I Could Write a Book

    It’s Christmas Eve - again. Seems just like yesterday I was getting ready for the big day last year. Time is truly flying by quicker and quicker the older I get. I must say that I’ve enjoyed Christmas much more this year , even with the last two weeks, than I have in many, many years.

    In the last two weeks, we’ve had 2 surgeries, 1 wreck, and 1 major dental emergency in this family. My surgery went just fine. I thought I was going to die the first week and honestly do not remember a lot of that week. I’m so glad I’m doing better. Tob’s surgery went just as well. He got really sick that evening from the anesthesia, but other than that you can’t tell he’s even had a surgery.  Now, the dental emergency is a completely different story. That was just crap and I hope I never had to go through this again. Tob decided to take a face plant and break one of his front teeth completely in half while pushing up and out the other front tooth. Permenant teeth, of course. That’s the only way a 9 year old knows how to do it. And the wreck, well, that wasn’t fun at all. It scared the stuffing out of me. I can still see the stop sign coming right at Tob. Thank you Lord for allowing the angels to keep us safe. My poor car is at the car doctor right now and I’m really interested in seeing what the damages come back in at. I do feel for the 16 year old who hit us. I’m glad he wasn’t hurt. I’m glad I only banged my shoulder. Maybe his parents won’t give him another brand new car. Somehow, I doubt that.

    The tricky situation to the whole car wreck is that the kid who hit us has a sister the same age as Tob , in the same class at school. The family goes to our church. We see them very often. Tricky, tricky, tricky. Also, the insurance company is wanting me to settle with them and I really have no intentions of "sueing" them, but I don’t have a clue what to do regarding potential further medical bills, if they should arise, regarding my shoulder. Sighs.

    However, it’s Christmas Eve and I’m happy. I think the children are going to be super pleased with Santa’s gifts this year. I will be happy to retire the Elf. The little Elf is a great tradition but at the same time a major pita. Look that up if you don’t know that acronym.

    Don’t forget to put out the cookies and milk for Santa. His reindeer might like some food , too. I’m off to start getting Christmas Eve dinner together and to put one little , grumpy princess down to a nap. We had a late night last night and it’s showing right now.

Merry Christmas Eve, y’all from a balmy, humidity 77 degrees !! 

Today, I  was thinking about a particular person and an accident they’ve encountered when all of a sudden I stopped focusing on the physical part of their accident and started thinking about the mental part of their accident. As we all know, every thing that happens to us in life shapes us, changes us, makes us the people that we are today. Goodness knows that my life is completely different today than it was 10 years ago and I’m a much different person today than I was back then. Back to my original thought — I started thinking "what was it like for this individual when their accident occured?" "Was there anything in their life that they wished they had done differently ? Anyone they wished they had told they loved  or that they forgave them?" etc.

After those initial ponderings, I started wondering "was anybody there with them?" "Were they alone?" And those two thoughts brings me all the way to the title of this post: "Sucide Memories". This story is not one that I talk about very much at all. Not like you can say at a party "hey, want to hear about the guy who committed suicide in front of me?" Not a great ice breaker, in my opinion.

It was December 26, 2001. Yes, the day after Christmas. The day when either the happiness and love of being with family and friends are still in your heart or either it is the day when you realize that you just spent the day before totally alone and depressed and wonder "why am I here?" Obviously, for the person in this memory, his thoughts must have run a little more towards the second question.

I was in New Orleans and driving back home. My mother still lived there. This was before Katrina. T was in the car seat, just a toddler at the time. I rounded the bend by the Superdome and was following a little sedan. Not too closely, thank goodness. I drive right under the overpass , nearest to the Dome, when the car in front of me swerves out of the blue. I look directly at the road to see that there is someone now laying on this very busy  roadway. I had seen something fall in front of the car but I really thought someone had thrown garbage off of the overpass. When I realize that this person has just jumped from above, I pull over on the side of the road (leaving T in his carseat) and I’m the second person to reach this individual. A paramedic follows behind me very closely. A preacher arrives from somewhere and kneels and starts praying over this male’s head. He is praying so loudly. I hear no other sounds around me. There is blood near me. I remember being almost afraid to touch this person because I was concerned of catching AIDs somehow.

I took his hand and held it. I started thinking "if this was my child I wouldn’t want him to be alone". I guess my maternal instincts kicked in. I stayed there and held his hand until the ambulance got there to take him away. I knew there was no way he was going to survive. He was doing "agonal breathing" and there was obviously a lot of internal damage. I remember getting up and realizing that the traffic was still zooming by us. That the noise from everything was deafening, but yet, I had heard nothing other than the preacher praying.

I watched the newspaper for days afterwards to see if I could find out his name. I did. He was 19 and at home from college on Christmas break. He had left a basketball game (I think) that he had been watching with his family and walked to this overpass and jumped off. The family said they had no idea anything was wrong with him.

To this day, I’ve contemplated contacting the mother and just telling her "He wasn’t alone. There were a couple of us with him. We did all we could."  I’m just not sure that the mother would want a wound like this to be that compeltely reopened again, so I’ve left well enough alone.

To say that the drive home that night is a blur is an understatement. I don’t remember it. I remember thinking "how can someone do this? What was so wrong that the day after Christmas they kill themselves?" It made me very sad for a long time.

To this day, I can not drive under that overpass without reliving the whole scene.

The end.  

You might be a "redneck" if you still have all of your Christmas decorations up on January 19th. Lol. That was how my sister greeted me today as she walked into my house unannounced. Got to love your sister.

Needless to say, after she left I got everything taken down except the tree. I’ve still got to get everything back up into the attic. I pray that I can get some help with that tomorrow, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’ll do a "ketchup" soon. Life’s been crazy, good, sad, down, happy, up, all in the same month.

I hope the New Year is going just the way you want it to.

Peace out,

Babycakes 

    It’s Christmas ! It’s Christmas! Merry Christmas, everyone.

   I peeked out under the tree a few minutes ago and Santa has already come. Go Santa. The stockings are filled. The presents are out. The children are sleeping. Now, it’s mommy’s turn to sleep.

   I hope Santa visited you. I’m sure he did. I know you all believe. He comes to the houses where you believe. I’ve never stopped believing. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. (Still haven’t figured out how to explain the pointy ears on the elves, though)

   Merry, merry Christmas. May you have a wonderful day.

Merry Christmas Eve to all. It is finally here. The big night. The night where we see if the children have been good enough over the past year to have Santa visit. Now, with my children, there is no doubt in the world that Santa will visit. Considering they are such perfect angels. (snorts) lol. I’m pretty sure that they’ve been great kids and Santa might even leave a "Wii" for the boys. (That might be a gift disgused for mommy.) Christmas Eve is our busiest night of the year. Two gatherings down so far today with 3 more to go tonight before we come back home and put out cookies and milk and for Santa.

Even though I’ve still got the very bad "Christmas Crud" going on I am finally in the spirit. Took me a little while to get there. I’m there, though. That’s the best thing. My most stressful gathering of the season is over and I feel like I have a huge weight off of my shoulders now. Whew. What a relief. Now if I could only get the weight off of my chest. Whenever I cough, I sound like I have the "smoker’s cough". My ears are still stopped up. I haven’t been able to breathe out of my nose in DAYS. That is so freaking miserable. But again - compared to Saturday when I felt like I was dying - I’m doing so much better. I’m concerned that 2 out of the 3 kidlets might be catching my crud, though. Dang.

I’m taking a new "finger food" tonight. Asparagus rollups. So easy. So yummy. So addictive. I could eat them all day long. I think you might have to like asparagus to like these though.  

I honestly can’t believe that tonight is Christmas Eve. It seems like it takes forever for this night to get here and then "bam" it’s here and I almost have my CELL PHONE. My "iphone’ baby. hehe. Who wants a phone call once I get it activated and figured out ? Now, I guess Santa could be really mean and not bring me one. Talk about a disappointed grownup child. LOL. (I’d just go buy it the next day)

Well, I wanted to let everyone know that I did manage to live through the Christmas Crud and stress and all the preparations that go into getting this all done. I hope Santa is nice to all of you.

with love,
Merry Christmas Eve ! 

This is how Santa visits us in Louisiana :  

Dear (adult) Santa,

    For Christmas (April 22, 2007) I want a maid who comes every week. I want a clothes folder so that I don’t have to fold this mountain of clothes. I want my own personal chef. I would really like it if he could come around 6am every morning. I know that may be hard for the elves to make, so if you can just get one to come from lunchtime on, that would be great. Oh, one requirement there, Santa, he must know how to make sushi.

    Maybe I should just make a list, Santa. I thought of some more things that I just really, really want this year. I’d like to have a driver for the kids. One who can pick them up whenever I can’t and if he can drive them to baseball practice, that would be swell.

    Oh, oh, oh, I just thought, maybe I could have a combo chef / personal trainer like Oprah. Santa, do the elves make those ? I really need one of those. Turning 40 this year has wrecked havoc on my body. My ankle injury may have had something to do with that. Speaking of that, Dear Santa, may I have my own MRI machine ? Could you throw in a Physical Therapist, too ? I really liked having one of those.

    And Santa, we all know that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. What about a tennis bracelet ? What about a tennis pro ? lol. If you don’t have any of those, I really, really need  (okay, want) a new racquet and some new workout clothes.

    Dear Santa, I’m an adult. I hope you don’t think I’ve asked for too much. I’ve seen kids around here get more than what I asked for on my list. I know I’m a bit early this year. I was thinking if you had any leftovers from this past Christmas that maybe you wouldn’t mind doing a special run with Rudolph one night.

Thanks a bunch, Santa. I promise (crosses fingers) that I’ve been a good girl.

xoxoxoxo