The Nose Knows

Ahhh. Nothing like family trials. We're having some difficulties with my nephew - the one who is supposed to be in recovery from Meth addiction. Well, he is living with my parents for a while to get back on his feet. We agreed after he left treatment and couldn't make it on his own elsewhere, that he could live there for a while provided he agree to a whole list of rules. The rules all centered around him staying clean and focusing on treatment. Well, my parents (who were in denial about his drug use almost until we had him standing at the treatment center doors) didn't hold to the rules and they've all been tossed out the window. The rules that is. :<)

Anyway, god love 'em, mom and dad are classic enablers. They just want everything to be Ok and can't understand that you can't treat addicts the same way you would anyone else. Dad just wants my nephew alive and safe and feels comforted by being able to see him everyday and knowing he's not living on the streets. While you may think that's not such a terrible thing, any support you give someone who is using drugs helps support their habit and delays their reaching a point of desperation enough to seek treatment. It's a difficult way of thinking but one that is counseled to families of addicts. *I'm not speaking of recovered/recovering addicts BTW*

To make a super long story only moderately long, my nephew is supposed to be clean. My parents just sat down with him a few days ago and came up with the "revised" rules. One of them, of course, is he has to be clean to live there. We visited today and while most of us were at my sisters, my nephew hadn't arrived yet. My husband was still at my folks cause he was going hunting with someone. He went back inside to go to the bathroom before he left. Well, when he went in the bathroom he noticed the bathroom window was open (it's like 40 some degrees here) and he smelled pot. There's only one person left in the house and that person happens to be an addict. You do the math.

So I pick my husband up after hunting and as we are headed back to where we live, he tells me this. (My husband, though he didn't do drugs, grew up around them, was constantly exposed to them, and knows quite a bit about them. He definitely knows what marijuana smells like) So I call my mom and tell her. Her response? "Well, we asked him (nephew) the other night if he was doing drugs and he said no". My response "Well gee, ya think he mighta been LYING?". We asked when he was using Meth if he was involved in drugs and he said no. Do you really expect him to say yes? Anyway, her and dad asked him if he'd smoked pot in the bathroom and he denied it. (Shocking, yes, I know) So mom and dad decided to do nothing. I'm having a wee bit of difficulty comprehending that. I'm sure their thought is that he denied it and they don't have proof. I KNOW that is what they are telling themselves. Myself, I say my husband smelling it is proof. What else do you need? He's not gonna pull out his pipe right in front of them! I asked my husband if he was sure. He said "I may not know a lot of things but I know pot when I smell it. Yes, I'm sure". My husband really has no desire to be involved in any of this but he said, ya know, our kids play over there, visit, spend the night. That can't happen if there're drugs in the house.

I guess I'll see if more developes tomorrow. All this has about put my dad over the edge as it is. He struggled horribly with my brother's death. Then when my nephew got into drugs, well, it's been almost more than he could handle. He's never, never been one not to face the truth, not to handle a problem head on. But all this has been too much for him. Right now I wouldn't be surprised if he thought the marijuana fairy flew in and smoking that pot in the bathroom. Damn fairies.

Poor Puppy

We have been dogsitting. For almost a year. Thanksgiving will mark the anniversary of dogsitting my nephew's pooch. My nephew went off the edge after my brother died and got into drugs. We did a drug intervention with him last Thanksgiving and put him on a plane to rehab. I voluteered to dogsit one of his two dogs.

Truly, this has to be the best mannered dog I've ever encountered. She is a Rotw+@# mix (I don't know how to spell it and am too lazy to google). I've never been much on dog breeds with a ferocious connotation. This dog however, doesn't have a mean bone in her body. I know. We just had her x-rayed. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Abby is ultra submissive. My two children have applied every tolerance test imaginable - and they've got good imaginations. She never does more than look pathetic. She rarely will even get up and leave.

Since she is not mine, and I had every intention of her returning to her rightful owner, I set out to enjoy her, but not become attatched. Every month I reminded everyone that she is not mine. Abby did not share my sentiments. She glued herself to me from the beginning. She follows me from room to room, sometimes so closely she walks on the back of my heels. She waits outside the bathroom door while I take a bath. She thinks, though she weighs 50+ lbs, that she is a lap dog. And she has declared my lap as hers. I remind myself often that she poops in my back yard, sheds on my furniture, and has to be made arrangements for if we go somewhere. She is not mine.

Two nights ago, it came to me that I think, perhaps, she is too ingrained in my life and heart to be removed. For some strange reason, I am the only one for whom this was a revelation.

In the morning, I treated her to a ride as I took my son to school. She was so excited. After we got back, I noticed she wasn't acting quite right. Abby is a dog of comfort. She won't lay on the floor if there is a perfectly good couch available. She won't lay on a couch if there is a perfectly good bed available. I noticed that she wasn't on the most comfortable furniture nearest me. She was on the floor at my feet. I got on the bed and called her up. She acted like she wanted to come sooo bad, but didn't. Finally she jumped up with a yipe in midair then came over to me whimpering and crying.

Admittedly, I've thought that people who spend a lot of money on their pets taking them to the vet were crazy. I couldn't drive there fast enough. One vet visit, two x-rays, and a whole lotta cash later (thanks mom), we think that she has disk problems in her back. She's on Prednisone. The vet said it will either help her, or she will continue to deteriorate and have to have surgery or be put down. I can't afford to fill my tank all the way up with gas, how could I afford surgery for a dog? But put the best dog in the world down? I just got her!

Scenario Spotlight

Got a scenario for ya. You know how it goes..."Someone has a friend of someone who...".

So here it is. Two part question.

B has a daughter(Allie) who, as girls sometimes do, has a diary. B has always respected Allie's privacy. Lately though, Allie has become distant and had behavior changes. B suspectes something is up in Allie's life and has had clues of some pretty disturbing stuff but Allie won't confide in B. B has access to Allie's diary. Question 1) Does B look through Allie's diary for evidence of something serious going on?

Part two. Assume B decided to read through the diary for key words and found talk of drug and alcohol use and illusions to sex. What does B do now with this "evidence"? Allie has gotten in trouble for alcohol in the past but the drugs is a new and very frightening development. And B couldn't derive enough to know if it was just talk or actual use. What say you?

This And That

I just thought I'd put out a bit of this and that, some websites I enjoy or think might be of use.

A site to look for convicted sex offenders: http://www.familywatchdog.us/Search.asp I just visited this site today so I'm new to it too.

I spend too much time on this game site: www.billsgames.com I particularly like the wordscram. It's addicting.

A must have on every "favorites" listing is www.imdb.com This site has everything you want to know about movies and tv shows, including tons of stuff about the actors, trivia about the show, and goofs. I challenge you if you've never been to this site to go there now and enter your favorite movie. If you don't love this site when you're done, I'll eat a cyber hat.

I had blogged about this site before, www.wheresgeorge.com You enter the seriel number on a dollar (or other) bill. You can see where it has been before you. Even better, take the bill out and spend it and watch it travel from place to place.

Of course, the ones I have linked on my page are worth a visit. www.pancan.org is the website of the nonprofit org that is working to fight pancreatic cancer. www.iusedtobelieve.com is a cute little site where people have entered tidbits about things they used to believe to be true when they were little.

Enjoy surfers!

Wahoo! Dun Da Dun

Yipee! I have finished my first dishcloth. (And you thought it was going to be something exciting, didn't you) Well, I was excited anyway. I am now on dishcloth #2, a basketweave pattern that involves a new type of stitch and a lot of stitch counting. After this, I can progress to the project of my choice which will probably be a scarf for my sister for Christmas. My family will then be able to sigh a collective groan that I am now a knitter and giving my creations to unsuspecting victims.

I talked to my dad tonight and told him of my plans. I didn't want him to feel left out so I offered to knit him a pair of overalls for Christmas '06. Believe me, if it weren't so much work and a pattern actually existed, I would do it. That would be right up the alley of my sense of humor. If there is enough time, I will knit each of my immediate family members a washcloth. The looks on their faces would be worth all the time - "Oh......gee......thanks sonson (insert forced smile here)" And plus, they would actually be useful too.

I am actually liking the knitting though. I want to be able to teach my daughter when she is old enough. I want to have some kind of skill to pass on to her. Originally I thought I would pass on my knowledge of horses and horseback riding. Since my surgery though, I don't think I'll be able to do that kind of stuff again. I could teach her of course, but it would never be something she saw me doing and enjoying. It would just be something I taught her. I guess that's better than nothing. Although, I can't really imagine having a horse unless I were caring for it, training it, etc. That's kind of an extravagant object to have just to teach my daughter how to do. Well, we'll see how the future pans out for that.

"Terrible" Book Series

My sister started me on a book series. She assured me they were the greatest books ever.

The first book made me angry. I was really mad at the message I thought the author was sending. The second book placated my anger and was interesting. The third book caught my interest and was intriguing reading. The forth book, which I just finished moments ago, was nothing short of horrendous.

I cried through 95 or more percent of the book. And that is NO exaggeration. Horrible events and I can't believe my sister gave it to me to read. Parts of it I not only cried through, but sobbed terribly. It was torture. I wanted to put it down and not read another page 50 pages into it. That, however, is completely impossible for me. It goes against the grain. In addition, I am waiting for book5. My sister had told me book 4 was sooo good and "the best". Since she thinks 4 is the best, I can only hope 5 will not be as torturous.

If you want to torture yourself with some christian fiction, the series is by Karen Kingsbery and Gary Smalley. Return, Rejoice, Remember, and some other one. I don't recommend them unless you are perhaps more emotionally stable than myself or enjoy emotional rollercoaster rides. For some that would swear you away from them. For others, that would be the highest recommendation I can give. They definitely get to your gut.

Find the man. A fun little search I got via email.

This is bizarre - after you find the guy - it's so obvious. Once you
find him - it's embarrassing, and you think, Why didn't I see him
immediately?

Just For Giggles

I get a daily post that includes funny stories from one of my favorite magazines. Thought I'd share some of them with you.



HIGH-SCHOOL sweethearts, my wife and I were soon married and spent the next 27 years raising a family. After our grown children moved out of the house, we experienced an unaccustomed freedom. One morning, when we came home at four, I asked Shirley, "Do you remember the last time we stayed out this late?" "I think so," she said. "We both got grounded for a month."--Contributed to "Life In These United States" by Peter Schumacher


WHEN MY FRIEND got a job, her husband agreed to share the housework. He was stunned by the amount of effort involved in keeping a house clean with small boys to pick up after, and insisted that he and his wife shop for a new vacuum cleaner. The salesman gave them a demonstration of the latest model. "It comes equipped with all the newest features," he assured them. The husband was not convinced. "Don't you have a riding one?" he asked grimly. --Contributed to "Life In These United States" by Pat Montgomery

A MAN BROUGHT HIS LITTLE GIRL to the hospital emergency room where my daughter works. As is often the case in emergency rooms, he had to wait. After a while, he approached a woman at the nurses' station and asked her how much longer it would be until a doctor looked at his daughter. The woman explained that she was just about to examine the child. There was a stunned silence. Then the man asked, "Are you the doctor?" "Yes," she replied. "Are you the child's mother?"--Contributed to "Life In These United States" by Norma C. Brooks

Forgot To Add

I forgot to mention on my previous post, the woman who is pregnant and planning to name her child - if it's a boy - after my brother, well, her due date is April 27th. My brother's birthday.

A True Honor

Someone my brother had worked with, and whom he and his wife became very good friends with, we've just found out is pregnant. My brother had requested her to be an honorary pall bearer at his funeral. They had all become very close friends. She had recently married though my brother didn't live to see her wedding. Anyway, she is pregnant and she announced that if their child is a boy, they intend to name him after my brother. What an honor that she would name him after my brother. I know she took his death very hard. I don't know if her husband knew my brother or not. I am so touched that they would do that. I tried to send her a note of thanks, which I did, but it was very simple. I simply couldn't put into words what I felt in my heart. Our family name died out with my brother's death. But now, if the child is a boy, there will be a namesake of him out in the world. Maybe it's the grief that makes that seem so profound, but I really feel it deeply. What an incredible thing for someone to do.

Sock Sanity

Ok, there's a big reason, besides the obvious ice and cold, that I don't like winter. Socks. My kids have to wear shoes with socks. It seems, no matter how many socks they have, I'm always running out. For some reason, socks have some kind of blocking agent on them that prevents them from making it to the dirty laundry. Sometimes I end up with a full load's worth of clean socks with no mate.

My kids take their shoes and socks off after they get home from school. Not when they get home from school - that would be too easy and supervisable - just sometime after. They're never ready to take them off when they come in the door for various reasons. Their feet are cold. They want to go back outside after a snack. They want to drive me crazy. Whatever the reason they wait till later. Initially I made them put their socks in the dirty laundry as soon as they took them off. Well, in the few events that that actually happened, they then decided to go outside and grabbed new socks to put on, thus they have fewer clean socks in their drawers.

I'm trying a new tactic. Socks go immediately in the shoes when you take them off. I can only hope it will help.

Last night I folded laundry, including socks. This morning I go to get my son's socks. His sock drawer is empty. Completely empty. Come to find out - precious get ready for school minutes later, my son decided to add his socks to his shorts drawer. No wonder I love sandals.

Five...A Fine, Fine Age

Happy Birthday to my little girl who turned five yesterday. My how time flies by! She had a skating party yesterday and had lots of fun. She LOVES Disney Princesses so she had a Cinderella cupcake cake shaped in Cinderella's carriage. She thinks herself quite the big girl now. We got her a dress from Chinatown in Chicago which she loves. My sister drove up for her party and my sister-in-law came down with her daughter from Chicago.

I have no idea what I did at five years old. I don't have many early childhood memories. I hope to create memories for my daughter to look back on and smile.

Old Dog, New Tricks

Well, I am learning something new. I am learning how to knit. I've wanted to learn for some time and finally took the plunge. It is not as easy as I had thought. I'm getting better with practice, but it's not the mindless activity I'd imagined either. At least not yet. It is kinda fun.

I'd imagined a picture of a mother sitting outside in a chair knitting a sweater, smiling pleasantly while her children play happily in the sunshine. Reality check. Last night I met with a knitting group. One of the ladies was knitting a sweater. It looked remarkedly hard and she was in a dither over a potential mistake that would require ripping out hours of work.

Ah well, I'm looking forward to learning a new skill. I'll let you know how my dishcloth turns out.

Pancreatic Cancer Awareness

Next month (November) is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. November 8th will mark the 2nd anniversary of my brothers death. This year he would have been 40. His daughter has just turned 4. I find myself wondering what he would have been doing had he lived. He had always been a career oriented man. In the year after his daughter's birth, while he was still undiagnosed, he had begun to make the shift towards being more family oriented. He was a businessman who'd strove to lead the pack in the big time business world. I think the birth of his daughter opened his mind to a whole new world of thinking. He'd begun discussing moving closer to his family so his daughter would have the opportunity to grow up near family. This would have been a major change as he would have gone from the "big times" of Dallas career world to the back roads of the midwest. Quite a consensus for him. In a way, though he was 38, he'd only begun to live. He'd just gotten a glimpse of a whole new way of life.

Still to this day, almost 2 years later, the thought that my brother is dead is coated by some sort of protective film that prevents it from fully penetrating my brain. Some part of me still seems to function on thought that he is still in Dallas, alive and well, just like always.

Shortly after he died, I went through a sort of panic thoughts for my children. I was afraid that we'd made a big mistake only having 2 children. If something happened to one of them, the other would be all alone. I thought we should have had some kind of an "insurance" child. I worried over lots of things then.

Now it's hard to imagine not being involved in PanCAN. I know had this not happened to my brother, I never would have gotten involved. Not that I prefer things this way. It's just odd to think of the different paths in life. I'm glad, extremely glad, that I've gone somewhere in response to his death. I can't say it's given meaning to his death, his will always be a senseless death to me, but it's given me focus in dealing with his death.

I'm sure next month I'll ask you to indulge me in reading some facts about pancreatic cancer. But every opportunity to share is a stab at my brother's killer. And that, well, kinda feels good.

Body Removal Climax

The big build up of the story was a 34 year old man who'd carried his fetal twin in his abdomen all his life. His stomach was enormously distended. They couldn't figure out what was in his abdomen and did and exploratory. When the guy went in he weighed over 125 pounds. When the fetus and mushed tissue was removed he weighed 88 pounds. Gross, huh?

Body Removal

I don't wanna gross you all out (well, maybe a small part of me does) but you will not believe what I am watching on TV. The Learning Channel has on a program entitled "Things removed from the human body". And they are not talking about natural body organs as I originally thought. They are talking about things people have swallowed - or inserted (Yikes!!) into their body, along with accidental paraphenalia. They had one guy who had a stop sign that went through his abdoment, a javelin that went through someone's face, and a rebar that went through someone's head. Now is a story of a guy who had a frog gig, like a pitchfork go through his face and out his eye socket. They've talked about things people have swallowed, like 200 nails, a key, a spoon, razor blade etc. Also things inserted in the rectum: jelly jar, bicycle pump, and a diamond necklace worth $125,000. Scariest of all is that the worst is yet to come.

I got this quiz from a link from Nick.



Waterfall

?? Which Natural Wonder Or Disaster Are You ??
brought to you by here.

I thought parts of it were accurate. My beauty is definitely hidden. :<)

Petty, Churlish, & All That Good Stuff

How do you take up an issue that makes you sound churlish and petty but yet is still a valid point? I hate being stuck in those situations. No matter how I go about it, it makes me look like I've been bit by the green eyed monster.

Imagine if I gave my son $100 and my daughter $10 as a gift. I gave my son the $100 because he is older and will be going to college before my daughter and he's able to help me out around the house more. Now, be my daughter and try to complain about it. If you found a way to do it without sounding petty or jealous, let me know. Or if you think she shouldn't complain, I'd like to hear about that too.