Tiny Plastic Houses » Blog

A Toast to One of the Best…

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 22:36:37 +0000

One of my longest known and best friends just died. I’ve known him since I was 5…

I found out, sitting at a picnic table with a friend over my break yesterday evening… I was immediately and irrevocably floored…

It’s not like I didn’t expect it. When he called the very last time he told me he didn’t think it was going to get better this time, but he had faith in his God and hope… But I knew for him to admit that to me meant he was saying goodbye. I cried then, not in his presence of course – but I cried… because of all the people in this world that didn’t deserve this, it was he who never did a truly shitty thing to anyone, he who was always there to help or be a friend, he who could always make me laugh… HE DIDN’T DESERVE THIS.

Later I was struck by it, had my 45 second cry in the fucking bathroom at my work… crouched down like a child playing in the mud… and we’re talking ugly, sobbing, cry. To my credit, the make-up held. (He used to tease I could be sweating buckets down my face, yet my make-up never ran, lol…)

These sorts of things usually don’t bother me like this… Death is part of life and part of the cycle we will all go through… but this one hit hard…

I mean, he used to call me at night when he was doing the traveling construction bit just because he “got lonely” and wanted to talk to someone… and intermittently, following that stint, he’d call just to bs….

Terry kept tabs on me forever. He’d ask about where I was living, what I was doing, my family… all of everything…

He hauled his cookies out to my mom’s every time he knew I was gonna be in town – And every time, even when I weighed 400+, even when I was crippled up, even this last time in July 2018 when I knew he wasn’t feeling his best, he would bellow: “HOOOOOOLLIE!!!” the instant he saw me – Then scoop me up off the ground in a giant hug.

I’ve known that boy for most of my life… 36 years of it, anyway…
We went to the principals office together in first grade, me for something I didn’t do and he for something he did… I stood by him and we got in trouble together. I convinced him to help me steal a giant “road closed” sign during a blazing hot summer day while we were in high school. (Don’t judge! The entire time he kept telling me as he hefted the behemoth into the bed of my truck that he was NOT helping me steal that sign!) I tricked him into joining FHA in the wayback and he actually enjoyed it!

Crap! He even took me on a date, lumpy old me, back when we were 15, lol, and years later he actually came to my house to tell me the morning after he lost his virginity… and how he always thought it would be me who took it, lol… But I never would make any move (and no, I didn’t even consider that until he mentioned it that day, and it was immediately dismissed with peaks of laughter from us both, lol!)

He’d check in on my mom as the years rolled on and help her around the house with little repairs and projects in my absence. He was always good for a story and a laugh… He was my friend. He never judged, was never mean. I don’t think he knew how to be that way…

He was the only person I knew that long that was still actually there, really there, not because he was family. Not because I gave him anything, or he felt like he owed me anything or because he wanted something…

But just there because he wanted to be…

The funeral is Saturday. I have no $$ for a flight, so I’m gonna have to either pray for cheap last minute flights I’ll purchase the day before I fly out or drive that lonely 18 hours x 2 by myself… I won’t even be able to call him to help pass the time.

I have to go. I just have to… I have to say goodbye to my oldest friend for the very last time.

Too Much…

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 19:38:08 +0000

I’m too skinny, he says…
But to that one? I’m much, much too fat…

And she thinks I’m too loud, but her friend finds me too quiet…

And I’m definitely too much on the whole…
but still not quite enough.

There are times when I’ve been handsome, beautiful even, when the mood strikes you… yet entirely too plain, too ugly, too average for most.

Let’s take note — I was too serious, yet far too funny… Too tough, too soft… Too friendly, yet distant… so very distant.

Sometimes I’m just too smart, too experienced, too informed, yet I know nothing, can’t hold my own, and am such a dumbass…

Tomorrow I’ll be just right, but today I’m just not?
Yesterday though… yesterday I was perfect… but still I wasn’t… just ask him.

And everyone has an opinion, like somehow my body, my personality, my actions, my very soul is up for debate, correction, change at the whim of the public, the call of the masses, the directive of the individual… the demand of you…

So fuck it, I think. Who cares what the collective you thinks, what you want, what you need…

Yet I do care! I want the world to voicelessly proclaim in silent adoration how much I’ve suffered, how greatly I’ve performed, how far I’ve exceeded expectation, how worthy I am of spoils beyond number for what I’ve done, what I will do… what I wish I’d done…

But realistically I know we are programmed to see the faults. We are designed to see what’s wrong, what can be better, what isn’t like us… or isn’t like how we’d like to see ourselves, more likely…

So I’ll simply continue to be too me…
And you can continue to be way too you…

And we’ll absolve ourselves to disagreeing about our general perfection and imperfection as we must… as we should.

The Transience of Life

Thu, 28 Dec 2017 18:11:41 +0000

Our lives here are transient as is the memory of those who’ve held our hearts… our day-to-day workings… our everything.

The holidays they come and go and with them are reminders of all the people who I’ve seen come and go in this world… each holding a part of who I am in their special way.

For instance, yeah… I remember Finn’s face… but it’s his hands, the freckles on his skin, the wild hair that strikes me… The things I can imagine him saying… him bleaching my first highlights into my long hair… him teaching me the tools of my trade, even way back then…

Or my paternal grandfather showing me how to check the oil in my first vehicle and the expletives he uttered when he pulled out the dipstick that was “longer than a whore’s dream”… or sitting looking at old slides in the basement and him telling me who was who and where it was taken… or sharing ferreted away treasures he’d found and collected over the years… and I see so much of him in me at times, even down to the smart assed remarks and somewhat cruel and cutting humor…

And there’s the boy who I barely remember his face but who’s hand I remember holding, saying his name… talking to his comatose form… as if there was any real chance that the whippet I was then was going to change this situation, somehow better it… fix this. Feeling a squeeze I was assured was just muscle reflex hours before he was taken, declared brain dead… and now lives on in others per donated organs… a precious gift we can only give once…

And my children’s paternal great grandmothers, both full of their own special brand of spunk, each going in her own way and time… One I remember stories of her youth full of fire and sass and how her hair and make-up were always flawless, the other how much she reminded me of my own grandmother in her look, her demeanor… just her.

I remember friends who took their own lives, leaving a wake that still beats against the shore in the most unexpected ways at the least expected times… washing salt into the wounds left from the harsh rub of guilt and remorse.

And others who live on physically but who’s spirit withers in this husk of humanity leaving them shadows of who they once were…

And me, 18-year-old me, with so much confidence and gumption, the world was hers… There wasn’t a damn thing she couldn’t power through… now she would laugh at my uncertainty, my misgivings, my wisdom… and call me old and cowardly. (I really do miss her, you know. But it takes an innocence to be that bold. A surety that youth and inexperience provides.)

All of these and more — gone to live in the memories I hold, the imaginings I keep, the wishes I hold for them and for me…

Beginning & The End…

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 04:19:03 +0000

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the end and the beginning… of everything… all at once.

Twenty years since this… and everything after has been a gift and a curse. A life lived a lifetime ago and now only tenuous strings hold me to what was before… Tenuous ties and strings I’ve tried vehemently to cut and yet cling desperately to — As if they will somehow save me from what I’ve become or take me back to what I was before…

For years following I had flashbacks, anxiety, night terrors… the smell of burning rubber or oil… The feel of snowflakes on my face… a curve on a hill… an overcast day on a country backroad… the hypnic jerk on the edge between awake and asleep that would continually throw me back into that car, that day, in the snow…impact. The pieces of a memory I can’t quite grasp and yet can’t forget.

There are more days than not when I feel like I’m living on borrowed time. There are sometimes moments when I wonder if I died that day and this is all my heaven or hell… There are times when I still get so angry… So scared… So tired…

There are days I want to just scream at someone, at anyone — I need them to realize that I haven’t felt ANY real pain since that day. That parts of me – mentally, physically, spiritually – haven’t felt ANYTHING since that day. I want them to recognize that an 18-year-old girl died that cold winter’s day… and the person who stands before you, blackened by the fire that she was FORCED to step into, can never go back. She can never unknow or unfeel any of this… She just tries to forget.

But I never want to forget…
Because what if that moment is all there was that was ever real… The last moments of a life long since gone. That very moment when I knew it was all over and there was no going back… The moment when they pushed back the cinders and found the rebirthed me, swaddled in my twisted metal blanket of blood and chrome, broken and shattered beneath a million shards of broken glass…

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10 Things I Have to Do This Week

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 12:51:59 +0000

Find a location for the LiA overnight my GS troop is running in a month or so for a great little Brownie group or two and touch base with possible attendees
Sort out all of my tax docs to see what’s missing and figure out if I I can locate it online or whether I’ll need to request it from various sources
Finalize WTD Plans with my girls
Start 5K Training Again & Sign up for the ShamRock & Run
Finalize 2017 Family Budget
Start Thinking About Birthday & Other Spring Event Plans
Finalize Plan for Troop Meeting Before Wednesday
Gather GS Receipts & Send all Parents Presidential Volunteer Information
Touch Base with SU People About Recognitions & Get on Facebook and Pump WTD, Recognitions, and COOKIES!
Start looking at goal planning systems

Annual Goals: Plan & Take a Great Vacation on a small budget, Repair the teepee and de-stank it thoroughly, Epoxy Coat the Basement Floor, Dress Up that Bar!

Quarterly Goals: Run another 5K, Pay off Bettie, Get the basement cracks & funky odor squared away,

Monthly Goals: Sign Up for the Shamrock & Run 5K , Pay my 2016 Personal Property Taxes (Bettie is over $500 by herself – I’ve been saving for the hit, I promise.), set up the annual budget, get a separate cage set up for Clover

Weekly Goals: Register to vote at my current address and get my driver’s license updated, Finish Annual Budget

Daily Goals: Get Gas, Get Physical, Watch BSG

Gratitude: I’m grateful for my friends who keep me sane… you know who you are!

Inspiration: My Sweet Potato Queens

Last summer, Jackie, our respective broods, and I headed out to Harvester’s to help out. We had a great time and the girls sorted through more potatoes than any of us wanted to see again for a really. long. time. So, today, when I have ten tons of crap on my desk, I”m going to think about all those potatoes and how it seemed impossible at first, but after plugging along steadily, we wiped them out!

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6 Reasons I’m So Happy It’s Friday!

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 21:52:26 +0000

No Work tomorrow!
Sleep in… tomorrow!
IT’S THE END OF A VERY STRESSFUL WEEK!
Get to close the chapter on that book…
PIZZA NIGHT!
Spend Time with my Girls

Annual Goals: Plan & Take a Great Vacation on a small budget, Repair the teepee and de-stank it thoroughly, Epoxy Coat the Basement Floor, Dress Up that Bar!

Quarterly Goals: Run another 5K, Pay off Bettie, Get the basement cracks & funky odor squared away

Weekly Goals: Register to vote at my current address and get my driver’s license updated, Finish Annual Budget Categories & get them all entered

Daily Goals: Get Gas, Get Physical, Watch BSG

Gratitude: I’m grateful for the January Birthday Celebration at work today – I’m not a January baby, but I still got CAKE! ;D

Inspiration:~

4 Things that Truly Scare Me

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:24:35 +0000

Real pain.
I haven’t felt real, physical pain since I was a kid… Probably the last time I can remember truly feeling pain was after the Wreck the Lives in Infamy ™ nearly 20 years ago. Now I go through the motions. Sometimes I feel an ache or a pain — something that lets me know that “this just ain’t right,” but not real pain… The prospect of that floors me.
A Trump Presidency
Now hold on, there buckaroo. I’m not slamming you. Just your man – You have just as much right to support him as I have to not. And I don’t. I really don’t.
I just can’t understand how people can support the kind of broad, chunky brushstrokes he’s painting with. I can’t see how American’s can’t understand the petulant and bullish manner in which he will destroy our standing here and all over the world. I just don’t understand. Period.
The end of “No discrimination for prior health problems.”
I have MS. I have been diagnosed with it for nearly 13 years. I HATE FEELING LIKE I HAVE TO MARRY SOMEONE JUST TO ENSURE I MIGHT HAVE HEALTH COVERAGE I CAN AFFORD. I HATE FEELING LIKE I HAVE TO SIGN MY FREEDOM AWAY SO THAT I CAN PAY FOR MEDICATION. :/
Losing My Job
I have worked for these people, in one form or another, for 15 years. Fifteen years where I have been tossed from place to place, treated good, bad, and indifferent, left behind and elevated… but a career change right now would be extremely hard. I’m almost 40. I only have a very specific set of skills — and I am uncertain what I would do financially — for me, for my family — if I lost my job.

Annual Goals: Plan & Take a Great Vacation on a small budget, Repair the teepee and de-stank it thoroughly, get the basement floor epoxy coated

Quarterly Goals: Run another 5K, Pay off Bettie, Get the basement cracks & funky odor squared away

Weekly Goals: Register to vote at my current address and get my driver’s license updated, Finish Annual Budget Categories & get them all entered

Daily Goals: Get Gas, Get Physical, Watch BSG

Gratitude: Today I’m grateful that my platemaker carries cash — oodles and oodles of cash — so he can change out my $5 bill for the arrogant snack machine.

Inspiration:~

10 Reasons I’m Crabby Today

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 21:06:43 +0000

I had to de-curl this mire of a hairdo this morning.
Early morning meetings.
Coffee Pot empty with no more coffee grounds to make more. :/
Radius training that isn’t about your area, but about your platemaker’s area so that you can be sure to help him when he inevitably messes it up.
My lunch box smells like garlic & butter. There is no garlic or butter in it.
I did not pack enough food in said lunch box, so I ended up having to partake of the snack machine.
The @*!?&$@# Snack Machine refused to take my $5 bill. It just spat it back out at me with a snicker and a rude finger gesture.
Having to hunt around for ANYBODY who has change for a $5 bill… Finally settling on my platemaker who is carrying WAY too much cash for today’s world in his wallet!
Network Admins that disconnect you from the automation server WITHOUT WARNING!
Overzealous doors that attack my elbows EVERY DAMN MORNING as I walk into work.

Annual Goals: Plan & Take a Great Vacation on a small budget, Repair the teepee and de-stank it thoroughly, get the basement floor epoxy coated

Quarterly Goals: Run another 5K, Pay off Bettie, Get the basement cracks & funky odor squared away

Weekly Goals: Register to vote at my current address and get my driver’s license updated

Daily Goals: Get Gas, Get Physical, Watch BSG,

Gratitude: Today I’m grateful that my platemaker carries cash — oodles and oodles of cash — so he can change out my $5 bill for the arrogant snack machine.

Inspiration: Waiting on it!

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10 Things I Wish I’d Done In My Youth

Tue, 24 Jan 2017 14:43:16 +0000

Travel
Reached Higher
Stayed Active
Got that PhD
Partied More
Made More Friends
Been Less Afraid
Listened to Prof Gilgun
Wrote that Book
Been More Independent

Annual Goals: Plan & Take a Great Vacation on a small budget

Quarterly Goals: Run another 5K, Pay off Bettie
Speaking of such things, I received the nicest email from my lender reminding me i was less than 90 days from pay off and informing me of next steps and options. Felt good to have official confirmation of that particular debt’s completion.

Monthly Goals: Sign Up for the Shamrock & Run 5K or the Liberty Hospital 5K, Pay my 2016 Personal Property Taxes (Bettie is over $500 by herself – I’ve been saving for the hit, I promise.)

Weekly Goals: Register to vote at my current address and get my driver’s license updated

Daily Goals: Pay Bills, Balance Budget, Get Groceries & Gas, Get Physical

Gratitude: Today I’m grateful for whomever found/bought the coffee grounds after we ran dry in the break room so that I might have some coffee this morning. Yeah, it’s the little things!

Inspiration: Today I’m looking for a little workout inspiration… So I discovered this I threw together a couple weeks ago:

One Year and 85 pounds apart. Surely I can lose these last 25!!

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10 Reasons I Need to Run the Shamrock & Run 5K

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 14:14:42 +0000

Gym Motivation
Thigh Muscles
25 Pounds
BMI
GLUTES
Bragging Rights
Bottle Opener Finisher’s Medal
Expensive Running Shoes
Focus
Proof I still Can!

Big Picture Goals: Run another 5K, Take a Great Vacation this Year, Retire by 55, Pay off the Car, Pay off the House

Goals for Today: Pay Bills, Balance Checkbook, Get Groceries & Gas, Post Up OWL PROWL Info, Get to the Gym

Gratitude: Today I’m grateful for Jas and my mom who facilitated retrieval of Thing 2′s forgotten flute in the middle of the night just in time for band class today! (I slept right through it but was wide-awake for this morning’s “OMG! I FORGOT MY FLUTE AT GRANDMA’S HOUSE!” moment bright and early at 6am!)

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Tiny Plastic Houses » Blog

A Toast to One of the Best…

Too Much…

Other Posts You Might Like:

The Transience of Life

Beginning & The End…

10 Things I Have to Do This Week

6 Reasons I’m So Happy It’s Friday!

4 Things that Truly Scare Me

10 Reasons I’m Crabby Today

10 Things I Wish I’d Done In My Youth

10 Reasons I Need to Run the Shamrock & Run 5K

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