AlternativesMagazine

As you have guessed I am a mother, a single one to boot. I live my life on the edge of insanity. Raising four children by myself isn't easy. Every day there is a new trial or other major crisis and I try my best to get through it. I have spent my time trying to find ways to relax, which with scouts, school, and many other things (and these are just in my children's lives, I have a whole other set of things I am trying to accomplish), isn't easy to do.

Besides being a mother I also run a website and webstore along with my best friends. I am however unemployed in all the ways the government finds important. Yet still I maintain my sanity while looking for a job and running a busy household.

I have some very wonderful people in my life besides my children. I live with a very wonderful woman who I couldn't see living my life without. She is my friend, my sunshine, my shoulder to cry and and so many things she doesn't even realize she is. I also have a very handsome, strong man in my life who takes alot of my anger and deals with it head on. He doesn't realize how special he is to me but someday I hope to be able to show him a little bit better then I do right now. Fantastic friends surround me and help to pick me up and dust me off when I need it and they aren't afraid to tell me how it is if it's what I need. Because of all of these people I am here... and with their help I will be here for years to come.

For Blog Archives
~ Click Here ~

Today I watched as my four year old son ate his lunch. Then I realized he was wearing two completely different socks. I know he has matching socks in his dresser drawer so it isn't because he didn't have any that matched. I asked him why and he said because each of these didn't have a mate. My insides went...AWWW!!! Then I realized he didn't care what people thought of him and his mismatched socks.

It must be nice to not have to worry what people think of you or your clothes or your hair or anything else you do. I wish my life were this simple. I spend all of my time worrying about what people are going to think of me, my clothes, my hair, my children, my house, my cooking, my friends, my religion or all of the many things I worry about.

Sometimes I think if only I stopped caring about it would they? If they did people wouldn't care what color your skin is, who you choose as your mate, which side of the tracks you live on, what kind of job you have, or who you choose to worship or not worship. The world would probably finally have peace. Noone would have anything to argue about. Quiet. Man I want to live in that world, I can use all the quiet I can get.

Today the rain is coming down in sheets and my driveway looks more like a river than the usual gravel and dirt path it's supposed to be. Granted the grass has never been greener but I think you can have too much of a good thing. Once the ground has soaked up all of this liquid sunshine it will be too tall to mow without great difficulty. Much like my life. Too short to do anything without great difficulty.

My youngest child has been getting into his usual trouble all day long. It started out with him waking my roommate while she was dreaming. He has done this more then once. He comes up to her and begins whispering in her ear. While dreaming this is kind of freaky. You hear his voice but he isn't there. Then he takes over the dream. Then your subconscious self realizes he is trying to wake you and you wake up, but not without startling. He has given her a reason to swallow her heart back to where it came from. He tends to do this to her when she is having the being chased by mass murderers dream. I would be scared if I woke up with a four year old just inches from my face while I was having a dream about people chasing me.

I have had dreams like that before but the good news is mine weren't the nightmares hers were. I had someone in my dream ask me if I was going to get that. At that point I woke up and the phone started to ring. Talk about scary. At one point in my life I had an alarm clock that sounded like a dump truck backing up. Once while dreaming I heard it go off and was looking around for the truck. Then I realized it was my alarm clock and woke myself up to shut it off.

This doesn't mean I don't have nightmares. I was having one when my son woke me up this morning. It was the being chased by someone who wants you dead kind of dream. I really wish I could figure out why someone wants me dead but hey all I know is they do.

This is so like the rest of my life. I have people who hate me because of reasons unknown to me. This boogles my mind. I never understood why people hated me and then I spend time wasting on what I have done to make them hate me so much. It usually has nothing to do with anything I have ever done to them, usually it is someone else doing it to them about me but hey hate is still hate no matter why.

So I move on in my day waiting until tonight when I will fall asleep again. I can't wait to see if I actually escape the murderers, take them on, and win!!!

Heat rising
Sweat pouring down
My tender breast.

Flesh to flesh
Our bodies lie
Cradling tears.

Heaving breaths
Weakness grows
Crumpling bones.

Sweet salvation,
Your lips upon mine
You love me.

Straddling your legs
Looking deep
Into your eyes

Your warm fingers
Caress my arms as
You pull me closer.

Your eyes sparkle with
The fire I feel
Rippling through my flesh.

Flower petals
Flavor the air like a
Garden of roses.

Two Witches Circle... State, Insanity... Where I live with my children and my roommate. Well my family thinks so anyway. Last Friday my older children went with their grandmother, even though they hadn't finished all of their chores. I didn't know it at the time but shortly after they left the drive I realized I had dirty dishes in the sink and wet laundry piled on the floor.

My younger two children helped pick up the mess their older siblings had left in their wake. Granted my younger two children weren't all that much more well behaved. They lied, trying to get their older siblings in trouble, but it didn't work. They fought with each other, but compared to the older two, they were angels.

My older children came home on Sunday, after their wonderful weekend full of meals eaten in restaurants and entertainment beyond all measure. They soon realized they were in deep trouble. My son took it very well knowing he was in trouble and started in on his work. My daughter however was a completely different story. When we asked her what she thought should happen as far as chores, she refused to respond!

This isn't the normal refusal like she said "I don't know." This is flat out refusal to say one word. Nothing! She had plenty of time to say anything, including the "I don't know." But there she stood, saying nothing. She was give one last chance to say anything and she was told if she didn't she was going to be grounded. Still nothing. Then she was going to be grounded to her room for the week. Still nothing.

So we let the punishment stand at grounding to her room for a week. She was going to miss out on her weekly trip with her grandma to scouts and her visit to her grandmother's for the weekend. She didn't care. She figured her grandma would show up and make it all better.

Now just so you all understand, my mother, who hasn't run my life since I was seventeen, tries to control everything I do. She figures I will cower down to whatever she wants because I have been that way my entire life. I never wanted a fight with her. I tried to get along with her, even let her be mean to me, just so I would not have to fight her. I was raised to respect your elders and even though she has done nothing in my life for me to respect her, I still try to.

So when she came on Tuesday to pick up my son for scouts she told me in no uncertain terms that my daughter was going and that was the final word. I blew my fuse. How could she figure she had any right to tell me that? I would value her opinion more if she had been a better mother to my brothers and myself. I guess as far as role models go, she stank. Both of my brothers have been to prison and she thinks she should have some sway as far as my kids are concerned.

I told her my daughter wasn't going and that was that. There were no ifs, no ands, and no buts as far as this thing went. Well I was wrong. When I refused to let my daughter go she tried to get her to come out of her room so she could "talk" to her. This was my mothers way of getting me to feel bad, by making me see my daughter cry. Well it didn't work. I told my daughter to stay where she was. She listened to me, which I was surprised by but didn't question. I told my mother she knew better then to disobey me but she still tried again.

When my daughter refused to come out of her bedroom, my mother went down the hall to talk to her in her room. She told my daughter she wasn't going to be able to go because I was being a "dumb b@#ch" and I was being lazy and she didn't think it was fair that all I did was sit on my butt and made my kids do all the housework. My daughter called me a b@#ch and agreed with my mother. She believes her brother should have to do the chores and she should be treated like a princess.

Well it is no wonder I'm having such trouble with my daughter. With a mother like her who needs in laws. My daughter thinks it is OK to disrespect me because her grandmother does. She has seen this her entire life. My mother has always disrespected me, even in front of my kids.

Well today I called her and left her a message. When she called me back she asked if my kids were going this weekend and as I told her all week long, I told her no again. She became angry with me and hung up on me. She then called my older brother and got him involved. He is only slightly better about the disrespecting me thing but he knows when it comes to my mother and I he needs to just stay out of it.

He wanted to know why my kids weren't allowed to visit this weekend. This was odd since he usually hates my kids visiting my mom's house. Well I told him the kids are grounded and besides this weekend is their youngest brother's birthday. He will be four and we are having a small family party for him. He asked if the kids could come for a part of the weekend but I told him no because they were grounded. He seemed happy with this line of answers to his "dumb questions" and he let me go. I'm sure he called my mother and told her everything I said, which he usually does.

Well this weekend my children will be grounded doing their chores and having a fun little party to celebrate their brother's life. As far as living on Two Witches Circle... I'm happy here and I have no plans to move anytime soon.

Looking into the crystal ball I see you will… Right now I wish I had a crystal ball. I want to know when I am going to meet the man of my dreams, what my children will become and where my future in general lies. However, being short one crystal ball, I will just move along in my life as best as I can, free to do as I please.

My middle son is six and a half and as full of life as ever. Over the course of the last week I have been looking back and realized he has all but been forgotten. During trips to the store he was the child you hear a code Adam for. These were actually more like reverse code Adams, they were looking for this lost boy’s mother. We would forget he was with us. I don’t know if it was because he was so quiet or if we all were so absent minded.

I will never forget the first time I left the house, by myself, after my youngest was born. I was trying to feed the baby and chase three other kids around Toys R Us. My oldest went to the video games and my daughter went to get him. She was supposed to take her little brother with her so I could feed the baby. Well as you can guess, the older two came back empty handed. I sent them out searching each going their own way and I headed off on my own search, screaming baby in my arms.

My daughter found me and said she hasn’t seen him in her search of the store. Keep in mind I live in Iowa so the Toys R Us is not much bigger then a small house, her search didn’t last long. Where was my oldest son, you ask? Now I’m missing two of my kids. I set off in search of my oldest and my youngest independently mobile children. I found my oldest in the video department, as usual, playing games. “I couldn’t find him?,” he said. I don’t think he ever looked.

Well then over the PA I hear a code Adam but they didn’t give any information on the child. As I was heading to the front of the store, I passed two employees, one new and one a vet. The vet was telling the new employee about the code Adam procedures. I giggled thinking “You’re welcome for the training exercise today.” as the vet began explaining what is done during one, but I trekked on.

There standing at the front of the store was my middle son. Tears streaming down his face, I hugged him. I would have picked him up but I was still carrying my youngest. I was so scared but I don’t think I was as scared as he was.

This isn’t the only time we have lost him. He has gone missing at Wal-Mart, where they found him in the parking lot looking for the car in the rain. I’m glad for those employees who found him and brought him back inside. I should say most of them where my friends and thought the kid looked familiar but again they weren’t sure.

I have been thinking about this because everyone in our family forgets about him. Last weekend their grandmother came over to drop off gifts for the two children with birthdays this month, while my oldest two were gone with their other grandmother. So it was just my youngest two. She never even noticed the forgotten one. Said not one word to him. Keep in mind she hardly ever sees them, so this has to hurt my son. He doesn’t say a word. My own mother is the same way. When she gets things for the kids, she often forgets about him.

Most people think I only have three kids because they forget about him. My roommate’s step-dad came to visit and he asked who this kid is. Boy that has to hurt, being this kid and all. I ran into a friend of mine from high school and she knew about the older two and the youngest one but she didn’t remember him. I even tried to describe him. Nothing. Thank goodness for pictures or else she wouldn’t have ever known who he was.

I don’t know how people forget him. He is the only one of my kids with freckles. He has huge dimples and beautiful eyes. He doesn’t look like any of the rest of the kids and he is bright. Yet still he is forgotten.

I’m hoping someday he will be remembered for doing something great. Maybe he will cure a deadly disease or bring the world peace. I see it in the crystal ball…

As I sit here looking down, do you see me? Was I ever real? My new wings won’t let me fly away so I sit here day to day. Seeing the world through my new eyes, I wonder how things have gone awry. Before too long our world collapse. Tears fill my bloodshot eyes. Will you ever see what destruction and desolation are to come before it is too late? I offer up my wings at last. To give you all but half a chance. Change your ways and lift your hearts.

This day is my youngest child’s fourth birthday. I can now officially start the countdown to the day our lives tanked. However I am not unhappy about it. My children are a blessing and I do not blame any of them for their father leaving. I blame their father for their father leaving. He was a very selfish man. And he still is to this day.

Anyway, four years ago I went to the hospital in the afternoon, which for me was unusual. The two times before that I have my surgery scheduled for the morning. It was one time I was guaranteed to see the sun come up. We left the house a little early but I wasn’t quite sure why. Well my husband decided to take the scenic route to the hospital. He asked me if I remembered the area we were driving through. Of course I did but I was angry. I had been fasting since midnight and it was now one in the afternoon and I still had to drive by every fast food restaurant from my house to the hospital knowing I wasn’t going to be eating any time soon.

What I didn’t know at the time was he was really scoping out his new girlfriend’s house. He planned to meet up with her while I was in the hospital. How wonderful, huh? He wanted to ditch our new child and his other responsibilities to go out with his new girlfriend. He was going to watch her son play ball and I couldn’t even get him to take his own son to scouts.

Well back to the story. We arrived at the hospital and just as we are getting to the room the phone is ringing. We didn’t know what room we were going to be in so I wasn’t sure how anyone got our number. It was my mother in law. I don’t know what she wanted because I was busy getting ready for surgery.

Well as I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since midnight, I was dehydrated so when they asked me to pee in the cup I had a hard time but I did it. Then they tried to draw my blood and this is were this story gets interesting. Keep in mind I was dehydrated so all the veins in my arms were narrow. This makes it very hard to get a needle in to take blood out or to get fluid in. The first nurse who saw me was just a regular floor nurse. She tried to draw my blood for about 15 minutes before she gave up and asked for assistance. The next nurse was the charge nurse. She also couldn’t get the needle in either. She called in the director of nursing and she tried. Guess what… she couldn’t get it in either.

Before you can have surgery they have to make sure your body is in balance. This requires blood. It is very difficult to get me surgery ready if you can’t test my blood. Well the charge nurse asked a favor of an anesthesiologist who was on his was to do the pre-surgery consult for the patient across the hall. She asked him to try and get the rig in my arm so they could get all my medical stuff cleared for surgery. Since I was also his patient he agreed and put off getting the other person ready for surgery.

Well he came in and in one very easy try he got the needle in and did what no one else could. He then ran through his pre-surgery stuff with me. While we were doing this there was a commotion outside my room. There were people shouting at one another and there were some expletives said. He got up and went to tell the people in the hall to take the argument away from the patient rooms and the guy shoved him!!!

Come to find out when he returned to the room, the people in the hallway fighting were my nurse and the doctor of the patient across the hall. He was upset because his patient wasn’t ready for surgery yet and he was yelling at my nurse about it. Well after the confrontation in the hallway neither patient has him for their surgery. He was going to have to fill out some paperwork about what happened. Great, I thought, now there is paperwork on me. Trust me it didn’t get better.

I threw up from all the meds they were giving me, the surgery was an hour late and they changed people mid surgery but through it all I was excited. There is something about seeing your newborn for the first time. You have carried this being inside you for the last nine months, changed your life for this small being, so seeing them emerge from you is amazing.

Well after the doctor began slicing and dicing (I know not a pretty way of thinking about it) he realized this baby wasn’t going to be any easier then any of the other three. He was in there sideways and there was no part of him visible from the incision. The doctor reached his hand into the wound and grabbed the first thing he could feel. He gently pulled and out came a foot and leg. The doctor tickled the tiny foot bottom and when it squirmed he said “It works.” Yes my doctor is funny like that which is why I liked him so much.

Anyway he finished pulling him out and born into the cold room full of bright light was a beautiful baby boy. He was so tiny compared to his brothers and sister. He was also three and a half weeks early. Though he had many complications in the days and weeks to come he was perfect.

Even after all of this I didn’t ever think I wouldn’t love him as much as I do today. He is a joy in my life and I can’t wait to see where he will go in life. He will go far.

Has anyone ever felt under-appreciated? Well this is how I feel. My children didn’t even care I slept through the entire time they were awake and home today. I guess I haven’t been feeling well as of late and sleep has been eluding me for the last week. Well now I sit here after having slept the better part of a day still tired but knowing I made a promise to myself and hopefully to others who may read this someday. I am going to write daily even if it kills me.

Well I have had a lot on my mind as of late. How am I ever going to make a go of this thing if no one reads it? I suppose it is my own fault. I always figure things will go really well and then I get disappointed and surprise!!! Things go crappy. I know I wanted this to appear as an archive for another webpage I have but still no one is reading it either. What can I do to make this thing work? Why doesn’t anyone care what people think in this great society of ours.

I get it I am only talking about being a mother but still I have value even if I don’t always feel like I do. Maybe I need to get out more and spend some time getting real life experiences. See the world. Move. I don’t know. Right now I’m just frustrated.

I sat down last night and tried to come up with a one year plan for myself, a direction for my life to go in within the next year. With or without anyone special in my life. I really need to move forward and get a life, something I don’t have right now. I hope I can only feel useful in the next month.

Hopefully people will begin to see me as useful and I really hope I can grow and fulfill my one year plan and even make up a five year plan which hopefully will include someone special, who is my equal, my life partner. If not I will have to work on it or maybe I should just leave it alone. Maybe loneliness is what my future entails. Still I will go on with a smile on my face.

Looking out my window, the grass and weeds have grown out of control. It is time for a mow yet I have no means to do so. So I sit, watching the yard overtake the house. Hopefully I will not have to get out there with my scissors and give it a trim. Besides I need to get my garden tilled so I can plant the vegetables and fruits which will sustain me and mine through the summer.

This reminds me of my childhood. I never could have a garden because the ground at my parent’s house had too much clay in it to grow anything at all. I always wondered about that since my grandfather, who lived in Missouri for my entire childhood, had some of the worst clay soil I have ever seen, yet he grew a wonderful garden full of fruits and vegetables. I always looked forward to my visit during the summer when we ate right out of his garden.

I really want to give this to my children. Memories like those. Eating fresh from the garden. Getting their little hands dirty to provide for themselves. I use to garden with my dad once I was an adult. We had a rather large plot of land across from the apartment I lived in where we grew all sorts of things. We had done this for two years gaining knowledge about how we needed to change our ways to make it work.

The second year we learned we needed to be in our garden more often, working every day. We got the garden in the ground. Working the ground and dealing with weeds was my job. My father was there as a cheerleader. He had difficulty doing anything where the ground wasn’t level. Well in June that year he passed away, a few days after we did a major weeding in the garden. After this I lost my passion. I didn’t want to do anything in it. I couldn’t stand driving by it let alone stepping foot in it.

This wasn’t the first time I had lost interest in gardening. The year before my father passed, my husband, who helped me plant the garden, left me when I could do anything in the garden. My father forced me to get out there and work the garden because he knew I needed to.

He was my strength and I miss him every day. Father’s day this year, it will have been three years since he passed. There isn’t a moment of any day when I don’t think about him. I miss his knowledge. He always knew what I needed to do and he always told me, no matter how much I didn’t want to hear it.

Right now I wish he was here. I need his advice more than ever. I sit on a precipice, feeling the only choice is to plummet the way the people in my life want me to. He always knew what I needed to do in my life and always seemed to point me in the right direction. He was like my human compass. Since he has passed I feel my compass can’t find North and is just spinning out of control. I need to find my way and I know I need to do this on my own. Yet it is so hard for me.

Needing a head on my shoulders and to have faith in myself are what he would have told me only more elaborately. I have been looking at other people who are my age and they are more successful then I am. They know what they want and where they are headed. I always wondered what they had that I didn’t. I think it might have been a belief in themselves and the knowledge they needed to do something to survive. Knowing where they were headed. Some to get away from everything they use to know and others to come closer to it. Knowing if they don’t they may end up at the bottom of the barrel.

My family always spent their time trying to coddle us and this has made it very difficult for us to grow up and move. I can’t do anything for myself and feel if it wasn’t for my roommate I wouldn’t do anything. My older brother, though he has his life together, only lives two blocks from my mom. My little brother, who has never gotten anything right, is beginning a two year prison term. We never could grow up.

Now I have children of my own and what am I teaching them. Right now I am teaching them it is OK to waste your life and never amount to anything. I know I need to pull on my boots and get out there. Get a job and begin taking care of my family, on my own. Earning my way. Everything will fall into place when it is time. I just need patience. And a good dose of vegetables and fruits grown in my own garden. Dirty under my nails and all.

As of late I have been looking for ways to improve my health and the health of my family. I have two children who are overweight as am I. With all of the health problems which are written in the cards you’d wonder why I have, as of yet, not done something about it.

My health has been going down hill over the last year and I have just sat idly by and let it happen. I didn’t do anything when I could no longer button my jeans, I just switched to pants with elastic waists. Well now the elastic is getting tight. I was trying to donate blood and told my blood pressure was high. Still I didn’t go to the doctor. Now I am checking my blood sugar and it is elevated. I think I need to see the doctor. Yet I’m putting it off.

Why put off something so important, you ask? Well I don’t like to get bad news. As a matter of fact I hate it. I always felt if I had been diagnosed with some deadly illness (non-contagious) I didn’t want to know. If I had cancer I didn’t want to be told. Yet doctors have the responsibility to tell you. So if you don’t go to the doctor for things then you never know you have them.

This feeling started a couple of years ago. I had gone to the hospital for chest pain. I wasn’t having a heart attack but it still hurt and i was having trouble breathing. They staff did their job and came back after the xrays to tell me, you have a nodule. OK, what does that mean? Well this means you have a growth which is not normal on your lung. OK so what could it be? Never ask that question. I learned this the hard way, I asked it that day. Well it could be nothing but it could be cancer. I FREAKED OUT!!!

From that moment on I had cancer. Yes I tend to jump to conclusions. They told me to see my doctor again in one month and have a second set of x-rays taken. So over the next month I read everything I could about lung cancer. Keep in mind my youngest child was 18 months old (and he is six now). I cried all the time. I would see kids with their parents and start crying. I just knew my kids were never going to have that. The survival rate for lung cancer diagnosed by x-ray is nil. I had six months or less.

At this time I looked my then husband in the eyes, tears streaming down my face, and asked him to quit smoking. He said “We’ll see.” I was livid. How could he say that? He was their dad and he was willing to have our children grow up as orphans. I couldn’t believe it.

I went back to the doctor and had my second set of x-rays take one month to the day after the first. He said he would call if there was any problems. Well a week went by and I hadn’t heard anything. I began to smile more and realized I was just being foolish. My kids liked having their mom back.

Well about a week later my dad called me and told me the doctor’s office was trying to reach me and they called his house. I called them back right away, panicked. They said they had tried calling me and that I had already missed my first CAT scan and I needed to be at the next one. It was very important. I FREAKED OUT again. In my reading I knew the only reason you needed a CAT scan was because they suspected cancer. The fears I had the last month all came back to the surface.

I went to my CAT scan and the tech was wonderful. I asked her what she saw. She said she couldn’t tell me but she knew how I felt and she told me I should call the doctor first thing in the morning. I did just as she had told me. When I called the doctor, though, they gave me the run around. I told them they could call and get the report right away. They said they would call me when they knew something.

Have you ever waited for a phone call like that? I was on edge. Every time the phone rang I answered it before the first ring was finished. I was short with everyone who called. I was short with my family. By the end of the day everyone I knew hated me but I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear from the doctor.

Finally the phone rang and it was the doctor’s office. Everything was fine, I didn’t have cancer. I was elated. You could have told me my dog died and I dont’ think I would have cared. Well I would have cared but I was happy I didn’t have cancer.

This leads me back to today. I know I need to see a doctor and get my health under control. I need to do this for myself as well as my kids. I was looking for some help with my diet and fitness online and I found it. I found a website which offers both of those for free. It is only for those who are over age eighteen.

With all of the diagnosis of adult onset (type 2) diabetes in children and all of those who are serverly obese I wondered why they didn’t offer anything for kids which is free. I found plenty of sites but they all charged for their services. It would be great if there was a site just like the one for adults for children.

Parents need all the help they can get when it comes to their childrens health. Show us what we need to do to help our children develop healthy habits. I know if any of my children were to be diagnosed with diabetes I wouldn’t know what an appropriate serving size is for them or any of those kinds of things. I have thought about writing to the site I found and asking why they don’t offer something for children. I think the country could use it, especially in this, the age of fast food. If parents could see it doens’t take long to provide a healthy meal for your children so you don’t have to feed them food which isn’t good for them. Also if they would offer tips for those people who decide to partake of the fast food, choices which are healthier then others.

Until then I will try and find ways to get and keep my kids fit and healthy. It won’t be easy. But like every other parent, I will make due.

Piczo