A real life BARN MOM

Just wanted to check in quickly to update....well, the blog, since I am positive there is nobody but myself here.

I am getting a tiny farm.

Yep. My childhood dream of owning a farm is FINALLY COMING TO FRUITION. I am moving to an acre and a quarter and we will be moving our off-track thoroughbred, who is currently being boarded at my daughter's horseback riding trainer's house, to our own property. I am so. FREAKING. EXCITED. We will need to get him a buddy, since he doesn't like to be alone, which means I get to shop for ponies!!! 

Childhood dream coming true. For reals.

The house will need major updating inside but I adore the neighborhood and I am planning all kinds of crazy things, like chickens and dock diving practice pools for Sophie and a miniature donkey to scare away coyotes, and also so I can stand on the back porch and yell DONKHEH in a Shrek voice.

YAY!

My Golden Girl

Discuss why you do or don't consider pets to be family members.

What do you mean pets aren't family members to some people?! That's crazy talk.

I kiss my dog goodbye when I go to work.  I own at least four pet Halloween costumes, and since my husband has moved out, my dog sleeps on his old side of the bed (which my allergies are not thrilled about). My dog's is the first face I see in the morning, the last I see before bed. I love it this way.

My dog....she's my baby.

I know, I have a human baby. Of course I love my daughter more than the dog. Most of the time. Kidding! Mostly.

Sophie was an impulse purchase, as most of my pets have been. I've had dogs over the years, usually rescues, and I've loved them all. But Sophie came to me in a time of my life when the universe knew I needed some sort of permanent sunshine in my home. I had just had my third failed IVF attempt. You've heard IVF is horrible, and my four cycles were no exception. Each time we do it I have to spend thousands of dollars on hormones that make my ovaries expand to the size of grapefruits, then we have to go in surgically and remove all eggs, and then any eggs that are mature and of good quality each get a single sperm injected into them in a lab. The eggs then have to fertilize correctly, and divide nicely before they can be put back into me. My ovaries are horrible traitors, and my eggs are brats, and while it was easy for me to conceive naturally with my first daughter during my first marriage, my ovaries don't like to do things the non-traditional way. So the docs start out with what they think are high doses of injectable hormones, and end up maxing me out completely just to get up to 9 eggs (that was my highest number ever during one retrieval). Most people get 20-40 eggs from each retrieval, so they can get them fertilized and then transfer a few into their uterus and freeze the rest. Not me. Each time I've had 2-4 embryos to put back on transfer day, and their quality is always poor. There is no reason for this. My hormone levels are picture perfect, and I have a perfect uterus setup. I think it has something to do with an autoimmune disorder I have been diagnosed with but I digress.....the point here is that every time we try another round of IVF we have to start. All. Over. Again. From. Scratch. And I always end up with ovarian hyperstimulation, and tons of pain and vomiting and ascites, and more time off work, and lots of time in bed thinking about how stressed out and sad I am. It's a complete nightmare. After the third attempt (and with a new doc) I did end up getting pregnant very briefly - I was over the moon when I had very faint positive double lines on the pregnancy tests.....but by the time we went to have blood levels drawn it seems I lost it. 

So devastating. Especially for someone who dreams of having a litter of kids to gather around the Christmas tree every year. 

So after this third attempt, I was down. I work in the NICU, you see, and get to witness all kinds of people having kids. People who get pregnant by their mom's boyfriend, by their drug dealer.....wonderful stories of the scum of the earth easily procreating. I get to attend deliveries where mom is brought in by ambulance, and is high on God knows what kind of drugs, and she delivers her baby and screams "Get the FUCKING KID OUT OF HERE! GET IT AWAY FROM ME!" Being a NICU nurse is so incredibly heart wrenching when you just want one more little one of your own, with your green eyes and your short feet. A sibling for your daughter. A son or daughter for your husband. 

Nope. Not for me.

I was leaving for work one morning, crossing the bridge back to the parking garage after another particularly difficult night at the hospital. I don't remember the details of why it sucked, but I was just so sad walking to my car, being a responsible college graduate with my face glued to my phone's screen and flipping through my Facebook news feed as I walked. And then I saw the post. A local breeder of golden retriever puppies had had a litter a few months back and all the babies were spoken for, but one had suddenly come available. I immediately called the hubs, skirted around the issue of getting the dog but mentioned that this adorable ball of fluff was available, and he immediately sighed and said, "Go ahead, put in an application". 

There were a bunch of applications for her, but we were chosen. 

And I'm not religious, but it was fate. 

When I brought Sophie home as a fat yellow ball of down with a little swish tail (she is now four years old) I quickly discovered that this is the dog that I had a complete and total attachment to, and she to me. I call her my heart dog, because you know that feeling you get, parents, when you're watching your kid sleep and they are just so perfect, and your heart swells in your chest and it feels like you might vomit from so much love? I feel that for Sophie. Of course, I feel that way about my own kid, too, but as she is currently 17 years old....the opportunities for watching her sleep without her waking up and glaring at me and declaring that I am creeping her out are few and far between. 

This dog, you guys. Seriously. I wish everyone could meet her and look into her liquid brown eyes. You would see what a perfect soul looks like. She knows exactly when to be silly, and when to be serious, and how to jam her big furry snout under my arm for hugs when she knows I need them. She completely loses. her. shit. when I get home from work, her heavy, blonde, fuzzy ears flopping up and down, half howling, jowls flapping, swishy tail flying in all directions as she dances, unable to physically contain all that joy of getting me back with her, where I belong. This dog is the best, guys. She is hilarious and naughty and sweet and an angel. I've often thought how weird it is that there is this other species of mammal that we move into our homes, and live next to, and we are both just so thrilled about the arrangement we become a family unit, these two different species. It's weird! But a good weird.

I love her so much that I just had to get up, in the middle of writing this, and go find her and give her big ol' confused face a hug. (She was sleeping on her side, drooling on the tile in the walk-in pantry, making sure nobody comes by and opens up the bag of dog treats without her knowledge. See? A great guard dog too! All my dog treats are safe with this girl around!)

So yeah, my dog is family. I will continue to buy special pool filters because my hairy ass dog is the only one in the family that swims in the $50,000 in-ground pool with a spa. I will continue to tuck her into bed with me at night, and fill up her stocking from Santa and wrap presents and put them under the Christmas tree every year for her. I will continue to tell her that I love her and I won't be gone long and I will miss her SO MUCH when I leave just to go to the grocery store.

Because this particular dog....she is definitely family.

Well Gird Your Loins

Ok, so I initially started out thinking that I would do all of these writing prompts in order of how they are suggested.....but number three is asking whether I have the same religious beliefs as I did as a child....and if so, why not? 

Jesus take the wheel. 

I'm ex-Mormon. It's messy, it's complicated, and no, it's not because I couldn't obey the rules or because I really love the taste of Jim Beam. I never had premarital sex and I have never done drugs. I was one of your "good" ones. Really. I was. Grew up in the LDS church. Primary class president, beehive class president, mia maid class president, laurel class president. Never missed a day of mutual. Went to church dutifully every week, played the piano like a nice Mormon girl does. Married in the temple to my first husband. High school seminary council member. Stake missionary. Bishop's perfect little daughter. Taught primary after I was married.   

So much life wasted.  

It's a sham, people. Seriously. Put down, on the ground, all that everyone else has ever told you about that religion - go ahead, try it, it's terrifying, I know, but it's also liberating -  and try to look at the whole thing, with all the REAL history that is documented (not the one you are fed), and be open-minded. Please. Put down the fear. If you were allowed to just listen to yourself, and not some OTHER PERSON who magically has been given a gift of discernment for how God wants YOU to live YOUR life, what would you find? Why do you need someone else to give that to you? Are you not good enough? Does this God person not love you, or trust you, or think you equal to a man, or another person who is somehow magically blessed by an invisible being and has all the answers? You don't have to take their word, you know. You don't. Please investigate it, on your own. It's not the beautiful, simple thing you were fed. Look into the history of Joseph Smith and his arrests. Look into the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, and what happened when professionals really did translate those scrolls that Joseph claimed were the Book of Abraham. (Spoiler alert, they were plain old Egyptian funeral writings.) Look into the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Look up marriage records of Joseph Smith. Investigate his use of seer stones, and buried treasure seeking, and his family's tendency toward swindling people. There are court documents to back these things up. Seriously. The temple ceremony was copied from the Freemasons. Look up Duncan's Ritual of Freemasonry. Joseph Smith wanted to be a Freemason, man. Oh there is just so much to refute it all and it's just.....sad. Sad that so many nice, kind-hearted people do things in the name of that religion. Nice people! Do those things in the name of YOU! Because you don't need a religion to make you a nice person! You don't! 

Those niggling questions in the back of your mind? Yeah. Those are not "the devil" speaking to you. It's common sense and your own internal warning system. Even if it's scary to go against everything you've ever been taught about the universe, and people, and families......and you might lose family and friends over it.......because they are taught to shun the non-believer..... 

It.  Is.  A.  Sham.

It took me long painful years to come to grips with it, so it will take me long painful years to convey to you just how well I understand the Mormon church to be a giant fake that destroys families. Including mine. So yeah, if I come across as irritated, it's because I am. Because I am still feeling the effects of the shunning by my family because their religion says that I am a sinner, even if I save babies for a living. Even if I end up single-handedly saving the world from World War III and curing cancer....I am still going to be an outcast in their eyes, and influenced by Satan. Because I exercised my "free agency", as they so often tout they let people do. Unless your free agency takes you away from them. Then let the shunning begin. For a religion that claims such martyrdom because they are different they sure do know how to roast and burn people who end up choosing different from them.

And please please please don't think I hate Mormons. I love Mormons. Sooooo many of them. I don't love their religion. My mom is still Mormon....and one of my best friends. We just don't discuss religion, and that's ok. I don't want to hurt her by saying all of these things to her face (because Mormons will generally take these facts as a personal attack, when it isn't! It's facts! Against a religion! That is not YOU!), but boy how much nicer it would be to have a mom who didn't have people telling her that her ex-Mormon daughter (who, incidentally, took her into her own home when her other perfect LDS daughter treated her like crap after their father died) is going to burn in hell. It would be nice if other people didn't get to scare my mom like that.   

So ANYWAY now that I got that off my double D's.....

What was the prompt for this one?

I guess I ended up answering the original prompt, after all. Whoops. 

Qualities, if that's what you wanna call them

Write about what you see as one of your best qualities.

Hoo boy. Here’s where I either sound like a conceited twit or a stereotypical white woman. How do I view myself internally, in the way of qualities? I mean, I have a few…qualities. I picked up a bit of my dad’s temper (I fortunately left the abusive/violent part behind). I am soft-hearted when it comes to those in need, animals and creatures, or children. (I have been known to try to save random doggos running in the middle of busy roads, go buy fast food for homeless people, take home strays, and stop for car accidents.) I am insecure at times, depending on the type of people I am around. Cheerleader types, and shallow people – I just feel like all of my flaws are on display to them for some reason, and that they can’t see my weird qualities as endearing but as just truly weird, and then I end up acting awkward and socially stumbly. I am an empath; sometimes to my downfall but usually in a positive way. I think my best quality is that I can accept people at face value, as long as they are real. It doesn’t matter if they are homeless, or a drug addict, or different than me. I can find something I like about them, even if I don’t want to, and I truly do not judge (unless they are abusing a child or an animal, then all bets are off).

I actually long to connect with those who feel different because I often feel like I don’t quite fit in anywhere. Which is weird, since I am a middle-class, average-looking white woman who holds a steady job and really is quite privileged. I would truly, literally, give someone the shoes off my feet if it meant making them happy, even if it’s a stranger. So maybe that is my best quality? That I am giving? Perhaps the umbrella to these various qualities is that I truly care about people, deep down, despite my tendency to bellow colorful obscenities at strangers on the freeway. 

****You know what's awesome about this writing thing, in this bloggy place? It's not getting turned in to anyone for grading - which is good, since this assignment may have missed the mark. F+. I gave myself a plus because I was succinct and to the point in my tangent, at least.

Stopping the cycle

I am attempting to write more often, to open up my creative side....with the goal of eventually doing some professional writing. I would like to take a creative writing class, but as I am currently working two jobs and going to grad school I am a little short on time for that.

In the meantime I have borrowed a list of writing prompts from Bryn Donovan's blog at

http://www.bryndonovan.com/2016/07/05/100-prompts-for-writing-about-yourself/

......and tonight will start with the first.

Describe one of your earliest childhood memories

Well this is one that I am not sure I should start with, mostly because it's honestly not a very nice one.

My dad passed away very suddenly last year, and while I will always love him because he is my father, I will always have the results of his hair-trigger temper as my earliest memory.

We were in our small kitchen of our 1970's-era middle-class brick home - just my mom, my dad, and me. There were five kids in the family at the time but I don't know where the remaining four were at. I remember there being an abundance of brown and orange and cream colors, a linoleum floor with a brown and/or orange flowery pattern on it. Dark-colored cabinets surrounded me on three sides of that room, with an opening to a small hallway leading to a family room on the fourth side. I was probably around three or four years old at the time and was quite tiny so it seemed like the cabinets were high above me. It must have been late evening, with only bright, yellowish, fluorescent lighting brightening the kitchen. I remember standing in the middle of the small area, a few feet away from my father, fascinated by the showers of Cheerios that were raining down from the ceiling as my father screamed at my frightened, crying mother. He violently threw what seemed like multiple cereal boxes into the light panels above our heads with each angry outburst. The odd thing is I don't recall being scared, and I don't recall why he was angry. I was just fixated on the cereal pieces skittering and rolling around and gathering into small clusters. I still wonder, today, if this was because I didn't think my dad would really hurt me or if I was so used to his temper, even at this young age, that I didn't think it out of the ordinary for him to behave in this manner. I remember him demanding that my mom clean up the mess right before he stormed out of the room, and then the memory fades. I maybe remember little parts of helping my mom pick up all of the Cheerios, but because I've replayed this in my mind a few times it's hard to remember whether this part is something I imagined or really happened.

Now that my dad is gone I regret so much of our relationship, but I am also vividly aware that most of the issues in our relationship stemmed from his inability to deal with certain situations in a productive, adult manner. He preferred to use bullying and threats to accomplish what were usually very selfish actions, even though he is known in the community and his church for his service. He once told me that he would "do anything to preserve my reputation and my name", when some dirty secrets about our family escaped the confines of the family secret vault.

I wish that we could have been closer, but wishing doesn't change anything about our tenuous relationship and his denial, until very recently, that he was abusive to his children. Even though he told me that he regretted some of the things that he did as a parent, he never openly apologized for being specifically abusive, or accusing me of lying about a certain amount of abuse, even though he finally admitted to its occurrence a few years ago. I don't say this to bad mouth my father, because I know that in his later years he really was kind to my mother and became a much gentler person, and he really did have many good qualities. But these are truths that can not be erased from history or from my memory. I guess that's the lesson here. We can try to make up for our wrongs but certain actions will do permanent damage that can not be completely erased, no matter how much time has passed or how much good you do afterward. This becomes a strong message to try to make sure your children always know you will have their back, no matter what kind of mistakes you might make. Make sure your kids know that they come first - before your peers and friends, before your imagined reputation, and before the leaders of your church. Even when they are grown and have children of their own. Adult children still want their parents' love, especially when the earlier years were just so....muddy. Make sure they know that their well-being is your number one concern, and that is it how they want their own well-being to be - not how you want their well-being to be - that should be the reason you live. I am trying, every day, to make sure that my older teen knows that I love her unconditionally, despite what demons she grapples with, what she does with herself, whom she loves, or what church she attends. No matter what, I will always have her back. Even if they are not the same decisions I would make for her, I will always support her own decisions. And even though I am sure I have made some big parenting mistakes myself I hope that our bond is an improvement over the one I had with my father. Most importantly, I hope her first memory of her childhood is a happy one instead of a sad one.