Hurricane Jeanne is just hitting Vero Beach. That's where my dad is at tonight. I worry about him, he doesn't like storms. He sounds fine on the Nextel, but he has to be at least a bit nervous. He's never been in a hurricane. I firmly believe we should experience most things once.. but this is one thing I wish no one had to deal with.
Dad, I love you. Be safe.
I noticed someone left a comment about my mood, frame of mind, while I write, wondering if I'm in a happy place, or a dark place. This post, curious reader, is for you.
Someone once told me that he couldn't figure me out, because I 'both sit in the light, and dwell in the dark'. I think he meant the same thing you're asking me about.
I am in a very happy place in my life, but even so, I'm very aware that terrible things are happening to millions of other people every single second. I'm aware that my time on this earth is limited. I enjoy as much as I can, but that joy is tempered knowing that anything I cherish can be taken in the blink of an eye.
This attitude is a mixed blessing in that while I have joy and appreciate it, I'm not foolish enough to think it will last forever. Nothing does. While I have happiness, there's also deep sadness.
I guess from reading my journal you can see that I'm better at people watching, and commenting on them, than I am at voicing things here that I'm feeling. I do that sometimes, but later, I go back and read what I wrote, and to me it sounds like nothing more than whining so I usually delete it. I hate whining. (even saying I hate whining sounds like whining)
I like balance. Symetry. Maybe that's why I sit in the light and dwell in the dark. We can't have one without the other.
*smiles oddly*
Or..maybe I'm just retarded.
She got an apartment and has been moving out this weekend. She's almost got everything in her new place, and she's going to stay there tonight!
Gooooo Bonnie!
I hope things work out good for you there, and can't wait to see it. :)
I'monna miss Joleybean living here, but I'll still see him every day, cuz I'monna still be babysitting for him.
Yesterday, Mikyla wanted to play one of her favorite games.. that I'm the queen, and she's the princess, and we're taking tea in the palace. She had me put her princess hat on, her veil over her face and off she went to her own palace, so she could "come back" to mine for tea.
Soon she came skipping up, and with a Brittish accent she said..
"Queen! I'd love to stay for tea, but my father and my sister are sick!"
"Oh no!" I played along, "whatever is this ailment that troubles your father and your sister, my dear princess?"
She tilted her head, her veil moved slightly to the side.
"Chocolate Polka Dots..." She informed me sadly.
"Oh no! Chocolate Polka Dots?" I gasped at the horror of that malady, then I suggested she feed them both some beef caviar soup but she said that the doctor advised her against it, that they would just have to wait out this dreadful disease, beef caviar soup would just make matters worse.
I don't know where she gets this stuff!! *laughs*
Imagine... living to be very very old - outliving all of your family and friends, and becoming a ward of the state. State property. And as if that isn't bad enough, imagine them putting you into a nursing home. Where you know no one, and can't care for yourself so you don't have a choice. Imagine that.. I mean I would HATE being put into a nursing home, that would be a nightmare...and further imagine hating that nursing home, hating every second of it, and then... dying. Dying as a ward of the state.
The state cremates because it's cheaper.
A nursing home. Ward of the state. Cremation. But .. even worse, imagine where old folks who are wards of the state might be put after they're cremated. What if it's in jars on tables in the halls and on shelves in the dining rooms of the nursing homes? Wouldn't that be a nightmare.
Good God.
Isn't it delicious with salt and pepper and butter? Either microwaved or stove popped! Mmmm!
I was watching A&E last night.. American Justice, I think it was.. and they were doing the show about John List. What a nutcase. What caught my attention was that they said that List had granted them a rare interview, so I wanted to see what he had to say.
The guy is in his 70's I think, and he's still chilling. He told what he did, without so much as a tear in his old eyes. Like he was telling the story of something someone else did, something that didn't even touch him.
He was very religious, so thought that if he killed his wife, his 3 kids and his mother, they'd get to heaven. He figures now, that he is going to heaven too, because he's forgiven, and in heaven they forgive everything.
He made up his mind to do it, and the day of the killing, he said (very matter of fact and clinically) he got up, went downstairs, talked a bit to his wife, Helen, and his children - trying to be as normal as possible so they didn't get suspicious.. then the kids went off to school, and he walked outside and around the house, in the back way and blew his wife's brains out from behind her.
He said he dragged her body into the ballroom and cleaned up the mess, he even talked about how her false teeth hit the floor and table, just so.. cooly, like someone normal would tell you they spilled their morning coffee...and had to clean it up before work.
Then, he said, he went up to the attic apartment of his mother, and talked to her a minute, she asked what that noise was, he told her he didn't know, that he'd came to see about her, and then he kissed her cheek, feeling like Judas and he shot her to death.
I listened to him, not believing this guy could not only do this, but now, talk about it like it was nothing.
He said he left her there where she died because she was too heavy to drag downstairs to the ballroom.
Then, he said he went downstairs and made himself a sandwich, ate, then went to the post office, stopped the mail, wrote letters to the kid's teachers, explaining that they were going to be out of town with a sick relative for a while.. and he mailed those. He went back home to wait for the other kids..he said never feeling a bit of remorse, he knew he'd done the right thing.. and he also knew he had to kill the kids, he couldn't back out, cuz he didn't want them to have to live with the knowledge that he'd killed their mom and grandmom.
His daughter came home first, and as she walked down the hall, he sneaked up behind her and shot her in the head, then dragged her into the ballroom and lay her on a sleeping bag by her mom. He killed his middle son next, I think it was.. the same way.. and lay him beside his sister.. then instead of waiting for the youngest one, he decided to go pick him up from school. He said this boy was playing soccer, and played a good game, that the child had enjoyed it, and when it was over he drove the boy home. He shot him several times, because he said that while the others just "dropped" when he had shot them, that this last child had "twitched". The autopsy showed about 10 rounds in the last child.
He dragged him into the ballroom with the others, and then he said that he went to bed and got a better night's sleep than he had the night before. The next day, he said he turned the thermostat down to 50, and he turned all the lights in the house on, then turned the radio on to his favorite classical station. He then withdrew 2000 from his joint account he held with his mom, and he headed west.
He wasn't caught for 17 years. Of this, he said he felt like he was just doing his parole before his jailtime. He'd changed his name to Robert P. Clark, got a job out west as a cook and started his new 'free, burdonless' life there, eventually marrying again. When the fbi came for him, his new wife couldn't believe he was the John List they said he was. Can you imagine how that poor woman felt?
Can you imagine how forever after that she probably had to think very hard before she could even decide what she wanted to eat, doubting herself for her decision to marry him, when obviously she had no clue. I don't think I could make another decision in my life if I'd married someone who had done that, or could do that. I'd be terrified to think for myself again.
This List guy, the said on A&E was having financial problems, poverty was a sin and he didn't want his family on welfare, so he figured it was better to let them die and go to heaven.. but in his home, the skylights were made by Tiffany glass company and worth 100,000 dollars. I wonder if he'd known that, if he had known he could have sold them to get out of debt, would he still have killed them and just ran off with the money, or would he have changed his mind, or not thought about killing them at all.
Mercy. He says he's going to heaven. I'm wondering if he's going to get the same neighborhood there as Hitler and the ilk. Egads.
He adores Mikyla, just one look from her and he goes into gales of helpless giggles, hiding his eyes, ready to play. He loves Mallory too, but he wants to wrestle with her. She wants to mother/boss him.
He's the lightest sleeper I've ever seen. I can tippy toe down the hall and a hair can fall off my shirt and he's awake as soon as it hits the floor! I'm not kidding!
He's sleeping right now and I'm typing reaaaal quiet with one finger, 2 rooms away so I don't wake him up.
He's learned to walk, run, run run now, and does so with this gleam in his eye that tells me .. ohhhh hell look out mammy here I come..
Sarah took him for a while yesterday after work, her intentions were to keep him overnight with her own 2.. she called me at 11 and said I need a medal. *laughs* she was ready for him to come home. 3 youngins were a bit much for her.
This child, she's the sweetest lil thing, sometimes, still mothering all of us.. still the same sweet smile on her face no matter what she's doing, unless it's tormenting joel or mikyla and she's been caught and is in trouble, then she's not smiling, she's wailing, quivering her lower lip when she cries, for emphasis.
Her hands are still into everything, lightening fast.. and she's thin as a bony whip, but eats all the time, and I do mean all the time.. *laughs*.. she's healthy as an ox, thank God, and I love her so so so so much, but of all the grandchildren, I have to confess, she exhausts me.
She's taken to biting again, and slapping and pinching, I suppose they all claim their independance much like this, well okay not so much like this but I think Mal's going to be an extremist. She pretended she was going to give me a hug yesterday, and ended up letting me get close enough so that she could flip me on the glasses with the fingertips of both hands. Was I startled? Yes, but not surprised. The kid's become ..almost a terror!
I'm trying to correct this by not letting her do "fun things" - like staying all night with me, or not letting her go with dranny when dranny comes to get Mikyla to visit with her for a while. She cries so hard, it hurts her feelings so much, but I just keep reminding her, "you have to be good to be able to do fun stuff".. she nods and says, I will be good, and she tries SO hard. She really tries.. but, just.. forgets fast.
I think she'll catch on, I really do. *prays!*
Miss Mikyla is just getting way too big, way too fast. Day before yesterday, I was cleaning the kitchen, and she had to help me do the dishes. She got everything stacked into the dishwasher to her satisfaction, then had to put in the powder and she got to push start. You'd have thought I'd given her a million barbie dolls.
A few minutes later she said she was going to go clean the bathroom for me. I heard her telling Stan that she needed him to plug in the vacuum cleaner for her, that she was going to clean that floor up for her "poor old sweet mammy".. *laughs* To her, I must look old and wise, I better take advantage of the wise part while she's still young and thinks I know it all, before she gets older and realizes I don't know shit from shinola. Anyway...
She cleaned it up, and made me cover my eyes as she led me down the hall towards the bathroom, then she showed me her surprise, she'd tidied it up right proper, not a towel in sight, nothing in sight really, not even a toothbrush. She'd put EVERYTHING into the cabinet drawers, right down to dumping our toothbrushes out of the toothbrush holders.
Talk about one pleasantly surprised poor sweet old mammy, but I surely was one! Thank you, Mikyla Sweety, I love you soooooo much!
That was interesting, about 11:30 or so, the house started rumbling. I stood in the kitchen and my heart sank - my first thought being, Oh Lord, Stan's been messing with the gas lines and he's blown up the whole neighborhood! But then he came in from the other room with a purplexed expression on his face and I realized he'd not been outside to do anything like that, and then the second rumble hit. Then I thought something had exploded or an airplane had crashed nearby. An hour or so later they gave on our local news that we'd had an earthquake, a moderate one, a "V" ever what that is.. 3.7 on the richter scale. Bonnie slept right through it. *smiles* I always knew she could. Mikyla and Mallory stopped playing for the 20 or so seconds it took for the quake to stop, and informed me that it was an "earth-shake". (Land Before Time) Smart cookies aren't they?
If we can't get them out...we'll breed them out." Something the King of England said of 'Scots', on Braveheart.
The people of China have almost done something similar, to themselves. In the 80's, told that they could only have one child, soon-to-be parents went sneaking off to places to find out what sex their baby was going to be, and after finding that it's a girl, most either aborted her, left her in a field or elsewhere abandoned, or giving her up for adoption, wanting a boy instead.
Boys were treasured, girls were trash for a giant lot of parents. Now.. well.. they got a huge population of males, and few gals for them to couple up with. Now gals are being kidnapped, and they're starting to look better and better to new parents.. especially since the government is kickin' around the idea of paying them a monthly allotment in reward for having girls.
They had a population problem so set a one child law. What else could they have done? Lord if I know, but someone should have seen this coming a long way back.
Goooo Li'l China Girls! It seems to me that the few of you who are out there can now be very very choosy in your life's mate!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508/