Big Love Binge Watching

 Over the last couple of weeks, I've spent a total of about $60 on YouTube to purchase and binge-watch the entire 5-season series of an HBO original called Big Love. I know I have struggled immensely the last couple of weeks with my own writing “career”, but I've been totally inspired by how well written this series is. 

The main character is Bill Henrickson, played by Bill Paxton, a Mormon polygamist with three wives and nine children (three per wife). His first wife Barb was born and raised in the mainstream LDS church. His second wife Nikki was born and raised in a polygamist compound on which her father was the prophet. (Her sect of Mormonism was fundamentalist and separate from the mainstream LDS).  Bill’s third wife Margie was raised by an alcoholic single mother who was a non-practicing catholic. Margie was 25 years younger than Bill and didn't become Mormon until after she married Bill (and essentially Barb and Nikki).  

In the first four seasons, only Barb is Bill’s legal wife. Then in the last season, they obtained a divorce on paper only so Nikki could be the legal one. 

Bill is the owner of a chain of home improvement stores. He then buys into a casino and ultimately runs for state senator. During the election, he hides that he's a polygamist, wins the election, and reveals that he's a polygamist while accepting the nomination. Kind of sneaky!  

I've never been Mormon, but I lived in Arizona for exactly nine years. I had a lot of Mormon friends, a lot of ex-Mormon friends, and a little bit of a fascination with the LDS church, even though I do not believe in it. Nowadays, one of my side jobs (which I haven't done in several months ) is to take pictures of the landscaping around LDS churches. Kevin asked me why a fascination if I don't believe in it. I said mostly because of their extreme niceness when you first meet them, their emphasis on having large, loving families (which my first boyfriend Matt and I wanted), and just the sheer number of friends I had as a teenager who were born and raised in it.  In my high school on the south side of Phoenix, LDS kids could skip one class period per quarter to go across the street and attend seminary. When I used to visit Arizona back when my side hustles paid a lot better, I often made about $60 per hour on the landscaping jobs because of so many LDS churches in the greater Phoenix area. 

I have one funny memory of when I was in high school, and they were going to have a hypnotist in either an assembly or a senior event (don't remember exactly).  Several LDS kids were getting religious exemptions from participating in the hypnosis. My mother, a devout Greek Orthodox, also went with me to get a religious exemption from the hypnosis. The school administrator commented to my mother like, “If you have a note from your Bishop, you can submit it, but it's not necessary.”  I burst out laughing. In Mormonism, every single church location has a bishop. In the Eastern Orthodox church, there's only one bishop over an entire area including several states. Living in Phoenix, we were actually in the diocese of Denver, whereas the local LDS churches with one bishop each were everywhere. My mom looked confused and said, “The bishop?  Why would I ask the bishop????”  It was just a funny side memory, because my mom didn't realize the disconnect in the meaning of that title across denominations. 

But back to the show Big Love. It took a lot of mental gymnastics to watch that show!  A marriage with four people instead of only two really gets convoluted. The three women all slept with Bill and considered themselves married to Bill, even though only one was legal, but they weren't lesbians and didn't sleep with each other. There were never three ways or four ways. They had a schedule for “who gets Bill” when. But the three women all talked to each other and used lingo with each other as if they were married to each other.  In their eyes, they were. 

Bill grew up on the polygamist compound where his second wife Nikki came from, and his parents were also polygamists. However, he was exiled as a teenager by his father. This is very common in polygamist groups. It's referred to as “polygamy’s lost boys”.  It's because in any society/group of people, it's likely to always be roughly half male and half female. Any time you get pregnant, it's literally always a 50/50 chance of having a boy or a girl. So what happens is that polygamists have a ton of kids, and the next generation is roughly half male and half female like the rest of planet earth. But the men are only considered worthy to go to heaven if they have at least three wives. The more the better.  This results in teenage boys being seen as competition for the younger girls. The men want to keep taking wives, and as the young people get old enough to marry, the older men don't want the younger men marrying the younger women, so they exile them in very horrible, abusive ways. Most of the time, when you hear about abuses on polygamist compounds, you only hear about the abuses towards girls and women.  The lost boys aren't talked about. But they're pretty much a mathematical inevitability. In the show, when Bill was exiled by his father, he went out into the world and made something of himself, joined the mainstream LDS, met Barb, and then after years of marriage to her, he realized he wanted to be a polygamist too, and married Nikki and later Margie. 

The show has all viewers asking how they would feel about sharing their spouses. No, I wouldn't want to share Kevin. When I was married to Anna’s father, I wouldn't have wanted to share him either. If I had married Matt, I wouldn't have wanted to share him. But when I was on again/off again with my long-distance boyfriend in Arizona, I suspected he saw someone else, but didn't care. I didn't care, because I knew that it was expected of me to be single, independent, and not need/want a man. But going to see him was still fun. People who knew about it were mad that he was a single parent (even though I was too- make it make sense).  People were angry and said I “needed to get her side of the story.” One time I said, if she sends her kids a birthday card with five bucks, I might care about her side of the story. My daughter’s stepmother never cared about my side of the story. I even got yelled at once as if I didn't know how to add one plus two. “Do you realize that if you marry him, YOU WILL HAVE THREE KIDS?”  Yes. I know that his two kids plus mine would make three. 

With all of this outside influence, I didn't consider him a real relationship and knew I wasn't supposed to want one anyway. So the possibility of him seeing someone else was moot.. 

Women who grow up and are in polygamist spaces are actually taught that they are supposed to share their husbands as a part of God’s will. I understand being ok with something due to your surroundings, due to my complicated feelings about my long-distance relationship. I was born and raised and still live in a society where polygamy isn't the norm, so of course it makes sense that I wouldn't “want to share my husband”.  I wonder how I'd feel about it if I were raised in that world, though. Your surroundings shape your beliefs more than you know!!  

At the end of the show, as a senator, Bill initiated legislation to legalize plural marriage. It was an extremely emotional scene. He made a lot of good points. 

I do believe that there isn't anything wrong with polygamy and polyamory. Yes, there are good points for making it legal. The problematic part is when you start bringing salvation and God’s will into it. If God really wanted every man to have three wives, then babies would be born at a rate of 75% female and 25% male (at least).  And this goes for everything else in life- what's right for some will never be right for “everyone”  

That's just the way it is. 

In the last two seasons, Bill has become a major asshole. In the first three seasons, he's only a little bit asshole. The ass-holiness grows exponentially when he runs for office. At the end, I believe he redeems himself greatly before he gets shot and killed by one of his many enemies. 

I really really admired the writing in this series. It was so good at capturing many elements around a specific topic, and this is what I strive to do when I write. 

The epilogue sucked- I wish there could be a season six with just the wives. It could happen. Bill the character and Bill the actor both are dead, but all three main actresses are alive and could pull it off. Eh maybe they will someday. 

Funny from rural teens

 Yesterday I was in a pretty rural part of the country near the Texas/Louisiana border. I was doing inventory of all the merchandise sold at the checkout lines, and the two teenagers working there as cashiers were cracking me up. (A boy and a girl). They were clearly flirting with each other, and they were arguing about who should be homecoming royalty. 

Then, a customer came in who they knew on a first name basis. This customer looked like he had done some methamphetamines in his life. He was bald and had no teeth, and just looked worn. They conversed with him quite a bit actually and obviously knew him. Then, he paid for his stuff and left. The boy cashier said jealously to the girl cashier, “I think he likes you. I think he was flirting with you.”  The girl cashier said, “ew! I don’t want that old man! He’s like 32!” 

I had not been talking to these kids at all, just eavesdropping, but I laughed out loud. 

Was that man actually 32, because the features he had from apparent past drug use made him look about 60. Or, was the number “32” just, in the girl’s mind, this extremely old age?  Of course it’s too old to be flirting with her, but the way she said “That old man is like 32” made me think that either she just thinks 32 is really old- or he really was 32 and meth really is that much of a hell of a drug. I told Kevin and he said, “Maybe he was really 39.”  I bust out laughing again. 

Another Snafu

One more thing about my writing that might garner negative attention. The main character decides on a career helping children, because she herself feels pressure not to ever have a family. This is definitely based on my own experience. With my first boyfriend Matthew, one of the areas where we felt pressured to not go through with our marriage was at church. Nowadays, churches seem to push getting married and having kids. I’m not sure if this change came about with the passage of time, or that our pastor himself was very unhappy in his own marriage and projected it onto all of us. The entire concept was not that it was wrong in and of itself to get married/have kids, but that God didn’t want what you wanted and God’s will wasn’t your will. Once I tried explaining this in therapy, years ago (not with my current therapist) and she started correcting me saying, “Actually, women are pressured TO get married and have kids.”  She literally sat there and told me my experience was wrong, because of what her own interpretation of “pressure on women” entailed. I come across this from time to time, sometimes people will say that churches pressure you TO do this, they don’t pressure you NOT to do this. BUT, “God’s will isn’t your will” can apply to literally anything. The emphasis that I want to put on the pressure we felt to go our separate ways was not the church saying that it was wrong to start a family, but that it was wrong to do what we wanted in general. It can apply to the exact opposite as well. You can want to remain single and childfree your entire life, but if God doesn’t want what you want, then that means get married and birth a basketball team. If you want to be an artist, God doesn't want that. If you want an alpaca farm, God doesn’t want that. One of my fears is that I’ll get negative reactions to the idea that a church was one of the sources from which I felt pressure to never have a family of my own. I want to make it very clear that it was a will of God thing. Here’s a copy paste from my 30K+ word document with Bible verses explaining what I mean. I thought I had more Bible verses. I know there are more that I can use, I just need to dig them up. (A hilarious side note- Grammarly was correcting and even trying to rewrite exact quotes from the Bible. Kevin said, “But I thought the Bible was perfect!”)

As far as last names for a pen name, I was remembering my first boyfriend who has now been deceased for almost 9 months. I would like to use his real last name as my pen last name in order to honor him, but it’s not a common name at all- so if anyone in his family got wind that it was me, it might be problematic. I am not claiming this to be a “memoir”, because some of my memories are shaky. It’s based on me, but it’s not me. So, since his first name was Matthew, I think a good pen last name would be Matthews. It would be the name of the character as well. In the copy paste below of the Bible verses from my main document, when I say Caleb Wills, that’s what I call him in the book (his pen name, so to speak). And for funsies, I added the AI image created of him and I with our hypothetical 7 kids we wanted. I like that pic. My commentary on the Bible verses is paraphrased. It’s not going to look like that in the book, it’s going to be worked into the actual story. 

At the same time as our engagement, the pastor of the college age ministries was preaching a sermon series on the will of God not being your will.  We in that group were all at the age where we were figuring out what to do with our lives.  We were picking majors and  working while attending college.  About half of us were paired into relationships.  One thing was for certain though, as I listened to the sermon series on the will of God- I knew that marrying Caleb and having children was “my will”.  It’s what I wanted more than anything else aside from my faith in God.  I ended my relationship with Caleb after I heard the following concepts in church:

Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but in the end it leads to death.”  (Marrying Caleb and having kids seemed right to me, did that mean it would lead to death?)

Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”  (My plan being to marry Caleb and have a family was something that God would have to prevail over?)

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding.”  (My own understanding was that I wanted to marry Caleb and have kids, was trusting the Lord the opposite of this?  As in, I couldn’t do both?)

I remember our pastor Jacob saying “Doing what makes you happy is so bad for Christians.  We aren’t called to do what makes us happy, we are called to glorify God.  

 

Slept on it 🛌

 After I wrote my blog post last night, Idecided that I really should include the story I talked about in my last post- the baby with long term disability due to shaken baby syndrome, which was done by her mother with postpartum mental health issues. The best way to tell the story is to simply tell the baby’s story, and not express any opinions of my own regarding whether or not the mother had an excuse/reason or not. The baby did have cerebral palsy, but Here is a complete run down of the basics about shaken baby syndrome, which I can incorporate more of into the story. The funny thing is, is that 25 years ago in my training, I was taught that bouncing a baby on your knee and other non abusive, benign actions can cause it. It would be interesting to look into why that recommendation changed. In the story, I may not express any of my own anger at the mother in order to prevent me looking like a big ignorant meanie, but I might tell stories of other abused children simultaneously and show the anger towards those other perpetrators (anger from others)  while this mother got sympathy (sympathy from others). Basically, I’ll just “show, not tell”. I’m on my way to Louisiana now so won’t have time to think about this anymore- I don’t have the mental energy to. My iron supplements are helping me feel more energized already, and my multivitamin contains vitamin C. 

Speaking of Writing ✍🏼

 I have still completely lost the mood for writing. One thing I’m scared of is negative opinions. You would think a book about helping children wouldn’t garner negative reactions, but some aspects of it might. For example, when I worked at the child abuse shelter, I took care of siblings whose mother tried to kill their infant sibling. It was a case of shaken baby syndrome that left the baby disabled, and it was attributed to the mother’s postpartum mental health. In cases like that, there is very little sympathy for child victims.  If I include a version of that story that would protect the true identities of these siblings, then I might be seen as someone who is uneducated about postpartum mental health. I might be seen as someone who thinks “mental illness isn’t real.” I do think it’s real, even though it’s not seen on imaging or bloodwork.  I would just have to be very careful about telling that story, because unlike other cases of child abuse, the child victim isn’t automatically considered. The mother is. Telling a story of helping children might sound like I was this heroic person who always had the answers that lined up with the popular opinions of the times, but that wasn’t reality. 

If you ever watched “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” in the 90’s, you might remember that no matter what the conflict was in the episode, the episode always ended with everyone realizing Dr. Quinn was right. That’s the kind of writing I want to avoid, because it’s not realistic. In the case of kids abused and/or killed by a mother with postpartum psychosis, more attention is given to the mom than the child victims. If you sympathize with the child victims,  you’re seen as “bad” in many ways. The emphasis is usually sympathy for the mother. Avoiding what I call “Dr. Quinn syndrome” where the main character always comes out the hero who’s right and has the popular opinion is likely to garner some negative reactions. I hope that makes sense. 

If that still doesn’t make sense, then think of Andrea Yates. When people talk about her case, do they even mention the names or the details of her children?  No- they talk about her and how the fact that she murdered her kids is because of her postpartum issues. If you say out loud that the kids were victims, or that it wasn’t ok what happened to them, you are snapped at immediately to give graces to Andrea for what she did. The children themselves are rarely real people in people’s minds. They’re game pieces in an argument to let a certain person be excused for an inexcusable action. If I tell the story of the kids I cared for, the focus will be them as victims, not any kind of excuses, reasoning, anger at, or rage towards the person who committed the abuse. 

I also was just talking to my therapist how, when people hear that I worked there, they assumed that I saw all this horrible abuse on the kids. The truth is, 95% or so of the kids that came there were not there because of abuse. (Obviously the siblings I just mentioned were the 5% that were), but they were there mostly due to homelessness, drug use, or both. If the kids were being physically or sexually abused, that was not the reason for admission the vast majority of the time. The worst thing I ever saw on the kids was that sometimes when they came in they were dirty. For the majority of them, it’s not like I “saw all this abuse”. If I read their files, it would just say homelessness, tested positive for this and that (parents) but it’s not like I had all these kids full of bruises all the time. That’s what people think. The truly horrific thing about working there was that every single member of the staff hated each other. Plus having to care for all those kids in those unstable situations with people who all hated each other. Some of the staff members tried to get even with others and involved children, and I’ll get into that another time. 

So, it’s complicated. The last thing I want if I do include the story of the siblings and shaken baby syndrome is some smart ass saying, “Educate yourself!” About XYZ mental health issue. If the book is published, I may get thousands of hate letters like that. I would just need to keep it about them and their care, keep it super minimal about their mom, and of course change names and identifying details. 

Also the postpartum/shaken baby thing is just one example. If I express any anger at the woman who did this to that baby, then that will not be popular at all. 

That’s a reason why I want a pen name.  I used to want Simi for a pen name, but I’m over the name Simi. I don’t like it anymore. When I started working for this inventory company in 2023 and developed a crush on Kevin, I put his last name with Simi, not realizing that I would eventually marry him and it would be my real last name. So that’s out. 

I really like the name Dassy. It’s short for Hadassah. Yes, I got it from Miriam on TikTok!  Miriam is an Orthodox Jew and mother of five who educates on TikTok about Judaism. Hadassah is her second youngest child, and they call her Dassy. Dassy also resembles Danny, which I like. Hadassah was the original name of Queen Esther in the Bible, before she became Queen Esther. Would my character be Jewish?  I don’t know. I mean for all intents and purposes, she’d be Greek like me, but the main character’s culture wouldn’t play a part in the story at all. Plus, my main character is a Christian who starts out fundie and goes through a Pentecostal phase before having a crisis of faith. I myself do have a drop of Jewish blood, but since it comes from my father’s side, it doesn’t count. (According to them anyway). 

Hadassah also means Myrtle tree. It’s symbolic of peace and joy and prosperity. That again gives the “heroic”, “everything goes smoothly”, “everything I battle is in agreement with societal norms” thing I want to avoid. So therefore, I also like the name Amalia or Amalyah which means work of God. And there are a lot of Greek women named Amalia or Amalyah. 

As far as last names, I have none at all. 

If you care to, tell me which you like better: Dassy or Amalyah. And perhaps suggest a last name. I do not want to use my real name at all. 

No more writing ✍🏼 🚫

 Sadness persists. I don’t think I’m going to be able to write the book I want to write. The book would have been based on my experiences working with kids. It would have told a story, raised awareness, and made people laugh simultaneously. I think the book was my ultimate life calling. Nonetheless, I’m still going to try and bring my laptop with me to Louisiana, since I get more writing inspiration in motel rooms. 

We go to Louisiana and the Beaumont, TX area every three months for inventory. The workdays are very long, but at least the motel rooms have bath tubs and the stores we do carry epsom salts. Kevin and I joked that we’re going to go out after work to a Cajun club and dance like this. Those two really got it, don’t they?  I don’t think Kevin can dance at all, but I could probably do some of that with some practice. 

They called me again regarding my appointment on 10/2, which was now three damn weeks ago. They told me I have iron deficient anemia and to take OTC supplements. So I got them yesterday and took one last night, am about to take one once we leave for work. I’m hoping these make me feel not so drained. 

My mother attempted to apologize and sent me a picture of the three granddaughters of one of her good friends. The oldest of the three girls is 19 and was just recently declared cancer free.  Then my mom started criticizing the girl’s appearance. As soon as she did, I said I gotta go. Dammit. You’d think by the time you get to be 80, you’d learn to be a better person than to make fun of a teenager who has been battling cancer for two years. If I said anything, she would have called me a goody two shoes or something. 

Here’s some more Cajun dancing to get me in the mood for Louisiana. I actually think that guy in that video is cute. 

Sinking

 Image by “Lock Ness” on Deviant Art. 

I feel like I’m sinking. Completely falling off the bandwagon of writing 30 minutes a day was a setback. Then finding out the nurse at my old job was murdered along with her husband almost did me in. The sleep paralysis the following night was jarring. I am highly suspicious of my coworkers at that old place- I remember a lot of them hated her. In fact they mostly all hated each other. My anonymous tip hasn’t been looked at. I have a weird username and password full of letters, numbers and characters that I can use to check. But nothing will be done. If nothing is done about my tip by tomorrow, I may blog the details on Wednesday. 

Then we went to my mom’s house on Saturday. I took a bath, because my place with Kevin has only a shower stall. While in the bath, I could hear my mom and Kevin whispering. Later on, as we were leaving, I called out to my mom, “See you later!” And I know by talking about this openly on here, I open myself up to critical comments, but as I’ve said before, this is my space. My mother isn’t deaf, hearing impaired, or hard of hearing. But over the past 40+ years, she has selectively not heard or pretended to not hear whenever I say something that makes me sound polite. “Hello”, “Bye”, “Thank you” or “you’re welcome.”  She’ll pretend to not hear me say it in order to proceed to humiliate me in front of the person I’m saying it to. Even if the person insists to my mom, “Yes, Danielle said thank you!”  She still does it. So when I called out “See you later!” To my mom, she instantly screeched, “Ok fine, DON’T SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR MOTHER!”  My husband was right there. He told me later that he heard me say it. 

He also said that when I was in the tub, my mother was asking him if he was sick of me yet and ready to put me out on the street. He said he reassured her that he isn’t “sick of me” and that he loves me etc. He said that at that point, she started saying that I often “make it up in my head” that she tells me to be prepared if he leaves me.  So basically, she tried to gaslight me to my husband behind my back, but was unsuccessful, because in the breath immediately preceding the gaslighting, she was saying the exact thing she was claiming to never say. 

She did that with me before.  If she claims to “never say” something, and then say it, I’ll call her out, but it doesn’t work, because then she’ll just say, “I’m such a bad mother!” 

All women tell all women to be prepared if their husbands leave them. It’s obsessive. No one has to worry about me.  My husband isn’t leaving me. If he does, I have an entire baggie of back up plans.  If he dies, I’m POD on his accounts. The grief will suck, but you know what? No one ever told me to have a back up plan in case my college degree didn’t work out, but I figured it out anyway. 

Please no comments telling me “just don’t worry what she says”. For a lot of us, our moms are our first bullies. You wouldn’t tell a woman with an abusive male partner to “just not care what he says.”  The end. 

Speaking of my baggie of back up plans, I’m so sick of my job. It’s eating at me for some reason and I don’t know. I like doing inventory. I like it so much, that one of the psychiatrists I tried to get gabapentin out of a few months ago said “You LIKE doing inventory?  Maybe you do have autism.”  But I never got an official autism diagnosis. Just that. If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad is the song I try to sing to myself if I get really bored or frustrated at work. Yes how bad can it be?  I worked at a shelter for abused kids with extreme tension among all staff members, had to take care of 18 kids at a time with all these motherfuckers who hated each other, and then (I suspect) someone murdered the nurse. Why would counting crap be so bad? 

 We have our own cardboard tags with our company name that say “audited” that we put on sections when we do them. The store we did today is one we do monthly. It has a big wine rack surrounded by 24 packs of bottled water and 12 packs of soda. I always do it, and I always deck the hell out of it with those tags. It doesn’t matter if something is tagged- or at other stores we put sticky notes on the sections and initial them when done (I’ve brought a sharpie for my initials) my coworker will yell-ask if I did the section. 

We do have one young lady who helps us put maybe once or twice a week because she has another job. I told her, “You see that wine rack with the water and soda 12 packs?  You see how I decked it all out with tags?  I guarantee I’m still going to get asked if I did it.” 

She laughed, but lo and behold, a couple hours later, “DID SOMEONE GET THIS WINE OVER HERE?” 

Me and the very part time girl just looked at each other and said nothing. I refused to answer. Then, “oh yeah there are tags.”  

I came home and literally fell asleep instantly. I slept two hours. I’m exhausted and burned out. My hand, wrist and thumb are all in total pain. They were doing better until today, I did something to throw out my thumb joint. I am hurting like hell. I have a wrist brace, but it’s stretched out after only a few days of use. I may need to go to cvs and get a size smaller. I’m just so miserable I want to sleep for hours and hours and wake up feeling inspired again. 

Homemade laundry detergent

 

20 years ago, the popular way to make homemade laundry detergent was just grated Zote soap, Borax, and washing soda. 

This one is different. All of the ingredients cost about $30 the first time I made it several months ago. We were getting low but not really anywhere near “out” so I thought I’d buy the ingredients again. This time, they were a little cheaper and totaled $26. They are:

One tub of oxy 

1 and a half bars of Zote soap grated. Kevin helped with this since I had some hand pain, and he laughed at himself the whole time. 

One box of borax

One box of washing soda

One four pound box of baking soda 

One tub of scent boosters 

The oxy comes with a scoop. Use this scoop to scoop the detergent. Only use 1/3-1/2 of the scoop depending on how soiled everything is. The lady online said this lasts her a year and she has five kids. She doubles it though. 

Sleep Paralysis 1st Time Ever

 Last night, I tried to go to bed in my own bed, but Kevin was diagonal, so I went in the other room. I started to fall asleep to one of my favorite true crime channels. He started to talk about a married couple that was murdered in Arizona. I was not paying attention until he said where the wife worked. She was the nurse at the child abuse emergency shelter that I worked at in the early 2000’s. The staff at this shelter had a TON of preexisting tension, so thick you could cut it with a knife. Being so young and having such a low self esteem and having grown up with it instilled in me that I couldn’t do anything, I internalized a lot of the hatred between the others. It was hard to deal with while taking care of kids in precarious circumstances. I have a lot of trauma and vicarious trauma from that job. I remember being on the road from Phoenix to Houston for the first time ever and thinking, I will not be surprised if some of those people murder each other. 

The only thing I remember about the nurse was her blonde hair that was just above shoulder length. I only really had one interaction with her, when she was teaching me how to give kids breathing treatments with a nebulizer. I only found out about the unsolved murder of her and her husband last night. I had no idea. I want to clarify that I did submit an anonymous tip with details about the tension among staff members in the early 2000’s. I just really hope that my anonymous tip doesn’t make anyone think that I’m accusing anyone. I cannot prove my suspicions, I can only hope that they believe what I tell them and look into it if they can. I do not believe they suspected her workplace, because their obituary stated to donate to the shelter where we worked. After I find out what they are going to do with my anonymous tip, if anything, I’ll talk more about her and her husband in detail. The murder is unsolved to this day, and there is evidence that several individuals were involved. They also think the couple knew the perpetrators.  

Even though the episode and finding out that she was murdered gave me some anxiety, I forced myself to relax and try to sleep.  Then, I started experiencing sleep paralysis for the first time in my life.  It was very scary.  

I was in the state that you’re in just as you start to drift to sleep- I wasn’t asleep yet. I couldn’t move at all but was aware of my surroundings and had a hallucination of a young blonde female putting her hand over my mouth. This video explains the medical reasons behind sleep paralysis, and anxiety and PTSD are underlying conditions. I’ve never experienced this in my life, nor have I ever hallucinated. I was finally able to get up and walk to my own bedroom and shake Kevin up enough to move over so I could get in bed. I’m afraid this means I have to see a psychiatrist. I really dislike psychiatrists. I know I probably need to tell my therapist, which is ironic, because she was just literally saying to stay away from true crime. She does know about the trauma and vicarious trauma I endured at that job almost 25 years ago though. 

Writing Woes

 Writing was going well until this week. I have completely fallen off the bandwagon of having a daily goal and have lost all inspiration. So here’s some more pics. 

Once we had to do inventory at a garden nursery. This was the store cat. She looked like a black cat and a brown cat traded heads. 

Let it in!  

Me and Anna walking on the beach while “baby wearing” 

Halloween, 2007

Photo Faves

I took this picture at HEB of the pumpkin patch.  I love this hippo, and I love when hippos munch on whole pumpkins  

Why is my cat sitting like this?

I can just hear these kids, “Got any games?” 

AI Jesus tells you to shut up. 

Me dressed as a hot fudge sundae while working at the children’s museum, Halloween,

2011

Me and Anna with dollar store orange hair Halloween, 2013

Halloween, 2010

Alex wants

To join my therapist appointment. 

 

Old Nancy Grace Episode

 Today, I was reminded of the case of Charles Bothuel. He went on Nancy Grace to talk about his missing son (who he was actually abusing) when Nancy Grace got breaking news, This Just In, that the kid was found in his basement. The interview was awesome. Did you check your basement, lol. 

My ex boyfriend and I watched this clip years ago and remember what a dumbass the dad looked like. Plus, as soon as he heard that his son who was missing several days was alive, he said “Oh Shit”  

Another Pic

 Another restored photo. My six aunties in 1938. Not sure I like this one as much. Maybe someone else will comment. They tend to like to comment on old pictures of your ancestors 

I also requested some of my mother in law’s cat Buck with a restored ear. They really went overboard on his ear tip. There's the before and after. They even gave him a

Fireplace. 

Doctor’s Appointment October 2

 I took October 2 off for two appointments- fasting bloodwork in the morning at my PCP, and a mammogram in the afternoon. I was completely out of refills on metformin and atorvastatin. 

My PCP is a chain of clinics. The last time I went in Houston, a medical assistant and a nurse practitioner both gave me absolute hell about the fact that a psychiatrist gave me gabapentin for anxiety four years ago. They made it very clear that they were against that. So this time, I just called the appointment line and requested to go to another location. My appointment on 10/2 was at the Magnolia clinic, which I’d never been to. I made it very clear that I was there for metformin and atorvastatin, I was fasting, and knew they would want bloodwork. Everything went well, and they were very pleasant. Gabapentin wasn’t brought up other than to ask if I still take it. I simply replied, “Sometimes, but I’m really just here for metformin and atorvastatin refills.”  Because that was the truth. With so many people becoming anti gabapentin in 2025, I only take it sometimes in order to save it for when my anxiety is really bad. And I really was only there for the other two. Nothing was said after that about gabapentin at my appointment. Everyone was pleasant, I checked out, and went for breakfast. 

Fast forward to Sunday the 5th- three days later. My phone rang at 2:00 pm, and it was a woman from the PCP clinic chain. She said she was calling about gabapentin, and proceeded to accost me about how it’s a controlled substance, off label for anxiety, and this that and the next thing. I was completely caught off guard. By this point, they had already called in the metformin and atorvastatin, and I was able to already have picked up 90 day supplies of each.  I had to cut this woman off from talking in order to get a word in edgewise, and reiterated that I did not ask for gabapentin at my 10/2 appointment, and didn’t appreciate her calling me on a Sunday. She combative argued that they do call people on Sunday, and I mean the whole thing was just out of line. I eventually decided to hang up on her, because all things said and done, I did already have the refills I needed. I got very shaken up after that phone call, though. It was extremely unnecessary, especially since I was actively trying to avoid the topic of gabapentin. I decided that I am going to have to start over with a new PCP, and just not ever tell them that I was ever on gabapentin. 

It’s extremely difficult to find a new PCP, because when I call my insurance and ask for other doctors, they give me doctors that are unavailable for any number of reasons. I can only achieve this by changing plans after open enrollment. Luckily, I have enough metformin and atorvastatin to last me through open enrollment. 

Yesterday while working, I thought to myself- I never got my bloodwork results. They were so worried about the gabapentin, that I never got what I actually went in for. The last time I had my A1C checked, it was 5.8. Some sources call 5.8 the lowest number to be considered pre diabetic, and some sources say 5.7 is the lowest end of pre diabetic. I’ve been working hard at my eating habits- there have been cheat days here and there, but I would say I’ve made huge improvements to how I eat. So I finished my section, stepped outside, and called the PCP main number. I asked for my results, and a man on the other line said, “Well I have them right here in front of me but I can’t give them to you.”  I said, “Can I speak to someone who can?”  He was like, “The doctor has to read them and then they’ll call you back.”  I begrudgingly accepted that answer, but then called back again in about an hour. I explained firmly that I really needed to know my A1C, because I’ve been working hard at my eating habits. The person I was talking to this time transferred me to a nurse who told me, “Your A1C last time was 5.8, and this time it was 5.6.”  

I said, “Good! Thank you!” And hung up. At this point, I am thinking of just blocking them. The guy I talked to first who couldn’t give me the results sounded like he actually could, especially since I called an hour later, talked to someone else, and got them.  I really, really needed to not tell anyone anymore that I was ever given gabapentin for anxiety. It’s not just this one clinic entity that has given me a hard time. Pharmacies have a huge problem with gabapentin all of a sudden, and I have tried three new psychiatrists who have all been very hostile when I mention I was given this four years ago for anxiety. 

I would be willing to try other things if they didn’t give me a side effect called Akathisia. They say Akathisia is caused by antipsychotic medication, but SSRI’s can cause it too. I have experienced Akathisia even on low doses of SSRI medications and Buspar. I have experienced it on all the medications that a psychiatrist would “try” me on if I went to one as a new patient. Akathisia isnactially worse than anxiety. I spent about five years blaming myself for it until the elderly female psychiatrist I saw in about 2021 that said “How about gabapentin?”  She was a godsend- or was she?  It's because of her that I've gotten the terrible treatment that I've gotten, but if I didn't have gabapentin in 2021-2024, I'm not sure I could have achieved what I have. 

I have grown to hate mental health “advocates” who are like, “You deserve to be heard!” or, “You just gotta try different medication until you find what works!”  My least favorite statement/sentiment is, “Going to the doctor for anxiety or depression is JUST like going to the doctor for a broken bone or diabetes!”  My story over the past few years absolutely proves that it isn't. If I could show what medication works for me via bloodwork or imaging, then I would in a heartbeat. But I can only talk about it.  If my story matched with their agenda, if I said, “Yeah escitalopram works wonders, in fact I can't live without it!” then they'd go “wow proof we do amazing things!” but since I'm saying gabapentin works, all of a sudden patient testimony isn't really diagnostic criteria anymore. I can see through the BS now. 

On a much better note, I guess I am no longer pre diabetic. Proof that changing your habits works!  I'm really proud of myself. Hopefully in January, I can see a new PCP, never mention gabapentin, and achieve an A1C of less than 5.6 maybe I can even stop taking metformin. 

Beautiful Photo Edits

I am loving the group “free photo edits” on facebook. I submitted this picture of my grandmother and great grandmother. My grandmother was born in December of 1905 and was 15 when she lost her mom. So this photo was taken in 1920 or earlier. Here’s the original:

Here are the edits. They’re beautiful!  I love these so much. I shared it on my facebook page, but chose my settings to hide the post from one of my cousins who has an insanely irrational fear of AI. (He’s on my dad’s side anyway, so this isn’t his ancestors). I’m also going to text them later to two cousins on my mom’s side that don’t have Facebook. 

 

Unexpected Sunday

 First things first- the wife of one of my cousins gave birth to their second child. It’s a boy, and there’s no need to give the baby’s full name, but trust me when I say, the initials are very unfortunate. They are ASS. The baby’s initials are ASS. My mother is already referring to him as “baby ass” and he’s not even a week old yet. And honestly, I’ll get to what happened yesterday. I’ll just let the news of baby ass sit with yall my readers. No one is mentioning it to the proud new parents, because no one is sure if they did this on purpose or if they genuinely didn’t think of what his initials would be. As for me, I always considered initials, even for hypothetical babies I never had. 

Eggplant Bacon 🥓

I heard of this a long time ago- vegetarians and vegans making “bacon” by slicing eggplant really thin, brushing it with liquid smoke and Worcestershire sauce, and baking it at 250 for 40 minutes. I did this, and we made ELT’s. It didn’t taste like bacon. It tasted like smoked eggplant, because that’s what it was. It was actually really good if you don’t expect it to really be like real bacon. 

 

Tidbits

October is my favorite month!  Don't  you know, just as October started, we started getting temperatures in the 60s in the mornings. Texas goes through fall phases where it's nice in the morning and then 90 in the afternoon. I'll take it, though. 

I joined a Facebook group called “Free photo edits”.  I gave them this selfie of me

And asked them to fix my eyebrows and the cat’s face on my t-shirt. 

Only one person responded, and he gave me this. It's very AI-looking and doesn't look anything like me, but I said thanks anyway. I have an old pic of my grandmother and great-great-grandmother back when my grandmother was about 14. It's the only picture I have of my great-grandmother. I have to find it, though!

Two years ago, I got this AI pic of myself on tiktok and like it a lot better. I look like some kind of supernatural PI who's solving all the mysteries. 

Ordering: I ordered two Scrub daddy bundles one for us and one for a Christmas gift. I am trying to pre-order a book called Holy Disruptor by Amy Duggar King

I'm going to read it. Do you remember the old reality show 19 Kids and Counting, about a couple who had 19 biological children with the same mother and father? Amy is their first cousin. She's also an only child. I follow her on social media. I joined a live stream of hers one time and idk, for some reason I commented “Im writing a book called The Child Advocate”.  There were a lot of comments going by in the live stream, but Amy read mine out loud. She responded to me saying, “Oh that's wonderful!  I love it!  You definitely should do it!” It made me feel good. I have to buy her book now. 

 I just can't find a pre-order link, and it comes out on the 14th. I love the picture of her on the cover. I feel like all she needs in that picture is a feather boa.

I also ordered this Lizard flash drive.  It will go in my bottom drawer, and my immediate family (Anna and Kevin) are aware that it’s there with my book just in case I die. I don’t want to die!  Yet!  But, it will be there. 

This weekend, we are off, and we have plans. I’m making vegetarian bacon out of eggplant, soy sauce, Worcester sauce, liquid smoke, and maple syrup. After that we will have ELT sandwiches. I’m also going to my mom’s house to clean and do shopping for her. 

inspirational

I could have written this about 2014-2024. 

 

Writing Update

 I have been keeping my goal of writing 30 minutes a day. Each day, I think of a new topic in my book to explore during that time.  

The main document on my laptop, The Child Advocate, which I haven't worked on in months, has a word count of 21,713. This morning, I copied and pasted the entire thing into Grammarly, and it gave me over 2,000 improvements. It must have decreased the word count quite a bit, but I didn't count it until I copied and pasted my past week of writing into the main document. 

After editing the old 21,713-word document and adding a week’s worth of 30-minute increments, my total word count is now 25,464. 

However, the book is a mess. It's all out of order. It's going to be fixed a gazillion more times. 

Writing Made Official

 I got paid on Saturday. I sent Anna some money, paid my insurance premiums, brought my student loan balance down to $15,990 (which in no way allows for a celebration of getting it under $16K because of the compounding interest) and purchased a one year membership on Grammarly Pro. 

I set the goal to work on my book for 30 minutes a day. In fact, I became pretty convicted about forcing myself to do it. Checking into motels for a few days and doing nothing except my writing was a lot easier when I was single and working while traveling around nine states. It isn’t going to happen any time soon, though. So I just have to make time like a regular person. 

I want to make it clear that I’m not using Grammarly to write blog posts here. If I pick up again on either my child advocate blog or missing person blog, then I would. But here is just a place for me to vomit thoughts. I blog from my phone, and Grammarly is on my laptop. 

I’ve made it my job to do 30 minutes a day of my book. I’m using techniques I learned in some memoir writing books. It has to happen for me, even if we are working out of town long days. I’ve been successful at it all weekend, too. 

Mitchell vs. Thread

I’ve never succeeded at uploading a video on blogger. So I’m trying it on safari instead of chrome to see if that works. 

Yesterday Mitchell knocked the spool of thread off of my sewing machine while I was napping. Kevin came home to him playing with it, and shot this adorable video. 

Alex did this when he was a baby while I was at work and my daughter was at school. It was a much bigger mess back then when he did it!  The thread was wound around furniture legs and everything. Anna was in first grade at the time and helped me cut it all away with her kiddie blunt edge scissors. 

 

Movie

 We watched a movie last night. It was the 2006 movie about Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst.  

Spoiler alerts aren’t necessary- we all knew she was be-headed. The ending doesn’t show this, however, it only shows her and her husband in a carriage escaping France. 

I know I learned about Marie Antoinette and her husband in school, and their role in the American revolution, but of course I was ADHD as hell and never paid attention. 

Later on, I watched a documentary. The revolutionaries who overthrew their monarchy also kidnapped their little boy in fear that he would grow up and re-establish the monarchy. They imprisoned and abused him, and he died of torture and abuse at age 10.

I doubt they mentioned that part when I was a kid in history class. It’s easy to say, “They never taught us this in school!” when you never paid attention and just got passed through by the system. Nowadays I just “wonder” if it was taught, instead of assuming. I do remember being about ten years old myself, seeing a picture of Marie Antoinette in a textbook and thinking “jeez” when I saw her hair. Kirsten Dunst was perfect for the part. 

My New Avatar

 

I changed my profile picture from my wedding picture (which was taken 6 months ago tomorrow) to the phoenix rising. This is because things are looking up for me. With my 6 month anniversary being tomorrow, I feel like no longer a newlywed. 

Some good things have happened. First of all, I finally figured out Grammarly!  I love it so much that I used it to work a little more on my book. 

Secondly, I found an app that REALLLLYYYY helps one know what to eat/not eat with NAFLD or non alcoholic fatty liver disease. My gastroenterologist called my case “promising” and said my stage was “zero” then corrected himself to say “Well, between zero and one.”  Obviously, a total stage zero would mean I don’t have the condition at all. Stage four would be cirrhosis.  I believe that I can change my diet and reverse this. The app I found is called “Food as Med for fatty liver”, cost $3.99, and looks like this:

There were some surprises for sure!  I went to the store and stocked up on the most “helpful” foods and some “ok/neutral” ones. 

I left the facebook group called “quit sugar”. The information was all over the place with that group, and it was full of people who “can’t” for whatever reason. I stepped on the scale last week and had gained four pounds. I attributed it to that group so I just left. The last time I stuck religiously to an eating plan specifically for NAFLD, I dropped weight quickly and then plateaued once I was not so strict anymore. 

Yesterday afternoon, I also went to the gynecologist because I have some things that I am not so sure are related to perimenopause.  There’s not only a lot of misinformation about sugar on the internet, there’s a lot of misinformation about perimenopause as well. I just wanted to get it sorted out. My gynecologist is a man, and he’s a very good doctor- probably because no one wants to see a male gynecologist, so he tries harder. When he walked into the room, I realized he’s extremely tall. I didn’t notice that about him last time which was April. He decided to give me a progesterone patch to help with menopausal symptoms. Honestly it sounds just like birth control, and I wonder if I’m just being made to go on birth control because I don’t really use any due to my and my husband’s ages. My weight at the doctor yesterday was 190.1. That was so frustrating!  Of course I was dressed, but if I wasn’t, then I would have been below 190. He also scheduled me for a mammogram on 10/2. 

With fall approaching, it will be easier to go for walks in the park with my husband who goes daily. I literally can’t go in the summer. My step counts daily are between 2000-6000.  Hopefully if we get a cool front that sticks, I can get to 10,000. Maybe on January1, 2027, I will weigh 145 🫶🏼

Tiring Sunday

Today I went to San Marcos to spend some time with Anna. I started the day extremely early in the morning so I could do side jobs in San Antonio. I left at 3:00 am just so I could get to San Antonio as stores were opening at 6:00. As I walked into the first store (the jobs I worked on were to capture pictures of HBC endcap), there was an Asian woman following me in the dark parking lot. She  stayed about 5-6 feet behind me. She had her phone out but didn’t have earbuds and was listening to something that was very obviously from North Korea (the communist part). A couple years ago, I got hooked on YouTube documentaries about North Korea, and I learned that when they talk, they speak extremely dramatically and fake. South Koreans speak the same language but have a wider vocabulary and a normal tone. This definitely sounded like something from North Korea. I actively tried to avoid her twice, both times giving her dirty looks. She kept following me. Finally I went into the family restroom, and when I came out she was gone. I didn’t see her in the store anymore. This was in San Antonio, so it was weird. I don’t understand Korean, but the way North Koreans talk made an impression on me that I never forgot, and this was definitely it. 

I did five side jobs before Anna texted me to pick her up and by that point I was only 30 minutes from Texas state. We went to lunch, and I took her shopping and on other errands. She really likes it there but is homesick!  I miss having a little kid, but I’m proud of who she’s become. One thing that’s getting to her is that she wants to work. I got paid yesterday and sent her some more money on PayPal. I brought my own student loan balance to $16,100. Plus I shopped, paid the phone and car insurance, and I have to get my registration sticker. 

Vivid Dream

 I have been having vivid dreams lately. The one last night felt like a premonition of sorts. In the dream, my husband Kevin was deceased and so was my cat Alex. I was living in this house by myself with his cat Mitchell, who at this point is a very old cat. Then in the dream, my daughter who is now 18 years old, walks in the door holding large boxes. She is in her 30’s in the dream and I think that the boxes mean she’s moving in with me. She puts one on the table and says, “Look, Mom, I got all of these from your garden. Look how prolific it is this year!”  She started pulling out every kind of vegetable there is. I don’t know whether to be happy about my garden or disappointed that she’s not moving in. Then she tries to pick up Mitchell, but he hisses at her. She starts crying and telling me that I need to euthanize Mitchell and I get really upset saying he’s all I have left of Kevin. Anna said, “That’s not true, you have this house.”  So I agreed through tears and we both put Mitchell in the carrier for his final ride to the vet. 

I woke up with a sore throat and phlegm. I must have been sleeping with my mouth open. Kevin wasn’t in the bed and he wasn’t at the table. He was asleep in Anna’s room (she lives in the dorms at Texas state). I woke him up and he said I was sprawled diagonally across the bed so he couldn’t get in it. I wonder why I slept so rough last night.