Tresa's Blog

I used the term “Hey Stupid” to get my husbands attention as we were leaving IHOP the international restaurant this morning.  My daughter was with us and remarked that people should be around me to know why she acted as she did.  I wasn’t being mean or even derogatory to my husband and I had something legitimate to say.  We know when we are joking and when we aren’t.  The dog also answers to “Hey Stupid.”   If I start cooing and saying lovey dovey things everyone worries.

So then this afternoon I return my 70 year old brothers phone call (I was an afterthought with my parents, he is OLD, I am not).  He is a YOUNG 70 like we aren’t sure which childhood he is in.   He wanted to buy a new convertible a couple weeks ago..and has a racecar…  Anyway he wanted help with his new computer but had gotten it figured out, I know he can figure it out, I did, and I’ve seen him get on my computer so…….

So I get on facebook to  tell the masses there is fresh blood to pick on a new relative who has email.   My nephew replies ——-HE GOT A COMPUTER!!  It just struck me (perhaps because I had discussed the computer thing with the nephew previously) that of course my brother has a computer if he has email.  So what do I do?  Answer nicely?

You surely jest.

I wrote back and said no he didn’t get a computer he receives the messages through his brain waves by sitting there and humming.  Then I waited for the cursing to begin.  I was almost immediately gratified.  But I’m sitting there waiting for the reply and I’m grinning and I suddenly think, WHY does this make me SOOOO happy?  BTW my nephew used the exact curseword I knew he was going to use, perhaps because it fit?

I love my relatives….

Kids on patio

We all know the horror stories of step families, I’ve seen some and experienced a few with other step families.  I’m not saying this because I ever really didn’t like the kids (OK there were times but my own have given me some grief too) but because I just wanted to thank them for being what they are and who they are.

The kids call me old witch (all of them) but I don’t mind as other words which rhyme are MUCH worse and I do have dark hair and a big nose….

We had my two girls who were in their teens and husbands two sons that were 8 and 11 when we first got married living with us most or @ least part of the time.  He had two older girls and a girl who was 5 when we got married, she stayed with us every other weekend.  Yes that adds up to 7 children.  There were already grandkids in the equation….

Freezing stuff from the garden 15 years ago.....

I love my biological children.  I expect them to think like I do in certain ways.   It’s just programmed into  every mother.  The last few years I have been able to appreciate fully what we have all accomplished though.   It hasn’t always been pretty but now family gatherings are my most precious moments.  It’s a gentle roar with 7 kids, assorted kids and grandkids?  Plus spouses, spouses to be etc.    I don’t know how long it’s been since we all tried to sit down @ a table, usually we fill a room up with folding tables.

Christmas Two years ago....

My husband and I have only been married 18+ years but these people are my family and always will be through thick and thin.  I didn’t have anything to do with raising the two oldest girls but I’m not exactly a mother figure to them, more like an aunt.   I’ve come to realize what a precious gift I’ve been given lately.  The reason for all of this?  A gradutation, a wedding shower,  a visit from the new mother (youngest step daughter) and 4 calls later in the week one from each step child checking on how I was or inviting me to a family function.  My daughters are on facebook and we talk almost every day on there but  not all of the steps are but they ALL took the time out to call ME, their father wasn’t home this week.  It wasn’t even mothers day!!

I’m not given to extreme emotions (except for occasional anger which we won’t discuss now) and I’m usually way too COOL trying to be snide and dry to say these things but I just had to say them now.  I am so very proud, I’ve always said we somehow got the perfect step family (there is not such a thing but ours is VERY good).  I am so proud of each and every one of them.

There is no sure  formula for step families as far as I can tell.  Tolerance, time, humor and shared experiences and love for the same people are the key I believe.  OK, lots of laughter and good food and kids playing, movies stories, campfires….. and now a wedding…

God has truly blessed me, all of it may not have been what I envisioned when I was 19  but  he has filled my heart.

Me and second oldest Grandson.

Let’s get this straight, I’m like pretty sure I’m not sick so this is just a post OK?  The song thing and the rest I sort of came up with to torture my kids because I managed to raise some strait laced children?  I can hear the older one say “oh Mother” cuz she knows I hate to be called Mother for various reasons.  If you can’t take black humor, don’t read anymore, you have been warned.

I’ve sort of been holding back on you all, I thought if you knew how shall we say strange I really was you would maybe run screaming.

Now I’ve decided I must reveal the truth.

I’ve sort of planned my funeral.

Don’t get all morbid on me, OK?  I say that OK as a question quite a bit don’t I?

First of all some members of my family have been cremated.  Me? Not so much.  For some reason it just doesn’t seem right.  Now you will be really surprised @ my thought.  I would make good fertilizer.  Like ground up and sort of scattered over the garden?  Think of the pilgrims and the fish.   Same thing.

I don’t want to be embalmed.  But they need to make sure I’m really dead, especially if we go through with the fertilizer thing.  (you do know you can’t even start a family graveyard anymore don’t you?)  And if they do bury me take my wedding ring off and take all my organs, anything useful GET IT.

Any flowers wreaths etc. in fact the whole funeral thing leaves me cold.  NOPE, I wouldn’t mind a party though, a last hoo rah, I wouldn’t be there but we could have like pictures, not taken of me but of me alive (sicko, although my family does do the dead people picture thing, it’s stopping with THIS generation I tell ya).   I would prefer people feel free to celebrate as they want.  I pictured a cauldron in the garden behind the house that had been fertilized by me and maybe some wild dancing by moonlight and moonshine, but that’s just me.  (I am kidding about that last part, it was a bad dream I had)  But a really wild party with nothing actually burning or being wrecked would be appropriate.

Regarding the funeral music because they have all told me I will be dead and they will do what they durn well please so I suppose I will have a funeral so I might as well have the music I want?  Right? Right!

1. I can’t get no satisfaction, Rolling Stones, my daughters would dance to this when they were toddlers
2. Take it Easy, Eagles, my mantra, that and lusting after the Eagles
3. House of the Rising Sun, Animals, mostly because I can play it
4. And last but not least…… Sympathy for the Devil, Rolling Stones.  The title says it all.

I get into the last song and people (my nosy interfering dear family) are usually telling me I’m NOT getting my way, blah blah blah, they will tell the grandkids because they are the ones who will end up taking car of me.  That’s when I stop and plug my fingers in my ears and start singing loudly because I AM a grown up you know?  AND you know what I sing don’t you?

No Silly, not my funeral songs, Chantilly Lace, it’s a good drown out annoying brats my family song!

My daughter and I visited every gallery we could on this street, Los Olas Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Christmas Eve of 2005 and then went to Key West the next day.  Not your typical Christmas but a great one (my daughter paints and so do I, heaven for wanna be artists).  Don’t know if we visited Pocock Fine Art & Antiques but I saw it on this site and was reminded of it all.  The beauty of blogs….I think Los Olas is where they had the pink drawbridge over the canal…I bought this hat close to that drawbridge and gave it to my other daughter.

My daughter and tired tired grandkids

I have more pictures on the other laptop  I’ll try to put on some day.  And BTW if you ever need to drive in Fort Lauderdale?  Forget the turn signal, a horn and a fist plus other hand signs are ALL you need.  First place I ever really had road rage or drove over a concrete median to make a u turn in heavy traffic….you just have to see it.

I am sorry I didn’t visit blogs or write while I was gone.  I had internet service.  I am lazy.  lazy lazy.  But I did think while going down the road.

I was thinking about how this is my blog and I write what I want and how because it’s MY BLOG.  Sometimes people don’t understand I use sentences that run together and And @ the beginning of a sentence or aint because it suits my purposes.  (OK sometimes I don’t know any better but we can pretend I catch all my mistakes can’t we?)

I also use hyperbole, rhetorical questions, allusion, illusion, preparation h, simile, and ky jelly if necessary to get my point slid across.

I also tilt @ windmills, the rebel without a cause, I spawned two conservative children and I have NO idea how but they think I am nuts.  BUT I play Don Quixote sometimes here BECAUSE I CAN, because it’s MY BLOG!!  And yes I had to look up how to spell Quixote.

I know the last 3 paragraphs have nothing to do with thanksgiving but I thought of the ky jelly line and it seemed too good not to share? I also thought of a blog post about how I lack the farming gene and my families ability to tell the crop and planting date of any field while I’m doing good to even notice them much less identify them but we will save that for another day.

What I’m grateful  for Thanksgiving day 2009:

The ability to blog and to read others blogs and my dear friends I’ve “met” blogging.

The free internet, news services, and press we have in this country.

Of course family and friends, I do have friends, I was just having trouble remembering some of their names because I hadn’t seen them since July?  LOL

Our family having survived the ups and downs of the previous year.  It’s been triumph and tragedy.  Some lost companies because of lost contracts through no fault of their own.  Some lost jobs because they were too temperamental.  (sorry if I scoff @ that one, they spoke up and told the truth and it hurt so they lost their job, imagine my relative having a big mouth? Moi?)  It was over a year ago that I started but I worked outside the home @ a job for the first time in 19 years.   Anyway I did a “real” job and I took orders from people and was a good employee which is not easy after years of “self” employment.  My husband also got a “job” for the first time in 20+ years when he leased his truck onto construction.  From what I hear he was a model employee (except for the time he asked permission to knock somone’s block off from the foreman, foreman said OK?) and was always ahead of everyone else even though he was the oldest one doing what he did. We are back to self employed but you always “work” for someone, if you are boss you “work” for the employees sometimes I think.   Also my brother is shall we say a senior citizen, I don’t know if he’s in like in his second childhood or what (I have doubts he ever left the first) but for an old man he’s not old.  Maybe it’s the race car he has?  He doesn’t drive it anymore but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.  My husband is of an age where I remember my parents well and I was going through my teenage rebellion.  He’s not old.  I’m thinking we are oblivious or just not aging like previous generations did (due to superior health care or the bilssful oblivion of many drug trips, JUST KIDDING)

Basically we have triumphed over adversity and turned around and made life better and realized what was important and what wasn’t  because of it and I’m thankful for the opportunity and the ability and the health to do it, especially during this time of financial difficulty.  (this is starting to sound like one of those bragging Christmas letters, little Johnnie is now the president of the cub scouts in North America and little Sally has been voted high school prom queen while in kindergarten and they will both attend Yale next year on a full ride scholarship, those kind of letters)

I’m grateful for my home and the ability to not live too close to people most of the time.  I’m grateful for all the “luck” and blessings that have enabled me to enjoy some(most) of lifes riches.

I’m grateful our relatives are still with us this year that were with us last year for the most part. I will miss Lester and Louella (my moms first cousin who married the widow of my dads best friend, got that?) because they were one of the links to my past.  I’m grateful that I was here when one of the closest family friends died.  I’m glad I got the opportunity to know our dog Mugsey.

I’m grateful I’ve sort of beat the fat genes that run in our family and have never seriously been over 160.  I shouldn’t say that because I will blossom (my brother has called me squatty body (say it it rhymes, he’s sometimes amusing, this isn’t one of those times) for years, we cant all be 6′4″ BRO!).  The last time I had a skinny woman ancestor was my great grandmother and her having no teeth may have had something to do with that?

I’m grateful for the man who is sleeping in my bed, (it’s my husband silly) and the dog who is sleeping in the chair, the dog sleeping on the porch, and the cat sleeping in the log cabin.

I’m grateful for the ability to overcome the health problems we have faced over the past year and the ability to “get healthy” disgusting and boring but we are doing it.  No drink, no smoke, no fatty foods, vegetables, very few sweets, sleep regularly, walk, drink water, blaaaahhhh.   BTW I never said I ever quit drinking, I’m the type of person who can have one and quit, or one potato chip.  I’m a sick sick puppy I know.  My husband will tell you how healthy he is and now he’s losing weight.  Did I mention the term ad nauseum?  I would never say those words? 

I’m grateful for the ability to go and stuff ourselves silly tomorrow with many of our close relatives and talk to the others. I am also grateful I can now distinguish most of  my grand-children’s voices over the phone and not call the boys by their mothers names which makes me NOT favorite grandma.  I’m also thankful we all have a way of making a living and/or our driving privledges left.  You know who I’m talking to.

Donnie Osmond won Dancing With The Stars and we missed it!  Sorry but I just couldn’t get behind Mya, I even sent a text vote for Kelley, first time I’ve ever done that and Johanna was GOOD and I think Derek is my nephew, that’s good and clean isn’t it?  When the show came on I thought it was the stupidest thing ever.  Now I’m usually pretty close with guessing how the judges are going to score the couples and how they will criticize them.  I know NOTHING about ballroom dancing or didn’t.  Just thought I”d throw that in there.

I’m grateful I learned how to spell quixote.

I’m on an angels on twitter list! Thanks Starlingpoet!  My family would say if she only knew me……..

I’d better quit.

Happy TURKEY DAY amigos!!

I wrote about Dispatches truck trip on animals that give pause.

OK, I’m in Missouri.  There are relatives here and my husband started up his “other” business again so I have been busy.

I had some of the grandkids this weekend.  The little ones played jail.  They used some of my extensive collection of Mardis Gras Beads for handcuffs.  I told them the beads I picked up from dead peoples houses from the hurricanes (NO I DIDN’T) the people were alive and well and having their houses demolished or I got them the old fashioned way from the floats.  You should have seen the 8 and 10 year olds faces before they said NO YOU DIDN’T G’MA (they are pretty sure I’m a bit off my rocker anyway).     Anyway I thought it was funny , if you don’t think so, well you just don’t have the family sick sense of humor.

The big grandkids went hunting deer hunting  (a sport not to be made light of here in MO, especially to the orange people (hunters with blaze orange) who are all over like alien ants this time of year).  There have been many big cat sightings around here, really.  See pictures on animals blog.  Panthers or mountain lions, bigger than bobcats.  You can guess what is coming.  First it was a rabid bull trying to get across the fence, this was probably actually the most danger the kids were in.  I asked grandson if he had looked for a tree to climb.  This isn’t being facetious, just good sense.  He said yes but bull was across a new fence thank goodness.  Second time the grandsons came home WAY before dark, it was raining and miserable.  It was a growl this time, 2nd grandson said he yelled for his big brother, big brother said no he screamed for me.  This went on and I believe the discussion of what happened had escalated to “I called for my brother” and older bro said “he screamed like a little girl” but that may have been my imagination.  I asked the one who had been growled @ if he was close to said previous fence and he said yes.  I said bull, he said no it was a growl, I said the bull sounded like he growled, grandson said I don’t care.  We did remind him he had a very powerful rifle that could be used like a club if need be or perhaps to shoot a bullet maybe @ something?  In all fairness the woods can be a very scary place and if I’d seen a panther or anything like it I would have made a world speed record back to the house.

So I have a “job” for now.  Husband says I once again can make more working with him than I could anywhere else.  He has some health problems too (we are fat and getting fatter) so he needs some coaching on what to eat etc.  So I will write from the road, I think I can, I’ll be home half the time though or more and the rest of the time the relatives will be here.  Plus there’s that rabid bull in the woods…….

Teacher and Classroom

I was laying in bed thinking about a post I’d been considering for days, maybe weeks.  I decided the post should probably be a page instead because I had too much to say.  The page will be about prejudice but it probably won’t be what you expect. This story isn’t about prejudice exactly but it is about kindness.  I haven’t gotten the page written yet.

I was thinking of some prejudice I’d met with in school, a small “hick” school merged with a much bigger “city” school.   I was like the big cheese in the hick school, not so in the new school.  That was 5th grade which was OK,  6th was a nightmare partly because of a teacher who was supposedly a friend of the family(I could do nothing right, he ridiculed me for getting through with assignments early etc, I could read faster than adults for years and he called me a liar…called 60s chick lit smut……. just NOT a good year), after that it got better, by high school I had convinced everyone I was just like them (I developed a VERY smart mouth) even though my mother was a teacher (in a different school)  and had cut my hair funny.

Then I remembered one incident that didn’t happen when I was going to school but when my youngest daughter was in kindergarten or first grade of the same school.  Her teacher was the wife of the high school principal.  I believe the teacher passed away @ a young  age of cancer  but @ this time she was probably in her 40s.   The incident was trivial but it made a lasting impression.

It was the Christmas party, I think I was a room mother, I’d brought cookies.  The students exchanged gifts of course.  Then it came time for an oddly wrapped present, it looked more like a ball of previously used paper than a gift.  I can’t remember who got the present but when she unwrapped it she found an obviously worn and stained old pink shirt. The teacher was prepared and miraculously somehow smoothed it over so the giver of the gift and the receiver both felt happy (the teacher either had another present or made such a fuss over the “nice” pink shirt that the receiver of the gift felt blessed, I don’t remember which).  There could have been such a scene as only little girls can make but having this teacher made all the difference in the world.  I know teachers are supposed to be prepared  for things like this and children might not even draw names anymore but the speed @ which this teacher took the mood in the room from disappointment and chaos to happiness and contentment was amazing.  No matter what else the children learned in that room they learned love, kindness, and acceptance.

I was always a stickler for my kids not making fun of others for not having things or being different or the gifts they gave but I was worse after this.  Why?  Probably because I had felt forms of prejudice firsthand.

The little girl who gave the gift?  She gave from her heart, the shirt was probably her most prized possession.  She lived not far from us, I took my daughter to see her, I think I managed to give her some clothes my kids had “outgrown”.   The child was 6 I believe and she was watching her younger brother (he was still in diapers I think) alone in the house while her parents worked as hired hands on a  large farm (I wasn’t rich by any means but my kids never knew hunger unless I was trying to get them not to be fat, this little girl obviously knew hunger and poverty firsthand).   The parents were less than  a mile away but yet not in easy calling distance.  The little girl offered me a chair when we arrived and a drink of something like a little hostess.  I just wanted to grab both of the kids up and drag them home with me (and feed them and spoil them with TV and games and attention and let them run wild and play like my kids did 90% of the time) but they seemed to be as well taken care of as they could be in those circumstances.    Yes I could have called child services but it wasn’t “done” then except for obvious physical abuse.   We lost track of the family, they moved away, but the kindness of that teacher will always remain with not only myself but with every child who’s life she touched.

Did you ever have or know a teacher or person of authority that could change a bad situation into something good @ the drop of a hat?

Oct 3, 2009

Interesting first lines of blog descriptions I found while looking for blog listing services.

We provides info about

How to shoose

Photos of place I have been

If you need to make younger,

This blog will present you how to

help you to make your finance more better

We helping Blogger in many part

Do you see anything wrong with them?

The dog just crawled up in my lap because it’s thundering, he’s not too skittish during storms but out Golden Lab was terrified so the bichon is a little leery of them. He’s not normally a cuddly dog unless he’s tired or afraid. I just realized how much he was like a child wanting comfort and wondering if I would need the feeling of the warm small thing needing me for the rest of my life. I was even the teenager who took the babies out of church so their mothers could enjoy the service, and I could get out of church to talk to one of my friends who invariably went out to help me. To see more of the dog go to Animals that give pause of course.

I just had to look up how to spell intubation. I intubated a man once who was in a coma. Just thought I’d throw that in there.  For some reason I just remembered it.

My grandson (I can write about him here because I am like 99% sure his friends don’t read this blog) sent me a text  earlier today about guns and trucks and wild pigs, fun things. We text quite a bit, he was being facetious and he is quite popular but once he said he was so cool he just text his mom, his grandma, and one friend?  He’s 15.  Remember I was a child bride and I do mean child so I can have a 15 year old grandson.

I took a walk with the dog earlier.  Evidently the walk improved the dogs digestion and he passed gas. He is a little white puffball but his gas smells like a chemical plant, probably hair dye mixed with a bit of sewer gas and smelling salts mixed in.  Hard to believe he can make an odor like that.

Dog and I just reached an important agreement after long negotiations. He can lay flat on my lap without being supported and held close to my body with my left arm, I mean it’s possible in his world, probably only temporarily though.

October 17, 2009 (forgot to post this before)

Since husband will be home tomorrow and he only gets one day a week off I try to devote it to him.  I know—– I know— gag me with a spoon—– but he works hard.  So I write a post or two ahead and if I’m not totally brain dead from our usual breakfast out on Sunday I will post them.  Speaking of eating breakfast out we went to Golden Corral last Sunday.  I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to seriously p anyone off but I’m not skinny, I wear between a 6 and a 10 and I’m 5′4″ and there were maybe 3 people out of everyone in Golden Corral that were skinnier than me and that’s giving two of them the benefit of the doubt and the other one was a teenager!  It was weird, made me feel good but also led me to believe I could eat those 3 plates, yes I did.  Also made me wonder about the general health of America?

Train of thought:

I’m sure you all have seen the  She’s a Very Freaky Girl commercial?  That always makes me think of Little Miss Sunshine (the movie, strange but it grows on you) which makes me think of the little girls grandpa trying to “help” her ou with her dance routine by choosing Superfreak for the music for a little girls beauty contest, the song and dance routine weren’t too well received.  It reminded me of my daughter coming in the house one day (we lived by her grandpas business, my father) and proudly saying Grandpa taught me how to siphon gas.  I got a little closer to her  and asked what exactly did you do for grandpa, she said sucked on the hose to get the gas out. Of course we laughed and laughed.  Please don’t think my father was a mean man but he was a horrible practical joker.   My daughter was no worse for the wear either.  But that is why Superfreak reminds me of siphoning gas.  Grandpa did something “good”.

And my grandsons!!! Semi big deal in our county, OK it’s the biggest deal besides the occasional unexpected explosion or the tourists coming in April or leaving in September.  Oh yeah the Fairs, demolition derbys and beer gardens are pretty big deals too.

This is the FIRST and only time that brothers have won Apple Festival King two years in a row.  Of course most people don’t have kids 15 1/2 months apart either.

Zach and his Queen last year

Marcus and his Queen 2009 Apple Festival

Zach, Marcus, Jacob, and Sara

Story also on Animals That Give Pause and Missouri Books and my old animals blog on blogger, in other words Grandma is braggin!  And the whole family is very proud and happy, I just emailed and twittered, I’m working on facebook.