Ann

I have a sister.

It's true I do. For years no one would have known it necessarily because I didn't talk about her much. There is six and a half years difference between us. We didn't run in the same circles growing up, so of course friends didn't overlap. We didn't talk much as adults. We lived and learned about each other through my mother. Isn't that a very odd way of doing things. It's the way my mother set it up.

This past Christmas we got a chance to talk and started to rebuild some bridges - still not understanding why they needed RE-building.

The reason for the need started to become clear near the end of January and early February. Our Mother had been the master puppeteer. She guided and directed and shared stories and items and tidbits that were designed to keep us apart. Stories that had a basis in reality but which were not true.

We've had to apologize to each other multiple times. We believed her! Why wouldn't you believe your mother. You are supposed to be able to believe your mother. I think we've gotten past that apologizing for not trusting that the other would know better, do better, act better -- but just past it. Now we've started to apologize for the hurt she's inflicted - the pain she's caused. The pain she can still cause.

Friendships

I didn't see the evidence of friendships growing up.

My Dad had no friends.

My Mom had friends, but as soon as a disagreement arose, they were gone. They were best friends and then they were no friends. I don't know how to describe the feeling of this, especially if they had a girl that was my friend.

Learning friendships as an adult has been terribly difficult. I've got them, but they've been few. They've been precious.

There is Rita. What would I have done without the Myers and Rita growing up. I can't imagine. How would I have made it through my teenaged years without having had the Myers's house as a refuge? Did they even know? I haven't talked to Rita in years, but I think of her so often. I need to try to find her.

There is Sharon. She was my first friend in Atlanta. Our children were best friends for years. We can pick up at the drop of a hat. It amazes me how God brought us together and keeps us bonded over the time periods that we miss.

There is Wendy. We talk daily. We talk about spiritual matters, educational matters, family matters. I can't think of anything that is out of bounds.

There are my friends at CBDS. Now this is amazing to me, because before I started working here, I counted my friends on one hand. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd ever have more than one or two friends at time. I'd never seen it modeled. I didn't think it could be done. I didn't know that a group of men and women could love and care for each other through Jesus Christ in friendship. Most especially, there are my precious, precious friends who have listened to my scarred past and hurts and have hugged me and cried with me and have loved me unconditionally.

Irony

September 7 I had a migraine that Imitrex didn't help, so I came home and went to bed. These migraines are exhausting. My face stays numb, my head continued to ache even when the migraine itself goes away.

So when Ron brought the mail in and said, you have a letter from your Mother, I asked him to read it - I just didn't have the strength myself.

I knew that eventually, the past would have to meet the present. I'd already been thinking about the things that would have to be addressed - a mental laundry list if you will, but the fact that I'd just written about letters and then one presented itself was almost too much to handle.


Then we get the letter. This one was scathing. She loved and trusted Daddy. Daddy had told her before he died to never trust Ron. She should not have let us move her out here. We moved her out here with dishonest intentions. Where did that come from? We did not move her out here. That was her decision. She would not even tell us when so that Ron could fly out and drive out with her like he offered. We do not come over enough, we do not do enough, we do not spend enough, we are not there enough. She is going to see a pastor at our church.

Is that last line a threat? It's hard to tell with the fantasy the letter is. Mother loved Daddy? She trusted him? Daddy didn't like or trust Ron? OH my goodness!

What would she like to see? Us not go on business trips? Ron not drive a company car? We tell her where we are going and why we are going and yet she still tells Ann that we never tell her anything or that it's been three weeks since we've seen her.

Then there's the part about us moving her out here. She announced to us that she wanted to move out to be near us so that she would be near someone in case she got sick again. She'd had pneumonia the winter before and was all alone and it scared her! I told several friends at work how uncomfortable I was with the idea.

This is typical of how she operates. Expectations that she has kept secret, but expects you to know. She dumps them on you ceremoniously and then expects life to go on as usual. Well it can't. How do you do that when she tells you that she doesn't trust the man you've adored for almost 30 years?

I'll go forward, but I won't be abused. That's one thing I've learned in 2007.

The messiest house in town

That would be our house. You really needed to see it to believe it. Mother always said it was Daddy's fault. Well eventually Daddy died and it was evident that it wasn't Daddy's fault.

We had stuff everywhere for as long as I can remember. It wasn't as bad when we were in El Paso, but there was still stuff. I remember a day when Mother entered my room and told me it was a pig sty. "What?" I thought. "How is my room different from everywhere else?" A that point I made a decision to be different - to be neat. I picked up every little thing angrily thinking that I would show her that should would never have to tell me to pick up anything again and she didn't.

In Houston, things were always messy. Ann made the comment recently that when company came, literally everything got shifted to Mother and Daddy's room. That was housekeeping. When they moved to Arkansas, things were so bad that you had to move stacks of things to have a place to sit or to eat at the table. When Daddy died, the floor was caked in dog hair.

Sometime near the end of last year, I asked a friend with experience in this field what that kind of housekeeping meant and she suggested undiagnosed depression. This could well be. Mother's been desperately unhappy for as long as I can remember. Daddy was a terrible disappointment. Most of her friends didn't live up to her expectations. Goodness knows Ann and I haven't, so it's entirely possible. Undiagnosed depression could explain some things.

Isolation

When I got in trouble, there was never a discussion. There was almost always a letter. I knew when I got home from school and there was a letter sitting on my bed that I'd done something that would let me know that had disappointed my again. It would tell me the infraction and the punishment which was usually some period of isolation in my room. We never talked about it.

I don't remember ever what I did. But I do remember the letters and how my heart sank with each one.

Preparing to Sell

I've been taking pictures of items to sell on eBay. I thought it would be hard. It's not been. I thought Ron might object -- even at first. He's not.

It's amazingly freeing to clean things up and package them in ways to sell - especially things associated with someone who has squeezed all the love out of your feelings and left them full of nothing but hurt and pain.

One thing this has brought back to haunt me though is one of the 13 characteristics that I suffer from dreadfully: Following a project through from beginning to end. I'm great at starting them. I'm full of plans, but it's hard to get past a certain point. I think it's fear.

I've got to do this though.

Cleaning House

I am literally cleaning house.

This is not just a mental exercise but a physical one as a well. Ron came home yesterday and said, "Oh my goodness." That surprised me because it's my phrase in this home.

Mother's given us lots of things over the years. Not new things, of course. Things that had been hers that she no longer wanted. Things that she had replaced with something new. I had them tucked away. I pulled them out. There were quite a few of them.

I started with an partial inventory, then I called Replacements.

Then I looked on Ebay.

Then I called Brenda. Again.

I think I'll stop by Barnes and Noble and get a book to take on the trip to this convention (another lavishly viewed trip, I'm sure) to read in the car. There were a good number of them on Amazon on how to sell things on Ebay. I bet I can find one at the book store that will teach me the ropes.

It's time to clean house.

Introvert or Extrovert

For years, I thought I was an introvert. Really! People who know me now are shocked to hear this. I was insecure. I was quiet. I did have bursts of occasional loudness, but they were few and far between. I was easily intimidated. On the Meyers-Briggs, I was a high I. I have the tests to prove it. I can pull them out for you.

The fact of the matter is that I'm not an introvert. I'm an extrovert and a fairly high one at that! Imagine what it took to squelch a social being, a communicator, the teacher who acts out columns, the one not afraid to go to the headmaster and say, "what?" into a wall flower, a child afraid to peep, with few friends.

When I say my memories began with Ron, I mean my very life began with Ron. He prodded me, he poked me, he pushed me. He made me realize that I am loved and I realized then that God probably really loved me too and that the commitment I'd made to Him years ago wasn't a sham like the life my family had always lived, but it could be real and sustaining like my life with Ron was. The two events are intertwined. Rededication and meeting Ron.

Slowly, this self-imposed shell fell away.

Affairs of the Heart

I don't know if affairs are really of the heart. What I do know is that they are heart-wrenching. My dad was what is fondly known as a philanderer. Where in the world did that term come from? Sounds dashing doesn't it? Well, it's not.

I didn't always know that my dad ran around on my mom. I knew their relationship was almost always strained. I thought that was how everyone's marriage was. It wasn't until I was 19 or 20 that I knew for sure . Daddy was a graduate assistant for Dale Carnegie courses and there was a woman in one of his courses, Ruth. She was older, divorced, attractive, and Daddy began spending a lot of time with her. He helped her do all the things a single woman needed help with. She had a cute little single sister and he helped her too. He confided in me. What a treat to find out that what you suspected was true. He loved her. He loved Mother, but he loved her. Wow.

Now the only parent to whom I could talk had put me in a position in which I could no longer talk with him. I was so disappointed. He needed someone, I knew he did. Mother was impossible, but this was not right and it wasn't right for him to tell me! What in the world was he thinking!

He had one other affair that I knew about for sure. This one was with a woman named Dixie. Dixie worked in the office with Daddy. She was not attractive or cute, but she was available. Daddy actually left Mother for Dixie and moved in with her. I was older now. Ann was the same age I'd been before. Amazing coincidence huh? AND you know what else? He told Ann about it! What makes a man want to tell his daughters about his affairs?

I had the boys and we were in Atlanta. Mother and Daddy had moved to Dallas and Daddy left Mother. Pretty despicable. Lower than I thought Daddy could stoop. Lower than even Mother deserved. She drove out to stay with us for a while and he cleaned out a couple of their checking accounts. I didn't think he had it in him. He was always the generous one. He was always the one to make sure everyone was taken care of.

They reconciled eventually. Did Daddy stop? I doubt it.

I remember when I first came to grips with the fact that my childhood wasn't normal thinking that the reason for this was that my dad was a philanderer. Now I know that this wasn't the entire reason. It took me a while to realize why I thought that. My entire adult life, and possibly long before, that's what I'd been told. It's not true, but it's what I'd been told. It is part of the truth but not the entire truth.

Birthdays and Christmases

As a kid, I remember one birthday. I'm not sure how old I was but we were in Houston. My Mother's mom had had a nervous breakdown. It was so memorable, that I don't remember whether my folks were in Texarkana or whether they were back home. I just remember that MaMa Beall had that nervous breakdown and they'd been gone.

I remember one childhood Christmas. We left Fort Worth to move to El Paso over the holidays. We had a little net tree in the car and I got a Dating Game. Daddy got strep throat and I remember them complaining because he went to a charity hospital and he had to wait and wait and wait. Finally he asked who he had to pay to see someone and he got to see someone really fast.

When I was in the 11th Grade right before Thanksgiving, my dad had a massive heart attack. I remember that Christmas because I didn't think I'd have another with him. He was home by Christmas though. I was grateful.

When I turned 18, we had a football game that night and my friends Rita and Annette and I went to the game and then out for dinner. I don't remember where we went afterwards! I do remember sitting in the stands and cheering. They got me a corsage with streamers. One of those big ones in the school colors with the school names on it. We went out to the parking lot arm in arm when it was over.

Faded Photographs

I have said for ages that my life started when I married Ron. I did not say it lightly. I did not say it in the biblical sense -- for a man shall leave his family and cleave to his wife. I really mean it. Essentially, my memories begin with Ron. My sister will mention an event and I look at her blankly. She gives surrounding details and I still don't remember.

Consider a photo album that has been through a flood. Pictures have been blurred and faded. You can pick out details if you look hard enough. You can remember the surrounding events if you spend enough time with each page. And occasionally a picture is remarkably, amazingly, astoundingly clear. The time-line is odd and disjointed. Dates come in and out in a jumbled fashion. You are young, you are old. It is yesterday, it is years ago.

My sister and I have been loosely estranged for years. The reasons will become clear as I write, I hope, I'm sure, they must. That's part of the purpose of this journey. Some things must be dealt with. Some things can't stay hidden. The question is, can the faded become clear?

Josh McDowell

Josh McDowell was at Calvary Baptist Day School today.

Pretty significant event and it took tons of work to make it happen. He spoke to the 8th grade up and didn't mince many words with them. In the evening, he spoke to the parents and minced even fewer words with them.

Long day, I'm pooped.

The Kitchen

The main living area seemed the place to start and the kitchen for some reason grabbed my attention first. So, I stripped the wallpaper, scraped off the popcorn ceiling (not for the feint of heart), primed, painted, and hung new blinds.

Here's what I started with. It didn't look bad, I'd just been looking at it for about eight years and it was starting to show some wear and tear. The trim was starting to discolor, the paper was peeling just a bit at the edges, and my tastes have changed!

The Before Pictures

The Inbetween Pictures

Middle of the road. Ceiling wasn't hard, but boy did it make a mess. It was a constant clean up so it wouldn't become such a big job (and I didn't want to track it into the rest of the house).

The After Pictures

I was very happy with the end results! I had a few moments when I wasn't sure how the color would really turn out, but I was really happy with overall look.

Skip Prosser

Skip Prosser died at age 56. And it hit close to home. I saw the man in person week in and week out in winter. I saw him on TV even more. I drove by Wake Forest on a nearly daily basis. I've taken classes on campus. I took kids to competitions there. I have friends who are graduates. He was four years younger than my husband. We have less than the six degrees of separation.

I could hardly wait until Ron got home to tell him dozens of things that night. I love him. He means the world to me. He's my partner, my encourager, OH how the list could go on and on. God's gift that I never expected. He knows those things, but I had to tell him because the fact of the matter is that like Nancy Prosser, tomorrow, Ron could go to work and I could get that phone call. Or it could be the other way around.

I don't want to take him for granted.

Another father charged in family tragedy

There is only one answer to this and that is Jesus - A real, saving-grace, knowledge of Him. I had to add that because apparently this father went to church.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...l=chi-news-hed

Tim Russert and Where?

from the evening newsI didn't see it. Another teacher told me about it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PWcjBDza0zI

This one has a little more surrounding verbage

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M0yQ83xeluI

(I'm not immune from this btw. I make my fair share of mistakes and frequently have to say, "please let me begin again.")

Another Kitchen Project

When we first moved into the townhouse, all the appliances were original. The stove was one of the first things that had to be replaced. The original was a single unit microwave/stove, and try as we might, we could not find a replacement for it. We had to buy a microwave and a stove. When the house was finished, they didn't connect the ceramic tile behind the stove. ACK! We had a space of drywall and no tile.

I went to the craft store and got supplies for a mosaic. It wasn't a difficult project. The supplies were

• thick glue
• broken pieces of tile
• grout

Then you just start arranging the pieces so they look good to you.

Corzine Deserves Seatbelt Summons

http://1010wins.com/pages/353364.php...ntentId=411065

I've seen several articles on this. Apparently the good governor just flat out refused to wear one.

He is Alive!

Ron and I went to Easter Service last night with many of the other regulars to make room for the not-so-regulars this morning So I was searching for Easter related items on the net this a.m. while waiting for the oven to heat.

I thought it was lovely - very different from the usual. My search was "He is Alive" http://www.theruined.com/Art/sketches/HeisAlive.htm

Praise God! He is Alive!

Wake Forest Basketball

Last year about did me in. YUCK. Last night was against North Carolina Central.

digital scrapbooking

I have been scanning pix from our history and when the kids were little (and when they were big -- but pre digital camera). I've made bunches of pages the old fashioned way, but as I've been thinking about passing the albums on, I was thinking that I could share more if the pages were digital.

I'm not sure I really like the process though.

Will Mark Foley Bring Down The Repulican Party

This is in today's issue of Newsweek.com .

Quote:

The secret world of Mark Foley—and the denial and bumbling of the House leaders
who possibly did not want to know too much about that world—is beginning to
emerge in bits and pieces of lurid detail. What actually happened—from the
moment that Hill staffers first became aware of Congressman Foley's unusual
interest in teenage congressional pages—is the source of intrigue,
finger-pointing, shock, fear and loathing on Capitol Hill and of endless
fascination around the country. No wonder: the political fortunes of the
Republican Party hang in the balance.

My question is:
Would the Dems have handled the situation differently?

Personally, I don't believe they would have. I think both parties are looking out only for their interests. I think most members of both parties will say or do anything to expedite their cause.

The rest of the article is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15178112/site/newsweek/

To the side of the article is a photo gallery of Washington's sex scandals. It's a mmmmmmm trip down scandal lane

Setting up blogs for all the teachers

I think I'm about ready to dumpt the teacher pages in lieu of setting of blogs for all the teachers.

mmmm monumental task I know (setting them up and training), but it's the only way I can think of for them to be able to enter current info themselves without me as a go between.

Calvary Media Center

I've been working on the Church Media Center web page. I can't say I'm crazy about this format. It's hard to maneuver through - too much going back and forth, but the end result is ok.

Posting the syllabi of the classes you take

On a board I frequent, a poster raised the question: Is sharing syllabi with other students ethical since the syllabus is the intellectual property of the professor?

The situation that led to the post is that students of one of the universities offering an online PhD program (NCU) has a Yahoo group in which students do share syllabi.

What do you think? It caused me to do some digging. I don't openly post complete syllabi, but I have used parts of them in my portfolio to help explain my work.

Neverland

An old movie I know, but I rented it and last night when I couldn't sleep, I watched it.

In the middle of the night, it's a very sweet movie. Not at all accurate - but still, it is neverland.