Tresa's Blog

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.

Here is the rest of the story of last week in the truck.  It contains the good the bad and the ugly and we had all three.

1.  (bad)  The first thing was when we waited for our friends truck to get done in the shop last Tuesday.  We won’t say where but it’s like the first truck stop in the valley in TX.  Two brake chambers and a mudflap took almost all day to fix and they had the parts to start with!! The mudflap wasn’t even torn off.  For you non truck drivers this is like having your oil changed and maybe the tires replaced and balanced.  NOT supposed to take forever but it took a great portion of the afternoon and some of the morning.

2. (bad good)  The next thing was when the wheel came off of the truck.  You say how could this be good but I’m just going on how people treated us which was excellent.  Once again if you need a super mechanic around Prescott Arkansas I can tell you where to go (email tcscarlet at yahoo dot com).  These people went out of their way to help us.  Also I want to thank our friends that were with us John and Cindy and also Allan who stopped by with his pickup for their help and kindness.

3. (bad good)  The next thing was driving through Illinois in the blizzard and then having to fix the filler tube on the truck in a parking lot.  My husband did wonderfully and I was so proud he could fix it, it would have been a bad job under any circumstances but in blowing wind and snow@ 4 am I was amazed he got it done.    Also the lady @ the fuel stop (exit 283 on I 57) was just as nice as she could be.    the parking lot was full of trucks and truckdrivers, I KNOW some were awake but did anyone ask if they could help?  Nope.  They can run to open doors for me but they can’t come hold a flashlight in a blizzard? (bad)  Seriously though I’m not sure if my husband would have helped another guy in those circumstances but if his wife was obviously shaking as if pooping a peach seed (my husbands quote cleaned up)and holding the flashlight, in his defense he did try to get me to get back in the truck but I try to help as much as possible.     I did buy a stocking cap after that.  Stupid me forgot my mufflers and hat @ home.

4. (ugly) We FINALLY get to where we are going to deliver.  SUPPOSEDLY the broker had changed the appointment to Tuesday.  It’s Friday and we had had a tire and wheel fall off, driven through a blizzard (saw an empty bus skidded off beside the road with all of it’s lights on facing the wrong way and the door open…… SPOOKY), and fixed the truck in said blizzard and then my husband was told we were going to have to sit there 5 days because they were busy?  I told my husband if I went to see the receiver I would ask him if his mama knew what a waste of valuable human skin he was.  LUCKILY our friends knew one of the guys working on the dock (great guy) who told the receiver they weren’t busy.  They weren’t busy in the first place  (we were the only trucks @ that dock) but some people REALLY get off on making others lives miserable.

5.(bad bad)  So we go to Springfield Illinois the Pilot on exit 100.  Fuel card won’t go through, it’s not like it didn’t have money on it or we hadn’t bought fuel @ a Pilot before with it.  They wouldn’t even RUN the card through for my husband till I went in and immediately asked for the manager in my polite but don’t cross me voice.  We could have used cash but if you knew my husband you would know why he wouldn’t even let me refill my thermos there after that incident.    Our friend said they just didn’t run the fuel card through right because it makes NO sense one Pilot could take it and not another?  So we go to another truck stop, fuel up, it’s COLD now and the wind is still blowing but it quit snowing.  We’ve driven on some VERY slick roads.  We are almost to our pickup point and…… the truck won’t run right?  It’s been since we fueled up, we have additive in the fuel to stop it from gelling??  Water in the fuel filter, don’t know if it came from the last fuel we got but……

6. (ugly good) We get to where we are supposed to pick up, Beardstown IL.  My husband has a spare fuel filter and he is pretty sure that’s what it was.  I asked him why he didn’t just change it and the single digit temp has something to do with it (I think he called me nuts right then and said something about freezing his tush off).  So we are bob-tailing to town and a TransX driver is @ the stop sign.  (I LOVE Canadians by the way but the last two TransX drivers we’ve ran into have been bad Canadian representatives).  The TransX driver is bob-tailing too.  We sit there and sit there and sit there, we sat 5 minutes.  There is traffic on the road but our truck isn’t running exactly right and the driver in front passes up several chances to pull out on the road.  So we go around, there is plenty of room and when we pull out he could have actually followed.  He gets irate and starts gesturing and yelling, I believe he said he WAS going to go, and I said when? smiled and waved.  LOL  Anyway we go to Ace Hardware in Beardstown and they were VERY helpful!  WONDERFUL people, new fuel filter on it and truck  purrs like a kitten.

7.  (ugly good bad) So we are within rock throwing distance of the Mexican border now.  We have to drop our trailer into a yard that has chugholes 2 ft deep in it and I”m not kidding.  There are usually 10+ trucks here  (30+ this morning) and we are supposed to go in in the order we got here….TransX again in front of us.  Don’t think it’s the one from Beardstown but he let ANOTHER TransX in front of him.  No big deal but my husband said something on the cb.  The TransX driver came back on and said everyone always butted in front of him down here so he was butting in this time, real nice attitude, several people had the same attitude last week.  So I know who TransX is now and I will stay way away from them.  BUT the girl in the office had breakfast tacos for sale, we had a nice conversation about my Aeropostale shoes, that was the good.  Then the foam cereal bowl broke on my husband and cereal, milk, and sugar went everywhere while I was writing this. I wanted to clean today but hadn’t planned on doing it in the middle of writing this.

So this has been my week.  I won’t forget it for awhile.  I’m just glad we are where it’s warm now and we are alive and fine.

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.

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.

1. Waiting till I think world is safely awake to go to Wal Mart for groceries etc. because I have to stop by the landlords (RV Park owner) house to get mail so I can maybe get my google adsense straightened out.
2. Back in TX which is where we call home even though it isn’t our native state?
3. Wondering if I should start wearing t-shirts instead of summer sleeveless tops?
4. Thankful we had such a nice “vacation” @ home and @ my brothers.
5. Listening to Good Morning America about the parents who took pictures of their kids naked, wal mart turned them in, and the children were taken from them for a month.  ?????  Everyone who hasn’t taken a picture of their kid naked please get busy because you will be the only ones out of jail and you are about 1% of the population.
6. Wondering if there is anything I can do about my step daughter who has a baby who lives in a tent with her husband whom the family doesn’t consider suitable.  We have reason trust me.  Think a record for one.
7. Thinking I’ll have to take some sort of nap because I got 5 hr sleep because I stayed up playing with my blogs or I can tough it out today without a nap?
8. Thinking I’m going to have to figure out a way not to eat 2000 calories a day even though I want to.

I was cleaning off the patio (used to be garage apron) tonight and my cousin’s husband stopped by.  Nothing unusual in that because I’m surrounded by cousins.  We were talking about his wife who has survived liver cancer for over two years.  It was bad, not long after she found out she had cancer they called the kids in to say goodbye they thought.  Then they gave her one shot with chemo and it got a bit better……She’s taught school the last two years!

I had blood clots earlier this year which is nothing like cancer and they weren’t even bad blood clots, I now live healthier and my husband gave up smoking not exactly because of the blood clots but it was a wake up call to us both.

So that is what I”m thankful for other than a loving husband, a great familiy (sometimes), a few good friends, and the ability to enjoy it all.

What I’m NOT thankful for is the TV commercial down south they have for the “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” monitors for elderly people, there is a discount for people over 50, grrrrrrrrrrrr.  70 maybe but 50??  So I just finished cleaning about 100 ft of grass growing in cement cracks and then cleaned off the concrete, discount on I’ve fallen buttons my royal red… well you get the idea.

So what are you thankful for or not thankful for today?