Margm

This is why I cannot handle a home. I cannot afford to have it fixed every time something goes wrong. If it goes wrong here, I call manager, she sends David. I don't miss my other house. The difference in four families to an apartment building, smelling what they are having for dinner (sometimes that turns my stomach), but we don't all eat the same thing. Brianna would rather be in London or NYC. I hope she makes it one day. She is not aiming towards her goal. We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, so much to worry about, so many to miss. I remember one ice storm holiday. We had come down from Arkansas. Electricity went out in Mama's house. No problem for her, she switched everything to the fireplace. Country gal can survive. We grow good-ole tomatoes and homemade wineAnd a country gal can surviveCountry folks can survive (with apologies to Hank Williams, Jr.) Mama did make homemade wine sometimes. That stuff was GOOD. You put a balloon on the top of the big bottle (big), keep air out with rubber band around balloon. One year she didn't have a balloon so she used plastic glove. When those five fingers were standing erect, time to drink it. Mama was mental, but I think most of the mental was when she had walked on top of that line she always talked about being the difference in genius and insanity. Mama walked on top of the genius line sometime. No, we didn't grow "smoke" but if she had thought about it, we might have. We had the whole back field empty.

It worries me because my granddaughter just crawls further into herself. She is not bodily sick, so how can we go to a doc? She has a friend, thank goodness, that she talks to often. Has her personality. But, has a twin and about 3 brothers and sisters and lives with her family, afraid of the outside, her parents and grandmother all live together, and they all have COVID now. Won't talk to Zoom, Skype, unless it is to her friend. I knew she did not want to get around people but I offered to get her outside, she will not go. Does not want to go Thanksgiving, but there will only be five of us. I've got a problem. Advice has been given. Over and over.

Billy wouldn't eat casseroles. He had to have meat at every meal when we first got married. I learned how to fix Spam so many ways. It was great in Chef's Salads. Then on a health kick later in life we left out meat except on "fat Fridays." Brianna fixes her own meals. She likes rice with anything. Not brown rice. Her nickname of Tater suited her too because she loves potatoes, but not tater tots.

I remember a lady in her 90's (I think) when they were taking away people's estrogen hormones as a daily dose. (Have not been typing that stuff for a few years) and for all I know they have put it back. I remember them telling her they were going to stop her estrogen. She said, "I beg your pardon, you most certainly will not" and they didn't stop it. I can imagine her thinking, "what, your worried about me getting breast cancer at 110?" I feel the same way about Xanax. I only take two 1 mg each day.

I think of my aunt and two cousins. Their hobby was antiques and they drove for miles to pick up pieces. My aunt had the cutest little house built beside her big one (a house I could have lived in comfortably the rest of my life), and in it she kept antiques that she could not keep in the big house. My boy cousin wanted my solid oak claw tooth table and chairs. I didn't care about material possessions, still don't, but I had bought that table alone at unpainted solid oak furniture store, chairs too. With my wonderful designing mind, I picked dark pecan stain. It was so ugly. Kelli took it, stripped it, and now it is oak color and she is saving it for Brianna. Kelli has my great grandmother's sewing machine, an old Minnesota treadle, will only sew forwards. It serves as a piece of furniture. She has the 1928 dresser and chest of drawers.. I let rain ruin the bed frame. My cousin has three floors and a Michigan basement full of collectables and antiques. When he was well, they sold them at an antique shop. I had noticed a collection of ancient butter molds. I told her I appreciated them. She knew I was not asking for them, they all know I will use lawn chairs for living room chairs. But, she had forgot all about them and wondered what box they might be in, in the basement. Both are in ill health, late 70's. Hire a gardener to care for their property. I remember seeing a native american graveyard with the deceased most prized possession as their monument. I remember seeing a sewing machine for one woman. That is about as close as we can get to "taking it with us."

We have a wonderfully beautiful assisted care right around the corner in front of the elementary school. In Mount Ida, they built the assisted living next door (connected by walkway) on a small mountain with the same mountain ridge that ran behind our house. The view was the valley, the town, the river. I wanted so bad to make Mount Ida my home, the rest of my days, but I didn't count losing Billy in that town and any pain of returning would be so agonizing. All in my head, but the rest of my five feet went along with my brain. Kelli informed me I would not be in any of them and I'm sure she would take good care of me, she is/was a nurse, mostly for the elderly. We don't know how we will leave this earth and it will happen, when it happens. If you can't leave your house.......don't. If you need more help than you can pay for, now that is a problem you will have to face. My friend Hettie lives in a triple level. I saw her little "for sale sign) on the street when I was paying my property taxes in October. She lives in her washroom, kitchen, her dining room, her den/living room, and her bedroom. But she was a flower person and she cannot keep up with her beautiful bolder laden home with all the trees and flowers. She cannot mow the big sloping hill in back, and she wants to leave, cannot afford to keep house upkeep, her husband built it though. Mount Ida is her home, forever. Her two kids are there and getting too old and busy to really take care of their things and hers too. This is not a little yard, it is acres. I think I would have my front steps, all the smooth rock steps weed eat all around her walkways, a light electric weed eater will do this. If I could not leave, and some cannot, then live in the part of your house you can without using the rest. Make your own apartment inside your house. Don't like it that way? Which is better? We are so individual. Cannot pick up all the limbs. Keep enough pushed out of your way to be able to get through. Not up to your expectations? Then find someone who you can hire, if you have the money. There is one stream that flows through most all of us. We are getting old and unable to do things. My heart made me leave. Yours makes you stay. It does not work the same way for everyone.

I was in a fog. I let Billy's fishing tackle and equipment go or be stolen and it was expensive stuff. I had Scott with me, but my head was in the pine trees surrounding the house. Now, I would have guarded them with my life. Then, I wasn't even there, and that is why the rules say, don't do anything the first year (I think that is what it says). I can see why. But, I could not stay in that house another night, even with people staying with me. It was like it was the house's fault he was gone. I had to get away. I absolutely had to, and that was why the 50 morphine pills sounded good. I guess I go insane when I don't want to face something. NOTE: Just had a note come across my screen saying "real estate business is booming because of the pandemic. I find that so hard to believe other than people cannot pay for their houses. Dee, it is hard (impossible for me) to take care of my own house. I don't want to. I know it is crazy, but even at 5:00 a.m. every morning, hearing that bed making noises in the apartment above me, it is kind of comforting. Been there, done that, y'all have fun. That quiet, beautiful country, wildlife surrounded, flower surrounded home was prison. This apartment house where I don't know any of the people, but the manager, David, the "fixer" and my sister, and I talk to my friends quite often, either on here or on the phone. We shy away from politics as I am a poly-tick hater and all of these people, me included, live in a red state and it should be purple, my sister wishes it was blue. It is past 1:00 a.m. and I want to go read and I am daffy anyhow, but more so after the witching hour. As long as we can just throw the stuff in big boxes, close the top and sit on them, we will be okay.

Kay, in reading your note about your four year old daughter, it makes me sick to be a part of "mankind" and vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I have asked him before though, "won't you just let me hide and watch?" The first pastor was arrested twice for embezzlement and those are "much more serious things than the innocence of a child." He is a car salesman now. I'm not like God wants me to be, I'm not as good as Jesus, I don't forgive easily. Kay in your case, a pedophile should have been put in a small room, a pair of dull scissors used, and his tool removed. He can control the bleeding. I am not into hating the sin, forgiving the sinner. I'm not that good a person. I did remove my post, some know already, I might not practice forgiveness but I do practice anger.

I can't do it even yet Dee. Brianna makes fun of my many plastic boxes, the biggest ones, piled in my closet, at the end of my bed, and against the wall. She wants me to get rid of them. I opened the first one and so much of Billy jumped out at me I had to close it and still won't open it. I don't care for a pretty bedroom. I feel so snug with them around me, almost like living in the RV again. I enjoy going into my bedroom and feel so contented. If I need something, I have not needed it in five years, so I am doing fine. I love my plastic boxes. They can throw it all away when I'm gone. I took the small bedroom on purpose. The big one has the extra bath and is very large with a ceiling fan.. I figured she could make her own apartment since in the other apartment the small one was so hot. Well, in this one the big one is the most hot. She has it decorated like she wants it with a huge walk in closet with room to hang three different poles of clothes and still room. I use my little closet and front closet. It is enough. Funny how few wants you have alone.

Our 60th will be July 2021. I will "celebrate" it the way we always did, doing nothing special. Sometimes the over five years seems like he left yesterday, other times I wonder if I ever knew him (but then we have two kids). Got to talking to a friend and neighbor, another classmate, a wonderful Christian woman, does not beat you to death with Proverbs from the Bible and she and Joe were childhood sweethearts. He passed away with a lung condition, had never smoked, but it put him sort of out of commission for 3-1/2 years. Her mom was my mom's best friend and across the street neighbor. Marie had four little girls, one right after the other. After the last one she developed a brain cancer. Her church friends said she and her husband should get away by themselves for a few days. Marie said "A vacation without my children would be no vacation. I could never leave my girls behind." My mom, who had few friends loved this sweet woman and admired her. When she passed my mama said, very stoically "She is on a vacation now without her girls." All girls grew up to be successful women and mothers. The husband married a woman, a school teacher, who had her daughter and husband killed at a train crossing there in the small town. There was a few years before they got together. She mothered those four girls very strictly, but lovingly. She and their father had one son, he is a doctor in the small town now. Parents gone, of course, one sister gone, the oldest. This friend of mine and I used to be playmates and throughout school were neighbors who shared many things. She is the same beautiful woman who hurts, like we all do, but helped me last night. I might go back and delete all this. I'm not ashamed of her, I'm ashamed of me.

Billy hated musicals but Clint and Lee Marvin played in "Paint Your Wagon" and Billy would start singing "I was born under a wandering star" all the time. No, none of us could sing, but I could whistle and Billy said he liked my whistling cause he knew I was happy. The one with the chimp was called "Every Which Way But Loose" and Sondra Lockwood, who he lived with many years or dated or something, she had a lot of bad things to say about him in her book. Didn't read it, read a summary of it. I think she passed away. He had a child with the redheaded woman he dated for awhile.

Bri keeps asking me, Mamol, does he do anything for you? I have to tell her I wish it did, and for my 30-year-old self, Jason Momoa, Scott Eastwood (never cared for Clint), sure liked the "Virginian" and a South Korean actor/singer named "Rain." I have seen that movie "Ninja's Assassin" about three times, and will watch it again. It is a bloody movie, so I would not recommend it for the faint hearted. But, they really don't do anything for me. That's sad. And if Billy was not gone I would not even be saying that. I'll probably have a bad dream tonight.

Well, "Merry Christmas" to you too Kevin, very pretty.

I'm rereading the book and Cassie Dewell does not resemble Cassie in the book. For one thing, she is 20 pounds overweight and very aware of it. The clothes don't resemble hers either and I'm not remembering the book happening like this, but C.J. Box was in on it, so he knew the changes. I will finish rereading the book and will not watch it at all next week. Nope, Yellowstone (I have never read a book), but it has Rip in it. Alfre Woodard, Kathy Bates played in about a 2009 movie by Tyler Perry ("The Family that Preys") and the spoiled rich son of Kathy Bates was Cole Houser. Cole Houser is Rip on Yellowstone, no resemblance to the Cole Houser that was Kathy Bates son in that movie.

Yes, it is getting to be a problem. There is fear thrown in. I could not go to my aunt's or my friend's funerals. One reason was because she was the high school secretary for so many years and I knew there would be so many people at grave side. My friend is having a church funeral and grave side also, and he died from the after effects of COVID and a stroke and listening to the news (problem solver, don't listen to the news), makes me afraid to go. Besides being elderly high risk, if I get sick, no one can do anything. All other methods/meds would kill me. I don't think I'm so afraid of dying, there is just so much I need to do for my granddaughter, and I want to be able to help her to "get out in the world" because she is worse than I am. All the social networks scare her, and that is the only way she can talk to her counselor. She won't do the "facetime" things. She won't learn to drive. I know all the answers that she will have to do things if I am not here. She is so intelligent, but her bio-mom taking all the drugs before she was born makes her need counseling. We had that going, then this COVID. We had school going, then this COVID. "I" (me, myself and I) have to come up with something. I get so much advice on what I have to do, and cannot really do anything right now. I can still drive, with purpose, and get out of the house, with purpose, also. Right now I am standing still. If I die, I will not have to worry about things. Gonna get rid of some of this. Just stuff we are going through. Life down in the southland.

My job as a transcriptionist was more a hobby than a job. I learned something new every day. I did this 43 years. Without spellcheck, without PDR's to look up medication spelling, it became a search and find job that I loved. I did not have a spellcheck or new PDR the whole time, 27 years, I worked at the state hospital. When I went to the Catholic Hospital, they had all of this. For the next 16 years, medical trans was a breeze. Then they brought in "voice recognition" and how could a machine understand some of these doctors we couldn't understand, English as a second language. (Being a southern grandmother, I should have been more understanding as English is my 2nd language, Southern is my first), as you all well know. But, they made me an "editor," what a smart sounding title. The first time a doctor said "parenthesis" and the damn machine printed out "bull flatus," I knew I was a glorified crap cleaner instead of what I enjoyed. I did not mind leaving, 43-years were enough. I totally hate voice recognition anything. Just read your captions on bottom of TV. Sometimes you can't.

I think it is taken after his series that include the woman investigator. Her name is Cassie Dewell (I think), and his last of the 4 books in her series is the last one I read. I just like the Joe Pickett ones so much better but they picked this series to draw from. And just like his others, she is no ninja fighter, Joe Pickett is a mild wildlife officer. Cassie is about 20 pounds overweight. Not much if any romance, but he sure does write interesting books. She started out as a law officer, but likes being a private investigator best. Lawyers hire her and she gets results. I just had Brianna record it and I will watch it the next morning. Who am I kidding, I get up at noon now. Never did that in my married life but once and slept till 1:00 pm when Scott was a baby. No kidding, I see agoraphobia in our future, what there is left. Be careful.

I think I will keep making mistakes in trying to fill these boxes.. You will see a double period, double comma, lots of double letters. I'm sorry, my fingers have little nerve brains that say lets just jump all over the place. You should see my straight lines I draw. I have to use a ruler and even then manage to have loops.. Just have to put up with me.

I forever remember the "joke" that is so true. "It was said during Katrina this Christian man and woman had been sent a boat to help them leave the flooding. They said 'no, God will save us' and then the water rose and they finally had to get on their roof. Twice more a boat was sent to help them. They refused, 'God will save us.' Well, they drowned and when they got to Heaven they asked God 'why didn't you save us?' and God said 'I sent you three boats." Okay, that is a joke, but there is so much truth to it that it really is not funny. We wonder why bad things happen to good people. I think most all of us are good people, but still we are having bad times. I miss Billy so much that it does hurt, often. When I pray, I talk to Jesus and either he allows me to talk to Billy, or Billy just looks at Jesus and says "you know her even better than I do." My friend Hettie, she had lost her husband Loyal five years before I lost Billy. I think maybe God helped put her, and this forum in my life. I was crying when another classmate had passed away (and if I was not at her house every day, then she came to mine). She said "we are both at the age we are going to be losing our friends." The week before, she had lost a classmate, a friend, also. Since then there have been so many. And each one makes me think "one day that will be me." I talk to my kids each day. With things like they are, and my son helps clean the COVID rooms sometimes, he is afraid he will bring the virus to me. I miss him terribly, but we talk on the phone and on "messenger" throughout the night while he is working. He comes in, showers, and all precautions are taken in the hospital, plus Kelli takes his sheets, washes his clothes twice and uses Lysol spray liberally. She even found a manly scent to spray in his room. She had her blood drawn and things were good. Both have had the COVID but know they can have it again, and both protect me by staying away. Kay, I am sure your kids have your health at their foremost wish. When it came to my mind I had to leave the place that Billy left me in, knowing it was not home anymore,, no place could ever be "home" again, but still I have to live. If I didn't, then those 50 morphine pills would have not been flushed down the drain. When it came to my mind, I knew my sister needed help with Mama (which is my downfall, I did not want to help with my own mother) but my sister was better than I was, and all the money Mama paid for her colleges, my sister sweated blood and owed Mama nothing, but her good heart kept Mama in her own home till she died. It was not easy. My mother's serpent tongue, even with Alzheimer's, it never shut up until she left on August 6th, 2016. Do you know I am so sinful that I paid my daughter to stay with my mother while my sister taught at a nearby college. My daughter is/was a nurse and she loved her "Maw" My downfall was that I disliked my mother very much. In the five years I have been back "home" I have made peace with my mother's mental problems, my own mental problems, and my dad's austere personality. I think God has allowed these things to happen for a purpose. I cannot blame him, although I think of him as having the same personality as my dad. I talk to Jesus, who is supposed to be one with God, but I will still talk to Jesus. People could give me an argument, but don't try, I'm too old, too cynical, and this is how I have to believe. I know it is common to blame God, but if you don't believe in him, you have to find someone else to blame. I hope and I pray that things will change soon because this is definitely giving agoraphobia to people, myself included.. I go to the store, but I suit up to do it, I shed those clothes and shower when I come home. I still do not feel safe, but if this is the only boat that is offered, then I'm taking it. And speaking of my mother, she was a very intelligent woman, she had mental problems but she believed that God helps those who help themselves. That is all we can do right now. And again, the dressing is put on the side of this very long word salad.

No, I returned to the doc that had given me the prescriptions. He would not even talk to me, just raised his hands when he saw my packing around my wrists, and he started walking backwards, would not talk to me, and all I wanted was a referral. I think he had already been confronted with some other damaged females. He would not talk to me.. I got hysterical and ran out the door. I was already so messed up anyhow.

Our friend from when we first married, he just passed away in the nursing home. His son's told him they loved him, he said it back, but he would not say it back to his wife. (This was all done through a glass, they could not touch him.) Maybe it was just the opposite of mine and Billy's, my turning my back on him and telling him "NO!!!" and I was not going to let him leave. Maybe our friend could not tell her goodbye or that he loved her because it would mean he was leaving. She has not got to touch him for the last few months. Married 59 years, and my heart is with her. Knew it was going to happen. He beat the COVID, but his little body was so tired from the stroke over a year ago. My heart hurts. He had said my Billy was the first to befriend him when he moved to the small town and in my mind, I believe he was the first to greet him in Heaven. I have to believe that way Billy, I have to.

No, at one time he was one of the most visited OB/GYN docs in the surrounding towns. He was in the city, he delivered Kelli. The one thing I remember was his telling me a woman needed help losing weight, and I became one of his followers. I heard the authorities talking to him in his office. He came in for my "examination" and said "they seem to think I have women addicted to these drugs, are you addicted. I said "no, I'm not" (now write the prescription). One other GYN doc before the cancer, I filled out my form and he said you mention you were addicted to amphetamines. I told him what his colleague had done (we women were willing accomplices), and he said, "yes, Dr. T., got a lot of our women addicted." The day after my wrist cutting I went to his office to get a referral to a shrink. He saw the wraps on my arm, threw up both hands, walked backward out of the room and I never saw him again. I was hysterical, crying openly, walked to my car, got in, rode to next medical complex, recognized a shrink I had typed often, no appointment (did not need one, I was insane). A good Samaritan had followed me, I got out of my car at the shrink's office and he left and waved me on. I guess I could have sued the Dr. T., but probably a lot of women might have. Still, he was allowed to practice, he retired an old, old man and lived to be 100. He was from a well established rich family. And, this was in the 1970's.

I rode Billy about it when we were first married. Many fusses. I quit fussing. Bothered me waking up to a cotton mattress burned an oval hole and the burning had spread, but no flame, just charred material that kept burning. His folks home burned completely down with many living with them when he was working nights and sleeping days. He escaped with his jeans only. But said he was not smoking. I would not try to get my sister to quit, though she wants to actually. Thinks she could do it with hypnosis. I hate to see her hurting. People look at people who smoke, who have the nicotine habit and look down on them for not being strong enough. My sister is a member of AA. She quit liquor twice. She cannot quit smoking. I quit prescription biphetamines after seven years "cold turkey" because I did not know you could buy them without a prescription and besides, would it have been the real stuff. The doc was a "weight control doc" and he left women from La., AR, Texas and Tenn. even to handle it the best we could. I went absolutely crazy/mad/insane. I had to be hospitalized as I was a danger to myself and those around me. It was not a pretty sight. I slit my left wrist and sure enough, I hit the big artery. Only a mile from the hospital, my neighbor sewed me up and asked if it was intentional.. The angry fit I threw was intentional, the slamming my arm down on a broke glass candle holder to pick up a table was intentional. He didn't send me to the psych ward. He wanted to. Didn't matter, I admitted myself the next day. My dad stormed into the room with his hat in his hand wanting to know what had I done with the life he and Mama had given me. About four of us in the room were dumb-struck, no words said, he stormed out. So, I sorta understood Billy's and my sister's addiction. It was a craving I could not handle and thus began 15 years of psychotherapy and many things happening that required me to keep going. The smoking itself was making Billy's arteries clogged. He had to quit after more than one kidney stent. But the liquid tobacco did not clog his arteries, just probably killed him. Some people can quit. Some people cannot. I understand. I grieve my sister's pain as a pain she cannot help. I will forever grieve Billy.

"N", I so understand not being able to watch the shows. He was in the middle of his favorite author's newest book and I came home from the hospital and he and I read it together in that one night. I was able to grasp all the meanings, concentrate fully, and when I finished it, I could not concentrate enough to read anything but magazine articles for at least a year and probably more. Someone said it was because he and I read the book together. We had many years together, but it is never enough. Our friends, since we were a young couple, had to celebrate their 59th wedding anniversary looking through the glass at each other. He had to be permanently in the nursing home after a stroke and she was there first thing in the morning and left late in the evening. Since COVID, they cannot be together. They took him to the ICU with COVID very recently and I'm afraid to even ask. We have enough cruel things in our life. Finish watching her shows. I thought it would be impossible, but I did it. He had two and I finished out both of them. We have some friends from many years ago and relatives that I know and can feel their fear. I feel their pain. And all we can do is say we are sorry. And it will never be enough.