Tresa's Blog

I was talking about my hawt relatives the other day……Said hawt relatives shall remain unnamed, maybe if you are related you are one?  I will never tell.  NEVER so forget it.  I love the word Hawt…hot for the uninformed.  It conveys so much.  Anyway I was talking about my hawt relatives to someone and then…..

This is where I”m probably going to get into trouble, want to come watch?

I realized while mowing (I do some of my best thinking while mowing) that not only do and did both my husbands have long arms (a fact that I was oblivious to until a year or so ago) they both have the squinty type eyes.  Not to say this ones eyes aren’t like normal.  They are.  They just have that faint exotic slant to them or they used to.  Not oriental, but almost although he is not asian in any way shape or form unless you count the American Indian/land bridge/ Asian Thing.  Neither was the first one.  Actually the first one was like German and Creole/Evangeline type people with a bit of Irish and the squint came from the GERMAN side?
This is where I get into trouble,  are you ready?  I told my second husband that he wasn’t my type when we first met.  I mean he is completely normal and HAWT.  OK, he is a tad older (and he is older than me) we aren’t talking movie star HAWT but take Mel Gibson?  Bruce Willis NOW without any airbrushing OK, are we talking the former HAWT levels there either?  I used to like skinny guys or so tall they looked skinny.  Biker types.  Leader of the Rock Band types.  I know, I know….wasn’t a good life choice on my part, and I really never ACTED on that I liked this type.  But that’s how I was.  But husband was not skinny when I met him, all macho and nice to look @ but he was more like the normal Bruce Willis Mel Gibson type…not David Bowie or anyone from the Eagles whom I was waiting to come swoop me off my feet?

I’m probably WAY in trouble so I had better quit….

Although I can’t think of ANY resemblance between myself and husbands first wife, she is tall and blonde and was a knockout without makeup, I’m short and dark and I look sort of sick without a bit of eye makeup.  Come to think of it first husband married sort of someone who resembles second husbands first wife…HEY!

To all involved, apologies if you read…….

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.

I can’t remember the lyrics to the song.  That should be a relief although you all have never had the agony of hearing me sing.

There’s a book by C. E. Morgan, All the Living, came out last year, audio this year.  We listened to it a week or so ago in the truck.  It’s a decent book.  My husband will do chick flicks and read Oprah books, yes with his baseball cap and cowboy boots, but this isn’t exactly chick lit.  All the Living is just a pretty good book.

That said there’s a phrase in it that I remember so very well.  Something about you get rid of the loving you’ve got because it seems too hard and go after what you think is easier loving.   Then you find out there’s nothing there where you thought there was easy lovin.

How many of us (100%) can say we’ve been guilty of thoughts like this?   I don’t know how to say this without saying something I don’t mean but my husband and I don’t always have easy loving.  It’s sort of like I can talk bad about him and tell him how horrible he is but no one else had better criticize him because they would be WRONG.  I’ve often wondered about this.  Second marriages are supposed to be more fragile than first, we’ve lasted almost 20 years so it’s sort of a success, especially with all the cards we had stacked against us.  The loving isn’t always easy but it’s strong,  get your mind out of the gutter if it’s there.   Talking frankly we’ve had months where I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickle for him.  Then he turns around and insists we take care of my dad with Alzheimers or tells me I’m prettier than some movie star just in passing conversation so I know he actually means it.  Or he calls me 10 times a day, or practically jumps up and down when I say I will go with him in the truck.  Or I look @ the car he insisted on buying me, (I wish he hadn’t we are STILL paying for it but the thought was there).

I knew when I was a teenager that there were boys and men whom I could walk all over.  Do anything to and they would come back for more.  That would have been EASY lovin and that’s who some of the marriage “experts” and my mother thought I should marry.  I knew life would be duller than dishwater with them.  I was also doing myself a favor by not letting myself be the manipulative b**** I knew I could be.  I was also doing those other guys a BIG favor by not marrying them.  So the easy loving isn’t always the best thing for everyone.  Sometimes it’s hard but if you pull through it’s better than anything else you could have had or @ least I think so.

Anyway that’s what I thought about that book and the message it gives.  It’s worth reading.  I think it would be good required reading before you get married or before you are allowed to divorce.  I know that’s simplistic but it might cause some people to think.

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.

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?

Why I love my husband.

Lynette Desperate Housewives

Because we had this conversation last night after my husband had made two doghouse comments in the last week.  (comments that got him in the doghouse, one was he didn’t talk about how my jeans fit because well because I was his wife, I let him look @ other women, he’s going to do it anyway, I even point them out…… and  then he said something about his first divorce, I’m his second wife, is he planning another divorce so he has to identify them?).

We are watching Desperate Housewives, (no cable till we move rv parks, too cheap for dish) and Lynette’s husband had just said something insensitive and then told her that if she didn’t have ONE thing wrong with her he couldn’t have fathomed the reason she would be with him.  (in a nutshell, one thing=small boobs)

So Lynette tells her husband that that is what she loves about him, his ability to walk through a  verbal minefield and come out not only unscathed but smelling like a rose.

Minefield

So my husband says “I don’t have that ability”.

I thought about it for awhile and I said “no, you jump in the middle of the minefield on the biggest mine  buttfirst going WHOO HOOOOOO.”  He agreed and knew what I was talking about, we laughed.

This is why I love my husband.