the dishwater, and scrutinized it closely, wiping the dish slowly as if trying t catch the food so she could show me I was doing a bad job. Finally, she finished wiping the dish, stacked it on top of the clean dishes, and lifted them into the cabinet. "You finally got it clean," she said.

I wash another couple of dishes, rinsed them, and stacked them in the drainer. "You're getting behind," I said.

"Forgot the silverware," she said.

"Go get the broom and sweep the floor," I said.

"Get the rest of the dishes from the table and do the silverware. And don't forget the pots and pans," she ordered.

"As soon as you sweep the floor," I said.

"Fat chance," she said. "Mom will make you do it."

"I'm washing the dishes."

"Mom will make you sweep the floor, too."

"I'm washing the dishes."

"I have homework.  Just watch."

When Mom came into the kitchen, Carol whined about having homework to do. Mom let her go as soon as she dried the silverware. She ordered me to sweep the floor and take out the trash. It would not do to complain. Carol got her way and I will sweep the floor and take out the trash. Maybe I would get time to practice tomorrow . Mom tacked the chore list on the fridge. Days of the week were marked across the top and my name was listed in tomorrow's chore. Carol's name did not appear anywhere. You will wash this week and Carol will wash next week."

"I did the dishes tonight. why do  I have to do them the rest of the week?" I asked.

"You will take turns. You do this week and Carol will do next week. You will switch weeks."

"Like we switched every other day?"

"It is easier to manage weeks. Days can get lost. You will switch weeks and since you started this week, Carol will take next week."

"Until she whines and fusses and you decide it is easier to make me do it," I said.

"You're whining and fussing and I haven't asked Carol to take over," Mom said.

"Because Carol's whining and fussing is louder than mine." I said.

Mom and I went back and forth arguing until she put an end to the argument. She slapped me in the face.

No matter whether or not the argument was over tonight, we would argue again. It was inevitable. Carol would win and I would lose. I might as well resign myself to doing the dishes. Carol will not do her share and Mom will back her up. Might as well get it over with. I finished the dishes, wiped off the table, picked up the broom and swept the floor. I wiped out the sink, dried the dishes. wiped the table, and wrapped the trash before I took it out and set it outside the gate for the trash men to pick it up tomorrow. When I got home from school, I would bring in the trashcan and start dinner. Tomorrow is another day and Carol is still my conniving sister. C'est la vie.

That is all. Disperse.

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.

Running Out of Options?

Still looking for work. I was just rejected by a company because they rejected me for not following their preferred method of captioning. No conversation. No ifs, ands, or buts. Rejected.

I might have curled up and died or even chalked the rejection of me and my lack of fitting into their employment model because I was coming down with Alzheimer's, but that is not my way and not the way I think. I have been keto for over a year and thus my mental agility is not in question because keto improves the brain. I've also begun sketching and relearning my drawing skills once again. I've started by copying comics because that is easy (sort of) and quickly learned -- at least for me. I have a sketchbook and pencils, but I need a pencil sharpener to put a point on the pencils. I cannot afford a sharpener of any kind because I only have my social security income to live on and right now, though it will increase by 2.8% in January, it is not enough. I haven't finished clearing out all the previous demands on my income from when I had a job and that is costing me $37 a hit and eating into the following month's social security income. No wonder my sisters question me about why I came back to Ohio and BB bullies and bashes me for my spur of the moment choice.

Maybe it was a questionable choice (according to BB), but I didn't want to wait to make the decision and not make the move because it would be better later. I am here and Colorado is behind me. Maybe I should have consulted my sons and moved closer to them, but I doubt the bullying and bashing would not have been any better. They have lied about me for years, telling their side of the story to cover their own tracks -- and I get that, but I would not like begging them for a little money or hoping they will be far more generous than the rest of my family has been. Beanie can be excluded from that generosity because she was generous in the beginning before her husband, Dan, saw me as a negative in Beanie's life and Beanie did not stand up for me. I get it. She was tired and worn out by working her day job, doing my laundry because I was debilitated and incontinent, and she does not consider me a priority or even a family member now that she has her own family -- husband, Dan, and stepchildren Daniel and Jordan.

Maybe I'm being too harsh because the Mushroom and BB let her take care of Dad, driving him to his appointments and visiting him every day because she lived closer to our parents then. That was a job they had always believe I would fill because I had no husband and no children living at home and should've taken care of my parents. That is not what I chose when they told me that was my job when I lived in Colorado. I was not going to finally be admitted into the family and take care of my parents when they, the biological spawn of our mother, decided it was time to do my duty. Nope. No. Nyet. No Way Jose.

Dad died and BB finally took Mom into her own home because she was considered the oldest child. They had already ruled me out and cast me from the family. Sorry that you didn't consider me family member enough until you wanted to foist our parents' care and keeping on me, the adopted daughter, when it came time.

But I have been cast out -- or shelved or whatever you call it -- here in Urbana because it is close to BB's home, except that BB doesn't visit because she works for a living. I don't work for a living because that was taken out of my hands January 5, 2018 when Beanie had me taken to the hospital where I was diagnosed with a laundry list of things that the doctors decided I had but never actually found. I was conveniently shelved and eventually handed with a $12,000+ bill that Medicare has not yet signed off on and collection companies have already been beating at my door in spite of having only my sociable security as one Steven King character called it. 

So I continue looking for a job while being intermittently hounded by colleges and universities dangling federal and state grants while they try to fit me into whatever debt hole they are trying to fill. Sorry, but I won't fall into your trap, not this year, and not this time. I will look for continuing education here in Urbana because I have access to free transport living here in Messiah Community. I wish I had a car, but that won't happen until BB or Crystal or someone will drive me to Stow to get the warrant off my driving privileges, which won't happen any time soon if I have to rely on others for transportation. I cannot afford to pay for a driver because I am held hostage by my lack of income, which is enough to pay for the ever-mounting $37 charges every month, eating up my income before I even get it -- and my bank was closed here in Urbana and the building given over to the City of Urbana for their own personal use. No bank within driving distance and I cannot drive since I don't have a car and don't have the ability to clear my license without a trip to Stow.
If I hadn't been honest with BB and told her I didn't have a drivers license, only a state ID card, maybe she would have relented and let me drive or loaned me one of her several cars. But, no, I was honest and here I am shelved and ignored or forgotten here in Urbana where the possibilities are fast shrinking.
What I really need is enough money  to get clear of the mounting bank charges by a nonexistent in Urbana bank and I cannot ask my family since that would end with bullying and bashing because I left Colorado and moved here to be in my home state near my family which has also disappeared or think about me less often than the copy of Forever Amber on BB's bookshelf.
I suppose I could mount a Go Fund Me campaign but sending money to a senior citizen for food and charges would be met with the same blank stare I get from a photo of BB or Beanie or the Mushroom on the Internet. I could ask my children, but that would be as welcome as a shit storm in the middle of August. After all, why would they help their mother since she is the dregs of the earth according to what I've been told of their lies about me? Probably a snowball's chance in Hell come to that.
I won't beg and I won't ask friends that have become closer than family to me because I'm not done looking for a job. I will wash dishes, bus tables, clean streets, or empty trash. I will do all I can and hope to be paid for it. I started out as a child shoveling sidewalks, driveways, and paths and asked for nothing but what the recipient of my work ethic could or would afford me. I was once paid a whole dime after shoveling front and back walks and the driveway for one old lady and the dime was a shiny silver dime that I pocketed, thanked her, and went to the next person on the street. I enjoyed those times when someone paid me with a home baked chocolate cookie and smiled broadly when someone paid me with folding money.
In a sense, I am in the same position, but I am not a child hoping to do something good for the neighbors. I am a senior citizen who has been ignored, shelved, or cast aside for choosing to leave Colorado and come back to Ohio, a decision I am beginning to regret and question. I am a rootless wanderer who has no family to speak of hoping for a break. What can I do now? I've stopped all pre-arranged charges coming from my meager account and I pray that someone -- anyone -- will see my willingness to work at anything. I can see now that honesty is not always the best policy when honesty can be fashioned into a weapon and used to beat someone down.
That is all. Disperse.

Of Circuses and Men

 Lady Celia responded to my last post about my cousin, Allyson Gross, whose life and death were memorialized in a Columbus Dispatch Sunday article that included stories about two other women with heart disease who died. The point was to raise awareness of heart disease and maybe boost donations to the hear disease charities to help fund research so these women need not have died needlessly.

At any rate, my answer to Lady Celia was rather long-winded and I went off on a riff about the death of my grandson, Connor, and how his mother continues to mourn him publicly on Facebook as his and his twin Sierra's birthday nears this month. Their birthday is/was six days after mine on the 23rd. (If you're slow with the math and want to know when my birthday is, it's the 17th when I turn 61.) I also answered her question about how I have been doing since I so seldom post anything here on LJ, though I keep paying the annual fees. I could read the posts without paying the fee for having an place to post, but I've gotten into the habit since I began posting here the summer of 2002 when membership was opened to the public at large. I began with a Dead Journal account, which lies abandoned over on their site and for which I no longer pay the fees, and kept hoping someone would give me a code so I could join Live Journal.

Before I wax macabre and melancholy over Connor's death or get into another groove musing about the impact that youthful death has on us all, I think I should switch to the main focus in my life these days -- informing people that, yes, we are a hybrid species created by extra terrestrials who were space travelers here to mine gold about 450,000 or so years ago and that, yes, there is a 10th planet (or rather a 12th planet according to Zechariah Sitchin and the Sumerians who inscribed the clay tablets that formed the basis of his Earth Chronicles books and fueled an international climb to fame that Erich von Daniken screwed up when he manufactured an ancient artifact to boost his own fame and continue his campaign to inform the world that the ancient civilizations scientists and historians purport to know really did believe in and depict ancient astronauts) and it is coming our way soon. Look up Google Sky and point the viewer to the space near Orion's belt and you will see either a black rectangle or what looks like a planet speeding towards Earth across the ecliptic plane of the rest of the solar systems denizens and resembles the flying disk that is prominently featured in ancient art and carvings through the Middle East and the ancient world of Egypt and its risen and fallen civilizations.

Yes, I believe that there are populated worlds on the planets strewn about the universe and that they have and still do visit Earth. According to Corey Goode and alien astronaut believer, David Wilcock, on Gaia.com and Cosmic Disclosure, there are numerous alien races actively involved in abductions and experiments on humans and there are civilizations undreamed of residing within this hollow planet out there among the stars somewhere near Pluto and the Kuiper belt discussing how to reveal the truth to the rest of the world and silence the forces that have actively kept humanity in the dark about their origins while running a disinformation campaign that demonizes and blackens the names of people who continue to maintain that aliens are among us. Remind you of Channing Tatum's assurances and explanations to Jupiter Jones when he saved her from aliens attempting to kidnap and/or kill her? Well, there are growing numbers of people who are willing to face the slings and arrows of outrageous detractors determined to keep the truth about who and what we are and how we came to be from us, and they are going public and giving lecture tours around the world and filming movies and documentaries and television shows every day. Men like Michael Tellinger from South Africa who are willing to put their money and their beliefs out where everyone can see them.

And it doesn't hurt that Tellinger is a handsome middle-aged man who is engaging and intelligent and a hunk.

Besides spending time researching and drooling over Michael Tellinger while learning more about my own lifelong obsession with the truth of our origins, I have been working and fuming about the draconian -- and punitive -- corporate policies that keep me off balance with slave wages and barely that, although the company is willing to make up the difference between the money they pay me and the national and state minimum wage laws just to keep the Dept of Labor from looking too closely into their business practices and their blatantly enforced and sanctioned slave wages and status. Those Indians are smart enough to know that the government will stand idly by as long as they stay a frog's hair over the legal lines as they continue to pay skilled and educated employees less than a bum makes at a day labor site digging ditches and transporting Port-a-potties. But that is another rant for another time. This rant is to introduce me to reader who've never read my posts and remind old LJ friends that I am alive and still a salty old broad getting saltier and soon a year older.

I have also taken up Chinese calligraphy (recently, like yesterday recently) and dived back into drawing and art with colored pencil while indulging my passion for baking and collecting cardboard boxes from Amazon.com. In my snowy back of beyond I continue my feud with the USPS and their dwindling services, enslaved to their draconian rules about how often I must check the cluster collection box 5 miles down the road and refusing to drive the 30 miles to the post office in Florissant proper (half a city block of auto repair shops, farm and hardware supply, dog grooming, and back yard auto repair business in the owner's garage, as well as a couple of closed down restaurants, a quick shop market in a defunct gas station, one gas stations, and a liquor store next to the market where there is a Subway shop inside the market) to pick up the location of and key to my new mailbox that the USPS so generously moved without informing me. I am a rebel to the end, though a rebel without a mailbox at present maintained by one old woman in a Range Rover who delivers to the scattered cluster boxes between here (relatively here) and the post office 30 miles away. The post mistress told me that I must pick up my mail every 2 days, which is often not possible with the weather (currently snowy and cold with impassable roads that UPS drivers haven't braved this week) and my schedule and the fact that I seldom need to go off my own property let alone 30 miles to the post office where I was T-boned a year ago by a Chevy truck passing me across a double yellow line at about 50 mph and rising without paying attention to my blinking turn signal as I slowed down to pull into the post office lot to put some mail in the box. Maybe you can see my reluctance to deal with draconian USPS, or rather local post office rules for the privilege of finding out where my new mailbox is located and obtaining keys for same.

Or not.

I'd rather go without the reams of junk mail and the occasional hard copy acknowledgement of information I've already received by email (or the rarer still letter or card from a friend) for that. All business mail and bills come to me by email so there is little motivation for me to bother with the often absent benefits of driving 5 miles to check the mail every other day, especially since I refuse to buy anything that will be delivered by post and not by UPS.

And there it is, a few snippets of information about how I'm doing these days. I work graveyard shift and usually sleep during the day, but I'm still buzzing from Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away and fantasies about the daring middle-aged man who does not fly on the trapeze but makes my whores moan louder with his intellectual banter about ancient civilizations and the truth of our prediluvial origins.

That is all. Disperse.

Stop Bugging Me!

I don't ask for much, and I know I've groused about this before, but I am so tired of business entities and sellers demanding I review their products/work/etc. immediately. Everyone is SO VERY REVIEW DRIVEN and it's really getting on my last nerve. If I had to review every single, solitary product I've bought I'd have no time for anything else because I can't just give them a few stars. NO! They want words from me too. Seriously?

Here's the quick skinny. If I keep buying the product then you can safely assume that I like the product. If you screwed up and sent me an item in the mail, by UPS, etc. and the packaging was far too big for a single item, especially when it is 1 of 3 items, each sent separately with lots of air filled plastic bladders, and what was sealed inside the original item has fallen out of the original packaging, then, yes, I will give you a bad review. Refunding my money might result in me deleting the original negative review, but on no account does that mean I will upgrade the negative service to a positive service. The item was damaged because of poor packaging to send and it was a waste of resources and my time since the item was DAMAGED! Have you finally gotten that message now? Keep bugging me and I will put back up the negative review and mention how you have hounded me several times a day since I contacted you begging me for a review. STOP IT! NOW!

Okay, now that I have that off my mind and I feel a little bit better, I can move on to other things, like almost all my seeds have sprouted and now I need to get busy and plant the other seeds in their little peat buttons, ready the planters, put together the 2 deck chairs I bought, and finish getting rid of the rest of the boxes and packing materials that have accumulated over the past weeks, most of which are for my seeds and plans for container gardening.

And then there are the constant demands and rounds of begging from work insisting that I give up my free time to work even more hours to bail them out because the numerous hospitals they service are running out of turn-around-time and they will be in breach of contract and have to pay for their breach. I get that you need to keep good relations with your customers, but I do my time and should not be expected to pick up the slack on other accounts when you have had me running around learning a whole bunch of different accounts, 7 in the past 3 months, and keeping me in QC hell because I don't have the time to get up to speed on any one account because I am confused learning so many different account protocols in a short space of time without finding my groove in any one account before you bump me into yet another account. Please! Give me some time to get up to speed before you load any more on my tired brain, especially since you want me to also pick up the slack at yet another long list of hospitals and health network without so much as hazard pay or financial remuneration. I like you, but not that much. Be glad that is the case.


Okay, so it's not all bad. They have offerered a 2 for 2 bonus for my extra time and no days off that will result in me getting 2 hours of PTO (paid time off) in return for 2 hours of my free time given to your customer relations, but I would prefer something more useful, like a year's worth of paid health benefits, dental, and vision with no cost to me. That would be better in my opinion. in the meantime, get behind sellers demanding reviews good reviews. I'll get to you eventually -- maybe.

I found yet another Kdrama. This one is called Good Doctor and is about an autistic young man who is brilliant where medicine is concerned. He has the classic autistic behaviors when confronted with violence, chaos, and new situations, but he is still pretty high functioning. I liked the young man, Park Si On (pronounced Park Shi On), and found him sweet, sad, and brilliant, as well as a bit immature. What else could one expect from such a situation? After all, there should be room for growth and advancement, and there was plenty.

Good Doctor reminded me a bit of The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, which is about an autistic young man who is high functioning, but who should be cured, fixed, whatever because he's not like other people. I found Moon's protagonist quite fascinating as he was, even with his rituals and autistic behaviors, but then I enjoy the oddities and special people in life. They make everything more interesting, even when they're being frustrating. Park Si ON was very much like that. Yes, he could be frustrating, but he had a good heart and genuinely cared for the children he was determined to heal, just as Lou Arrendale of Moon's vision of autism is special and as unique as a snowflake even though he was too early to benefit from genetic manipulation that would fix him, as if he were a broken toy. Park Si On isn't a broken toy either and the knowledge he has gained in his studies is not just information contained in a robotic data bank. It's so much more -- even though it is difficult for him to articulate in the normal way. These two young men are extraordinary and I would like to see American television embrace such a concept and give it substance and reality. Now that would be worth watching.

As we strive to make robots more human, maybe we should also spend some time embracing the unusual, odd, and special in humans. That is a subject for another post and will likely encompass Alan Turing and Eva, a 10-year-old free robot who is as unique and beautiful as she is dangerous. After all, every odd duck is complex in so many ways. We shouldn't seek to make them conform or mentally, physically, or chemically castrate them, but celebrate their differences and the unique vision they embody.

One thing I see is that even when a Kdrama is set in modern times the basic themes remain: abuse of power, politics, self-effacement, and romance. Whether set in centuries past or in a modern hospital (the best in the country), the back stabbing and politicking remain, no doubt an offshoot of earlier times when rank and how you get and maintain it is of paramount importance, even to an young boy with autism violently abused by his alcoholic father and neglected to the point where he ends up being brought up in an orphanage because his father hates him and wishes him dead -- at least until it's time for said abusive alcoholic father to face his own mortality and the fact that there will be no filial devotion from the child he battered unless he makes peace just in time to guilt his son into making propitious offerings and setting out ancestral meals for him to enjoy in the aferlife. Reminds me of Livia begging Claudius, who she has repudiated and wished dead numerous times, except that he is a stumbling, bumbling idiot, to make her a goddess when he becomes emperor, as he undoubtedly will because he has outlasted all his relatives, so she won't spend eternity in the fiery furnace of hell for her murders in her quest to make her family important and powerful and wealthy . . . for the good of the Republic. Funny how that works out.

If you'd like to watch a Kdrama, like The Moon Embracing the Sun or Good Doctor, go to Netflix and sign up for streaming or videos by mail. That is where I found them.

There are so many things for me to write about -- Yggdrasil, the heaven-purgatory-hell, 7 levels of existence of Mayan belief, etc. -- not to mention seeds sprouting into plants, getting back to writing, continuing my cross stitch projects, and any number of personal and not so personal subjects, but I'll stop here -- while I'm at least a little ahead. in the meantime . . .

That is all. Disperse.

Knock, Knock, Knock

This weekend I tried to get back into a more normal sleeping rhythm as mine was disrupted by working back to back full time jobs last week, without sleep for 3 days, and cranky as a wet hen, and just about as aggressive, though there is no one here to benefit from it or be hurt by it. UPS doesn't deliver on weekends and I didn't have any visitors.  At least not so you'd notice, though I could swear...

When I lived in the cottage in Colorado Springs I had several instances where I would be deeply asleep, heavy into the REM/NREM phase, and I'd hear someone knocking on the door, waking me abruptly from sleep. I got out of bed and went to the door and there was no one there and no sign anyone had been there. The same thing happened this morning, or rather very late last night. At 2:30 AM to be exact. 

I was deep into the REM/NREM sleep and 3 loud knocks on the glass front door woke me immediately, dragging me from whatever dream I was enjoying at that moment. (And that seems to be the only similarity; I'm always dreaming something really good.) I woke to darkness and listened for another knock. Nothing. No sounds outside of the furnace and the lack of wind howling outside. No shuffling. No sound of the suet cage banging on the back door -- because all the birds were asleep and not feeding for a change. Nothing. Even the usual stirrings, creakings, rumblings, and crackings were silent. I got up in darkness, leaving the light off, and walked boldly down the hallway. The front door glowed with light from the big pole light in the driveway, a blue glow that lit the way adequately. I peered through the front door glass and there was no sign of anyone have been there since yesterday afternoon when UPS dropped off a small package in a plastic bag. His footprints were nearly filled in from the snow that had since fallen. Nothing new. No sign of new tracks in the driveway and the old tracks were also covered with newly fallen snow. I went to the back door and there were no signs of anyone have been there either. The bird tracks were covered with new snow and there were no tire tracks in the driveway in any direction.  I went back to bed.

When I was fully awake this afternoon I got online and searched the Net for answers, as I had done the first couple of times it happened and I decided I had not missed anyone at the door. The explanations ranged from dream interpretation (important news or financial collapse) to UFO visitations (3 knocks akin to a hypnotist snapping his fingers to wake the hypnotized from sleep) to awaken the abducted from their drugged trance to some sort of neurologic disorder. 

It wasn't sleep apnea or even obstructive sleep apnea because there has been no snorting, gasping, feeling of being hag-ridden, someone sitting on my chest (cats stealing breath) or other signs of choking or loss of oxygen. I do tend towards sinus and nasal congestion, but that has more to do with changes in atmospheric pressure (better than arthritis and bunions for telling the weather) than with sleep apnea. And there were no signs of other physiologic disturbances. 

I suppose I could go with some apparition or spirit trying to get my attention because Kevin had stopped by some time this morning, about 8 AM, but I thought that was my imagination at the time. How do I know it was Kevin? The prints of his heavy duty snow boots outside my front door and new tracks in the driveway going in an out when I got up. Kevin didn't knock and he didn't say anything, but I did hear noises at the door, probably Kevin trying the knob and finding it locked. He knows I don't lock the back door, but it was evidently not important or he would have come into the house across the brand new welcome mat I put out to keep his wet and muddy boots off my living room carpet.   None of that had anything to do with the 3 knocks on the door.

When I lived at the cottage in the Springs the knocks sounded on a wooden door. I have only 1 wooden door here; all the others are glass. The knocks I heard this morning were 3 knocks on a glass door. I know my mind keeps working when I am asleep (it has to keep the body running [digesting, breathing, pumping blood, etc.] even though I'm resting). I do think my mind is sufficiently advanced to be able to differentiate the sounds of knocking on wood and on glass, but that would take a level of sophistication that seems like shooting fish in a barrel with a Howitzer. Too much effort for too little return. Something else is definitely going on. 

Being me, the first thing I imagine is a warning that someone is coming to force me out of my house or tell me someone is dead. Neither is the case, but my default setting is always trouble and always my fault or related to me. Yes, me living in a me-centric universe. It has to mean something, but for the life of me I cannot imagine what. 

Knowing what I do about alien abductions (yes, I've read Whitley Streiber's books and watched the X-Files. Like Mulder, I sort of believe, but not for the reasons you might think), believing that there is something in my brain or DNA to interest an alien to abduct me many times over the past 7 or so years, and probably the reason for my wanderlust and constant moving about for the better part of my life, even if I have to discount that my father was in the Army and we were deployed to various bases around Europe and Central America as well as the United States since I was 10 months old. Maybe that is where the books and stories I've written in my head have disappeared to. That's another story for another ride into the depths of the abyss that is my mind. 

Or maybe it is my clairvoyance, specifically my precognitive abilities, surfacing to let me know something or someone is coming. And it had better not be who I think it is because he will not get a better answer from me now -- or ever. 

Whatever is going on, if anyone has any suggestions, other than the ones touched on above, let me know. I'd like to know. You know what I always say: Knowledge is wasted when it isn't shared. 

That is all. Disperse.