Sade’s World- my last thoughts on the flooding

 Going viral on TikTok right now is a woman named Sadè (pronounced Shah-Day) who has been extremely nasty in her descriptions of the children who lost their lives at Camp Mystic. She has claimed that their deaths are deserving all the way to actually calling the 8-10 year old deceased kids “cunts”. 

Some people are saying she’s a preacher’s wife. They actually aren’t married. Her partner is the pastor of The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, which is located on Fannin St. near downtown and the museum district. I went to this church a handful of times. My ex husband used to make fun of it and call it “The come and believe your own shit church”, because there’s no creed. He wasn’t wrong though, that’s exactly what UU is. It’s a congregation of people with varying religious beliefs. Two of the times I visited this church, I also visited the Houston Women’s Group, which is a weekly gathering to discuss feminist politics. The first time I went, I was visibly pregnant, about 7-8 months along. I just sat and said nothing that first time. The reason I’m writing this here is not so I can be educated in the comments about how “feminism is all about choice.”  Trust me, I already know. I respect that that has been some people’s experience, but as for me I was heavily pressured to just be all about career and not a family. When I was about to have a baby, I heard of them and just wanted to go sit in the back. I just went and sat near the door in case I needed to escape. They were generally welcoming, but said nothing about me being obviously pregnant. 

The next time I went to the Houston Women’s Group was almost two years later. I let my daughter go to the nursery while attended the service and then went to the women’s group. They didn’t remember me. There was a guest speaker that day. She was talking about an email list about political advocacy, and she kept using the word “pro abortion”.  Someone cringed at like the third or fourth time she said it and reminded her something like, “When you write the emails though, please don’t use the term pro abortion please use pro choice.  I know it’s how we really feel, but it might get some people riled up.” And then mentioned that the right likes to misinterpret “pro abortion” so they’re “forced to” use the term “pro choice” and act like they really believe in choice. 

Haha, what?  I spoke up at that point and said it was always drilled into me that there was no such thing as pro abortion and that the correct term was pro choice. One of them explained it to me that the inherent act of having children was oppressive to women. Women were the first oppressed group in human history, and it was directly due to childbearing.  It was still oppressive even if a woman “chose” it, and in fact, if she chose it she was bringing all women down. I’m paraphrasing here, but they also explained that if a woman is choosing to have children, she’s not actually making an informed choice, she’s just doing it out of pressure. I clammed up at that point. What a weird thing to say, especially since all pressure I ever felt surrounding the issue was to not have any kids. I couldn’t leave, because I didn’t want them thinking I disagreed with them and having them get mad. I thought to myself holy shit and I showed up here when I was 8 months pregnant?  Eventually I did slip out the door and ran to the nursery to get Anna. Hilariously, the nursery volunteers convinced us to stay for mommy and me song time, and I did. It was completely different women there, of course, because they were all moms who had put their kids in the church nursery. I spent the next little while sitting in this circle with my toddler in my lap singing “Cumbaya” type songs.  It helped me forget about the weird “just use pro choice so you don’t upset the moms” comment in women’s group. 

The opinion that having children is in and of itself a negative- oppression of women literally caused by it- in my opinion is a seed that could manifest in child abuse. 

It manifested in this. This woman whose “partner” is a “pastor” there said those little girls deserved to die. She even called these dead little girls cunts. Go to TikTok and search “Sade’s World”. There are thousands calling her out on how evil she is. 

A lot of people are discovering Unitarian Universalism for the first time because of her too, and are like “Oh my goodness that’s why!  Because SHES NOT A CHRISSTIANNN!”  

Well that’s not why, and that’s why I shared my personal experience with that church. There is a hatred of children that manifests from the idea that having them is inherently wrong. I don’t think it’s all of those people though. Of course, there was a nursery with mommy and me song time following the service. 

One thing I will say I agree with Sade on though- and it’s the only thing because she’s an evil cunt whore bitch- is that “missing white woman syndrome” or “Gabby Petito syndrome” is real. It means that when a child of color goes missing, they don’t get as much attention as when a white child goes missing, in particular if it’s a little girl who’s blonde. It’s a thing  

Lord knows I’ve devoted so much time to trying to write about missing people who could still be alive and even tried to blog about them until I just kept finding out about more and more of them and it got too much. I would like to challenge Sade to go look for Asha Degree, Diamond and Tionda Bradley, Anthonette Cayedito, Relisha Rudd, Vinyette Teague, Manuela Orlandi and I could srsly go on and on. I would love to see any of them found. But the truth is probably doesn’t know who any of them are. She’s just a demon spewing hate. She doesn’t want to learn who any of them are. 

She also made a TikTok basically threatening to kill anyone who talks about her online. It’s not deterring me from this blog post. 

 Day two of my sourdough starter was just “give it a stir”. I don’t have to “remove half and add more” until tomorrow. 

Today Kevin and I are riding in the back of the boss’s car for five hours to “Louisiana”. He has no idea where, but the five hour timeframe suggests Alexandria. Tomorrow we do a job there and then come back in the evening. 

There’s a lot of drama on social media about the children who lost their lives in Kerrville. A lot of people saying Texas deserves it due to the politics here. Both sides of the political bird gloat when disasters happen in states that vote the opposite of them. I literally just really hate both sides. 

This is the most educational and factual take I’ve heard.  This woman is a meteorologist and gives a solution at the end of the video. 

To lighten the mood, here’s Alex. Yes I know he’s fat. 

Sourdough Starter; No July 4th

 Today, I made a sourdough starter. It will be ready in about a week. I got this container at Dollar Tree, and I’m following these instructions:

If anyone has any tips, let me know. 

Many times, I find people online to follow that I end up loving, and the whole reason I found them in the first place was because I had listened to their haters complaining about them. One of those is Nara Smith. Nara Smith likes to get dressed up for the kitchen and make things from scratch- so of course she has haters. But I watch some of her stuff and I’m just like, you can do that?  Here she is making a regular loaf of sourdough and a chocolate one. I’m totally going to do both as well. Chocolate sourdough sounds amazing. 

We didn’t hear fireworks on the fourth. Many people online aren’t celebrating because of Trump. I’m not a Trump supporter, nor am I really big on Fourth of July, but I couldn’t help noticing that the same people who aren’t celebrating the fourth out of the belief that he’s a dictator, also wanted to dictate my every move for several years of my life. In my old apartment, thanks to my mom leaking my address, I had cops occasionally knocking on my door for welfare checks because family members called and said I was suicidal. I’m not. One cop kept asking me if I had a gun. I don’t. He kept pressing. I said, you’re welcome to search. He said, “I just want to go home.”  Then go home!  The goal of these family members was to have me locked up, because they didn’t like several things, including my long distance relationship at the time, my 1099 job that wasn’t a W2 job etc. one of my best friends thought it was my ex husband and his wife doing this (Anna’s dad and stepmom), but I didn’t think so, because I was required to give them my new address as soon as I moved in. My mother didn’t leak it until a few months later, and that’s when the knocks at the door started happening. 

I’ve also seen a handful of comments online poking fun at recent tragedies in my home state of Texas. We lost several 8-10 year old girls at a summer camp due to flooding. The owner of the camp also died trying to save them. This is devastating, as a mom, as someone whose best childhood memories were at camp, and as someone close by. These were kids. Don’t do that. They were little girls. Our country is truly divided if people can stoop that low. 

The plus side of no fireworks is that my daughter reported that her father’s chiwawa-pug didn’t have anxiety and didn’t need meds. 

4th of July- Can’t Move Numbers Online

 As of this evening, Saturday the fifth, I still haven’t received my paycheck. So I sent this meme to my boss. He loves the movie Office Space, and if you haven’t seen it and/or don’t get the meme, here is the explanation. 

I have a bad case of the irritation. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have waited another week on paying the whole car loan off. 

Conversation With Gastroenterologist

 Back in April, I had a Fibroscan of my liver in a gastroenterologist’s office. At the time, they had told me that if they found anything serious, the doctor would call me. If not, then I could discuss my results at my follow up on June 17th. Only, I canceled the appointment on June 17th due to anxiety. I found out that I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease back in November of 2021. It was discovered when I went to the emergency room for panic attacks that caused cardio symptoms. 

But with so many things going well in my life, I’m afraid I’ll die. So back on Monday, I called the GI office and was like look, is there any way the Dr can just call me. She was extremely rude, “Your insurance doesn’t cover that.” She snapped. I replied, “I will pay for it. I will pay 100% if he just calls me about this.”  I explained that I have severe anxiety over the issue and do no want to have to handle talking about it in the office. It would not only be humiliating for me, but they don’t want to deal with that, I don’t want to deal with that, and I would have to drive upset. She snapped again, “But your insurance doesn’t allow for a phone consult.”  And that’s true with Obamacare- if you have it and something is not covered and you are able/willing to pay out of pocket anyway, they won’t let you. But I started getting attitude back and said, “It lets me go on the teledoc app, that’s who referred me to y’all in the first place.”  She said hang on for her manager and then came back saying the manager wasn’t answering and then gave me her direct line. I called the direct line, and it was a non working number. That bitch! So I called back, got a completely different operator and started over. She put me on hold for the manager. I told the office manager everything and she asked, “Would you like me to run your insurance to see if it covers telehealth or would you like me to leave the doctor a message?” I said, “Can you do both?”  

So I was on kind of a long hold, she came back and said that yes my insurance covers telemedicine, she left my message for my doctor, and he’d call me Thursday the 3rd at 5:00 pm. 

He called a little before then. Immediately I started having panic attacks, but I did mention to him that this liver condition is an extremely serious cause of anxiety for me and that I wasn’t really interested in knowing what my liver looked like, I just had five questions- 1. Is there any medication he wants me to take? 2. Is there any medication he doesn’t want me to take? 3. Is there any specific food I should eat? 4. Is there any specific foods I should not eat and 5. How often do I have to keep coming back for this test? 

He told me first of all, to calm my fears, that everything on the test looks “promising”. He said a few more vague positive things before answering my five questions- there isn’t really a pill to take; my atorvastatin and metformin as long as they work controlling pre diabetes and cholesterol do fine. There is not anything to “not take”, he said, just don’t overdose on anything. As far as foods he described “The Mediterranean Diet” which is what they  all say, but there are more strict guidelines online. And that I should repeat the test about once a year. 

I then stepped back a little and said, “ok since it looks promising then I guess you can tell me what my liver looks like.” He seemed glad and said “Ok well your fatty liver disease is currently at a stage 0, which is the best it can be.”

I know from reading online that stage 4 would be cirrhosis.  Didn’t mention that though, was just glad to hear the number zero. He said the fibroscan was to check for hardening, and other bad things, of which I had none. 

I thanked him and before he hung up. He tried to convince me to get a colonoscopy again. I said, “Let me psych myself up for it for a couple months.”  He said that was fine. 

I told my mom, and she said, “I never had a colonoscopy, and I’m fine.”  

🤦🏻‍♀️ 

I’ve explained survivor bias to her before, but you can’t teach an old dog. 

I believe I know what causes this in me. It wasn’t the panic attacks. As a young woman, I was too skinny. I didn’t even reach 100 pounds until I was 22. Because of that, I constantly had older people telling me I had to gain weight and eat a burger and eat a pizza and I mean it was constantly skinny shaming. This seems counterintuitive to people, because only fat shaming is talked about. I was 220-something at my heaviest, and no one ever said anything about me being fat to my face. They kept it to themselves. Skinny shaming, though, is literally always 100% of the time, said to a person’s face. Because of that I spent many years making myself eat fatty unhealthy things, and that’s what I believe caused this. I feel like I’m not ever allowed to say that out loud though. People don’t like to hear about skinny shaming because they want to believe “society” wants women to be thin. But who exactly is “society”?  I’ve been working hard the last few years trying to reverse the habits and learn more about food. Combined with people who “wanted more for me than to just be in the kitchen” it has taken a lot of work and resisting. But I’m doing it. This morning I weighed 192.2, so some kind of plateau is happening. 

A Fruitful Wednesday Off

I started yesterday with a trip to 25 cent day at my favorite thrift store. I spent $13.25 plus tax, which means i got 53 pairs of jeans.  This is my second full ziplock bag of buttons harvested from 25 cent jeans. I cannot and do not remove buttons that were attached with grommets. I think it’s time for some button art. I was in a button art facebook group for a while, and I think the easiest thing to do would be a tree.  Some of the white buttons may have to be painted green. 

Also while cutting the waists off below the pockets, I thought to myself- if I was more careful in my cutting of these, did then more straight and intentionally, I could add flowy fabrics to them and make skirts. What are y’all’s opinions on that? 

I then took my daughter to Niko Niko’s for lunch and afterwards, we went to the metaphysical gift shop which is right next door. I needed scented votive candles, because I did receive nice votive size candle holders as a wedding gift. Anna bought little heart shaped stones to give to her friends. Her last day at her job is tomorrow. I’m actually kind of glad because I want her to spend more time up here with me. That’s one of the reasons she’s quitting. She wants to spend more time with me and with her friends before she leaves for San Marcos on 8/15.  

I then went to Walmart and not only got what seems like the perfect glass container for my own sourdough starter, but in the sewing department, three yard packs of solid 100% quilting fabrics were on sale for $5.94. They’re usually over $8. 

 

Stephen Hawking Movie Scene- Explanation

 Two posts ago, I mentioned this movie scene and how I thought about it when thinking of my deceased first boyfriend. This scene was from a movie called “The
Theory of Everything” about the life of Stephen Hawking. My first love didn’t have Lou Gherig’s disease like Stephen Hawking did, but he did have cardiomyopathy as a result of long term Ritalin use as a child. I suspect that’s how he died, but I’m not sure.

He and I used to daydream out loud to each other about our future kids and what they’d be like. In reality, we went our separate ways, married and divorced other people, and he had two sons while I had a daughter. In this scene, Stephen Hawking is with his estranged wife at an event and their three kids- two sons and a daughter- are playing. Stephen is so advanced in his disease at this point that he can only communicate by typing. He starts typing, and his ex wife leans over to read it. He says in his iconic robot voice, “Look what we made!” And they gaze at their girl and two boys. 

Of course that scene hits different now that I know about Matt’s passing. We didn’t get to do it together, but we did it.  Of course I see that scene and think of my daughter and his two sons. 

Then, it starts showing major memories of his life in reverse.  The scenes reverse all the way through the advancement of his disease, as if he’s getting better and better until he’s perfectly healthy and sees his wife for the first time- as two little 18 year old nerds like me and Matt were.  

Someone put this in the comments: 

I often wonder if when we come into this life, if there are truly hundreds of possibilities of what will happen based on what choices we make.  When Matt and I used to attend church, they used to argue about “predestination vs free will”.  But I believe in a mix of both.  The high number of possibilities is predestined.  Our free will determines what possibility actually happens.  I hope that makes sense. 

What ended up happening is that Matt and I broke up and I was so brokenhearted that I dove into working jobs that helped abused kids.  I was pressured to break up with Matt, so I did.  But when I tried to reconcile a month later, he rejected me and said I’d hurt him too much.  I became obsessed with my career goals.   I did several jobs that helped children, and there was so much sadness.  I look back on it now, and I don’t even know how I handled all of that weight on my shoulders being just barely out of childhood myself.  What was I doing and how did I do it?  

What if Matt and I could rewind like that, maybe all the way back to when we were in kindergarten, before we knew each other, and someone could convince his parents not to give him Ritalin?  Maybe they could have met my anti-helping kids- with mental health- and learning disability parents and been swayed by them.  Maybe Matt could have had a childhood like mine where he was just yelled at and told to buckle down instead of drugged.  It may sound like I’m being snarky, but his death has made me almost glad I never got help for my own neurodivergence.  I didn’t have that male privilege! (Snark intended since I’m alive and he’s dead)

What if we did get to get married and have our seven kids?  Would there be as much sadness as I’ve had working with kids?  Maybe  or maybe not.  

Today I’m just very sad, and I shouldn’t be.  I came home from work and immediately got in bed.  When I got hungry I just had (baked whole grain) chips and salsa.  I’m very happy with my life. But I’m so sad today.  

I should be happy that my car is paid off and that I got a raise.  And that I’m happily married to a man that’s honestly much easier to be married to than Matt would have been.  And my kid is going to college. I am just sad as hell and I want to spend all day tomorrow crying since there’s no inventory- BUT it will be 25 cent day and Anna wants to spend the night so if I want to cry I better do it now 

New Budget

 Phone: $164.74  This includes the WiFi for this house. 

Health insurance: $102.98 But I hate my insurance. Changing January first, asap. 

Car insurance is now $79.75 a month now that I paid the car off. At one point, it was $349 a month , went down to $2-something and is now under $80. Love it. 

I don’t have a minimum payment required for my student loans, because of my income, but I also realized that I didn’t tell them I got married. They’ll figure it out when we file jointly. Each time I log in to the servicer “Aidvantage”, I make a payment that decreases the principal balance. When you’re on an income based repayment plan, your interest compounds and compounds and compounds. If I left it alone, then I’d never retire because it would be over $100K by the time I got to my 60’s. This is why you hear people talking about having made significant payments every month, but the balance keeps increasing. What a scam. The plan now is to pay it down much more than “just a little bit” each time I log in. 

For the three years that interest was frozen during the pandemic, the balance was $20K even. I started paying it down in September of 2023 when the interest started accruing again. My balance is now $18,200 even. Of course now I’m going to be tackling it more aggressively

When I graduated, it was somewhere between $37K-$39K  I don’t remember anything except that it was “close to 40”  

Kevin pays the rent here, but I can definitely pay it sometimes now too.  It’s low, because this is his parents’ property. 

Goals now:

this booklet I have in lavender. It’s stuck in the seat pocket of the passenger seat of my car. It’s full of slots you number from 1-100. In the 1 slot, you put $1, in the 53 slot, you put $53, in the 100 slot you put $100 and so on. I fill some slots and then take them out. I’m terrible at this challenge. I wanted to give it to Anna, but she’s going to be living in a dorm and I didn’t want it to get stolen. I’m going to be better at it now with no car note. And I’m not going to keep it in the seat pocket of the car when it starts to get high.  If you fill all the slots, you’ve just saved $5,050. And I am not able to do it daily, it’s going to be a per payday thing. 

I have a retirement account on the Robin Hood app. It’s super low. Part of me hasn’t expected to live long enough to retire, but now I think I will. I’ll keep adding small amounts to it. I was always raised to believe that social security would go away by the time I was old enough for it. But people my age and younger are fighting back on that now. We are realizing that that was probably just said to us in order for the people saying it to drain social security. And my husband is turning 62 in February of 2026. He can collect it at that point but doesn’t seem to want to yet. 

My side jobs on the apps- I’m going to lay off of those and work on my writing and sewing more. Of course, if I’m driving to my mother’s house 65 miles away, there’s likely to be a handful of them there and back. It would make sense to do them then. We have two HEB stores we go to- in cypress and in Brenham. One is 30 miles east, and one is 30 miles west. When Kevin and I shop together, I always push to go to Brenham because that HEB always has a bunch of jobs at that location. 

I’m going to be giving my daughter HEB gift cards since there’s one in San Marcos walking distance to the university and she’s only on a two meal a day plan. And because the university has convinced her not to work her first semester- I think her dad and stepmom told her that too. It’s not wise. But I can’t say anything- when I first married her dad, there actually was a few month period where I was a stay at home wife. Before my pregnancy with her. There was a few month period when I was about 20-21 ish that I lived with my parents and didn’t work. I was a stay at home daughter. So it’s not like I ALWAYS worked. I did have breaks. Would my maternity leave with her also count since she was the easiest baby ever?  Most people would say no, but that was a chill time for me. (I also had a supportive partner!)

Hopefully my financial situation turns around. I make good money at my job in my opinion. It’s actually insane behavior that I returned to a job I had in my early 20’s that everyone told me to leave and go back for my degree, and even more insane is that I married my supervisor/coworker. Goals are shifting now that I’m getting older. In 2014, I didn’t think I’d live through each day. Now I rock. 

A Funny and a Sad

There was a post on facebook that was complaining about menopause symptoms, including chin hair. I made this comment, “I just know it feels super victorious when I pluck a chin hair with just my fingers.”  

My comment got over 2,000 likes and hundreds of comments telling me I have skills. It’s rare that I make a comment and get so many likes and comments. 

On a sad note, I had a weird dream last night about my first boyfriend who passed away in February 9th of this year. I had put an ambient sound on YouTube to fall asleep to. The video was three hours long. I fell asleep and then I started having a dream that I was trying to save the life of my first boyfriend. In the dream, I was trying to get him out of an area that was basically the afterlife, but I couldn’t do it. In my dream, I could hear the song kind of loudly, “Saving Me” by Nickleback. I forced myself to wake up and discovered that that song was now playing on YouTube

  It was the actual music video that was playing, but I linked to the lyric video just to show how weird this dream was. The lyrics fit. 

I am madly in love with my husband Kevin.  I still grieve when I think of Matt and how he was lost too soon. 

I haven’t thought of him lately, other than when I marvel at how proud I am of my daughter. My daughter is now the same age I was when I met Matt, and she’s everything we dreamed our future kids would be. He was not her father- we broke up in our early 20’s and I married Anna’s father when I was 26. Anna’s father is still living. Matt was my first love. Just to clarify. 

We couldn’t wait to have a large family and see how “our kids” would turn out. We had a lot of opposition, but in the end it seems like we were right about giving our kids a better start in life than what we had. When we were dating, we were considered failures by the older people in our life. He went on to have two sons that I never knew- one older and one younger than my child. I’m sure they’re just as amazing as Anna, even if his passing was a setback for them. Sometimes me and Kevin look at each other and say, “We did it!”  

If Matt was here, I think at this point in life, we could have told each other, “We did it.”  Maybe not together, but we did it- we raised amazing kids with a better start in life than we had. 

Also This scene comes to mind. I saw that movie a long time ago. 
 

Reflections

For funsies, here’s a cute picture I took of Alex last night. He wanted his breakfast at 11:45 PM. I asked him, “Are you hungry?” And then snapped his picture right as he answered me yes. 

Today is the 18th anniversary of the death of my aunt Mary. She’s on the right in this picture, my mom is on the left, and I’m in the middle. I believe this was in the spring of 1992.  Aunt Mary was my grandmother’s oldest daughter. She was born in 1929 and passed away in 2007. When I was giving birth to my daughter on June 11,2007, we thought Aunt Mary would pass away that day. She was given last rights just as I was entering the maternity ward. I was afraid that she would die and no one would inform me just because I was in labor. I remember begging, PLEASE inform me when she passes, even if I’m with legs apart and they’re saying here comes the head, if she dies I want to be informed. They were all “iffy” when they said ok. I didn’t believe they would really tell me. At 5:00 pm on the day Anna was born, I called my other aunt who’s also now deceased. I told her I had the baby, and after she got done squealing with excitement, she said Aunt Mary was still in a coma. She said they held the phone up to her ear as my mother announced to her that she was now a grandmother and “mother and baby are doing fine.” 

I look back on that now and I kind of understand- I would not want to tell a woman in labor or a brand new mom that her aunt died. But I also really needed and wanted to be informed no matter what condition I was in. 

Aunt Mary stayed in a coma for the next 19 days and died June 30, 2007 at age 78. 

She was one of the cool aunts. Actually, all of my cool aunts and uncles are dead now, and the abusive ones are still alive. Why did it have to happen that way?  

I wish Aunt Mary could see my daughter. She also has two great grandchildren that have been born since her passing. I miss her. 

 

Guess Who Paid Off Her Car

 Yours truly! 

My car was paid off this morning!  

I don’t think I’m really celebrating until the payment posts. I think now I’m supposed to get the title and also my car insurance goes down. 

This frees me up sooooooo much. 

Thank you God and thank you me!  

As a gift for getting paid off, my car got this TXST Bobcat Mom bumper sticker 

I’m Home From San Marcos

I’m depressed. Empty nest syndrome hits different when you were a non custodial parent. My daughter and I had our own apartment just the two of us for about 8 years. After I finished my degree, we had to live with my parents because the financial hardship caused by going back to school was too much for me to be able to pay rent at the time. When Anna was 12 and a half, she wanted to go and live with her dad. It absolutely killed me, but I understood. My parents are difficult to live with. They don’t have healthy conflict resolution. They just deal with the most minor things by yelling and screaming. Anna couldn’t handle that, because our home was peaceful. I know that is a good reflection on me, but I will always be bitter that the thing everyone in the world expected me to do (finish college) caused me to lose my home and my child.  

Her dad and stepmom are millionaires, so they’re

paying for her to go to Texas State University. She won’t have to worry about loans, or will she?  She told me how much is in her 529 plan her dad started, and it only seems like enough for about 3 years. Therefore, I’m starting my own. It’s not a 529, it’s just me, putting a little extra away. She’ll have a meal plan, but I’m still going to be giving her grocery store gift cards every couple weeks. She isn’t going to have a job the first semester, and that worries me. That’s one of the ways colleges and universities get you. They tell you not to work. She said after Christmas break, she’ll look for a job. That makes me feel better. Her stepsister (her stepmom’s daughter) also didn’t work her first semester and got a job after Christmas. I’m just worried, I want my daughter to be ok and have a good start in life. Her last day at her current job will be in the Fourth of July. 

Anna is taking college algebra right off the bat!  It will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 am. Tuesday and Thursday at 11 am is “Intro to Fine Arts” which does count for a requirement. Tuesday and Thursday at 2 pm is “Organismal Biology” with the lab being Wednesday at 2:00. Then Tuesday and Thursday at 5 pm is “College Writing”. I’m not sure what that is a requirement for. I hope they aren’t getting her to take classes that don’t meet requirements just to waste time and money. 

The parent only sessions on “how to support your student” were boring. I had to make sure I had crowds of people between me and my ex and his wife. If there are not crowds of people around, she tends to get nasty with me for no reason, with finger in my face and everything. 

They said that “career services will help them find a job at any time for the rest of their lives”. I went to the University of Houston, and I went to career services once. All they said was “Have you heard of Indeed?” 

Everyone has heard of Indeed. If you haven’t, it’s a job searching website. It’s www.indeed.com

There’s also an app. It guides you through making a resume and you can “apply with one click” if you see a job you like. I went on the other day and saw an ad for a caregiving company who’s urgently hiring for a client in the town of Magnolia, Tx. Magnolia is only a 10 minute drive from where I live in Waller. This client has 24 hour coverage and will only accept a caregiver with 10 years experience. I have ten years experience, roughly.  She also needs to be transferred. The ironic thing is that I would have been much better at transferring 10 years ago when I had no experience. If I do arm strength training and squats daily, I might be able to transfer people again (which means lifting them from wheelchair to bed, or toilet or recliner chair and back etc), even if I don’t ever do that job again, it’s good to do squats daily. I did not apply with a click. I’m loyal to my current boss especially after the raise I got. 

But back to Anna. I’m glad she’s so excited about this. I’m glad she was able to get in and get financial support from her father. When I was her age, I had no support. I had undiagnosed ADHD and learning disabilities and was unable to get into any university that offered dorm life. In fact, when I went to my local community college and took placement testing, I tested at a 6th-7th grade level in math and science. I didn’t take college algebra until I was 32 years old. Whatever George Bush was talking about when he said “no child left behind”, he was talking about me. I was left behind. 

When I was with my last boyfriend, he had two kids- and they both had IEP’s. He used to go to ARD meetings for both of them. Could you see my parents in anARD meeting for me back in the day?  Screaming and yelling?  My father also always pounded things with his fist. But never me!  So I could never call it abuse. 

I’m glad my kid doesn’t have to deal with the things I dealt with at her age. I hope she has fun the next four years, and I hope this degree actually gets her a career like she’s being led to believe. 

When I got home, I got this text from my mother in law. (We live in the guest house on her 11 acre property). 

I immediately thought my father in law Jay was dying. A couple times in the past I remember going to church members’ houses to pray for them in their final hours. But lo and behold, I pull up, and Jay is out there pulling weeds like nothing. He’s stubborn. He’s either 88 or 89 years old. We’ll see what happens with him. Here are some pictures of when Anna and I had our own apartment for 8 years: 

 

Stuff Found Online

This is the truth. Reminds me of all the pets I lost. I’m going to lose my mind when Alex dies. 

“O Am I?”

Someone posted this, found in a thrift store. This takes talent. 

I would get slug nails, but it would make it hard to do inventory. 

If my husband ever let me get chickens, I’d want a coop like this. 

This is why I’m big on letting my kid find her own way. 

 

Orientation Day 1

I’m back at the motel now. Anna gets to spend tonight in the dorms as part of her itinerary. Whenever I’m in a motel room by myself, I crank the AC to 69-67 and double up on blankets. Can’t get away with that anywhere else, nor can I get away with it if I’m sharing the motel room. 

The university rec center had old 80’s arcades including Mrs. Pac-Man!! 

Family of deer living on campus. The one in front stared me down as I walked by. 

Oh and I got the 50 cent raise I asked for. Hallelujah! 

More tomorrow on orientation. I’m exhausted. 

 

Traveling with my Kid !!

 

I’ve traveled all over 9 states for the last 5 years doing retail audits. I was never able to take my child anywhere, because her dad wouldn’t let me. Now that she’s 18, I finally am taking her this week. First, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant I like in Giddings called Las Patrones. I had fish and shrimp soup. They make it the best. Then I took her to the Berdoll Pecan Farm (Berdoll.com) which has a pretty neat gift shop. They sold these enormous bags of pecans. I like pecans but I don’t think I like them enough to buy one of those bags. They also sell neat gift items and pecan everything. Pecan pies, pecan pralines, pecan oil, pecan butter, pecan trees. You name it they got it (pecan-wise). 

Now we’re staying in a motel in San Marcos and today is parent orientation at Texas State University. Taking an uber so we don’t have to mess with parking. I’m hoping after orientation, we’ll check out of here tomorrow and go to the river walk in San Antonio. 

Midlife

 Me and my mom on the right with five of my aunts, my grandmother and great aunt seated. My mom was 33 here, and my aunts all ranged from 43-49 years old. 

Do you ever wonder what day you’re going to die?  I think about how my dad passed away on MLK day in 2020. For so many years during his life, he seemed to admire MLK and think he was a great speaker. The elderly woman I cared for between July of 2023 and March of 2024 died on the anniversary of the day her son’s adoption was final. She told me the story of that day a few times, unaware that it would be her “deathiversary”. I asked my mom if she ever wondered what hers would be. She said “No, because I’d be afraid every year when that day rolled around.”  

I also kind of wonder when is midlife. I’m about to turn 47. I’m at midlife if I live to be 94. 

My aunt Fran, pictured above second from left with a black dress and black curly hair just passed away in March at age 94. In this picture, she was about my age or maybe a year older, and at her own halfway mark. I think it’s possible that I would live to 94, but chances are I probably have more life behind me than in front of me. 

Of course it’s always possible that I could die in a freak accident today- I hope not, but if that were the case, then my halfway point would have been when I was 23. Back when 9/11 happened. 

My little cousin Evan was killed in an accident at age 23.  His midlife was when he was in 6th grade. 

Whatever happens, I pray for Psalm 91:16. “With long life, I will satisfy him.”  It’s also a Song

Tire Problem

 Lately, it has sounded like I had a tire problem. My tires weren’t flat, so I was confused. I could hear thumping as I drove. I went to a tire shop to get my air checked. The guy that checked my air said nothing, but as I drove more I could still hear thumping. 

So I went to another tire shop and parked and got out this time. They came back and said there was a frog stuck to one of my tires. He was a big dude, too, about 6 inches long. Although he may have been shorter in life, considering my car flattened him out. The tire guy removed the frog and did a rotation. I felt bad for the frog I killed. Sorry little fella. He must have been on the bottom when the first guy put air in my tires. 

I Miss My Husband

 It sucks having him gone. I almost don’t know what to do with myself. Why is that?  I lived alone for years. 

Yesterday my anxiety was a lot better. Today, it’s back. I’m trying not to take any gabapentin at all, unless I have actual withdrawal symptoms (like twitching). I have a bottle of Snapple in the fridge with 200 mg that I’m trying to avoid unless it gets really bad. When it’s done, I might try to look for a sugar free option to dissolve those capsules in. 

I don’t blame myself for getting into this situation. I did what I was supposed to do when my mental health was bad. I believe this was done to me. I can’t believe some of the attitude I’ve gotten just for wanting the medication that has worked great for me for four years. It’s as if I’m this awful person just for bringing it up. The professionals get really triggered if I mention that I take it- I wonder how they’ll react if I ever have to mention that I “used to take it”. 

I thought back to a therapist that either said I have “Complex PTSD” from all the work with children and elderly that I’ve done, or he said that I “might” have it. Then another therapist told me I didn’t deserve that label or whatever, mostly because my parents were together.  When I said it out loud that one professional said one thing about me and another one said another thing, I was absolutely beseeched (like it was a damn emergency) to go see someone else who will say I do have it. I don’t remember exactly how that went down, but how annoying. If different people will tell you different things about yourself, then what’s the point of going to see more and more people?  If you keep going to different people until you hear what you want to hear, then what’s the point?  Doesn’t that prove you’re full of it?  

Whether I “do” or “don’t” “have” “Complex PTSD”, my story is my story and I can’t change the past and the things I’ve been through. I wouldn’t want to either. Our experiences shape us. Sometimes I’ve taken breaks from writing my book, “because of mental health” but I wonder how much of that is real. How much do I really need to take the long mental health breaks from writing my book?  And how much am I just buying into the hype surrounding mental health conditions?  If the therapist who said I have complex PTSD was right, then the breaks are good. If the one who said I don’t because my parents never got divorced was right, then I need to get back to work on it. 

Since it can’t actually be proven either way, I’ll just pay more attention to how I personally feel about writing at any given time. 

On another note, I made homemade bread today. I also boiled up the rest of my cinnamon green tea bags and sweetened it with monk fruit. I then poured it through a funnel into empty water bottles and put them in the freezer. 

Ramblings

 No I didn’t get a nose ring, but my daughter did. She’s 18 now, so she can. I want one if I get down about another 5-10 pounds. She also said she’s on a waiting list for a tattoo. She briefly explained the tattoo, and it’s similar to mine. I might show it when I get the final picture. 

This has been a challenging week, because Kevin had to travel to the dead ass middle of Texas while I am staying behind to work locally. The chain that we usually do all over that area is being done by our Austin crew, and Kevin has to run it because none of the Austin crew knows how. Kevin seemed unnecessarily bummed out that he had to travel without me. It makes me realize that even though he said he’d be supportive if I moved on to another job, he’d still really hate traveling without me. We travel often. I would bring that up, but nah. It actually makes me feel great that he would miss me that much. After decades of being told that if I got married, my husband would want to leave me for every little thing, turns out that’s not the case. 

Next week, I’ll be on vacation. There is going to be parent orientation at the university where my daughter is going, and I’m taking her on a road trip the rest of the week. I requested it a long time ago. 

I’m struggling a lot with my anxiety, but still working hard to fight it off. I often try to not take any gabapentin at all some days. It works, in that, I don’t have that many withdrawal symptoms. I do have bad anxiety though. If I have a withdrawal problem, I just take half a capsule. Actually the one time I did have withdrawals this week, I drank my apple juice that had 400 mg inside but I drank half at a time about four hours apart. It’s easy to fall into the “I need to go see someone who can help me” trap, but in the end that would be such a bad idea. I thought about maybe seeing another psychiatrist and letting them know that I would be willing to take gabapentin and an SSRI, just because they obviously push SSRI’s so much. However, in the end that also wouldn’t be smart. The doctor would just see me doing well and attribute it to the SSRI, not the gabapentin, and then take me “off” gabapentin.  I know this from experience as well. The whole experience makes me totally look down on them. Then I saw this meme:

Oh so snarky huh!!!  The point of this meme is that “you can’t” just cheer up, you need professionals. What the meme doesn’t tell you is that you can  go see as many professionals as you want, and they also are just going to tell you to cheer up. So, in my opinion, you might as well save your money and just cheer up. In fact, you might be able to use that money to help with whatever is stressing you out. 

I have had to tell myself over and over that a big part of the reason for my anxiety is that I have been on meds so long and now I’m not. At least I have a pretty decent stash  for in case it gets really bad. If I had been taking the full dose daily, then I would be out soon. That would absolutely suck. I just need to remind myself that no one I ever go to for help is actually going to help me. I have the tools, I just need to tap in and discover them. 

I also want to say thanks for all the encouragement on my child advocate blog. That blog is slow going. Ideally, I would write a post there daily. Ideally, I would also physically exercise daily as well. Perhaps that is a nice goal that would help my anxiety. 

One thing that I wasn’t sure should go on this blog or that one is what was recently discovered about the Duggar family from 19 Kids and Counting. As you may know, their oldest son is now serving time for CSAM. More recently, a young man who was dating one of their younger daughters but since moved on and married someone else, was arrested for sexual assault of a child under 12. It appears to have happened when he was 18-19 years old. His current wife made this post, which made its way to Reddit. I have a lot to say:

One of the comments under that post was, “I read the first two words of that and was hoping the rest of it would say ‘went down to Georgia.’”

Yeah no shit!  What an absolute piece of shit this couple is!  “Victim”. She didn’t just do that. And while it’s been many years since I’ve been to church, I have seen this sentiment quite a bit among them. They tend to hold minor sins against people pretty harshly but when it comes to CSA, it’s all about forgiveness all of a sudden. I noticed a lot of young people on TikTok claiming that the heavy push for forgiveness in past decades was not actually for the right reasons. In a lot of instance, people preached forgiveness so heavily because they themselves wanted to get away with abuse. I can believe that!  And when she says that she knows a lot of people who are also doing it, I want to say “Ok- go on…”