"T" in the Morning

Where am I? How did I get here? What time is it? 7:30 A.M. I fell asleep after the movie on the family room mattress. Nate got up and went to bed, but didn't tell me to follow and now I have a neck ache from not sleeping on my own pillow. I get up and go in to the bathroom, hmmm, my hair looks pretty good having just woken up.

My slippers skid across the kitchen floor and I put the tea kettle on high to heat my water. The air is hazey and the trees are dusted with a thin layer of white. It looks cold outside. As I sit down to read my country magazines my eye catches a squirrel jump from one pine tree to the next. He scurries up the tree and my eye catches the movement of another squirrel. They are playing going round and round the tree, their tails flipping back and forth. They are so fast my eyes can't keep up.

Blue jays and woodpeckers gather round the bottom of the tree to get some breakfast from the seeds fallen out of the bird feeder on the tree and my tea kettle whistles. Better hurry before it wakes anyone else in the house.

I have chosen chocolate hazelnut tea. Non-caffeinated, dang. Oh well, it's still good. The tea bag changes the water to a nice orange-brown. Cream swirls in little circular paths until it no longer is separate from the tea and now my tea is a creamy brown. Just add sugar and sip the heat down until my whole body is warmer. No one is up to start a fire in the stove so the tea will have to be my heater.

Today is the day we shall celebrate Thanksgiving as I worked on the actual day. We will have all the regulars, turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy, pie, both pecan and pumpkin, cranberry sauce, salad. Notice, salad came after PIE! I have actually had two days of this food already as my work furnished the whole meal for it's employees already. But they didn't furnish the family and that's the most important ingrediant of all. No football game today, only after thanksgiving sales and lots of traffic. I didn't buy gravy mix so I may have to venture out into the maddness. which will give me the excuse I need to go to the new store with all the decorations that just opened last week. It's only open twice a week and Fridays are one of the days it's open.

So what am I doing blogging? I need to put on makeup and get out of the house into the cold and onto the highway.

Hope your thanksgiving was grand. T

Mean People Suck

I remember reading this statement on a bumper sticker once and I agreed with it, however, I knew I still had a mean streak in me and I'd be a hypocrite if I bought it and put it on my car.

Mean People Suck

Don't it make you wonder where those "mean streaks" come from? Do we keep the meanies under the rug and never let them know we know who they are?

I remember when I was little, very little, about 6 to 8 years old, we lived in a trailer court in the middle of Salt Lake City. I mean "in the middle" of the city. The trailers were mostly single wide, there was no grass or playground to play on. Only a smidgen of what would be called a "back yard" and it was really a "side yard", which consisted of gravel and an old truck or something in it taking up most of the room to play. Each trailer was only a few feet away from each other which basically solidified the fact that no one else had a yard. We played in the car wash at the end of the street. It had a roller to squeeze the water out of the rags and we'd put paper cups filled with water and squeeze them until the water shot out the other end of the cup. What fun!!! Another thing we did was run through the Ramada Inn just down the street. I remember looking at the huge swimming pool with the greatest desire to hop the fence and take a dip. Instead, we'd just go in and play around in the Inn. It was huge!! Anyway, I say this to illustrate our immense boredom.

One day Lori and I went over to the neighbors house. They had chicken wire fence so it didn't stand too high off the ground and their little girl was in the yard. She must have been about one or two years old. Lori and I would push her over through the fence, and she'd cry and pick herself back up. We'd make like it was sad that she was crying for no apparent reason to us, give it a few minutes and then we'd pinch her. She'd start to bawl and the mother would stick her head out the door to see what was wrong. We did this a couple times until it was obvious the girl wasn't just crying for nothing. There was a sense of accomplishment in being able to make someone smaller than myself cry. Isn't that awful?

What would make me want to be so mean? My mom had a mean streak. And it is my opinion that her grandmother, my great grandmother, had a mean streak too. Where great grandma got it I don't know. Anyway, mom would tell me how someone in her family, an aunt or possibly great grandma, would purposely stick the baby with the pin when she would change it's diaper. I don't think it was the persons own baby. Isn't that just MEAN? Sticking an innocent and unexpecting infant with a pin, watching the poor thing cry and grinning about it! Awful.

My sister and I would fight. I mean fist fight, throw things at each other, yell, scream and call names. I hated it. I think that's part of the reason I went into religion. It was my way of swearing off of that sort of behavior and taking a "public vow" to show I had made a heart felt change. Only thing is, this last trip to Utah, we had a fight again and the yelling returned and it felt like I had come full circle. Like, I hadn't really changed at all. It was easy to scream at her like I used to and I hated it this time as I hated it all the other times it happened when we were growing up. I was yelling at her for yelling at dad. Make sense to you? Me neither.

What real purpose does being mean serve? What do we gain by being mean? What positive thing can come from such a negative behavior?

Nothing.

This is why I am publishing this blog. To let people know I have a mean streak and I'm working on it. I am learning that there is no real reason to keep it. Kindness, even when you feel the need to snap back and give 'em what they deserve, doesn't always get you what you hoped for............ justice.

The meanies in my family must some day come forward. The fire started somewhere and it must be put out now. I am standing on the side of kindness, until the next time I am faced with a person spitting in my face their vile loathing hatred and I can only hope I have the strength of character to look at them and see it is they who have the problem and not fall into their pit of hatefulness.

Forgiveness

The Oxford Dictionary:

"Forgive: Cease to feel angry or resentful toward; pardon; excuse, overlook, clear, acquit, absolve."


New World Dictionary:

"Forgive: To give up resentment against or the desire to punish; stop being angry with; pardon. To give up all claim to punish or exact penalty for (an offense)."


The American Heritage Dictionary:

"Forgive: To excuse for a fault or offense; pardon. Synonyms: forgive, excuse, condone. These verbs mean to pass over an offense and to free the offender from the consequences of it. To forgive it to grant pardon without harboring resentment."

Three dictionaries definitions of what "forgiveness" is. Three different views using words to describe what "true" forgiveness is. Not just "releasing the pain that a person has caused in your life", but absolving. Not holding onto it, but "stop being angry with". Not hoping to punish but "pardoning".

I read a blog once that started out like this. "You know what I hate, hate, hate, despise?".

This is not forgiveness. This is harboring, hoping to inflict pain with the blog. Just hoping that the person it was directed toward would read it and feel the vial seething hate spew all over them. Putrid, sick, loathing....... this is not forgiveness. This is not happiness. This kind of hate and loathing leads to physical sickness.

You can choose your friends, you can't choose your relatives. This is so true. But why allienate yourself from the people who love you? We know you're hurt. So are we.

How do I feel about the person who wrote these words? Do I hate her? No. I don't hate her. How can I hate her. I don't know her well enough to hate her. I babysat her once when she was very small. I looked forward to seeing her at family parties, unfortunately, sometimes her mother would choose not to come to the parties and I wouldn't get the chance to see her. I am a loving Aunt. I love my nieces and nephews.

You are not the only one hurt. We have been lost, confused, bewildered and alienated too. We feel we have lost a big chunk of our family. Fortunately there have been a few who have splintered off and decided to be a part of our lives. I'm grateful for this.

Just because we continue to love the person who has made changes that have caused confusion, distrust, pain and sorrow doesn't mean we don't look on those closest to him and ask ourselves how they are handling it all.

Another thing, the feelings you have about this are your own. So "own" them. Don't think that avoidance is forgiveness. Don't think that allienating everyone who has love for the offender is the way to go. Don't think for one minute the thought hasn't run through my head..... How the hell are you and your family handling all of this?

Maybe it's time to put down the resentment and ask yourself why a person would make such a strong change in their life that would affect everyone they are close to; that would allienate everyone they love. Could it be they had no foresite? What would make a person do such a thing?

Could it be self hate?

Could it be they were convinced by so called "experts" that it was the only way to be "whole"?

Did it happen at a time in their life so close after a major injury and they were drugged out of their gord, really unable to make a smart decision.

Maybe their upbringing hadn't allowed them to make solid smart decisions for themself, believing that someone else always has the truth. Maybe it's a combination of all of those things. Who knows. What's done is done. All I know is that I still love this person through all of it.

I've been hurt too. I hold resentment for some of my family members too. They adopted my nieces and nephew and now won't let any of us have part in their lives. They changed the childrens names, something they were asked not to do. I have not forgiven them. I also acknowledge that I haven't forgiven them. I hold resentment toward them because they took something from me. Something was taken from you too. Our stories are not the same. But I know that I'm grateful for those in my family that I love and am ever grateful to find I am loved.

Know that you are loved.

Even if you are the one hating.

For Crickets Sake

Nathan stood their naked, readying himself for his shower. looking down into the toilet and then up at me. I looked into the toilet and saw something brown, half expecting to see a spider or fly but no, it was a cricket kicking himself in circles with one leg trying to get out of the ocean of water he found himself in. Nate didn't appear to be harboring any guilt, no thoughts of Pinnocio, Jiminy or sitting outside listening to the soothing sound of crickets seemed to show in his face, just another day in our basement bathroom with it's occasional annoying bug. I, on the other hand, was flabbergasted, looking around the room to find a cup or something to scoop this poor guy out. I'm not the kind to flush a friend, I like the sound of crickets, he was just "in the wrong place".

So I took a piece of paper out of the trash and placed it near dear ol' Jiminy and he stuck to the paper clinging for dear life. After placing him on the cement just outside the sliding glass door, I wasn't sure if he was totally able to sustain life, so I watched him come to full crouching position (crickets don't stand) and hop off of the cement pad and onto the dirt outside. I was pleased with myself. I had just saved a life, one that will please many an ear at night giving that soothing sound that luls scared children into pleasant peaceful rest.

I returned to the bathroom where Nate peered back at me kind of scrunching up his face. "Yeah, that was a better solution". I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Had I made headway with a subject that I have long felt everyone thought I was a lune for. I have saved many the life of an occasional spider, bee or bug. (I do however kill flies. They land on poop and barf on your food. Nasty creatures. They don't belong anywhere except in a spiders web or in the mouth of a frog, another creature I love)

Had I converted him to my funky way of thinking that even small lives deserve a chance, and that they are "just in the wrong place"? I don't know.................. Until the next time I find something floating in the toilet.

Thinking of myself

So this is my last day of my weeks vacation spent in good ol' Utah, land of my family, pollution, cars, houses and businesses everywhere. I don't think I will be making too many more trips like this one again.

Each time I come, I try to make it fun, provide my own and everyone elses food, pay for dinner or activities out, try to be kind. But so often it slaps me back in the face. My plans don't go as I hoped, someone ends up mad. I can't help but think it has more to do with poverty than anything I've done really, but still, it makes me feel that maybe my trying to think of others isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

Each one of my family members seems to be struggling with tight money situations which causes a lot of tension for everyone.

I don't know, but it seems that each person wants to be able to be giving, but in the end it comes down to them thinking of themselves and their own. I'm beginning to feel that I won't be so bad off doing the same.