If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

3 hours ago, kayc said:

hoping to at least make it past winter first, we'll see

Good luck with that Kay.  I think we are expecting some days in the 70's again.  We have not had winter yet.  Those big tulip trees are in bloom everywhere, all of the pretty daffodils are blooming.  I know we are in for some weather that will kill those pretty flowers.  I hate that.  I wish I was as optimistic as a tulip tree in the sun.  

[kayc]

It snowed all afternoon and evening yesterday and then I woke up to see it didn't let up during the night.  It's extremely heavy wet stuff, very hard to shovel.  I have a not fun day cut out for me.

I haven't heard that saying before, but I like it 

21 hours ago, Marg M said:

I wish I was as optimistic as a tulip tree in the sun.  

 

[Gin]

I tried to volunteer at a local children's hospital.  Finally got an interview.  Went well.  It was in the surgical waiting room.  I knew that I had to have a flu shot (which I have).  I have to get 2 TB tests.  OK, that is doable.  Then, they take a blood test and check my immunity to measles, rubella, mumps and chicken pox.  If low in any, then I would need the MMR and chicken pox vaccine.  I have had terrible reactions to tetanus and shingles shots, so do not want to take a chance.  Have to find somewhere else.

[Margm]

Gin, your intentions were good but no need to kill yourself with all those immunizations.  Guess they wanted to protect you.  I used to get aggravated that I had to come to the hospital once a year for a TB skin test or they would fire me.  We worked in our homes.  I kinda felt like the Native Americans with all us foreigners bringing them all their diseases.  I stayed at home so much if I went to Walmart I got sick.  The library sounds lots more interesting to volunteer (but they'd have to fire me cause I would be in some closet reading).  Hey, points for getting out and trying.  Good for you.

 

[kevin]

This is a good morning........no new snow to shovel, but still need to clean up some of yesterdays......running out of room to put the crap...My Van died on me, its like a part of my family......I'm shaking a small chest cold, taking Vitamin c and Buckleys cough medicine......One more month and Golf course open 

[kayc]

Gin, keep your eyes open, you'll find the right place for you.

Kevin, I'm sorry your van died...are you getting it fixed or having to buy something else?  Get well!!  At least no new snow, that's good!  I'm getting more tonight.  

[brat#2]

Gin, I have to give you an A for the effort.  I don't blame you though, I wouldn't want to go through all those tests and vaccinations either.  Keep looking if you want to, you will find something.  Good luck

Kevin, hope you feel better soon and keep your eye on spring for golf!

Joyce

 

 

[kevin]

KayC, I have three vehicles so I'm not in a pinch....But that Van is Primo and took Angela and me everywhere last ten years...I will put $1000 into it, if no success,  then let it go for salvage......My cold definitely turned the corner, will resume work outs Sunday......

[kayc]

Sometimes you can donate a vehicle to St. Vinnie's or other charity and get a tax write off, they have mechanics to work on them.  Glad you're doing better!

[Margm]

(Just got off the phone with my sister, who called me and asked how I was doing.  When I said I was having a bit of a hard time because all of a sudden I'm wondering what happened to my husband, she proceeded to reprimand me, saying "why are you doing this to yourself" and you're just torturing yourself.")

Cookie, I am transferring this to the "if your going through hell" post.  Actually, I guess it covers what we are all going through.  

My sister has said some things that sounded harsh to me.  I am nearly nine years older than her.  I was her babysitter.  She was my baby for so long.  She could be a holy terror sometimes too.  But through it all, she did not like for her big sister to fuss at her.  One time after she got grown, I fussed at her, don't even remember what about, but she cried.  I said I would never do that again.

As sisters we love each other very much.  She had the total care of our mother through Alzheimer's..  I know this is terrible, but I am so happy my sister is free now.  One of her majors was a lot of philosophy and she also worked for about 22 years in child protection.  She speaks sometimes like a textbook and not a human being.  She does not mean to do that.  She is a loving person who teaches college students writing, literature, and a lot about living.  She is not well.  Cigarettes have taken their toll on her health.  

Your sister loves you and maybe the words she said were voiced wrong, but it is because she loves you, she does not want you to hurt and she knows you hurt and it is a kind of hurt she cannot help you with.  My sister feels the same way.  But, her trying to understand, my trying to help her, we have become a lot closer than ever before.  Your sister just wants you to quit hurting and there is nothing she can do about it.  We just have to love them back for caring.  Sometimes we see it as us being a problem to them, but if they did not love us, we would not be a problem, we would be a distant friend that grows more distant.  

 

[Margm]

I can talk about stuff before Billy without it hurting so much.  This tiny country store was my maternal grandmother's bread and butter while my granddad was ill and after he passed.  Every day (except Sunday) she kept it open for all the farmers of the area, the kids after school.  It was a crossroads store with the church right across the road.  At a relatives funeral at that church I picked up a song book and they had all been given to the little country Methodist Church by my grandma.  There was a big old wood burning stove and cracks in the walls that made you freeze on one side burn on the other.  I don't know how they saved all the animal feed since there were rats.  My little grandmother left each "child" money and land, and yes they did fuss about who got what.  It was 7-10 miles from any town and about 50 or more from any city.  This was southern country.  They grew cotton, sugar cane, corn, and my uncle even made a motorcycle racing track in later years.  

The front of the store was tiled with Grapette, Big Red, Orange Crush, RC, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, 7-up tops.  It was like a regular floor but it was completely tiled with the tops to the drinks.  People that lived around kept company by playing dominoes, Rook, and probably poker, etc.  There was always someone inside this small store.  But the best to me were the moon pies.  Not these little things in boxes.  These where huge, as big as a sandwich.  My favorite.  There was a glass case full of candy. I remember when she had one gas pump and it was the old fashioned kind with gasoline in the glass top and was tall.  (Of course anything was tall to a kid).  

Okay, just a few memories that were not sad.  We used to crawfish in the little stream under the bridge close to the house.  I wish all our memories were that sweet and innocent. 

[KarenK]

Marg,

I think happy childhood memories are part of what keeps us sane. I remember at age 6, we lived in a tiny oil town in West Texas near my mother's sisters. One aunt & uncle had a huge farm and lived in a  big farmhouse out of town which was actually two houses connected with a walkway. The part I didn't like was when the chickens were beheaded and walked around without heads. Have been scared of chickens ever since. The other aunt(my favorite) & uncle lived at the edge of town near the Shell gas refinery where he worked. He also sold used cars on the side and always had a pocket full of silver dollars that he constantly jingled. A lot of love, laughter, and home canning went on in that house. They were one of few to get a TV back in 1953 and I sat in front of that TV for all my waking hours while my aunt brought me food. I was the only one who knew how to keep the picture from "rolling". Come to think of it, I am still sitting in front of the TV almost 24/7. That aunt was the one who had raised my mother when their mama died in 1918 in the flu epidemic. They were 9 and 7 then. She never had children, but all the little children of the Baptist Church were hers. She had a big craft room built in her back yard filled with things to the brim for those kids and taught Sunday School for probably 50 years until those "Christian folks" told her she was too old and replaced her, just like that. They broke her spirit and her soul. She died suddenly with Galloping Leukemia.

I also have fond memories of living in the Tetons during summers age 11 to 13. Learned to shovel a lot of $hit(still shoveling) and ride a horse. Had my first "love affair" with and older guy(he was 17). We planned to run away to Mexico and get married.  LOL  Instead, he returned to military school and I to Phoenix. Have often wondered what happened to him. He would have been prime age for Vietnam.

Well, I could write a novel just like you could, but you know what I mean.  If only we could go back and start over...............

[kevin]

Marg, was it also the local Post office?...Looks like Ike Godsy's on the Waltons...

[Margm]

No, probably got it through mail trucks/cars/horse drawn wagons/horseback.  

It was the only place to buy bread and stuff for miles (I guess it was the country 7-11).  And that might have been before a lot of ya'll's times.  I did cry the last time I went by where it was though.  One of the daughters (long gone) planted it in pine trees and the one who owns it now lives in Michigan (my cousin) and it is so thick, no trace of a childhood.  The old house on the hill (grandparents house) is covered over with trees now too).  Lots of living used to go on there.  There were 2-3 houses down the road behind the  house where sharecroppers lived and where there used to be a schoolhouse in the early 1900's.  Life goes on.

[Margm]

I don't listen to much music, but this morning the words to this old song, listening (of course crying) and it just is so true.  The "soul to bleed" got to me the most.  I know Bette Midler sang it, but I was thinking it was about Janis Joplin, old song.  Old soul.  

Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed

Its the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance
Its the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance
Its the one who won't be taking, who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose

[Froggie4635]

The movie "The Rose" was loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, so it is no wonder that is where your thoughts went, Marg.  Sometimes it is hard to perceive that something beautiful can come from so much pain.  Music just cuts to the heart of everything.

[Margm]

Well, I guess it was in the back of my mind.  (You know, that part that is seldom visited.)

[Margm]

I stopped by Mama and Daddy's grave on the way home Friday.  The cemetery is about 25 miles straight up the road I live on, just before you hit the Arkansas line.  It is where all my relatives sleep.  Daddy's grave needs more dirt added, it is caved in some.  I'm not supposed to lift heavy so I bought the cutest little shovel with long handle.  I could do it.  I still had the crosses, nice size, I had got at Michael's, but they were fall flowers.  I even remembered to bring wire strippers to help hold the bows on.    I bought the flowers in groups, about five daffodils to each group, white daisies, and I cannot put flowers down without purple, so some bearded beautiful purple.  Three of each group with baby's breath (I think it is called) in between, big white bow for Mama.  Daddy was a rose man.  He grew roses.  I found groups of pale purple, dark red, white, and  baby's breath with a big red bow.  It rained all the way up there.  And here was this crazy woman out in the rain fixing flowers and talking to her mom and dad.  No one around but my relative ghosts.  Out in the country, forests bordering the beautiful cemetery.  Here is this insane woman talking to her dead relatives making flower arrangements in the rain.  Huge cemetery, I'm the only one in it, and I did not feel creepy at all.  I did not cry

But coming home Merle Haggard was finishing up his song.

Goodbye, goodbye little darlin'
I'm leaving this cold world behind
So promise me that you will never be
Nobody's darlin' but mine...

Okay Billy, I heard you.  You have not changed a bit.  

[Margm]

I dropped out of the "free book" club at Amazon because I really got my "money's worth" when Billy was reading.  It is $9.99 a month and for the life of me, why do they charge you $9.99 for something, why not just say $10.  I was not reading as much, and I was choosing some that were not on the "free" list.  Cannot remember if this book was on the free list or not but it is one book that I am glad I bought.  Oh, I did join the "free" book club again.  

Annie Dodd covers losing her husband in the first of the book, and possibly will get into it later on.  Maybe because I know the area she is writing from, maybe that makes it more interesting.  Her husband had been bipolar and unfortunately, in one of his moods, he canceled his life insurance.  So ya'll, she found herself selling everything (meager) that they had to take care of the cremation.  She has two or three grown boys that live elsewhere, but do come in handy at times.  (I think this was her 2nd marriage, but lasted quite awhile).

She is not dwelling on her loss, so if your looking for empathy/sympathy, don't read this.  Years before she had picked up a magazine about living off the grid.  (Backwoods ???), and I cannot remember.  Know she is in her 50's though and know that was probably the strongest physically I have been.  I could not do what she did, not now, maybe not ever.

No money.  A nun had slipped a little over $200 in her hands.  She has a truck that is probably going to be repossessed (have not got that far).  The house and land belongs to a friend of her son's..  He raises cattle.  No conveniences. The price was right though, I think a little over $500 a year. At night she heard gnawing in the attic and saw rats that were fearsomely huge.  (We had a type of Norwegian rat living in the city where we lived that I would not have let any cat come up against.)  The house is in the East Texas back country with small country stores, 1 or 2.  No electricity, no conveniences.  (She did buy a bucket).  She found a cistern of water that had been covered up.  Hey, I'm country, but I have not looked this up, think it might mean a well.  The bull that lived outside the fence that surrounds her house fell in love with her truck.

I won't give anymore away.  Kay, I think you would like this woman.  She reminds me of you a lot.  She knows how to "make do" and in "making do" she does not have time to let the grief head to the surface, although I figure further on it will.  I know we are supposed to let it come out.  I have not got to that part of the book though.

It is called "A Widow's Walk Off-Grid to Self Reliance" and the author is Annie Dodds.  It is on Amazon.  I have not read many books yet that I had to make myself put down, have not had the concentration.  It is funny/strange/ironic that at first she mentions forgetting things often.  Little Annie Dodds, she obviously had not read that that was part of the grief process.  I know at my age I could not do all she is doing in this book, and I wonder how much of that "Backwoods" magazine, how much of it is helping her.  

One thing I thought was funny, no phone service (she does not even know her address), but I know the "backwoods" in her part of the country and when she did get a cell phone, the only place she could get service was on top of a ladder she placed in the pasture (50 acres of pasture), and she would go out there at night to use it too.  

No offence meant Kay, I definitely meant it as a compliment to your ingenuity and your strength in shoveling that snow.  She has a fur baby to take care of too, which provides much company.  

I pick books to read from widows and widowers to learn how they are coping.  I read "us" to see how we all are coping.  

[kayc]

Marg,

None offense taken, I take it as a compliment, and it does indeed sound like a really good book.  I don't know about the rats though.  Right now I have a mouse that died inside a wall that borders three places (kitchen cupboard, kitchen drawers, utility room closet, it's a triangular space that's walled off and empty.  I guess the only way to remove it would be to tear into the walls, which I don't want to do.  Right now I'm trying to outlive the smell, which I know from experience can take months.  I am not seeing any more signs of mice after putting fresh rat poison out.  I thought I'd never do that after Arlie got into rat poison once and scared me for his life, but he can't get at this, neither can Kitty.

Believe me, sometimes I feel like a pioneer!  Yesterday I was in the pouring rain in my nightgown and slippers trying to get some wood for the wood stove.  I'm down to the perimeter of the firewood stack and it's tarped on the outside to protect it from the elements.  The wind had blown the tarp off so I had to dredge up in the snow to the outside of it and get the tarp back in place...meanwhile wondering how long I can keep doing this.  I have to shovel the snow before I can run the wheelbarrow to the pole barn where the firewood is stored.  Ugh!  Today it's just pouring rain and miserable as it is, I'm grateful it's not snow.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a cistern is for holding and storing rainwater, whereas a well brings water up from underground vessels, usually drawn up with a pump.  My son discovered an extra well on his place and I found a hand pump around my place for him to affix to it so he can use it when the electricity goes out.  

[Margm]

Kay, I have not looked up a cistern, but this book tells of the strength, the intelligent thinking, the way of making a metal foot scraper she dug up out of the ground by her house into a stove, the dump yards where she finds treasures, the block they were going to build something with, she finds all these things and she found her strainer so she could keep the coffee grounds out of her coffee.  This woman totally amazes me.  I cannot tell you how much I applaud her because most of us women would not dirty our hands to dig a foot scraper out of Texas mud.  I see a cinder block that is too heavy for me to carry.  She sees 100 and throws them in the back of her truck.  Wire, anything usable.  And can you believe someone broke into her house, trampled it (she had no valuables), but the man that owned the cattle had had a new calf she called "Zipper" because of the black jagged stripe down its back.  These same people broke through the fence and killed that baby calf.  The sheriff (an old soul that had lived there forever) looked at the tire tracks and he knew who did it.  I have not finished, but it reminds me of when I was a kid making my play houses out of all the junk I could find in my pine thicket in the country.  I raked up pine straw into rooms.  I had a kitchen with tin cans.  And, I'm thinking, I had a lot more fun than I would have had with a doll house and those dishes Santa brought me every Christmas.  

Hats off to women, and I think this is the week to do it.  We got it gals.  And, rather than dying like I was planning soon, my women folks lived into their late 80's with more living into their 90's.  My grandma had sepsis, radiation, cancer, nervous breakdown and outlived her husband that was older than her by over 30 years.  My other grandmother (losing a kidney to TB in the 20's or 30's) outlived her mean husband 40 years, all the sisters outlived the brothers-in-law.

I honestly, have been planning on my final plans.  To hell with that.  I will get those final plans payed for then I am going somewhere.  I might leave out one morning early and phone my kids from some far away place..  Just no telling.  This woman has inserted a rod in my backbone.

[Margm]

Lost my "site" and I like posting on this cause I started it and I can say anything I want to.........within reason.  I am the cowardly lion in my heart, but today I talked to both my kids and explained to them about my never being on my own before and that I had to live and surprise, no one got angry, both understood and will help me by helping themselves.  Really, did not get angry.  No hard feelings.  

Reading this book I spoke about earlier has helped me.  I think I am gonna try to live.  Kay, you are someone i admire.  Your a tough lady.  I want to be a tough lady too.  There are not very many worldly things I care about.  I don't care about clothes, fixing up with makeup, (I like to be clean, at least once a week anyhow), but really nothing has struck my fancy that I want.  I want Billy, but I cannot have him.  I'd rather buy things for other people.  I'm not goody-goody, I just don't care.  I like Ferris Yaris pretty well.  In fact, once I really get on "my own" me and him might strike out for somewhere, I don't know where, just somewhere I have not been.  Just me and him.  (Boy, that's gonna worry some family.)  Ferris Yaris had to follow me home or I would not have taken him.  But, I have found something I want.  Yep, it hit me that this is something I really want, and I am gonna get it. I know it is strange. But it will soon be mine.  Gotta rearrange some boxes.

[scba]

47 minutes ago, Marg M said:

 In fact, once I really get on "my own" me and him might strike out for somewhere, I don't know where, just somewhere I have not been.  Just me and him.  (Boy, that's gonna worry some family.)  

Just me and him out somewhere, I have been thinking this too. Nobody is going to be worried, I won't tell anyone Im going with him, it is my crazy secret. 

[scba]

Is that a tent?

[Margm]

It is a tent bed.  I loved camping out with Billy, and this will be my new camping out.