I Could Write a Book

Tomorrow is Little Bit’s hernia surgery. The worst part is going to be handing her over to the nurses and not being in the back with her. ack. I hate thinking that she might be scared and I won’t know it. The 2nd little worst part is going to be getting up so dang early. Have I ever mentioned that I am not a morning person ?

I feel like there are areas where I completely fail as a mother. Explaining to my child that she is having surgery tomorrow is definitely a "flunking" area. She knows that we are going to the doctor to get her boo-boo fixed. She knows they are going to give her some medicine to make her sleepy, but that’s it. I didn’t know what else to tell her. I didn’t want her to freak out and I wanted her to be able to sleep tonight. I haven’t told her brothers because they would be completely freaking out and then have her freaked out.

Anyone want to pick up my son from camp tomorrow for me ? I’ll get that taken care of tomorrow.

Since I’m on the subject of this surgery, can you believe the hospital called me today wanting a check for $2500 tomorrow morning ? I asked the lady, "do you always call people at 4:30pm the afternoon before their surgery and tell them to bring in $2500 the next morning?" She didn’t say a whole lot. Just what do people do who don’t have that kind of cash sitting around. Oh, she told me, "we will take credit cards." Whoopie. I’m a tad grumpy tonight. 

Please remember Little Bit and me tomorrow in your prayers. We will be at the hospital, in the city, early.

Don’t forget to ~spread the love~. 

    It’s time for me to make some "presidential decisions." Am I speaking of deciding between Bush and Obama ? No, I am not. I am referring to the position of President of my Jr League. To some that may not be a big decision. For me, it is the difference of going to graduate school full-time at the age of 42 or 44. When it was put into perspective of "only 2 years difference" yesterday, I thought "maybe I can be the president." Now, just because I decide to accept the nomination of the president position doesn’t mean I’ve won it. Hmm, let me go back to this weekend.

    This weekend was the "board / bored retreat." It’s a wonderful mandatory obligation of serving on the board. It’s actually an interesting time to learn neat, little tidbits about your fellow members. IE: one of our board members collects cacti. We also get a lot of leadership training, effective communication, and some problem solving guidelines. A true shame that they can’t teach me proper grammar while there.

    Unknown to me, the creative team member had been assessed of the fact that I’m a potential canditate for the position and that I am undecided because of the possiblity of graduate school. She was very effective in her line of questioning to me and helped me to look at the "bigger picture." One of the questions I was asked, "why do you want this Master’s degree ?" Well," I said, "it’s a personal goal of mine." She asked if I had an age deadline to obtain that goal. She asked what did I plan on doing with that degree, etc.  I think the fact that I said I wouldn’t work unless it was necessary made me realize that if that is indeed the case it would be okay to wait for 2 more years before tackling that mountain.

    Why don’t I put off the presidency nomination ? If I burn this bridge now, so-to-speak, I probably will not get another chance. Even though I know taking on the possible position will be a lot of work, I know it would be very rewarding for me. Nice, little ego stroke. The main reason - I know I’d be a great leader.

   So, I’m off to the prayers. I’m off to look for guidance. I’ve got a month to let the league know if I will accept the nomination, but I’ve only got 3 weeks before I really need to drop my class(es). I know that school will always be there for me. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. I wished someone could show me a crystal ball that laid out my life map for me to view. How on earth does one know if they are making the correct decisions ? 

    Good luck in your "presidential decisions", as well. I hope you use your knowledge and your prayers in determining your correct decision, too. We all need to remember that every little decision we make in our lives have huge impacts on the rest of our lives.

Peace out. Sweet dreams. Oh, I can’t wait to sleep in my bed. 6 hours of sleep in 72 hours does not hack it. ~~ I love you ~~ (don’t forget to say it) 

    I have a very difficult time with forgiveness. Intellectually, I know that I’m supposed to forgive. Spiritually, I know I’m supposed to forgive. Humanely, I find it extremely difficult. Even when I do forgive I find myself not "forgetting". I know that at some point in all of our lives we’ve had something happen to us that was "bad". Something that others would look at and say "how could you possibly forgive that person ?" Sound familiar ?

    I’m the recepient of a lot of forwarded emails. Lots. I do not respond to them, but generally, I read them all. Today, as I was thinking about this issue of forgiveness, one of my emails was a story on it. One that I need to read daily. So, in case you haven’t read this story, I’m going to share it with you.

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.  

Well, here I’ve gone and done it again. I’ve let 2 weeks go by before writing in my blog. Why ? Because I’ve been unbelievably busy. I’ve had people call and ask "did you get that email on such and such?" Uh, no. What’s email ? lol. If it hasn’t been extremely important in the last 2 weeks - it hasn’t gotten done.

Thank the good Lord above - my midterm is over. I’m not real sure what kind of grade I’m going to make. The longer I sit here, the more I think about "well, I should have written this down, etc". Oh, well. It’s water under the bridge, now. I’m just praying for an 85. That’s the lowest B and I will be more than thrilled. I will be celebrating on Wednesday if I make an 85. Bigtime celebrating.  I’m also prepared for the fact that I might not get an 85 and well, I’ll say I had a good attempt at graduate school, swallow my pride and move on in life. Blah, blah, blah.

I need sleep. I need fun. I need relaxation. Who wants to adopt me at their house for a weekend ? I’m ready to fly somewhere and just get away. <<<—- That’s a serious question. lol.  

J’s 5th bday was last Tuesday. She’s getting cuter by the day. More stubborn, too. We had her school friend birthday party this past Saturday and I must say that for as much as I stressed about it - it was a success. Enough said. I’m still not sure what to do regarding T’s bday.  

This afternoon is tennis for G, religion class for T, and a wonderful business meeting (Jr League) for myself. (I still haven’t looked at the million of emails I’m supposed to be reading. Ignorance is bliss) So, I’m back on a normal, crazy schedule again. I’m reentering my family today. I was pretty much a studying hermit all weekend.

On Thursday, I’ll be on a 3rd grade field trip to our State Capital and surrounding museums. Oh, 1 1/2 hours on a bus each way with 30 8-9 year olds will be fun. Right ? lol.

Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts and well-wishes I’ve received. I truly appreciate them.  

My eldest son started his new school today. I hardly slept last night because of worrying about how his day was going to go for him. When I left him at school this morning it was everything I could do not to cry. I wasn’t this emotional when I left him at Kindergarten. I said a prayer or two (hundred) during the day today and couldn’t wait to pick him up from school just so I could hear how it went.

 I get up to him in car line and the first words out of his mouth were "I had a great day, Mom". Tears welled up. "It was awesome". "I loved my lunch". Lol. I literally started laughing at the lunch comment. He was excited because he was served fruit AND broccoli. He said "the teachers don’t yell and everybody is nice." Wow. I’m really glad I switched him. 

Talk about relief. I honestly felt as if a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. Ever since then I’ve wanted to do nothing but go to sleep. You know how it is when you are completely stressed and worried about something ? How it wears you out ? How you feel when you no longer have to worry ? Like you could sleep like Rip Van Winkle ? Well, that’s me right now.

Peace out, Babycakes. Sweet dreams. 

Lack of control in any situation in my life makes me crazy. I wish I knew how to handle this area in my life a lot differently.  I’m going to be doing lots of praying this weekend.

I hope my son’s baseball team wins the tournament this weekend. Even if they don’t - they’ve done an excellent job.

I’m off to do my presentation and sleep somewhere that I really don’t want to. LOL.

Peace out, Babycakes.  

    It’s been a long one. It’s been a hot one. It’s been a fun one. It’s been a very interesting one.

    I sat out in the boiling heat for my son’s baseball game. They won. He did wonderfully catching and throwing. We need to practice some on hitting, but hey, he’s only 8.

    We went to a really nice and very interesting party tonight. The host/hostess are super nice, sweet people. There were actually some people there that we knew. It was nice to sit and talk and catch up some. There were people there where I knew the wife and not the husband, that sort of thing. It was very interesting to see the "other-halves".

    The one "interesting" thing that happened tonight was when one of the guys we were talking to asked all of a sudden if he could pray. He said it just "clicked" with him and wanted to pray with us. Uhhh, just what do you say to that ? We said sure and then had about a 15 minute prayer. It was very nice, very impromtu and totally unexpected. One of those things that you drive away from the party asking your spouse "so, what did you think of that ?"

    Tomorrow is Sunday and it is another full day. Actually having some family time in the afternoon. My children are super excited about getting to see their cousins. You’d think Santa (still not in sight) was coming.  

    I’ve had a semi-crappy day. I had my feelings hurt yesterday evening by a grown woman. That amazes me. Why ? First, because I allowed her words to hurt me and secondly, I still can’t believe she said what she did in front of other people.  I was polite to her. I did not respond with any hate-filled words. Believe me, I wanted to. I think it was God showing me that it is definitely time to get away from that situation and to move on. 

    Now, to what I started this post about. Today when J got in the car she was BEAMING. Couldn’t wait to tell me her good news. "Mommy, I made it all the way across the monkey bars."  Until today, she has only been able to go "2 bars" before falling off. She was so proud of herself. The teacher helping her into the car was so proud of her and it made my heart melt to know how happy she was.

    Why can’t we find such joy in such "little" things ? Actually, now that I think about it, I probably would find joy in being able to make it all the way across the monkey bars. LOL. Do they make any high enough for me to find out ?  

    I want to share one my favorite prayers with you all. Here goes:

A Prayer For Prayer

May we let prayer be. May we allow it to follow the infinite patterns of the human heart.

May we learn to practice the most difficult art, the art of noninterference.

May we be guided by prayer instead of attempting to guide prayer.

May we allow prayer to be what it needs to be, to be what it is.

May we let prayer be.