Posted on 02/09/09 at 3:19 pm to Remember, family
My younger sister is 10 years younger than me and we were raised in separate households. We didn’t really get to know each other until we were adults and I was pregnant with my youngest and she was pregnant with Joshua. But then my sister was in a car accident and the baby died. My heart broke for her then but rejoiced with her when months later she got pregnant with my nephew Issak. Issak is 7 months younger than Devlin. He will be 6 in April. My sister has been trying to have a baby with her new husband for the last 3 years. In the last 3 years she has had 4 miscarriages. Yesterday she lost baby Rose #4. I beg you to please keep my sister in your thoughts and prayers. Light a candle for her healing. It breaks my heart to see her heartbreak and disappointment. I love her so much and wish I could take away her pain or at the very least be with her right now. She’s such a good mom and she has so much love to give.
2 CommentsPosted on 02/08/09 at 9:49 pm to Uncategorized
Wow! I haven’t blogged since election day! We went to Snowball Express for a 3rd year in a row but I’ll make a post about that at a later time. There’s much to tell about that trip. We’ve gone through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Cat’s birthday and the Steelers winning another Super Bowl since I last blogged. LOL I promise I’ll try to be better at it. I think I’m going to look for one of those sites that gives you a topic to write about every day. Maybe that will help. I just feel so dull.
The song “Gotta Be Somebody” by Nickelback has really had me thinking lately.
This time, I wonder what it feels like
To find the one in this life, the one we all dream of
But dreams just aren’t enough
So I’ll be waiting for the real thing, I’ll know it by the feeling
The moment when we’re meeting, will play out like a scene
Straight off the silver screen
So I’ll be holding my own breath, right up ’til the end
Until that moment when, I find the one that I’ll spend forever with‘Cause nobody wants to be the last one there
‘Cause everyone wants to feel like someone cares
Someone to love with my life in their hands
There’s gotta be somebody for me like that
‘Cause nobody wants to do it on their own
And everyone wants to know they’re not alone
There’s somebody else that feels the same somewhere
There’s gotta be somebody for me out thereTonight, out on the street, out in the moonlight
And dammit this feels too right, it’s just like déjà vu
Me standing here with you
So I’ll be holding my own breath, could this be the end
Is it that moment when, I find the one that I’ll spend forever with‘Cause nobody wants to be the last one there
‘Cause everyone wants to feel like someone cares
Someone to love with my life in their hands
There’s gotta be somebody for me like that
‘Cause nobody wants to do it on their own
And everyone wants to know they’re not alone
There’s somebody else that feels the same somewhere
There’s gotta be somebody for me out thereYou can’t give up, looking for a diamond in the rough
You never know, when it shows up, make sure you’re holding on
‘Cause it could be the one, the one you’re waiting on
‘Cause nobody wants to be the last one there
And everyone wants to feel like someone cares
Someone to love with my life in their hands
There’s gotta be somebody for me, ohhhNobody wants to do it on their own
And everyone wants to know they’re not alone
There’s somebody else that feels the same somewhere
There’s gotta be somebody for me out there
Nobody wants to be the last one there
‘Cause everyone wants to feel like someone cares
There’s somebody else that feels the same somewhere
There’s gotta be somebody for me out there
I think I’ve reached a turning point in my grief. One where I can no longer rule out ever dating again. While I will always love Paul and he will always be in my heart, I realize that my heart is big enough to love another. But my standards are definitely higher this time around. There are things I will not put up with and that I expect. These are things that I am firm on. I want to know that I’m enough for somebody. I want somebody to love me for me and to support me in areas I want to change about myself. People do change over time as they hopefully grow within themselves and each other. I want somebody to laugh with and enjoy life with. I want somebody that understands that I didn’t stop loving my husband and accepts that he’ll always be part of me. I want somebody who accepts my childre, the good, the bad and the sometimes ugly. Somebody who wants to be an active part of their lives and not just a spectator. I want somebody to cuddle with one the couch and spend a quiet night in watching movies or just reading in bed together. I want somebody who likes to get out and see new things. I won’t settle this time around for somebody who just has one or two of the qualities I’m looking for. I’m not asking for all of them either. I want to be loved, respected and appreciated.
Having said all that, I’m not actively looking for somebody either. If there comes a time and a place I will hopefully not pass it up. But I am the epitome of bad timing and I refuse to get involved with somebody until I have made certain changes in myself. If I can’t love certain things about myself how can I expect somebody else to? And most guys do not want a work in progress. They want the finished product.
No CommentsPosted on 11/04/08 at 10:25 pm to Inner Sanctum
I cannot express how saddened I am that these two props are passing. 
I really hope that within my lifetime I can see this type of attitude put aside. That people can see the love of all as a beautiful thing and not something that will hurt them. I just don’t understand how 2 people of the same sex loving each other and wanting the same rights as straight people can harm a straight marriage. If an external force or influence can harm your straight marriage then the problem lies between the 2 straight people and are much deeper than the love of their gay neighbors. And that whole argument of gay marriage harming the sanctity of marriage doesn’t fly with me either. Divorce harms that more than the love of 2 same sex people. Did anybody see the photos of Ellen’s wedding to her partner? They are so beautiful and so full of love that when I saw them I cried. I wish I had a love as strong and stable as the love that Ellen has with Portia. I don’t understand this digging in of the feet to fight change. If we didn’t have change we wouldn’t have our first African American president.
Some day one of my children may come to me and tell me they are gay. It breaks my heart to think that they will be discriminated against and hated because they choose to love somebody of the same sex. I hope that those that hold onto this belief don’t ever have a child of theirs come to them and tell them they are gay and in love.
Off to be happy about Obama but heart broken for the gay community.
No CommentsPosted on 09/29/08 at 11:47 am to Caitlyn, Paul, Remember, pixels
Friday we went to the cemetery like we do every year. I worried it would be more difficult this year because we took the van in to replace a hose that would cost us $50 for the repair. The hose disintegrated in the mechanic’s hands when he went to remove it. We thought all was fine except when Rob went to run some errands all of a sudden the van kept overheating. So he took it back and they spent most of the day looking over the van to find the problem. It wasn’t immediately visible. We had things to be done though and didn’t have time for this kind of set back. Come to find out it was the van’s computer. It’s shot and will need to be replaced to the tune of a $700 - $800 garage bill. *sigh* They rigged it to bi pass the computer because one of the fans that cools down the engine wasn’t working and that’s why it was overheating. I don’t know how long this “patch” will work but did it have to happen NOW? I have to renew the truck registration which is around $350 for a year. Plus my property tax bill has arrived and I have to pay $750 in October. And that’s just the first half. The second half is due in March. Plus Halloween is next month and I still have to order Cat’s costume and buy candy and goodies to give out. We also need to replace the smoke machine that ended up being a dud but couldn’t be returned because the Halloween shop had already closed. But despite all that we managed to pick the kids up early, get the balloons and index cards and still get to the cemetery on time. We all wrote our notes and tied them to the bunch of balloons and then released them. Other soldiers had been there. They left 3 beer cans, a pack of smokes with one partially smoked and flowers. I like to go at the end of the day because I get to see that others have visited. It makes me feel better to know others remembered and stopped by.
I did get some good news on Friday though. They moved Cat’s psych appointment up to today. She is at this moment on her way out to lunch with her dad and then he’s taking her to her appointment. She still doesn’t know about it though. We wanted to minimize the fighting it would take to actually get her there. If she throws a fit in the parking lot so be it. At least they’ll see what we’re dealing with first hand. I opted to stay home because should that happen and they decide she needs to be admitted somewhere, because 13 yr olds should not be throwing 2 yr old temper tantrums, I needed to be available to go pick the boys up from school and Aaron from work. I’m really hoping she’ll surprise us all and just go in. She knows something is up though. We didn’t fight with her about going to school this morning we just let her go back to bed. And then her dad shows up in the middle of the day just to take her to lunch. She’s not stupid. She just doesn’t know what is going on.
I spent the weekend working on setting up more albums for The Dragon Keep to display my signatures easier. It’s time consuming to create all the albums and upload all the signatures but it will make updating the site so much easier. I’m also working on signatures for Dragon Keep Pixels because I really want to open officially on the 1st. I hope I get this done! I’ll be back later with an update on Cat if there’s something to report today.
1 CommentPosted on 09/25/08 at 5:08 pm to Fun Stuff
Tagged…
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
* Tag five other people to do the same.
“Eragon looked back at the wretched butcher. He had no more time for mindless wanderings. He had to choose. One way or another, he had to choose….” - Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
Tagging whoever wants to do this. 
Posted on 09/24/08 at 11:21 pm to Caitlyn, General, Paul, Sound Off, family
We had a big of stress here this week. Monday morning we had trouble getting Caitlyn to get her bum in the van to go to school so we did the typical drag her to the van bit. Well things blew up from there. This was not the first time she had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the van to get her to go to school. She takes things to extremes. But this time she was scaring Devlin and Edwin somehow got hit in the leg so I told them all to just come back in the house. Well in the process of that she starts saying how she doesn’t need any of us. So naturally I asked her how she’d survive without us. She said she only needed one thing. I expected to hear, “My money that you get every month since Paul died.” but what I got was, “A knife.” Well needless to say the kids all stayed home that day as well as Rob & Aaron. We spent the whole day trying to get through to any of the psychologist offices listed on my insurances websites. One answered in the morning but said they had to do a 20 minute phone interview before they could schedule an appointment and then never called back. All the rest of them apparently have no receptionists because all their phones went to voicemail. Finally around 3 PM we got through to one of them and got an appointment scheduled. For October 17. WTF? My kids just alluded to suicide and you can’t get her in for almost a month?? Why? Because she didn’t actually TRY and hurt herself. Well let me tell you something. She wouldn’t “try”.. She’s not the type that would hurt herself just for attention she would actually do it and succeed. But what do I know? I’m just her mother. One of Paul’s Army buddies says it sounds to him like on top of her depression and the time of the year that it sounds like the classic symptoms of PTSD. She’s also got insomnia and has trouble sleeping at night and then she wants to sleep during the day. She’s even stayed up all night, stayed up all day, slept the next night and then still was up all night the next night. And it hurts to hear your child say they don’t want to be here any more. It hurts to know they hurt that much and there’s nothing you can do. So all the kitchen knives are locked up and my collectors knives/daggers are in my room. I stay up all night just in case she wakes up (if she’s fallen asleep) or in case she hasn’t gone to sleep. Then I’m sleeping all day and I’m not getting a damn thing done. *sigh*
The positives of this week is that it’s season premiere week. Heroes was on Monday and I loved it! I’m happy it’s back. One Tree Hill started a couple weeks ago and I always get the warm fuzzies when I watch it because Paul got me hooked on it. L&O: SVU had their season premiere last night and Luke Perry was on it and it was awesome! Caitlyn and I have been watching the new 90210 and the show Privileged. New episodes of House are on and as always that show is brilliant. Tonight Knight Rider debuted as a series and Justin is as hot as ever and the special effects for K.I.T.T. are phenomenal. I mean the car morphs into a truck! Yea it’s a Ford but it’s a truck! We’ve also been watching Next Top Model. We like to giggle at all the silly things they make those women do and how ridiculous they look sometimes. And of course there’s Army Wives. There’s been a lot of great TV lately. Thank god for DVR and the fact that I have to keep myself awake at night.
I’ve been reading a lot lately. The new book in the Inheritance series, Brisingr, came out on Sept. 20th. But I decided to reread Eragon and Eldest first. I didn’t finish in time LOL I’m less than 100 pages away from being able to start Brisingr which is sitting on my desk and has been taunting me to hurry up and finish reading Eldest since it was bought on September 20th. LOL
Friday we will be going to the cemetery with balloons, notes and flowers. We’ll be meeting Paul’s sister there and my nieces may be going with us this year. We go every year. We’ll see if it’s in the cards that we run into any of his soldiers again this year. The last 2 years we’ve ran into the same soldier but this year he’s married with a baby so who knows if he’ll be there at the same time. I hate the days leaving up to the anniversary. They are agony. And if they aren’t bad enough yesterday was the 4 yr anniversary of my aunt’s death to heart failure. Aside from Devlin’s birthday on the 11th, September is a month I’d like to erase from my calendar now.
Well I think that just about catches up my life lately. I’ll try and get better at blogging. I guess I just feel like I have nothing of interest to say. I’m such a homebody and my routine is so blah that I’m afraid I’ll bore everybody.
Posted on 09/20/08 at 12:18 pm to Inner Sanctum, Paul
Three years ago today, Paul and I had a HUGE fight while he was in Iraq. So bad that I shut down my laptop and refused to get back online right away. He’d had a very bad day because his unit had been in a fire fight. However, instead of telling me this he picked a fight over outlets in a house we were going to purchase. When I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t something that was immediately important he took is at me telling him to “f*@k off* which was not what I had said. What I had meant was that the kitchen was HIS room and he wasn’t there yet so we could worry about it when he got home. Instead we had a wasted day that we could of been talking. Hind sight is always 20/20. Had I known that 6 days later he’d be yanked from my world forever I would of sucked it up and let him dump on me during his temper tantrum. Looking back now with hind sight it was such a stupid fight. He did apologize the next day and finally told me why he’d really been so upset and promised to try and never take it out on me that way again. That he understood I worried about him and his unit and that I was here to support him and didn’t deserve to be dumped on.
But even that didn’t matter. It’s proof that you just never know how much time you have left with somebody and not to waste it over petty things such as who’s right and who’s wrong. What really matters is how you treat each other RIGHT NOW because would you be able to live with yourself if the last words you said to that person were said in anger? Wouldn’t you feel better knowing the last thing you said to a person was, “I love you and you matter”? We may have had that huge fight 6 days before he died but I feel better knowing my last words to him were, “I love you. Stay safe.”
1 CommentPosted on 09/11/08 at 4:52 am to Devlin, Remember
I’d like to start this post by saying happy birthday to my baby. Happy Birthday, Devlin! I can’t believe that today you are 6 yrs old. I remember sitting at the hospital waiting for it to be time to go in and deliver you. Watching the one year anniversary tributes to 9/11. Daddy was so excited and nervous. He couldn’t wait to hold you and finally get to bond with you. And when he got to hold you for the first time and feed you your first bottle, he beamed with pride. It was like in that one moment his life finally made sense for him. He loved you so much and was so proud to have a son. You’re now twice as old as you were when daddy died and he’d be so proud of you. You’ve learned so much and you’re such a smart little man. And you look so much like daddy. You have his sense of humor too. Happy birthday, baby. I love you.
Two years ago, while visiting the east coast on my cross country trip, we visited ground zero. We stood there looking through a fence at the entrance/exit to the subway. People were going home from work and were streaming past us. Ground zero had become a part of their daily life and they didn’t even pause and reflect. This is what happens when you’ve grieved and move on and learn to live with a tragedy. But we stood there bawling. At first I was upset that so many people could just walk by it and not be in tears seeing it. But as I’ve spent the last 3 years grieving for Paul, I get it. It’s not that they aren’t sad by it. It’s not that they’ve forgotten. They’ve just made it a part of their daily lives. They’re proof that you can move on but never forget.
Happy birthday to my little ray of hope. My proof that life can over come tragedy. My reminder that Paul lives on with us every day. Happy birthday to my little man. Please remember to wear your red, white and blue today in memory of those that lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and those who have lost their lives fighting in the war on terror.
1 CommentPosted on 08/29/08 at 12:53 am to Administrative
Just wanted to leave a note saying that if my membership logos look a little screwy right now it’s because I’m reorganizing a little and removing extra link buttons I have on my server from people changing their logos.
No CommentsPosted on 07/22/08 at 10:40 pm to Uncategorized
x-posted from My Hero Always. I take two steps forward and 10 steps back. This is posted here in case whoever this person is has decided to stalk me and ends up here.
This person btw is apparently STALKING me just to be malicious as they commented on the family site also. I should also remind that the kids check both sites from school and on their own laptops. Nice huh? Just what they need to be reading too.
Wondering
a.friend@gmail.com | 72.240.170.177
Patience – Why no new posts? Have you forgotten?
I know you loved him – I understand. But now has time passed and you’ve forgotten this tribute so easily? Or is life too busy to take the time any more, now that he’s been gone for so long.
Just like the country…. you forget. How sad.
Actually it just means that my children are a bigger priority than a website. Sharing stories with them is more important than people like YOU.
You know what they say about people who make assumptions? You make an ass of you and me.
To the person from the Toledo, Ohio area who was too cowardly to sign their real name, with their real email address and seems to take pleasure in actually causing pain to the widow of a fallen soldier, you have made a terrible assumption. Who are you to assume you know how I grieve? Just because a website has not been updated does NOT mean that I have forgotten MY husband. It means my time has been better served else where. MY CHILDREN. Paul’s son will be 6 years old in September. Last year he went to half day kindergarten and became VERY aware that HE did not have a daddy attending school functions and taking him to and picking him up from school. Do you have any idea who it is that comforts this crying child who misses his daddy EVERY day? ME. Paul’s WIFE. I’m the one that cries every day still, even almost 3 years later. It has NOT been a good year for me and the kids contrary to what many people may wish to believe. I have photos of him in EVERY room of my house. I have his picture in my cars. I talk about him all the time to the point where people are tired of hearing his name.
And while I’m at it, since somebody from Ohio is choosing to make assumptions about me like they live in my house with me and stand in my shoes every day, I have NOT dated anybody since Paul died. I have NO interest in dating. I am still very much IN love with my husband and I still call myself his WIFE. People who know me and actually speak to me know that my heart did, does and always will belong to Paul. People see my pain still. Were you here yesterday (July 21) when I cried off and on all day and didn’t want to get out of bed or do anything because it would of been 8 years that we had been together? I didn’t see you in bed next to me. Have you emailed me on a personal level? Or are you just jealous that he was married to ME and feel the need to lash out and make ME hurt more to make yourself feel better? Well screw you and anybody else that thinks they know me and my grief and my life. Were you at the cemetery on April 3rd of this year? I was.. with my 3 children and 3 other adults drinking a sparkling cider toast and having green frosted cup cakes for him. Were you at the cemetery on the 2 yr anniversary? I was.. with balloons and notes in hand with my children, his sister, some of his battle buddies and one of his best friends. Are you the god mother of a child who is named after him? I am. Oh yea.. BTW.. he’s the god father. Were you sitting here with Devlin watching the videos Paul left for him of him reading stories? I don’t think so.. nope you weren’t. Are you playing mom AND dad to this sweet and loving little boy with a hurting heart? Nope. You’re not doing that either.
For anybody that’s interested, I have a memorial Myspace set up for Paul. Just email me for the URL. It’s only viewable to those who are added as friends. I post/update this one more often at the moment because that’s where some of his battle buddies are signed up and I can keep in touch with them and let them know how we are doing. Those that really care and support us take the time to send supportive messages not try to cause us more hurt.
It’s sad that I should even have to make a post such as this but this behavior is absolutely unacceptable of an adult. But from the mouth of our sweet boy who wonders why mommy is now crying AGAIN, “You have pictures everywhere mommy. You always tell me stories about him. Don’t let that person make you cry. Tell that person to go away.” And that is what keeps me going every day. That little boy with Paul’s face and habits. If not for that little boy I’d already be with MY husband.
5 Comments« Previous Entries