Tuesday, May 20, 2008

For our rise against the years and years and years....





I have been smoke free for 2 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes

And as a result:

My hair does not smell like cigarettes and neither does my clothing, my car, not to mention my 12 year old son.

I have saved approximately $20.

I am cranky and miserable but stronger than this.

I have not smoked approximately 77 cigarettes.

I have added an additional 14 hours to my life.
(Thanks for all of your support and suggestions)






Monday, May 19, 2008

Or just try again tomorrow...

I have not smoked a cigarette since before going to bed Saturday night. I have always had a love/hate relationship with smoking. I can quit for 6 months, 2 years, whatever, and then randomly decide one day that I can be a social smoker, and smoke one cigarette, and then I am instantly addicted again the next day.

My reasons for quitting are the obvious; health and financial. So far I am feeling OK. I would love to smoke a cigarette right now, or even more so, half a pack of them on my ride home from work. But for the moment, right now, I am going to remain smoke free. Maybe tomorrow I will smoke. Maybe I won't. Taking this, like everything else, one day at a time.

Friday, May 16, 2008

He buzzes like a fridge, hes like a detuned radio...

I am not sure if it is appropriate to blog about this or not, but I do feel a need to share it. a day or so after the Monster beat me, I told a very good, platonic, male friend of mine what happened and he stopped over to see me to see if I was telling the truth about the extent of my injuries, as he tends to think that no one could possibly have as much drama in my life, and I therefore maybe I was exaggerating the extent of my injuries.

Needless to say, he was infuriated when he saw me. As a human being, as a man and as my friend. He could not comprehend something like this being done to someone, let alone someone he loved and cared about. He decided, without my knowledge that he would take a ride and have a talk with the Monster about what is and is not an acceptable way to treat a woman.

It is important to state that my friend is about as calm as they come. He has never been in trouble a day in his life. He is a good guy. I have known him well over 15 years and have never seen him raise his voice or loose his cool. Anyway, as the story was told to me, he took a ride out to his house and sat waiting for him to come home from work. When the monster pulled in the driveway, my friend pulled in behind him. He did not disguise himself, his vehicle or his plates.

He walked over to the car and told the monster that he was a friend of mine and that he needed to step out of the truck as they needed to have a conversation. The monster, refused. He made a statement about how he was recording this and how my friend was trespassing on private property and he should leave. My friend explained, calmly that he would leave just as soon as he steeped out of his truck and spoke to him. Again, the monster, big tough guy who beats on 115 lb women, would not get out of his truck. Now mind you, I do not know for sure what my friends intentions were, if it were to be a conversation or a confrontation. I only know he was doing this in my honor and defense.

Long story short they started to push and pull at each other a bit through the window, and my friend finally said this is ridiculous, walked away and OK, this might sound bad, pulled a hammer out of his car. At this point the monster RAN from his car into his backyard screaming that he would be sorry, he was going to jail, etc. Not so tough when it is a man he is confronted with. My friend then, in anger smashed the windshield of his truck, his cell phone that dropped as he ran from the truck and a few more slams to the hood of the truck. Decided this was not what his intention here was, knew he had crossed a line, got in his car and drove home.

A few hours later, detectives showed up at his house with a warrant for his arrest. He was being charged with felony (!) criminal mischief, and a few other ridiculous bogus felony charges. He admitted what he had done to the detectives, told them why and even went as far to show them some digital pics he had taken of me the day before. The detectives then told him how the monster had quote a violent reputation in his home town, and well, although they should arrest him, it would be best for all involved, if he just came to court the following Tuesday to be arraigned. No point in him having to sit in a jail cell. Everyone has a sister, mother, wife, GF.

My friend had to hire a lawyer. It is important to say, that I felt awful about what he had done, that he got himself into trouble, and was looking at felony charges, possible jail time and restitution for the damage he did to the monsters truck. My friend had no regrets, he felt strongly that the monster deserved this and a whole lot more.

My friend had his court date on Wednesday. He was anxious. He gets to court and he has to have a sit down with his lawyer, the DA and the judge. All charges DROPPED. Not even restitution. The judge said this is what they call western justice, old school style.

Karma, baby.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Won't you take him when he comes to your door...


This is a picture of my father and I taken late last August. It is probably the last picture that we will ever take together, and I wanted to share it with you all.

My Daddy is dying. I'm sure I have posted in the past about his many medical ailments. He has been in the hospital since early December, switching back and forth for physical rehabilitation and back to the hospital. As he has had no success in the rehab, he is pretty much confined to bed, unable to stand up, never mind walk, he is incontinent, and just a very sick man, he was admitted to a nursing home a few weeks ago, which was basically just the rest stop to his final call. Last week he had another bad episode of Congestive Heart Failure, Pneumonia, Anemia, etc. and was rushed to the ER. He has been back in the hospital for over a week. He will not improve. At best, he will plateau, and we will transfer him back to the Nursing Home with Hospice care. He is not eating or drinking much and we refused a feeding tube. We signed a DNR. It is very sad. I do not think he will be with us much longer, and sadly, it is time for him to go. This man, who lies incoherently in bed, filled with cancer, fluids filling his lungs, his heart too weak to pump his blood properly, yelling, confined to a hospital bed, is not my Father. Or at least he is not the father I will choose to remember.


Thursday, May 01, 2008

Have faith in you and the things you do...

There is much to be shared here today. I have been writing this post in my head for the last week and just haven't gotten around to put it down here.

First off, I have nothing new to add about the monster. I will update after the next court date which is May 15th. I am better about it every day. I still have anger, and still want him to pay for what he did to me and took from me, but every day I think about it less and less and have chalked it up to a life experience. I am better than him.

Ok, I haven't posted much of anything about the Prince since early this year after his overdose. What I do want to add about the monster, is that the Friday night before he beat me, was the night my Prince came back into my life. We had barely spoken in months, and he knew I had a boyfriend and he wasn't particularly happy about it. He had called that night and needed to come by to get his passport. When I told him that the BF was there, he said forget it and hung up on me. He then called back and said he would come over. I suggested they come over and hang out for a while. He agreed, reluctantly, and they did. I wont get into the details about that night as there is no real relevance, other than basically we had a pleasant evening and I was able to see that my son and I were begininng to be capable of developing a new, adult relationship, despite our opinions about his life choices.

The Prince had called me Sunday night, just a few hours prior to the beating, asking me if I could help him and his GF plan a trip to the Bahamas later this summer, and did the monster and I maybe want to join them, and then we got into a conversation where we had offered to help finance most of their trip if he would stay clean from that moment until the trip, random drug tests required. He wholeheartedly agreed.

A few days later, he stopped at the house for a visit, and the physical signs of the beating were still incredibly obvious and the monster was also obviously absent. I told him we had broken up and when he inquired about the bruises, etc. I told him I had taken a bad fall. He bought it. His girlfriend, on the other hand, did not. However, I digress and this is a story for another day.

His visits became more and more frequent. His clear eyes evidence that he was taking my challenge/offer seriously. It started with a short visit for a few hours on a weeknight, to him calling Friday afternoons asking what I was doing in the evening and could we all go out to dinner. This lead to us making plans to see an exhibit at a museum, or going together to visit my Dad in the nursing home, staying in the evenings to watch movies together, playing games, etc. The visits got longer and longer and the kids started wanting to go out for dinner less and less and we started cooking meals together, the Prince and his GF (I think I will have to give her a nickname soon) anxious to learn to cook, and slowly they were taking care of the entire meal. Mostly just BBQ, but now we have progressed to full dinners and they are anxious for me to teach them to make sauce. As the visits got longer and longer, he and the GF starting spending the night at my house, and sitting around on Sunday mornings drinking coffee and having breakfast.

We have also begun to actively look for employment together. He can now pass a drug test, so his options are less limited. With my help, he put together a nice resume, and we have been applying all over the place. He has also gotten his drivers learning permit, and has begun taking driving lessons (required for his license) and is contemplating computer trade school possibly next winter.

Since January, he has lost two friends to drug related deaths. He also has a friend looking at jail time for a pretty serious felony assault charge who was offered the option of rehab vs. jail, and went away for three days and came back Sunday evening cause he "couldn't deal". Another friend is well on his way to becoming a career criminal because he just refuses to follow the rules of society and prefers jail to conformity. It is very, very sad. However, I do believe this has given him a priceless reinforcement of the old saying, that an addict will end up in one of three places: Dead, Incarcerated, or in Recovery. I believe my beautiful Prince is seeing that recovery is just the best, if not the only option.

Basically, my son and his GF have been spending more time at my house than not. He looks for excuses to come over and wants to come "home". We are seriously considering converting my attached garage to a small apartment like space for them at the end of the summer, under the conditions of him maintaining his sobriety, they both must find and maintain steady employment (that does not break any laws), and they must contribute financially to the household. I am extremely apprehensive about this. But when he is there, I am as happy as I have ever been. When they are not there, the house feels a little empty. I didn't realize how much I missed him, especially when he is clean. Oh!! How beautiful his eyes are.

This situation has taught me something incredibly valuable, something that I should have realized a long, long time ago. One of the reasons I stayed married to the AH for so long is that I hated the idea of breaking up my family. One of the reasons I was so enamored with the monster is that it felt like a little family. What I didn't realize is that families come in all shapes and forms, and that my family was there all along, we did not need someone else to complete us. With the absence of their father, there is so much less anxiety, stress and sadness in our home. The monster just added a different level of anxiety and stress to our home. My kids and I, well, that's all we ever really needed, we just need each other.