Oh geez I disappeared again…. August 24, 2009

Well in my defense I’ve been kinda busy and going through some weird stuff. Nothing I can divulge here- too many ears (or would that be eyes) that might get offended.

The remainder of the trip to Michigan was where we left off I believe. It went well the whole thing from Missouri to Michigan only taking 15 hours instead of the 18 it took to go the other direction. Thank goodness for the GPS my father in law loaned me. I got to spend a bunch of time hanging out with my cousins while I was up there and that was a blast. Being in Michigan is almost like being home for me because throughout my life it has been the one constant for me. My dad got remarried and the house where I grew up is no longer the same. My mom moved more times than I feel like counting so that the place where she lives is no longer home to me. But my grandparent’s house still looks the same, smells the same, has the same furniture, and walking through the door is like walking back in time to my childhood. But sadly the place was never built to be a permanent residence- more like a weekend retreat- and years of abuse by us grand kids (we were tough on the place) and an increasing inability for my aging grandparent’s to keep up with the place (that has stairs and 20 acres) has  reached the point where it probably isn’t fit to live in. My poor aunt has been working to get them to an assisted living facility near her and things are finally moving in that direction. My grampa wants out of the country- he’s tired and its hard for him to keep up with everything that needs to be done that my gramma can’t do anymore. My gramma on the other hand isn’t quite in touch with reality anymore. She has convinced herself that this is all just a phase that will pass and then she’ll be back to her old self. But the truth is she’s on the edges of dementia be having cataract surgery in September, (the excuse for the move to assisted living for now) and above all that, she’s 82 years old. So this trip had some very bittersweet moments for me. I got to spend quite a bit of time getting to know my cousins in their own rights as adults and had a chance to update the memories of all of us spending summer days running free through the pines on my grandparent’s property. I learned that the two other granddaughters and I share many of the same likes, dislikes, and random personality traits and its wonderful to know that I’m not alone out there. Our lives have shared some very odd parallels at times that I have only recently discovered but they are things that have shaped us into the women we’ve become.

Returning home was the hardest part of all. I was so happy to see Jarell and my home, my dogs, my fish (yes a few of them are still around) and even my sorely neglected garden but it was so hard to leave the family that I’ve only started to get to know. I’m alternately homesick and ecstatic to be where my husband is because no place is truly home without him. I have friends here too that thanks to Facebook I’m reconnecting with and for that I am so thankful because I realized when I got home how truly lonely I’ve been. I get along with Jarell’s family most of the time (altho currently I think they’re mad at me because I exploded about some stuff at home) but my friends who knew before I became Melissa Sisk are a treasure. They knew me when I was more carefree before I had to grow up and be responsible and when I talk to them I am able to reclaim some of that youth. Now before any of you comment on my age I know I’m not very old but I feel ancient in my soul and its dragging me down. If you’re only as old as you feel then I’m 70 years old with my worries about money, family, and life in general. Middle aged at 23 and not sure how to go about being young again because I’m not sure I ever was. I know theres a difference between being responsible and feeling old but I’m not sure what it is. So for now I’m going to do my best to keep in touch with my youth and hope that something changes soon.

The other big change in my life came only yesterday. This may seem silly to some of you (well okay most of you) but it makes me sad. I’m a mechanic’s daughter and as such grew up loving a good car. When I bought my first vehicle (an 87 Toyota truck) it was love at first sight. It reminded me of the truck my dad had when I was little (his was an 85 so the body was a little different but very similar in many ways) and even tho it was more than I had initially planned to spend I bought the truck after the dealer agreed to replace the radiator. I learned to drive in that truck and it got me to and from work and then helped me move back to Missouri when I came home. We made an unplanned stop in Denver and got the oil changed which proved to be a mistake as we barely arrived in Missouri but it got us there. It cracked the head however and so my dad replaced the engine. The truck was running and driving great again and got me where I needed to go with no complaints. Its overdrive was…. quirky and so we had that repaired. Then it needed the starter motor replaced (I called that one but no one believed me till it went out). Finally last summer it was sluggish. It would start and then die when I put it in gear. But only when I drove it. On the rare occasions that Jarell or my dad drove it, it put on a brave face and ran like a dream but I knew it was sick. Then one day, as I hopped in it to run up to the mailbox, it started smoking like a chimney- billowing clouds of yellow smoke. I drove the hundred feet back down to the house and shut off the engine. My dad asked me to restart it to see what the smoke smelled like but it wouldn’t even turn over. Ever since then it has sat with promises of getting it fixed. The problem has been that either we didn’t have the money or my dad didn’t have the time- we’ve never managed to line the two up together. So yesterday after a great deal of thought I decided that we should put it up for sale as is so that someone else can get a decent vehicle with some work put into it. We’ll probably get less than a 10th of what we have in it and I can’t even say that I’ve gotten my money’s worth because I’ve owned it for 4 years but only actually driven it for about 1 year and a half out of that time due to one thing or another. So its a sad deal all around. But as soon as I can get Craigslist to function properly I’m listing it there and it will move to sit at the front of our property. I won’t be surprised if it sells because it has had offers made on it even when not running due to its extra long bed and being an automatic. But I’m sad. Its going to be like losing a friend when we sell my little truck.

Life November 6, 2008

Well I’m sure some of you must have been wondering if I had gone “gently into that good night” but the answer is no. I’ve just been busy.

This year has been one of those years where the giant batting machine of life has been pitching non-stop curve balls at us and it seems that just as soon as we knock one outta the park the next one is there ready to hit us in the face if we’re not careful. The most recent being our septic tank not draining properly and the cleanout pipe in our basement… overflowing. Yeah how disgusting and puke-worthy is that?

So we’ve been cleaning up after that mess in our basement and Jarell has been working on finishing a couple of .22’s he bought. They are the most beautiful things I’ve seen despite the fact that they are guns because of the amazing stocks he bought for them. They’re laminate or something like that in varying colors- one is pink, purple, blue, and green and the other is brown, green, black, and blue. The colors vary at different layers making for an absolutely amazing gun stock and I know this sounds silly, but I think they’re beautiful.

In this area and with car restoration my husband is an artist. The big burly guy that he is, he matches colors and styles so beautifully that you can’t help but admit that even something like a gun is a work of art. He has similar wonderful taste for our house helping me to create a space that is warm and inviting without being overly masculine or feminine- just comfortable and lovely. Yeah I really got the pick of the litter (and with 13 siblings, it almost IS a litter).  So if I’m absent a bit, just understand that I’m reveling in having my darling dearest home and here underfoot around the house. Tomorrow we go to take our three female dogs to get spayed (Yee haw) and then next week I’m sure he’ll be back to work and I’ll be back here.

For now I’m off to make some breakfast.

I dream of Genie October 26, 2008

So I’ve been having some seriously strange dreams lately. Like seriously! Like for example? Last night I had yet another dream about living at home again. This is not the first second or even fifth time this has happened. I always wake up pissed off as hell because there are definitely some unresolved issues there. The funny thing is I always remember in these dreams that I’m married altho it usually takes me a little while. Yeah that’s fun- trying to figure out why the hell I’m in trouble for not going to school in the morning when 1) I already graduated and 2) I’m married and do not answer to my parents in that way any more. However the biggest issue in these dreams is me fighting with my step mom. Oh man is that bad. I find myself screaming at her and saying all the things I will never say in real life because I am not able to do that to my dad. These scenes generally involve me cussing and throwing things and in general being someone who is a very angry individual. It’s a whole lotta fun let me tell you that right now. As much fun as those dreams are, the ones that I really love almost as much as a good root canal are the scary ones. Last night it was a movie worthy performance in which there was a girl who was mentally handicapped who had murdered her parents and I knew about it which meant that I was next. Fun stuff! In the beginning she resembled a girl who I worked with at Wal Mart. This girl was slightly handicapped, but the sweetest girl in the world. The one in the dream was terrifying and by the end of the dream when we had her trapped in a box that was supposed to simulate an elevator she had transformed into something truly evil. And of course because riding elevators was her favorite thing to do because she liked watching the trees out the window (It was a really fancy elevator) she realized it was fake when the trees didn’t move and came after us. She couldn’t be photographed because all that came out in the picture was like a part of a foot or arm or something and then it would be like something had been over the rest of the lens of the camera. This is even scaring me telling you about it. *shudders* The worst part however wasn’t the dream but waking up and feeling like I was surrounded by evil and there were spider monsters in my mind. I turned on the light just so that I could stick my boiling feet out from under the covers and then spent an hour reading from a Christian fiction story in order to get my head back to somewhere normal. So what the hell do these dreams mean? I am accustomed to cinematic quality dreams with a wide range of subject matter that, if I could ever remember enough of them, would make damn fine books or at least short stories. They don’t bother me as long as Jarell is home, but when I’m alone they scare the bejeezez outta me. And the crap with living at home again? Crap I went through that once, isn’t that enough for my apparently sick and twisted mind?! Don’t get me wrong- I do have mundane normal dreams along the lines of Jarell coming home for lunch, but somehow they don’t stand out as much as these ones do. Do these dreams indicate a seriously unsettled psyche or are they just run of the mill? And please note that the whole time Jarell has been gone (he’s coming home this week, YAY!) I have steered clear of movies that have any sort of morbid plot, stayed away from my favorite crime scene books ( the good ones by Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell) and in general stuck with safe stuff. Even the Halloween planning has been mostly on the G-rated side because there are likely to be children at our party so that couldn’t be it either. Not to mention that I haven’t had to talk to my step mom so theres not been any conflicts there either. Ah well lets just chalk it up to crazy for now. What do you dream about?

Alone in the middle of the night August 27, 2008

I spent several (okay 3 but it felt like more) months alone last summer because my husband had back to back out of town jobs with his father’s drilling company. And as soon as the men left, my MIL would follow with all the kids in tow except J10 and J11 because 10 had to work and 11 had to take care of the animals. I kept them at our house as often as possible since neither had a drivers license and really who leaves teens alone even when they’re responsible like 11 or not so much like 10. But the true reason I kept them close was I did not want to rattle about in this big home that is only a dwelling without my other half. At the beginning of all of this The Princess (J5) was still living here because that was the agreement when we bought the house from him. He spent a great deal of his time making my life a living hell for reasons known only to him but that was not the worst part.

J5 has been involved in some shall we say unsavory situations in his relatively short time on this earth. Unfortunately these unsavory situations have the tendency to make enemies for him and those enemies would always start as friends who would be invited to his house. The house that I now live in. So needless to say we lock up at night. He had just finished making a fairly volatile and dangerous person angry right before Jarell and I got married by hooking up with his former friend and roommate’s girlfriend/baby’s mother and lying about it to all and sundry including his live in girlfriend who I liked very much. I have to assume that the reason he hates me so much is that I told her the truth when asked about his activities as far as I knew while she was out of town. Again not relevant to alone in the middle of the night per se, but rather back story that makes things more understandable.

By the time that Jarell went out of town the first of July TP had taken to staying elsewhere most nights but he would show up in the middle of the night out of the blue. This made me nervous because I would not know about it till the next morning and its a bit unnerving to know someone can come into your house and sit in the living room next to your bedroom without you ever knowing it. Especially unnerving if you have lived in a place where someone tried repeatedly to break into your house in a drunken fit because they had mistaken your trailer for theirs. (another story for another day) I decided to take matters into my own hands and did the unthinkable according to TP. I put a locking doorknob on our interior basement/garage door. Unbeknownst to me it did not install properly and when you turned the door knob sometimes it would lock of its own volition. I took the key with me the day after installation to get copies made for TP (because the house was still technically his at the time- we were renting to own) and for Jarell. I wanted two locked doors between me and any possible intruders, but what I got was a royally pissed off brother in law and a messed up door. When I left to get copies that day the door locked behind me without my knowledge and TP tried to go upstairs. When he found the door locked and assumed it was on purpose he pried it open and left me and Jarell rude messages. He told Jarell to get his wife under control (oh yes…. he did go there) and told me to quit effing up his house. As amazing as this may sound, I am now thankful that he messed the doorknob up.

One night for whatever reason I was alone in my house. Neither of the girls were here having taken a rare night to stay at home with J4. The house was not locked up for the night, but the inside door was shut all the way and that meant that there was no doorknob on the outside for anyone to grab making a prybar or large screwdriver necessary to open it and light to see by a good thing.  

I was sitting on my couch reading a book at 9:30 or so when I heard a rattling at the bottom of the stairs. I assumed it was TP so I gave it no further thought. It kept going and I knew he would have gotten it by now because he was the one that broke it in the first place. I called Jarell quietly and asked him to check and see if it was J5 downstairs I also went in my room and locked the door as a precaution. Jarell called me back saying no J5 was in KC, why? Because theres someone in the basement trying to get upstairs. I could still hear the muted rattling of the door. Jarell debated about who to call while I cried softly and then decided to call J3 who lives only about 5 miles away. I grabbed a gun and snuck quietly out of my bedroom glad now to hear that the noise had stopped but nervous about what that might mean.

J3 came tearing down the driveway in his big duelly Dodge with its diesel engine hammering. He came to the seldom used front door and rang the bell. I was on the phone with his wife so I knew it was him. He came in with his shirt unbuttoned looking like he’d dressed quickly with his .45 drawn (this is rural America folks – even grannies gots guns) and checked the bedrooms, closets, bathroom, and the basement. Whoever had been there was now gone.

We locked all the doors and I drove to my inlaw’s house to stay with the girls because my house was no longer the safe haven it had been 3 hours earlier. It was a scary place 1/4 mile back from the road that no one even knew was there. Well almost no one and that was the problem. The wrong people knew and the right ones to call in an emergency might take too long getting lost with confusing directions given by the omniscient GPS that has somehow misplaced our location. After that I was not willing to stay alone in the house and the few short trips where Jarell has been gone overnight since then have been girls nights in because when it comes down to it, I am more capable of acting when there is someone else to protect besides myself.

When ,in the middle of the afternoon one day J11 and I heard a noise in the basement that was not made by someone who was supposed to be here, I grabbed the gun again and made my way down the stairs to check every nook and cranny because someone was there to call 911 if need be. I was shaking for an hour afterwards from the excess adrenaline leaving my body but at the time all I cared about was making sure we were both safe. This is my nature- to protect my home and those in it less strong than I.

Where does all of this come from you might ask. Why talk about it now? Well it just so happens that on or around the 15th Jarell will make a trip that should last only about 2 weeks to Oregon for his job. I will not go because 1) I hate flying with a passion and 2) My dogs are here and I don’t need to go but I do need to take care of them and my fish and my home. The thought of his upcoming trip makes me nervous. I cringe a little more as each day passes knowing that his imminent departure draws nigh. I curl up inside thinking of the long nights alone where things go bump in the night and it makes me afraid. The standard excuse of having the kids around because there are no parents at home may or may not be valid because it is unlikely that my MIL will follow for this short trip. The fact that J5 has been gone from this residence for almost a year now seems to have made a difference in the last 2 months but thats not that long and we’ve gone longer between incidents before this.

This is what weighs on my mind in the wee sma’s of the night so much so that I have dragged out my most persuasive words and writing for you dear reader. Show instead of tell. I was always good at that in school assignments but I’m out of practice now. Persuasion in my life is done with food and verbal incentive rather than passioned proes, adjectives, illiteration, and good punctuation. I lay my daily life open for all to see as if I were writing notes to a good friend replete with smileys and slang rather than as if I were trying to make the grade. I hope it does not dissapoint because I feel inadequate next to those of you who speak so eloquently of things as simple as chickens, yard work, and visits to the grocery store.

As a conclusion, I want to say this was always the weakest point of my papers, letters and even emails. I never knew just how to end and countless teachers and peers told me this as did my own eyes. How does one conclude a piece about your fear of the dark and lonely night when it is at odds with your love of shadows and moons and all things nocturnal. I suppose you say that you will soldier on and that there is (usually) nothing to fear but fear itself. As for me? I bid you adieu for the night mes chers amis.

Bonne Nuit

Waking up in someone else’s dream August 23, 2008

Me circa 2008… I

I mentioned once that I went to 9 schools in my school days. I figured out once that I had 52 different teachers (some I had multiple years) and who knows how many substitute teachers. I divided my life between the midwest and NorCal and at times spent summers in Michigan. Its funny, I love having my home and knowing where that is, but here lately I find myself longing for California or Michigan- a change of scenery. However I know as soon as I got there I would be longing for rednecks, mud runs, and my wonderful home where my heart definitely stays. I was inspired to think on these things by The Cheek of God here.

Its amazing what a life of different places can give you in this world. I often consider this, because I have two sets of friends for a long time- California and Missouri- and now I have all of you. Its sometimes difficult, as he relates, to try and explain the different groups to each other, but its not a bad thing. My friends in California knew me in my formative years when I was young and shy and cared what everyone else thought of me. My friends in Missouri knew me as I began to grow up and decided what everyone else thought was a bunch of crap and I was going to live my life my way. And now, you all get to watch me grow into my true self.

I don’t plan to ever fully grow up, but I am becoming my own person away from my parents. I have a new name, a new life, a new husband. (and I’m a new wife… sorry couldn’t resist that rhyme scheme) I am reinventing myself and becoming able to ignore all the things I was for everyone else and just be who I am for me. For better or worse, I am. My dad once quoted a Faith Hill song about me in a sermon in church of all places. “Daddy’s little girl, Mama’s little angel, Teacher’s pet, and pagent queen (well never that) All my life I’ve been pleasing everyone but me. Waking up in someone else’s dream.” I don’t remember exactly what the moral was altho he went on to mention that for the little bit of a person I was, I dreamed big. No one would ever guess from looking at me that I played the baritone horn or had a voice that could belt like mine did when the need arose. But I still hid behind the guise of everyone’s little darling.

Well now its finally my time to shine. I’m living my own dream here folks and you guys have ring side seats. It may get a bit sloppy and nostalgic from time to time and I’m not always grammaticly or politicly correct, but here I am world.

Me circa 2004

Home but good and mad March 27, 2008

Well we’re finally home and I’m so happy to be here. I am not however happy with the last movie we watched this evening. We watched “The Mist” and I’m livid over the ending. The movie was mediocre at best throughout the whole thing, but when you get to the end and I’m not going to spoil it for those of you who still want to see it, I was about as pissed off as I can get. There is a character who, fortunately gets whats coming to her, but before hand she goes all hypocritical bible thumper on everyone and even goes so far as to incite a crowd to murder before she’s finally shot. But the fact that the movie ended the way it did absolutely disgusted me. I’ve never been a King fan altho I have enjoyed a few of his movies, but this really upset me. Thats all I have to say for tonight as I am exhausted.

Almost back home March 24, 2008

Well no not really but we’ll be going home the day after tomorrow. We’re going to Seaworld today maybe which will be fun but if we don’t I’ll be okay with that too. I’m happy because yesterday I went to a bead store called Black Market Minerals and got a bunch of beads including some really cool magnetic beads. It’ll fun to play with them and I already have a design for a choker planned for some of the shell beads and teardrop pearls. They had sets of 10 magnetic beads for sale as clasps for 4.50 and they had whole strings for sale of the same beads for 4.50 so needless to say I bought the whole string. I’ll try to post pictures later but I’m not making promises because I’ve procrastinated before Until later,
Me